New York Giants players celebrate after the Minnesota Vikings failed to get a first down during the second half of an NFL wild card football game Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, in Minneapolis. The Giants won 31-24. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
New York Giants players celebrate after the Minnesota Vikings failed to get a first down during the second half of an NFL wild card football game Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, in Minneapolis. The Giants won 31-24. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
Carver
Thomas Carver reacts to a standing ovation from the room at the end of the meeting.CRDA chairman, James Kehoe, Thomas Carver, CRDA attorney , Paul Weiss and Casino Control Commission chair, Linda Kassekert. . The CRDA had its final board meeting under Executive Director Thomas Carver, who announced his resignation last week. Tuesday, February,15, 2011
Historic flooding has hit California after torrential storms swept across the state. In Orange County, emergency responders have braved rapid …
Thomas Carver, a champion for casino industry and economic growth in Atlantic City, has died.
Carver, of Allenwood in Wall Township, Monmouth County, died Tuesday at 86. No cause of death was given in his obituary, and it was said he was “surrounded in the love of his family” at the time of his passing.
Those who spoke about Carver praised him for his work leading the gaming industry and his dedication to the area.
“He was a gentleman,” former state Sen. William Gormley said Sunday. “He was highly respected, by everyone I think.”
A onetime reporter who had a 23-year career at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Carver rose to prominence through his work in the casino industry. Carver served as the president of the Casino Association of New Jersey from 1984 to 1994, becoming the second leader of the association and a fighter for the burgeoning business of the casinos of Atlantic City.
As president, Carver was the association’s chief lobbyist and spokesperson and lead labor negotiator. He brought with him a tenacity to a role that saw him work on behalf of the industry among state officials in Trenton and in the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Steven Perskie, a former state senator and New Jersey Superior Court judge, crossed paths with Carver working as the chair of the state Casino Control Commission from 1990 to 1994. He said he found Carver to be an honest man leading Atlantic City’s premier industry.
“I trusted him, I respected him,” Perskie said Sunday. “When he said something, you could bank on it. He wasn’t going to con you.”
Michael Pollock, managing director at Spectrum Gaming Group and a former spokesperson for the Casino Control Commission, is the author of “Hostage to Fortune: Atlantic City and Casino Gambling,” a book that analyzed the economic impact of the casino industry the city. He credited Carver with unifying an industry and the competing egos therein during an era of turbulent deregulation. Carver’s lack of ego, he said, was the key to his success.
“He was the voice, the face, the guiding light of the casino industry,” said Pollock, a former editorial page editor for The Press. “He rounded up an entire industry together.”
Known for a relaxed disposition, Carver calmed tempestuous clashes among the association’s occasionally warring members. Gormley said the tempered manner Carver displayed was an asset, especially in an area where passions usually run hot.
“He was never in attack mode,” Gormley said. “He was always looking for a solution.”
Gormley added that Carver always worked on behalf of the common people involved in the casino industry.
“He had the affinity towards the working man in everything he did,” Gormley said.
Legalized sports betting was perhaps Carver’s white whale during his casino association presidency. He launched an extended campaign in favor of the idea, appealing to state and federal leaders for a chance to bring the new avenue of gaming to the resort city. Some speculated as he was leaving his post in 1994 that his protracted, and apparently futile, fight for sports betting shortened his tenure as president.
It was not as futile as they might have seemed then. New Jersey voters approved of a referendum in 2011 legalizing sports betting, ultimately leading to the U.S. Supreme Court to act in 2018 overturn the federal law that had banned the practice in most states. Sports gambling has since experienced a meteoric rise throughout New Jersey and across the country — Carver had bet on the winning team.
Carver assisted in the drafting of legislation that created the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority and the South Jersey Transportation Authority during his association presidency. He served as an inaugural member of the CRDA in 1985 and quit the board in December 1993 in advance of the end of his presidency, with onlookers saying his influence on the body had waned.
Carver’s influence would wax again. Acting Gov. Richard Codey appointed Carver acting commissioner of the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development in 2004, a decade after he left his role at the casino association. He began his brief tenure there by warning of the threat that new gambling centers in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York could pose to the Atlantic City casinos — a warning that in time proved unfortunately prescient.
Soon after, in 2005, Carver was appointed the executive director of the CRDA, considered then to be one of the most powerful positions in Atlantic City. Gov. Jon Corzine asked that Carver keep on in the role, and he did do for five years. Carver gave a speech at Trump Plaza near the start of his tenure hailing the Jersey Shore as the state’s strongest asset and its only one of worldwide renown. After it shuttered and fell into disrepair, the Trump Plaza from which he was speaking was destroyed in what was advertised as a public ceremony in 2021.
