WHAT A HAPPY DAY! The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights introduced with 43 Assembly sponsors!

Congrats Mr. Goldstein (0.00 / 0)

Unlike some on this site you have learned to not burn bridges!

Your persistence must be commended!

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by: firstamend07 @ Mon Oct 25, 2010 at 23:18:25 PM UTC

firstamend07 = Steve Ayscue (3.00 / 1)

This was a great accomplishment for our community!!

Also if you can't tell by now "firstamend07" is none other than the self-proclaimed "prince of darkness," Steve Ayscue.  Read his posts and see for yourself.  He's from S.J. and it is obvious to anyone who knows him, his anger, his writing style, his undying love of Norcross, Adler, Beach, Sweeney, etc.  

And typical of the prince of darkness look at the message here:  "You have learned to not burn bridges."  This is a subtle f*** you to those progressives in our party who have stood up to the Camden County machine.  

Move on prince of darkness.  We are all tired of your bullying.  Is the US Attorney and state AG as well?

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by: ron-equality @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 02:59:13 AM UTC

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hard to believe (0.00 / 0)

I worked with Steve Ayscue on Jim Florio's 2000 Senatorial primary election campaign against Jon Corzine and while there can be no doubt that he is a Norcross loyalist (one of the first things that he stressed when he interviewed me was the importance of loyalty), I think that it would be beneath him to hide behind a pseudonym.

If Steve wanted to post here, he would do it with his own name and he would write far more convincingly than firstamend07 does.  FA07 is undoubtably a Norcross acolyte, but at a far lower level than Steve.

What is even harder to believe is that there are progressives in South Jersey that are standing up to the Norcross machine, but if it is true, that is great to read.  I look forward to reading more about your efforts in the weeks, months, and years to come, particularly who you have to run against Beach, (Donald) Norcross, Sweeney et al in 2011 and wish you the best going forward.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 03:51:54 AM UTC

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Must disagree (0.00 / 0)

I've worked with him for more than a half dozen campaigns.  

Because of that I state without question that it is definitely not beneath him.  Read the recent headlines!  His amoralism may very likely cause Adler his reelection bid.  

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by: ron-equality @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 04:17:57 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

you might be right (0.00 / 0)

Steve was implicated by the Courier Post article as the mastermind behind Stefanogate, which doesn't surprise me in the least.  I also don't feel bad at all if this issue brings down Adler, because there is not a doubt in my mind that he was aware of what was going on and fully endorsed it.

That doesn't mean that Steve would write on a blog under anything other than his actual name.  I also don't think that he would dumb down his writing just to avoid exposure.  He is a very busy guy and would not waste his time on such nonsense.  It has to be a low-level flunkie.

If you have some tangible proof that firstamend07 is Steve Ayscue akin to the proof that Juan Melli found that a Tom Kean Jr. staffer was astrofturfing the site, please feel free to share it with the rest of us.  Otherwise, if you want to smear Steve here, focus on everything that you can prove, which may be a lot if you have worked with him on that many campaigns.

Despite the fact that he is loyal operative within a corrupt political machine, I have a soft spot in my heart for the big, bald hired (son-of-a) gun, because he taught me a lot about how politics works in our state, and while I don't feel bad about betraying him by speaking out against the political machines and sharing what I learned from him with progressives who want to work against them, I still feel some degree of loyalty to him as a person and respect his professional skills, which are vast.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 04:55:29 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Who? (0.00 / 0)

Never met the man.

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by: firstamend07 @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 10:12:44 AM UTC

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video coming soon! (0.00 / 0)

(with a special focus on the bi-partisan nature of today's announcement.)

activist for hire.

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by: Jay Lassiter @ Mon Oct 25, 2010 at 23:51:53 PM UTC

anti bullying bill of rights (4.00 / 1)

thank you steve for sharing your own personal reflections of torment, also ,thank you to the victims who told their stories of harassment , intimidation , and bullying. emotions filled the air as everyone was moved to tears. it will get better. everyone standing with me today will be working to make sure that it does get better for bullied kids in new jersey

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by: Valerie Huttle @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 00:57:59 AM UTC

Congrats and great timing (0.00 / 0)

Steven, I was with Frank Vespa tonight and he seemed satisfied that all bases were covered on this bill, including that of some of us LGBT folks who are parents of school children. We can talk some more!

Speaker Oliver seemed very happy with the bill as well! I didn't get a chance to ask what the bill number was and get the content.

We should also talk about Senate sponsors.

As far as timing,tomorrow, Tuesday, the White House through Secretary of Education Duncan is doing a major conference call to address bullying in schools. President Obama is following up with action on his recent words and video on bullying.

"Discrimination caused by ignorance and fear is a tax on human progress" - Barbra Casbar Siperstein

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by: Babs NJSD @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 03:45:48 AM UTC

Yipes! (0.00 / 0)

Write something nice and you get attacked!

