Monmouth GOP Chairman John O. Bennett III is to be applauded for his endeavors to keep his campaign promises. In particular, his efforts to codify bylaws, a nagging issue that has stymied several previous chairmen, are worthy of praise.
A windbag is someone who talks too much yet contributes little of value. Someone who complains yet offers no solutions. At MMM we’re not windbags.
We have no intention of telling Bennett how to run the party or select candidates. He should do what he thinks is best in how he structures the party and selects candidates. If he does well, we’ll praise him. If he screws up, we’ll be all over him with glee. Not because we want him to fail, but because the web traffic will go through the roof. This is a business after all.
It is in the spirit of not being a windbag and in driving traffic to this site, that we offer a solution to the bylaws problem that will let Chairman Bennett run the party and select candidates how he sees fit. More importantly, our solution will not hamstring future chairs with unintended consequences of the bylaws as proposed.
-Spicy Cantina & Mexican Grill Fined $15,000 and Will Ban ‘Deena’ for Two Years –
TRENTON – The Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control today announced a settlement with the owners of Spicy Cantina & Mexican Grill in Seaside Heights in connection with a June 10 incident involving the television show “The Jersey Shore” and cast member Deena Cortese, who was served alcohol at the establishment while visibly intoxicated.
As part of the settlement, Spicy will be fined $15,000 and Cortese, a New Egypt native, will be banned from the restaurant for two years as part of a special condition on the alcohol license, owned by AFW 500 LLC. Also, Spicy faces a 10-day suspension of their license should they violate the ABC’s laws in the next two years.
“This settlement is a cautionary tale for licensees who might think ignoring the law for the sake of airtime is good for business,” said Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control Director Michael Halfacre. “By turning a blind eye to the mayhem that can be associated with reality television, you are risking your livelihood. That is, without a doubt, bad for business.”
Monmouth GOP Chairman John O. Bennett has announced that a convention of the County Committee will be held on Saturday September 29 at Colts Neck High School for the purpose of adopting party by laws and to”rally for our candidates.” Previously, a new State Committeeman was to be elected at the convention to replace Bennett, but he has decided not to resign from that office.
Bennett has distributed his proposed by-laws for the county party to members of the county committee. A copy can be found here.
To Bennett’s credit, this “final draft” has been adjusted substantially to address the reactions that incumbent office holders had to his original proposed rules for nominating candidates that he unveiled last week at meetings with county elected officials and legislators, the as yet unofficial board of directors and the municipal chairs.
The original proposal for candidate selection would have given no consideration to incumbents. Anyone who submitted a letter of intent and appeared before a steering committee could have challenged an incumbent at nominating convention. This proposal, combined with the chairman’s instructions, not in the by-laws, that incumbents restrict and adjust their fundraising activities, left most county elected officers and some legislators feeling angry and vulnerable. This “final draft” has addressed the incumbents concerns, to a degree. Good thing too. Bennett was in danger of being as relevant to incumbent office holders as Chairman Bill Dowd was to Bennett when he was a senator. Not very.
While most of the media is justifiably covering the events in Libya and Egypt today, I thought I’d bring some attention to a foreign policy issue in the Middle East that has been going on for two years involving our junior New Jersey U.S. Senator Bob Menendez that has escaped the attention of the New Jersey media.
It came to our attention today, via the president of Azerbaijan, that Menendez has been similarly abusing his senatorial courtesy power in the domain of foreign affairs.
Yesterday, President Ilhan Aliyev said that Menendez is racist and that he is cooperating with a political adversary of Aliyev’s on behalf of the Armenian lobby in his country.
His compatriot Breivik killed about 80 people and he was sentenced to 21 year imprisonment. And it means that he got 3 month of imprisonment for each people.Is that possible? Why does he keep silence about this? Or there is one pro-Armenian Senator Menendez and he is against Azerbaijan and Islam. His last work was that he was not allowed to extend the term of the former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan and to prevent his nomination for two reasons. The first reason is that the US ambassador does not recognize the so-called “Armenian genocide”. And he should not recognize as the U.S. government does not recognize this “genocide”.
The second reason is that the ambassador’s wife is of Turkish origin. It is racism. However, I want to stress that no one can affect my will, opinion, action, and have never affected.’
The ambassador that Aliyev is talking about is Matthew Bryza.
President Obama nominated the career diplomat Bryza to be the ambassador to Azerbaijan, an oil rich former Soviet state which is a rare constitutional secular republic with a predominantly Muslim population, in 2010. Menendez and California Senator Barbara Boxer put a hold on the nomination because, The Washington Post Editorial Page Editor says, of the senators ties to (and donations from) the Armenian community.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are long term geopolitical and cultural rivals.
