Responding to the apparent fact that the NJ Legislature may be finally getting its head together in treating gay couples in love with respect and recognizing their right to marry, Gov. Christie tried a headline-grabbing, but morally bankrupt dodge: He proposed a referendum, political cover for his obedient, spineless GOP legislative Muppets.
But the next day, Christie went further, and in doing so exposed both an ignorance of history, or given his intelligence, more likely a cunning attempt to twist it. He said this:
People would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.
- Gov. Chris Christie, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012
Cheryl Contee said it well:(Christie's assertion is) if Southern whites in the 1940s, 50s and 60s had just been given enough time, they would have totally been down for equality with their black neighbors. They would have even voted for it themselves!
But yesterday, closer to home, Cory Booker set the Governor straight, and it's a thing of beauty:
HIV/AIDS has not gone away. Among those most aware are staff members at NJCRI, which for over 20 years has been providing free services for clients in Newark. (Disclosure: I previously served as NJCRI Executive Director.)
Their needle/syringe exchange program serves as one portal for injection drug users to get added services. Counselor Paul Hidalgo says over 2,300 clients have come to exchange dirty needles (which can transmit HIV and Hep C) for clean ones and that increasingly clients are availing themselves of additional services such as drug treatment, HIV testing, counseling, and the drop-in center. Substance Use Director Bob Baxter points out that increasingly the large majority of clients at this Newark facility are suburban, white, under 26 years of age who started raiding their parents' medicine cabinet, moved to purchasing expensive oxycontin, and as their financial means decreased began sniffing and then injecting less expensive heroin. Strangely enough some believe if they are not gay they can't get HIV. Those African-American and Hispanics who attend the clinic are typically 40 to 60 years of age and long-time users, whereas, the youth in this demographic group seem to have learned the injection dangers from their elders. An important bill in the legislature would legalize over the counter pharmay needle/syringe sales.
Danielle Bush, Manager of Counseling & Testing, sent a letter to Mayor Booker pleading for his help in increasing awareness among Newark residents on the need for HIV testing in order to find out their status and get access to medical care if they are positive. She says, "The numbers are still astronomical, with newly reported cases particularly among seniors and youth." This year her department has tested over 2,000 people. Bob Baxter points out the disturbing increase particularly among young gay men of color who, as opposed to their injection counterparts, have not learned from their elders the ravages of HIV.
Corey DeStefano, Treatment/Research Director, explains there are more treatment options today, and getting people into treatment not only benefits them but as the medicine reduces their viral load it also reduces the likelihood of their transmitting HIV to others. As people now live longer and take more medicine, resistant strains are developing, so her clinic is conducting a clinical trial on a new investigational integrase inhibitor which might be more effective with multi-drug resistant patients. The clinic provides medical care to over 300 patients, but with an increasing number on Medicaid or no health insurance.
Executive Director Brian McGovern is concerned that in spite of new medicines that render HIV a chronic manageable illness there remains a significant need for increased and more effective prevention programs. Also, as people with HIV live longer, they need to view themselves as whole persons, looking past their HIV status and accessing a broader range of services. In the meantime, as Baxter points out, youth continue to feel that HIV is not a big deal and that if they turn positive they just take medicine, unaware that even researchers do not know the full effect of life-time treatment, with the likelihood of side effects, resistance and other illnesses brought on by a compromised immune system.
Today the New Jersey Stop AIDS Coalition is holding its annual World AIDS Day Event at Symphony Hall, Newark, from 1:00PM to 5:00PM. Speakers will include Mayor Wayne Smith, Irvington, and Mayor Mary Sharon Robinson Briggs, Plainfield. In the midst of so much economic difficulty the focus today is on community needs and will include raffles for rental and PSE&G vouchers.
Unless a miracle takes place this Tuesday and Republicans in LD1, LD3, and LD4 pull off major upsets, South Jersey party boss, George Norcross, will have more than enough votes to replace his primary adversary in the Assembly, Majority Leader Joe Cryan, with his top ally in the legislative body, Louis Greenwald, sending Cryan to the back bench.
What remains to be seen, however, is what Cryan will do once he is sent there. Will he unite with his fellow back bencher in the Senate, Dick Codey, to build an opposition movement that will contend not only for the Governor's office in 2013, but also all 120 legislative seats? As much as I would love to see this, I do not expect that this will happen. It is very possible that Dick Codey will run for Governor in 2013, but it is also possible that Cory Booker, Barbara Buono, and Steve Sweeney will run as well and it is unlikely that any of them will run opposition slates against the party lines that they do not win, which means that regardless of who wins the gubernatorial primary, there will not be much change in the legislative roster or its leadership.
