News
- Details
- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Latest News
School children at the B. Bernice Young Elementary Government School in Burlington, NJ were forced to sing praises to Barack Obama in June.
Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all say "hooray!"
Hooray Mr. President! You're number one!
- Details
- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Candidates and Elections
By Lisa Fleisher
September 18, 2009, 4:45PMTRENTON -- The Libertarian Party candidate for governor and five New Jersey voters joined independent candidate Chris Daggett in filing a lawsuit today challenging the state's balloting system, a Daggett spokesman said.
Daggett, who has qualified for public funding in the governor's race, charges it is unfair for the Republican and Democratic parties to automatically get the two top spots on ballots in the general election.
- Details
- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Latest News
While traveling through Freehold last week I passed a group of people gathered with signs demanding immigration rights. I found a place to park and walked over to investigate. I found a group of about 35 people gathered with signs demanding rights for immigrants.The group consisted mostly of people from Casa Freehold and representatives from the NJ Immigration Policy Network.
The rights we enjoy as Americans belong to all humans. The right to freely travel provides humans with the ability to vote with their feet. If a regime (be it a country, state, or municipality) abuses the rights of its citizens, those citizens must be free to travel to another region. The right to freely contract for labor is an essential component of free and open markets. Free markets benefit all parties. Protectionism penalizes everyone.
Our current immigration policies are too complicated, too oppressive, and too restrictive. Immigration and Customs Enforcement locks up way too many people and disregards the rights of citizens and non citizens alike. Immigration control has been used as a pretext for National ID cards, financial surveillance of Americans, border and travel surveillance, and a growing police state.
- Details
- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Latest News
Agreement Ends Eminent Domain and Begins Restoration Of the MTOTSA Neighborhood
WEB RELEASE: September 15, 2009
Media Contact:
John Kramer
(703) 682-9320
Arlington, Va.—The Long Branch, N.J., property owners are finally safe at home. After years of battling eminent domain for a developer’s private gain, Long Branch’s MTOTSA homeowners declared victory with today’s announcement that eminent domain actions filed against the homeowners have been withdrawn and that the city and the developer must take steps to restore the neighborhood damaged by eminent domain abuse.
“Today’s agreement finally ends this government-created nightmare that was imposed upon these Long Branch homeowners,” said Scott Bullock, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice which, along with noted New Jersey eminent domain lawyers Peter H. Wegener and William Ward, represented the homeowners. “With this agreement, the neighborhood can be restored to the kind of wonderful community it was before the city and the developer targeted it. These modest, proudly-maintained homes will no longer be threatened by the bulldozers.”
- Details
- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Latest News
From the Heritage Foundation:
Fact checking President Barack Obama’s health care speech from last night, the Associated Press reports: “The president’s speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.” That is an understatement. We counted no less than 15 spurious claims made by the President, including:
- Details
- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
I posted the following today on a few blogs. It's a bit unsettling because it my research reveals that, in addition to the police abuse matter, two Atlantic City officers, while on duty, gave an underage female a strong painkiller (Tramadol) and then went into a nightclub with her where she drank alcohol.
While the Press of Atlantic City reported that the officers were suspended without pay because of the incident, there is no indication that any criminal charges were filed against the officers. It would appear that giving a non-prescribed drug to an twenty-year old violates the criminal code.
- Details
- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Latest News
NJ city considers adult curfew after crime spate
8/18/2009, 4:38 p.m. EDT The Associated Press (AP) — PATERSON, N.J. - Curfews might not be just for kids anymore in one city in northern New Jersey.
Officials in Paterson are considering one for people of all ages in a bid to curb violence after a spate of deadly shootings.
Several experts say they believe it would be the nation's first curfew of its type to include adults. The state ACLU says it would open Paterson to legal action.
The curfew would last for two months and would bar people from loitering outside from midnight to 7 a.m. Violators would face up to a $2,000 fine and 90 days in jail.
- Details
- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Selected Blogs
The Atlantic has posted an excellent analysis of the ills of our current health care system. David Goldhill presents the problems and shows that Obamacare will do nothing to solve the problems.
After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.
How American Health Care Killed My Father
Illustration by Mark Hooper Almost two years ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.
- Details
- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Selected Blogs
The Unseen Cost of Minimum Wage Laws
The media are never better at displaying their economic illiteracy than when they report on the minimum wage.
"Workers got a raise on Friday when the federal minimum wage was hiked 70 cents to $7.25 an hour," the Christian Science Monitor reported last week. "They'll be shouting, "Olé!"
