kevmor is calling an early funeral for Tony Mack's political career. Trenton-area people, what do you think? - promoted by Rosi
Today is Wednesday, August 4, 2010. Thirty-five days into the new Administration of Trenton Mayor Tony Mack, Mr. Mack has for all intents and purposes ended any reasonable chance that he has to be the effective manager, leader and mayor the Capital City and its sad people need to keep their head above water.
Tony Mack is done.
Just yesterday, all the talk in the city was about several terrible hiring and personnel decisions made over the last couple of weeks, culminating in the appointment of convicted felon Carlton Badger - a man accused and convicted of crimes committed in the course of his career in New Jersey Real Estate - as the city's acting director of Housing and Economic Development.
Yesterday afternoon, news and rumors started to swirl about the Mayor's personal finances, set off by the appearance on Mercer Sheriff Kevin Larkin's Foreclosure Sale List of Mr. Mack's personal residence. The Mayor's house has been foreclosed upon and will be sold at Sheriff's sale on August 25 to satisfy the outstanding mortgage debt and outstanding water bill. Today's Trentonian carries a front page story on the news. The story is bad enough, but the transcript of the interview is devastating. More on that, below.
Promoted by Rosi. Proud of her feminist friend, Jay. And the Senator from Teaneck.
It's nice to see the Senate Democratic leadership so supportive of this issue but it's really lame that Gov. Christie is still so intransigent on women's health and family planning. So we paid him a visit. Again.
Well, great googlymoogly! Putative third place finisher Eric Jackson has, after the latest recount, gone one vote up on Manny Segura, leaving in doubt just who is going to run against top vote getter Tony Mack on June 15th!
This is a really sharply-drawn account of last weekend's rally. Make sure not to miss the photos at the end. - - Promoted by Rosi Efthim
Tens of thousands descended on Trenton Saturday for what at times felt more like a street fair than a political rally; gyro vendors, souvenir salesmen, and small children peppered West State Street as if there were merry-go-rounds to be ridden around the corner. And though I was at first taken aback by the decidedly festive aura – after all, no less than the livelihoods of many in attendance were at stake – a lesson was quickly brought to bear: fiery political rhetoric about the plight of middle-class workers doesn’t mean a whole lot unless it's backed up with community-based, middle-class solidarity. If nothing else, that solidarity was on full display last weekend, as hordes of people from otherwise disparate interest groups and constituencies joined together to declare that Chris Christie’s budgetary discretions are not reflective of the type of society we wish to build in New Jersey.
People are still arriving at the NJ State House, site of a massive rally today to protest the spending priorities of New Jersey's new governor, Chris Christie. We'll have more on this later today.
State Police peg the crowd now at 25,000, which alone would make this the largest rally in State House history. But the crowd is still growing, and the police estimate is that the 35,000 mark may be reached today. The rally started at noon.
There may be a recount to ascertain for sure whether Trenton mayoral candidate and current Councilman Manny Segura actually bested public works Director Jackson in last week's election. After all the votes were initially tallied, Segura squeaked by Jackson with two additional votes. Jackson's possible call for a recount is more of the 'trust but verify' variety - he isn't claiming any improprieties, he just wants complete certainty he lost fair and square.
In Trenton's nonpartisan system, if no mayoral candidate secures 50%+1 of the vote, there is a run-off between the two highest votegetting candidate. It will be held in early June - I'm not certain of which Tuesday it will be.
"We're talking about, potentially, a recount, just to make sure that the numbers are defensible, and that they are what they are," Jackson said. "If we find out that they are at the end of the day, that that's what the residents of the city did and voted for, I'm going to wish Mr. Segura and Mr. Mack well in their runoff, and stay supportive wherever I can be."
Whoever wins the Mayoral race has challenges to meet that the last Mayor could only see in his worst nightmares. The loss of state budget support for the city suggests a period of austerity that may well leave Trenton dead in the water for a decade or more. What's next? Well, even the city's current minimal efforts to market itself as a history-rich cultural destination (the Battles of Trenton, first public reading of the Declaration, temporary capital of the US, birthplace of America's steel, rubber and pottery industries, not to mention the hometown of two Supreme Court justices (Scalia and Alito, for what they're worth) AND Jon Stewart* (yaay!) are flagging already. See here http://www.trentonian.com/arti...
(*Yes, yes, Stewart grew up in Lawrence but he was born in a Trenton hospital and used to sling beer at City Gardens, and it doesn't get more Trenton than that).
