Middletown Democrat Thugs Vandalize Election Signs

By now, we're used to the regular election sign wars in Middletown: signs being stolen, moved or taken down. It usually happens to Republican signs, and an active member of the Democrat executive committee was arrested and subjected to a fine a couple of years ago, after being caught in the act.

But this year, the sleazy Midddletown Democrat thugs are using new tactics. After taking down at least one 4x4 board sign, since last Friday night they started spraying those 4x4s with grafitti. It happened almost every night for the past 4-5 days, and some of those hoodlums are even tagging them with gang signs. You can see this happening on Tindall Rd, East Rd, Leonardville Rd and other places.

Maybe it's time for Joe Caliendo to remind his thugs that this is not Hudson or Union county, and this kind of gang vandalism is not welcome in Middletown. Or maybe the local committee people would know more. Most of the thuggery occurred in District 23 (Thomas Mahon and Annaliesa Meloro). It was also seen in the neighboring districts, 13 (Steven Borbely and Lynda Cordasco) and 34 (Peter Geronimo and Mary Yule).

Below you can see an example of this new type of Democrat vandalism.

Candidates Face the Northern Monmouth Chamber of Commerce

On Oct 13th, the Northern Monmouth Chamber of Commerce invited Congressional and county candidates for a forum at the Bayshore Senior Center in Keansburg. The crowd was smaller than you'd expect, but most candidates showed up. It wasn't a debate, and no Q&A. Each candidate received the same series of questions in advance and were invited to respond.

Scott Sipprelle, running for Congress in the 12th district, was first. Probably has the most business credentials from all the candidates present, and he relates to the audience. Scott attacks the healthcare bill for the provision requiring all businesses that receive more than $600 from another business to send a 1099. In his example, if you're a transportation company, and buy gas at dozens of gas stations in the Northeast, identifying all of them and getting their tax ID's (since they're all independently operated) would be a nightmare.

Scott's opponent, Rush Holt, isn't here. But he has an excuse. He doesn't know where Monmouth County is.

6th district candidate Anna Little speaks about her conservative history and attacks the healthcare bill. She makes it clear she'll fight to repeal it. She speaks about her vision of water transportation in the Bayshore, from South Amboy all the way to Red Bank. She advocates the "flat tax" and at the end mentions the Fair Tax.

I can't say I wasn't surprised that Anna's opponent, Frank Pallone showed up. He doesn't like to appear in public recently, and it took guts for him to come face a group of small business owners, considering that everything he does in Congress is against business owners. Even more, he came well prepared and was on point with his answers. I don't agree with them, but he didn't avoid the issues, even if he read most of his speech.

One of the questions all the Congressional candidates were asked was whether they support the healthcare bill. Frank (who repeatedly said it's his bill, that he wrote it himself) spoke for over 10 minutes about it, but didn't say whether he voted for it or not, or whether he supports it or not. I'm yet to find a Democrat incumbent who's boast his vote for the healthcare bill in his/her campaign speeches/ads, except Harry Reid. Pallone said he's actively working to fix the bill. Does this mean he accepts it's broken?

Eventually, a surrogate for Rush Holt found the Chamber of Commerce. She struggled to read his answers, and not even halfway through her plea, people were leaving. I can't say it was more or less exciting than if Holt would've spoken. It was the same boring, meaningless blabber than you'd expect of him.

John D'Amico, Democrat running for Freeholder, was almost as boring as Holt's surrogate (his Dem colleague on the Monmouth Cty Board of Freeholders, Amy Mallet). It felt like half an hour and can't remember one thing he said.

Tom Arnone, mayor of Neptune City and Rep. candidate for freeholder, was probably the most interesting speaker. He didn't have any notes, he spoke completely free about his achievements as Mayor and President of the NJ Conference of Mayors, as well as his plans once he's elected.

Tom was followed by a blonde lady wearing a Halloween pirate costume. Her name is Janice, she's from Spring Lake, and she's running for freeholder as a Dem. She spoke for about 10 minutes about what she's done as a councilwoman to improve the business climate, and she would do to help companies, how the freeholders should get involved in business, and what elected representatives should do to help small businesses. And then all of a sudden, she ends with "... and I think Government should get out of the way of small businesses!". For anybody who listened to her speaking exclusively about how Government should get involved in the business environment, it must've been like a shock.

