;)
The Commentariat -- Feb. 10, 2014
Kimberly Dozier of the AP: "An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year. The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a U.S. citizen and the Justice Department must build a case against him, a task it hasn't completed. Four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him. And President Barack Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House." ...
... Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald: "The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes -- an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people."
Paul Krugman refutes all the phony Republican excuses for refusing to extend unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed. ...
... E. J. Dionne: Many thanks to Ron Paul, "... today's conservatives are in thrall to Austrian thinking, and this explains a lot of what is going on in Washington. Broadly popular measures such as raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment insurance -- normal, bipartisan legislation during the Keynesian heyday -- are blocked on the assumption that people are better off if the government simply keeps its mitts off the market.... When it comes to government policy, the Austrian economists paved the road to paralysis."
Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "Chuck Schumer is trying to call John Boehner's bluff over immigration reform.... Appearing on 'Meet the Press' Sunday, Schumer ... floated a new proposal designed to win Republican support for an immigration bill -- a proposal designed specifically to address concerns that Boehner raised last week.... At a press conference, Boehner indicated that his fellow House Republicans won't support an immigration bill because they don't trust President Obama to enforce it. Fine, Schumer said on Sunday -- let's postpone the new law's effective date until 2017, when Obama isn't president anymore." ...
... Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "A spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) rejected Schumer's idea saying it wold remove the impetus for Obama to enforce immigration laws during his remaining time in office. 'The suggestion is entirely impractical, since it would totally eliminate the President's incentive to enforce immigration law for the remainder of his term,' said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel." CW: Obviously, this is pure bull. (a) Obama is the Deportin'est President Ever, & (b) what conceivable difference is there between (1) current law (the House sits on its collective ass) & (2) current law (the House passes a bill that doesn't kick in until February 2017)?
Live Poets Society. Megan Wilson of the Hill: "Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Sunday said Democrats are pushing poetry as an alternative to holding a job.... 'What the liberals and the Democrats want you to believe is, "Well, but you'll have time to write poetry,"' Gowdy said. 'Well, that's great until you try and buy your grandkid a birthday present or you try and pay the heating bill.'"
Jerry Markon & Alice Crites of the Washington Post: "Accenture, the contractor urgently tapped to help fix the federal health-insurance Web site, is a favorite of corporate America but has a record that includes troubled projects and allegations of ethical lapses, a review of the consulting giant's history shows."
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times on the coordinated efforts by the Republican Party's leadership -- which, BTW, includes the Koch brothers -- to nip in the bud extremist Tea Party challenges to establishment candidates.
Deanna Fei, the mother of one of those "distressed babies" AOL CEO Tim Armstrong cited as the reason for cutting all employees' 401(k)s, writes a rebuttal in Slate: "Our daughter has already overcome more setbacks than most of us have endured in the span of our lives. Having her very existence used as a scapegoat for cutting corporate benefits was one indignity too many." Fei points out, among other things, that hers was not a "high-risk pregnancy," as Armstrong claimed. ...
... Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times on Tim Armstrong's repeated claim that AOL has an "employees first" policy: the ObamaCare-imposed costs of paying for care of "distressed babies" "wasn't Armstrong's only rationale for the 401(k) change. He also told CNBC that the company figured that its obligations to employees who were leaving AOL were at the 'bottom of the list' -- so why not screw them on their way out? If Armstrong listened to himself talk, he might learn why 'AOLers' might want to leave in the first place."
Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "Bill Keller, a columnist at The New York Times and its former executive editor, will leave the paper to become editor in chief of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism start-up focused on the American criminal justice system." CW: Good riddance to an insufferable man. I do salute any effort to shed more light on our horrible, criminal justice system, so here's hoping Keller does some worthwhile work over there.
Annals of Slipshod Journalism
Jay Rosen tries to figure out what's wrong with Chris Cillizza, Tuck Chodd, Mark Halperin, Politico, et al. He dubs them "the savvy" & says they "sever any lingering solidarity between journalists as the providers of information, and voters as decision-makers in need of it.... [They] set up -- so it can speak to and cultivate -- a third group between these two: close followers of the game." As a class exercise, Rosen instructs us to read this piece by Cillizza, defending his "report" on the CBO report.
