So, someone sent me a way too long video that they received which was of the "you eeevil soshulist Demmocrats better watch it cuz we are coming to git ya" variety, and I decided that it was way too easy to come up with a powerful rebuttal.
That being said, I put this little video together to remind everyone just how things were back when Republicans ruled Congress (and the White House). And that this is precisely what they will do if they regain power.
One of the biggest things that last year's Governor race turned on was the massive arrests of (mainly) Democratic politicians - plus a couple of Republicans - for taking bribes from criminal turned informant Solomon Dwek. And one of the things that didn't really get that much exposure at the time was Dwek's connection to Chris Christie and the State Republican Party.
Here we are one year later, and the State Republican Party is still holding onto the corrupt donations from a criminal.
And interestingly, one of Dwek's contributions during the 2000 presidential campaign went right through Chris Christie. And as I said last year:
Follow me through this timeline of "coincidences":
2000: Dwek donates $500 to Bush through Christie's organization.
2006: Dwek gets busted for bad checks worth tens of millions
He then becomes an informant who bribes Democratic politicians - who knows if this was going on from before mid 2006 or if it had to do with Christie's getting on and then off "the list" of US Attorneys to be fired - recall that Christie and Rove also spoke around this time about a potential run for Governor
Dwek busts are announced in the middle of Christie's campaign for Governor, when they can do the most to build his reputation. And the timing raises objections from most in the US Attorney's office, except Michele Brown, whose relationship with Christie raises many questions including obvious conflict of interest, in her professional conduct and his.
There's a lot of smoke here. Too many coincidences and artful timing in the way Christie found Dwek, molded Dwek, and used Dwek to entrap politicians in a way that seems too carefully orchestrated to build a political reputation for a man who looks like he was using the United States Attorney's Office to build himself a political reputation, which is a thing the United States Dept. of Justice forbids expressly, because of potential miscarriage of justice.
Now, both the Democrats and Republicans pledged to donate their contributions from Dwek to various charities, and here we are over a year later with much of Dwek's corrupt $51,000 is still in the State Republican Party's coffers. As the Asbury Park Press noted the other day, the Democratic State Committee, Republican State Senator Jennifer Beck and Democratic Senator Menendez all donated their entire amount of donations to various charities.
I guess the State Republican Party (and Governor Christie) is just a-ok with corrupt criminal money as long as it is for their benefit and as long as they can use it for their political gain.
Ritacco, whose home was raided by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service in April, supervises the relatives of five of the nine board members. One board member's relative also works for a company that sells meat to the school district's cafeteria, an Asbury Park Press investigation found.
Four of the five board members' relatives were hired or promoted to their current positions after the board member's election, payroll and financial disclosure records show.
We told you about some of these conflicts and the need to invoke the doctrine of necessity in order to take any action, but the Asbury Park Press found even more when they looked past the board itself:
The conflicts don't stop at the board. Four of the district's top administrators, including Ritacco, have family members on the school payroll.
This story continues to brew as rumors swirl around what the next steps will be. The Press even went so far as to list the members with conflicts and what they are in the story. Stay tuned as this one seems far from done.
We've written a good deal here about Governor Christie's attempted power grab to eliminate the independent State Commission of Investigation (SCI) and move its responsibilities into the executive branch. Up until now, many Republicans have remained silent, but quietly yesterday we saw A2986 introduced:
The bill's text isn't available yet, but the sponsors are Assemblymen DeCroce and Bramnick. The original idea put forth by the Governor was to consolidate the Medicaid Inspector, Inspector General and SCI under the Office of the Comptroller in the executive branch. As you can see, the SCI isn't included in their bill. The Governor could still defund the SCI in his budget through a line item veto. That would force the Legislature to override his veto in order to maintain the state's most successful corruption fighting agency. Hopefully this bill is an indication that the Republican legislators have finally decided to put the people's interest above their Governor's endless appetite for power.
Now, however, the SCI is in peril again. To merge the investigative agencies, Gov. Christie would need legislative approval, which he is unlikely to get.
But he could defund the SCI, and if the Legislature tried to restore its budget, he could cast a line-item veto that would require a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and Assembly to override.
That means some Republicans in each house would have to brave their governor's wrath and join Democrats in the override vote.
My understanding is that the Democrats submitted for full restoration of the SCI as a budget resolution, so now it's part of negotiations. If the negotiations fail and the funding isn't restored, the story reminds us that the Legislature still holds the power to override the Governor, but Republicans will need to come on board. This is just the latest attempt to neuter the SCI as Republicans tried the effort during the Whitman administration. We've written plenty here about the excellent work done by the SCI. The benefits far outweigh any costs to the state and it's time GOP Legislatures stand up to this power grab by their Governor. If they don't, they can stop complaining about corruption and waste in government, because they're complicit in allowing it to continue.
So, a group of Republicans going by the name "Reform Jersey Now" is running ads in favor of Chris Christie's agenda. Not much new there -- after all, many TV ads for Christie were paid for by the RGA, not Christie's official campaign -- but what I think is interesting is that unlike the RGA (or the DGA) this group evades both state and federal campaign finance laws.
The "chief strategist" of the Christie campaign explained how the scheme works to NJ.com:
As a 501(c)(4) organization, the group is not required to publicly disclose its donors. [Mike] DuHaime said it will voluntarily disclose donor information to state and federal regulators at least once a year, but declined to say when that would begin.
He said the group can accept unlimited contributions and will not restrict them based on New Jersey's pay-to-play laws, which ban those with state contracts worth more than $17,500 from donating more than $300 to statewide campaigns. "We're going to fully disclose, so people can make their own judgment on it," DuHaime said.
Contributions need not come from people: Democrats point out that the website asks for corporate money. I suspect there may not be any actual disclosure next year, nor need a "voluntary" disclosure be complete. (Here's a good example of how a 501(c)(4) was used to "pay to play" in Florida. The donors were kept secret.)
The silence is deafening. For all their talk about wanting to fight corruption, Governor Christie proposes to get rid of the independent arm charged with doing just that, and the NJ GOP collectively loses their voice. It's not that they can't talk, because Jay Webber is putting out press releases about Mother Teresa. They're just not saying anything about their Governor's plan to get rid of the State Commission of Investigation.
But why would Republican legislators refuse to stand up for their co-equal branch of government? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they belong to the party that is about to embark on a plan to privatize many functions of the state and they know the SCI has a strong track record in rooting out waste and fraud in that arena.
Lets look back in time to the 1990's, when GOP Gov. Whitman tried to privatize everything in sight. It was the SCI that unmasked nearly every major initiative, from the Parsons auto emissions testing contract to the E-ZPass toll deal, as abject boondoggles that wasted enormous amounts of public money.
So is it any surprise that as the Governor prepares for yet another Republican privatization extravaganza -- this time to include even more functions of the government -- backers of his approach aren't anxious for the type of scrutiny an independent watchdog like the SCI can provide? Their silence speaks volumes. Hopefully they can find their voice at today's hearing when Senator Buono shines a light on what is in store.
Senate Majority Leader Barbara Buono has called a hearing for tomorrow, June 2 to examine the Governor's effort to merge the State Commission of Investigation (SCI), the Inspector General (IG) and the Medicaid Inspector General (MIG) into the Office of the Comptroller. Here's the list of people scheduled to testify on the matter:
Comptroller Matthew Boxer, Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper, SCI Commissioner Cary Edwards, Medicaid Inspector General Mark Anderson, and former State Auditor Richard Fair, who is now the Director of Rutgers University's Masters Program in Governmental Accounting. Additionally, Florida's Inspector General Melinda Miguel, who is also the First Vice President of the National Inspector Generals' Association, will lend her expertise and Michael P. Riccards, Executive Director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy, will detail his research on an elected versus an appointed state comptroller.