MEANWHILE ... if you really want to experience what Trenton is today and could be tomorrow, on June 19 into June 20, Trenton's ArtWorks presents Art All Night http://www.artworkstrenton.org... a community celebration of creativity. I expect to be there for the midnight glassblowing after having a late dinner at Settimo Cielo http://hiddentrenton.com/?p=8 And Ellarslie, the Trenton City Museum, currently is showing the 28th annual Ellarslie Open judged art competition http://www.ellarslie.org/ through June 20
Yesterday morning wasn't the usual in Trenton. I had expected to testify against S1872, which creates a school voucher system in New Jersey. But instead of a hearing before the Senate Economic Growth Committee, I found myself at a rally of voucher supporters - mostly children attending private schools and their parents. From a basic strategic standpoint, they weren't the best faces for their cause, having an obvious, direct financial interest in the bill's passage - S1872 reserves 25 percent of the funding for private schools for families with students already in private schools. But I suppose they made up for their self- interest with enthusiasm.
The hearing became a cheerleading session when Senator Raymond Lesniak, the committee chairman and the bill's sponsor, expressed his outrage at the NJEA members who had filled the hearing room, while his hundreds of voucher supporters rallied outside. I understand why the situation frustrated him, but there were other, more productive, less divisive ways to solve the problem.
Instead, we all paid the price for his political theater. His sideshow cost the committee and those following the debate meaningful input from groups like the ACLU-NJ, Education Law Center, League of Women Voters, and NAACP. Instead of delivering my remarks collegially, seated at a table facing the legislators voting on the bill, I was forced to speak with my back to the legislators who were scarcely paying attention anyway. It's hard enough to hold legislators' attention in a hearing room with decorum, let alone with your back turned to them at a rally. It felt like an exercise in disrespect for the bill's opponents, the hearing process, and the constitutional analysis I had come to share.
At the end of the day Senator Lesniak said that the kids had learned a lesson in civics - but he was teaching from a bad curriculum. The students had been taken out of the classroom for the day to witness a mockery of the democratic process.
Councilman Manny Segura currently has a one vote lead over Public Works Director Eric Jackson in the vote count for Mayor of Trenton, still going on two days after the election. A court-ordered recount seems likely.
The race at this point, is for second-place, and the right to go up against the frontrunner, former Mercer County Freeholder Tony Mack, in a runoff in June. Mack got 2,302 votes of 10,771 cast, but would have needed a 50% mandate to win without a runoff.
Jackson was leading by just 3 votes after the polls closed. But provisional ballots counted yesterday by the Board of Elections added 24 to Segura's total, and just 20 to Jackson's. That means, right now Segura's at 1,862 and Jackson's at 1,861.
There are also Council positions headed to the June 15 runoff.
Governor Christie boldly declared in his late-March budget address that the day of reckoning had arrived. His spending plan would chart a new course, he promised.
That course plunges New Jersey into dangerous waters, with women and children going first. Christie proposes slashing all state funding for women's health and reproductive services - $7.5 million - in a move that would undermine basic health care and erode fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the law.
No budget crisis can justify the evisceration of women's rights.
That funding allows over 50 health centers across the state to screen thousands of women for potentially fatal diseases such as breast cancer and cervical cancer. The centers dispense birth control, conduct annual gynecological exams, and provide prenatal care so that all children in New Jersey enter the world with a clean bill of health, regardless of their parents' income.
And while some family planning centers do provide abortions, the procedure constitutes only a sliver of the overall services these centers provide, and moreover, none of the state funding may go toward abortion.
In reality, these centers do more to prevent abortions than to provide them. Rather than decreasing the number of abortions, closing these centers would increase the number of unwanted pregnancies, which health centers could have prevented - the primary goal. In 2009, family planning agencies helped prevent 39,872 unintended pregnancies.
Most of the 140,000 patients treated at family planning centers last year were low-income. At least 70 percent of patients relied on family planning clinics as their sole health care provider, lacking health insurance or independent means to pay for medical care.
If these women qualify for benefits under the health care reform bill, they won't kick in until 2014 - a long time to wait for a checkup. According to The Washington Post, a single mother of two making $25,000 would not be eligible for Medicaid, which extends only to people making 133 percent of the poverty line or below.
The costs quickly add up. Without insurance, birth control costs women hundreds of dollars per year, and a pap smear - one of the most important tests for potentially deadly diseases - can cost thousands. People already struggling to make ends meet will avoid the doctor if it means putting up rent money or their children's winter coats to pay for it. The governor isn't cutting the budget; he's gambling with the fate of women's health.