The Dem candidate for Sheriff, a short lawyer named Brophy, spoke briefly. He focused on spending by the current Sheriff's Department. According to him, the department is "losing about $2,500 per day. Over the year, this adds up to $8-9 million". Hmmmm. Maybe, but he's wrong by a 0 (a factor of 10). Won't blame him personally for this, after all if you're an Obama supporter you start mistaking trillions for billions and billions for millions.

Last candidate to speak was Brophy's opponent, current Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden. He boasted his experience, as undersheriff for many years and acting Sheriff since the beginning of 2010. He challenged Brophy's calculations and said they're not losing money from the federal contracts. And he informed his young opponent that the department's contracts and budget are determined by the freeholders, not the Sheriff.

It was a good, informative forum, but I would've liked more local business owners to show up. Also, the ability to ask direct questions to the candidates would've been nice, but in that case I'd probably still be there at this hour.

The Road to Hell

by Thomas Stokes


The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions.

The current economic crisis, resulting from the sub prime mortgage meltdown, is certainly a perfect example of this.

Politicians had the major role in creating the current problems, starting with the admirable intention of having low-income families own their own homes.

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed by a Democrat Congress in 1977 to reduce alleged discriminatory credit practices in low income areas actually encouraged lending to uncreditworthy borrowers. Amendments to the CRA in the mid-1990s, raised the amount of mortgages issued to otherwise unqualified low-income borrowers, and allowed the securitization of CRA-regulated mortgages, even though many were subprime.

Those who opposed this faced charges of racism from the more liberal politicians and activist groups like SEIU and ACORN (both of these organizations are international and no information is provided as to foreign funding of their political activities in the US).

In 1982, a Democrat Congress passed the Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act (AMTPA), which allowed creditors to write adjustable-rate mortgages, including option adjustable-rate, balloon-payment and interest-only mortgages.

Approximately 80% of subprime mortgages were adjustable-rate mortgages.

By 2008, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned, either directly or through mortgage pools they sponsored, $5.1 trillion in residential mortgages, about half the total U.S. mortgage market.

When concerns arose in September 2008 regarding the ability of Fannie and Freddie to make good on their guarantees, Washington placed the companies into a conservatorship, effectively nationalizing them at the taxpayers' expense.

What has been the result of this?

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930's. In 2009, almost 3 million homeowners faced foreclosure. Huge drops in home values for those who manged to keep their homes with many now "under water" (values below the mortgage owed). Double digit unemployment, poverty levels higher than when President Johnson waged a "War on Poverty". This attempt to help people has not only hurt those same low-income families. but has also hurt each and every one of us.

In New Jersey, politicians have created the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) which imposes mandates on communities, like Middletown, to provide low-income, high density housing at taxpayer expense. This has a major impact on services, especially schools, and the property taxes we pay.

Professional politicians, of both parties, always searching for more votes, ignore the unintended (but not unforseen) consequences of their actions. Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

November is Coming to Middletown

October 1st, 32 days before election day, the AFP bus made a stop in Middletown for the grand opening of the Bayshore Tea Party HQ. Bayshore TP is one of the first tea party groups that appeared in NJ in early 2009. Since then, it continued to grow in numbers, it became more and more active in the local community and is currently conducting an unprecedented grassroots campaign for Anna Little. And now, due to AFP, its NJ director Steve Lonegan, and its grassroots campaign November is Coming, Bayshore has its one HQ!




There are a lot of local patriots who made all of this possible: Barbara, Dwight, Brian, Bob, Lynn and many others. They achieved so much in just over one year and! Having Steve Lonegan and the November is Coming bus stop here is a great honor for the tea party.

Steve addressed a crowd of almost 100 people, gathered in a parking lot on busy Route 35, and started by saying that the current tea party efforts will make "Acorn look like Little League baseball". In 2006 and 2008, taxpayer-funded Acorn conducted a very aggressive GOTV campaign, but that's being dwarfed now by the more numerous, more dedicated, more enthusiastic conservative volunteers.