They assume that if politicians declare that workers should get a raise, they will actually get it. But the idea that government can increase wages by decree with only good consequences rests on a serious economic fallacy: that employers set wages arbitrarily. If wages are very low, it must be that employers are stingy.
- Details
- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Selected Blogs
While truth can shine a light, it usually takes lies to generate heat.
Take the immigration debate, which is about to get underway again. President Obama has said that he intends to pursue comprehensive immigration reform. And recently, New York Senator Chuck Schumer said that he planned to have a bill written by Labor Day. We can expect six to eight months of spirited debate before Spring 2010, at which point Congress will either have passed the bill or defeated it.
Whenever we talk about immigration, much of the heat that is generated comes from myths and assumptions masquerading as facts. These are things that people know in their bones to be true, even though they aren’t really true at all. An example is when people say immigrant birthrates in the United States are going up, but all the available research points to the fact that newcomers are having smaller families — mostly for economic reasons.
- Details
- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
On June 2, 2009, the Open Government Advocacy Project filed a complaint with the Hasbrouck Heights (Bergen County) Ethical Standards Board alleging that twenty-six Borough officials failed to file the Financial Disclosure Statements that were due on April 30, 2008.
I recently was informed that the Ethical Standards Board will meet on August 10, 2009 to "determine the penalty that shall be imposed upon those who were charged with respect to violation of the 2008 Financial Disclosure Statement." The meeting, which will start at 8 p.m. and be held at Borough Hall, 320 Boulevard, is open to the public.
The officials could each be fined between $100 and $500.
The complaint and notice of the meeting are on-line at http://ogtf.lpcnj.org/2009208PC//HHEthComplaint.pdf
John Paff, Chair
New Jersey Libertarian Party's
Open Government Advocacy Project
- Details
- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Latest News
There's an article in today's Star Ledger about a judge ruling that a marijuana-growing defendant cannot inform the jury that he has multiple sclerosis and grew the 17 plants for medicinal purposes.
It strikes me that this would be a good case for the LP to take interest in, as it deals both with re-legalization and jury nullification. In fact, the Judge mentioned nullification in his ruling--that allowing the medical defense to be raised "would create a powerful emotional argument in favor of jury nullification because it gives defendant a sympathetic reason for breaking the law."
FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP -- A Somerset County man won't be able to use multiple sclerosis as a defense for the 17 marijuana plants police found growing behind his house, a Superior Court judge ruled today.
A claim of personal use simply does not apply to the charges against Franklin Township resident John Ray Wilson, Judge Robert Reed said, following a hearing today in Somerville.
Subcategories
NJ Libertarian Blog
Imported from NJ Libertarian News from the published feed
Videos
This is a page of various videos that we have either created or found interesting. Be sure to check out and follow our YouTube page.
Open Government Advocacy Project
The Open Government Advocacy Project is a committee of the NJ Libertarian Party. Its goal is to ensure transparency and accountability at all levels of government. Articles posted here are a subset of the work of the committee. For more information visit the Open Government Advocacy Project blog.
If you would like to demand accountability and ensure that your local governing body or school board adheres to the Open Public Records Act we can help you request information from them. Contact John Paff, the project chair here.
Insight New Jersey
NJ government is huge and complex. Private industry is shrinking while the size and cost of government bureacracy continues to grow. The articles posted here provide a guide of the NJ State Government and can be used by citizens and candidates for office to evaluate what departments can be reduced drastically in size.
We'll start with just some of the departments and provide a breakdown on what they do (or purport to do), how many employees they have and how big their budget is.
Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project
The New Jersey Libertarian Party's Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project (“the Project”) seeks to get New Jersey municipalities to repeal loitering ordinances that should have been -- but were not -- repealed when the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice was enacted in 1979. The Project has successfully had loitering ordinances repealed in over 30 towns. For a summary listing of all the towns see Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project page.
Police Accountability Project
The Police Accountability Project is a committee of the NJ Libertarian Party. Its goal is to search out cases of police misconduct, file former Internal Affairs (IA) complaints when appropriate, and to publicize violations of rules and laws by the police. There may be other stories posted on the NJLP Police Internal Affairs Complaint Blog page.
If you would like to help or know of a case we should be looking at, contact the committee at
Legislative Affairs Committee
The Legislative Affairs Committee was created to allow a select core of Volunteers to take action on legislation and policies which directly affects the people of New Jersey.
[INTRO VIDEO - HOSTED ON NJLP STATE YOUTUBE AND EMBEDED HERE]
Staff
Legislative Director and Committee Chair
Volunteers: