Conundrum

A Public Referendum on The Governor

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:59:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

A referendum for gay marriage?!? That’s not leadership, Governor. New Jersey is your testing ground. The decisions that you make here will ultimately prove your mettle when the country considers you for the Presidency.

This is a republic, not a direct democracy. Referendums make for bad laws (we don’t want to end up like California, do we?). We have faith in our elected leaders that they will implement laws reflecting our intent. We pay them a lot of money to do so.

Governor, you are our leader. Your judgment of morality should trump even the laws that we implement. If you deem it necessary, save us from ourselves. We look to you to shine the light of morality for us in our own homes. We look to measure where you place the goalposts of morality.

Please don’t send us mixed messages. On one hand, you say that it is okay for a gay man to sit on the Supreme Court, where he very much could have influence over our lives. On the other hand, when it comes to gay marriage, you seem to be against it where it would have no immediate effect on our own lives, but for political purposes, you do not want to stand up against it, so you demure and try to throw it to referendum for The People to decide. You evade the opportunity to lead us due to fear of the political implications of doing the right thing in your heart. How Obamaesque of you. We expected more of you.

We remember fondly that President Lincoln was skittish about freeing the slaves. “I dunno,” he said, in his lumbering voice. “Emancipation is such a big change. The negroes have been slaves for hundreds of years. Maybe we should put it to the voters.” Eventually, President Lincoln realized that he was put into office to lead and chose to proclaim emancipation. Governor Christie, you will have incredible powers as President.

We ill expect for Coach Coughlin to look to the stands to ask the fans if the Giants should kick or go for it on fourth down in the Super Bowl. He was placed as head coach to take all of his knowledge and instinct and make a decision. The People want to see your sense of leadership, your sense of Compassion, and your sense of how the system should work… and they want to see you make the right call under all of that pressure of 68,000 screaming fans and the eyes of the world watching.

Governor, we look to you as our leader. We have full faith that our Legislature reflects the will of the People. When The People so petition their government for redress, we see no need for a government that needlessly makes life more difficult for them. Do not make this fundamental right into a bureaucratic nightmare and make people go stand on another line. We have full faith that you will lead us in the right direction, even over and above the will of The People if necessary. If you feel that being gay is evil, please withdraw your nomination of Bruce Harris and defend the traditional morals of marriage by vetoing the Marriage Equality bill. There is a whole Santorum wing of our Grand Old Party that would love for you to go that way. Tell us why it is a bad idea to stop treating gays like plain-bellied Sneetches. Let us into your thinking. Don’t let us hurt ourselves. Of course, on the flip side, if Mr. Harris is able to sit on the Supreme Court without his gay agenda negatively affecting us, then we imagine that his gay marriage would not negatively affect our heterosexual marriages either. Then maybe we could learn to forgive for past transgressions. Maybe we could learn to live as neighbors, raising our children in the same towns, in the same school districts, together in peace. We imagine that those lessons could be carried well in your foreign policies as President. But we are really lost without your firm leadership.

The problem of the gays is not going away, Governor. Explain to us your solution. We need direction from you, Governor. If you are against marriage equality, stand up and speak your mind. Help us save ourselves from ourselves. Otherwise, let the will of The People be spoken through their Legislature. When you run for the Presidency, people will be judging you on your ability to make decisions on the fly based on instinct. You won’t have the opportunity to seek a referendum on the big issues. This is your proving ground, here in New Jersey. Give us your best stuff. Don’t go all weak on us when like President Obama would when faced with a difficult decision. The People of the country are looking for more solid leadership.

We have faith in you that you will lead us in the right direction. We have faith in you, Governor, to do the right thing. No referendum is necessary.

Lead us to morality, then let’s end this continuing and ridiculous argument about marriage equality and move on with a Conservative agenda of a smaller, more-effective government. We beg of you.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

State of the State II

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:29:00 +0000

Dear Senator Codey, Assemblyman McKeon, and Assemblywoman Jasey:

My name is Justin Escher Alpert. I lived New York City and married a nice girl from New Jersey and found myself with a wife and family living in a modest home out in the suburbs in Livingston. I’m a father, husband, attorney, snowboarder, guitarist, writer, artist, athlete and general seeker of God’s greater meaning.

It was two years after the collapse of the economy, which was caused in part by us attorneys who drafted the documents that were so complex so as to not be understandable, and by Democrats and Republicans together, who had created a completely morally corrupt banking system. Capitalism failed because it began to incentivize size over function and relationships and “too big to fail” became a goal (but Capitalism still, notably, is the best system we have come up with to date). A little bit dejected by the whole thing, I had taken a look at the passage of the Compassionate Use Act, and said to myself, “Well, darn. Working with marijuana. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

I had been out to Colorado and had seen some of their dispensaries and was really impressed. You walk into a really nice room that looks like the lobby of a health club and in a back room is this glass case and there are glass gallon jars full of vibrantly colored fresh marijuana buds. And the patients looked like, well, they looked like all of the people from about town... nurses, doctors, business owners, bankers, teachers, mail carriers, paraplegics, veterans, college students, police officers, and senior citizens, alike.

I was first around marijuana at a Rolling Stones concert back in high school and had found through most of my life, in college, in the film industry, in law school, at major law firms, across businesses, that pretty much everybody else smoked or used to smoke and had nothing against it morally. And nobody knew where it came from. Nobody had a good connection. And either you had some, or you didn’t have some. And that was the life that most of us lived around marijuana.

And there, in the glass case, in the room, in a storefront, in the state, in the law, there was a new business plan. And it was honest. It created supply to meet demand. And while its participants may have been more tattooed or pierced than us, it was pretty clean-cut. And the science behind it was pretty intriguing.

So, seeing the new legitimacy of the Medical Marijuana industry in the Garden State, and looking to make life fun again, I jumped at the opportunity to participate. I am an attorney for start-up business and I thought that all of these start-up Alternative Treatment Centers now authorized under the law would need an attorney to help them with their operating agreements and leases and employment agreements and HIPAA compliance, and I thought I could make the practice of law fun again, something more than splicing tranches on a computer screen.

I never imagined that two years later, there would be nothing.

The Governor had delayed implementation of the law. He had issued unconstitutional regulations that were against the letter of the law, against the spirit of the law, and against the will of the People. Commissioners resigned. Both houses of the Legislature rebuked the regulations. The logistical flaws were pointed out. And it turns out that a law with an 83% approval rating has found only one town that wants one of the Governor’s Frankenstein behemoth ATCs in their back yard. I am a supporter of Medical Marijuana and I am not sure that I want one of these high security mega-plexes on Livingston Avenue. Of course, we know that there isn’t much violence associated with marijuana and the need for highly-secured facilities would only really be there if supply never met demand. The law was designed for neighborhood stores, somewhat of a cross between really nice local wine store where the owners’ daughter goes to school with your daughter, and a medical office offering therapeutic services.

I had taken out a few small ads to help people with formation of their ATCs and had spoken with hundreds of people from across the state… nurses, doctors, business owners, bankers, teachers, mail carriers, paraplegics, veterans, college students, police officers, senior citizens… and they all wanted to place their life savings at risk for something that they believed in and was now, in fact, the law (and it is funny how everyone had friends and family who wanted to invest in this sure thing). And the only real requirement from a business point of view was that the first six had to be not-for-profit.

When it became apparent on the first issuance of the regulations that Governor Christie had no intent of actually effecting this law, I first met the patients and advocates. I had put my reputation on the line for what was already the law. The patients and advocates were the people who long before the law was passed had the fortitude to be honest and stand up in their communities and say, “It is wrong to place people in jail for marijuana use.” These people have amongst them the most moral, compassionate, warm hearted people whom I have ever met. And they were not backed by industry money, but they threaded a pass of the Compassionate Use Act into law only by the honesty of their arguments.

And they were counted out of their law in the Garden State. Democracy had failed them.

Really interesting dynamic group of people. All from regular walks of life, Democrats and Republicans, who have experienced some of the great pains and joys of life, who may never have done everything perfectly but had the guts to be honest with themselves and with their communities. When I saw them, and I saw them being taken advantage of by a Republican, I saw the dark side of my party. This side that waves the flag of liberty, but keeps illegal immigrants in for-profit jails. The side that believes in free markets until you are too big to fail. The side that thumps its bathroom stall door against immorality.

And my party was supposed to be the one that was for entrepreneurship… for finding demand and meeting it. And either every scientist and editorial writer in the country is secretly a stoner or there is genuine validity for the science and moralities behind the arguments (though, there is a small chance that both theses are true). And the funny thing that I had found as I reached out across the vast sea of marijuana culture, was that many of these folks actually agreed with the core principles of my Republican Party of Liberty and smaller-less intrusive government. They are people who actually do and would vote Republican. I figured that I could do my part as an activist and as a fairly Conservative life-long Republican to convince my Republican governor that he is going about this wrong, against the basis of our principles, and maybe in the process help the gay folks in this state, who are also living in this limbo where the government is the last member of the community to accept them and are facing similar issues of irrational institutionalized fear.

You know, when I saw that Governor McGreevey was at the State of the State yesterday and heard that the Governor had “a surprise,” I really had faith that the Governor was going to announce that it was time for gays to have full equality in the Garden State. I thought his heart was going to grow three sizes that day. I thought that this darkness that had plagued the Party of Lincoln was going to be ended by our Governor. It was the third time in my life that I had ever been disappointed when I placed complete faith in another person, but it has not shaken my faith in humanity.

I believe that we are capable of getting over hatred. I believe that Americans are capable of leading the way. I believe that we here in New Jersey have the capability of making the opportunity for the Pursuit of Happiness equal for all of its residents.

It has now been two years of bureaucracy and nonsense when it comes to the Compassionate Use Act. Government has failed the patients and advocates. And they continue to be arrested. And even the well-connected folks who received their “accepted but not really accepted acceptance letters” for their six ATCs, they are frustrated at a system which has been a black hole of money for them and only promises to continue to be a black hole if they have to operate under the draconian rules for a very long time and compete against more-effective and less expensive Medicinal Marijuana from that mysterious market where everyone has it but no one knows where to get it. They are also caught in the Governors limbo.

I had already put my reputation on the line, coming out for Medicinal Marijuana, even if it was after the law was passed. It was a legitimate industry that I would have liked to have been involved with.

My life is too pockmarked for me to ever really make it very far in Government, but I thought in my heart that I could have a role in changing it for the better. You know, out in California, they are trying to get a law to treat marijuana like wine, meanwhile, in New Jersey, we see heavy industry money moving to change the laws with respect to liquor and gambling and plastic surgery. It became very hard for Government to define morality. Nonetheless, the Cannabis Culture is alive and well across the Garden State, and across every other culture and profession. The CHAMPS Trade Show is coming back to Atlantic City in May, where you will find some of today’s most brilliant craftsman and artisans. There are a lot of good, decent people who are working in this industry. And they have children and morals, and equal rights to define their lives. And it looks like the last people to accept the industry are in the government. Same problem as the gays. So much for leadership.

And you know what the funny thing is? Governor Christie did this whole thing to prevent doctor shopping, and with a program that is so stringent that only 110 doctors in the state signed up, he is causing just that. And a law that was supposed to remove criminality would force a cramp down on the market just to keep the “legitimate” six ATCs in operations. The entirety of the regulations goes against the letter of the law, the intent of the law, the will of the Legislature, and the will of the People.

My faith is not shaken that at some point, some true leader will rise to power and declare the Culture War (including, but not limited to the War on Drugs and the War on Gays) to be over, and set an example for others across the world that they may choose to live in peace by being open to new ideas, forgiving for past transgressions, and fixing corruption as it arises.

But I’m done. I am out of will power and I am out of money. I have to move on with my life. It is my job to help people start companies and get the engine moving again. I may never have the kind of opportunities that Governor Christie has to exercise power and correct injustices in the world. It must really be some awesome life. But I can rest knowing that the Governor may never stand on stage in a rock n’ roll band playing guitar to 300 screaming people. It’s the twists and turns in life that make it interesting. If we are honest with ourselves, it can be one amazing ride. I welcome you to come and hang out and drink with my suburban parent friends when my Band, The Stiff Joints (www.thestifjoints.com) plays at The Ringside Pub in Caldwell on March 3 at 9pm. If I have learned anything in the past two years, and in starting a mid-life crisis band, and at being at the forefront of the modern civil rights movement, it is to teach my children to be honest with themselves and to never quit seeking out new experiences and interesting and open people, and that if you love unconditionally, you will find love back. If the Governor met us folks at the show, he would know that we are the cross section of the electorate to which he preaches. And we all have faced different flavors of life’s great joys and sorrows. We look with sorrow at those who live their lives in judgment of others. Life is too short not to keep it real. May the Governor, for all of his wisdom, never stop learning.

If the Governor is going to shut down the industry, he should shut it down, before anyone else unknowingly risks their reputation or freedom in pursuit of this truely just cause. At least then The People could fairly judge the Governor and his intentions. This life in limbo reflects poorly upon all of us. There has been a miscarriage of the law.

I’m done, but it is your job to make sure that the Will of the People is carried out by the Governor. We have an entire new generation of entrepreneurs who are going to have a choice where they live, where they start their businesses across all industries, where they raise their families, either elsewhere where people are free, or in peace with their neighbors from one tip of the State at Ocean Grove, to the other tip at Asbury Park. Between them, I am sure that there is room for all of us.

The Gays should have the right to call themselves married. Marijuana use should be decriminalized and legitimized. The Governor had a good speech. If he had called on either or both of the forgoing, he would have had a transformational speech in this era of civil rights. The Governor has the real potential to become President. He has been given a gift. It will be up to him how he uses it.

It is your job to represent the interests of the Medical Marijuana patients and advocates and the gays and their supports and families. You represent me, and their interests are my interests and the interests of my friends and family and neighbors who will be joining us on March 3rd in celebration of this crazy life that we are living. I have invited the Governor. It is my sincere hope that he will one day join us too.

With best intentions and sincere appreciation for the job that you do,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

State of the State

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:13:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

We like you, Captain. You run a really tight ship. You give us something to aspire to. We do not all do it as well as you, but we really all do have the same goals at heart.

You want things done your way, Captain. You have the helm, but you don’t have the trust of the guys in the galley. Use the State of the State to build that trust. Lay out a broad vision. Where are we going in the Garden State, Captain? Where are we going to be in two and four and six years under your vision? This is a marriage. Make yourself vulnerable. Put yourself at risk of offending national party dogma for what is right for the diverse People of the Garden State. Tell us what your hopes and dreams are. Trust us to trust you. Tell us what the goals are that will make New Jersey stand out amongst the other States. What is going to make us blessed to live here, in New Jersey? What will make us freer, all as captains of our own ships. What will give us new direction, adventure in uncharted waters, and Pride under the flags we wave? Tell us how each of the diverse People of The Garden State will be free to play out the role that we were assigned by our Maker. We all would like to feel like we are an important part of the team, Captain.

We have the ability to get all of the rowers rowing to the beat in the same direction. But you have to earn our trust, Captain.

Best wishes in the State of the Ship tomorrow. Let’s make New Jersey the proudest ship in the fleet.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

Marriage Equality and The State of the State

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:28:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

We don’t envy you right now, Governor. Tough spot. The Democrats had shot a cannon across our Republican bow with the Marriage Equality legislation. Everybody is going to be looking at you to have a response in the State of the State. Do we wave the white flag and forgive the gays for their sins and truly accept them as equals in marriage and adoption? Do you, with good humor and humility in finding yourself in a situation that you could never have imagined, very publicly and enthusiastically sign the Marriage Equality bill and declare an end to the Culture War? Or, do you double down and maybe we continue the valiant battles of The Culture War? Maybe with your strong leadership and fresh ideas we can finally win the Culture War and maintain our old political alliances with the Rick Santorum wing of the Republican Party. Maybe under your leadership we could start actively driving the homosexuals back into the closet so that their gay agenda does not fall on the precious ears of our precocious kids.

But whatever the answer, Governor… whatever you do… please do not remain silent on the issue. You don’t want to look like you failed to lead on an issue that so directly implicates our morality. Surely, your heart is guiding you in one direction or the other. The whole Garden State is looking to you to make the right call, so that we can fall in right behind you. We may be adults, but we are lost without your moral leadership. Call out your decision with confidence and bravado. Place faith in God and The People that we will universally support you in making the right decision.

To be honest, Governor, we all have found our own heterosexual marriages to be very difficult. We are kind of tired. It’s tough raising our own kids out here in the rolling green hills of suburbia. We are drained. We are not sure that we really have the energy left to spend the time to pass judgment on whether homosexuals could pull off a marriage. Life is not perfect and we have yet to see any of our friends be perfect heterosexual partners or parents. Our differences from perfection are what make this life interesting. We suppose that in how the gay couples resolve and overcome the differences of their marriages from perfection will implicate the content of their character to a much greater extent than the fact that their partner is of the same sex. Our feeling is kind of like, if the gays want to give this a shot, at this point, well, more power to them. We derive no benefit from treating them like plain-bellied Sneetches. But, it is your call, Governor. You are our moral leader. If you want us to continue the fight against these folks, just let us know in that old State of the State of yours on Tuesday, and we will fall in right behind you and fight these homosexuals and their gay agenda.

You know, there is another possibility though. What if we just learned to live with our neighbors and forgave them for their sins and started to treat them like equals in marriages and adoptions. You know, treat them like folks with good intentions who aren’t always going to get everything right or do everything exactly the way that we would do them. We suppose we could all start respecting one another and maybe even learn from one another. Heck, maybe we could just take a chill from the Culture War and focus on some of our own issues for a while. Maybe we could try to live by example when it comes to matters of morality, but not try to enforce it by law. Perhaps, if we are going to look for immorality in The Garden State, we could tear down the goal posts of immorality from Culture War Field and place them at the feet of the folks over at Corrections Corporation of America, who profit so handsomely from the modern slavery of imprisoning folks at facilities like the Elizabeth Detention Center (http://www.cca.com/facility/elizabeth-detention-center) that its CEO earned $3.26 million dollars last year. I’m sure that there are levels of immorality that we could all agree upon if we looked together. Maybe we could get back to our core Republican principles of Liberty and smaller government. We don’t know. We are just folks living out in the world trying to make it. But maybe if we can get it right with your guidance and bold leadership, Governor, and we learn to work together, maybe you in four or eight years will have a verifiable record of concrete results of change and harmony that Candidate Obama could only have hoped for in 2008. Maybe by your example, other people in other similarly situated states and countries will learn to settle their cultural disagreements that have divided them so viscerally for generations so that they might learn to live together with their neighbors in peace under a common set of laws going forward.