What the AFP is offering Bayshore TP, besides a very nice HQ, is a state-of-the-art phone banking system and a micro-targeting voter database, which will optimize the volunteers time so they can reach those voters most likely to swing their votes. It cost AFP a lot of money raised through private donations, but it's all free for the Bayshore tea partiers!



Anna Little also stopped by and energized the crowd with a short speech, while trucks carrying huge Little signs were driving up and down the highway. Not even a disgruntled liberal neighbor who called the cops couldn't interrupt the party. Mayor Scharfenberger of Middletown and township candidate Kevin Settembrino stopped by, as well as representatives from Scott Sipprelle's campaign and the Monmouth County Republican Committee, signaling that all Republicans in NJ are joining forces against the Democrats.



AFP is targeting three incumbent Democrats, Adler, Pallone and Holt, with the last two being in the coverage area of the Bayshore TP. Steve Lonegan predicted a 100-seat swing in the House, and Anna Little, Scott Sipprelle and Jon Runyan will be part of this new wave of Republican representatives.

The Bayshore Tea Party HQ is located at 275 Route 35 in Middletown, just North of Pool world. Please stop by and join the conservative grassroots efforts!

November is Coming

The "November is Coming" headquarters in Middletown has its grand Friday night at 7pm. It will be managed by the Bayshore Tea Party, being the first tea party HQ sponsored by AFP. Here's the press release:



New Jersey’s Flagship ‘November Is Coming’ Tea Party Headquarters will be first of its kind in nation, Friday, October 1st, 7PM

RED BANK– Americans for Prosperity is announcing the grand opening of its ‘November Is Coming’ Tea Party headquarters in Middletown, located at 275 Highway 35, on Friday, October 1st at 7PM. The opening will coincide with arrival of the free market organization’s ‘November Is Coming’ Bus Tour.

The ‘November Is Coming’ Bus Tour will be making stops in key districts across the state earlier in the day, including Cherry Hill, Toms River, and Somerset.

New Jersey state director Steve Lonegan hailed the opening of the headquarters as groundbreaking.

“The Tea Party movement has been enormously effective in recruiting activists. These patriots have mobilized for rallies and protests but now they will have a central place where they can meet, organize and execute the grassroots voter reach out that is necessary to ensure a conservative victory in November.

“This is truly a remarkable step. Nowhere else in the country do Tea Party activists have such an operation in place. All the momentum and energy in the Tea Party movement will now be focused on our ‘November Is Coming’ grassroots effort. They realize the time for rallies is over and the time to get the troops on the ground to make a difference has come.

“The passion and intensity in the conservative Tea Party movement is palpable. And now these activists will be using this energy toward the biggest voter education and outreach effort ever undertaken by the conservative movement. By the time we are done, this will make ACORN look like Little League baseball.”

Activists participating in the ‘November Is Coming’ project will be encouraged to go door-to-door and implement a state-of-the-art phone banking system as part of a citizen education effort. Activists will let people know where incumbent representatives stand on the issues and encourage them to contact their representatives to tell them to stop the out-of-control spending and big government policies.

The New Jersey campaign will focus on educating voters about the big government, big spending records of incumbents of Frank Pallone, John Adler, and Rush Holt.

The grand opening of the November Is Coming Tea Party headquarters is free and open to all conservative Tea Party activists.

What: Grand Opening of November Is Coming Tea Party Headquarters – Middletown

Who: Americans for Prosperity, Tea Party Activists

When: Friday, October 1st at 7 p.m.
Where: New Jersey November Is Coming Headquarters
275 Highway 35
Red Bank, NJ 07701

Media: Media are invited to attend. Please contact Michael Proto at mproto@afphq.org or (201) 487-8844/(201) 281-2700.

