What kind of a poltician is Bob Menendez?

By Rob Eichmann   Cross-posted from ConservativeNewJersey

U. S. Senator Bob Menendez was in Belleville, NJ. on September 25 looking for votes from American Veterans and throwing around Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remark. Menendez likes to contrast himself with Romney. He told the veterans how much he understands them and their lives. What a joke.

How can he? How can a career politician like Bob Menendez play the champion of the “middle class” when he has lived as a member of that most elite of elites, the “political class”, for nearly all of his adult life? In other words, he is that rarity of rarities – a one percenter among one percenters.

Starting out as a young man on the make, Bob Menendez hitched on to corrupt Union City boss Mayor Musto and became one of his ardent henchmen – until a palace coup got rid of Boss Musto and replaced him with Boss Menendez. And what kind of a boss was Bob Menendez? To know the politician, you must go back to his roots, in Union City, back when he had his first taste of power, back when he was Mayor Menendez – boss of Union City.

In the winter of 1988, a story broke about an American veteran, down on his luck, living in low income housing, stuck in Union City. The Record (Bergen County) carried this report on December 9, 1988:

To Jack Stahl, using powder-blue paint to obliterate a swastika and an anti-Semitic epithet in an elevator of his public housing complex was an act of kindness, a neighborhood beautification project.

Not so, says Virgilio Cabello, executive director of the city’s Housing Authority, noting that no one other than Stahl reported seeing the swastika.

Stahl’s community cleanup was “an act of vandalism,” Cabello said, for which he must be prosecuted to forestall “anarchy” in the 35-year-old housing project at 3911 Kennedy Blvd.

As a result, Stahl, 58, an unemployed truck dispatcher and bachelor who has lived in the same apartment for 23 years, has to appear in city court next month to answer charges of vandalizing public property. He faces fines of up to $250.

Cabello’s complaint states that Stahl “purposely and knowingly damaged property of another by applying paint to walls in the hallway . . . the property of the Union City Housing Authority.”

Neither Cobello nor Stahl dispute what happened; they differ on why it happened.

“We complain and complain about the graffiti, and they do nothing,” said Stahl, an assertion backed by Ginny Militello, secretary for the tenants association.

“We found it doesn’t help to complain; they just turn it against us,” Militello said.

Stahl said he acted after seeing a woman wearing a Star of David on a necklace sobbing and pointing to a swastika next to a “Kill All the . . . Jews” inscription on the elevator door.

Stahl said the woman, whom he did not know, told him she lost family in the Holocaust.

Touched by her pain, Stahl said, he went to his apartment, where he was painting his bedroom powder blue, grabbed paint and a sponge, and went to the elevator, where he obliterated the swastika and the epithet. He carried on with his efforts in the lobby and stairwell of the city-owned building.

He said he acted after a maintenance worker ignored his request to remove the graffiti. The same maintenance worker, Stahl said, reported his painting to Cabello.

Within 20 minutes, a typewritten note from the Housing Authority was slipped under his door, summoning him to a meeting Monday. At that meeting, Stahl said, Cobello’s administrative assistant, Patricia Botti, told him he would be fined $450, evicted, prosecuted, and billed the $125 cost of scrubbing away the paint.

Cobello and Botti said Stahl was advised of his rights, was told that he would be billed the cost of removing the paint splotches from the lobby and that his relocation from a two-bedroom apartment to a single-bedroom probably would be accelerated. Stahl and his mother lived in a two-bedroom unit until her death two years ago.

Cabello said it was authority policy to remove graffiti as soon as a tenant complains, and he is looking into using graffiti-resistant material.

By the following spring, it appeared as though the Menendez administration wanted to make an example of this freelance community cleaner. The New York Daily News covered it and put it on the front page of its March 29, 1989 edition:

UNION CITY, N.J. – A man who painted over two swastikas drawn in the housing project where he lives – after trying to get maintenance crews to do the job for seven months – has been charged with criminal mischief.

Jack Stahl, a World War II veteran who has lived in Union City for 25 years, is due in court tomorrow.

The maximum penalty is six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

“Instead of trying to catch the people who painted the swastikas they decided to get me after I painted them over,” Stahl, 59, said yesterday. “It’s crazy.”

Stahl, a truck dispatcher, said he had decided to paint out the swastikas in December after an elderly neighbor broke into tears in an elevator where one swastika had been drawn.

“I said, ‘Why are you crying?’” Stahl said.

“She pointed to the swastika and said a relative of hers had died in the Holocaust. I could see how she hurt,” said Stahl, who is not Jewish.

