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Horsey’s Timely News Posts

News

Occhipinti charges park for Southwest shortchanged

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

Occhipinti for Council announces:

Talking Ed Note:  MSV is no longer getting press releases from Occhipinti for Council.  It actually began on Friday with their release and letter to the Attorney General complaining about a “bounty” for names of vote by mail applicants.  Looks like the same over at the Hoboken Journal as well.  MSV derided that release noting that’s public information.  The attempt to derail Operation Bounty has failed.  The bounty has been doubled. Read More...

News

Union City Mayor Brian Stack visits the Hoboken ‘playground’

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading
Mayor/Senator Stack parachuted into Hoboken yesterday

Yesterday Union City Mayor Brian Stack reached out to touch Hoboken.  He came down the big ole hill from Union City and said he wants to make friends with some of Hoboken’s residents in the Hoboken Housing Authority.  He didn’t tell anyone at City Hall he was coming.  Normal etiquette would suggest one mayor holding a public event in their town would do so.

Can you name a few reasons why a dual job holding elected official would want to visit Hoboken’s HHA community two weeks before an election? Read More...

News

Tim Occhipinti runs an errand

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

Back when Tim Occhipinti truly ran as an independent for City Council in 2009, he watched as the race around him motored ahead without him when the results came in.  He then found the appeal of Peter Cammarano to be too strong and backed him in the runoff for mayor.

After the election, Occhipinti grew closer to Cammarano and joined his team acting as official notetaker at City Council meetings.  (Since a mayor should be watching city council meetings himself, it’s unclear why Cammarano would need Tim to do so but I digress.) Read More...

News

Lenz for Council announces the 14 day sprint

by SmartyJones2 Min Reading
=&0=&


There is only 14 DAYS until Election Day and I need your help to get through the finish line on November 2nd. I’m running for city council to continue my work to lower taxes, fight overdevelopment, end flooding, and bring a park to the 4th Ward. I will win or lose based on who shows up to vote. Too many of your friends and neighbors don’t know who is who, or why they should care. Please help get them information and get them out to vote! 

You could: 

1. Put up a sign in your window. Respond to this email with your address and we will get you a couple window signs delivered to your home or business.
2. Host a “meet and greet” to let your friends and neighbors talk hear more about our campaign. No room? Call the 201-588-5369, and we’ll find a place to get your friends together.
3. Volunteer to work part of Election Day or the weekend before, handing out literature and reminding people to vote. Be a familiar face in front of your building, making sure people make their voice heard!
4. Wear a campaign button as you walk around the fourth ward. Pick up yours at Campaign HQ (60 Madison St.)
5. Talk to your friends, acquaintances, or even the person waiting in line with you. Make sure they know there is an election coming.
6. Forward “LenzForCouncil” e-mails to your friends–it is more credible, coming from you.
7. Join our facebook fan page and invite your friends to join as well (www.facebook.com/lenzforcouncil)

If you can donate to the campaign as well, that’s great and we promise to put your contribution to good use, but first and foremost we need to hear your voice. 

Contact the campaign office at lenzforcouncil@gmail.com or call 201-588-5369 to get more involved in these, or other activities. 

Thanks for your help, now and in the past. 

Mike Lenz Read More...

News

Operation Bounty responds to attack and pledges by doubling its reward to $2,000

by SmartyJones3 Min Reading
@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }@font-face { font-family: "ArialMT"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Last Friday, the vying campaigns for the 4th ward special election voiced concerns to the State Attorney General on actions detrimental to free and fair elections.  With the November 2nd special election two weeks away, both the Hoboken Journal and Mile Square View share misgivings about actions potentially disenfranchising both the 4th ward vote and similarly its impact on all of Hoboken.   “Operation Bounty*” a plan to take vote by mail/absentee ballot fraud head on with a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any individual disenfranchising the vote using vote by mail/absentee ballots in the Hoboken special election is obviously creating a backlash in certain quarters where fair elections are apparently not the goal. The Hoboken Journal and Mile Square View have been hopeful for a clean election in November but now it’s become clear, our efforts along with the citizens of Hoboken supporting fair and legal elections are being targeted as a threat to legitimate voters. We do understand that vote by mail is designed to potentially increase voter turnout as per Common Cause but we would like to point out that the intent of vote by mail actually means voting by mail and not by messenger where the delivery of the ballot can’t be guaranteed or the potential for it being compromised is increased. We fail to see the need to have “couriers” in most cases deliver ballots by hand when the postal system is more than capable of delivering people’s votes to the Board of Elections to be properly tallied.  Although the goal is clear to any objective observer who wishes to see Hoboken enter the 21st century with clean standards in its electoral process, others are seeking to misinform residents and the Attorney General that supporters of Operation Bounty are looking to pay for names of vote by mail applicants. This is clearly erroneous in both judgment and fact.  Details of applications for vote by mail are readily available to anyone from the Hudson County Board of Elections.  Backing the Hoboken community for clean and fair elections and one that carries such importance as this one requires an appropriate response.  With the additional recent pledges of support from Hoboken citizens, Operation Bounty is proud to now double the reward to $2,000. =&2=&
News

About das debate and Hoboken’s face of hate

by SmartyJones11 Min Reading

MILE SQUARE VIEW EXCLUSIVE FEATURE




Attending the debate Wednesday was an eye opening experience.  But not in the normal way one expects in going to see candidates go mano a mano in a group press conference.  That’s what this really is, a group press conference where each side tells the viewer their position or the semblance of one to the audience and cameras.


This “debate” did not even include a 30 second rebuttal option.  On background the Occhipinti camp says the format was sent to them that way.  It may have been more helpful for Tim Occhipinti in retrospect if that was the case.  But in the end, none of that mattered. This was about as big a mismatch of a “debate” as one might ever see.

Let’s break down the elements of the debate: delivery, substance and impact with a final overall performance score.  You can measure these “discussions” in any number of ways but that’s the approach here.

Overall Performance: scored on a 0-100 scale.
Mike Lenz gets an overall grade of 91







There’s actually one more item to score:
Tim Occhipinti’s binder – which earns a solid 60

Now why is Occhipinti’s binder getting a score?  Well outside of the complete lack of coherence to Occhipinti’s presentation, and it was pretty awful on numerous levels: pitch, tone, pace, content, authenticity – the binder thought to be just notes was actually far more than that.

Here’s a better look for those of you who just won’t believe it without seeing it:
Occhipinti’s binder included tabs for many topics and was a spoon fed word for word recitation for a speech like in a City Council meeting.  Who would type up something like this?  Who would have time to?
Occhipinti’s binder must have been a couple of dozen pages.  From the photo above, you can see all the tabs and the typed words on the page even had bolded sections for him to recite the prepackaged lines easier than others.  MSV blew the page up and could read almost the all of it.

Here’s some segments of the spoon fed lines:

Top of the page, in bold: Mike Lenz you are the budget and finance chairman.  We have a huge surplus…
Middle in bold:  My opponent doesn’t cut taxes, he cuts deals to get him on the public payroll. It’s time for an independent….
Bottom portion of page: We’ve got a huge tax increase from Hudson County.  (Unclear) says nothing because he can’t.    
Headline: “Taxes are not going down.”  Now this one is interesting and what in poker you can call a tell, a tip off in the game.  This is a sensitive subject but not in the way Tim Occhipinti thinks.  For those who followed the November mayoral election, the last week leading in was a roller coaster.  MSV had interviewed the fiscal state monitor, Judy Tripodi before the election.  In her first ever interview in Hoboken on policy, she requested the truth be told of a tax decrease budgeted and asked MSV to do so.  Surprised at this good fortune (unbeknownst to us, the fiscal state monitor was an MSV reader), our impormptu interview and exclusive story was quickly followed by others: and the Hudson Reporter and Hoboken Now confirmed the basic fact of the MSV story – a scheduled tax reduction was in the budget for 2010.  
Just as the truth was getting out, Councilwoman Beth Mason had already committed to a media plan telling voters then Acting Mayor, Dawn Zimmer was in fact planning a 15% tax increase.  What 15% tax increase you ask?  Hey this is Beth Mason we’re talking about.
The results of the Tripodi interview and the other publications that followed created a zeitgeist of truth Beth Mason’s halfway to a million spending to obtain a job paying $115K couldn’t overcome.  Hoboken411 who targeted the fiscal state monitor earlier in their typical hatchet job fashion toed the line in complete lockstep the Mason party line and avoided mentioning the truth to no avail leading into the election. The result: Mason came in a distant second vying with Frank Raia in a battle for second and third.
So even though the Occhipinti campaign will probably deny it, there’s too much of the Mason party line coming out of that binder, word for word to be incidental, let alone “independent.”  Hoboken political observers know the pathology of that voice well.  It actually doesn’t suit Tim, but his coach could care less and he was sitting right in the front row in front of his plebe.  Hey, here’s the flotsam and jetsam Tim, just parrot what coach writes…
Lane Bajardi, ubermensch Beth Mason confidant sets his sights on Mike Lenz at the debate.  His video efforts the last two times out, (the police press conference being the other) have all come to naught as the “news” doesn’t fit the propaganda requirements at Hoboken411.  Occhipinti is his latest pet project when not ghostwriting for Hoboken411.
The typed pages in the binder were textbook positions chock full of the usual venom and hatred from Lane Bajardi and the Beth Mason party line of other worldly Hoboken reality.  From the $20 million surplus lie to the false accusation of Hoboken Zoning Board seats being available for a $1,000 political donation, Occhipinti dutifully rattled off numerous positions Lane Bajardi has previously mouthed in his relentless monotone of conspiracies in City Council meetings. 
The problem is, to the uninitiated Bajardi can make them sound plausible, if in nothing but his legato rate of enunciating half-truths, distortions and out and out lies.  But unfortunately his hatred for all things Zimmer is almost always over the top.  He’s been overheard in City Council recently muttering them to himself, the hatred oozing from his pores.  But where do his revenge fantasies originate?
Some who have crossed paths earlier with the notorious Hoboken411 minion point to his and other Masonite supporters approach to then Council candidate Dawn Zimmer in 2007.  She was asked to let them run her campaign and play junior supporter to a Beth Mason dynasty.  After Zimmer  declined, funding and defining her own policy objectives, the jihad has been in overdrive ever since.   Zimmer’s battles against former councilman Chris Campos are now the stuff of legend, but when Councilwoman Zimmer finally took her seat, she found a hostile Beth Mason awaiting with an invitation to have her third and final winning election “investigated.”  Beth Mason’s stated self-investigation of street money in her mayoral bid last year as told to the Hudson Reporter is still unknown.  (Why doesn’t the Hudson Reporter follow up on their own story?)
So in listening to Tim Occhipinti feign mock anger in his best Lame voice, the audience hearing him for the first time had to wonder, how is this going over? Well not too well.  Reviewing the video feed sent out live over the internet has proven to be a worse disaster than watching the performance live.  But this is a fourth ward election and nothing is conclusive when it’s issues versus the machine’s political syndicate. 

If it was any other ward in Hoboken, Occhipinti could start emptying the office and save a few dollars for some of his backers, but there’s a confidence among his campaign supporters that the Peter Cammarano locked in vote will stick with Occhipinti no matter what, issues and his competence at the debate be damned. Heck when Cammarano comes out of jail, they will happily pull the lever for him too, as long as the wheels are greased.


The biggest problem for Occhipinti: his poor anger management imitation just wasn’t credible.  Now in Bajardi’s case, it’s 100% absolutely genuine and no lie goes too far or is over the top if it feeds his revenge fantasies against Mayor Zimmer who dared spurn his purple pillowless queen without a crown, Beth Mason.  Even worse, Zimmer resoundingly delivered a thumping not once but twice in the span of last year’s mayoral races while even being outspent five to one!

At the recent special council meeting, when the subject of how much is the current cost to the city on the Municipal Garage arose, going from the lease amount of $100,000 to a low cost bonded ownership (now estimated at $20,000 monthly) Bajardi muttered aloud: $25.5 million to no one in particular.  Hoboken411 just published that lie yet again yesterday as a freebie attached to their never ending series of we hate Mike Lenz historical tributes.   

Unfortunately for Tim Occhipinti, only true hatred communicates authentically via camera.  If you want to practice Tim, here’s the true face of hate you’re after: 
Face of hate: Lane Bajardi at a recent City Council meeting.  Although unemployed, he’s adopted a revenge fantasy against Mayor Zimmer as a full time job.  The Occhipinti campaign being the latest means to that end would hand the mayor’s council majority to Councilman Mike Russo who backs Tim Occhipinti.  
So if you take the final score in the debate last Wednesday, Mike Lenz comes in at 91 and Tim Occhipinti a 60 since we’re sure he’d prefer his Bajardi binder score over his own performance of 25.  

Here’s some highs and lows for each of the candidates:

Mike Lenz – High point: answering a question on middle income housing.  Tore the roof off with this one saying there should be an income means test at Church Towers and Marine View in order to encourage openings for new, eligible members like young officers on the Hoboken Police Force.  It pointedly highlighted the Russo-Mason alliance and its corruptive, corrosive affect on middle income housing.  Low point: not clearly detailing his choice on accepting the city’s health benefits versus his full time job.  (All City Council members have the option to do so.)

