Life in Violin's New Jersey

“By Steve Strunsky
Associated Press

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - The little black bag seized in a raid on a cockfighting "ranch" contained the tools of the cruel trade: syringes for injecting steroids into already ornery roosters, tiny boxing gloves worn by the birds during training matches, and sharp plastic claws that replace the birds' less-lethal talons when blood and money are on the line.

Animal-welfare officials say a September raid in Monmouth County was among a growing number of arrests and animal seizures linked to blood sports, mainly cockfighting and, to a lesser extent, dogfighting.
[...]

"We're seeing an increased popularity of these sports," said Chief Carl Galioto of the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a largely volunteer organization that has law enforcement authority in animal-cruelty cases.
[...]

"Dogfighting was very popular among our forefathers," Galioto said.
[...]

"What we do know is it's making the news more," he said. "Law enforcement and legislative entities are better aware now than in the past of the grim implications of all forms of cruelty to animals. With blood sports, certainly you find guns, narcotics operations, gambling and, most horrifically, children. Many spectators deem it appropriate to bring their young children along, and the link between cruelty to animals and interpersonal violence is well-recognized."
[...]

...disabled fighting roosters are tossed into a barrel with other losing birds, bleeding but alive, to die slowly in a writhing, feathered heap...”

“LOL:

The mob cleaned up; Big profits from illegal dumping; now we're paying
Wednesday, October 5, 2005

By ALEX NUSSBAUM and TOM TRONCONE
STAFF WRITERS

Special report: Toxic Legacy


Robert Constant got the message through a neighbor: If he didn't stop complaining about the toxic waste being buried at a nearby landfill, he would "end up walking on the bottom of the Hudson."

Constant wasn't the only one in the small community above Greenwood Lake who felt threatened. One family found their vehicles sabotaged.

The residents had spoken up about a parade of trucks carrying industrial chemicals, medical waste, and castoffs from Ford's Mahwah plant to a private landfill tucked into the woods. In doing so, they dared to take on dumpers with mob connections.

Mafia haulers and other corner-cutting garbagemen had a chokehold on industrial waste in New Jersey and New York a generation ago. Haulers carried off toxic trash from Ford and other factories and dumped it anywhere they could.

Today, their legacy seeps through Superfund sites in New Jersey and New York, costing taxpayers and corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in hazardous-waste cleanups. And those are just the sites authorities have discovered.

"The Meadowlands is a burial ground, the Pine Barrens of New Jersey is a burial ground, all of the waterways," said John Fine, a former assistant attorney general in New York who prosecuted dumping cases. "People will be poisoned forever because these kinds of materials - some of the most deadly materials known to man - they will be there forever."

The Ford plant represented the biggest hauling contract in the state - with thousands of tons of paint sludge alone. And with 15,000 other New Jersey businesses generating industrial waste in the 1970s, plenty of opportunity existed for haulers. Especially those who didn't care where they dumped.

It was easy for haulers to make toxic waste disappear: They flushed it down sewers, buried it with regular garbage, poured it in creeks, abandoned it in vacant lots or just opened the valve on a tanker truck rolling down the highway.

An investigation by The Record found haulers dumped Ford's waste far and wide. They left it along the banks of the Hudson in Edgewater. They dumped it behind what is now a college in Wanaque. They buried it in landfills that were supposed to take only household garbage. Truck drivers told of being ordered to dump paint, solvents and other industrial junk alongside streams.

Those who tracked polluters in the freewheeling 1970s still worry about the mercury, lead, PCBs, dioxins and other substances dumped illegally across the region.

"These chemical contaminants are leaching out of these landfills, leaching out of illegal dumps, and it eventually gets into the environment," said Maurice Hinchey, a New York congressman who led a probe of toxic dumping in the 1980s. "We know where most of the worst materials are, but there are places off the back roads that have not really been dealt with."

New Jersey is home to 134 federal Superfund cleanup sites and has nearly 16,000 contaminated sites on its own list. But officials acknowledge that there are sites they have not yet discovered.

"Waste haulers took things to a lot of dumpsites and didn't keep records," said Bradley Campbell, New Jersey's commissioner of environmental protection. "Our operating assumption is that there are still additional sites that have not been identified."

Nobody is hunting for these sites. State and federal officials say they lack the staff to seek out the waste that still lies secretly buried, perhaps leaching into waterways or wells or lingering near homes or woods.

"I'm pleased to be able just to cover what we have now," said Bill McCabe, acting Superfund director in the Environmental Protection Agency's New York office.

New Jersey's industries produced a staggering amount of pollution a generation ago, before better production methods and a decline in manufacturing reduced waste. In 1977 alone, according to congressional testimony, New Jersey generated 1.5 billion gallons of liquid toxic waste and chemical sludges - enough to fill Giants Stadium nearly three times.