“Enough was enough.”

After being ‘yessed’ to death by housing authority officials who promised to take care of the problem for seven months, I decided I had to take the matter into my own hands.

“I painted over the swastika and some other graffiti on the elevator door and then I went to the eighth floor to take care of the other swastika and some more graffiti” in a stairwell.

“I was back in my apartment less than 20 minutes when a notice was put under my door ordering me to report to the housing authority office.”

Stahl said housing authority’s executive director, Virgilio Cabello, told him the blue paint he used “was an absolutely terrible color.” He said it “didn’t go at all with the green elevator door and walls.”

Cabello’s secretary said he had no comment.

Frank Sternberg, spokesman for Mayor Robert Menendez, said Stahl had been given a summons the day after painting over the swastikas “because he broke the law.”

Asked why the swastikas and graffiti were allowed to remain in the building for seven months, the mayor said: “I guess we didn’t have enough workers to take care of it.”

Looking outside his window at a bare flagpole, Stahl said: “They don’t ever fly the American flag here. This isn’t America; this is Union City.”

Six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for covering up graffiti? And get a load of that bureaucrat complaining about how the paint color used clashed with the graffiti-filled décor.

The backlash against Mayor Menendez and his bureaucrat lackey only made the Mayor angrier, as this report from The Record (Bergen County, March 31, 1989) made clear:

In Union City, Jack Stahl is Public Enemy No. 1. The housing director wants him in jail. The mayor called him a liar. A committee will be appointed to investigate “serious counter-allegations” about Stahl.

What atrocity did he commit?

The 58-year-old unemployed truck dispatcher took out a can of blue paint, headed for the elevator and stairwell, and covered obscene graffiti in the public housing project where he lives.

That’s all.

Stahl says he painted over a swastika and obscenities that made his apartment building look like a subway car.

He says he acted after seeing a woman wearing a Star of David crying after seeing the swastika and the words: “Kill all the . . . Jews.”

He and other tenants have long complained about graffiti. Nothing changed.

But 20 minutes after Stahl covered the graffiti before the paint even dried a typewritten note from the Housing Authority was slipped under his door. He was served with a summons. And now he, not the cretins who sprayed racial obscenities, is on trial for criminal mischief. He faces six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The city is going after him.

Stahl showed up in court Thursday ready to explain why he “purposely and knowingly damaged property of another by applying paint to walls in the hallway of . . . the property of the Union City Housing Authority.”

Why did he do it?

“I’m a World War II veteran. I’m of German descent. I’m not Jewish. But I know you’re not supposed to allow things like that,” said Stahl. He seems an ordinary fellow, wearing a trench coat and smoking cigarettes, who never expected to be prosecuted for his aggressive cleanup.

“Women, children come into my building. They shouldn’t have to see that viciousness. I can’t repeat the stuff written on the wall. Would you want a relative to come in and look at that?” he asked.

But the Housing Authority seems more intent on showing Stahl who’s boss than in stopping the criminals who deface our urban landscape with messages of hate.

Executive Director Virgilio Cabello has called Stahl’s cleanup an act of vandalism that must be prosecuted to “forestall anarchy.” Just imagine if other tenants started cleaning up graffiti.

The bureaucratic arrogance continued Thursday. Mayor Robert Menendez, faced with a courtroom full of reporters and television cameras, found himself and the city in an embarrassing position.

So what did he do? He stood by his housing director and attacked Stahl. “I don’t believe his contention about the swastika graffiti,” he said.

The new housing director instituted “discipline” that upset longtime tenants, Menendez said without elaborating, as if talking about unruly schoolchildren.

Then the mayor did what every skillful politician does when caught in a pickle: He appointed a committee. Menendez asked that court proceedings against Stahl be postponed until a “special independent investigative committee” can get to “the truth of the matter.”

Stahl wants to know why, after waiting since December for Thursday’s trial date, the city now decides to appoint a committee. “They have their foot in their mouth, and now they’re trying to extract it,” he said, standing in the old, marble-walled Union City courthouse.

Nearby was Steve Shochet of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Last year, the ADL investigated 67 complaints of anti-Semitism in New Jersey.

He, too, wants the truth.

That did not happen Thursday. A judge postponed legal proceedings against Stahl until May 10.

Meanwhile, city officials moved to another press conference at 15th Street and Bergenline Avenue to demonstrate the city’s new war on graffiti.

The writer, Carol Ann Campbell, hit the nail on the head. This was about who is going to be in charge – the people or the bureaucrats. Siding with the bureaucrats was Bob Menendez, talking about meting out some “discipline” to any citizen under the illusion that he or she is free.