But you make the call, Governor. We are all sinners. We are afraid to cast the first stone. But you are clean. You make the decision on this whole gay marriage thing and we will be right behind you every step of the way to Pennsylvania Avenue. But please, by all means, do not fail to mention the issue at the State of the State. The world would think that you cowered from the shot across our Republican bow. It would be a poor showing of leadership. And what our Republican Party could really use right now is some leadership.

A: “I will work with Republicans in the Legislature to prevent the passage of the Marriage Equality bill, and if it lands on my desk I will veto it and protect the sacred institution of marriage in New Jersey.”

or

B: “If the Legislature places the Marriage Equality bill lands on my desk, I will sign it, and we will welcome an end to the Culture War in New Jersey.”

Pick one and give us clear direction and we will all fall in behind you.

Best of luck with the State of the State. Let’s work together under your leadership and guidance to make New Jersey great for all of its residents and maybe one day soon put a native son in The White House.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

Assembly Bill No. 1465 and Assembly Bill No. 1

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:56:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

It is time that we as Conservatives end the Culture War.

Assembly Bill No. 1465 decriminalizes possession of 15 grams or less of marijuana in New Jersey (http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2012/Bills/A1500/1465_I1.HTM). With that bill signed into law, we will have joined our neighbors in New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and ten other states in decriminalizing marijuana and freeing up the criminal justice system for crimes that actually involve victims. Unless you can objectify a definitive reason why New Jersey residents should be subject to special criminal prosecution for their own personal use of marijuana above and beyond what our neighbors face in other states, as a Conservative committed to the principle of personal Liberty, you should throw your support behind this bill. The implementation of the Compassionate Use Act, with regulations shrouded in criminality, has failed against the plain intent of the law. The People of the Garden State would like to have a law that actually somehow provides them protection from prosecution for marijuana use.

Assembly Bill No. 1 reintroduces the "Marriage Equality and Religious Exemption Act,” which would serve to allow gay couples in a committed relationship to call on the State to recognize them as married, with all attendant rights. With that bill signed into law, we will have joined our neighbors in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the first-in-the-country states of Iowa and New Hampshire in stopping treating homosexuals like plain-bellied Sneetches. Unless you objectify a definitive reason why New Jersey should continue to treat gays like plain-bellied Sneetches, perhaps it is time for us to grow up, and stop acting like a bully on the playground, picking on those who are easy to pick on.

In either case of decriminalizing personal marijuana possession or legitimizing gay marriage, “protecting the children” is no longer a viable reason to veto the law. As you can see from the protesters who stand up to the government like John the Baptist, calling out the plain-sight corruptions, we are creating a generation that looks at government with a very cynical eye. If we end the Culture War, then government will cease to be at war with its own citizens.

What can we agree on to be next for New Jersey? Will we build out infrastructure? Will we restore business friendly regulations and manufacturing jobs and create technology jobs? Will we free local school districts from State mandates so that they may experiment? Will we make life in New Jersey fun and sell our Garden State as a place where you can raise your family as you see fit in peace with your neighbors? If you can work together with the Democrats, you will bring concrete results that Candidate Obama could only have hoped for in 2008. In 2016 or 2020, State Democrats will be able to stand up and say that you are a great leader of All of The People of the Garden State. We will be able to on a bipartisan basis put a native son of the Garden State into the White House strictly on the content of his character, the capacity of his heart, and the honesty of his judgment. We can think of no higher honor for citizens of the Garden State.

We Conservatives are tired of fighting the Culture War. We have lost sight of its benefits. We have lost sight of the definition of Liberty. People may not live their lives in the exact same way as us, but that is their right as adults, to make choices. You as our democratically elected leader are obligated to defend our freedoms, especially when we petition the Government for change on a bipartisan basis. We wish to bask in the light of your compassion, Governor. Please do not supplant your judgment for the will of The People when it comes to setting the standards for morality in their own homes. We are adults. We are capable of making personal choices. That is what Liberty is all about.

We look to you for your leadership, Governor. Please tell the Republican leadership that if either of these bills lands on your desk that you will sign them, if only because you believe in personal Liberty… well that and you would hate to see any New Jersey legislator caught up like Senator Santorum in what history is surely to judge as the wrong side of the Culture War. And as a man of humility and good humor finding yourself in a situation that you never could have imagined, we hope that you will very publicly throw your heart behind and sign each of these bills together, with bravado, and heal wounds, and declare sins to be forgiven, and declare for the Culture War to be over in the Garden State.

Governor, you have been given a gift. You have that certain je ne sais quoi that commands an audience and wraps them around your finger with anticipation. We have not seen this sort of raw political talent since a young Bill Clinton burst onto the national scene in 1988. We also, here in the Garden State, have not had the real potential of capturing The White House since Bill Bradley’s name was brandished about, also in 1988, when Michael Jackson had a hit with Man in the Mirror. Governor, we envision great things for the Garden State under your leadership. We also see the real potential for you to make it to the Presidency and unite the country in ways that Candidate Obama only dreamed about, and all under real Conservative principles of Liberty and Honesty and freedom to Pursue Happiness. But you must end the war against our friends and neighbors. We can no longer support a party that analyzes the morality of others before it deals with its own issues. We must look past any singular trait and into people’s hearts to see if they are capable of love and are loved by their friends and families and neighbors. You have that ability. If you have faith in the diverse people of the Garden State, The People will work with you to end all corruption of our hearts.

No small task, but thank you for your attention to these matters.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

The Governor's Moral Leadership and Gay Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:45:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

You are our governor, and we love you, and you make us very proud. We, the People of New Jersey are so fortunate to have you as our governor for you have the will to stand up for what is right and show moral leadership despite what The People may want or what the law may demand.

We are thankful to you, Governor, that you have shown moral leadership with respect to the State’s Medical Marijuana Program. Despite you having been directed by law to get the program up and running, it was your moral leadership that deemed us too immature to enter into this new line of business or actually benefit from its laws some two years after its passage. We thank you for having saved us from ourselves. We can only imagine how much better the Sgt. Pepper album would have been without all of that swirly music had the Beatles been denied access to marijuana under a compassionate program such as yours.

The Good Lord has seen to it to again test the morality of the good People of The Garden State, this time in deciding whether homosexuals should have the right to be recognized by the State as being married. Governor, it will again come down to your leadership and we look to you to guide us in our morality. Make a bold and principled decision, whatever it may be, and we will follow you. But please, do not just let the gay marriage bill quietly become law without your signature or without fanfare, much in the same way as you allowed your Medical Marijuana regulations to be adopted during the slow news Wednesday afternoon headed into Thanksgiving weekend. If we are going to implement a law that has the potential to affect our morality such as this gay marriage bill, we are relying on you to stand up for what is right. We will follow you down whichever path you choose, because you are our governor, and we love you, and you make us very proud.

If gay marriage is an unforgivable sin, Governor, you are duty-bound to veto this gay marriage bill. And then, Governor, you must teach us how to protect our children from the influence of the gays and their agenda. We should develop a government to program to bind the sinners back into their closets so as not to entice our children with a lifestyle of sin that must come so easily to those in the gay community. We look to you for our moral guidance. If the concept of gay marriage in an abomination, please do not sign the bill. We look to you for leadership. If gay marriage will truly cheapen our heterosexual marriages, then please save us. Do not sign the gay marriage bill (or let it go into effect without signature) merely because you feel the political pressure or the winds of change. It would cheapen your honor and your leadership.

Governor, we have all sinned, and are therefore afraid to cast stones. We are not as perfect as you, who have lived your life without sin or the glaring judgmental eyes of others. We look to you for your moral guidance. If the sin of homosexuality is worse than all other sins, then, yes, let’s continue to treat homosexuals as a lesser class when it comes to affairs of the heart, and we will be forever thankful to you for your guidance.

However, Governor, we believe that it is with greater chance, that you are capable of forgiving sinners for their sins. Governor, if, and only if, you are capable of forgiving sinners for their sins, then you should announce in the State of the State that you intend to sign the gay marriage bill with great fanfare and ceremony and pomp and circumstance. Invite gay state workers and friends and families to the celebration of your benevolent forgiveness in signing the bill. Let the gay community know that past differences are bygones. Tell the world that the arguments of former generations have been permanently settled and we bear no ill will… that homosexuals are free to love, and marry, and adopt on an equal basis with us heterosexuals without bitterness or snicker. Set an example for other countries and states to get past their generations-long divisive issues, whatever they may be, so that they may live together under a common set of laws in peace.

But we beg of you, Governor, do not let this pass into law without your forgiveness and your solid mark of approval. We did not get your clear moral leadership with the Compassionate Use Act. You had created a system that was universally criticized as being fatally flawed to give lip service to the law so you would not need to be seen as the last man standing defending a tired ideology. Now we see a fear-based stillborn Compassionate Use program shrouded in secrecy and criminality. It’s no wonder that towns are afraid to have Alternative Treatment Centers. You set the tone and they followed. We believe that you are better than that. The gays had come out of the closet and stood for what they believed over the years in an incredible risk to their reputations, just as the patients and supporters of the Compassionate Use Act did. We are all deserving of clear moral leadership. We do not wish to judge you by any one of your traits but by the content of your character. We choose to love you for the size of your heart, the wealth of your empathy, and the honesty of your analysis. We will follow you wherever you lead us. We have chosen you to be our moral leader, because you are our governor, and we love you, and you make us very proud.