Tim Occhipinti: High point: declining the option to take health benefits if he gets elected as fourth ward councilman.  (He missed a better opportunity in not saying he would present a resolution eliminating health benefits to ALL Council members if elected.  But then again, his supporter Councilman Mike Russo wouldn’t like that.  That would however be at least one independent position.)  Low point: his overall vindictive barbs.  The one where he accused Mile Lenz of selling Hoboken Zoning seats for $1,000 each even made his own supporters groan out loud.  Sitting in the audience was one Zoning Board member and she’s not given a nickel in donations to anyone.  

Being that Occhipinti was recruited to speak on behalf of ex-mayor Peter Cammarano on his centralized powers to appoint Hoboken Zoning Board members right before his arrest, one would expect he’d handle this area with radioactive gloves.  No doubt the vitriol lessons from coach Bajardi infected him.  In the end however, the candidate is always responsible for the choices made in his name, whether it’s a debate or in expenditures, re: street money.

Occhipinti didn’t exhibit even a bare understanding of local issues.  Even on the newly introduced Western Edge plan, although he appeared before the City Counil on that very topic, he declined to even try.  Would it be a farfetched guess to say there was a tab missing on the subject in his spoon fed binder of typed Bajardi style fabricated speeches?  Occhipinti said he would prefer to discuss a redevelopment plan in the fourth ward.  

Did anyone tell this guy Council members vote on issue across the city?  

Talking Ed Note: For those who didn’t see it, the debate video will be left up on the right side of the website until the election.  Hoboken411 had led readers to believe it would do similarly but Perry Klaussen pulled the plug and voila, the debate now doesn’t exist.  He must have gotten the heads up from the minion things didn’t go well.  

Nothing is more telling in Occhipinti’s performance than the fact they can’t even edit something to mislead readers, a Hoboken411 specialty.  Instead it’s been an onslaught of we hate Mike Lenz and the progress of Hoboken under Mayor Zimmer 24×7.

Typical Mason propaganda – Hoboken411 mentioned the debate going in but has ignored its existence since.  Instead, the Hoboken411 minion has come up with some old manufactured items to replace the reality of the present.  There’s no examination of the voting record of Mike Lenz vs Beth Mason on the council.  Tim Occhipinti’s positions would better reflect that examination.

Lane Bajardi has rejected the reform movement entirely for new loves: Michellle five bucks-a-tow Russo along with an unquenchable anger and unrelenting quest for power.  His colleague in hate, Perry Klaussen was seen recently in an embrace with Councilman Mike Russo in a rare public appearance. And that’s how the boys of hate at Hoboken411 roll. Read More...

News

Board of Ed Meeting tonight

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

PUBLIC NOTICE
HOBOKEN BOARD OF EDUCATION
SPECIAL MEETING

DATES AND TIMES: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 6:00 p.m.

LOCATION: Hoboken Board of Education Meeting Room
1115 Clinton Street
Hoboken, New Jersey 07030

AGENDA

1. Conducting final interviews with prospective candidates for the position of Hoboken Superintendent of Schools.

Please note: After the opening of the public meeting, the Board will immediately go into Closed Executive Session to conduct the interviews.

Closed Executive Sessions are closed to the public.

No formal action will be taken at any of the above meetings.

Published by order of the Board of
Education of the School District of the City
of Hoboken.

Robert H. Davis
 Read More...

News

Tim Occhipinti's unintended debate revelation – 'street money time is back!'

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading
MILE SQUARE VIEW EXCLUSIVE SPECIAL FEATURE

With the Hudson County Board of Elections confirming there are more than several hundred vote by mail ballots mailed to fourth ward residents, the integrity of the fourth ward special election on November 2nd is officially at stake. On Friday the Occhipinti for Council campaign made charges of voter intimidation against the Lenz for Council campaign and included a letter to the State Attorney General pointedly complaining of “bounties” by “blogs” for the names of vote by mail voters. Read More...

News

Congressional Candidate Henrietta Dwyer – ‘Albio what are you afraid of a little debate?’

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading
Henrietta Dwyer for the US Congress announces:
This last week I directed my volunteer staff to reach out to the Sires campaign to schedule a debate, so that the voters of the 13th

Congressional District could hear both of our positions on the issues facing us in this important election.  Regrettably, Mr. Sires indicated that he has a full schedule.  A schedule so full, even though congress is in recess, that there is not even one hour available for a debate. My opponent is too busy to discuss his positions on the issues before the people he pretends to want to represent.  This practice of dodging and evading his constituents was on full display during the recent health care debate when he refused to hold even one town hall meeting to explain his position on the legislation.  We are used to the Congressman holding the views of his constituents as an afterthought so we were not surprised when we he declined our invitation.  On the other hand, with the record Washington has produced this last term, perhaps he’s just hiding. Read More...