If I am right about this, then Cryan will most likely remain on the back bench for most of the next decade. That is, unless he finds a new office for which to run or that office finds him. There have been times in the past decade when Cryan expressed an interest in running for Congress in the 7th district, but admitted that the current configuration of the district made it extremely difficult for a Democrat to win.
This is very true. Our best chance to win this district came in 2006 when a very popular Assemblywoman, Linda Stender, challenged a very unpopular Congressman Mike Ferguson in a year that Democrats were trending up and Republicans were trending down. However, despite these trends, Stender came a few thousand votes short of victory. Two years later, Stender did not run as strong of a campaign as she did in 2006 and faced a very popular State Senator, Leonard Lance. Despite huge turnout increases inspired by Barack Obama's candidacy, it was not enough for a Democrat to win the 7th and Lance defeated Stender by a much wider margin than Ferguson did two years earlier.
This was written by Ron C. Rice with Allen Patterson, CEO of Patterson & Fraser, and posted by Newark Councilman Rice. - Promoted by Rosi
Since 1967, the City of Newark has economically struggled. In 44 years, real development did not take place until the early 1990s - the construction of New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The development of this edifice started the energy of citywide "new" construction throughout the '90s. In 2006 and 2007, there were signs of economic retraction possibly leading to a recession and as the recession loomed, the City of Newark began to experience an even more critical condition of its economic pulse: the foreclosure rate elevated to historic highs and the city continued spending more than it was generating despite cutting substantially into the structural deficit.
Recently, the Newark Municipal Council voted for a $616M spending plan thereby ratifying a 2011 budget for the city. In doing so, the council lowered the tax increase originally proposed by Booker's Administration from 7% to 4.6% and maintained the budget's commitment to no furloughs or layoffs. Historically, however, Newark's budget solutions have not tackled the main systemic problems of spending and investing.
It would be easy to say that as the structural deficit grew in our budget, the problem was masked by the use of Port Authority settlement monies to fill budget holes for a decade. It would be easy to say cut all directors' salaries, get rid of all city perks, end all legal contracts, etc. and those cuts alone would annually balance the budget. It would also be easy to merely state that other cities in America are experiencing the same maladies and worse, from laying off half of their police forces to declaring bankruptcy. But all of those arguments hide the fact that we have real assets in our city that we have not had the collective will or the statewide support to use for the benefit of our city's progress.
The article clunks through a description of Booker's motivational remarks, peppered with journalistic slop like:
The Tony Robbins headset messages included team work and never giving up, and these were massage points (did he mean "message points"?) for a county organization long used to getting carried off the field on Election Day - on stretchers, not shoulders.
Then this:
Redistricting put a crack in the drawbridge of longtime GOP stronghold LD 16 - rerouting the Princetons and South Brunswick into the laps of veteran state Sen. Kip Bateman (R-16) and Assemblyman Pete Biondi (R-16) and giving Dems enough juice to play for an assembly win.
(Disclosure: I am campaign treasurer for the Corfield Campaign)
Then, he went full Bulwer-Lyton with the account of the Booker/Schaffer bowling match, which I'm sure would have Hemingway rolling in his grave. Not exactly "Death in the Afternoon", folks.
Then the money shot:
The mayor went first, powering in shot that left him with a single spare. On his second roll he pounded the lone sentinel down with ease.
"Lone sentinel"?
The story at least had a happy ending. They tied, and Peg got her $1,000 from the Mayor.
How would you like to be the speaker who goes to the podium before two international celebrities? And do it while you are nursing a very bad cold? Well, New Jersey Assembly candidate Troy Singleton was in just that position last night, and he hit a home run.
Last night's Get Out the Vote rally in Willingboro featured nine time Olympic Gold Medal winner Carl Lewis and Oprah celebrity Newark Mayor Cory Booker. But Singleton was a star in his own light.
Singleton's district, the seventh, is one of the few competitive legislative races this year. He and his running mate, Assemblyman/Doctor/Lawyer Herb Conaway are competing against the flip-flopping Mayor of Mount Laurel, Jim Keenan, and Christie Clone Chris Halgas.
Singleton already has a list of accomplishments that would make him one of the best prepared Assemblypeople in Trenton. As chief of staff to former Speaker Joe Roberts, Singleton knows the ins and outs of the State House. He's a labor leader and serves on the Turnpike Authority, the Burlington County Bridge Commission and is a trustee of Rowan University.
Lewis and Booker were inspiring in their remarks last night. But listening to Troy was the highlight.
Despite the snow and slush, there was a good turnout at a Get Out The Vote Rally tonight in Willingboro. The keynote speaker was Newark Mayor Cory Booker (who was introduced by long-time New Jersey resident and Olympic gold medal winner Carl Lewis). Booker spoke in support of our legislative slate (Assemblyman Herb Conaway, Troy Singleton, and Gail Cook). Following his remarks, Booker spoke with Blue Jersey:
Mayor Booker's remarks to the crowd are below the fold.