If you can forgive the gays for their sins and welcome them as equals, then very publicly sign the law and you will begin to build the new coalition of Garden State residents who will come together in support of your eventual candidacy for The White House. The People have shown you their deepest wishes. We know that you are a strong enough leader that you can show the People your core beliefs, whichever way they may go on gay marriage.

Governor, you are our governor, and we love you, and you make us very proud. We have faith in you. We look to you to define our morality in the privacy of our homes and in the homes of our neighbors. We will follow you wherever you honestly take us.

Forever your most humbled and loyal constituent,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

Governor Christie and Marriage Equality in The Garden State

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:58:00 +0000

Dear Assemblyman Gusciora:

Please make sure that you nicely, respectfully, and personally ask Governor Christie to support the new gay marriage bill (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/nj_legislature_to_introduce_ga.html). Ask him not to fight you on this. We all have the ability to move forward in a new chapter together with the end of The Culture War. Governor Christie does not want to fight you on this. He has too much heart. We Republicans no longer wish to support a party that treats our friends and neighbors and co-workers and people with whom we share holiday meals as second class citizens. The Governor knows this and he will, after much deliberation and soul searching, ceremoniously sign the bill. Going forward, let's find a way for the bi-partisan Legislature to work with the Governor to make the Garden State great for all of us over the next four years, and we may quite possibly be able to put a native son of The Garden State into The White House. We can think of no higher honor for The United People of The Garden State.

And, Assemblyman Gusciora, with solid faith in the Governor's intentions, let me be the first to welcome you to equality in The Garden State. Welcome to the rest of your life. Proudly wave the flag of Liberty and thank God for your innate right to Pursue Happiness. And be sure to thank Governor Christie for having the courage to do the right thing.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

A New Universe for Republicans in The Garden State

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:07:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie, Senator Tom Kane, and Assemblyman DeCroce:

Happy New Year. We start over with a blank slate. We forgive for past transgressions and we look forward together with our Republican and Democratic partners as Team New Jersey.

Right now, about 300 feet below the border between Switzerland and France (mostly because Congress shot down the budget for the Superconducting Super Collider in the United States), the Large Hadron Collider is answering questions about what happened to the Universe in less time from its start than it takes for you to receive this email. We are on the verge of understanding the possibilities of dimensions that may exist outside of the spacetime of our universe, which may itself be just a bubble in the giant lava lamp of possibilities. A black hole may be the entrance into alternative universes where some or all of the laws of physics of our universe no longer apply.

With that knowledge, we cannot definitively say whether we were created in God’s image or whether we created Him in ours, but whatever the answer, that should not stop us from seeking His intent. From our reading of the scriptures, we understand the ideals. We understand that we may each allegorically consider ourselves Sons of Man and Sons of God. That we are each capable of defining our universes of friends and family and neighbors as we see fit pursuant to the higher ideals. We have personified that freedom as Lady Liberty and incorporated her into our Pledge of Allegiance, “…with Liberty and Justice for all.”

With Liberty and Justice for all. The commandment is simple.

    “All” means all of us. No exceptions there;
    “Liberty” is the concept aforementioned; and
    “Justice” exists to ensure that Lady Liberty is not violated.

We had come of age, gentlemen. We had gone to the right schools, got the right jobs, married the right spouses, and raised precocious kids right here in The Garden State. We voted for Perot and Dole and Bush and Bush and McCain and we forged our alliances to effect the universe as it then existed. And we played our roles. We took jobs building the house of cards and processed the agreements that were not worth the paper upon which they were written. And when the Bailout happened, we sold out our most basic principles. Those who were best able to understand systemic risk exercised an arm of power that destroyed the rules of the political universe that then existed for Republicans when we allowed the corporations to rape the Treasury. We had become what we once despised. All that mattered to us as Republicans about the free markets was sucked into a black hole, out of which the old rules no longer have meaning and we are forced redefine the principles that lead us to our understanding of God’s intent.

Having, as true-blood Republicans, exposed ourselves as naked emperors who violated their own principles, we are now vulnerable. As emperors, we can either immaturely declare, “Off with the heads” of everyone who saw us naked, or take that moment of intimacy and vulnerability and bond with our enemies of the former universe (for we all are guilty of having taken part in one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins). We can decide that the principle that should govern us in this New Universe ought to be the one that we started with in the old universe. It was a pretty good starting point and we are free to truly live and plot our own new path through spacetime. All that we have to help us define the rules of the New Universe is our experiences in the old universe of our greater pursuit of God’s intent… that we are all in this together, with Liberty and Justice for all.

We believe that the Republican Party is capable of working with the Democratic Party towards this goal here in the Garden State.

Here are three corruptions of the old universe that we are capable of fixing, Democrats and Republicans together, in the New Universe. There should be no Democratic or Republican way to take out the trash on these issues.

1.    Equality. We have forgotten why our generation discriminates against the gay population. We know that our grandparents’ generation was worried about the sense of shame and that our parents’ generation was worried about promiscuity and AIDS. However, we must acknowledge that gay community has to a certain extent grown up and gone off and bought a proverbial house in the ‘burbs and since petitioned the Government because they feel like outsiders and would like to be treated as equals. The only real cultural stigmas left placed against them are our general discomforts with the idea and the last vestiges of exclusion to equal access under the law… to being merely acknowledged by their Government as being married. That stigma leads them to shame and embarrassment and, we are sure that the continuing stigma plays a role young suicides, as we have tragically seen here in the Garden State. And they aren’t even seeking our religious approval. They merely petition the government to ask, “Help us not feel like plain-bellied Sneetches.” And we look around and we think, “Hey, I know that one. They are asking for Liberty... The rights of adults to forge their own path in this crazy life. That’s us! That’s the softball for the sweet spot of The Republican Party’s big bat. Boy, if only one of our Conservative, Liberty-loving guys were in charge right now.”

Governor, Senator, Assemblyman… You are in charge. And you have been petitioned by The People from whom you get your authority. And we forgot why our generation of Conservative adults discriminates against these folks. What is the party line again? If it was because of the promiscuity associated with the lifestyle, then they are moving on and merely asking the Government to recognize marriage where it actually exists as fact under every roof of the Garden State. With the Internet, the amount of raw information that we are going to pass on to our children is mind-staggering. We can no longer keep facts from our kids, but we must teach them how to appropriately deal with facts. We must come up with new ways to process this information. Ignorance of facts is not an option. We take it as a matter of faith that God had designed us with the purposes of peace, love and understanding. Just as the individual is free to disregard laws written in stone that impinge only his personal Liberty in favor of the laws written in his heart, we are free to restate the principles of the Republican Party. We have the capability to look beyond any individual characteristic to the heart of an individual and asking whether they love and are loved by their family, friends, and neighbors. Jesus would not kick the sinners out of the Temple. We see no reason why we should set the bar any lower for our Grand Old “Big Tent” Party.

Enough with the discrimination. You have the ability to stop it. Heck, we ended our nights when we were younger at some crazy bars too. But we grew up. And we got married (thankfully to State-sanctioned partners). We are capable of admitting all of our friends and neighbors into the civil institution of marriage without damaging our precious kids to a greater extent than having them see institutionalized discrimination under your tenure in office. You have the ability to do the right thing… all based on Conservative Republican principles. We have to have a better reason to discriminate than, “Ooh, that looks uncomfortable.”

Let’s work with the Republican and Democratic leadership to get the Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act ceremoniously signed into law to ensure that we have a government here in The Garden State dedicated to the proposition of Liberty and Justice for all. In the process, we are likely to gain new supporters of a party that is for a principled, smaller, more efficient, and less-intrusive government, and one that does not look at its citizens with disdain.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

2.    Freedom from Corporate Enslavement. If we are going to agree that our former stance on equality of marriage was not a morally principled stance, then perhaps we need to take a bold morally principled stance if only to redefine the base level of morality in The Garden State going forward in our New Universe.

Our Federal immigration policy is atrocious. We let low-level workers live here with a wink and a nod and let them raise their children here under the constant fear of their world falling apart if they get caught up in the immigration system. In our Garden State, many of these folks who got caught up in the limbo of the immigration system end up at the Elizabeth Detention Center as modern day slaves, overseen by a warden that has to answer to corporate shareholders (http://www.cca.com/facility/elizabeth-detention-center). Five dollars a minute for payphone calls for men and women who were separated from their families during Christmas because they were caught up in a broken and unjust immigration system is an interesting way for Correction Corporation of America to drive and derive corporate profits (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/axel-woolfolk/detainees-working-for-1-a_b_1095548.html). You mean I can invest in this company, where the CEO earned $3.26 million dollars last year (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1070985/000095012311029087/c14508def14a.htm#C14508144) to imprison folks, when we should have had a reasonably well paid civil servant doing this work for a fraction of the salary? If we can justify this privatization of public obligation, what is our moral base for going after public servants who, say, abuse the system by getting paid for their unused sick leave? Tell me, gentlemen, are we not dangerously close to losing sight of who controls whom in this country? This is a Federal issue, but it is a pestilence taking place in our dear Garden State when we are in control and it is our responsibility to define morality. And we are wasting time telling the gays that they are immoral?!? Besides, we are a tad bit uncomfortable when a shareholders of a corporation can be in legal possession of an individual, but a loving life partner cannot be. Something is wrong with the system.