... CW: The line that particularly struck me was Cillizza's explanation of his charter: "My job is to assess not the rightness of each argument but to deal in the real world of campaign politics in which perception often (if not always) trumps reality." This is precisely what Friar Tuck argued last September when Ed Rendell said on "Morning Joe" that most people who oppose ObamaCare because they believe "stuff that's incorrect." Tuck said he agreed: "because they haven't even heard the Democratic message. What I always love is people say, 'Well, it's you folks' fault in the media.' No, it's the President of the United States' fault for not selling it." Later he tweeted, "point I actually made was folks shouldn't expect media to do job WH has FAILED to do re: ACA"
... Paul Krugman thinks the joke is on both Republicans & the "savvy" re: the CBO report: "By the end of the week a barrage of press reports, plus those mighty figures Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, had effectively changed the story from 'CBO predicts massive job losses' to 'Republicans lie about CBO report.' ... So the savvy cultists were wrong even on their own terms. And notice why they were wrong: It never occurred to them that understanding the real issues might matter, and so they were caught completely off guard when Republican lies about policy matters produced a backlash." ...
... Eric Lipton of the New York Times demonstrates how special interest groups, like the restaurant industry, fund phony think tanks & how the groups' lobbyists sell the think-tank "research" to media outlets as legitimate evidence to support their clients: "What is most important, said Lisa Graves, the executive director of an organization responsible for the online publication PR Watch, is that newspapers detail Employment Policies Institute's corporate ties when they cite research it publishes. Such disclosure happened in less than 20 percent of the cases over a three-year period, an analysis by PR Watch found. 'They are trying to peddle an industry wish list, but mask it as if they are independent experts,' she said. 'They are little more than phony experts on retainer.'" ...
... CW: it also apparently is "not the media's job" to point out the affiliations of an "expert"'s think tank. Liberals simply need to do a better job of "selling" junk research to media stenographers.
AND Driftglass makes a great catch: David Brooks cannot remember Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. CW: I would add that Brooks has never heard of Minority Leader Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Outside the Beltway
Shawn Boburg of the Bergen Record: "A team of attorneys retained by Governor Christie's office in the aftermath of the George Washington Bridge scandal is seeking documents and a private interview with the Hoboken mayor [Dawn Zimmer], whose explosive allegations have added to the governor's woes.... But Zimmer, who has already met with the U.S. Attorney's Office and gave authorities a journal in which she recounted the alleged threat delivered by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, declined the invitation. We question whether it is appropriate for the Governor's Office, in essence, to be investigating itself, particularly when an investigation of the same subject matter is being conducted by the U.S. Attorney's Office,' Zimmer's attorney wrote.... In a show of force, [attorney Randy] Mastro, whose firm is charging the governor's office $650 per hour per attorney, wrote in his letters to Hoboken officials that he had assembled a team of 'five former federal prosecutors' to look into Zimmer's claims."
David Chen of the New York Times contrasts Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, with the last guy who had that job -- Chris Christie. CW: The main difference seems to be that Fishman is not a crooked pol. ...
... Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board:The Star-Ledger's endorsement of Chris Christie for re-election was "regrettable."
Presidential Election 2016
Jonathan Karl, the conservative hack masquerading as an ABC News reporter, writes, [David] "Petraeus has always shied away from politics, but in a new book he is quoted lavishing so much praise on Hillary Clinton, he seems to be endorsing her as a candidate for President. 'She'd make a tremendous president, Petraeus says in the new book 'HRC' by Jonathan Allen and Aimee Parnes. And for Petraeus, Exhibit A in why she would be a tremendous president is the very thing for which Republicans most aggressively attack Clinton: her performance as Secretary of State when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked." Karl claims this is a shocker because Petraeus is the Republican's most popular general.