For more information, please visit www.NovemberIsComing.com

A Reaction to Chris Christie's Education Reform Proposals

Ed Mazlish sent us the following response regarding the Governor's education reform agenda:

Governor Christie called the Legislature into special session for a Constitutional Amendment to deal with the crisis of school funding and the high property taxes mandated by the Abbott decisions. Did he propose an Amendment to overrule th...e Abbott decisions? No. He proposed yet another cap on property tax increases - instead of dealing with (1) the Court's blatant violation of separation of powers by ordering spending and tax increases to support such spending; and (2) the misguided Constitutional provision that the Court used to justify such violation of separation of powers (the Public Education Clause). If he "loved children" and really wanted to deal with the education crisis - both from the perspective of failing schools and skyrocketting property taxes - he would have urged a very different Constitutional Amendment. And he certainly would not be trying to override taxing and spending decisions dealing with education made by local school boards and centralize such decisionmaking in Trenton.

What's even worse is that he had a very creative, committed Education Commissioner in Bret Schundler who has demonstrated novel thinking on solving education problems. Instead of implementing some of the vouchjer and charter school proposals Schundler has championed and pioneered, he threw Schundler under the bus at the first opportunity.

The solutions to the education problem are really not that difficult. Conservative thinkers and politicians have been providing the justifications necessary to implement real change in the education arena - these arguments have been available for at least all of Governor Christie's adult life, if not longer. He is either aware of them and chooses to ignore then, or he is willfully ignorant of them. Either way that does not demonstrate his love for the children.

Bashing the teachers unions makes for good soundbytes (and I am no fan of those unions, or any other unions for that matter). But it does not make for sound policy. It would be nice of the Governor had a better solution to the education crisis than artificial caps on property taxes (that have more holes than swiss cheese), redistributing wealth from rich districts to poor ones (otherwise known as raiding the surpluses of districts that actually saved money for a rainy day over the years), and demoralizing the teachers who will ultimately be teaching most children in New Jersey. We deserve better from a Governor who promised to shake things up.

Chris Christie on Education Reform

Today, Sep 28, I attended Governor Chris Christie's townhall meeting in Old Bridge, focused on his proposals for education reform. It's the first time I go to a townhall organized by someone I support. The ones I've attended before were organized by Democrats and resulted in a lot of frustrated attendees, vociferations, protests and so on, due to the extreme views of the speakers. Rush Holt even decided that "townhalls have a negative connotation", without thinking that maybe his ideas have negative implications. So in a way I expected a lot of discontent union members to show up, especially in Democratic Old Bridge from Democratic Middlesex County. To my surprise, most of the people inside the packed room (a few hundred peoples) were supporting the Christie Reform Agenda, were enthusiastic about his proposals, and have him many rounds of standing ovations.

The Governor started kinda like an E! channel show, with about five minutes dedicated to movie reviews. He talked about The Cartel, but especially about the newly released Waiting for Superman. There's no coincidence, as these movies are about failed public school systems. So he went straight to the topic of the day - education. And today he didn't speak about compensation, benefits, guaranteed pay raises or (lack of) contributions to health insurance, but about one thing: teacher quality.

Packed room in Old Bridge

His first example, as it relates to his recent joint appearance with Mayor Booker of Newark and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (or Zuckerman as Booker repeatedly called him) of Facebook, was about the abysmal Newark school system. Over there, only 1 in 2 children graduate from high school. You can say this is bad enough. But 95% of those students who decide to go to college need remedial education to bring them up to the level of college admission knowledge! What this means is that high school tests are rigged so those teachers can make themselves look good and keep their jobs!

The problem with public (unionized) education in NJ (and other states) is that it doesn't take into account AT ALL teachers' performance. The system doesn't reward good teachers and punish bad teachers. It just maintains a status quo where everyone has a guaranteed job, a guaranteed salary, a guaranteed pay raise. Imagine another enterprise, a private company, where at the end of the year, the boss comes to one of the worst employees and says "Congrats for surviving one more year! Here's your bonus and your 5% raise for next year!". Does anyone see that possible?? Well, it's the reality of unionized education, where the only test you have to pass in order to keep your job and get a raise is "to breathe". That's all you have to do!




