Booker ♥ Red Light Cameras

 O’Scanlon gathers 4,000 signatures to stop Red Light Cameras  in only two weeks

The City of Newark is ripping off motorists with Red Light Cameras and Cory Booker loves the revenue.

Newark announced yesterday that the seven intersections in the city that have RLCs have seen a 64% decline in accidents since the cameras were installed four years ago, according the a report in The Star Ledger.

But Newark did not disclose the number of accidents at the intersection before or after the installations of the RLCs, which could make the percentages meaningless.  A Newark spokesman declined to elaborate.  Additionally, Newark has 19 intersections with RLC’s.  Their news release touted the results of only 7 intersections.

Booker said,

“Since their installation four years ago, our city’s red light cameras have been an effective mechanism in significantly reducing auto accidents at busy intersections,” Booker, a candidate for U.S. Senate in next month’s special election, said in a statement. “The investment in this technology has made our residents safer and served as a strong deterrent for people who may otherwise consider breaking traffic laws.”

Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), the state’s leading advocate against the Red Light Rip-offs  called Newark’s press release disingenuous.

Upon learning of their city’s bogus report hailing the success of RLCs, a group of residents gathered under a light, looked in the camera and started chanting, “We don’t want you here, We don’t want you here!”

Just kidding. Those guys were really heckling GOP nominee for U.S. Senate Steve Lonegan yesterday outside of Booker’s former abandoned property.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Booker’s Hecklers Disrupt Lonegan’s Newark Press Conference

Lonegan and his Newark supporters allege Booker paid hecklers

GOP nominee for U.S. Senate Steve Lonegan went to Newark yesterday afternoon to underscore Democratic nominee Cory Booker’s hypocrisy and failure.

A group of perhaps a dozen Booker supporters made sure Lonegan wasn’t heard by the press, no matter how hard the reporters present struggled to hear what the former Bogota mayor had to say.

Lonegan called a press conference at 130 Court Street in Newark, a home that Booker bought for $175,000 in November of 2009 and left in a state of disrepair until he sold it to Newark Now, a non-profit Booker founded, in March of this year for $1.00  The Record reported last weekend that the home has been a neighborhood nuisance since Booker bought it.   The New York Post reported yesterday that squatters living in the home caused a fire last year.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Legal Clinic For Sandy Survivors on Thursday Afternoon

The Monmouth County Superstorm Sandy Fraud Task Force and Volunteer Lawyers for Justice will be holding a legal clinic to assist Sandy survivors on Thursday afternoon, September 19, from 2pm -4:30pm at the Bayshore Activity Center, 719 Port Monmouth Ave, Port Monmouth, according to Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni.

Representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office, the Monmouth County Department of Consumer Affairs,  FBI, IRS, New Jersey Division of Taxation, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies will be on hand to provide information and assistance to anyone in need.

Attorneys from the Disaster Legal Response Program launched by Volunteer Lawyers for Justice will also be available to consult with people and provide free legal advice. Those requiring further assistance may be referred to volunteer outside counsel (financial eligibility requirements apply).

The hotline for the Monmouth County Superstorm Sandy Fraud Task Force is (855) SANDY-39. Volunteer Lawyers for Justice may be reached at (855) 301-2525.

• Tweet

How is Cory Booker Different From Chris Christie?

In addition to their diets:

1) Chris Christie put criminals in prison. Cory Booker put criminals up in his house.

2) Chris Christie embraced Obama, but campaigned against him.  Cory Booker was nauseated by Obama, but campaigned for him.

3) Chris Christie did not apologize for embracing Obama.  Cory Booker apologized for being nauseated by Obama.

4) Chris Christie has 400,262 twitter followers.  Cory Booker has 1,417,546 twitter followers.

5) Chris Christie is a Thunder Roads scholar.  Cory Booker is a Rhodes scholar.

6) Chris Christie frolicked on the beach with his family.  Cory Booker danced with Dr. Oz.

7) The Boss is Chris Christie’s friend. Cory Booker has an imaginary friend.

Add to the list in the comments…

• Tweet

Seaside Fire Aid Will Only Cover Cost Not Picked Up By Insurance, SBA

The Christie Administration announced this morning that government aid to assist businesses in recovering from the Seaside Boardwalk fire will only cover costs not reimbursed by insurance proceeds or by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Governor Christie announced over the weekend that the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) will make $15 million in Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery monies available to affected businesses in the form of $50,000 grants and loans free of interest and principle payments for two years.

