New Jersey received $1.8 billion for affordable housing for storm victims. This map is the insurance payouts, which is not the state funds.

By Andy Polhamus/South Jersey Times
on October 08, 2013 at 6:00 PM, 
updated October 08, 2013 at 6:06 PM

MANTUA TWP. — The township is suing a land developer over a half-finished construction project.

The lawsuit, filed Sept. 20, names the Paparone Housing Co., First Indemnity of America Insurance Co., Bond Safeguard Insurance Co., Wells Fargo Bank and Rouse/Chamberlain, LTD. as defendants.

The case centers around Paparone Housing’s development of Country Garden Estates, which was supposed to be completed in three phases. The developer could not afford to finish the development, however, and Wells Fargo foreclosed on the properties slated for development in late 2012....

This might be some of the issue. I don't think this is affordable housing, the average home costs half-million, but , affordable housing can be built in cities known to have high end housing. The average house in Seaside Heights still sells for a quarter million. There are houses in Seaside Heights as much as $700.000.

New Jersey's median housing cost per US Census in 2011 is over $300,000. Median household income is $71,000. There is 9.4% below the poverty level in New Jersey compared to 14.3% in the USA.

This is interesting, MF Global's customers are getting 100% back.

By Bloomberg News  
November 06, 2013 at 10:16 AM
updated November 06, 2013 at 10:51 AM

MF Global’s trustee (click here) will get court approval to complete distributions to former customers of the failed brokerage, allowing all missing funds to be returned by the end of the year.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn said yesterday he’s prepared to approve a plan to make the final determination of what 26,000 former customers are owed and distribute the money to them. The motion will ensure customers are paid by Dec. 31, satisfying all claims more than two years after the brokerage failed.
‘That’s quite an accomplishment,’’ Glenn said at a hearing in Manhattan. At the outset of the case, nobody thought that customers would recover everything they lost, he said.
MF Global Holdings, the brokerage’s parent company, filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 31, 2011, after wrong-way $6.3 billion bet on bonds of some of Europe’s most indebted nations. The company listed assets of $41 billion and debts of $39.7 billion. More than $1.6 billion in customer funds that should have been segregated were missing.
The trustee, James Giddens, marshaled more than $5.3 billion in assets from MF Global’s former exchanges and depositories, which he said were clearly customer property. He has already made interim distributions to customers. The final distributions will require him to advance funds from the company’s general bankruptcy estate....

How often does that happen, huh?

 

Polonium?

Nov. 6, 2013

By LAMA HASAN

A Swiss forensics investigation (click here) claims that the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned with radioactive polonium, the TV channel Al Jazeera reported today.

In the 108-page report, the scientists say they found at least 18 times the normal levels of polonium in his rib, pelvis and in soil stained with his decaying organs.

The investigation, a year in the making, concludes that Arafat had ''unexpectedly high levels'' of polonium and that ''the results moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium.''

A Palestinian forensic investigator removed 20 specimens from Arafat's grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah in November 2012. His body was reinterred the same day. The samples from his corpse and grave were taken in front of three international teams....

It took there weeks from the time of Litvinenko's first symtoms to his death. Who had Arafat been with from September 11 to November 11, 2004?

Polonium (click here) was discovered by Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie in 1898 and was named after Marie's native land of Poland (Latin: Polonia). This element was the first one discovered by them while they were investigating the cause of pitchblende radioactivity.

Po-210 has a half-life of 138 days. This is the time it takes for the activity to decrease by half due to a process of radioactive decay. Po-210 decays to stable lead-206 

uranium ores contain less than 0.1 mg Po-210 per ton

Po-210 can be manufactured artificially by irradiating stable bismuth-209 with thermal neutrons resulting in the formation of radioactive Bi-210, which decays (half-life 5 days) into Po-210. Polonium may now be made in milligram amounts in this procedure which uses high neutron fluxes found in nuclear reactors. Only about 100 grams are produced each year, making polonium exceedingly rare.

Polonium is not subject to IAEA safeguards.

Was Arafat a Shi'ite? Arafat had met with Iranians shortly after the release of the American hostages in hopes of finding allies that could assist him in leveraging against the USA. 