Chris Christie said "I don't attack teachers. I attack BAD teacher". And later: "I don't bash teachers, I bash stubborn, self-interested unions". It's the unions that have created the so called "rubber rooms" in New York City. A rubber room is a room where the worst teachers are sent to just do nothing... watch TV, read newspapers, play cards, while getting paid full salary and benefits. Just because it's so hard and expensive to fire them that it's more economically feasible to pay them full salary to do nothing! That's the reality of public education.

The Governor said the NJ Legislature needs to act on several bills. One is about prohibiting using seniority as a basis for deciding compensation. It goes back to the previous example. Right now, salaries, benefits and pay raises are obtained automatically, simply by breathing for one more year. It doesn't matter if you're the best or the worst teacher, you get the same. I don't think it's even necessary to ask what's then the incentive to be a good teacher?? Christie's proposal is very simple: compensation should be based only on merit. Good teachers get paid more, and bad teachers get paid less or get FIRED. Also, he suggested that additional degrees shouldn't be a criteria for boosting a salary, as a lot of teachers get free Masters' degrees (I mean, paid by the taxpayers) in non-related subjects, just to get a pay increase.

Chris Christie's 2nd legislative proposal is about tenure. The way tenure is used now in public education is illogical. Tenure was introduced in higher education in order to stimulate professors to be free thinkers and to engage in creative debate, without fearing for their job. But it's been adopted by the public education system as a synonym for "job guarantee". 3rd grade teachers don't engage in phylosophical debates, the hide behind tenure as an excuse for their performance. Imagine the following discussion a principal can have with a parent: "Your daughter's 3rd grade teacher is really bad, but you know we can't fire her. Lucky us, we got more funding from the state, so we're gonna give her a pay raise this year, and try to talk to her into bettering herself. And who knows, maybe next year she'll do a better job". The thing is that the daughter of that parent has only one year in 3rd grade. And that more money won't make that teacher better. But this is the reality of our public, unionized education.

I think teachers should be like eveybody else working in this country: you do your job well, you keep it. You do a bad job, you get fired. Chris Christie's proposal wasn't that common sense (or "radical", as the Democrats would call it), he just proposed that tenure should be granted or revoked based on teacher performance. I'm sure it would still be very hard to revoke someone's tenure, but it's a small step forward.

Christie takes on the unions

After his speech, the Governor said he's ready for "the fun part of the program, the one most likely to get on YouTube": questions from the public. He responded pretty much on point to all of them, as they were about common sense issues like education (mostly) or public employees. He seemed a little bit upset only when the issues of accrued sick time was raised. In case you didn't know, public employees are allowed a certain amount of sick days per year, which accrue unlimited over their career, and when you retire you get PAID for all those unused sick days. Sounds sick, doesn't it??? The Governor errupted saying that "if after 20 years on the job you haven't used any sick days, you shouldn't asked to be paid for that, you should go to church, get on your knees, and thank God for your good health". But really, can anyone find any similar arrangement in any other American enterprise? There were people who retired this year and were paid by the State (meaning us, taxpayers), $900,000 (Nine Hundred Thousand Dollars) in accrued sick time. This makes ME sick! The best the Governor could do was to cap those payments at $15k/person. Still a lot, but the best you can achieve with a Democratic legislature driven by special interest groups (read: Unions).

Someone asked about RGGI, which is the local equivalent of Cap & Trade, used by several liberal Northeast states. I was looking forward to hearing the Governor's opinion about this, and can't say I was very satisfied. He said he's a bit opposed to it, because big industrial states like Pennsylvania are not participating, so the program is totally ineffective and even more, creates higher costs of doing business in NJ, while Pennsylvania can attract more of those businesses away from NJ. But Chris Christie didn't specifically address the fact that it costs small businesses a lot of money and ultimately we, the citizens of NJ, have to pay all those costs associated with Tax&Trade.

Finally, Chris Christie's best quote about Democrats came as related to a question about vouchers and charter schools: "They don't like choice, because it allows people to walk away from failures". This is true about so many aspects about our life. Democrats would like to mandate and regulate everything (what to eat, what car to drive, what light bulbs to use, etc), because people won't "choose" something they don't like unless they're forced to or left with no other choice.