Without state funding next year, the centers would serve 40,000 fewer patients, leaving an already vulnerable population with even less. In the midst of a recession, these services are more critical than ever. The recently passed health care legislation may offer some assistance in the coming years, but it won't keep the lights on in the only medical centers serving neighborhoods that need them the most.
Making matters worse, the Christie administration also withdrew an application for a Medicaid waiver that would have allowed these clinics to expand services using federal dollars. Clearly, the governor's financial concerns tell only part of the story.
Denying access to health care is just another way of denying women the ability to participate fully in society. In 1992, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor acknowledged the link between reproductive rights and gender equality in an opinion that she co-authored, along with Justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter.
"The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated," O'Connor wrote, "by their ability to control their reproductive lives."
The ACLU-NJ has fought for women's control of their lives since it began 50 years ago. We helped establish abortion rights in New Jersey before Roe v. Wade, defended a doctor in the early Seventies who was arrested under the state's obscenity laws for giving housewives information about birth control pills, battled farcical restrictions denying women tubal ligations and beat back countless restrictions on the right to abortion.
Christie's proposed cuts could make us one of the least progressive states in the country when it comes to taking care of our residents.
It will cost New Jersey far more in the long run, both for the economy and society. For every dollar spent on family-planning services, the state saves four dollars in Medicaid costs. If these cuts go through, only women wealthy enough to afford skyrocketing medical costs or those with stable jobs and good benefits will be able to see a doctor.
Adding a medical crisis to a budget crisis is no cure. It's bad public policy and a catastrophe for public health.
This is both fun and informative. One key reason Gov. Christie's budget is going to devastate the City of Trenton is because so much of the city's land doesn't generate property tax revenues, as the state uses the land for public purposes. Can you guess which buildings that house state offices are publically owned, and which are private? Take the handy quiz, below!
I only got 10 out of 15 correct, which I guess isn't too bad as I only lived in Trenton a little less than five years ... I do hope someone who is on the ground in the Capital City takes up the challenge of blogging about its travails for BlueJersey, I'm just not in the loop anymore.
Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer has not been shy about his disapproval for the Governor's plans to cut back on state aid. Trenton is seeing $43 million in aid cut and we get this from the Mayor about what the situation is:
"Right now it looks pretty bad. We've been put in a position where we are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and Gov. Christie is an iceberg coming right at us,"
Palmer says the money is owed to the city because they have to pay their rent. The Governor is saying they have to go through the process to compete for aid. I'l like to be able to tell my mortgage company that they have to go through a process to compete for my money.
Giants, Jets, Devils, and Nets games. Going to the races. Springsteen, Bon Jovi, the Circus. We all have memories of fun times spent with family and friends at the Meadowlands Sports Complex and other sites developed by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.
This piece, by ACLU-NJ Legal Director Ed Barocas, originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Promoted by Rosi Efthim, who in full disclosure should say she is proud that a member of her family is an ACLU-NJ board member. But that's not why we're posting this, we're doing that because Ed Barocas is right.
N.J. statute discriminates against couples, families.
In New Jersey's debate over marriage, legislators have suggested making businesses pay for discrimination that lawmakers themselves created with the 2006 civil union law. It seems that the legislature believes discrimination is only a problem when someone else practices it.
During last month's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on marriage equality, family after family testified about discrimination they experienced, ranging from bank tellers to hospital staff, who failed to recognize their civil unions.
But rather than enact the obvious remedy - legalizing gay marriage - five Republican state senators suggested flaws could be corrected by levying "strong penalties" against businesses that fail to recognize the rights of civil union couples and their families. But neither fines nor revisions will fix the discrimination written into this law.
Legislators fashioned a segregated system of rights for one group of citizens in 2006, hoping that somehow separate would be equal. But as history shows us, separate is never equal. Many New Jerseyans have no idea what civil unions are and therefore simply fail to recognize the rights they carry.
If the legislature were to massage the civil union law rather than reform it, businesses could face fines, as well as vast, untold costs to train employees and alter data systems (most business forms recognize people only as "married" or "single"). And taxpayers would foot the multimillion-dollar bill to educate businesses and the public about a law that still would be inherently discriminatory.
Laws don't exist in a vacuum, and the titles we give to our rights affect how those rights are treated in our state, in the country and around the globe. And children of civil union couples suffer most of all.
The most compelling testimony during the Senate hearing came from a student who had been mercilessly bullied at school and from other children who felt like outsiders when they couldn't make their classmates understand their parents' nonmarital status. How can kids on the playground be expected to understand civil unions when businesses and hospital personnel don't get it?