...His stand may have been influenced at least in part (click here) by the success of the Islamic radical, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who had just overthrown the Shah of Iran. If that obscure Iranian cleric could unseat the Shah and hold American officials hostage for 444 days, then Arafat could have his cake in Palestine and eat it too (See Rubin and Rubin, Aburish)....

Arafat with Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, days after Iranian Revolution

...Iran also admitted (click here) to producing small amounts of polonium-210 in the TRR in the early 1990s through the irradiation of bismuth targets.  Polonium 210 is a well-known radioactive material used in a beryllium-polonium neutron initiator that starts the chain reaction in a nuclear weapon.  Iran claims that the polonium was produced as part of a study of the production of neutron sources for use in radioisotope thermoelectric generators and not for use in a nuclear weapons neutron initiator.  The TRR was under traditional safeguards at the time of the undeclared plutonium experiments and polonium production.  This type of safeguards is not designed to detect such small-scale activities.

Litvinenko was working for a Chechen newspaper.

Luke Harding and Ian Sample

The Guardian

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Seven years ago (click here) the Kremlin critic and ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko met two Russians in a London hotel. What happened next was one of the most brazen assassinations of modern times. According to British prosecutors, Litvinenko's companions, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, slipped a colourless, odourless substance into his tea. Litvinenko drank. Not much, but enough for him to die in agony three weeks later in University College hospital.

The substance was polonium-210, a rare and highly radioactive isotope that a Swiss team has discovered in Yasser Arafat's exhumed corpse. It is extremely hard to detect. Scientists only identified it in Litvinenko hours before his death. A former FSB officer, and teetotaller, Litvinenko was a fitness fanatic. Doctors say it was only because he was in such good shape that he lasted so long. If he had died sooner, the cause of death would probably never have been uncovered....

Despite her defeat she still pulled in 15 points more than expected.

The current Governor was expected to finish his second race in the 70%, that didn't happen. In the last three weeks of the campaign Barbara Buono was gaining attention by the New Jersey voters.

The Huffington Post 
By Shadee Ashtari & Chris Gentilviso Posted: 11/05/2013 10:11 pm EST Updated: 11/05/2013 10:15 pm EST 
New Jersey Democratic (click here) gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono slammed members of her party Tuesday after losing the race to Republican incumbent Chris Christie.
In her concession speech, Buono praised supporters who "withstood the onslaught of betrayal from our own political party."
"The Democratic political bosses, some elected and some not, made a deal with this governor," she said, according to NorthJersey.com. "They didn’t do it for the state. They did it out of a desire to help themselves."
Over the course of the 2013 campaign, several Democrats in New Jersey crossed party lines and backed Christie's reelection bid, including Sea Bright, N.J. Mayor Dina Long, state Sen. Brian Stack (D-Union City), Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, and Spring Lake Mayor Jennifer Naughton....

2016 - The extremists will run Jeb Bush and Chris Christi will be Veep candidate. Christi will pull some attention from voters, but, Bush is not going win the election. I think Christi's presidential ambitions will eventually bring him to federal elections and quite possibly as an Independent. It is where Chris belongs. He belongs in the Federal government, the House at the very least. But, he should not retreat from his political ambitions because the GOP is too blind to lead. The GOP is locked in rhetoric and not reality. I don't think that is going to change.

I am very excited for New York City. It is going to be awesome. 

The Republicans aren't the Pope and they always try to use religious guilt to drive the electorate. It is a hideous and rhetorical paradigm. The GOP candidates 'available' to run in 2016 are all locked into that mindless paradigm. American Catholics aren't sheep, although most Popes have thought they should be.

My father was a devout Catholic. He loved Kennedy. He hung his hat on his soul. But, vote for a Republican because they were lining up with the Pope? Never. He saw a greater morality than any Republican was willing to serve up. He was a lifelong Democrat and involved in politics. The real morality matters. He was a union representative in most of his early employment years. When he was recruited into management he respected the people that worked under him and had their respect and willingness to work. My father was not that exceptional in his beliefs within his peer group and close friends.

Governor-elect McAuliffe was up against an incumbent. He had to run hard to get voters' attention. I think the voter purge caused problems, but, the Attorney General owned it so he can't really complain about his shortfall.