The toxic waste vanished quickly. In one notorious scheme during the oil shortage in the early 1970s, haulers mixed waste oil with industrial chemicals and sold it as fuel to schools, hospitals and apartment buildings in the New York region, Hinchey's investigation found.

Dirk Ottens, a retired New Jersey State Police detective, staked out some of the worst offenders in the 1970s and witnessed the toxic sleight-of-hand many times. Some raised it almost to an art form: They lined the containers of their trucks with sawdust to absorb the chemicals, poured in hazardous waste and clamped sheets of plywood over the loads to keep them from spilling. Often, they added a final layer of municipal trash on top so they could haul it unnoticed into a municipal landfill.

In 1976, Congress passed tougher laws regulating where the hazardous waste went and requiring paperwork to track it. But the changes largely served to make the business even more profitable for shifty garbage companies. Almost overnight, haulers quadrupled the price to take away what was now considered "toxic waste." Some charged $100 to cart off a drum they would end up tossing in the woods.

Not everyone who hauled toxic waste was a mobster, but it was hard not to play by the mob's rules.

"It is exactly this type of lucrative business that attracts organized crime elements," a congressional panel investigating the waste business was told in a 1980 hearing.

In New York, Fine, the assistant attorney general, overheard two gangsters discussing the business on a wiretap. "These racket guys were bragging: 'We're making more money on this toxic waste than we're making on heroin.'Ÿ"

For mobsters, toxic waste was a growth industry in the 1970s, when the new laws were being imposed. They had exerted control over the garbage business for decades. The Mafia controlled many haulers and demanded tribute from others. They used intimidation to enforce an illegal property-rights system to divvy up customers - whoever hauled at a particular address owned that location forever, free from competition. Move in on another man's territory and you risked getting your trucks blown up, your legs broken or a bullet in your head.

They had the trucks and the muscle and were already entrenched with many of the customers. Moving into the toxic waste business was a natural progression.

The hazardous waste industry "reeks of organized crime," John J. Degnan, then the attorney general of New Jersey, told Congress in 1980.

It is unclear what Ford knew about those who were hauling its hazardous waste. The company declined to answer questions about its contractors, mentioning "limited historical records."

By the mid-1960s, the Mafia was fighting for a share of the garbage moving out of the Mahwah factory. A Genovese family gangster named Joseph "Joey Surprise" Feola vanished in 1965, reportedly after swiping the Mahwah job from the Gambino crime syndicate. In the final years before the plant closed in 1980, the factory's waste was most often in the control of people who were playing by the mob's rules, The Record found.

"A great deal of the material illegally dumped in northern New Jersey, in Orange, Rockland and to some extent Sullivan counties, was from [Ford's plant in] Mahwah," said Hinchey, the congressman, who lives in Hurley, N.Y. "And what you have to some extent now is that material sitting in the ground, infiltrating our watercourses."

As haulers dumped hazardous waste indiscriminately across the region in the 1970s, some lawmakers made it clear privately that their priority was keeping big industries and jobs in their communities - even if that meant overlooking some toxic hot spots, said Jeremiah McKenna, the lead investigator for the New York State Senate Select Committee on Crime when it probed the mob's hazardous-waste ventures in the 1980s.

"I don't think people fully understood the dangers of this, or the amount of bribes that were going down," McKenna said recently. "They just didn't want to shut down those industries. They sacrificed children to economics."

To be sure, the blame for New Jersey's pollution problems doesn't rest solely on organized crime and the government's inability to stop it. Industries also dumped on their own - in some cases before the dangers of their discards became clear, in others, afterward. Berry's Creek in Carlstadt, for example, was for decades an open sewer for chemical companies in the Meadowlands. Today, it's one of the most polluted streams in New Jersey, loaded with PCBs and the highest freshwater concentrations of mercury on the planet.

Ford's old property and dumping ground in Ringwood is another example. Millions of gallons of Ford's paint sludge was dumped there in the late 1960s, even though the land is in one of the state's most precious watersheds. State officials acknowledged this summer that residents who live near the site suffer elevated rates of some cancers.

Companies that wanted to properly dispose of toxic waste discovered licensed disposal sites were in short supply - and not always trustworthy.

In Edison, the Department of Environmental Protection allowed the Kin-Buc landfill to accept industrial chemicals starting in 1971. The dumpsite ended up leaching an inky toxic soup into the Raritan River. And in 1980, a roaring inferno at Chemical Control Corp. in Elizabeth consumed tens of thousands of drums of chemicals, explosives and medical wastes piled there illegally.