We, Democrats and Republicans, should be able to agree that our national policy of, “We should have closed the immigration doors right after our Grandparents got in” is an outright corruption of the “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” inscription at the base of The Statue of Liberty. In our bid for security, we have lost our principles.

It is going to take a national resolve that we do not currently have to pull back on the regulations and welcome those freely back and forth across our borders those who wish to work hard and pay taxes and integrate themselves into our larger communities and share cultures and understandings. But we should all be in agreement that it is fundamentally wrong to have a corporation directly profiting from the detention of individuals right here in the Garden State.

We need to jointly petition our Federal legislators to ban this practice of privately operated prisons. It scares us, gentlemen, when the lines between government and industry become too blurry. It shocks the conscience that private corporations could both profit directly from restraining the private right of Liberty and have the freedom to lobby for more laws restricting private right of Liberty. We are morally obligated to make changes to this injustice that is taking place within our State borders. We are on a very slippery slope if we begin to justify this Corporate enslavement through nuances… we are jeopardizing our souls. But as we outsource these core government functions to private corporations, we begin to lose our freedoms. Are private for-profit police forces next? The grave risk is that those in charge of core government functions will no longer get their authority solely from The People, but will get much of their authority from their boards of directors. This is a move of unbelievably strategically poor insight.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

3.    Freedom for Localities to Define Themselves Through Their School Systems. New Jersey is a miracle. It is in its own way, a promised land. It is a universe that lives in its own dimensions where a three hour drive will take you from North to South through its mountains and fertile valleys to the sea, where the good folks of Ocean Grove can live next to the good folks of Asbury Park together in peace. What works in New Jersey, and what The People are unwilling to change, is the level of local control. The hallmark of that local control is the network of 603 local school districts guaranteed by our State Constitution in that “The Legislature shall not pass any private, special or local laws providing for the management and control of free public schools.”

The schools create and define the communities here in the Garden State. Our communities are strong because of the common bonds that are created by our school systems. The charter schools in the inner cities have to be seen as temporary band-aids that are to become part of recreated school systems under broad community control. They need to be used as tools to rebuild inner-city communities and school boards. However, for so long as education is a public obligation, the charter schools cannot be used as an end-game.

The threat is that revenues dedicated to public obligations are filtered through a permanent political machine that is subject to the whims of future government leaders with lesser quality moral compasses than yourselves. Furthermore, these State-chartered schools are now threatening to tear apart our suburban communities by giving those sects with enough political clout the freedom to carve themselves out of their broader communities under the veil of foreign language schools, all on the public dime. As children currently attending religious day schools start swarming the newly created language day schools, we will have the perverse effect of blurring the lines as everyone will have an incentive to have their particular points of view inflicted upon their children in state-chartered schools. We believe that active debate within our local communities encourages within our local public schools debate and thinking and learning and interacting with others whose points-of-view may vary by creative difference than ours. We believe that those interactions will be critical lessons for our children in this interconnected New Universe. We believe that if we can learn to work with our neighbors as allies, we can create order out of this New Universe and set examples for others all while keeping our cultural traditions in tact. We do not know the physical laws of any other universe, but we can imagine what a three hour drive from North to South through mountains and fertile valleys to the sea would look like in a state where the line between government and religion becomes too blurry.

Now, let it be said we are not necessarily opposed to having the conversation as to whether in this New Universe it should in fact be the obligation of the privately-funded religious orders to provide an education for children in the State. When through tax breaks and tax deductions the government and corporations inadvertently teamed up to take the obligations of health care and education from Religion, Religion had tended to lose its purpose of carrying forth God’s intent of, well, providing for the well-being of others. With nothing left to do but praise God for our existence, Religion became stale and could at times get very ugly over the proper way to sing His praises. As Conservative Republicans, we very much believe that this would be a terrific opportunity for government to actually unload some of its responsibilities for education and healthcare back onto Religion and the pure charity (no corrupting tax break needed, thank you) of The People. It would give us each a personal responsibility to identify with a group, religious or otherwise, that holds itself out to the larger community as carrying through with God’s intent of providing the best care for the community. It could be a wonderful new path forward and help restore some of the balance of power and prestige back to those who spend their lives doing The Lord’s Work. By showing faith in The People, we would actually be showing our faith in our Designer.

But as it is we must sit and wonder about what could be. We note that we are constricted by our State Constitution in that the State must “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years.” We cannot farm that obligation back to Religion unless we amend our State Constitution, so let’s not do it and pretend that we are doing something else by calling it foreign language schools. We corrupt both the State and Religion in the process. We are more honest than that. Just as we want the people running our prisons to be answerable to the public at large and not corporate shareholders, we wish to have the people running our local schools be accountable to our local public school officials and not to outside influences. The level of debate and oversight is too important.

We must, Democrats and Republicans together, take a principled stand against State-issued charters that will effectively divide communities along ethnic or religious lines and will prevent the rebuilding of communities and local control in our inner cities.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Gentlemen, it is up to the poets and artists and dreamers of every generation to re-imagine God’s intent by incorporating the knowledge and moralities that develop through our experiences in society and the sciences. It does not matter whether we were created in His image or whether He was created in ours. The truth of His intent is a matter of faith and we are obligated to speak for those principles of Liberty which we as lifelong Republicans hold dear.

The new century holds great promises for the Garden State. We are capable of introspection and improvement and absolution and compassion. While all systems are capable of corruption, what makes the democratic system of government better than all others is that when we stand on principle, we are able to quickly rout out systemic corruption.

We are capable of moving forward in directions which we can all agree upon and live in peace with our neighbors and save our souls from corruption in the process. We no longer wish to have our Grand Old Party be defined by hatred and exclusion and inside tracks. We are pleased that powerful and intelligent and principled men like yourselves are in a position to do the right thing.

We look forward to working together in the New Year in the New Universe, with a principled commitment to Liberty and Justice for all.

Very truly yours,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

Goveronor Chris Christie and Marriage Equality in The Garden State

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:30:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

Have you given any thought to Senator Menendez's statement on gay marriage in today's paper? http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2011/12/discrimination_against_same-se.html

Newt Gingrich was a hero to us as young Republicans in 1994, but he will never win the Presidency. You know this. Governor Romney has vast experience as business leader and religious leader and government leader, but he seemingly has no backbone. Follow your heart, and make an announcement before Christmas that all Garden State residents should enjoy the holidays with their families, however they are defined, and when we get back in January, you will sign the Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act. You, Governor, will have to be the guinea pig for what happens to a leader of the Republican Party for doing the right thing. Even we, your most loyal Republican constituency, can no longer face our family members at our Christmas tables in support of a government that sits in judgment of them as miscreants and plain-bellied Sneetches. We can no longer be the big bully on the playground. Let's put the final nail in the coffin of the sad and sick history of hatred that has been intertwined with our Grand Old Party by Rick Santorum’s tired ideology. Governor Romney will have to follow your lead and make a clean break with the Gingrich/Santorum branch of the Party to do what is right. Otherwise, the People are going to choose their current ineffective President for another four years and we will lose the chance to implement Conservative principles of Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, and smaller, less intrusive government.

Take one for the team by following your heart. If Romney wins, you will have your choice of cabinet posts. If Romney loses, you have the real potential to capture the White House in 2016.

If we flounder on this as the winds blow in the direction that they are going, we will set ourselves up against the growing will and morality of The People, rather than being seen as a leaders on this issue. The GOP will need to be a big tent party going forward. We are going to have to ditch old alliances and make peace with those who desire to live in peace with their neighbors. We will have to set an example for others who need to learn to work with their neighbors to live together as equals in peace.

You are the leader of the Garden State. None of your constituents should be forced to live their lives in limbo. Follow your heart, Governor, and you will be loved.

May you and your family have a merry Christmas, Governor.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:19:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

“You are so angry aren’t you? So angry… so terrible… let them continue… work it all out for yourselves… We are used to dealing with jokers like this in New Jersey all the time… Where was I before I was so New Jersilly interrupted?” - http://www.mediaite.com/online/chris-christie-shouts-down-occupy-wall-street-hecklers-were-used-to-jokers-like-this-in-new-jersey/

Are you kidding us, Governor? What New Jersey do you live in? People protest and interrupt speeches when they feel that they have no voice in government. And you mock The People? When they pass laws, you ignore them. When they beg for compassion, you shame them. When they claim issues of great importance you belittle them.

If we are going to begin using New Jersey as an adverb, how can we start New Jersilly ensuring that The People have their voices heard and respected by their government? How can we begin New Jersilly providing compassion? How can we begin ensuring that we all have equal New Jersilly access to the laws?

Governor, your contempt for The People is unbecoming of a man who gets his authority from The People.

