Letter to Editor - Prostitution Must Be Legalized

The expressed opinions or views of this letter does not necessarily represent the opinion of the MiddletownMike blog:


Dear Editor,

The ACLU of New Jersey is right that prostitution must be legalized, and in the meantime prostitutes should not be arrested by police.

In New Jersey, where Latino male illegal immigrant day laborers are permitted by the courts to openly advertise the availability of their illegal labor to the public, are allowed to loiter in front of businesses, and the local courts require their employers to pay wages to those unpaid, there is no rational basis to deny the same equal protection to U.S. citizen sex workers, who are largely disenfranchised females, trans people, or gay men.

Communities like my hometown of Fair Haven (Monmouth County) are where suburban riches fuel the demand for urban sex workers and drugs like heroin, resulting in urban street violence, yet these lily-white suburbs are sheltered from the numerous problems their wealth enables.

The communities of Rumson, Fair Haven, and Little Silver should join together to provide a Sex Worker's Empowerment and Counseling Center, with an on-site drug rehabilitation, HIV testing, needle exchange, and transitional housing program, well-funded and outside of the shadow of urban blight.

We cannot judge prostitutes, when our own communities are awash with their customers.


Rev. Dr. Eric Hafner
Toms River, NJ

Is Middletown's Version of Big Brother Tracking Your Cell Phone ?

Last week BlueJersey posted a slightly misleading blurb about how, according to the ACLU, police departments in New Jersey were tracking cell phones without warrants. The post listed 50 police departments from around the State that allegedly were illegally tracking the cell phones of local residents. Middletown's police department was one of the 50 on the list, which intrigued me. So I dug a little deeper by following the hyperlink to the ACLU's report to see what it was all about.

What I found out was that the American Civil Liberties Union "filed over 380 requests in 31 states with local law enforcement agencies large and small to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans". The results from these requests varied greatly and is a cause for concern for privacy advocates. All but 10 out of 200 responding police departments stated that they track cell phones in some capacity and it was found that most police departments do not usually obtain warrants before tracking cell phones.

After reading this I jumped over to the section of the report that pertained to the 50 police departments in New Jersey.  I found that the reason why these particular 50 were chosen was for no other reason other than, they were the 50 largest police departments in the state and not because they were suspected of wrong doing.

Each of the 50 police departments were sent an identical Cell Phone Tracking Information Request Letter (this is Middletown's) seeking information on how each department gathers cell phone data, all but 4 (Bayonne, Edison, Jersey City and Union City) responded. 

Besides Middletown's response, I also read the responses East Brunswick, Howell, Jackson, Lakewood, Newark and Old Bridge.

There is a lot that can be said after reading the various responses above but I'm fairly convinced that a vast majority of residents living in Middletown,as well as around the state, have little to fear at the moment from Big Brother. There seems to be general proceedures in place that would safeguard against unnecessary phone tracking


However that may not be always be the case.


 In most instances, nearly 3/4 of the questions asked by the ACLU went unanswered due to the lack of a policy concerning cell phone tracking or adequate record keeping.

According to Middletown's response,the last known case in which they tracked a person's cell phone was in 2008. I find that a little hard to believe considering other towns had shown that such information as recently as last year.

That being said, I won't lose to much sleep at the moment worring about who is looking at my phone records. It may be a big issue in parts of the country,but for right now I have nothing to fear and neither do fellow Middletowners, we all seem safe from the prying eyes of Big Brother,

Pallone Letter Calls for Executive Order Protecting LGBT Workers from Workplace Discrimination

For Immediate Release:
April 4, 2012

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06), along with 71 Members of Congress, sent the following letter to President Obama on Tuesday, April 3, 2012, calling for an executive order prohibiting contractors from receiving federal funds unless they have sexual orientation and gender identity anti-discrimination policies in place.

The letter was prompted by several examples of LGBT workplace discrimination, including one where a former employee at DynCorp, a military contractor profiting from billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, reported that he was a victim of continual anti-gay discrimination and harassment while working at the corporation.  In 1965, President Johnson established an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

 “I am pleased to join so many colleagues and reputable organizations to call for an executive order that ensures all Americans are afforded the same protections in the workplace,” said Congressman Frank Pallone. “This action by the President will send a clear sign that we will not tolerate such discrimination and serve as a step forward in our efforts to ensure LGBT equality.”

“Americans recognize that discrimination is bad for business and they want our government to take action,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “An executive order is the best step we can take right now to ensure that what matters is how you do your job, not who you are.  We thank Representative Pallone and all of the cosigners of this letter for their leadership and their continued commitment to LGBT workplace equality.” 

“Extending the current executive order to cover the LGBT population is good and fair policy. Good because it would require federal contractors to follow a common and efficient best HR practice, and fair because it helps put LGBT workers on equal footing with all other employees at these businesses, said Jeff Krehely, Vice President for LGBT Progress at Center for American Progress. Thank you to Congressman Pallone for his leadership on this letter and all cosigners for their commitment to LGBT equality.”

“Having worked with Rep. Frank Pallone and his staff on persuading nearly half of the Democratic Caucus to sign this congressional letter to President Obama, I know firsthand that our LGBT community owes Mr. Pallone a debt of gratitude for his strong leadership promoting workplace fairness,” said Tico Almeida, the founder and President of the national LGBT organization Freedom to Work.  “More than 110,000 people have signed the Freedom to Work online petition proclaiming that ‘We Can’t Wait’ any longer for President Obama to sign this executive order.  The right time is now.”

The ACLU views this executive order as the single most important step that President Obama could take this year to eradicate anti-LGBT discrimination from American workplaces,” said Ian Thompson, ACLU Legislative Representative.  With the impressive number of signers on this letter, it is clear that this view is widely shared on Capitol Hill.  We thank Representatives Pallone, Frank, and Capps for their outstanding leadership on this letter and on issues of workplace fairness generally.

Booker Sits Down With Colbert And Talks About "Brick City"

Last night on the Colbert Report, Newark Mayor Cory Booker sat down with Stephen Colbert and talked the City of Newark and the new documentary " Brick City" which will be presented on the Sundance Channel next Monday at 10 pm.

Colbert asks Booker why he is "docu-bait", Brick City is the second documentary to feature Booker in the past few years. For those who do not know what "Brick City" refers to, Newark has long been call the "Brick City".

The mayor of Newark answered by saying that Brick City wasn't just about him, but about a number of unique, grassroots folks and characters that every day, who fight to make sure that the city reaches it's full potential.

Mayor Booker also discusses the decreasing crime rate within the city and how the quality of life for residents has steadily increased.

At one point during the interview, Colbert points out that as a "Lefty Liberal" the ACLU has given Booker a grade of "C" and asks Booker to remind him, not to visit Newark on St. Patrick's day because they have arrested individuals for public urination.

The mayor answers by giving Colbert permission to pee in Newark... as long as he uses a urinal!

Watch it:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Cory Booker
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

Editorial of the day: The Torturers’ Manifesto

The New York Times

April 18, 2009

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions.

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