In 2011, Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican seeking to break with a holdover from his Democratic predecessor, forced Carver out as CRDA executive director. Carver left as the Christie administration prepared to expand the CRDA’s scope and authority. Five years later, Christie would effect the state takeover of Atlantic City, as its once vaunted casinos foundered in the fallout of a global financial crisis.
Perskie reflected on how much the casino industry had changed since Carver first headed the casino association 39 years ago.
He pointed to the advent of online gambling, the crop of casinos throughout that have emerged in competing markets and the consolidation of casino operating companies into teeming gaming behemoths. While many in the industry were fixated on short-term returns and thought by the quarter, Perskie said Carver had unique foresight among casino leaders.
“Better than a lot of people in the industry, he could anticipate what the future looked like,” Perskie said.
Pollock said that Carver’s steady hand was useful in fortifying the city before it fell on hard times in the 2010s.
“It would have been a lot worse if they didn’t have someone with the leadership skills of Tom Carver,” Pollock said.
“What an incredible legacy.”
Carver said he was optimistic about Atlantic City’s future at the end of his tenure at the CRDA and seemed to retain that optimism even as the prospect of a state takeover loomed. In a 2014 Op-Ed in The Press of Atlantic City, Carver said a downsizing of the casino industry could serve as a blessing in disguise. He called on “Atlantic City to become a true city — a municipality of economic enterprise and of diversified educational and employment opportunities.” The opening of the new Stockton University campus in the city, development at Gardner’s Basin and utilization of the Atlantic City Airport were among steps Carver recommended.
Being a veteran proponent of gambling made Carver’s own gaming habits somewhat ironic.
“I don’t go to casinos much,” Carver told The Press in 2004. “Never did.”
Thomas D. Carver was born on July 9, 1936, in Teaneck, Bergen County, according to his obituary. He grew up in Maywood, Bergen County and graduated from Xavier High School in Manhattan. After high school, Carver attended Georgetown University and graduated from Saint Peter’s University, Jersey City. His college experience instilled within him an appreciation of Jesuit values that led him through life. Carver later graduated from New York Law School and became a member of the New Jersey Bar.
After leaving the Casino Association, Carver became the managing partner of a government affairs firm, the Castle Group, and served as the first president and founding member of the New Jersey Aviation Association.
Carver served on the Board of Trustees and Board of Regents for St. Peter’s University and the Board of Trustees for Cristo Rey High School in Newark, New Jersey. St. Peter’s awarded him an Honorary Degree of Letters in 2008. He said that his efforts on behalf of the students of Cristo Rey High School in Newark was the endeavor of which he was “most proud.”
He predeceased by his parents Daniel and Mary Carver. He is survived by his wife, Sheila (nee Wilson) of 60 years whom he met in elementary school.
He was the father of Thomas Carver Jr., Deirdre Carver and Erin Granata, and had several grandchildren.
Carver was honored at a 2011 ceremony for his leadership at the CRDA. He was showered with praise during the meeting, and Carver thanked attendees for their kindness.
“You’re all invited to my wake,” Carver said, according to Press archives.
A visitation will be held on Monday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at O’Brien Funeral Home in Wall. A Funeral Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at St. Catharine’s Church, Spring Lake, Monmouth County, and committal will follow in Wall at St. Anne’s Cemetery.
Contact Chris Doyle
Rich Heim, of Somers Point, sent billows of snow into the air while clearing his neighbors’ sidewalk last Jan. 30 after a snowstorm the preceding day.
The vibrant sunset caps off one of the snowiest days on record in Absecon last Jan. 29.
Snow and slush cover the Atlantic City Boardwalk after a Jan. 7, 2022, storm, the second in a week.
Kids have a good time in the snow on the Ocean City Boardwalk last Jan. 30.
Snow is covering the grass and cars but struggling to accumulate on the roads as a long period of light snow falls Sun. Feb. 13, 2022.
On January 29 2022, in Linwood, residents get busy digging out of the piles of snow that came from the latest nor'easter.
CALIFORNIA NYACK SHELL STATION SLIPPERY ROADS SIERRA SNOW
Snow.
Of all of the weather events New Jersey sees, snow can cause the biggest emotions.
There are the snow lovers, the snow haters, the “one-and-done” people — those who like one snow and are then fine for the season — and everybody in between.
In New Jersey, I counted nine ways in which the state can bring out these emotions. Nine ways to snow.
Here’s a look at how they happen and why they happen. They’re generally grouped into three categories: large-scale storms, small-scale storms and snow caused by wind and water.
1 and 2) “Miller A” and “Miller B” storms
When you think of your classic nor’easters, think of Miller A and Miller B low-pressure systems.
The name comes from J.E. Miller, the researcher who came up with this naming system for East Coast storms in 1946.
They can happen any time of the year, bringing rain, wind and coastal flooding. However, it’s during the winter when they’re most frequent, and most apt to bring snow, sleet and freezing rain.