Kingpins of trash

Front and center among Ford's unscrupulous contractors was a Monroe, N.Y., family led by Joseph Mongelli, a trash hauler who entered the business in the 1960s with two used garbage trucks and no credit, according to federal prosecutors. In 1971, the Mongellis partnered with Louisville, Ky.-based Industrial Services of America and landed the Mahwah contract.

ISA founder Harry Kletter said that his firm worked with the Mongellis on the contract only until 1973 and that during that time Ford's waste was disposed of properly. The Mongellis and others hauled Ford waste until the plant closed in 1980.

The Mongellis put Mario "The Shadow" Gigante on the payroll of their company, ISA in New Jersey Inc. Gigante controlled garbage collection in lower New York State for decades, according to federal prosecutors. His brother, Vincent "Chin" Gigante, later became boss of the Genovese crime family.

The Mongellis ordered Ford waste buried illegally in more than a dozen places in the area, according to retired ISA driver Charles Oetzel and another driver who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. Oetzel said one of the sites to which he trucked sludge was the old Wanaque municipal dump, now a satellite campus of Passaic County Community College.

The Mongellis' favorite burial ground was the landfill just above Greenwood Lake, a private dump tucked into mountains in Warwick, N.Y. Grace Disposal, another Mongelli company, leased the property starting in 1977.

Trucks made their way there in a steady flow. They carried blood, organs and other hospital waste; battery acids; industrial chemicals and paint sludge, according to a 1986 report by New York State's Assembly Environment Committee. Eyewitnesses told of material that "popped and glowed" in the night.

One nearby family, the Penalunas, spied on the dump for months and later turned their notes over to investigators. In an account from the spring of 1979, the Penalunas described the witches' brew that arrived by night:

"Household rubbish, mixed with thick black liquid," read the report, provided to the Assembly committee. "Black liquid burns skin on contact, has strong smell. ... Also a bag containing rubber gloves, masks ... and a piece of paper stating materials in bag are radioactive-contaminated. About a half-hour later, a load from Ford plant."

Mongelli workers piled up drums stamped "Ford" behind the landfill office at night and later crushed them with a bulldozer, the Penalunas reported.

Robert Constant, who was a Midland Park High School teacher at the time, told The Record that he often followed trucks from the Mahwah plant all the way to the landfill near his home.

Residents discovered there was a price to pay for complaining: The Penalunas said someone slashed the brake lines on their truck and loosened the lug nuts on their car. Constant said he was warned several times to keep his mouth shut.

But instead of staying quiet, residents interviewed truck drivers and landfill workers and campaigned to close the dump. They were worried that the landfill was leaching contaminants into the water supply.

"We determined we would risk our lives because the alternative was to allow the lives of millions of people to be in danger," Constant said. "We knew who we were dealing with."

State health officials eventually declared the location a public health hazard. The dump was closed in 1980.

In a brief interview inside his expansive house in Monroe, Joseph Mongelli Jr. said his family had no connection to organized crime. He also defended his family's handling of Ford's waste. He said the Mongellis brought all paint sludge to the Bergen County landfill in Lyndhurst, where today the EnCap development is under construction. His statement contradicts the recollections of former drivers, as well as some of Ford's legal settlements.

"When you are talking to the drivers, you're talking to old men," Mongelli said. "They have to be confused."

His brothers, Louis and Robert, pleaded guilty in 1992 to racketeering and bribery in connection with the operations of their garbage empire. They were never charged with illegal dumping. Attempts to contact them were unsuccessful.

It was easy money

Other contractors who worked for Ford in the late 1970s were a Who's Who of problem haulers.

At the top of the list was the Duane Marine Salvage Corp., a Perth Amboy hazardous waste processor. The Mongellis hired the company to haul paint sludge out of Ford's Mahwah plant. Duane Marine also removed sludge from Ford's plant in Edison for Statewide Environmental Contractors Inc., a company owned by New York garbage magnate Charles Macaluso and his partner Frank Lotano.

Duane Marine's contract required that the sludge be incinerated, according to Ottens, who investigated the company.

There was just one problem: Duane Marine did not have an incinerator, Ottens said. Instead, the company stockpiled thousands of leaking drums on its waterfront property along the Arthur Kill. Ford's sludge was mixed with shale, a dusty byproduct from a Chevron refinery in Perth Amboy, and dumped in East Brunswick's Edgeboro landfill, according to testimony by Harold Kaufman, a mob associate-turned-government informer who was a Duane Marine executive at the time.

It was easy money: Duane Marine charged Ford up to $85 per cubic yard to remove the sludge, and paid just $3.75 a cubic yard to dump in Edgeboro, Kaufman said.

