What's Going On In Parsippany's Council Race?

     Recently, there has been a great controversy in Parsippany's Town Council Republican primary.  It seems that a national Political Action Committee which supports the Democratic party has taken notice of our township and decided to support a group of Republican candidates running for council.  Since Parsippany is pretty much a Republican town (the Mayor and all five current Council members are Republicans, there's been one Democrat on the council in the last 30 years), it seems odd that a SuperPAC that raised funds for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would take an interest.  Many people, including a few of the candidates, are quite confused by this.  It really doesn't make much sense unless you look at some recent history and dig in to the past of a seemingly inconsequential player in this whole farce.

     The first relevant incident occurred in early 2014.  Council President Paul Carifi, after a long and public feud with Mayor James Barberio in the 2013 Mayoral race that resulted in accusations of corruption and bribery, proposed a resolution to investigate Township Attorney John Inglesino, claiming Mr. Inglesino had a conflict of interest serving as Township Attorney.  Mr. Carifi also voted to appoint Union City lawyer Wilfredo J. Ortiz II, Esq, as acting counsel to the "committee as a whole" created to investigate Inglesino, with a nice $30,000 retainer. Mr. Ortiz was representing his brother, former Parsippany Police Capt. James Carifi, in a lawsuit against the Township, which is somehow not a conflict of interest. The resolutions passed 3-1, with the sole dissenting vote coming from Councilman Mike dePierro.  Fast forward to a year later, and we find that Mr. Carifi's attempts to hire his brother's attorney have stalled, due to a countersuit from the Mayor's office and pushback from the county and state. 

     Now, Mr. Carifi's seat on the council is up for re-election this year, as is Mike DiPierro's and Councilman Brian Stanton. Mr. Carifi has a ticket of three candidates, including himself, running against Mr. dePierro and two others in the Republican primary. Mr. Stanton has chosen not to run. The controversy came two weeks ago, when voters registered to vote in the Republican primary got a visit from some youngsters canvassing neighborhoods asking if voters were planning on supporting Mike "diPiero" and handing out flyers with him and his running mates on them.  The flyers were distributed by a group called New Jersey's Future First, a SuperPAC based in Washington DC that has supported Democratic candidates in the past, including Hillary Clinton.  Mr. Carifi and his running mates have jumped on this, asking why a Republican like Mike dePierro would take support from Democrats and just what exactly he's trying to pull, which gets really interesting when you start to dig a little.  Mr. Carifi in particular was quoted as saying this "is offensive to every Republican voter in Parsippany," which would be hilarious if it weren't for it's hypocrisy.  His running mate, Aida Visakay, wants to know "Who brought them here? ... Who's funding them?" Well, maybe she should ask Mr. Carifi, or more specifically, his friend, Mr. Wilfredo J. Ortiz II, Esq.

     Who is Wilfredo J. Ortiz II, Esq?  Well, the bio on his firm's website says he was born in the Bronx, grew up in West New York, educated at Seton Hall.  He's versed in municipal law and has been the township attorney for several townships, including Hasbrouck Heights and Bloomfield, NJ.  He's also "a lifelong Democrat" who has chaired several Political Action Committees dedicated to electing Democratic candidates.  He has ties to Joe Ferriero and Sen. Robert Menendez, two shining examples of corrupt NJ politicians.  Oh, and he has a history of supporting candidates for town councils who then vote for his appointment to the post of township attorney, where he makes a nice commission and gets some of his buddies set up as well. 

     So to get back to Mr. Carifi's question, why would a Democratic SuperPAC suddenly take an interest in Mike dePierro, a lifelong Republican? Could it be to give his opponent an opportunity to grandstand and claim to be a "true conservative" when in fact, he's trying to get Democrat appointed to the post of township attorney?  Let's review some facts:

1. In 2010, then-Morris County Sheriff's Deputy Sgt. Paul Carifi supported Steve Olimpio, a lifelong Democrat who switched parties to run for Sheriff. 
2. In 2013, Councilman Paul Carifi supported Johnathan Nelson, the Democrat candidate for Mayor after losing his primary bid to Mayor Jamie Barberio.
3. Mr. Carifi is presenting Wilfredo J. Ortiz II, Esq, a self proclaimed "lifelong Democrat" as the new Township Attorney for Parsippany.
4. Mr. Ortiz has run Democratic PACs before, he has connections with the Democrat machine.
5. Mr. Ortiz has a history of supporting candidates for Town Councils and then getting himself appointed to lucrative municipal positions.
6. Mike dePierro is a respected member of the community, having served with distinction on the Parsippany Town Council for over 20 years.  He is a lifelong Republican. 
7. Mr. Carifi claimed to be a "true conservative" and then in the same breath said that a Democratic SuperPAC, which by law cannot coordinate it's activities with a candidate, supporting Mike dePierro "is offensive to every Republican voter in Parsippany," presumably with a straight face.

    It would seem Mr. Carifi's "true conservative" credentials can be summed up in four letters: R-I-N-O.  He's a true conservative in the mold of George W. Bush - spouting the manipulated facts and distorted reality thought up by a self serving political operative pulling his strings.  The difference is, W. was the kind of guy you'd want to have a beer with.

    Today, we see another flyer from New Jersey's Future First: one about voter fraud.  No candidates are named, but the implication is clear: Mr. Carifi, along with his running mates Louis Valori and Robert Peluso, was accused of voter fraud in his 2013 primary win for Town Council.  The allegations were that his campaign used fraudulent mail in ballots to boost their votes above those of Vincent Ferrara and Michael Strumolo.  The county is still investigating, two years later, and charges may still be filed, but we won't know until after the primary.  Tomorrow, you're very likely to see a quote from Mr. Carifi or his campaign alleging that dePierro is doing this to attack him, condemning the dirty politics and shameful allegations, when in fact it's very likely his friend Wilfredo J. Ortiz II, Esq, is the one who arranged this political farce through his contacts in the Democrat machine. They really think we're that stupid. Then again, it worked for W., so maybe we are.

     The great irony here is that this entire thing is the result of the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case, a decision that was made by Republican appointees.  Now it's coming back to hurt one of the Republican party's most ardent supporters, one of the last decent Republicans left. Because SuperPACs are not required to disclose their donors, we may never know who is funding New Jersey's Future First, and we will probably never be able to prove Mr. Ortiz's involvement with it.  While his history and Mr. Carifi's history suggest that this is very likely the case, the only chance we had of finding out for sure is gone, lost to greed and partisanship.

     None of this is a smoking gun but there is some proof, though none of it would hold up in a court of law.  Fortunately this isn't a court of law, it's the court of public opinion, so the question that needs to be asked is: does it make more sense that a lifelong Republican who is known throughout his community as a man of integrity would break the law by coordinating his efforts with a Democratic SuperPAC or that a man once accused of fraud and known for his combative and dirty political tactics would team up with a man who has a history of getting people elected to municipal posts and using that leverage to get himself appointed to a lucrative position would use his contacts in the rival party to smear a primary opponent?  Who has more to gain from these dirty politics?  Like Mrs. Visakay said, follow the money.

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
     
      - Ronald Reagan
    

An open letter to Mr. Paul Mulshine, opinion writer for The Star Ledger, in response to his blog post My generation is kidding itself about Medicare:

Mulshie,

You can delete my comments from your post all you like, it doesn't make you right, and it won't stop me from publishing them elsewhere.

First of all, do us a favor: head over to "the Google" and look up Godwin's law. As usual, you have it wrong.

As for Medicare, I agree that it's broken, but the solution is not to hobble it and make it impotent. What you're kidding yourself about isn't Medicare, it's the delusion that the "free market" can solve anything. The fact is that Medicare is the largest health care provider in the US, as such they have immense negotiating power. Because of this, they pay pennies on the dollar for health care compared to what the average insured American under 65 does. A hospital may bill Medicare $100,000/ day for ICU care, Medicare only actually pays a few thousand. That's because Medicare has a full time staff that makes sure YOUR tax dollars aren't wasted; that the corporations running our hospitals are not charging Medicare $10 for an aspirin. 

If the US had a socialized medicine program similar to the UK or Canada, we could all benefit from such negotiations, not just curmudgeons like yourself. The fact is, the majority of people in the world are covered by some sort of socialized medicine. They get better health care than all but the wealthiest Americans and are happier for it. 

You, and the small minded internet trolls who love your "writing," continue to labor under the delusion that health care in the US is a "free market;" it is not. The free market is a fairy tale, invented by the wealthy in the 18th century to control the middle class. I seriously doubt you're wealthy enough to benefit from the perpetuation of this myth, so why don't you stop working against yourself and the majority of Americans and join the 20th century? The fact is, Medicare is the only group that has the power to negotiate with the mega corporations running our hospitals and as time goes on this will only become more true. 

I know you think that private businesses are better at handling, well, anything, than the government, but the reality is that health care is supposed to be about healing people, not about profiting on death and suffering. Corporate America has proven time and again that they only care about the bottom line. They've shown that bad corporate citizens can simply buy their way out of bad behavior, it doesn't matter how poorly they treat their customers because you and I have no actual choice. One corporation is no different from the next, and they all collude in keeping prices and services pretty much uniform. 

Government may be inefficient, but government, at least in this country, is still the people. They're accountable to us. Perhaps instead of playing to the lowest common denominator of internet trolls here on NJ.com, you should use your forum to promote intelligent discourse. Instead of encouraging and perpetuating the delusion that we're better off without socialized medicine, take a look at history and the rest of the world. It could just be possible they know something you don't. 

Before you go accusing me of not being on topic, let me sum up my comment here: you're complaining about Medicare paying so much for people who are "old." I'm saying you're working off of bad information: Medicare pays pennies on the dollar compared to what health care corporations bill and still less than private insurance does. I would provide links to back this up, but NJ.com (or you, I don't know) has deleted my previous comments with links, so I guess you're just going to have to find it on your own. I suggest you start with Stephen Brill's article in Time Magazine titled "A Bitter Pill." Please stop spreading misinformation and rhetoric, you're not helping anyone. 

Finally, I noticed your update about the Dying in America paper. Wow, you could not have missed the point of that paper more. That paper is about giving people the option and opportunity to die with dignity. It was about letting doctors inform terminally ill patients that they do not have to suffer and wither away, spending their last months or weeks in a hospital hooked up to machines and causing their loved ones immense grief. Do you know why this kindness is not legal in the United States? Because the mega corporations that run the hospitals in this country, not Medicare, petitioned the government to remove language permitting it from the Affordible Care Act because it would hurt their bottom line. That's right: the problem isn't Medicare, as you imply, it's the billion dollar corporations you think should be administering our health care. Did you read the paper? Maybe you should. 

Democrats Are Deluding Themselves About Obama's Impeachment

     The last few weeks have seen quite a bit of discussion about conservatives and their obsession with impeaching President Obama.  Most of it has centered around how "insane" it is and how the Republican establishment has distanced itself from such fractious and negative rhetoric, noting that Democrats have raised so much money that the tactic seems to be damaging the Republicans chances in the 2014 midterms.  One could say the right is crazy to be calling for impeachment proceedings since it backfired on them so horribly with the Clinton impeachment.   Did it really, though?

     Let's take a trip down memory lane, back to the halcyon days of 1998. The stock market was way up and climbing, unemployment was way down, the Republicans were still riding high on Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.  While the '96 election resulted in Clinton winning a second term and not much change in the Congress, the GOP was still ascendant and seemed to be capable of doing no wrong.  When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, it seemed as if they finally had some dirt on the President that would stick: the President had lied under oath, committing perjury, a felony that would have resulted in him being removed from office. 

     Gingrich and co. struck fast and struck hard: they impeached the President on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, which could result not just in his removal from office but 10 years in prison.  More than that, though, was the media blitz: 24 hour news channels carried near constant coverage, debate and analysis of the scandal.  It seemed to be all anyone talked about, and the more we learned, the more absurd the whole thing became.  What started with tapes of a White House intern discussing her relations with the President (made without her knowledge or consent) devolved into jokes about stains on blue dresses, debate over the definition of "is" and what exactly constitutes "sexual relations."  It was everything the news media could want: politics, sex, drama and enough legal mumbo jumbo to fill in the 23 1/2 hours a day they had after reporting on the actual news with analysts and pundits and talking heads to "explain" it all to us.  

      For the Republicans, it looked like another sure fire win: how could the American people hear that the President not only cheated on his wife in the Oval Office but then lied about it under oath and not turn against him and his party?  Come November, they were going to get a 2/3 majority in the House and Senate no problem.  Then nothing, not even an Al Gore Presidency, could stop them from carrying out their Contract With America. Except it backfired: people still supported the President, by about 2:1.  While the GOP didn't get creamed in the midterms, they didn't gain anything and in fact lost a few seats in the House.  Gingrich's grandstanding and attacks on the President were seen as mean; political manipulation instead of genuine outrage.  Besides, Clinton wasn't seen as doing anything that other Presidents didn't do (JFK, we're looking at you).  As far as most Americans were concerned, who cared what the President does with little Willy as long as the economy is chugging along?  Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr, apparently. 

     Now let's fast forward two years, when the Republican party nominated a man for the highest office in the land in what can only be the worst practical joke ever played.  I remember thinking to myself that George W. Bush could not be serious, that there is no way this man has been nominated to be President of the United States as anything other than a joke.  I mean, he could barely speak coherently.  The man ran an oil field at a loss for Christ's sake.  How the hell do you not make a profit with an oil company unless you're one of the most incompetent people in the world?  Yet here he was, a serious contender in the 2000 Presidential election.  

     Now, some people claim that Al Gore lost that election because he didn't take W. seriously enough.  They claim that he didn't campaign hard enough, that he distanced himself from Clinton when he should have used the President's charisma and relatively high poll numbers to boost himself.  It cannot be denied, however, that the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment circus cast a major shadow over the election.  Try as he might, Gore could never distance himself enough from the entire process to prevent W. from using the phrase "restore honor and dignity to the White House" as a rallying cry for conservative and religious voters.  People were so tired of the nonsense, the bad jokes and brain numbing debates about minutia and semantics that came to symbolize the ridiculousness both sides were willing to stoop to that they chose a man who was the literal opposite, almost out of spite.  Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, W. was a C student. Clinton was a moderate, W. was a puppet for a neo-con cabal.  Clinton worked with the world when it came to military measures, W. squandered the largest international support the US had had since WWII on carrying out a personal vendetta.  Clinton balanced the budget, W. left us farther in debt than we had been in 100 years. Clinton oversaw the largest economic expansion in the US since the 1950s, W. left us with higher unemployment and debt than any time since the 1930s. Talk about a really bad joke.