Yes, Menendez actually appointed a “special independent investigative committee” to look into the “crime” of painting over graffiti. In the 1930’s, these kinds of things were called “show trials”. Google “Stalin” – he was a big fan of them.

Menendez went so far as to hire an “art restoration expert” to dispute whether swastikas had been part of the graffiti. No, we’re not making it up, Bob Menendez is not only the embodiment of the nanny state – he is the prim, righteous authoritarian who must be right. In short, he’s a bully.

So Menendez’ art historian claimed there were no swastikas, while witnesses claimed there were. And you would never guess that while this occupied the attentions of Mayor Menendez, Union City was bankrupt, having to live off the tax money sent to it from the rest of the state.

Needless to say, on May 11, 1989, the Star-Ledger announced that the “Swastika case” had been dropped by Menendez and company:

Charges were dropped yesterday against a man who allegedly painted over swastikas in his apartment building in Union City.

A three-member commission concluded it would be hard to prove the charges that Jack Stahl, 59, intentionally damaged the property. However, the panel also said a paint expert and a commission member examined the elevator where the swastikas allegedly were scrawled, yet found no evidence of the Nazi symbol.

Virgilio Cabello, executive director of the Union City Housing Authority, told Municipal Judge Joseph N. Falbo that Stahl had been proven a liar.

“Mr. Stahl’s actions clearly overstepped the right of any tenants to take a matter into their own hands,” Cabello said. Stahl, who was scheduled to stand trial on the charge yesterday, has said he painted over the doors because the authority refused to do so. He said he was spurred to act when he saw a Jewish woman crying after seeing the swastika and racist remarks.

Housing authority officials and Mayor Robert Menendez said they did not wish to pursue the case.

The Record (Bergen County) carried a disturbing story on the same day. It covered the lengths to which Menendez and company had apparently gone to smear a down-at-heals everyman. It was titled: “A slur by any other name”.

Jack Stahl was bouncing between the living room and kitchen of his Union City apartment slurping coffee and slapping a rolled-up paper into his palm. It was 9:05 a.m., and his day was already a bust.

The only man in America ever arrested for trying to paint over pro-Nazi and obscene graffiti wasn’t going on trial after all. Jack Stahl wasn’t declaring victory either.

“Can you believe it? They dismissed the charges,” he said, eyes widening. “They couldn’t even face me man-to-man. They folded their tent. Not me, though. ”

Jack Stahl may be out of jail, but he isn’t free.

“I feel terrible,” he said, slumping finally against the kitchen door. “I’ve gone through hell for the past five months.”

Last December, angered at what he felt were increasing amounts of graffiti in his city-owned apartment building on Kennedy Boulevard, Stahl, a 59-year-old unemployed truck dispatcher who never married and who lived with his mother until her death two years ago, took up a paint roller.

After giving his second bedroom a coat of baby-blue latex, he walked across the hall and did the same to the elevator door.

In the bedroom, he painted a wall. On the elevator, Stahl claims, he painted over a swastika. He did this, he said, after he saw an elderly Jewish woman in the elevator sobbing when she saw the symbol of Nazism.

But rather than erecting a statue or giving him a citation, Union City cited Stahl for criminal mischief and mounted a campaign to discredit him.

Stahl had no right to take matters into his own hands, Union City officials said. What’s more, Stahl was lying about the swastika and the tearful woman.

Then, there were whispers. Stahl was a nut case, a troublemaker. And his sexual preferences well, maybe they were a little odd, too.

“How would you feel?” Stahl said. “I don’t have to tell you how I felt. You fill in the line.”

Meanwhile, Union City officials let the rumors fly.

In fact, the city’s executive director of the Housing Authority, Virgilio Cabello, said he was told by Housing Authority employees that Stahl wasn’t painting over a swastika but references to his sexual preferences.

Cabello went on to say that Stahl’s sexual preferences “had nothing to do” with the city’s case against him. “Personally, that makes no difference to me,” Cabello said.

Nice of him to say that, wasn’t it? Notice how Cabello washed his hands, but still allowed the rumor to lay there. Notice how he conveniently missed the point that it’s wrong to even raise the issue of anybody’s sexual preference. And it’s worse for a public official to do it. But this was the same man who said Stahl should be prosecuted to forestall “anarchy.”

On Wednesday, Cabello and other city officials were supposed to back up their assertions in court, maybe even answer a few questions from Stahl’s attorney who took the case for free.

But after spending the last month calling in an art restorer to peel the paint off the elevator door and consulting with its lawyer and a blue-ribbon panel, the city did what it should have done long ago: It dropped its charges against Stahl.

Of course, Union City never admitted its stupidity. It said it had come to the conclusion that “no physical evidence” of the swastika or ethnic slurs existed. Thus, there was no reason to charge Jack Stahl.

And what if the slurs had existed? Would Stahl have been prosecuted? No one knew.

Union City’s officials took all of four minutes in Municipal Court to get the charges dropped. But the city never cleared Jack Stahl’s name.

It may take years before Jack Stahl can do that.

Ah… the prim self-righteous stink of the authoritarian who knows best. What lengths they will go to so that we might benefit from their “discipline”. The one percent of the one percenters because, not only do they get to live fat, they exercise the power to tell the rest of us how to live too.

Jack Stahl died in 1996. One of the men who persecuted him, Bob Menendez, was elected to Congress by then and went on to be appointed to the United States Senate by Jon Corzine.

The other man who persecuted him, Virgilio Cabello, has remained a loyal follower of Bob Menendez, contributing $10,800 to his federal campaigns – most recently, a thousand dollar contribution to Menendez for Senate on May 25, 2012.

Do you remember Team Menendez’ quote – they had to go after Jack Stahl “because he broke the law”? Well, Virgilio Cabello ran into his own problems. On March 21, 2000, the Jersey Journal reported: “Union City official runs afoul of Union City permit process.”

UNION CITY – The director of the city’s Housing Authority was slapped with a stop-work order on the renovation of his Harrison Place home after neighbors reported him for doing work without a permit, officials said.

UCHA Executive Director Virgilio Cabello says he’s been making repairs on the four-family home off 45th Street for more than one year and has yet to move in. He said he’s obtained all the proper permits from the city all along, but decided to have the sidewalk and driveway repaired two weeks ago.

Construction workers were scheduled to begin the work on March 9, but showed up a week early and began the work, he said. But before Cabello got the required permits for the driveway and sidewalk repairs, his next-door neighbors snitched on him to the Buildings Department…”

Not really the stuff of newspaper articles – almost as minor as painting over graffiti. But then there is this recent report from the Jersey Journal (May 19, 2012):

UNION CITY – The city’s Housing Authority asked its attorney at a special meeting yesterday afternoon to speak with other counsel to determine whether or not it will need outside legal representation to handle an ongoing FBI probe.

The Union City Housing Authority board spent much of the meeting in a closed-door session, citing “litigation,” said its attorney, Libero Marotta.

Once back in public session, the board passed a resolution allowing Marotta to speak to outside counsel. Marotta said the move will not cost the board any money.

Housing Authority Executive Director Virgilio Cabello again reiterated prior to the meeting that federal agents have stated that their investigation does not directly involve the Housing Authority.

Cabello said something similar on May 4 when he first revealed to The Jersey Journal that a subpoena had been issued by the FBI on April 27.

Cabello would not provide any details about what the federal agents were investigating.

After yesterday’s meeting, Cabello confirmed to The Jersey Journal that the FBI had been back to the Housing Authority on Tuesday to retrieve subpoenaed documents.

The next Housing Authority meeting takes place May 31, with a time to be announced.

Cary Rubenstein, the special agent in charge of the Housing and Urban Development Office of the Inspector General, said he could not confirm or deny any ongoing investigations.

A spokesman for the city earlier in the month initially denied that the FBI had issued a subpoena to the Housing Authority.

Do you think he believes in karma? Do you think he and Bob Menendez regret breaking a little guy’s balls because he wanted to clean-up the place where circumstance had left him, and painted over some graffiti?

Do tell Senator? Do you regret what you did? Is this how you represent all New Jersey Citizens while you are in Washington?

Rob Eichmann is the elected Gloucester County Committeeman to the Republican State Committee. He has been active in conservative politics for more than 20 years and is widely recognized as the most conservative member of the New Jersey Republican State Committee. You can now follow Rob Eichmann on Twitter… Follow @RobEichmannNJ

Posted: October 6th, 2012 | Author: admin | Filed under: 2012 U.S. Senate Race, Bob Menendez | Tags: 1, Anti-Semitic, Bob Menendez, Carol Ann Campbell, ConservativeNewJersey.com, Jack Stahl, Libero Marotta, Mitt Romney, New Jersey Senate Race, One Percent, One Percenter, Rob Eichmann, Rubashov, Union City, Union City Housing Authority | 2 Comments »

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