Three weeks after the Mahwah plant closed in 1980, a spectacular fire ripped through the waste company's Perth Amboy property, incinerating chemicals and evidence alike.

Duane Marine's owner, Eddie Lecarreaux, was later fined nearly $2 million for not cooperating with the Superfund cleanup of the site and pleaded guilty to violating the Water Pollution Control Act. Lecarreaux said he did so just to end the dispute with the state.

Ottens said he staked out the offices of another Mongelli subcontractor, S&W Waste Inc. of South Kearny, and saw chemical wastes secretly mixed into loads of household garbage - a common, illegal dumping practice known as "cocktailing."

"We took the paint sludge and mixed it with cement dust for solidification," said Robert Fixter, general manager of S&W Waste - now Clean Earth New Jersey - and the company's compliance officer in the late 1970s. "Then we took it to licensed disposal facilities in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Niagara Falls."

In 1984, an S&W shipment of sawdust mixed with paint residues from a chemical company exploded in an Akron, Ohio, trash incinerator, killing three at the plant. The hauler and five employees were charged with involuntary manslaughter. A judge dismissed the case, saying he saw no evidence of criminal recklessness in the explosion.

Another Ford contractor, All-County Environmental Service Corp. of Edgewater, was shut down after the state discovered 6,000 gallons of PCB-contaminated oil on its Hudson River property. The company was also fined for illegally hauling toxic waste in New York. All-County was a partnership between the Mongellis and brothers John and Frank Coppola.

John Coppola says the state allowed the facility to reopen within weeks because authorities found nothing improper at the site. He lays any blame for illegal dumping on the Mongellis, who he said took advantage of his youth.

"We only took paint sludge like maybe seven times, 10 times," he said. "It was our attempt at pumping and blending and disposing of it properly. Mongelli, he just dumped it.

"We had no idea who [Louis Mongelli] was, to tell you the truth," Coppola said. "We had no idea."

During his conversations with investigators, Kaufman vividly described how the Mongellis did business.

He told of a 1978 meeting that pitted Chin Gigante against Joseph Macaluso, whose son owned Statewide Environmental, the company that held a garbage contract at Ford's plant in Edison.

Kaufman said Gigante was seething over Macaluso's "theft" of a Ford garbage contract. Gigante brought the meeting to an abrupt climax, according to notes of the interview, which were obtained by The Record.

"Chin Gigante puts a gun to Joe Macaluso's head," Kaufman recounted. "He says, 'Are you going to give up Ford, no more fooling around?'

"Joe Macaluso says, 'Let me tell you something. If you shoot me or you hurt any of my sons, the war would never end.'Ÿ"

The way Kaufman told the story, Macaluso soon gave back the contract. But Lotano, as well as Charles Macaluso's brother-in-law, John McDonald, dispute much of what the career criminal told investigators. McDonald said the meeting contained no threats of violence. Lotano said Statewide was never told to give up the contract.

Charles Macaluso, who served as an honorary co-chairman of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, had close ties to the Genovese crime family, according to a congressional report on organized crime in the hazardous waste industry. But those who knew Macaluso instead describe the second-generation garbage hauler as a maverick in the tightly controlled industry - someone whom organized crime kept at arm's length.

Macaluso pleaded guilty in 1984 to bribing a Wanaque official to fix a garbage contract. He died in 2000. His father, Joseph, died in 1998.

'Everyone was in on it'

Crooked haulers sometimes got help from the very people who were supposed to police them.

In New York, state landfill inspector Sandra White pleaded guilty in 1988 to taking $10,000 in bribes to protect an illegal landfill in Tuxedo. The town's police chief and municipal judge also served time for taking bribes from Frank Sacco, the landfill's operator and an Upper Saddle River resident. Sacco, meanwhile, got 25 years to life in prison for killing the dump's manager.

Meanwhile, some police officers maintained that their attempts to enforce anti-dumping laws were not supported. Former Orange County Sheriff's Officer Armondo Bilancione said he issued more than 80 tickets in 1986 to haulers for violations. Almost all of those tickets vanished after he filed them, he said.

In Rockland County, a sheriff's lieutenant remembers seeing the "connected" trucks bypass the scales at landfills. Cigar-chewing men driving Lincoln Town Cars rolled in and acted with impunity.

"Everyone was in on it," said Stanley Greenberg, now retired. "People were getting paid all over the place."

In New Jersey, a former deputy attorney general who had once prosecuted toxic polluters was sentenced to nine months in prison after a company he co-founded was accused of pouring 13 million gallons of untreated chemicals into the sewers of Elizabeth. Authorities claimed George Gregory falsified reports about the company's dumping and paid an Elizabeth building inspector - a reputed soldier in the DeCavalcante crime family - to look the other way.

To this day, Ottens is uneasy about papers he said went missing at Ford's Mahwah plant. He claims he visited the factory in 1979 and found memos that detailed falsified manifests and fraud by some of Ford's haulers. When he returned with a subpoena for the records, however, key documents were missing. In their place, Ottens claimed, was a note that somebody in the state Attorney General's Office had warned Ford he was coming.

"The question always came to mind: Is this merely gross incompetence or is it by design?" Ottens told The Record.

Lasting damage

Illegal toxic dumping continues today.

Officials in Trenton say they increasingly find trailers filled with contaminated soil abandoned along streets and vacant lots in Paterson, Newark and other cities. The soil comes from the cleanup of polluted sites - some of them, no doubt, polluted by an earlier generation of illegal dumpers.

Still, today's problems aren't nearly as bad as those in the free-for-all years of the 1970s, authorities said. The public is more aware of the dangers of chemical waste and more likely to report trucks skulking in the night. Companies like Ford, stuck with enormous cleanup bills at illegal dumps, are more careful about whom they hire. The mob has largely been pushed out of the hauling business by national garbage giants such as Waste Management Inc., state officials say.

As for toxic waste abandoned 30 years ago, some of it will probably stay hidden forever.

Ford says it long ago told federal authorities about every disposal site it knew of. The automaker says it has cooperated whenever the government sought information, participating in "a substantial number of cleanups under the Superfund program," according to a written statement.

"Ford takes its environmental responsibilities seriously," said a Ford spokesman, Jon Holt.

The Mongellis' dump above Greenwood Lake is one of 15 sites in New York and New Jersey where the federal government declared Ford partially responsible for pollution or the company agreed to settlements for its share of cleanup costs. The Record also found evidence of Ford waste at six spots on state contamination lists, including landfills in Kearny and Lyndhurst.

Undoing the damage has been costly. In Greenwood Lake, the EPA put cleanup costs at $14 million. At Kin-Buc, where federal officials say some of Ford's waste ended up, the government expects to spend $100 million over the next 20 years to treat leaking chemicals.

McCabe, the EPA official, said companies like Ford bear no legal responsibility to track down every gallon of waste that rolled out of their factories. Moral responsibility, however, is a different question.

"That obviously is a totally ethical question," he said. "I can't answer that for anyone. But I would certainly want to know what my potential liabilities are. Personally, I'd rather go out and find them myself."

Ex-lawmen like Fine and Ottens have no doubt the dumping caused lasting damage. Ringwood's health problems are a sign, Ottens said; so are the cancers and skin disorders he saw in truck drivers who spirited industrial waste across New Jersey.

"We're reaping now what we were sowing back then," Ottens said. "You can't make those people healthy."

E-mail: nussbaum@northjersey.com and troncone@northjersey.com

Copyright © 2006 North Jersey Media Group Inc.”

“Violin did it...”

“DIRTY TRICKS' IN JERSEY?

From NBC's Ron Allen
In New Jersey's senatorial campaign, Republican candidate Tom Kean Jr.'s aides are charging that opponents "already have resorted to Election Day dirty tricks."

Last night, vandals chained shut the Kean campaign's headquarters in Mountainside, N.J., and broke keys off in the door locks to prevent entry, according to aides. "It's Jersey ... this is not surprising," Kean spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker told us. "It's the Menendez campaign, or their supporters," she added, but without offering evidence.

"It's just a lot of noise," was the response from campaign aides for Democratic incumbent Bob Menendez. They say they have "thousands" of lawyers at polling places across the site, especially where they expect problems - such as Essex and Hudson County, two big urban Democratic areas.

Menendez's folks are checking out a report of electronic voting problems in Essex County, where voting machines are reportedly defaulting to certain candidates rather than voters' choices. Whatever is happening there, they say that the problems don't appear to be widespread and that right now the voting process is "basically smooth."


http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2006/11/07/11670.aspx

********************************************

Dem dirty tricks in Jersey?
Oh my!!!!
Who'da thunk it?
New Jersey Democrats are never corrupt or sleazy, just look at our beloved violin.
[VBG]”

“TRENTON -- Three men seen urinating in front of a house on Federal Street got the surprise of their lives early Sunday morning -- an enraged homeowner ran out wielding a machete, then chased and shot at them, police reported.
[...]
The men had been walking home from the M&M Bar located at 400 Centre St., when nature called, and they allegedly stopped in front of a residence in the 400 block of Federal Street.

"They were confronted by a man who ran from his house carrying a machete, enraged (that) the three had been urinating in front of his house," Page reported.

The three men took off, and were chased by men in a van who cornered them near the intersection of Lamberton and Bridge streets.

"One man, later identified as Joseph Rivera, 19, of the 400 block of Federal Street, exited the van and fired a gun at the three (bar patrons)," Page reported.

"Martinez was struck once in the abdomen. His wound is not life threatening."

The three fleeing men finally flagged down a passing police patrol car in the 400 block of South Broad Street.
[...]

http://trentonian.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17461537&BRD=1697&PAG=461&dept_id=44551&rfi=6”

“I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED I say, at this violation of the Urinating Rights of these three poor men by NJ.
The ACLU needs to get on this ASAP!!!!

LOL”

“Someone needs to take a chill pill! I mean, someone pooped in your backpack, Violin, and you didn't go all apesh-t with a machete. LOL!”

“can I have my poop back, by the way?”

“I should think a person running out of their house waving a machete and yelling "Remember John Bobbit" would suffice to make a believer out of any drunk.”

“Wolnder if they crapped their pants? Finding a safe place to pee between the bars and ones home cam be difficult in a city.”

“I was caught by the police in Quebec and they just told us to "get your faces out of here".

Probably made more sense in French.”

“New Jersey would have to be the last state in the Union I would choose to live. This kind of thing would never happen in God's Country.”

“Maybe they wanted you to get your feces out of there.

Or they thought you guys were butt-faces, in which case it would make some sense.

"Get your asses(faces) out of here."
last edited: 11/21/06 11:58:54 AM”

““New Jersey would have to be the last state in the Union I would choose to live. This kind of thing would never happen in God's Country.”
Mutt
12:52:55 PM
11/21/06

You mean Japan, right?

The Emperor is a god, no?”

“This kind of thing would never happen in God's Country.”
Mutt
12:52:55 PM
11/21/06

Unless it was a bunch of homosexuals or illegals peeing on your lawn.....”

“Well that's different. Gawd said something about hating homos and illegals by definition are not protected by our laws.”

“People don't piss in "God's Country", they hold it for eternity.

"New Jersey would have to be the last state in the Union I would choose to live."
Mutt

So, what would be the second to last state, Mississippi??
(pee pee, aye!)”

“Hey did you know if you take dried up old poop and cook it in the microwave that it will smell like fresh poop again?”

“So, what would be the second to last state, Mississippi - MarkO

Nope, Maryland! HA HA!”

“Ha ha!

Hey, we here in Maryland have D.C. surrounded.......mostly.”

“God's Country: No Brains required.

Mo. Panel's Report Links Immigration To Abortion

By David A. Lieb
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 14, 2006; A09

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., Nov. 13 -- A Republican-led legislative panel says in a new report on illegal immigration that abortion is partly to blame because it is causing a shortage of American workers.

The report from the state House Special Committee on Immigration Reform also says that "liberal social welfare policies" have discouraged Americans from working and have encouraged immigrants to cross the border illegally.

The statements about abortion and welfare policies, along with a recommendation to abolish income taxes in favor of sales taxes, were inserted into the immigration report by Rep. Edgar G.H. Emery (R), the panel's chairman.

All 10 Republican committee members signed the report, while the six Democrats did not. Some of the Democrats called the abortion assertion ridiculous and embarrassing.




:D”

“Hey Bear!!”

“ Rep. Edgar G.H. Emery

I'm pretty sure he's from New Jersey originally.”

“Sorry mutt - There are very few municipalities in NJ where trailer homes are even permitted.”

“...So, what would be the second to last state, Mississippi??
(pee pee, aye!)”
MarkO
12:12:58 PM

MarkO's bigotry is on full display again.”

“A double wide ain't no trailer home!”

“Define "bigotry", redneck.”

“MarkO calling someone a redneck is so laughable.
[VBG]”

“what's up MarkO?”

“I'm bored at work.

You?”

“waiting to see why this dude broke into our neighbors rowhouse.”

“Mmmmm, city life!”

“Wait a minute, isn't PhantomSoul from Trenton? I wonder if he has peed on anyone's house lately.”

“

In an effort to handle its nighttime public urination problem, Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is considering installing urinals that disappear below street level during the day. Unlike the automated, self-cleaning toilets planned for Toronto and Vancouver, which are enclosed booths with doors that that automatically open after a set time period, the Urilift system is a two-meter high stainless steel cylinder with three alcoves, each with a urinal, and no doors.

By day, the Urilift is lowered below street level for a nice clean look. Then at night, an operator comes by with a remote and the Urilift hydraulically lifts to sidewalk level in about two minutes. Then the unit is ready to serve all the nighttime party animals who don’t mind peeing in a very exposed public urinal.

http://www.johnchow.com/the-worlds-most-high-tech-urinal/”

“Still gonna stink like sour pee.”

“We can rehash the famous jogger taking a dump in the lady's petunias if we want...good joke.”

“http://www.nj.com/newsflash/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-23/1168544946233200.xml&storylist=jersey

Veterans angry NJ may abolish memorial activities in schools
1/11/2007, 2:45 p.m. ET
By TOM HESTER Jr.
The Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — For World War II veteran Sam Stia, a legislative proposal that would cease requiring New Jersey schools to teach about Veterans Day and Memorial Day can be summed up in two words.

"That's wrong," Stia, 83, said Thursday from his Hamilton home, where he flies an American flag at half-staff to honor fallen soldiers. "We're just giving our flag away and our patriotism away."

Stia and other veterans are steamed about the proposal, which unanimously passed the Legislature last month and now awaits action by the governor. It was included as part of a larger measure designed to help control property taxes, mostly by abolishing some laws on school purchasing and public hearings.

Other holidays about which schools no longer would be required to teach include Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day and Commodore Barry Day, which commemorates Revolutionary War hero John Barry.

New Jersey schools must observe the holidays under a 1967 law designed to promote "the development of a higher spirit of patriotism." Florida, Nebraska and Washington are among the other states with similar laws.

Now, New Jersey American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars groups have asked Gov. Jon S. Corzine to veto the bill so schools still have to teach about Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

"It's not right. They're not going to know the sacrifices that were made so they can enjoy the protections that they have," said Hank Adams, New Jersey VFW adjutant and an Army and Coast Guard veteran.

The governor hasn't decided how to proceed. "We're reviewing that bill," Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said.

The law wouldn't ban schools from holding holiday commemorations, but Ray Zawacki, department adjutant for the American Legion of New Jersey, said requiring schools to honor the days guarantees children would learn about veterans.

"If it wasn't for veterans, we wouldn't have been able to maintain the freedoms the Constitution provided to us," said Zawacki, a Vietnam War Navy veteran.

Zawacki said schools frequently ask his and other veterans groups to send speakers into schools before the holidays.

But Sen. John Adler, a sponsor of the bill, cited a 2004 report by a state commission that recommended giving schools more flexibility to decide holiday observations. He questioned whether schools even bother to recognize the holidays.

"I don't believe that most schools fulfill the spirit of the law and the mandate," said Adler, D-Camden.

Adler said he understood and respected the veterans' concerns, but argued curriculum, not state mandates, should drive instruction.

"I don't think the state should be in the business of telling districts to do every single thing," Adler said.

New Jersey school officials support the bill.

"It's simply time and flexibility," said Mike Yaple, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. "There's nothing in the legislation that can undermine the amount of pride and honor a community feels toward their veterans."”

“At least now when we hear action by the governor it doesn't mean a glory hole in the men's room of a rest are off I-95. LOL!”

“That comment really sucked, Nigal.
last edited: 1/11/07 3:30:58 PM”

“But pretty sharp you have to admit....(LOL). I guess they think this will help them get a GRIP on things....which in an ironic thing happened with the former governor in a bathroom off I-95.”

“Democrats block corruption measures through inaction
By TOM HESTER Jr.
Associated Press Writer

January 22, 2007, 3:47 PM EST

TRENTON, N.J. -- By doing nothing, Senate Democrats Monday blocked a Republican effort to enact campaign finance reforms designed to clean up New Jersey government and slice property taxes.

Sen. Peter Inverso employed a seldom-used parliamentary tactic to try to force an instant vote on a bill that would restrict campaign contributions from government contractors and make it tough for local political parties to pass money among themselves.


The bill has been languishing in Senate committees for years, but Gov. Jon S. Corzine has expressed support for the ideas, including as recently as his Jan. 9 State of the State address.

Republicans last week asked Corzine to get three Democrats to support Inverso's bid, giving the bill enough votes to pass in a Senate controlled 22-18 by Democrats.

But Corzine never agreed and only one Democrat, Sen. Ellen Karcher of Monmouth County, supported Inverso.

The other 20 Democrats present refused to vote either way on Inverso's motion, which failed 19-0, two votes shy of what was needed to pass the bill.

"It's very surprising to me that we can't move this thing forward," said Inverso, R-Mercer.

Senate Majority Leader Bernard F. Kenny said Democrats prefer to let municipalities adopt ordinances limiting campaign contributions from government contractors, a practice known as "pay-to-play." The Legislature in late 2005 gave local governments authority to adopt such laws.

"We think that should have some time to take hold," said Kenny, D-Hudson.

Republicans decried the refusal by most Democrats to take a position on Inverso's proposal.

"We need to ban pay-to-play at all levels of government," said Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance, R-Hunterdon.

Lance cited statistics from Common Cause, a government reform group, that estimated contracts inflated by pay-to-play cost taxpayers $1 billion per year.

"Pay-to-play is a poison," Lance said.

State law restricts campaign donors from receiving state contracts worth $17,500 or more if they contributed to a gubernatorial campaign or a state or county political party.

Republicans want to extend that so-called "pay-to-play" ban to all government entities.
They also want to limit how much money party organizations can give each other. Critics contend such transfers allow donors to skirt contribution limits and allow powerful county party machines to exert influence elsewhere.



http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/ny-bc-nj--publiccorruption0122jan22,0,1423590.story?coll=ny-region-apnewjersey”

“http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/11737647504550.xml&coll=1

McGreevey seeks sole custody of 5-year-old daughter

Former governor's amended divorce lawsuit also asks for child support

Tuesday, March 13, 2007
BY JOSH MARGOLIN
Star-Ledger Staff

Former Gov. James E. McGreevey has revised his divorce lawsuit against his estranged wife and is now seeking sole custody of the couple's 5-year-old daughter -- and child support.

The new documents make no mention of a "matrimonial settlement agreement" that McGreevey's original divorce filing said had resolved all issues of custody and support.

McGreevey, who resigned as governor after announcing he had had an affair with a male aide, has retained a new lawyer and filed the revised papers with the Superior Court in Elizabeth on Feb. 20.

In a brief interview yesterday, McGreevey declined to discuss the particulars of his case or why he should be granted full custody of daughter Jacqueline. He said only: "It's a private family matter and I know we both want what's in the best interest for our daughter."

Contacted by cell phone yesterday, Dina Matos McGreevey hung up without answering questions.

Last month, after McGreevey originally filed for divorce, Matos McGreevey issued a statement disputing his claim that they had reached a settlement. "We continue to have profound differences about what our daughter should be exposed to, and until they are resolved, there will be no agreement," the statement said.

The revised lawsuit filed by attorney Matthew Piermatti asks a judge to grant custody of Jacqueline to the former governor and grant visitation rights to the former first lady. It seeks child support from Matos McGreevey, leaving it to the judge to decide the amount.

The earlier court papers said the confidential agreement "resolves all issues pertaining to custody, parenting time, alimony, child support, equitable distribution and counsel fees." Matos McGreevey has not filed a formal response to either set of documents.

"Obviously, the settlement discussions aren't going too well," said McGreevey confidante Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union).

The McGreeveys have lived separately in Union County since his last day in office, Nov. 15, 2004.........

*******************************************

Poor little girl, God help her and her Mom.

Do judges give sole custody of little girls to men who cruise the Jersey turnpike looking for random hookups in public rest stops?

Why isn't McGreevey in jail anyway, for diverting Homeland Security money to his gay lover? Oh wait- it's NEW JERSEY and he's a Democrat.
last edited: 3/13/07 10:06:07 AM”

“Oh wait, this guy is from Mississippi and he's a jerk.”

““Oh wait, this guy is from Mississippi and he's a jerk.”
MarkO
10:06:29 AM
3/13/07

Can't follow the subject, figures. LOL”

“I don't care to follow your worthless crap.

I'm just here to heckle.”

“Creepy guys raising children.......”

“Good for him. I don't believe in the child automatically going to the mother in every case and the fact he is gay shouldn't factor in. He's her father and if does get her he should get support from the mother.”

““Creepy guys raising children.......”

Coming from a creepy guy......hmmmmmm?
last edited: 3/13/07 11:33:31 AM”

“MarkO is the EXPERT on creepy guys raising children.”

“Rights Activist Killed at N.J. Rest Stop

By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007; B01

A prominent human rights activist who had been jailed in the former Soviet Union and lived in Loudoun County was beaten to death early yesterday at a New Jersey highway rest stop by a man trying to sell him religious CDs, authorities said.

Michail J. Makarenko, 75, a Hillsboro resident and former political prisoner, was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the attack at a rest stop near the southern end of the New Jersey Turnpike, a state police spokesman said.

Authorities said Brian K. White, 26, of Humble, Tex., approached Makarenko to sell him a Christian music CD. When Makarenko declined, witnesses said, White struck Makarenko on the head with a landscaping rock. White climbed into his 1984 Chevy Camaro and fled northbound on the turnpike.

State troopers chased White for 80 miles before he jumped from his moving vehicle, said Lt. Gerald Lewis of the New Jersey State Police. He charged at the troopers, who were then chasing White on foot, Lewis said. The troopers eventually subdued him.

More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/15/AR2007031501923_pf.html”