In announcement that the EDA will be providing CDBG-DR funding for debris removal assistance, the administration said, “the State will conduct an analysis of duplication of benefits and ensure that the CDBG-DR funds are used only to cover costs not already paid by other sources, such as insurance or SBA.  For the demolition of private structures, the state and/or municipality will place a lien on the property to enable recapture of any duplicative insurance proceeds, should they be paid later.”

• Tweet

Booker Insists T-Bone Is Real, Says He Put Drug Dealers Up In His House While Mayor

In an interview with NJTV’s On The Record with Michael Aron aired yesterday, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, insisted that T-Bone is a real person and not a composite or archetype as has been previously reported.

The mayor said the Newark police told him there are currently five people in the city using the alias “T-Bone.”  He went on to say that he, as an attorney prior to entering public office, “and after I became mayor”  would hold meetings with drug dealers, “100’s of guys involved in the narcotics trade,” in his house, ” even putting them up with me.”

The Booker interview can be viewed here.  Aron starts the T-Bone questioning at the 9:15 mark.  Booker talks about his meetings and his hospitality for drug dealers, while mayor, at the 11:29 mark.

Booker said he was dealing with non-violent drug dealers.  Aron did not ask him how he knew they were non-violent drug dealers.

When MMM first reported the T-Bone controversy, we asked, Did Booker Fabricate A Drug Dealer Or Did He Harbor A Fugitive?  Last week, I argued that Booker’s “story telling” to make a point or to inspire action was not a big deal and was politically insignificant.

However, if Booker is telling the truth in his stories, as he insists he is, it is a big deal.  It seems to me that Booker is confessing to his own crimes of harboring fugitives and maybe even aiding and abetting.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

‘This was a killer’: Seaside looks to regroup after boardwalk fire; Christie touts Jersey grit

‘This was a killer’: Seaside looks to regroup after boardwalk fire; Christie touts Jersey grit (via NJ.com)

By James Queally and Mark Mueller/ The Star-Ledger Daylight revealed the panorama of devastation. Along a four-block stretch of boardwalk in one of New Jersey’s most popular summer playgrounds, almost nothing remained intact. The fire that roared…

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

A Second Highlands House Collapses

49 Second Street, Highlands. Click for larger view.

For the second time in less than a month, a home being lifted above the floodplain has collapsed in the borough of Highlands.

At 9:43 this evening the Highlands Police Department received a call that the house at 49 Second Street had collapsed.

The Highlands Fire Department  and eight volunteer members of the Highlands First Aid Squad are on the scene.  There were no injuries reported.  Gas and electric utilities were shut off.  The utility companies have not been notified and neighboring homes have not been evacuated.

The home had already been lifted.  A resident on the scene told MMM that the cause of the collapse is believed to be wind.

On August 23, a house being lifted onto its temporary cribbing collapsed in the borough.  The contractor on the scene of the August

49 Second St, Highlands on July 26. Photo courtesy of Kerry McEntee Gowan via facebook

23rd incident said it was an accident.

There was no contractor on the scene in Highlands tonight.  A lawn sign for Jerome Homes House Lifting was on the Second Street property.

• Tweet

Christie on the boardwalk in Seaside

• Tweet

The moral of Cory Booker’s Wazn Miller story

“It’s easier to build a healthy child than to fix a broken man”
photo via facebook

Cory Booker tells the tale of Wazn Miller’s murder as a set up to an important insight the mayor says his father shared with him in the aftermath of the incident—that the elder Booker, born in 1936 to a Black single mother, in poverty in a segregated community, had a better future than Black men born in 1996 (or 2006 depending on where and when the younger Booker told the story) have before them.

The news out of Newark of 10 murders in 10 days is a testament to the truth of that insight.  The recent news of violence in Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit further attests to the fact that young Black men today are more likely to end up dead or in jail than they are to become IBM executives residing in Harrington Park  and, if they know their sons, witness them graduate from the most prestigious universities in the world, become mayor of a major U.S. city or serve in the United States Senate.

Cory Booker heard that insight from his father in 2004, before he became mayor.

Yet the well intentioned policies that Booker pursued in leading the city have failed.  They failed in Newark, as they have failed in Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit.  Young Black men are more likely to end up dead or in jail today than they were when Booker, and his father, were growing up.  The progress in racial equality that Booker’s father’s generation fought for, and Booker’s generation reaped the benefits of, has been replaced by a not so great society of despair.

As Booker says in his speeches, we’ve made a great deal of progress towards racial equality, that his father’s generation fought for, yet we’ve got so much further to go.  To the young Black men, and their families, in Newark, Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit, there is no where to go but failing schools, gangs, guns, death or jail.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet