Blue Jersey in the News

by: Juan Melli

Wed May 31, 2006 at 12:43:07 PM EDT

  Instead of merely taking questions from the participants at Rider, Rep. Holt turned to the Internet and fielded questions from people at three different wireless Internet hot spots around central New Jersey — Panera Bread in Freehold, the Lambertville Public Library and the Plainsboro Public Library.
  "I am using the Web to show that this job depends on soliciting input from all over," Rep. Holt said after the event. "This is the way politics and governing should be done, with more outreach."
  Using the weblog, or blog, www.bluejersey.net, participants asked Rep. Holt about adding a paper backup trail to electronic voting machines and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq. Those joining him at Rider University could see the questions and the congressman's responses projected on a screen at the front of the room while he sat a computer typing out replies.
  One woman at the Plainsboro Public Library asked whether it would be possible for Congress to pass legislation requiring legal immigrant workers be paid the minimum wage.
  "There has been some discussion of setting a minimum, but I suspect that in any proposal that might find its way to the floor for a vote, there will not be good wage protection," Rep. Holt responded in the blog. "More generally about immigration — we need a practical and humane path to earned citizenship. We need a more reliable system for keeping track of those who want to come and those who enter the U.S. We need to have laws that are enforceable, and then we must enforce them."