Obama made Bryza a recess appointment. Menendez continued to oppose his nomination and Bryza’s diplomatic career came to an end this past January. Because Bob Menendez and Barbara Boxer get political donations and support from Armenians, a talented ambassador to an important Middle Eastern country was sent home.
MMM knows little about the Azerbaijan/Armenia conflict. We highly doubt it will be an issue in the campaign between Menendez and GOP nominee State Senator Joe Kyrillos, as Kyrillos has exceptionally close ties to the Armenian community. Joe’s wife Susan is of Armenian descent. The conflicts between the two countries and cultures is not the point.
The point is that Menendez has a pattern of abusing his power for his own personal and political interests, to the detriment of our national interests.
New Jersey’s mainstream media has not covered the Menendez/Bryza disgrace. Yesterday the President of Azerbaijan gave them a reason to cover it. When the head of state of a foreign country calls a U.S. Senator a racist, that should be news. MMM is happy to point the story out to our mainstream media friends, just in case they missed it with all the other pressing foreign affairs news.
“Please file an amendment to your report to accurately disclose your financial activities.”
The Federal Election Commission wrote Anna Little’s congressional campaign three times during the month of August to demand that her campaign finance reports comply with federal law.
The letters were addressed to Little’s opposite sex husband, Robert Lee Little III, the campaign’s fourth treasurer this year.
On August 24th FEC analyst Carolina Cavana wrote the male Little informing him that the campaign’s April 2012 quarterly report failed to adequately disclose the identity of donors who contributed $200 or more to the campaign. The campaign must disclose the missing information or prove that it made a good faith effort to obtain the information. The answer is due by September 28th and there will be no further notice given, unless Rob reads MMM.
Another FEC analyst, Brian Jones, wrote to Little III, who is Treasurer IV, on August 27 to inform him that the 12 day pre-primary report, filed on June 27 three weeks after the primary, is also missing the donor information that April report was missing. The answer to that letter is due on October 1.
Jones wrote again on August 28 detailing 4 problems with the July 2012 quarterly report including contributions accepted for the primary campaign, post primary, beginning balances that did not match ending balances for the April report, and a ending cash balance of negative $11,321.08 in the July report.
Your report discloses a negative ending cash balance of $11,321.08. This suggests that you have overdrawn your account, made a mathematical error, or incurred a debt. If your committee has incurred a debt or obligation, please itemize this debt on Schedule D, show a zero balance on Line 8 of the Summary Page and include the amount on Line 10. If the negative ending cash balance is a result of an overdraft, it may constitute a prohibited bank contribution unless it is made on an account that has automatic overdraft protection with usual and customary interest rates and a definite repayment schedule. Please file an amendment to your report to accurately disclose your financial activities.
The answer to the August 28 letter is due on October 2.
MMM readers are invited to submit their 9-11 memories in the comments of this post. If you would like your story published on the front page, start you comment with “Art, put this on the front page.”
MY 9/11 memory, by Charles Measley
It was a morning very similar to this as I sat in my six grade English class at
Holy Trinity School in Long Branch. When a teacher from across the hall came in
and instructed us to turn on the news, that there was some sort of accident in
New York City.
As we turned on CNN we saw a gaping hole on the side of a skyscraper as the
reporters struggled to understand how a pilot could make such a horrific mistake on a clear day like this. As we sat there and watch without warning we saw an airplane coming from behind and slamming into the next tower with a horrific fireball. At that moment the attitude of everyone change , the reporters said with certainty that this was no accident, but intentional.
Shortly after that my father came and picked me up early, he drove me down to the beach in West, a section of Long Branch. As we stood there on the sandy
beach with the crystal clear sky in front of us we could see the smoke billowing
from the city. In the back of my mind I was wondering if my mother, who worked in the city was okay.
We went back home and put on the news and watch as one tower fell, and then
another, and then a plane crashing into the Pentagon and then another plane
smashing into a field in Pennsylvania. Luckily that day my mother never made it in, she left late and got stuck in traffic on the parkway by Perth Amboy.
The weather was wonderful on Sunday, much as it was on September 11, 2001.
As I gazed over to New York and noticed the Freedom Tower in the distance, I turned to my friend and said, “it is just not the same.”
Life will never be the same for those who lost husbands or wives, brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles, friends and lovers that day. Life will not be the same for those who fled lower Manhattan to physical safety but still bear the psychological and emotions scars.
Life will never be the same for the families of the first responders who perished that day, or have perished since or are still hanging on, due to poisonous air that guaranteed a slow death.
Life with never be the same for the young men and women who have served bravely in Afghanistan and Iraq, even if they came home unharmed physically. Life will never be the same for their families.
Life will never be the same for a nation that has traded freedom and privacy for security.
