Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. First day commuting back to Hoboken on NJ Transit. A lot slower than usual, and the train creeped into the terminal, which makes sense given all the scrutiny over what caused the crash and the NTSB watching everything NJ Transit is doing.

TV crews were out in force, and they’ll be here for some time to come as there are regular updates on findings, progress on reopening the terminal fully, etc. Figure that will last another couple of days, and then the media will move on to the next story.

Reality is that NJ Transit has been beat down for so long trying to cobble together a budget, that it makes it difficult to plan accordingly. Capital budgets are plundered to fund operations. State assistance simply has fallen like a rock, and Gov. Christie decided that his path to gas tax funding (which only came about because of the crash in Hoboken) was to demand and get an estate tax repeal to go along with the gas tax hike, earned income break, and a sales tax break. The sales tax break is a pittance for a person attempting to offset the gas tax hike - you’d need to spend something like $40k to see a breakeven. The estate tax repeal is a giveaway to millionaires.

It would have been far more prudent to skip the sales tax cut altogether, and direct the portions that would have been cut, plus the estate tax revenue to mass transit. That would have lessened the burden on drivers and commuters, but that’s not how NJ politicians roll in the Shire.

Oh, and about that ruckus last night in St. Louis. Just who exactly is on the fence now? Seriously. Trump doesn’t even have Schoolhouse Rock level knowledge of how bills become law, or what a legislator does. So, no Trump, Clinton couldn’t just enact anything she damn well liked before she even entered the Senate to stop you from taking the very tax breaks that the tax code has allowed for years (NOLs, depreciation).

And all your talk about tax policy shows you don’t know the first thing about it. Other than what your tax accountants were able to do to reduce your tax bill to nothing because of spectacular losses. $1B in losses on personal income. That is jaw-dropping bad. Spectacularly awful.

Then, there’s the nonsensical and dangerous rheotric about throwing Hillary in prison and having special prosecutors to investigate - never mind that the FBI and DOJ said no reasonable prosecutor would touch, but you know that Rudy would relish that opportunity, because it’s self-evident he’s no longer reasonable (he’s thrown his lot with Trump after all).

As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, you had Trump (and the GOP) claiming that Hillary shouldn’t have given a defendant counsel in a heinous case of a rape. Apparently, Trump doesn’t think the 6A right to counsel is a thing. At least for those people who can’t afford it.