Letter: Do Not Allow Takeover Of Dispensary By Compassionate Sciences

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

Dear Editor,

Compassionate Sciences, Inc. a New Jersey medical marijuana business with former Gov. Whitman’s brother Webster Todd on it’s Board of Trustees, should not be allowed to purchase it’s Atlantic County competitor, Compassionate Care Foundation.

Compassionate Care Foundation, which operates a dispensary in Egg Harbor Township has had financial troubles. But that does not justify it's takeover by another politically connected company now also questionably employing John O’Brien, the former Executive Director of New Jersey’s medical marijuana program.

Under federal law, marijuana is still illegal for all purposes. Under the 1983 US Supreme Court case Michigan Canners & Freezers v. Agricultural Bd, it is unlawful for a state government to explicitly license and regulate an activity that violates federal law. Therefore, New Jersey can only remove state level criminal penalties.

Requiring patients to register and all sales to be tracked additionally violates the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination affirmed in the 1969 US Supreme Court Case Leary v. United States.

New Jersey has violated federal law by creating a politically operated racketeering scheme and cartel, victimizing seriously-ill patients with a monopoly designed to make high profits for the politically connected, at the expense of sick people.



Eric Hafner
Toms River

July 7, 2014 Middletown Township Committee Meeting: Police Chief Retires with $250K Payout

Last Monday the Middletown Township Committee held its monthly workshop meeting. The meeting lasted about an hour, which was nearly double the time of recent workshop meetings of the past. It was a busy meeting, a lot was discussed. Namely the retirement of Middletown Police Chief Robert Oches. Upon his retirement effective August 1st, Chief Oches will walk away with a  $249, 338 check for unused sick and vacation time that has been accumulated over his 40 years of service.

 Now in general I have no problem with this, Chief Oches served Middletown admirably over his 40 year career and played by the rules. He is entitled to this payout and I wish him well and hope he uses it wisely during his retirement. However, I do  happen to agree with the members of the Township Committee and think these types of payouts are extravagant budget busters that need to end.  But what really annoys me most about this is the self-righteous indignation that was expressed while discussing this issue.

As usual, our very partisan, all Republican Township Committee placed blame for these types of payouts at the feet of the Democrats in Trenton. They implored the Democratically controlled state legislature to do something about this problem and couldn't believe why they would allow this to go on.

The Committee members seem to forget however that the Democrats did do something about. They sent a bill to the desk of  Governor Christie during the early days of his 1st term in office that capped the payouts for unused sick time and vacation days at $15K! Christie however vetoed the bill because it didn't go far enough. He wanted to eliminate (unrealistically in my opinion) these types of payout all together.

You can watch the whole discussion starting at the 19:50 mark of the video.

As it turns out, all the belly-aching that the Township Committee did last week about having to shell out nearly $250K to our retiring police chief, seems to have caught the attention of NJ Senate President Steve Sweeney, who along with Monmouth County State Senator Joe Kyrillos (a Middletown resident)  issued a joint statement - that should make Middletown Township Committee members happy - which said, "We continue to see hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts to employees simply because they were fortunate enough not to get sick, it's a policy that is grossly unfair to the taxpayers of New Jersey and one the state cannot sustain given our current budgetary issues." according to yesterday's Asbury Park Press.  The article continued to state however that Governor Christie's all or nothing position on the issue hasn't changed.

So maybe it's time for Gerry Scharfenberger, Tony Fiore, Stephanie Murrary, Kevin Settembrino and Steve Massel to put-up or shut-up and issue a resolution calling on their beloved governor to compromise with members of the state legislature on this issue and accept a cap on these type of employee windfalls upon retirement. After all, it would be a whole lot better to pay out just $15K to a retiree than the quarter $Million or more that towns like Middletown are in the process of paying out now or in the future.




As always, you can download a copy of the Meeting Agenda that contains the discussion items and the proposed resolutions and ordinances that were voted on or presented during the meeting. A box around an item is a link, bringing you further into the document to that resolution or ordinance. At the end of the resolution there will be a link bringing you back to the agenda. Attached to this agenda is also the monthly bill list, so that everyone can see how the Township is spending our tax dollars.