News Lede
Charlotte (North Carolina) Business Journal: "N.C. environmental officials now confirm arsenic levels in the Dan River exceeded state standards for at least two days following the coal ash spill a week ago from a shuttered Duke Energy plant. The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources says it made an error when it indicated Thursday that the arsenic levels in the Dan River downstream from the spill were within state standards on Monday and Tuesday." (See also February 8 News Ledes.)
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Reader Comments (17)
I don't really agree that Cillizza is failing his journalistic duty. He reminds readers often that he is an observer and critic of the strategies and tactics of the political contenders, and of the effects of those s&t's, before he is an analyst of the policies and programs the contenders are selling (Ezra Klein gets to handle the p&p; too bad he's leaving WaPo).
In the particular case of ACA/CBO I think he is correct, that the GOP will use the simple lie to great negative-ad effect in the next campaign cycle, because the D's message on that particular subject (ACA and labor participation) will be more complicated. The D's could come up with a simple message that is also negative (negative messages are proven to be more effective), which would basically be "The GOP lied about job losses due to ACA." But that would be less effective than the GOP lie that "ACA cost X million jobs," to that uninformed swing voter who had not been paying attention. And the D's would be smarter to put their negative-ad ammo where it counts: "the GOP is screwing up your life, and doesn't care about you."
Cillizza doesn't seem to be propounding the "both sides do it" line, rather saying "here's how the dynamics work on voters."
Finally, it is interesting that Cillizza writes, in the linked piece, that
"Politics is about perception and confirming or debunking deeply held beliefs (whether or not those beliefs are factually based)."
The operational definition of "politics" I got in PoliSci 101, reinforced often in reading and experience, is that it is the process of determining who gets what and why and how. It trumps economics and law when those in political power have the ability to change market outcomes, property rights and societal priorities by being able to write law. So, since Cillizza thinks "politics" is about perception, it seems clear that he is not really talking about "politics" - he is talking about the game of voter persuasion, which has been closely aligned with advertsing techniques at least since TV became a standard appliance.
On phony think tanks, savvy non-reporters, truth, and the public good.
While reading the link Marie provides to the Eric Lipton article on think tanks whose efforts are predetermined by connections to interest groups (a restaurant owners group who wishes to squash increases in minimum wage, eg), two things came to mind.
First, and most predictably, Lipton, very early in the article, adds the de rigueur disclaimer (they must teach this in journalism classes by now) that "both sides do it". Yes, Eric, liberals and conservatives both have think tanks and they both produce findings favorable to a certain point of view, but the sheer volume and jaw-dropping dishonesty of those done by most conservative groups dramatically outweighs anything coming from the left. First, the left is nowhere near as organized or well funded, and they still tend to deal in facts. They may organize and present those facts in a manner that supports progressive views, but at least they deal in real, as opposed to manufactured facts. So, yes, both sides do it, but that's like saying that scientists and creationists both have "ist" at the end of their titles. That's the extent of the similarity.
So there's that.
Then, I was thinking about how often I take the time to read some of these reports. I mean, really dig in. The answer is not all that often. In most instances I will find a think tank report and gloss through it looking for the salient argument and supporting facts (if any), but only occasionally do I pick them apart line by line, plus if you've done this a few times, you realize that most of these reports are terribly written which makes the effort a bit like grading a pile of college term papers. I bet I could say the same for most readers out here.
There just isn't time to scour the hundreds of reports that come out every month. And I'm talking here about a self-selected group of political/news junkies. We, most of us, tend to rely on meta-reports, reports about the reports, to provide us with the most notable features of pronouncements from both sides, but mostly for the flood of conservative think tank effluvia.
But we also, necessarily, tend to be aware of the relative merits of the secondary sources. If Krugman offers an opinion on a paper decrying the salutary effects of a raise in the minimum wage, we tend to give it a bit more weight than, say, a Breitbart screed or something from the Kochs.
And now we have "reporters" who say that it's more important to "report" on what seems to be rather than what is. Of course most of us know to take whatever drizzles out of the lazy minds of people like Mark Halperin with enough salt to float a battleship. But there are plenty of casual readers who aren't armed with the necessary information to keep such flotsam at bay.
