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Liberty On Tour recently passed through NJ. While in Edgewater, Officer William J. Wallach aggressively approached Adam Mueller demanding identification and paperwork. Officer Wallach is paid a salary of just over $111,000 by the township.
by Pete Eyre on 09. Aug, 2010
EDGEWATER, NJ – Since it’s close to impossible to park MARV in Manhattan we’ve spent some time just across the Hudson in Edgewater, NJ working from a shopping center that includes a 24hr Starbucks – the first we’ve seen. Unlike other ‘bucks we’ve worked from, the rush isn’t in the morning from commuters on their way to work but late at night when there are literally hundreds hanging out and riding around on their motorcycles and suped-up cars. Unsurprisingly, such a crowd tends to attract the police.
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NJLP member and activist Julian Heicklen was harassed and detained again for handing out Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) flyers. The event was attended by the Liberty On Tour project. For more articles on Julian's outreach events see this link.
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Dear Friend of Liberty,
The War in Afghanistan has dragged on for almost nine years. According to the Washington Post, there have been 1,189 American military deaths, which is more than two per week.
And of course, today's big news about WikiLeaks raises a lot of questions about whether we've been honestly told how badly the war is going.
I'm often asked how Libertarian candidates make a difference in cases where they don't win their election. We have over 150 candidates running for U.S. Representative, and over 20 for U.S. Senator.
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In his 1944 work, The Road To Serfdom, F. A. Hayek noted the misuse of the words freedom and liberty:
"Freedom" and "Liberty" are now words so worn that one must hesitate to employ them to express the ideals for which they stood during that period.1
He was referring to the push towards socialism and how the socialist revolutionists were using these words while demanding state planning of every human economic interaction.
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Voters in the Borough of Spring Lake Heights (Monmouth County) employed a little-used statutory mechanism to force the Borough Council to reconsider two ordinances that would have raised salaries for some Borough officers and employees. The purpose of this posting is to explain the mechanism so that voters in other municipalities can also avail themselves of it.
At issue are Ordinances 05-2010 and 06-2010, which were both enacted on June 14, 2010. The ordinances, respectively, sought to raise certain employee and officer salaries retroactively to January 1, 2009 and January 1, 2010.
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Right-To-Die Billboard Causes Uproar In N.J.
Final Exit Network Says It Provides Guidance To Adults With Painful Illnesses, But Many Residents Upset With Ad
HILLSIDE, N.J. (CBS)
This billboard on Route 22 in Hillside, N.J., has many people up in arms.
The message on a billboard in New Jersey is stirring up a lot of controversy.
It centers on whether a person suffering from a painful disease has the right to take his or her own life.
The billboard looms over a busy section of Route 22 in Hillside, facing the eastbound lanes. Some drivers said they are confused by the message.
The NJ Libertarian Party platform calls for "the repeal of all laws interfering with the right to commit suicide as infringement of the ultimate right of an individual to his or her own life." We congratulate the Final Exit Network on their billboard.
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Libertarian think tank, CATO, has recently released a bulletin, Immigrants and Crime: Perception vs. Reality, that finds crime among recent immigrants is less than or no higher than the rest of the population.
Data show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born, a pattern confirmed by a 2008 study of data from California.
The bulletin summarizes with:
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WASHINGTON - Tomorrow, June 23, marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo v. New London decision. Today the Libertarian Party published the following open letter:
We, the state chairs of the Libertarian Party, and members of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC), wish to call attention to the fifth anniversary of the wrongful Kelo v. New London decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Susette Kelo and her co-plaintiffs simply wanted to be left in peace in their homes, but the New London Development Corp. wanted their land for its own development purposes, and convinced the City of New London to condemn their property for its benefit.
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WASHINGTON - Wes Benedict, executive director of the Libertarian Party, issued the following statement today:
The federal government and BP share the blame for the large oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
When the CEO of BP appeared at a Congressional hearing yesterday, Republicans and Democrats predictably engaged in finger-pointing and blame-ducking, trying to score political points. Their fingers should have been pointed at themselves.
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FIJA Demonstration of 5/25/10
I arrived at the U. S. District Court at 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan, NY at 11:40 am on Tuesday, May 25, 2010. It was a warm and sunny day. Immediately a Homeland Security officer approached me and told me to leave. He was joined by officer Valenti, who told the first officer that I would be arrested. I continued to pass out the American Jury Institute pamphlet entitled “A Primer for Prospective Jurors” along with my handout which reads:
The judge will instruct the jury that it must uphold the law as he gives it.
He will be lying.
The jury must judge the law as well as the facts.
Juries were instituted to protect the citizens from the tyranny of their government.
It is not the duty of the jury to uphold the law.
The jury’s duty is to see that justice is done.
At 12:00 noon Officer Barnes and a sergeant approached. Officer Barnes asked me to put down my sign, so that I would not hit him on the head with it. I declined saying that: “I am not going to hit you. It is not my style.” Officer Barnes stood 5 feet in front of me and glowered. The sergeant stood 5 feet behind me.
I passed out literature, and Barnes kept staring at me. I said to Barnes, “Nice day isn’t it.” He replied “Don’t try to be friendly with me. I am not your friend.” I apologized for offending him.
At 12:25 pm, I moved about 20 feet into the shade so that I could see the face of my cell phone better. Barnes yelled that I could not move there, but I ignored him. He placed me under arrest. Immediately I fell to the ground, as I always do when placed under arrest.
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Longtime NJLP activist Ginny Flynn must go to Germany to get special medical treatment to try and save her life. She was diagnosed with a rare and lethal cancer Leiomyosarcoma in January 2010. Thanks to the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other medical restrictions she and her husband (currently dormant NJLP Newsletter Editor) Len have to travel to Prien Germany for the treatment.
The treating physician Rigdon Lentz, MD is an expatriate American doctor driven out of the USA and prosecuted and fined by FDA for botching the clinical paperwork requirements for his cancer treatment device. The “immunepheresis” device removes blockers that cancer cells have to hinder the body’s immune system (Tumor Necrosis Factor [TNF]). It is approved for sale in the European Union but not here in the USA.
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Diner: "Waiter, theres a fly in my soup!"
Waiter: "Your soup? We don't respect private property anymore, its his soup too."
Unable to purchase an old Sears building in Camden using fair negotiations, Campbell Soup Company has asked the Camden Redevelopment Authority to use government force to acquire the property for them.
Campbell soup has begun a revitalization of the area known as the Gateway neighborhood. In 2007 the State of NJ named Campbell as the master developer of the area. Campbell has invested heavily in the Camden area, building a new headquarters.
The old Sears building sits in Campbell's redevelopment area. The current owner, Ilan Zaken, refuses to sell, so Campbells has resorted to using the guns of government to take this property. Campbell Soup wishes to tear down the building and turn the area into an office park. Mr. Zaken has slowly been fixing up the building with plans to turn it into a restaurant supply distribution center.
The threat of of eminent domain exists throughout the city. This past April, the Camden Redevelopment Authority sent threatening letters to four homeowners notifying them that their homes would be taken from them. The Abandoned Properties Rehabilitation Act of 2004 authorized the theft of private property.
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The Soprano State Illustrated:
Assemblyman David P. Rible retired as a Wall Township police officer at age 31 with a bad back and a fat pension. He's collected $570,000 in disability payments since a state board decided he was "totally and permanently disabled."
Yet Rible competes in five-mile and five-kilometer runs along the Jersey Shore. He exercises at a gym, dances as a celebrity and hauls trash to the curb at his Monmouth County home. He commutes to Trenton to represent the 11th District in the State Assembly, where he holds a leadership position as Republican Whip and seeks publicity as a tax-fighter.
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It's been 75 years since the federal government, on the spurious grounds of fighting the Great Depression, ordered the confiscation of all monetary gold from Americans, permitting trivial amounts for ornamental or industrial use. This happens to be one of the episodes Kevin Gutzman and I describe in detail in our new book, Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush. From the point of view of the typical American classroom, on the other hand, the incident may as well not have occurred.
From Thomas E. Wood's article "The Great Gold Robbery of 1933" in 2008. On June 5, 1933, congress, at the urging of Roosevelt, passed a resolution making it illegal to trade in gold.
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The 2010 Libertarian National Convention was held this weekend. I'm finally finding time to write about the convention.
The convention was very well attended. There were about 100 more delegates than the last non-Presidential convention. (I believe there were somewhere over 530 delegates attending) Unfortunately the New Jersey delegation was much smaller than what we were allocated. We had four delegates, myself, Kevin Ferrizzi, Dan Karlan, and Tim O'Brien. I strongly recommend that our members attend our National Conventions and regret that we had not started earlier in promoting the convention and finding delegates who would want to go.
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Julian Heicklen has been arrested for handing out Fully Informed Jury Brochures on Tuesday. Julian was arrested by Officer Clifford Barnes of the Federal Protective Service. He is currently being held at Riker's Island Anna M. Kross detention center. A court date is not scheduled until June 8th. He has been denied bail!
More information can be found on Bile's site, The Blog of Bile.