A Comment Worthy Enough For Front Page Posting

I received the following blog comment from reader Judy Repic, who was responding to my March 11th post Doesn't Anyone Remember Christine Whitman? . I thought that it was a worthwhile comment that should be shared with everyone, so I've posted it below:

My question in all of this pension discussion is did either Florio or Whitman take just the portion that the state provided,or did they include the payments made by employees also? Governor Christie was a member of Morris County freeholders when this happened. His comment about "getting in the delorean and going back in time" is pretty cavalier when he was an elected official at the time.

Also, why should any man or woman who have to wear a protective vest have to conceed to giving up anything? Every day active members of PFRS kiss their spouse and family members good by, and that family member has to wonder for 8 hours if they will be welcoming them home or planning a funeral. These State Employees should never have to conceed to anything.

But,hisotically, politicians know how to push the buttons of the general public by accusing state workers of being overpaid for underperformance. The politicians can rile up the hard working general public into a frenzy by saying their world would be better if "x" changes are made. Attacking state workers pay is normally the "x" they use. However, the civil service test is open to everyone, it does not discrimate on any level, so in reality, every citizen in the state of New Jersey has the potential to become a state employee based on a test score.

How about the Governor, Assembly, and Senate start cutting some of their aids, secretaries, close down redundant posititions in Trenton. How about they post the pay of career Trenton employees with that of Police,Fire, Rescue and Corrections Officers who when 911 is dialed show up to aid you.

I am sick of all state employees being considered as lazy and over paid.

Doesn't Anyone Remember Christine Whitman?

In a CountyFair blog post on the website MediaMatters.org, blogger Jamison Foser asks a simple question " Doesn't Anyone Remember Christine Whitman? "

It's a great read and analogy of what transpired in the early 1990's when young Republican Governors were swept into office and faced huge budget deficits after Bill Clinton became President and what is happening today.

"A young Democrat is elected President on a theme of hope and change, does some of the things he was elected to do, Republicans howl and win control of Congress in a landslide mid-term election, and the media becomes infatuated with a new crop of Republican governors who are trying to dramatically reconfigure state budgets.

"That's a reasonable summary of the current state of affairs, but it also describes the first few years of Bill Clinton's presidency. But it isn't the similarity that's striking: After all, there's a reason the phrase "history has a way of repeating itself" exists. Or, perhaps more appropriately: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." See, what's really striking about the current situation is how few reporters seem to remember what happened in the 1990s.

Most notably, the past few weeks have seen massive media attention paid to state budget deficits, and attempts by Republican governors like Chris Christie to blame out-of-control pension obligations for those deficits (even as they pursue deficit-increasing tax cuts..."

Foser goes on to talk about how NJ Governor Christie Whitman cut taxes and raided the state pension fund in order to close New Jersey's budget gap even though many critics warned that the State Pension system would see significant shortfall 15-20 years down the road, which of course is what is happening to be now!

"Whitman was one of those star Republican governors of the early 1990s. Like so many other Republican governors who win media attention for innovative approaches, she made her name through the not-so-innovative strategy of cutting taxes. Since she had to offset those tax cuts in order to balance New Jersey's budget, she reduced payments into the state's pension system. And that, as the New York Times noted last August, "contributed to the growth of the unfunded liability" that is now widely blamed for New Jersey's budget shortfall."

He went on to state that none of this should have come as a surprise to anyone because "when Whitman was defunding the pension system in order to cut taxes, there were warnings that this is exactly what would happen. Here, for example, is a September 5, 1994 Washington Post article:

"The first thing Christine Todd Whitman did upon taking office as governor of New Jersey in January was to cut the state's income tax. Then in July, as she signed into law her first state budget, the Republican cut taxes again while simultaneously closing the huge deficit left by her predecessor.

This is what her supporters call the Whitman miracle, the fiscal accomplishment that has sent her stock soaring among New Jersey's voters and transformed her on the national scene from a political unknown into one of the Republican Party's newest stars.
…

But the key to the Whitman miracle lies neither in her political philosophy nor in her spending cuts, but rather in the fine print of her budget. Contained there is a series of arcane fiscal changes that some experts say amount to this: Christine Todd Whitman has balanced New Jersey's books and paid for her tax cut by quietly diverting more than $1 billion from the state's pension fund.

Whitman calls what she did a "reform" of the pension system that puts it on a more "sound actuarial footing." Others are less charitable. The one thing that even the actuarial consultants hired by the Whitman administration agree on, however, is that the chief effect of the changes will be to shift billions of dollars in pension obligations onto New Jersey taxpayers 15 to 20 years from now."

"At best, this represents a gamble that the state's economy in the early part of the next century will be stronger than it is today and better able to shoulder pension responsibilities. At worst, according to fiscal experts, Whitman's move represents politics at its most cynical.

In recent years financially strapped governments around the country -- including Washington, D.C., and New York state -- have raided their pension funds for cash, gambling that when the bills come due their local economies will be in a better position to pay them.
…

"The New Jersey pension system was highly rated in terms of its fiscal integrity," said [Henry] Raimondo of the Eagleton Institute. "Now that's compromised. She has effectively slowed down" the amount of "money going into the system, and in around 2010 the liability to New Jersey taxpayers is going to grow dramatically."

Foser concluded his post by adding:

"Let's review: A Republican governor of New Jersey reduced payments to the state pension system so she could cut taxes. Critics warned doing so would cause significant budget shortfalls in 2010. 2010 rolled around, and -- surprise! -- so did budget shortfalls. And now those shortfalls are used by New Jersey's current Republican governor (along with many in the media) to justify cutting pensions (while again cutting taxes.)

Basically, conservatives have staged an end-run around having a public debate over cutting pensions in order to pay for tax cuts. Rather than making the argument that tax cuts are more important than pensions, they just went ahead and cut taxes, raiding the pension system in the process, then waited 15 years for predictable -- and predicted -- deficits, which they now point to as evidence that the pension system is unsustainably generous. And they've done it with the help of countless news organizations that fall for this shell game."

You really need to read the full post, it's fascinating how history has once again repeated itself.

You can read it >>> here

The Republican Political Hacks Of Middletown

by
Barabara Thorpe


This longtime resident of Middletown reads with interest the ranting,preposterous dribble from the republican political hacks of Middletown. This includes the current republican committee persons and all those among the ranks of the political patronage persons dependent on these so called representatives of the people.

History indicates a Republican administration. during Christie Whitman's years in office,is responsible for fiscal irresponsibility in N.J. leading to much of our current problems. The last eight years of George W. Bush's administration is responsible for fiscal irresponsibility in Washington,D.C. and the transgressions of 28 years of republican control in Middletown is responsible for fiscal irresponsibility in this township.

Expenditures for defending a committeeman from charges of misconduct (amount never disclosed as to the cost to the taxpayers),a convicted committeeman and former mayor,now serving a prison term for violating the public trust, are among the points that immediately come to the mind of this taxpayer and also the handling of the County ordered revaluation. Who knows what lurks in this township if a forensic audit were to be done by authorities able to supercede the efforts of the republicans to hide the facts from it's residents.

We need only to look at the last political campaign in this township to see just how low the republicans were willing to stoop to retain control of the township committee. Ask yourself WHY??? It's all about money,ladies and gentlemen.....and you pay the bills while patronage is alive and well in Middletown.

These politicians have no regard for the rule of law....all they care about is the rule of the republican party in this town. just scrutinize the appointments in this township and the township sewage authority. Take off your blinders,fellow citizens, and start really evaluating the facts of life in this township.....until you do,each and every taxpayer in this township subsidizes this madness !!!

Hypocrisy Is the name of the blame game played by the current majority.Everything wrong is someone else's fault. Try cleaning up your own act before pointing fingers at ANYONE ELSE

All intelligent people know that there are morally and integrity challenged politicians in BOTH parties. No,they are not ALL or ONLY democrats. Many are republicans...and some of them dot the landscape here in Middletown,serving only their own agenda and not the people they were entrusted to represent or serve.

Barbara R.Thorpe (unaffiliated voter)