News
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Police Accountability Project
In June we reported on the beating of Ronnie Holloway by Passaic police Officer Joseph Rios, III. Today Officer Rios was indicted for aggravated assault and official misconduct by a Passaic grand jury. Officer Rios still claims he did nothing wrong.
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- Written by: CATO
- Category: Selected Blogs
President Obama is right when he says that the U.S. health care system needs reform. Although this country provides the finest care in the world, our health care system has serious problems. It costs too much. Too many people lack health insurance. And quality can be uneven.
But a government takeover of the health care system, as proposed by the president and some in Congress, would be a step in the wrong direction. Instead, we should pursue a uniquely American solution, one that builds on free markets, competition and choice.
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Let individuals control their health care dollars, and free them to choose from a wide variety of health plans and providers.
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- Written by: Marc Gallagher
- Category: Selected Blogs
Michael Moore utilizes a word in the title of his new movie to elicit praise and respect from his Left-leaning fans and derision from his Right-leaning critics. Unfortunately for all of us, he uses the wrong word to describe his movie’s subject matter. It’s not capitalism, silly man; it’s corporatism. Therefore, I refuse to call his movie anything but what its true title should be: “Corporatism, A Love Story“.
Let’s head to Merriam-Webster to clear this up. Which one of the following best describes America today?
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Latest News
School children at the B. Bernice Young Elementary Government School in Burlington, NJ were forced to sing praises to Barack Obama in June.
Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all say "hooray!"
Hooray Mr. President! You're number one!
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Candidates and Elections
By Lisa Fleisher
September 18, 2009, 4:45PMTRENTON -- The Libertarian Party candidate for governor and five New Jersey voters joined independent candidate Chris Daggett in filing a lawsuit today challenging the state's balloting system, a Daggett spokesman said.
Daggett, who has qualified for public funding in the governor's race, charges it is unfair for the Republican and Democratic parties to automatically get the two top spots on ballots in the general election.
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Latest News
While traveling through Freehold last week I passed a group of people gathered with signs demanding immigration rights. I found a place to park and walked over to investigate. I found a group of about 35 people gathered with signs demanding rights for immigrants.The group consisted mostly of people from Casa Freehold and representatives from the NJ Immigration Policy Network.
The rights we enjoy as Americans belong to all humans. The right to freely travel provides humans with the ability to vote with their feet. If a regime (be it a country, state, or municipality) abuses the rights of its citizens, those citizens must be free to travel to another region. The right to freely contract for labor is an essential component of free and open markets. Free markets benefit all parties. Protectionism penalizes everyone.
Our current immigration policies are too complicated, too oppressive, and too restrictive. Immigration and Customs Enforcement locks up way too many people and disregards the rights of citizens and non citizens alike. Immigration control has been used as a pretext for National ID cards, financial surveillance of Americans, border and travel surveillance, and a growing police state.
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- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Latest News
Agreement Ends Eminent Domain and Begins Restoration Of the MTOTSA Neighborhood
WEB RELEASE: September 15, 2009
Media Contact:
John Kramer
(703) 682-9320
Arlington, Va.—The Long Branch, N.J., property owners are finally safe at home. After years of battling eminent domain for a developer’s private gain, Long Branch’s MTOTSA homeowners declared victory with today’s announcement that eminent domain actions filed against the homeowners have been withdrawn and that the city and the developer must take steps to restore the neighborhood damaged by eminent domain abuse.
“Today’s agreement finally ends this government-created nightmare that was imposed upon these Long Branch homeowners,” said Scott Bullock, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice which, along with noted New Jersey eminent domain lawyers Peter H. Wegener and William Ward, represented the homeowners. “With this agreement, the neighborhood can be restored to the kind of wonderful community it was before the city and the developer targeted it. These modest, proudly-maintained homes will no longer be threatened by the bulldozers.”
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- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Latest News
From the Heritage Foundation:
Fact checking President Barack Obama’s health care speech from last night, the Associated Press reports: “The president’s speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.” That is an understatement. We counted no less than 15 spurious claims made by the President, including:
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
I posted the following today on a few blogs. It's a bit unsettling because it my research reveals that, in addition to the police abuse matter, two Atlantic City officers, while on duty, gave an underage female a strong painkiller (Tramadol) and then went into a nightclub with her where she drank alcohol.
While the Press of Atlantic City reported that the officers were suspended without pay because of the incident, there is no indication that any criminal charges were filed against the officers. It would appear that giving a non-prescribed drug to an twenty-year old violates the criminal code.
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- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Latest News
NJ city considers adult curfew after crime spate
8/18/2009, 4:38 p.m. EDT The Associated Press (AP) — PATERSON, N.J. - Curfews might not be just for kids anymore in one city in northern New Jersey.
Officials in Paterson are considering one for people of all ages in a bid to curb violence after a spate of deadly shootings.
Several experts say they believe it would be the nation's first curfew of its type to include adults. The state ACLU says it would open Paterson to legal action.
The curfew would last for two months and would bar people from loitering outside from midnight to 7 a.m. Violators would face up to a $2,000 fine and 90 days in jail.
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Selected Blogs
The Atlantic has posted an excellent analysis of the ills of our current health care system. David Goldhill presents the problems and shows that Obamacare will do nothing to solve the problems.
After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.
How American Health Care Killed My Father
Illustration by Mark Hooper Almost two years ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.
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- Written by: John Stossel
- Category: Selected Blogs
The Unseen Cost of Minimum Wage Laws
The media are never better at displaying their economic illiteracy than when they report on the minimum wage.
"Workers got a raise on Friday when the federal minimum wage was hiked 70 cents to $7.25 an hour," the Christian Science Monitor reported last week. "They'll be shouting, "Olé!"
They assume that if politicians declare that workers should get a raise, they will actually get it. But the idea that government can increase wages by decree with only good consequences rests on a serious economic fallacy: that employers set wages arbitrarily. If wages are very low, it must be that employers are stingy.
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- Written by: Ruben Navarrette Jr.
- Category: Selected Blogs
While truth can shine a light, it usually takes lies to generate heat.
Take the immigration debate, which is about to get underway again. President Obama has said that he intends to pursue comprehensive immigration reform. And recently, New York Senator Chuck Schumer said that he planned to have a bill written by Labor Day. We can expect six to eight months of spirited debate before Spring 2010, at which point Congress will either have passed the bill or defeated it.
Whenever we talk about immigration, much of the heat that is generated comes from myths and assumptions masquerading as facts. These are things that people know in their bones to be true, even though they aren’t really true at all. An example is when people say immigrant birthrates in the United States are going up, but all the available research points to the fact that newcomers are having smaller families — mostly for economic reasons.
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
On June 2, 2009, the Open Government Advocacy Project filed a complaint with the Hasbrouck Heights (Bergen County) Ethical Standards Board alleging that twenty-six Borough officials failed to file the Financial Disclosure Statements that were due on April 30, 2008.
I recently was informed that the Ethical Standards Board will meet on August 10, 2009 to "determine the penalty that shall be imposed upon those who were charged with respect to violation of the 2008 Financial Disclosure Statement." The meeting, which will start at 8 p.m. and be held at Borough Hall, 320 Boulevard, is open to the public.
The officials could each be fined between $100 and $500.
The complaint and notice of the meeting are on-line at http://ogtf.lpcnj.org/2009208PC//HHEthComplaint.pdf
John Paff, Chair
New Jersey Libertarian Party's
Open Government Advocacy Project
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Latest News
There's an article in today's Star Ledger about a judge ruling that a marijuana-growing defendant cannot inform the jury that he has multiple sclerosis and grew the 17 plants for medicinal purposes.
It strikes me that this would be a good case for the LP to take interest in, as it deals both with re-legalization and jury nullification. In fact, the Judge mentioned nullification in his ruling--that allowing the medical defense to be raised "would create a powerful emotional argument in favor of jury nullification because it gives defendant a sympathetic reason for breaking the law."
FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP -- A Somerset County man won't be able to use multiple sclerosis as a defense for the 17 marijuana plants police found growing behind his house, a Superior Court judge ruled today.
A claim of personal use simply does not apply to the charges against Franklin Township resident John Ray Wilson, Judge Robert Reed said, following a hearing today in Somerville.
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
The North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights (NPCCR) has submitted a petition to the North Plainfield Borough Council that will force a "Sunshine" referendum to the ballot. The referendum, if approved by the voters, will require the Borough government to be much more open and transparent. A copy of the petition is on-line a here.
The NPCCR was able to do this because North Plainfield has a form of government chartered under the Optional Municipal Charter Law of 1950 (OMCL), also known as the Faulkner Act. All such forms of government allow citizens to bypass their elected officials and put binding laws on the ballot for voter approval.
More information on the OMCL and an unverified list of municipalities that have Faulkner charters are, respectively, at the following links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulkner_Act_(New_Jersey)
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Faulkner:Act:Mayor:Council.htm
Readers living in a Faulkner municipality should consider petitioning for a referendum similar to North Plainfield's. Those living in a non-Faulkner municipality should consider petitioning for adoption of a Faulkner charter (see N.J.S.A. 40:69A-1 et seq.)
John Paff
Somerset, New Jersey
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Candidates and Elections
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Kenneth Kaplan announced today that he has chosen John Paff as his Lieutenant Governor. Paff has chaired the New Jersey Libertarian Party’s Open Government Advocacy Project for the past 5 years. Praising his work in that capacity, Kaplan said, “Paff has served as a watchdog for New Jersey citizens, assuring that the workings of local government are properly recorded and made available for public scrutiny. If we are elected, I will appoint him as Commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs, where his expertise on local government will stand New Jersey residents in good stead. He will only draw one salary. There will be no double dipping in a Kaplan administration.”
Paff is a 1979 graduate of Rutgers University, where he majored in economics. He was president of City Line Insurance, Inc from 1979 – 1988, and currently manages rental real estate. A resident of Franklin Township for the past 23 years, he has been a member of the Middlebush Volunteer Fire Department in Somerset for 17 years and has been president of that fire company since 2008. He and his wife, Diane, are the parents of 2 children.
Said Kaplan, “I cannot be happier that John has agreed to be my running mate. I have admired his long time volunteer work on behalf of open government in our state, and I am excited about what he would be able to do as the head of the Department of Community Affairs.
For more information contact the campaign.