We forgive you for your trespasses against us, Governor. Let’s start over. Heal the wounds and let’s work together in a New Jersilly manner.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

Adoption of the Medicinal Marijuana Program Rules in New Jersey

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:14:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

What could have been announced as a source of pride was instead quietly slipped out as we adjourned for our Thanksgiving dinners. With your adoption of the Medicinal Marijuana Program Rules, you dropped a turkey (http://www.state.nj.us/health/medicalmarijuana/documents/mm_rules.pdf), apparently wishing that it would meander off quietly in the night. And in the process, you seemingly have missed the point of being Governor.

Here in The Garden State, “all political power is inherent in the people.” It says so in our State Constitution (Article I.2.a http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/lawsconstitution/constitution.asp). “Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people, and they have the right at all times to alter or reform the same, whenever the public good may require it.”

Your Excellency, when the good People of The Garden State so petition their government pursuant to the School House Rock alchemic formula for how a bill becomes a law, and have their law signed by a governor, are they not entitled to, in fact, benefit from said law? If only as a matter of having the benefit of receipt of a good civics lesson from you, dear Governor, after the good People of The Garden State needled a Hail Mary pass through two houses of the Legislature and obtained a signed law based solely on a moral argument, with absolutely zero lobbying money, short of outright bribery, Governor, what additional steps should patients and advocates have in fact taken to have their law respectfully implemented by your Administration? What additional political power was required of us? Your administration, Governor, had done everything in its ability to obstruficate the process, placing a tired ideology ahead of any sense of civic duty or constitutional right. Your administration ignored public commentary. Ignored it. For two years. When two able-bodied commissioners from the Department of Health resigned in protest of the process, your administration replaced them with a young Commissioner who was tied into your administration and was unlikely to rock the boat. And when your administration finally responded to the public comments last Wednesday, it was nothing but condescending in tone. You broke the process of a republican form of government… all for a decaying ideology. Nice win, dear Governor.

The People had obtained their law granting them Compassion, and your administration had given nothing but frustration and delay and sham public hearings. Your administration had invoked tortured reasonings and trampled on freedoms of speech. Your administration denied advocates who fought for the law the ability to participate in the legitimate commerce that was to be created under the law. Your administration painted what was supposed to be warm Alternative Treatment Centers with a steel-gray set of regulations that has created cold hard dispensaries shrouded in security and a sense of criminality. Your administration, in twisted reasoning, dampened the effectiveness of the medication and limited access by draconian measures… all for an ideologically driven culture war.

Generally, Governor, your administration had behaved as if all political power resided in The Office of the Governor, and in the process, your administration had trampled on our State Constitution and had trampled on the will of the People. Your administration has failed to plainly carry out the law and, as such, you have failed to serve All of The People from whom you get your authority. How embarrassing for you, Governor. How embarrassing for Commissioner O’Dowd to have to pick up the leash to this turkey that was placed at your feet in moral resignation by Commissioner Alaigh and Deputy Commissioner Walsh.

And the funny thing, Governor, is that it was never primarily about access. Access was already there for the patients in need who asked around. In a sad statement about our society, if they had the good fortune to be white, they had very little chance of implicating the criminal justice system. But the risk was out there… risk of loss of prospects and property and family and freedoms for using the natural medicine of their choice, even under doctor recommendation. And so a hodge podge of Garden State citizens from all walks of life… regular folks… doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, business executives and owners, cops, construction workers, writers, mail carriers, etc… they sought to change the law, which by any historian’s measure, was solely a product of this nation’s racist past. It was never about access… it was about removing the criminal justice system from medicines already in use liberally and secretively by doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, business executives and owners, cops, construction workers, writers, and mail carriers, etc. across the Garden State for whatever ailments afflict them. And many of these doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, business executives and owners, cops, construction workers, writers, and mail carriers, etc., had wanted to have an equal shot to put their life savings and community reputations at risk to engage in this new and legitimate line of business here in The Garden State. And your administration stole the opportunity. Your administration rigged the process in favor of a wealthy and well-connected state-sanctioned oligopoly, which we fear will become a tool in the political machines of future governors who do not show the kind of restraint that your Excellency is quite obviously so capable of.

This is the kind of stuff that you used to prosecute when parties of disfavor acted to corrupt the law. You had lost sight of what was important. You smashed civil law for a decayed ideology. And when your administration was stuck with unworkable regulations, it forged ahead anyway to save you from having to publicly confront your mistakes. And you let this turkey slip out the night before Thanksgiving. How embarrassing for you, Governor. How Nixonian of you.

And God bless those folks who win their licenses to distribute inferior medicines to those few patients who don’t have the wherewithal to find access to quality medicine from the street, but who do have the wherewithal to call 300 doctors to find one on the secretive doctor registry, who may recommend their inferior product, accessible for a $200 fee to the State. For how long must the oligopoly of approved cold, hard dispensaries operate under your surrealist regulations? How much capital must they blow through before they come back with mounds of campaign contributions to future governors of weaker moral certitude to get the reforms that were so requested by The People and so ignored by your administration? We envision that the changes will happen exclusively for that well-moneyed oligopoly and that the engine of an entirely new and indestructible political machine will have been created. How sad for your legacy, Governor.

What lessons are our children to take from your administration? Should we produce a second School House Rock video to show how a law becomes corrupted?

LAW (in his screechy songy voice): “Once you become a law, you have to overcome ingrained ideology to have your law properly effected.”

Governor, when can we, as Conservatives, declare the culture war to be over and actually grow our political party? When can we sit across from family members at our holiday tables and let them know that our political party and government will stop treating our friends and neighbors as plain-bellied Sneetches with no stars upon thars? We were looking for a leader for all of us, and we found an ideologue who would supplant his judgment for the law. What a sad commentary on your governorship. What a sad commentary on your faith in your fellow citizens of The Garden State. You are setting the “big tent” Republican Party back by thirty years, having only proven that when our interests are so wound up in fighting a war, we lose our ability to recognize when that war is no longer winnable or even worth winning. We have become what we once despised. How sad for us all, Governor.

It is never too late to find salvation. Governor, may your heart grow three sizes this Christmas. In the New Year, let’s start over, and restore some semblance of power to the People.

In the shadow of your greater authority, Your Excellency, I remain your most humbled constituent,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

Fracking

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:07:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

When we first hear the term, “fracking,” we immediately thought that we were talking about intentionally throwing a grenade at our own troops. The more we researched, the more that we found that “fragging” of our families is not too far off the mark when it comes to policies dealing with drilling for natural gas. If you haven’t read the seminal piece on fracking from The New York Times yesterday (www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/magazine/fracking-amwell-township.html), your time may better be spent there before moving forward.

We understand that New Jersey is in the midst of a one-year moratorium on fracking and that drilling for natural gas in the Garden State is unlikely in any case. However, our neighbors in the Keystone State and the Empire State may make liberal use of hydraulic fracturing and we here in the Garden State may suffer from its effects.

The gas exploration companies have created a matter of fact website (http://fracfocus.org), that clearly discloses many of the risks of fracking, though they coat it in a legalese that is designed to turn off the reader. We know that the fracking solution, even when heavily diluted, is powerful enough to eat away at the rock to release the natural gas. The gas companies are pouring acids and biocides and stabilizers and corrosion inhibitors and lubricants and suffricants down into the earth, and the corruption of our drinking water from the drilling process is equaled by the risks from pools of contaminated water stored at the surface near drilling sites.

Here, Governor, we have a clear moral issue. All of that lubricant and excrement that they are pumping into the earth, even if done a few miles over the border from New Jersey, has the potential to contaminate our water. Water has a way of flowing underground without reference to state borders. No matter how well connected we are or how wealthy we are, our children still have to bathe in and drink the same water.

The Republican Party is not sustainable if we are not able to stand up for the safety of the public at large and against these moneyed corporate interests. While Senator Santorum is running for President seeking to claim a moral righteousness in the Culture War, he has been nothing but a lap dog for the natural gas industry (http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/10/01/333661/rick-santorums-stump-speech-includes-nod-to-fracking-company-directly-paying-him-the-past-year/).

Governor, just as we here in the Garden State could do without all of that fracking santorum contaminating our water supplies, we here in the Republican Party could do without Senator Santorum contaminating our Conservative principles of Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. We question the factory settings of Senator Santorum’s moral compass. Fracking has more real potential to damage New Jersey families than if we were to outright raise the white flag in the Culture War.

Unfortunately, our Grand Old Party has been painted as a defender of large corporations and as a hypocritical defender of personal liberty. In the meantime, you, Governor Christie, have the ability to show real leadership. Call it like you see it and let our neighboring states know that our ground water is too important to be contaminated by fracking fluids. And while you have the ear of Governor Romney, let him know that he has the ability to end the culture war while simultaneously ending the moral indignation and political career of Senator Santorum. Let us know in what direction the Republican Party is planning on leading us. Let’s be that Big Tent party and embrace true definitions of morality, and maybe save our drinking water in the process.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
56 Amherst Place
Livingston, NJ 07039
(917) 406-2323
www.justinalpert.com

The Path Forward for New Jersey, Together

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:25:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

We went to our hometown this week, where we grew up. It may be our last time back. Our parents may retire to another community and we may never have reason to again visit the corners where we once ruled. We saw that old haunts had been replaced, and streets had been widened, and cultural institutions had blossomed where they never once were so many years ago. Life had moved on in the twenty-some-odd years that we had been gone.

And we look to Facebook to see those old familiar faces. We see their life stories… where they ended up… who they became… their joys… their pains… their unexpected roles… their loves lost and found. They are not all that much different than us. Their joys are different, but most of them really work hard to see day’s light… it’s tough. Their pains are different, but they eventually face them with grace and incorporate them into whom they have become, and try to make the world a better place in the aftermath. And we look to them and the lives that they are living and decide that we all have issues to face up to and define who we are. It’s a group therapy. We are all in this together.

And we get to that point, after years of struggle, and we become loved and cherished by family and friends for who we are… for our successes… for our faults… for our hearts… for the way that we try to raise our children. And we realize that some of those familiar faces are crying out for relief not from the trials and travails of life, but from the oppressions of our government.

And one night, lying in bed, the lights are out, and our spouse is taking a nightly break from this roller coaster of life, but we are not so lucky to find sleep. The sound of the fan rotating acts as a pump, recycling thought through our mind. “It’s our government that oppresses you?” we think. “We can help you with that. What are your problems?” We plod into the bathroom and splash cold water on our day’s unshaven face and look the man in the mirror in the eyes. “My government should have no dog in that fight.”

Governor, the man who gets into the White House in 2016 is going to have figured out a way to lead “All of The People.” He will have stopped the fighting over the silly tidbits of leftover dogma that have plagued the political parties. He will have boldly stated the direction in which he wants to take the State so that we are working together toward a common goal and, in the process, redefined our institutions to better serve us going forward.

Governor, there are a lot of good people traditionally from both parties who have a lot of ideas to add. Ideas that transcend party and concentrate the People of the Garden State on moving forward together rather than continuing interparty fighting over morality, the moderation of which should rightly be left for religion. We can incorporate true diversity while jettisoning divisiveness.

Governor, there comes a point when we realize that we have the power to do good and that we can no longer wait for the timing to be right to do right… that the right time to act is when we have the courage to say what is right.

Governor, you have the power to sign the Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act by Thanksgiving if you were to have that restless night tonight. Let them know that they have equal access to the laws and will be an important part of the path forward here in New Jersey. Government don’t got no dog in that fight no more. And you could turn to the Compassionate Use Act patients and advocates who played by the rules and fought for their law and got it, and let them know that they will no longer be oppressed by their government in spite of the law that they had won. They too are entitled to demonstrate that they can pull this off responsibly and be accountable to their friends and neighbors (and certainly more accountable than the shady people who had been proposed in the current stillborn program under Commissioner O’Dowd’s guidance (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/10/vetting_of_pot_dispensary_seem.html)).

With a change of heart, suddenly all of the poisonous air will be swept out of the room. “What were we fighting about?" we may ask. And attention will turn to you, Governor. And the national microphone will again be placed in front of you. And they will ask, “If we are done with the Culture War, what is your vision for taking us forward as a state?” We know that if you reach deep, you will have something to say… something that shines the light on the path for forward for all of us together.

And you will have the opportunity to say whatever you want. The world’s ears will be yours. Where are we going? What can we all work on together?

If it were up to us, we would kick start the engine by working with our U.S. Senators and Congressmen to simplify the tax code, make dividends tax deductible to the issuer and taxable as ordinary income to the recipient to incentivize the efficient reallocation of capital and disincentivize the gaming of the system by the mega-corporations at the expense of the People. But that is our plan. You may have your own. But ain’t no body gonna listen to your plan if you make them feel like outsiders from their government… if they don’t have equal access to the laws… if they don’t have the compassionate benefits of the laws that they have worked so hard to pass. Trust and faith in our friends and neighbors has to be an innate part of the path forward. We Republicans were supposed to be the Big Tent Party… the party of ideas… of freedoms. Right now, under your administration, those are just platitudes. We have the ability to inspire people with ideas that are inclusive and experiment by forging new directions forward.

We have a leader who has the ability to charm audiences with his wit and barrel through entrenched interests with his honesty. Follow through on that honesty. Let’s stop focusing on filling seats with political allies, and let’s start focusing on joint solutions that government is actually capable of accomplishing. You can fix a lot of things by Thanksgiving Day for a lot of people. You will have the world’s ears. Define the path forward that we all can take together. Go there and trust that The People will follow. They will follow truth. They will follow a government in which they can take an active and responsible role. You have the power to do what is right. You need to have the faith in yourself to use it.

We can start on that road by Thanksgiving with your leadership.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

The Path of Redemption for Sasha Grey

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:48:00 +0000

We had written about Sasha Grey once before, and we welcome her continuing journey through the Conundrum. Miss Grey again makes the news, this time for reading to children at Compton's Emerson Elementary School for Read Across America Day.

Now, let us state at the outset that Miss Grey had pushed the envelope for what is acceptable even by pornography’s standards, taking hard core to levels that many would not have otherwise considered. But we must as a society ask whether individuals who push boundaries should ever find themselves beyond redemption. Is there a secular redemption beyond accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and savior, or should an individual be forever marked by their past actions? Shouldn’t individuals be judged by the size of their hearts going forward.

Miss Grey has apparently left the porn industry and has been working for two years as a mainstream actress. We envision that one day she will become a mother who will try to raise her children to make sense of this world. Should she forever be banned from participating in education and culture because of her past choices? Should the path to redemption be denied to her based on her past which is decidedly non-criminal?

We are not sure that we wish to live in a society that permanently affixes a scarlet letter. We grow. We evolve. Our past becomes a part of who we are and informs our decisions going forward. We have the ability to learn from the experiences and mistakes of others. If we close the door to redemption, we place fear in the eyes of those who look to legitimately push boundaries and question customs… we create a society that is split between those who repress in the name of conformity and those who take the long hard path of finding true self… we create bitterness as opposed to working towards peaceful resolution.

As a society, we must find a way to grow the heart and shine the light on the path of redemption even for those who have found themselves living life beyond common societal expectations. We are capable of learning and growing and sharing and teaching and redeeming. If Miss Gray is on that road towards redemption, we should feel uneasy about denying her the freedom to travel that path.

www.justinalpert.com

Working With Governor Christie To Redefine Our Universe

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:13:00 +0000

Dear Senator Rice:

If you had found yourself at the Occupy Wall Street protests during the past several months, you might have walked away with the impression of a community that was governed by raw ideals. There has been honesty in calling out which of our overseers of Government, Corporations, and Religion have been empirically corrupted beyond their own stated principles. Perhaps the most jarring and regularly occurring scene is one that could easily be depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting of a man in a suit and a man in a hoodie standing toe-to-toe, vigorously debating and coming to an understanding of the principles that they hold in common.

In this cauldron of civics lessons, people from all walks of life have come together to discuss how the system has broken down. They are people who have seen an injustice and have been called by some higher power to right wrongs and have the courage to call out the nakedness of their systematic emperors. Of all of the protested issues, there has been one seemingly absurd concept that has been brought to our attention that we might have never otherwise have thought about… Corporate Ownership of Prisons.

Now, Senator Rice, it has come to our attention that right here in the Garden State, Corrections Corporation of America operates the Elizabeth Detention Center (http://www.cca.com/facility/elizabeth-detention-center). Now, we speak about morality often in government, but when government outsources its core functions to private industry, we have seen time and time again the complete collapse of morality. Government contracts for for-profit prisons, and for-profit schools, and for-profit private Blackwater armies create dangerous precedents for the ability of corporations to profit off of what should be core government services. Just as with government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we create a dangerous loop where Democrats and Republicans alike become addicted to the mainlined campaign contributions of those who receive the sanctioned benefits of providing outsourced government services. To have a private corporation in full control of detained human beings, and directly profiting from the increased detention of those detained human beings within our borders while campaign contributions influence the laws the lead to further detentions, reflects a complete collapse of our collective morality. You know it. Governor Christie knows it. The People know it. As this is a federally chartered facility, we are faced with using our powers as leaders of our State government to work in a bi-partisan manner with our Governor and U.S. Senators and Representatives to correct the injustices that are occurring within the borders of New Jersey.

But then something funny came up as we were doing our research. We looked into the prison population breakdown in the State of New Jersey. According to the Department of Corrections (http://www.nj.gov/corrections/pdf/offender_statistics/2011/By%20Ethnicity_Race%202011.pdf), as of January 1, 2011, there were 15,236 black offenders in New Jersey correctional institutions and 5,158 white offenders in New Jersey correctional institutions. We took a look at the Census count (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34000.html) and reached deep for our eighth grade algebra (you should undertake the exercise yourself… we were happy to find that our math skills are alive and well in the dark recesses of our minds). With 1.2 million blacks in the State and 6 million whites, we calculate that a black person is 15 times more likely to be imprisoned than a white person, just merely by the color of his skin. Do the math work yourself. It is mentally challenging, rewarding, and shocking.

This leads us to one of two conclusions. Either (i) black people have a criminal streak that is inherent to their nature, or (ii) the system has broken down. We choose to believe the latter.