I was very sincere, I greatly admire Mr.Goldstein and his persistence. I am also extremely happy that this Bill was passed.

It is a shame we need such a Bill ,but i am happy we now have it.

Great work again!  

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by: firstamend07 @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 10:12:05 AM UTC

I'm not sure how this thread... (0.00 / 0)

developed into a bashing of Steve Ayscue... a bit far afield from my posting.  It's been such a tough year and I confess all I wanted to do was kvell over a good day on behalf of so many people and so many organizations who have worked so hard on the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights.

Now as far as Steve Ayscue, without commenting in this post on whether I think he's firstamend07, let me say this.

I've worked against the guy in opposing campaigns and I've worked with him, so I know him.  I would not deny he's to the right of most of us here, including me.  But I admire his talents greatly and he happens to be a caring person.  Please don't hate me for saying that - it is just my view.  

Sometimes in this line of work we're all in, we really don't know each other personally.  Rather, we are presented with two-dimensional views of one another from what we read in the press or know of one another just from the very limiting political world.  All of us are much more than that.

Best, Steven

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by: Steven Goldstein, Garden State Equality chair @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 12:09:49 PM UTC

I wholeheartedly agree (1.00 / 1)

You may have worked with Steve enough to get a better sense of his ideological bend than I did on the one campaign in which we both worked on.  I never felt that he was that much to the right of me as he was more politically driven than ideologically driven.

An example of this came from the Florio campaign's efforts to make Corzine's position on marriage equality an issue in the primary election campaign, which was disappointing from an ideological point of view and seemingly unwise politically.

Even though the campaign was only four years removed from Democratic capitulation on DOMA, I still had a hard time believing that a majority of Democratic primary voters in New Jersey would be opposed to marriage equality.

I guess when you're being outspent $32 million to $2 million and issues like Corzine's financing for Chinese oil exploration in Sudan and his rude jokes about Italian-Americans cannot get traction against the baggage that Florio was still carrying from his tax policies as Governor, which have long since been proven to be the correct policies, you have to grasp at whatever straws that you can.

Needless to say, it made me very uncomfortable at the time and I could tell that it was not a strategy that Governor Florio was comfortable with either.  He may not have been a supporter of marriage equality at the time, but it was clear that it was a position that he was not necessarily proud of nor did he want it to be an issue in the campaign.

I never got a sense about how Steve felt about the issue personnally, because his focus was always on the political calculus, which was true for most of the issues that we dealt with on the campaign.

I apologize if this thread has become a distraction from the original intent of your diary, but this has not been the first time that it has been intimated that firstamend07 is Steve Ayscue and for me, that just seemed very much unlike him.

That said, I especially agree with what you wrote about his talents and his caring side.  I know that it is hard to tell from the public personnae that he has created for himself, but that hardcore exterior undoubtedly is as soft as they come on the inside.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 13:42:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

every comment.... (0.00 / 0)

...that you leave is "a distraction from the original intent of the diary."  So spare us you ridiculous apology for sending this one into a ditch, too.

Otherwise it's a critique of others' lack of courage for NOT being more critical of the same machine whose leg you're humping on this thread.    

activist for hire.

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by: Jay Lassiter @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 19:06:10 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Steve is a person, not a machine, and... (0.00 / 0)

...if I am humping his leg, as you say, then so is Steven Goldstein as his comment about Steve is about the same as mine.  Aside from being appreciative for what he taught me about how the political system in NJ works and respectful of his talents, I do not think that I have been overly complimentary of him and have never defended the Norcross machine or its cogs at all, much less to the degree that you have on numerous occasions, Jay, particularly where you argued that a campaign that doesn't do anything and everything legal (clearly ethical is not an applicable standard as well) that it can to win is guilty of malpractice.

To be honest, Jay, I could care less if you are critical of the Norcross machine or not.  The only point that I have ever tried to get across to you is that if you aren't going to organize progressives to take on people like Adler and Beach and the Norcross machine, the least that you can do is refrain from giving them the political cover that your credibility and prominence on this site provides them.

As far as distracting from the original intent of the diary is concerned, I was not the one who started the thread about firstamend07 being Steve Ayscue.  I simply disagreed with the person who did, because I felt that if Steve was going to write on Blue Jersey in defense of the Norcross machine, he would do it with his own name.  Knowing Steve as I know that you do, do you disagree with me about that?

If that constitutes humping Steve's leg, then what you do to John Adler cannot be described with language that is appropriate for this site.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 20:12:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Back to the anti-bullying bill (0.00 / 0)

Jay made a great video - how refreshing in these otherwise seldom bipartisan times to see Republican legislators so eagerly interviewed by Blue Jersey... I was there - when they saw Jay, they couldn't wait to talk to him.  It was awesome.

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by: Steven Goldstein, Garden State Equality chair @ Wed Oct 27, 2010 at 02:01:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]