Framing S. Jersey through lens of 2014

My 2014 was a year of living powerfully.

I demanded my first discounted movie ticket due to my - ahem - seasoned-filmgoer status, confirmed by a tousled lad who politely asked to see my ID.

Being carded felt nostalgic, and seeing Birdman for a buck less than the flirting/texting millennials around me enhanced my enjoyment of one of the year's best movies.

But because I'm a South Jersey columnist and not a Hollywood critic, this Year in Review will focus on local cast members whose performances lent 2014 such Transcendence.

Beginning with three Transformers: George Norcross, Stephen Sweeney, and Chris Christie.

They also could be described, respectively and aspirationally, as the future Master of the Universe, the future Governor of New Jersey, and the future President of the United States.

In 2014 this power trio - like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but with three white dudes - rocked South Jersey with the promise of bipartisan benevolence.

Such were the persuasive powers of our very own Guardians of the Galaxy that after plans were announced to poach Subaru of America's corporate headquarters from Cherry Hill to Camden, Township Mayor Chuck Cahn expressed no Fury.

He declined to go Wild. His loyalty to the Democratic organization that plucked him from retirement to run Cherry Hill remained Unbroken.

"Cherry Hill will be fine no matter what we lose," declared Cahn, which leads me to wonder how he would react should the three Jersey Boys ever try to woo Wegmans to the Camden waterfront.

And woo the Big Men did in 2014, as Subaru, the 76ers, the Marlton manufacturer Holtec International Inc., and Lockheed Martin's Moorestown operations agreed to move to greener pastures in Camden. Almost like a suburban Exodus.

The wanderlust had everything to do with the collective prospect of a half-billion dollars, courtesy of the taxpayers of New Jersey. Think The Hunger Games without Katniss, but with tax credits rather than food (or survival) as the prize.

Consider: About $40 million of the largesse is earmarked to head off the supposed possibility that 350 jobs at a Cherry Hill facility of Cooper University Health Care - of which Democratic leader Norcross is the trustee-board chairman - could end up in, say, Philadelphia.

Which could happen only in the movies.

Nevertheless, we now know that the Garden State's willingness to subsidize "job creation" in Camden is so limitless as to be almost Interstellar.

Speaking of great distances, Republican Christie was often absent from New Jersey in 2014 - physically and, one would think, mentally.

He became much too consumed by Cuban Fury and New Jersey's diplomatic relations with Mexico and Canada to pay attention to parochial matters.

Such as New Jersey's finances, the sorry state of which last year inspired the latest of at least a half-dozen successive credit downgrades by Wall Street.

Perhaps out of gratitude to the state's taxpayers, who have so far paid nearly $7 million to the governor's legal team for its ongoing Bridgegate exoneration project, Christie did show up occasionally in New Jersey during 2014.

In Atlantic City, where the governor usually plays The Gambler, Christie convened two summits about the city's future. The domino-like demise in 2014 of casino after casino (including that publicly subsidized fiasco formerly known as Revel) resembled nothing less than a Jersey Shore Massacre.

State Senate President Sweeney, meanwhile, spent 2014 ramping up his news-release operation to a point where it now rivals that of the governor whom he hopes to succeed.

And while legislative stumbles like the 2014 iteration of his annual attempt to "reform" Rutgers University's governance ended up fading away in a fog of face-saving, Sweeney and his eventual ascendancy would appear to be a piece of Cake.

Happy New Year!