In Sept. 2010, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, NJ Governor Chris Christie, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey announced an exciting step for education reform in America: Mark Zuckerberg would be donating $100 million to improve Newark public schools, a potentially transformative opportunity. This week, nearly a year later, the ACLU-NJ filed a lawsuit on behalf of a local parents' group to find out how that donation, and the plan for what to do with it to benefit their children, came about, since the City of Newark refused to share.
The city of Newark hasn't responded with details, but the mayor of Twitter has: @CoryBooker: All grants of Zuckerberg $ have been made public. New grant announcements coming in Sept RT @bluejersey Update public on Zuckerberg's gift
The next morning, he told the Newark Star-Ledger that he had disclosed everything, and that the records don't exist. Wait, what? Below, you'll find a detailed q+a to clear up as much as possible on our end.
You're suing over the Facebook money. What does that mean? The Secondary Parent Council, a 30-year-old group of parents and grandparents of Newark schoolchildren, requested records about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's gift to the Newark Public Schools using New Jersey's Open Public Records Act (that's OPRA - not to be confused with Oprah, who hosted Mayor Booker, Zuckerberg and Governor Christie on her TV show to announce the gift Sept. 24, 2010).
What information did the parents ask Newark for? In a nutshell, letters, emails, memos and any other documentation between June 1, 2010 and April 15, 2011 (the date the request was filed) related to Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million gift supporting the Newark Public Schools.
Shouldn't they just accept the money happily, no questions asked, since it's a gift? What Mark Zuckerberg has done for Newark is incredibly generous, and we don't want to take away from the potentially staggering implications of this donation. But part of what made this gift so extraordinary was the promise from all involved - Zuckerberg, Booker and Christie - to be completely transparent with the public, and many parents and grandparents now feel sidelined and disappointed.
But at the same time, this is a gift to a public institution.
There's more ...
UPDATE 6:10pm:@CoryBooker just answered @bluejersey's Tweet: "All grants of Zuckerberg $ have been made public. New grant announcements coming in Sept RT @bluejersey Update public on Zuckerberg's gift"
So, ACLU, want to dispute that? - - Rosi
Laura Baker, a grandmother of a Newark public school student and a member of the Secondary Parent Council (which sued Newark today), explained why she wanted to go to court for the details of Facebook's $100 million donation to Newark Public Schools.
"The city talks a lot about transparency, but we haven't seen a thing," said Baker.
Right now, in Newark's South Ward, there's an exchange going on - toy guns handed over by small children, exchanged for other playthings, or for books. Mayor Cory Booker, whose story and interaction with Newark police and the street crimes they tackle has been chronicled for two years in a documentary series on Sundance, was planning to speak.
The event - Newark's city council members will also attend - is a project of Stop Shootin' Music and its founder Al'Tarik Onque, who lives in Newark.
You can imagine the power of the symbolism here. Toy guns are more than mere baubles. Between 1979 and 2001, gunfire killed 90,000 children and teens in America. Real loss is felt in Newark. And Essex County has more homicides than the next three counties combined. Newark's police force is likely to come under federal monitor after a federal Justice Department investigation spurred by a formal request from NJ's ACLU, citing inaction in its internal affairs bureau - the police dept. policing itself - and community complaints of excessive force.
Oh, pesky facts. Why won't you just go away? As reported by Jeremy Rosen over at the Courier-Post, documents released by the Christie administration in the wake of Coptergate don't actually absolve the governor of any and all wrongdoing with respect to inappropriate use of state helicopters. The issue? Missing flight information; unnamed guests and passengers; contradictions between administration documents and other relevant records. Here's a taste:
Yet records show Christie's Aug. 28 Newark meeting with city Mayor Cory Booker and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was surrounded with helicopter flights to the governor's shore house. Further details of that flight were redacted, so it's unclear if Zuckerberg or Booker were on board.
Get your caption contest toolbelt and strap on the thought bubbles. This is Mayor Cory Booker at the new corporate offices of The Manischewitz Co., yes the sticky Kosher wine people. Newark's gain is Secaucus' loss; New Jersey's biggest city got Manischewitz without tax incentives, for it's "business-friendly climate". So there's that.
For the happy occasion, there was a blessing by the chief rabbi of Israel and Manischewitz baked a monster matzo. That's 25 feet of unleavened yummy loveliness. And as Chris Pedota, Record photog, snapped this picture, Mayor Cory Booker, in a fetching paper hairnet, had just broken off a big chunk.