Whether it’s a Miller A or Miller B depends on where the low-pressure system originates.
In a Miller A setup, the low-pressure system develops off the southeastern United States coast or the Gulf of Mexico. It then intensifies as it moves up the East Coast before turning to the northeast somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast or Eastern Canada.
The blizzard of March 13-14, 1993, was an example of a Miller A.
Miller B storms are a little more common but typically not as strong as Miller A storms.
Miller B storms start as low-pressure systems moving east from the Great Plains and Midwest.
The system weakens as it hits the Appalachian Mountains. However, the low reforms on the other side of the mountains, either over the coastal states or just out to sea. From there, it’ll strengthen as it moves north. Like a Miller A, it’ll move to the northeast.
For New Jersey, these storms are best known for bringing more snow northwest of the New Jersey Turnpike, a mix along the turnpike and mostly rain to southeastern New Jersey. However, a shift in the track 75 miles east can bring snow to the whole state. The opposite can bring rain to all but the mountains of northwest New Jersey.
3) Alberta clipper
As the name implies, these storms hail from Alberta. They form on the lee, or eastern side, of the Rocky Mountains.
They’re fast-moving, cold, fairly weak low-pressure systems. They travel from Canada to New Jersey in two or three days.
If New Jersey is near or north of the low-pressure center, a few hours of light (less than a half-inch per hour) to moderate (a half-inch to an inch per hour) snow is likely with gusty winds.
If the Garden State is south of the low, it’ll usually rain. Behind it typically comes a cold shot of air and gusty winds.
Alberta Clippers happen numerous times a winter in New Jersey.
Small-scale storms 4) Norlun trough
Along with Miller storms, norlun troughs give meteorologists the most headaches.
A norlun trough is an axis of shifting winds on the northwest side of a low-pressure system, which spins counterclockwise.
Snow with a norlun trough is usually heavy, narrow in size and only lasts a few hours.
This private snowstorm was put on full display Dec. 5, 2018. Brigantine reported 7.5 inches of snow, with 5.0 inches in the Beesleys Point section of Upper Township. However, West Cape May reported nothing. Just flurries were seen near Forked River in Lacey Township.
A norlun trough requires colder-than-usual air aloft and relatively mild ocean waters to cause unstable air to develop. Around 15,000 to 20,000 feet in the atmosphere, a low-pressure system provides upward motion to create snow. At the surface, winds that meet in a localized area provide additional upward motion.
5) Snow squalls
The wintertime equivalent of brief but intense warm-season thunderstorm is the snow squall.
Whiteout conditions that bring dangerous, even deadly road conditions, with strong winds for a brief time (less than an hour), are usually the case with these.
Snow squalls are usually caused by cold fronts with Arctic origins. The squall itself forms either just in front of or behind the front.
While not to the same degree as with warm-season storms, these fronts form a relatively large amount of unstable air. That creates the snow.
Snow caused by wind and water comes from low-level clouds — 1,000 to 5,000 feet high. Previously discussed forms of snow come from clouds 10,000 or 20,000 feet high.
6) Lake-effect snow
The same snow that falls around the Great Lakes throughout the year usually makes its way to New Jersey a few times a year.
Typically, though, by the time it reaches New Jersey, it’s light snow, having been weakened by the Appalachian Mountains. Sometimes, it’s even rain by the time it reaches us.
Still, it can coat the ground or bring a light accumulation, typically north of Interstate 195, which runs from near Trenton to Point Pleasant.
At the most basic level, lake-effect snow develops when cold winds blow over a relatively mild body of water. However, the cold air must typically blow over the water for at least 60 miles. Winds at the surface must be from nearly the same direction as a few thousand feet above.
Lake-effect snow season stops when the Great Lakes freeze over. This usually happens on Lake Erie, though with declining frequency. However, it can also happen on Lake Huron, Lake Ontario and Lake Superior.
7) Delaware Bay-effect snow
It takes a lot, but it has happened, giving lower Cape May County a snowstorm all to themselves.
Similar to lake-effect snow, it’s caused by cold air going over the relatively milder Delaware Bay. Unlike some of the Great Lakes, the Delaware Bay does not freeze over significantly. Therefore, this can happen at any point during the winter.
However, there are challenges to making this happen. The bay is fairly small. Therefore, during the winter, it needs to be warmer than usual to have enough moisture available so that when the cold air goes over it, snow develops in addition to clouds.
Furthermore, winds need to be nearly due northwest to capture the full length of the bay.
8) Long Island Sound
Even less common is snow that develops off the Long Island Sound and goes into North Jersey.
While the sound is longer than the Delaware Bay, a colder than usual east-northeast wind is needed to pick up the moisture off the sound and convert it to snow.
At Teterboro Airport in Bergen County, northwesterly winds are the most common during the winter.