So not only do we have plenty of inaccurate, poorly written, badly researched, predetermined information flooding public forums, we have also to deal with secondary sources who come right out and say that if the lie sounds good enough, that's what they'll stick with.
Public good anyone?
I didn't think so.
And this is why the Kochs and special interest groups continue to fund these spurious reports. They don't even have to worry about very many truly savvy reporters sniffing out the truth. As long as it sounds good to Chuck Todd, they're home free, because real reporting ain't his job, man.
I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that Republicans are running around trying to put out fires they set themselves.
They're the geniuses who invited in the crazies, but now they realize that these zombies they hoped would eat Democrats make no distinction in their diet and have put them on the menu as well. Oh those poor Republicans. Those poor Koch brothers. And poor Turd Blossom! Bless their withered little hearts.
The fact is that people like the characters mentioned in the Times article who are currently scaring the bejeezus out of the GOP establishment, the plastic baby fetus whacko and the no statues of Lincoln loony, and others much worse, are the sort that you used to see sitting alone at the end of the subway car, half shaven, zippers down, drooling on themselves and screaming about aliens. Now, thanks to the masterminds, a whole herd of these subway loons are running congress.
Thanks, guys. And good luck with your zombie removal plan. I think.
I read Deanna Fei's rebuttal. She mentions her 3-inch folder of medical bills. If her daughter was born before 26 weeks (and it sounds like she was because she was in NICU for 3 months) and weighed less than 2 or 2-1/2 pounds, there is a little known government program available that covers all the costs and there is no income link. She should look into it. Actually, the hospital social worker should have told her.
From the NYT/Peters piece on GOP leadership seeking to contain the TP:
"“We’re not picking a fight with the basis for the Tea Party,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ... “But some have hijacked the Tea Party model and taken it to an extreme level.”
OK -- they like the Tea Party but don't like what it is. GOP gets more Orwellian all the time.
@Patrick. I think you're right about Cillizza. The problem is, in my view, that this kind of meta-reporting (a) ignores the substance of whatever the contested issue is, & (b) treats real issues that affect real people as a game, a rigged game in which the public interest is always the loser. (Appropriately enough, as I write in the left column, the "House of Cards" promo is in the right-hand column.) Rosen gets at this. And it gets to him.
Rosen notes that the name of Cillizza's column, "The Fix," is a reference to the fact that it is geared to political junkies. But I see the name more along the lines of "the fix is in"; that is, the game is as rigged as any crooked carnival game or blackjack table.
I see it more as a for-profit industry, but in any event, it isn't perception that trumps reality as much as it is politics that trumps reality.
If this meta-reporting were limited to blogs like Cillizza's, I guess it would be okay, but the problem is that it has bled onto the front pages of major media outlets. From Cillizza's obsession with process, where the press releases & strategies of opposing sides are the subject, it's a short step to the front page, where the Cillizza's subject becomes the "news" report's content. Ergo, on Cillizza's paper, the Washington Post, not only traffics in he-said/she-said nonsense -- Cillizza's dueling stragetigies -- but also are written on the premise that the contested issue (of no interest to Cillizza) is in itself a worthy goal: the deficit is too damned high, "entitlements" cuts are necessary. He-said/she-said reporting -- like Cillizza himself -- is blissfully superficial; it can ignore the purposeful political misstatements & obfuscations, making journalism itself more a game than a profession.
Stephen Colbert famous mocked White House correspondents at the WH Correspondents' Dinner:
"The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!"
It doesn't take much revision of Colbert's joke to see today's reporting as such a racket: type a lede, cut & paste both sides' talking points, run a spell-check, turn it in. For in-depth pieces, add opinions of both sides' "experts," toss in some anonymous sources, expense $50 for Pulitzer entry. No wonder some "news" outlets think they can offshore the news.
The danger isn't Chris Cillizza as much as it is his spawn: reporters like Lori Montgomery.