As you can see from the last guest scheduled to testify, they will also look at the merits of an elected vs. appointed state comptroller position. We've been writing about the efforts of the SCI for the past week and the concerns raised by getting rid of an independent legislative investigative body and moving the functions into the executive branch where they may be more subject to political pressure. It's good Buono is holding this hearing, let's hope that Republicans are willing to stand up with her asking questions about this misguided idea.
I've been writing about the monumentally short sighted decision to get rid of the State Commission on Investigation and fold it into the Executive Branch. How's this for an odd twist.
If you remember right after the Governor was elected, he made a big deal and rightfully so, about obscene compensation at boards and commissions singling out the Passaic Valley Commission. He got that opportunity when the information was released in the SCI report in December 2009.
I guess the idea is steal the message and then kill the messenger. If the ideas were good enough to take, then the department should be worthy enough of being spared from the budget ax and the potential for political influence. Legislators need to start speaking up and put a stop to this misguided plan.
Van Pelt stared straight ahead as the jury prepared to deliver its verdict. When the jury forewoman read that he was guilty on both counts, Van Pelt hung his head, his hands crossed at his waist in front of him.
Evidently the consultant story was not convincing. The APP also has a good account of the verdict.
U.S. District Judge Jose Linares ruled that Louis and Ronald Manzo cannot be charged under a federal extortion statute because they did not hold public office at the time of the alleged offense. The Manzos still faces wire fraud and bribery charges and if convicted could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
Louis Manzo, who served in the Assembly from 2004 to 2008, was running for mayor of Jersey City last spring when authorities say he and his brother, a political adviser, took $27,500 in illegal campaign contributions from an FBI informant. In exchange, they promised to help the informant secure building permits, authorities said.
His lawyer is earning his pay. Of course the remaining charges have not been proven, but it seems to me that bribery and wire fraud are still serious crimes.
During closing arguments today, the prosecution took head on the claims made by former Assemblyman Van Pelt during his testimony that he was telling "everyone" he was making the transition to the private sector by becoming a private consultant. They said that the claim of being a consultant is cover for his corrupt actions:
"The defendant said on the stand the minute he (Dwek) retained me I considered myself a consultant. But the minute the defendant gets his retainer he doesn't tell anyone," Chao said. "What the defendant didn't do in this case speaks volumes."
"Integrity is not a suit you put on when you're talking to the DEP and you take off when you're dealing with (Solomon) Dwek," Chao said.
But the defense painted Van Pelt as naive and attacked Dwek's credibility:
"If Dan took a bribe why would he put the money in a joint checking account and then transfer the money, knowing there would be obvious paper trail? He had nothing to hide. People who accept bribes put the money in slippers," Fuggi said to the jury.
"He (Van Pelt) may be a little naïve and exercised poor judgement but there is no criminal intent," he said.
The defense also said that Van Pelt wouldn't have talked to the Office of Legislative services if he was doing something wrong. But as we've written here at Blue Jersey, Van Pelt didn't tell the whole story when seeking his ethics advice leaving out the fact that he was already sitting on $10,000 cash. The jury now has the case and will have to decide if Van Pelt's lack of action constitutes a crime as the prosecution has argued. Much of that will depend on whether they find Van Pelt or Dwek more credible. In Hoboken during the Beldini trial, the jury went with Dwek.
Former Assemblyman Van Pelt's defense is that he was merely starting a consulting business and that the $10,000 cash he took was nothing more than a retainer. But when he sought advice on whether his actions would cross ethical lines, he didn't tell the full story to the Legislative Counsel:
Marci Hochman said Daniel Van Pelt did not mention the payment when he phoned her two days after accepting a cash-stuffed envelope from an FBI informant who was posing as a crooked developer.
Hochman said Van Pelt told her he was thinking of starting a consulting business, not that he had already been retained for cash. She said he also failed to mention his relationship with the informant two weeks later during an annual ethics consultation required of all legislators.
She said that her advice "absolutely" would have been different had Van Pelt just told her the whole story. She also said he specifically denied having any clients. Van Pelt is trying to say he followed the advice as he got it.:
Van Pelt, however, also acknowledged accepting payment from Dwek before fulfilling two self-imposed conditions for his fledgling consulting business -- leaving the Waretown council and consulting with a lawyer. He also said he didn't have a consulting contract drawn up or spend any of the money on his business.
I still wonder how Van Pelt became the only Republican that got caught up in such a large bust. It doesn't seem like we'll get that answer in this trial, but we will find out whether you can actually start a business without doing anything more for it than taking an envelope full of cash as an elected official. If Van Pelt ever "starts another business", he may want to hire a consultant to advise him on what he needs to do so he avoids these corruption problems.
Opening arguments began this morning in the trial of former Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, with the prosecution beginning its case by revealing that the former Ocean Township (Waretown) mayor met real estate mogul turned government cooperating witness Solomon Dwek at the 'offices of the head of the Ocean County Republican Party.'
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachael Honig confirmed the statement during a recess after opening arguments, but did not elaborate. It was not clear whether she was referring to Ocean County Republican Headquarters on Route 37 in Toms River or the law offices of George R. Gilmore, also in Toms River.
Could political boss Gilmore or other Republican leaders be dragged into the case? Certainly Gilmore has not been charged with any wrongdoing but it does make me wonder what's going on.
Apparently, the fact that Ritacco is at the center of a federal fraud and corruption probe wasn't enough to suspend him with pay while the feds complete their investigation. Nor was the sight of FBI agents impounding his car and seizing documents from his home and office.
The Board of Education's failure to take action served Ritacco's best interests rather than those of the students, parents and teachers of the district. The board needs to reconsider its position immediately and suspend him until federal authorities finish their work.
The editorial encouraged residents to "flood the school board office" with phone calls if they were "disgusted by the board's willingness to let Ritacco stay on," going so far as to publish the phone number and email address to contact.
Ritacco will also remain in his Superintendent position in Seaside Park and Seaside Heights with the board President saying "it's status quo" and Vice President chiming in with "We don't have a problem with Mike." While I'm sure he appreciates the sentiments, I'd say Mike should be more worried about the problem the FBI may have with him though.
The Toms River School Board had a 4.5 hour "informal meeting" Saturday, two days after the FBI raided the home of Superintendent Michael Ritacco, the school board offices and the home of a long-time employee. At the end of that meeting, Board President Betty Vasil emerged and announced there would be no suspension, or firing, of Ritacco.
Just because the school isn't taking action doesn't mean the issue goes away without further question. Will our law-and-order Governor and his Education Commissioner Bret Schundler will be quick to call for Ritacco - whose star is (was?) rising in the GOP as an education policy advisor and Christie's Transition Team member - to resign if indicted? Christie was mighty quick calling for the resignation of all the politicians caught up in last summer's corruption sweep. So far he's just said he hopes Ritacco isn't in trouble, but if he is, he'll have to pay the price.
And something that came up 3 months ago in Toms River also raises some questions.
School boards are required by state law to conduct performance evaluations of Superintendents. Standard procedure. But there were some sticky conflicts of interest to be worked out before the Board could move forward, and what was required by the guidelines of an Advisory Ethics opinion they were required to invoke a Doctrine of Necessity which spells out the conflicts of interest, requires the Board to make them public, and allows them to move forward with the evaluation (Plainfield also did this this year).
3 months ago, the Board was unable to generate a quorum because of conflict of interest until they completed the Doctrine of Necessity process. Does that Doctrine, and the conflicts it made public 3 months ago, carry forward to the Board's ability to make a decision Saturday? Or was further disclosure required of them?