     So what does this have to do with Obama's impeachment?  Well, pundits are out there right now talking about how the whole thing has backfired on the GOP; how Americans are sick of the partisan politics and bickering in Congress and that they view this and Speaker Boehner's lawsuit as another Tea Party ploy to waste time and money on petty political nonsense instead of actually fixing things, and it is. The left wing media is predicting that it will affect the Republicans' chances in the midterm elections in November, and not in a good way.  Sure, antics like this might shore up support with the nut jobs and whackos who are still looking for Obama's birth certificate, but the GOP already had their vote.  This sort of thing won't help with moderates and Democrats who might be frustrated with Obama's administration but are more frustrated with Congress and it's lack of perspective.  Odds are, the more the right talks about suing and impeaching the President, the more it helps the Democrats come November.  But the GOP isn't looking at November.  They're looking to 2016.

     Assuming the GOP can generate the same kind of three ring circus for a lawsuit against President Obama they managed with President Clinton, this could potentially hurt whoever runs on the Democrat ticket in '16, especially if it's Hillary. It would only be a matter of time before we hear the accusations of "do you really want four more years of this? Remember what you got last time a Clinton was in office?"  In fact, they've already started, although barely a rumble now.  Make no mistake: the Republicans are playing a long game here, and the Democrats, as usual, are walking right into it, thinking they're so clever to turn the right's vitriol around on them.  If they're not careful, we're going to wind up with 4 years of another President Bush, or worse, President Christie.  

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Hello? Is anyone still here? Was anyone here to begin with?

Wow, so here's something I haven't done in a while.  I kind of fell into a black hole of Reddit for a minute (or 525949, give or take) there.  Arguing with people on the internet just seemed so important for some reason.  Here's what I take away from it:

1. People on the internet are assholes.  Anonymity breeds rudeness and anti-social behavior.  It's disgusting. 

2. I am an asshole.  Seriously.  I would get into these "discussions" and suddenly everyone else was a moron.  How could they not see that my comment was clearly the correct one, and anything else was just stupid? 

While Reddit seems like a great idea on paper, and maybe it was for about a half a second there in the beginning, all it does is promote narcissistic, anti-social behavior.  The people there are either so self-righteous they delude themselves into thinking the upvote they just gave to some post about the crisis du jour is making a difference in the world or they're the worst kind of internet trolls.  The idea of a news aggregating site that allows users to interact with not just the content but each other is fantastic.  It's like an online town hall meeting, where everyone gets a chance to voice their opinion and contribute to the conversation.  The problem comes from the fact that, unlike at a town hall meeting, the people voicing their opinions are not subject to the scrutiny and social stigma of having to do it in front of their friends, neighbors, family and, most importantly, clientele. 

In a town hall meeting, if a person gets up and makes a hate filled statement, or perpetuates yet another rumor or myth or ridiculous idea, they're likely going to be laughed out of the room, if not asked to leave.  At the very least, it will be known to all in attendance that this person is not quite right and maybe we shouldn't deal with them.  On the internet, this is not the case.  People like that can continue to agitate and instigate, often encouraging other like minded people to join in, until any hope of intelligent debate or conversation is lost.  On Reddit, they can even create their own little forums of hate; echo chambers filled with the same bad ideas repeated ad nauseum until the members hear it so often that it seems as if theirs are the only voices heard.  That's not conversation, it's insanity.  It's the guy in the mental ward who keeps repeating the same things over and over to himself until he becomes hysterical.

So I needed to get away from it.  Because it was making me into a bad person.  Sure, it was informative. I learned things.  But it was also degenerative.  I became lost in threads and arguments about inanity and pedantry.  I got angry about something some random person that I'll never meet said.  Why should I care?  If some 17 year old troll can get my goat like that, it's time to move on.  So maybe I'll come back to this.  Maybe I'll just let it go and find something productive to do with my time. 

It's snowing in NY right now. It's not sticking, but there is snow falling. It was almost 70 degrees last week, and its 35 now. So much for autumn, hope you enjoyed all three days of it.

Here we have it, the all time winner. From this point on, nothing the human race does on the internet will rival this website. That's right, a work poop calculator. I'm sure that when Charles Babbage laid out his plans for a computing device 180 years ago, it was so we could determine exactly how much money we were paid to poop at work. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the pinnacle of human achievement.