Not happy with how Democrats are running NJ, a Cranbury Republican wants change

[Guest]

Speaking of a third party - Look what Ed Koch had to say about NY. The same can be said about NJ.

New York Is a Disgrace, Laughingstock
Tuesday, July 1, 2008 9:03 AM
By: Edward I. Koch

I have been thinking long and hard about the state of politics in New York. We are a national disgrace and laughingstock.

Our state legislature has been called the most dysfunctional in the country, and most opinion-makers voicing an opinion on the subject have agreed with the description. We have had a most unusual situation with the recent resignation of a governor, Eliot Spitzer, who was in office for a little more than a year, for using hookers and engaging in other possibly criminal conduct.

This followed the resignation of the newly-re-elected state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, for using state resources to provide assistance for his wife. The recent sudden departure of the state senate majority leader, Joe Bruno, followed.

Bruno, before he resigned, apparently called U.S. law enforcement authorities to ask if his resignation would cause them to end their investigation of his business activities then and still under investigation, and was told no. Now we have a state legislature totally dominated by the speaker, Sheldon Silver, who while conducting the state's affairs, allegedly also draws $1 million per year as a law firm partner in a state where the trial lawyers wield great influence on state legislation.

Then there is the enormous influence of the municipal unions on the state legislature and the laws it enacts affecting the relationship of those unions and New York City, particularly with respect to pensions. Those pension increases imposed by the state cost the city of New York billions of dollars in increases, most not agreed to by the city and adversely impacting on city services by causing cuts in service.

While the city has limited the terms of its city council by referendum, the state legislature rarely sees sitting members lose at the election polls, with on average less than 3 percent of the state legislators losing in any general election.

In 1999, we saw city legislators led by Speaker Shelly Silver disgracefully vote to successfully abolish the commuter tax paid by non-residents to the city for the services they receive here including police, fire and sanitation, depriving the city of more than $500 million dollars a year in tax revenues. No city legislator lost support of editorial boards, union support or has been punished at the election polls for that traitorous act.

Using the words of the late Bill Buckley in another context, what to do in this zoo-like atmosphere?

I propose that we use the tactic employed in New York City back in the 1950s through the 1960s and expand it. What was that tactic?

The formation of a reform wing in the Democratic Party. It was led by a group of revered citizens: Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Sen. Herbert Lehman, Mayor Robert Wagner, and others. The reformers undertook primaries against the regulars and beat many of them.

I had the privilege of running against the boss of bosses as he was referred to Carmine De Sapio leader of Tammany Hall, the Democratic organization running Manhattan. I was not the first to beat him in 1963 in a Democratic primary for District Leader in Greenwich Village. He was first defeated in 1961 by James Lannigan.

Those victories led to many reform changes in Manhattan which spread to the other boroughs. Regrettably, as often happens, reform ultimately tires with the return of the regular forces.

What we should do is improve on the reform model and create a new party which will state in its manifesto that it is running against the candidates of both the Democratic and Republican parties and has as its goal the sweeping out of Albany of all incumbents the bad and the good replacing them with the new party's candidates.

After two elections in which the new party is successful, it should agree to dissolve and allow the Democratic and Republican parties to once again take over, vying against one another on a philosophical basis, hoping they have learned their lesson and become functional.

So how do we start? We have to find those five New Yorkers willing to do what Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert Lehman, et al., did step forward and lead such an effort.

If they do, we can turn our state of deplorable politics around and once again be proud to be citizens of the great Empire State that produced FDR, Al Smith, and Fiorello LaGuardia, among others.

This need not be a dream. It can become a reality.

http://www.newsmax.com/koch/new_york_koch/2008/07/01/108867.html

[NJ Repulican Council Prez]

TANELLI BLASTS NEW STATE COAH RULES

By MountaintopMedia - June 30, 2008 - 12:02pm
Tags: Steve Tanelli, COAH,
Release Date: Jun 30 2008

Council President Steve Tanelli said he will offer a resolution for the borough council at its July meeting condemning the state’s new Affordable Housing rules as being, “far beyond reasonable and an economic threat to the community and other surrounding communities.”

Tanelli said he will forward to resolution to other communities in the Meadowlands area and other towns in Bergen County, asking them to demand the legislature change the state’s Fair Housing Act and the affordable housing mandates.

Tanelli said the new rules promulgated by the Council on Affordable Housing -- known as COAH Round 3 -- represent radical social engineering that will come at the expense of hard working homeowners who were able to afford a home without government assistance or mandates.