9) Ocean-effect snow
Why use a bay or lake when you can use an entire ocean? With an essentially limitless amount of fetch over the Atlantic Ocean, ocean-effect snow can happen whenever the difference in temperature between onshore near-surface winds and the water is large enough.
This will come from one of two weather events, typically.
First is a cold east-to-northeast wind around an arctic high-pressure system in Quebec or Atlantic Canada.
Second would be in the later stages of a nor’easter, when cold northeast winds wrap around a system.
In the latter case, low-level ocean-effect snow can fall below the large-scale clouds of a nor’easter. In New Jersey, Ocean and Atlantic counties see this the most.
The polar vortex can start the process that brings New Jersey snow. However, the vortex is a low-pressure system in the stratosphere. In the poles, that starts about 20,000 feet high. In New Jersey, that’s about 35,000 feet high.
Surface low-pressure systems tend to be more directly responsible for cloud and snow formation.
Rescue workers clear the rubble from an apartment building that was destroyed in a Russian rocket attack at a residential neighbourhood in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Rescue workers clear the rubble from an apartment building that was destroyed in a Russian rocket attack at a residential neighbourhood in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
WASHINGTON — Newly empowered House Republicans on Sunday demanded the White House turn over all information related to its searches that have uncovered classified documents at President Joe Biden’s home and former office in the wake of more records found at his Delaware residence.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., talks to reporters as he walks to the House chamber, Thursday on Capitol Hill in Washington. In a letter Sunday to the White House, Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said he wants to see the documents and communications related to searches that have uncovered classified documents at President Joe Biden’s home and former office as well as visitor logs of the president’s Wilmington, Del., home.
“We have a lot of questions,” said Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Comer, R-Ky., said he wants to see all documents and communications related to the searches by the Biden team, as well as visitor logs of the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, from Jan. 20, 2021, to present. He said the aim is to determine who might have had access to classified material and how the records got there.
The White House on Saturday said it had discovered five more pages of classified documents at Biden’s home on Thursday, the same day a special counsel was appointed to review the matter.
In a letter Sunday to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Comer criticized the searches by Biden representatives when the Justice Department was beginning to investigate and said Biden’s “mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security.” Comer demanded that the White House provide all relevant information including visitor logs by the end of the month.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Comer referred to Biden’s home as a “crime scene” though he acknowledged that it was not clear whether laws were broken.
“My concern is that the special counsel was called for, but yet hours after that we still had the president’s personal attorneys, who have no security clearance, still rummaging around the president’s residence, looking for things — I mean that would essentially be a crime scene, so to speak,” Comer said.
While the U.S. Secret Service provides security at the president’s private residence, it does not maintain visitor logs, agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Sunday.
“We don’t independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence,” Guglielmi said. He added that the agency does screen visitors to the president’s properties but doesn’t maintain records of those checks.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Biden has independently maintained records of who has visited his residence.
Asked about Comer’s request for logs and communications regarding the search for documents, White House spokesman Ian Sams responded: “I would simply refer you to what Congressman Comer himself told CNN this morning: ‘At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents to be honest with you.’ That says it all.”
In that CNN interview, Comer had added that House Republicans did not trust the Justice Department to give the matter of Biden’s classified documents an appropriate level of scrutiny. The House Judiciary Committee on Friday requested that Attorney General Merrick Garland turn over information related to the discovery of documents and Garland’s appointment of special counsel Richard Hur to oversee the investigation.
White House officials “can say they’re being transparent, but it’s anything but,” the committee chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Security personnel stand at the entrance to President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden's home Feb. 21, 2021, in Wilmington, Del.
White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement Saturday that a total of six pages of classified documents were found from Biden’s time serving as vice president in the Obama administration during a search of Biden’s private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page was found there.
The latest disclosure was in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Biden’s garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
Sauber said that Biden’s personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by Justice Department. Sauber did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting. The White House is already facing scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial group of documents at the Biden office.
CNN's Jake Tapper asks Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) about President Biden's handling of classified documents after numerous classified documents w…
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said the Justice Department rightfully appointed special counsels to “get to the bottom” of the Biden classified documents matter as well as in a separate investigation into the mishandling of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.
But Raskin also stressed key differences between the two cases, including that Biden’s team readily handed over documents to the National Archives compared with Trump’s repeated resistance to such requests.
“We should keep a sense of proportion and measure about what we’re talking about,” Raskin told CNN.
Asked Sunday if his oversight committee would investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents as well, Comer demurred.
“There have been so many investigations of President Trump, I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump, because the Democrats have done that for the past six years,” he said.
Cartoonists from across the country react to the discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden's personal office and residence, plus more car…
House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer tells CNN's Jake Tapper that he sent a new letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain asking for…