Was Saturday's meeting "informal" because of the conflicts of interest, and they needed to invode the Doctrine? If not, does the Board have an existing conflict that prevents a quorum from taking further action on Ritacco? And we'd like some clarification on what the Board means when they say they held an "informal" meeting. If it is a meeting covered under the law of the Open Public Meetings Act, it is a formal meeting of the body. If they are either in Executive Session or a public meeting open to attendance by residents, those are both formal meetings covered by the law. If the meeting was held under the aegis of the Open Public Meetings Act, there are rules they are required to follow that require transparency, either by discussion before the public or in sanctioned executive session, and there are rules in place about how and why boards can go into executive session. So, which was it? Were minutes taken of this meeting? If the meeting was in compliance with the law, and was a public meeting, the minutes should be made available. If the discussion about Ritacco was held in executive session (which employment questions routinely are) and was in compliance with the law, then minutes should be available whenever the Board no longer is required to consider Ritacco's employment in terms of the FBI raid.
Gilmore & Monahan,11th most powerful firm in NJ, represents the Board. George Gilmore is the powerful GOP political boss of Ocean County. Given that the GOP has a lot at stake in the reputation of Ritacco, who advised Chris Christie as a member of the governor's Transition Team, should the Board be consulting with a firm that may have conflicts of their own, or have the appearance of conflict?
I don't know the answer to these questions, but I'd bet they're the same ones a lot of people in Toms River are asking. This is a developing story. Bet on it.
That was the informal decision made by the nine-member Board of Education after a closed-door meeting Saturday that lasted nearly four hours and 30 minutes....
The special meeting, which started at 1:45 p.m. and took place at Toms River Intermediate School North on Intermediate North Way, was held to discuss subpoenas issued for personnel and records of school district employees following a federal raid two days ago.
Interesting that it is an "informal" decision. One resident expressed surprise that he was not at least suspended, but you have to realize "zero tolerance" policies so associated with schools today only apply to those without power.
"many, many (what we consider) shady deals... Camp Albocondo, our Bubble, the Ritacco Center... We've heard a lot of talk about things that aren't quite on the up and up. "
She also says he is "a nice man," "a wonderful businessman," and reminds us to remember he is innocent until proven guilty.
To the tune of "Blame Canada" from "South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut":
Times have changed
New Jersey's getting worse
This bipartisan graft
Is such a fucking curse
Should we blame corruption
Should we blame patronage
Or the taxes driving us to the edge
Fuck No
Blame state workers
Blame state workers
We shall loudly demonize
Get 101.5 to spread lies
Blame state workers
Blame state workers
We'll give them less salt
It's the unions' fault
Don't blame me
I'm just a Christie fan
I wanted hope and change
But I'm as hateful as the Klan
And my boy Corzine's
Denied us our raise
But we rightfully deserve
More than fifteen furlough days
Well, blame state workers
Blame state workers
Seems that all has gone wrong
Since the unions came along
Blame state workers
Blame state workers
They don't even do real work anyway
Well, I'm a New Jersey state legislator rich and fucking true
I'm a triple-dipping pension-padder that unions and students shall rue
Should we blame the contractors
Or should we stoke the fire
So we can now freeze every hire
Blame state workers
Blame state workers
For our property taxes going through
the roof, and patronage too
Blame state workers
Shame on state workers
For...
The pay we must cut
And benefits we will gut
Union achievements
Must all be undone
We must blame and muss and fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming uuussssssssss!!!!!!
I was recently the victim of a hate crime based on my gender identity and expression, which was eventually downgraded by the Bergen County prosecutor's office. The culprit will be making an appearance in Mahwah municipal court on April 6, 2010 for an appearance, and I intend to be there and possibly give a statement. More info can be found at this facebook event!!!
So, why am I posting it here??? Because prosecutors in NJ serve at the whim of the governor for five year terms, and it is my position that BCP John Molinelli was intimidated by Chris Christie into downgrading the charge.
Show up, and show that hate crimes won't be tolerated, even though we have a red governor.
The hardest part, though, may be renewing confidence in the criminal justice system.
"If the police are no different from the thugs, who are we supposed to depend on when we need help?" Mills said.
That's a good question. Granted, it's not all police. But that's similar to how all politicians fight the corruption meme because of the actions of a few. How do you restore the public trust when innocent people have been framed and served time for nothing more than being in the wrong place, at the wrong time to be busted by the wrong people.