The new COAH regulations will impose a 20 percent low income housing requirement - for every group of five new residences, one must be an affordable unit. A similar calculation is made for non residential development as well. It is estimated that the cost of Round 3 would add billions to the cost of commercial development in New Jersey.

DETER INVESTMENT

Tanelli said COAH-3 will make it difficult to attract commercial tax ratables to the community at critical time when the borough is trying to map a new future for the Meadowlands portion of the community.

“Any developer who wants to invest in a commercial enterprise in our town, whether it be a warehouse or a retail store, will have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in added fees to construct affordable housing,” said Tanelli.

“I can’t think of a bigger disincentive the state could mandate to chase investment out of the region,” added the council president. “I think the legislators in Trenton have become dupes of the housing radicals, who simply don’t understand basic economics,”

OVERCROWDING & TAXES

Tanelli said not only will the new rules inhibit commercial development, but they will inundate already developed towns like North Arlington with additional housing, causing more overcrowding and more traffic congestion. The additional over-development, he said will force taxes to go up to pay for additional services, such as police, fire and schools.

Finally, said Tanelli, the legislature has failed to calculate the impact of the housing requirements on existing homeowners.

He noted that the state housing sales for the first quarter of the year dropped by 30 percent and that home prices are falling throughout the region. “In the face of one of the worst housing recessions in almost a century, the State of New Jersey – in one of the poorest decision it could possibly make -- is going to mandate the construction of hundreds of thousands of units of additional housing. All that will do is drive down the value of homes for existing homeowners, whose life savings are tied up in their property values.”

“Hasn’t anyone in Trenton thought about the senior citizens who are looking to retire and sell their home? It doesn’t appear so,” said Tanelli.

The Council President added that COAH-3 -- which raises income eligibility for subsidized housing to more than $86,000 for a family of four, -- “is a slap in the face to every hard working family that scrimped and saved and worked two jobs to afford a home. The State has created a yet another new entitlement for people earning almost $90,000. The legislature may as well promise to build everyone a house and let’s rename New Jersey the Soviet Union.”

Tanelli said his resolution is calling on the state legislature to completely overhaul the Fair Housing Act and to develop a new way to provide a one time subsidy to moderate income home buyers that does not entail building additional housing.

“The legislature needs to be creative. A revolving loan program for moderate income buyers would do more good than the mess the state has created with COAH,” said Tanelli

[MoreInfo]

Two Princeton residents launch grassroots Republican drive

Two Princeton residents launch grassroots Republican drive

Tuesday, July 1, 2008 7:15 AM EDT
By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer

Two Princeton residents have launched a statewide grassroots effort to identify, develop and provide funding to local Republican candidates.

Their toughest challenge may be in their own backyard, with Princeton politics dominated by Democrats, who hold every local elected office in the borough and township.

The organization is called “Building a New Majority.”

John Crowley, president and CEO of Cranbury-based biopharma company Amicus Therapeutics Inc. is the organization’s honorary chairman and Bill Spadea, vice president of executive recruiting at Weichert Realtors’ Morris Plains headquarters, will serve as the organization’s president.

Mr. Spadea ran unsuccessfully against U.S. Rep. Rush Holt in 2004 for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District seat. Mr. Crowley was recruited to be a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate earlier this year to run against incumbent Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg, but ultimately declined to run because of family and work demands. Mr. Crowley gained public recognition for founding a biotechnology company in search of a therapy for Pompe disease, a rare form of muscular dystrophy that was diagnosed in two of his children. His story was featured in the Wall Street Journal and in a subsequent book.

Before his brief flirtation with being a Republican Senate candidate, “I had never been involved at all in politics,” Mr. Crowley said. At that point he talked with state and national GOP leaders, including Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who also had sought the GOP presidential nomination, Mr. Crowley said.

More than the calls from these high-level politicians, what impressed Mr. Crowley about that period, he said, were “all the letters and e-mails and phone calls and knocks on the door” he received from New Jersey residents. From this, Mr. Crowley said he learned there was “a deep sense of urgency weighing heavily on people’s minds” in the state, that “we really needed new leadership in the state.”

Through “mutual brainstorming” he and Mr. Spadea came up with the idea for a grassroots GOP organization as “the best way we can make the most impact,” Mr. Crowley said.

”We have a pretty simple mission, the bottom line is to rebuild the Republican Party from the ground up,” said Mr. Spadea. “For example, in Princeton Borough and Township there is a lot of organizing work that needs to be done before the Republican Party can present their case,” he said.

”We really need to walk before we run, and the walk starts in the neighborhood,” he said.

Mr. Spadea said philosophically “there is no litmus test for our organization beyond ethical transparent government.”

He said the group welcomed participants and candidates who believed in free-market solutions rather than government-mandated ones and in responsible government spending.

”Part of it was my own personal experience,” Mr. Spadea said of his own interest is building a grassroots GOP organization. “I ran for Congress in 2004 and I had the experience of having to build a campaign from scratch.”

”Building the New Majority” is organized as a continuing political committee in the state, according to Mr. Spadea, with the ability to receive up to $7,200 from an individual or corporate donor, and the ability to give out up to $8,200 to candidates. But simply donating to Republican campaigns is not what the organization is about, he said.

”It is tied to activities, this is not about throwing money at a problem, it is about investing in a solution,” he said.

Mr. Spadea said the organization intends to initially identify one- to two-dozen Republican candidates at the local level, give them schooling in campaign techniques, give modest financial support — $500 to $1,000 — and with an eye on the longer term, looking years not months ahead, help those candidates succeed, rejuvenating the state Republican Party in the process.

Both Mr. Crowley and Mr. Spadea said the organization was not a vehicle to advance their own political careers, and they had no personal plans to run for political office at present.

Mr. Crowley said his “focus is not at all about raising money in the pharmaceutical industry,” but rather to develop “a new network of people who are not the traditional supporters of the Republican Party.”

He said the organization’s message pushing for good government and fiduciary responsibility “will resonate very well” with traditionally Democratic communities like Princeton that have grown disaffected with high taxes and poor leadership by Democrats at the local and state level.

According to Mr. Spadea, the organization has already been successful in energizing Republicans in Princeton Township, Middletown and North Brunswick over write-in campaigns for township committee seats and other races, and is looking to get involved in local elections in Hopewell.

He named Princeton residents Dudley and Linda Sipprelle as bright future Republican lights, and called township resident Tom Pyle “one of the great future leaders in the Republican Party.” He also named Cindy Randazzo, who is running for freeholder, and Colin Von Vorys as other area “stars out there that really have potential.”

Mr. Spadea said “there are dozens if not hundreds of good people that would make citizen statesmen” in communities across New Jersey, and be brought into the Republican fold.

New Jersey State GOP Chairman Tom Wilson said the Republican Party was “eager and happy” to receive help from an organization like “Building the New Majority.”

”There are 566 towns in New Jersey. It’s tough for us to be everywhere,” Mr. Wilson said, adding “we will be working very closely together.”

Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, New Jersey State Democratic chairman, did not respond to requests for comment.

Jenny Crumiller, president of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization, said the launch of the GOP organization is a positive development in general. “I think competition is a healthy thing for the democratic process,” she said.

Ms. Crumiller said she remained confident in the local Democratic candidates in Princeton.

”There are a lot of Democrats in Princeton and not very many Republicans. That alone will make it hard for the Republican Party, but I think a strong Republican Party in Princeton would be a good thing,” she said.

Democratic Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, a Princeton resident, said he also welcomed the advent of the new GOP organization.

”At the end of the day, I believe the majority of New Jersey supports the Democratic message,” Mr. Gusciora said, but added that an active Republican Party was good for political discourse in general, “and especially in Princeton because it has a reputation as being a one-party town, and I don’t think that serves the interests of residents and taxpayers.”

[Guest]

Middletown Mayor Gerard Scharfenberger reacted strongly this week to the passage of legislation that spells an end to the township's use of Regional Contribution Agreements (RCA) to help fulfill its affordable housing obligation.

http://independent.gmnews.com/news/2008/0702/front_page/002.html

[fred thomsen]

In reference to the idea of a third party.........................

The average American has the attention span of a flea!
If they can't understand a two party system...........a third won't help much. Look at the fleecing that we have gotten over the last several years. They took the worst attack on American soil since the War of 1812, and used it against us to further their own twisted interests. All with the knowledge and complicity of the sheepish American public. You couldn't make this crap up if you tried. Nobody would EVER believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am in the camp of the late, great George Carlin. He said,"When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat".

[Guest]

For democracy to work well, the voters must be well informed and highly educated. Otherwise, politicians can manipulate voters.

If a country does not have a well educated population, then democracy will not work as intended.

The policy to impose democracy on all the countries is flawed.

[publius]

Voters highly informed and educated?

OUCH!
We're up the creek now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!