Tuesday, 23 June 2009 from 4-5:00 pm
at Johnson Memorial Park, Hackensack, NJ
Map address: 490 River Street, Hackensack, NJ.
(corner of River Street and Cedar Lane/E. Anderson Street)
Both New Jersey senators, Bob Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, support the DREAM Act but as of today only two (Rush Holt and Steve Rothman) of New Jersey’s 13 Congressmen plan to vote for it.
The DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) is bipartisan legislation that will provide children raised in the United States, whom are high school graduates but not legal residents, the right to become legal US residents if they earn a college associate’s degree or serve in the military. The DREAM Act will give undocumented students with good civic records the chance to acquire the education, skills and legal status they need to be fully participating and productive members of American society.
This is a fascinating view of civics and the political process. Also a fundamental reminder that people’s hearts rule their actions.
Democrats have held the Senate majority in New York State since November. Yesterday, on June 9, two Democrats announced they will, “caucus with the GOP (Republicans),” and now Republicans assert that they own control of the senate and have replaced the Democratic majority leader Malcolm A. Smith, with their own man, Republican Dean G. Skelos. The Dems are challenging this political maneuver, calling it illegal.
My sons and I are really interested to know whether this maneuver is in fact, going to be proved illegal. It certainly seems to me like it ought to be. I mean, look, how does a Democrat side with Republicans over an issue and suddenly, that Democrat is considered to be a Republican for the purpose of counting how many senators are in each party? This doesn’t make sense to me, but that doesn’t mean the Republicans won’t win. Our legal and justice system can be confounding at times.
What’s all the hullabaloo about? Gay marriage. townhall.com says, “the takeover apparently had nothing to do with the issue (of gay marriage). In my opinion, the gay marriage issue may simply be the smokescreen used by the Republicans to initiate one more manipulation of American law to take advantage of technical loopholes that allows them to defeat the intended purpose of our laws. It would better if Republicans would carry out their campaigns in the clear light of day and acquire their political power through the election process – the fair and clean way.
It seems a lot of people don’t know that public school students in New Jersey have the option to take off certain Jewish holidays as “excused religious absences”. Meaning that the absence is noted but does not count against the cumulative totals of absences allowed to each student during a school year.
A new Hip Hop Rock Musical
April 16 thru May 3, VFW Theatre, Asbury Park
Music by Ian Williams / Book & Lyrics by Aaron Jafferis / Directed by Carlos Armesto !
Order tickets online at www.ReVisionTheatre.org or call 732-455-3059
DISCOUNT TICKETS
For special price of only $15, use code KIMI when ordering
I’ll be at the show on May 2nd. Let me know if you’re coming that night.
Inspired by the true stories of current and former Latin Kings, KINGDOM follows the journey of two kids from “the barrio” who want to belong – and the power struggle that tears the two friends apart. Andres and Juan are tired of being stepped on, abandoned, and poor. Juan is homeless, they’re both jobless, and no one will help them – so they decide to help themselves.
They meet up with leaders of an underground organization that says it supports young Latinos: the Almighty Latin King & Queen Nation. Andres and Juan join the Nation, and their lives immediately change forever. What they learn is that gangs don’t help young people build lives – they destroy them.
The Newark Museum is celebrating its centennial April 22-26 2009 with programs, performances and dance. All free, for 100 hours Wednesday through Sunday.
If you haven’t been to this gem of an educational and art venue, now’s a good time to go. On site parking for a modest fee, beautiful building.
For more information, call 973-596-6550 or visit http://www.newarkmuseum.org/Centennial100Hours.html
Our friend Steve Cohn is an avant garde jazz artist who does really brilliant, leading edge work, sometimes right here in the New York City region. In 2007 he was in Amsterdam for a fusion performance called Mo(ve)ment Meets Musicians. My son and I just watched a video clip of the performance and love what we saw.
While Steve played Piano and Shakuhachi and Ernst Resijseger played Cello (sometimes holding it like a guitar), Benno Hübner danced. And on the wall behind them a super-large screen projects the work of two painters who are live on the scene painting while the performance takes place (Tali Farchi and Royce Deans).
You have to see it for yourself. Words are inadequate. It’s a tasty visual delight. I only wish Steve had told me about it sooner, but creative types’ sense of time doesn’t always work linearly.
My son Jorge commented, “The lady is painting according to how the music goes. That’s deep.” And he’s totally right.
One of the people whose opinions on current issues I always find compelling, is Phil Greenspun. Phil’s not afraid to look an issue in the mouth and tell us what the issue looks like to his informed eye, even if everyone else is calling it a non-issue or a gobydoggle. His insights are compelling because they’re reasoned with logic and are based on simple, verifiable facts. In a blog post yesterday Phil said
AIG has been in the news again, this time for bleeding taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars to pay employee bonuses for a job well done in 2008. Most egregiously, the very division that bankrupted the company is sucking down $165 million in 2008 bonus. Is there some sort of contract that would require the company to pay these bonuses? The company essentially went bankrupt in the fall of 2008, though the U.S. governnment tried to avoid the actual word “bankruptcy”. When a company goes bankrupt, it doesn’t pay most of its obligations under old contracts and certainly does not pay bonuses to the employees who ran it into the ground (not for moral reasons but simply because it no longer has the cash).
From the book Stuff White People Like by a guy who became famous by mistake and says in his Authors@Google interview, “I’m a bigger jerk now than I ever was.” Christian Lander says lots more in his wickedly funny book and blog.
Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!
After acquiring a Masters Degree that will not increase their salary or hiring desirability, many white people will move on to a PhD program where they will go after their dream of becoming a professor. However, by their second year they usually wake up with a hangover and realize: “I’m going to spend six years in graduate school to make $35,000 and live in the middle of nowhere?”
After this crisis, a white person will follow one of two paths. The first involves dropping out and moving to New York, San Francisco or their original home town where they can resume the job that they left to attend graduate school. . . .
The second path involves becoming a professor, moving to a small town and telling everyone how they are awful and uncultured.
TracFone Wireless launches SafeLink Wireless in New York, making cellphone use free to low-income families eligible for the Lifeline utilities program. Lifeline is a U.S. government supported program for income eligible families that ensures telephone service is available and affordable.
The service will provide eligible households a free cell phone, mobile access to emergency services and free 68 minutes of air time, monthly for a one year term which the customer can apply to extend the following year. The free cell phone offers all of the convenient features customers want in a phone: voicemail, text, call waiting, international calling to over 60 destinations and caller ID.
The program is currently available in several states (unfortunately, not New Jersey). New York residents can apply here.
Hyundai promises to pay your car note for three months if you, “lose your income”. They let you return it if you can’t work things out within that time frame. You can make the return without messing up your credit, having a balance to pay or suffering other penalties.
CNN reports on the program in depth and quotes Hyundai’s US Marketing VP Joel Ewanick as saying
“With no extra charge to the sticker price, the program pays the difference between the car’s trade-in value at the time the owner files a claim and any remaining balance on the loan up to a maximum of $7,500.”
There’s a conversation about this going on at ridelust.com. Feel free to post a comment here too if you like.