The Courier-Post's opinion editor Mike Daniels ran a recent Sunday feature citing folks, "who closely follow state politics to give us their take -- who they think might vie for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, and what advice they would give the candidates."
I am excited to hear how'd you'd answer. Meantime, here was my take:
"My short list includes Sweeney, Buono and Booker at this point. If the election were tomorrow I think a Sweeney/Buono ticket seems most plausable, given the state's machine-driven dynamics which don't favor Booker at the moment. A Rob Andrews/Loretta Weinberg ticket is my fantasy pick."
My recommendations for the Democrats who throw their hat in against Christie: (below)
"All the little chatter from small people" is how Newark Mayor Cory Booker described anyone with the temerity to criticize his double-dipping political sugar daddy Joe DiVincenzo's expolitation of NJ taxpayers.
I'm gonna just assume by "little" he means deliciously thin.
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is in Newark right now, at a "Town Hall" open only to teachers and other "education stakeholders". He is joined there by Congressman Donald Payne, and Newark's mayor, Cory Booker.
Duncan will be discussing the federal TEACH Campaign to recruit teachers to "high-need" urban and rural school districts. But it's likely other issues, like privatizing New Jersey schools and the role Acting NJ Ed Commissioner Chris Cerf has played in the direction Newark's public schools may take.
Damn. Read this all the way to the end - promoted by Rosi
"When someone says 'it's not about money', it's about money." - H.L. Mencken
Earlier, as the overt push for privatizing New Jersey's public schools was just getting started, I wanted to bring attention to some of the strange theories and characters who were spearheading the effort. I was under the impression that they were promoting a justifiably unpopular vision based on pure conviction and that when confronted by the force of democracy would be defeated. The privatizers claimed it was about the kids and their way was superior to the tried and true system that works in the wealthier parts of the state. I thought this was a genuine contest of ideas.
I was fundamentally wrong. This is not about ideas, this is about money.
That truth was made clear when Christopher Cerf was named acting Education Commissioner. Cerf is, without a doubt, a businessman posing as a public servant. Jack Grubman, a former securities analyst for Salomon Smith Barney commenting on corruption on Wall Street said that “what used to be a conflict of interest has now become a synergy.” In that case, Cerf brings a lot of "synergies" to the position of State Education Commissioner.
And this was Cory Booker yesterday, promoting the arrival of Southwest Airlines:
You tell me, is this good or bad? A young man dreaming of space, who achieves his dreams with real airplanes? Or has he sold out his dream of space exploration to wear a dark suit with The Man and merely fly in the atmosphere? Where's Newark's spaceport?
Nothing like a dose of the truth to shine the light on the fact that the Emperor really wears no clothes.
1. New Jersey Loses Jobs: 13,000 of them according to the state DOL. So much for all those tax cuts to make NJ welcoming to business. So much for the Governor's veto of the Legislature's job creation bills.
2. Property Taxes Increase: A 2010 increase averaging about 4.1% vs. an average increase of about 3.5% in the years 2007 thru 2009. So let's see - the "tough budget" Governor Christie has increased property taxes more than that "wimpy budget" Governor Corzine. mmmmm?
3. The Straight Talking Governor: apparently doesn't always talk so "straight and honest" - read the New York Times article unmasking Governor Blunt Speaking who seems to embellish the truth just a little.
It's a kick to read in the Washington Post today that Blue Jersey's made their list of best state-based political tweeters in the country, via Chris Cillizza's political column The Fix. We have our readers and Cillizza's readers at The Fix to thank for that, because he compiled the list after asking for nominations from his own Fixistas and sifted through them all for every state in the country.
Cillizza apparently was thinking (here's his call for tweeter nominations) most of people he chose would be reporters. In his NJ list, only 2 are; Ginger Gibson of the statehouse bureau shared by Star-Ledger & Bergen Record and New Jersey reporter for the Wall Street Journal Lisa Fleisher both made Cillizza's list.
The rest of us are all progressive or Democratic partisans. more below
Certain bloggers and governors could benefit from the kind of public commitment to lose weight, eat healthier and get fit that Mayor Cory Booker is conducting since he hit his all-time high weight of 295 lbs. on Christmas Day, a month after Michelle Obama came to Newark to talk farmer's markets, dance classes and low-fat school lunches at the city's Maple Avenue School.
Booker's getting a lot of attention with this hashtag: #letsmove, which has turned into a kind of national daily pep-talk for thousands of people. Let's Move is the name of FLOTUS' campaign for healthy eating & fitness; Booker is her overweight national co-Chair.
Here's Booker getting weighed in - publicly - this week, and how much he's planning to lose (that comes in at about the 1:00 mark):
Who is this guy Max Pizarro and who thinks his "writing" is fit to publish?