Justice Louis Brandeis said, "Our government is the potent, the omnipotent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example."
What is the legislature teaching by segregating one group from all others? That it's acceptable to have two classes of people with two sets of rights. When the state itself segregates people, it grants the rest of society permission to do the same. Through its example, the legislature excuses bigotry and emboldens bullies.
Senators, the time has come to right this wrong rather than heap the blame and cost of your own discriminatory decision upon others.
Ed Barocas (info@aclu-nj.org) is the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.
There was a little bit of nutty happening over there in the hearing room yesterday. No worries, babies. Go for marriage equality. Because on that other thing? that free speech thing? I'm here to tell ya, ACLU-NJ's got your back. - - promoted by Rosi
The vast majority of those testifying at last nights Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on marriage equality told moving stories of love, family and justice. We heard from families who had overcome harrowing obstacles and given back to society in humbling ways, children holding out hope that their parents would be allowed to marry each other like their friends' families, and some 50 clergy who wanted to marry their congregants.
In testimony from the other side, although the topic was marriage equality, free speech seemed to play the part of star witness.
One Hasidic rabbi - of whom there were many - voiced particular concern that he would be legally barred from condemning same-sex marriage in his synagogue.
Huh? As an authority on the First Amendment, be assured that you can still slam same-sex marriage all you want at temple.
After the rabbis took the stage, John Tomicki of the New Jersey Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage (which represents, as far as I can tell, no one) somehow wound his argument to say that allowing marriage equality infringed upon his religious freedom rights and therefore his right to religious expression. He then asked the senators if they would represent him if he preached his beliefs on the street corner.
Hey, over here, in the overflow room, the ACLU will represent you. Free speech in public places is one of our specialties. Just give us a call (no need to meet in person).
And finally, I spoke with a guy from Knights of Columbus (to his wife's terror) who was dead sure that marriage equality would result in dramatic free speech infringements. "Just look at what happened in Canada," he told me five or six times.
What happened in Canada? Nothing as far as I know. But anyway, we don't live in Canada.
And we have a really strong First Amendment; Canada doesn't.
The spirit of Rick Santorum hovered in the room as opponents let loose their far-fetched fears that marriage between gay couples would lead to polygamy, underage marriage and, if I heard right, bestiality.
Our country has seen steady progress over the past few decades in wiping out homophobia. We've learned that marriage in Massachusetts hasn't brought society to a halt. Our culture has become familiar with images of gay couples raising families and living ordinary lives. Our opponents have but one thing to cling to: scare tactics. It makes you realize how scared they must be, when they're swinging desperately in the committee hearing room. (Unfortunately, confronting those irrational fears will be an ongoing project for our side).
The absurdity of the opposition's arguments in yesterday's committee room made me realize that even though this fight is far from over, it's fundamentally over. We win. It's only a matter of time before we have marriage equality in this country, in every state.
How soon it happens depends on how smart and strategic we can be. It's a question of whether we can put aside our differences to have honest conversations about our beliefs and our lives. How patient will we be in bringing people along? How impatient will we be to get equal rights? How committed are we to working together and keeping the flame alive? The country, as we've seen in a handful of different states this year, still hasn't figured out what the right answers to those questions are.
I recently heard the folk singer Ferron say something like, "Society can only move forward as fast as the slowest person, so you might as well get to the back of the line and try to help push it along."
Based on yesterday's testimony, which was delivered by overwhelmingly by smart, inspiring, amazing human beings standing for their rights, and which included some eloquent truths from Senators Weinberg, Gill and Baroni, the good news is that most people are up here with us. The bad news is too many others are straggling behind.
Douglas Palmer is expected to announce today that he won't seek re-election to a sixth term as Mayor of Trenton next year. The 58-year-old Palmer has served as mayor since 1990, when he ousted incumbent Carmen Armenti by less than 297 votes to become Trenton's first African American mayor. Armenti, who had been Mayor from 1966 to 1970, took office after the death of longtime incumbent Arthur Holland.
The report says that former Freeholder Tony Mack plans to announce his run for Mayor tomorrow.
There is little momentum behind the New Jersey marriage equality bill, The New York Times website's front page curiously suggested this evening. Somehow, however, they're not seeing what I'm seeing. In reality, we have plenty of reasons to be (cautiously) optimistic. The NYT's claim, I would therefore argue, is unsubstantiated. But unfortunately we're now seeing it being reported throughout the state.