Marie
@Patrick: I think what the Chamber of Commerce means is, "We like the Tea Party as the astroturf organizations we conceived, funded & surreptitiously directed. We must, however, purge those 'extreme elements' who don't obey orders." Yes, democracy is messy, & even leaks into right-wing hierarchical structures.
Marie
@Nancy. Thanks for the information. I passed it on to Deanna Fei. I wouldn't have bothered if I thought the only beneficiary would be AOL, but I think it likely that Fei & her husband have to pay a portion of the medical bills.
Marie
Re: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow; White paper snow jobs.
@ Patrick and AK; A couple of nights ago I watched one of my favorite movies,"All the King's Men" which stars Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. When I read your comments this morning I compared and contrasted today's perceptions and politics with the "hicks" perceptions and politics.
"The operational definition of "politics" I got in PoliSci 101, reinforced often in reading and experience, is that it is the process of determining who gets what and why and how." Patrick.
Willie Stark is all about "who gets what and why and how."
AK points out that the sheer volume of white papers drowns any "hick's" attempt at making sense of them.
"So not only do we have plenty of inaccurate, poorly written, badly researched, predetermined information flooding public forums, we have also to deal with secondary sources who come right out and say that if the lie sounds good enough, that's what they'll stick with." AK. Sort of the irony of "Truth" in the post-modern world.
Willie Stark was the flesh and blood white paper back in the day when public speaking was conveying the message.
Will there be another messenger? Was Bill Clinton the last practicer of "Lend me your ears" and I will fill them with the truth?
A few weeks back Marie asked for comments on an article written in response to a long interview with Obama in the New Yorker. In the piece the writer called out the President for answering about the questions rather than answering the questions themselves. Seemed as if the writer was counting on "The Truth" coming from Obama when Obama is a post-modern man who sees the truth as a mirrored reflection of values and beliefs.
One result of the drizzle shit of think tanks and Kock crock white papers might come back to bite the policy benders in the ass is the raise of a Willie Stark. A person who plays on the ignorance of ignorant, someone who the "hicks" see as a messenger of the "Truth"; a white paper book burner if you will.
Ultimately policy and politics can be influenced by those that seek to do so by whatever means they are willing to employ. But influence is like chrome on steel, polish it or rust will out.
Interestingly Francis Underwood's (House of Cards) signature saying, "You could very well say that; I couldn't possibly," seems to be these savvy in the know reporter's message as well. Keep your ass nicely covered, sound like you are giving us something that sounds like intelligent (REAL) reporting and call it a day. I recall when Colbert gave that speech––a lot of uncomfortable laughter followed.
JJG,
Your reference to truth, or rather, "truth", and post-modernism, in connection with your comments on Willie Stark/Huey Long, raises the issue of whether or not we are still living in a post-modern culture. Not long ago, while reading a long piece on Anxiety by Louis Menand, I was reminded of another paper I had been reading on what comes after post-modernism, what comes after that period of questioning the nature of truth and reality. What comes after serious questions about the nature of the world?
There are several intriguing concepts for what's going on, post post-modernism, but they all have to do with a breakdown in the senses of authorship, of an authorial voice, prevalent in both modernism and post-modernism. The signatures of what one theorist calls pseudo-modernism, are anxiety, ignorance, and fanaticism (sound familiar?). The larger process of an authentic intellectual pursuit of knowledge has been replaced by triviality raised to the level of profundity (reality TV, eg) and a displacement of true human interaction by trite, shallow "interactive" participation in which each recipient of cultural products (news articles, eg) get to invent their own reality (Dubya's White House claim "We make our own reality").
If you tease this out a bit, you find that truth can be whatever people want it to be. Facts don't seem to matter at any point along the process of the production of meaning. Not to get too technical, the idea seems to be that the most banal, trivial postulations can attain the status of serious intellectual engagement, giving people like Chuck Todd and those who imbibe his third rate moonshine, the impression that together they are doing something Important. They are Making Meaning.
At least Huey Long, for all his faults (and there were a stack of them), worked at doing something real. But will there be another Huey Long? I don't know. I don't know, given the kaleidoscopic fracturing of the world (of truth? or authenticity?) into millions of post post-modern shards, and the baleful and often invisible influence of corporate money and power, whether anyone can attain the level of influence Long had, at least on a state level. Of course, he had to be brought down, and so he was. But any attempt to compare his populist speeches with the insane maunderings of present day faux populist 'baggers would be a mistake.
Or perhaps it's hubris. Flying too close to the sun. But unlike in modernist or even post-modern texts, mistakes of hubris seem to have little or no consequences today where truth is what people believe it to be.
Now there's something to be anxious about.
@ AK, Thanks that's what I was talking about. Some smart fellow dubbed our times as the "age of anxiety". The shadow cast on the cave's wall seems to be as illusive as ever. Oh, to be a true believer and die in ignorance. But wait, to seek is all.
As Marie points out, Driftglass does his typically sardonic punch up of a David Brooks inanity in Bobo's ongoing effort at presenting himself as just a simple centrist with simple "both sides are to blame" tastes.
Is there any chance that PBS could pundit-bomb (neologisms are not my strong suit) Brooks by one day making a last minute substitution of Driftglass for Mark Shields? Shields seems like a nice man with plenty of real world experience, as opposed to Our Miss Brooks, who has lived his entire life in the conservative bubble, beginning with sucking up to Bill Buckley, making up shit for the Weekly Turd, and having the gall to teach a class on humility, of all things. Like hiring Charlie Sheen to teach a course on sobriety. But Shields is too nice a fellow to really lower the boom on Mr. Hippies Ate My Morality.
Driftglass or maybe a boxing kangaroo would be a nice change of pace and either would be an excellent choice for wiping that ever present smarter-than-thou smirk off the Bobo mug.
I just hear a spot on NPR in which their Senior Washington Editor, Ron Elving, made some assertions about what immigrants "want". He informed us that immigrants were just interested in being legal, that was enough for them. A pathway to citizenship and voting were things that immigrants were quite willing to delay until, I don't know, the 4th of never ? He further opined that any new immigration law wouldn't be operative until 2017 "anyway" and boy howdy was Schumer "calling the bluff" of Republicans. What a load of camel dung. Schumer is a dickhead. No matter how you cut it up, his newest plan was a tacit agreement that Obama is not to be trusted. Yes, I heard his verbal disclaimer.
A simple statement to the effect that Republicans are attempting a twofer- to delegitimatize the President while screwing immigrants once again, would have been a much more clear and truthful message. As it is, the President has been placed in a diminished light once again and immigrants have been kicked to the curb in favor of Schumer polishing his ...well you get the picture.
Democrats are going to have to take concrete action on immigration. The difference between Republicans and Democrats will soon be measured in the degree of overt racism not in any kind of immigration reform achievements.
@JJG: Your reference re: Willy Stark in Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men" brought back memories for me. In one of my many literature classes we studied that novel inside and out along with the author's biography. What was interesting to me is how this man of the South who defended racial segregation and published the short lived magazine "The Fugitive" that published Southern poets and writers that sometimes had a racist bent began to change his stripes gradually as he began teaching in other areas such as the Midwest and Yale. But when he was teaching at Louisiana State he observed the ascendancy of Huey Long which began his concern of the individual's moral experience in the context of political upheavals that require the making of commitments which ultimately betray the individual and ultimately the individual betrays the commitments.
I remember being fascinated by that message and by Warren's use of irony and political conflicts in that novel.
I'm thinking of our guy in New Jersey–––a state named after a breed of cows back in Merry ole England.
@ PD Pepe: Yo, quit making up shit. New Jersey is NOT "named after a breed of cows back in Merry ole England." It is not even named after a place that is technically IN "Merry ole England." New Jersey is named for the Isle of Jersey, the homeland of George Carteret, made one the proprietors of the territory after the British took New Netherlands from the Dutch.
Marie
@Marie: Well shit, smack me on the backside. Always did think that Jersey jest meant cows and theys come from England and we jest put the word new in front. I thank you kindly for clearing that up. So good to be enlightened.