I'm not quite sure how this media narrative first materialized -- but it's being widely propagated. And it needs to be stopped in its tracks, lest public opinion be damned.
Let's look at the facts:
Sen. Steve Sweeney, who was today elected senate president, made comments last week that were interpreted by one PolitickerNJ reporter to suggest that the senator wasn't in favor of bringing the marriage equality bill to a vote. But in the original PolitickerNJ article, Sweeney was never directly quoted as saying this, and quickly issued a statement affirming that same-sex marriage is "an important social issue" and would be on the lame-duck legislative agenda.
Sen. Loretta Weinberg intervened, calling on Sweeney to reaffirm his commitment to the bill's passage. After the initial dust had settled, though, it all seemed like much adieu about nothing. Again, from PolitickerNJ:
Update, 9:42pm -- Citing a miscommunication with Sweeney, Weinberg offered this revised statement:
"I think there has been a miscommunication between Steve Sweeney and myself. I look forward to talking to him personally. It really is up to Senate President Dick Codey to make a decision about pushing this bill forward, and the Judiciary Committee Chair [state Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge) has informed me that he will post the bill."
This, along with just about every other development related to the prospects of winning marriage equality in New Jersey, is excellent news. The result of today's lobbying in Trenton was invigorating; we vastly outnumbered the opposition, who were out in full force. I was personally able to hand-deliver a letter from the TCNJ College Democrats in support of the bill to Sen. Sarlo. TV, radio, and internet ads are now going on the air. Public opinion polls show a plurality of support for same-sex marriage. Garden State Equality has spent an unbelievable amount of time and energy organizing the LGBT community and its allies for this very moment. Democratic legislators are aware that by reneging on their commitments, they will be upsetting a very large proportion of their progressive base.
Please come, and invite your friends and colleagues. Let me know if you'd like to become an admin on Facebook (so you can invite people). This rally will likely closely coincide with the time around when the bill will have hopefully been brought to a vote, so a visible presence at the State House is vitally important! The opposition is sure to be out in full-force again. By outnumbering them, we are achieving a valuable psychological victory. And remember, changing trends in public sentiment are often much more consequential than the timing of arcane procedural votes. Legislators, especially state legislators, are very sensitive to the demands of their constituents.
These are the facts, despite the alleged doom-and-gloom reported by certain media outlets. Things, I can say with confidence, are looking up. No doubt, we have to keep vigorously applying pressure to our legislators, many of whom are endlessly frustrating with their ambiguously tenuous statements of support -- if only there were more Loretta Weinbergs. But think of how far we've come, and how close to achieving our goal we now are.
This should be a very busy week in Trenton. The Senate has a regular schedule of committee meetings, but the Assembly only has the budget committee on tap.
The big talk will be over the budget. The official Senate and Assembly bills became available on Saturday afternoon. They are scheduled for consideration in both the Senate and Assembly Budget committees today. The Assembly committee will take public testimony on the FY2010 appropriations bill at 9am and the committee will consider it. The Senate Committee will follow with a meeting at 2pm. They have all of the individual appropriations bills on the agenda for consideration along with the budget bill.
The Senate Labor Committee will discuss a bill that would address the suspension and revocation of employer licensees for repeated violations of wage, benefit and tax laws. They will also have a bill up for discussion only that would extend prevailing wage requirements to food service contracts and state authorities.
Among the bills up for consideration in the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee are two that would memorialize Congress and the President to enact legislation to provide universal health insurance coverage.
The Law and Public safety committee has a few bills up including one that would require all wireless cell phones issued by public entities to receive Amber Alerts and another that would another that would require telecommunications companies to provide caller location information to law enforcement in emergency situations
Although they started returning on Memorial day, a parade and ceremonies were held in Trenton yesterday to honor the service of our National Guard troops. The largest deployment since World War II returned with the same number they left to serve. Here is video from the Assembly:And here is some video from the Governor's office where he said:
"Today, we are proud to welcome home our heroes one and all," Governor Corzine said. "You have served our state and our nation with dignity, with honor, and with courage. We can only imagine the adversity you faced and the conditions that made your jobs even more difficult. On behalf of all New Jersey's citizens, we thank you for your patriotism and service and we honor the sacrifices of your families. We are fortunate that you have all returned home safely."
I'll put more comments from elected officials, video and photos from the day below the fold. We're glad to have them all back safe and sound, but just because they've returned safely doesn't mean that everything goes back to normal. Let's hope that our elected officials are as interested in caring for them now that they have returned as they were celebrating their arrival.