Senator Rice, in the mid-1990s, it was proposed that the world's largest and most energetic particle accelerator would be constructed in the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider). At a cost of $16 billion dollars, this would have created opportunities for universities and scientists in the United States to have an understanding of what happens to matter when it is compressed into black holes and the laws of the Universe no longer apply. Theoretically, out of such a distortion in spacetime as we understand it, a redefinition of the rules of the universe is possible (unfortunately, that opportunity and its ancillary economic benefits were destroyed, and, as we funneled untold billions into paper derivatives markets, our scientists are forced to go to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to be at the forefront of science, but we digress). Just as a black hole has the ability to redefine the rules that apply to the universe, the collapse and bailout of our financial institutions has lead to the American Public looking to redefine the laws that govern us. The old rules for the old universe no longer apply to the future for which we will strive. The Occupy Wall Street movement, as disheveled and idealistic as it is, has been supported by millions of people who have seen The System breakdown in the financial black hole. And they are crying out that government at every level has broken down, and large too-big-to-fail corporations no longer serve the interests of the People, and that the Democrats and Republicans together have failed the American People. We are all responsible. Now is not the time to seek revenge. Now is the time to imagine a new path forward and build a new model.

Senator, this country was founded on the principle that the states should be the source of experimentation in government. As such, the Garden State, with more PhDs per capita, has the opportunity to throw out all of the rules that no longer work for it and redesign the laws of its universe going forward. And here is the real interesting thing… Governor Christie is the heir-apparent to the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 2016. We have the real opportunity to send a native son of the Garden State to the White House if Democrats and Republicans can learn to work together. Imagine that. Your successful career as a New Jersey Democrat will lead to a New Jersey Republican governor as President. You can imagine how Moses felt when he was tapped for a most unlikely task.

Senator Rice, the Governor knows that to get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he is going to have to get the Garden State operating on all twelve cylinders quickly, with the support of a new majority coalition of people devoted to righteousness and inclusiveness and diversity. The Governor knows that he cannot get there if he treats portions of the greater populations as if they are lesser citizens, on whatever basis. He is going to have to be a leader of all of us and figure out a way for all of us to prosper together under the forever waving flag of Liberty. As Liberals and Conservatives and Libertarians and Progressives, we can disagree about the path to prosperity and happiness, but we must agree that we are all entitled to Pursue Happiness and have equal access to the law and to the government. And when the national press comes knocking again, if Governor Christie can have the various and diverse leaders of this State say, “Yeah, that cat’s alright,” he will be able to ride the Acela Train right into Washington DC.

How are we going to get to that point where you can effectively work with a Governor of another party to do “right” and “good” within the State of New Jersey? We are going to have to acknowledge that we all are on Team New Jersey… we are all in this together. We are going to have to stop judging each other by our singular traits and incorporate the great diversity of the Garden State into the plan that will lead the country out of its funk. And we can begin to do this immediately.

As a man who was so fortunate to miss the 15X crap shoot odds against him based on the color of his skin, the kind of compassion that Jesus set as precedent ought to come easily to you. You and the Governor, who have each served the country and State in honorable ways, both know that to discriminate amongst members of the broad population based on their singular traits, instead of judging them by the content of their character, is fundamentally wrong. We need to take bold steps to cement our agreement to right injustices of the past. The most concrete way to embark on this journey is to say that all of our friends and neighbors should have equal access to the laws.

Governor Christie has the ability with a single stroke of his pen, to redefine the political universe in the Garden State, and to do so by Thanksgiving Day, when we gather at large tables and thank God for the blessings and freedoms that we have and are so entitled respectively. If Governor Christie and you both move to quickly effect the Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act, we will have the ability to move past the inter-party fighting and civilly and boldly move the Garden State forward. As such, we will not look like those government officials in those old black and white films proclaiming a future of segregation forever. We looked at white folks of the time and prayed that we would have had the foresight to stand up for what was the morally right thing to do. The Lord works in mysterious ways, for he has presented us with the challenge to meet our prayers. This is our calling. And it is going to be up to you, Senator Rice, to reach deeply into the dark recesses of your heritage and to come up with the right answer. And then you are going to have to go to the Governor, and the two of you together, are going to have to have your “Come to Jesus” moment and do the right thing. And every day that you sit on your hands in contemplation, the two of you begin to look more and more like the bystanders in those old black and white films… the ones without the courage to stand up for what was right. But if the two of you pull off this battle together, you will create an unlikely camaraderie not dissimilar to what Marines may feel for each other after the battles that they experience together. You will build trust together on foreign and hostile grounds where you may each feel that you don’t innately belong, but you will be stronger for it. And then, together, you can begin to address some of the systematic issues that keep brothers and sisters in New Jersey imprisoned at a 15X higher rate based on the color of their skin.

Perhaps we will need to redefine our criminal code so that violations that do not reflect a depraved indifference do not lead to jail time and loss of all future opportunity. Perhaps we will need to agree that time served is the debt that is paid to society and that we are all entitled to grow and learn and become better people than who we once were, and that as such, criminal background checks as part of employment need to be made illegal if we wish to reduce recidivism and welcome all of our friends and neighbors into society as productive members. Perhaps, as a fundamental matter of our morality, we will need to ensure that no corporation directly profits from managing the incarceration of any individual human being in the state of New Jersey, if only because of the risks that we will no longer be able to draw any discernible line between right and wrong. Perhaps we will need to redefine the roles of government and corporations and religions and charities, giving each clearly defined responsibilities and ensuring that each does not overstep its limited bounds.

Out of the black hole of the collapse of government and industry and religion in the beginning of the 21st Century, we have the ability that is innate in every generation to redefine our universe. The artists and poets and dreamers can redefine God’s intent based on our current understanding of the universe, and we can each do our part to do right in this world. We will miss the opportunity to send a native son of the Garden State to the White House if we do not embrace the concept that we must work together to carry out God’s will that we be civil and compassionate to each other. Governor Christie knows that. You know that. The People know that. And together, like Moses who considered himself the most unlikely person to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, you will have the ability to start on this path by Thanksgiving Day, when families that look very different from our families, will similarly come together across the Garden State, giving thanks to God for the blessings and freedoms that they have.

Best wishes in your endeavor. All you have are your experiences to guide you in doing the right thing.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

Voting for Senator Richard Codey

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:55:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

We are considering voting for Senator Richard Codey this November. As fairly hardcore Conservative Republicans, we have only once in our lives voted for a Democrat (and a quick Google search for Inmate No. 11-R-1334 shows how well that turned out).

While we might naturally be inclined to agree with Senator Codey’s “Tea Party” Republican challenger, we believe that you will actually need in the Senate a strong Democratic partner with executive branch experience who can help you get bipartisan legislation through the Legislature. As such, it is our firm belief that you would actually want and find it beneficial to have Senator Codey in the Senate if New Jersey is to actually lead the country out of this recession by example on a bipartisan basis. As long as we are all going to be honest with each other going forward, please let us know otherwise if you disagree.

We know that you have spent the past several months doing a lot of soul searching. We know that having freed yourself from immediate pursuit of the Presidency, you have freed yourself to do what is right for the Garden State, irrespective of national Republican dogma. If only envy were not one of the Seven Deadly Sins, we would love to be in the position that you are in right now. You have the ability to redefine Conservatism on a State and national basis, while re-affirming core Conservative principles of smaller more efficient government.

We are happy to see your empathy for the Occupy Wall Street protesters (http://youtu.be/kOSb810x9rk) in their feelings that, “The government is not helping them; the Government is not being fair.” That was an incredible acknowledgement on your part. Governor, we are men of ideas. In the great New Jersey spirit, we dream of things. In the great American spirit, we imagine novel solutions. You point out that the Occupy Wall Street folks and the Tea Party folks come from the same prospective, but have different solutions. Now you are beginning to actually talk about and compare and debate the solutions by actually speaking with the other side rather than pontificating. Governor, we have the ability to restore Conservative principles of smaller and more productive government, by actually bringing the lost Occupy Wall Streeters and their supporters on board.

Governor, what has to impress us about all of the Tea Partiers, no matter how misguided they may be, is that power has to reside ultimately with The People. What impressed us most about the Occupy Wall Streeters, no matter how misguided they may be, was their faith in humanity and the outpouring of warmth that was shown to and by them… and that they were able to take donated food that was as good as the food that we eat and in turn feed the homeless and the hungry. Brother, that’s Compassion. That’s the kind of stuff that Jesus was talking about.

Governor, when we came to adulthood as thinking men, we became Conservatives and Republicans because we believed that when the ideas were honestly debated, the Conservative principles won every time.

Governor, we still believe that.

And these are college educated folks out there protesting that the system ain’t working for them. And we are going to lose an entire generation of young people over two issues that don’t make any sense. We as debating Conservatives stopped debating. And when we seem closed-minded, we seem dishonest, and people don’t want to hear our other Conservative real free-market ideas to lead forward out of the wreckage of the past decade. They are rightly wary of us (http://youtu.be/BFIuVspMesQ and http://youtu.be/fRuR_hofutg).

Governor, we can no longer in good company come up with any good argument as to why two adults should not be allowed to be recognized by their state and Federal governments as married, living this crazy life together for better or worse. Governor, we can no longer in good company come up with any good argument as to why an adult should lose his fortune or freedom if he is to use marijuana, especially in light of the stark racial disparity in enforcement. If you were to throw your support behind the marriage equality bill and say that if it lands on your desk you would sign it, and if you actually reach out to the patients and advocates in the Garden State who risked their reputations standing up for what is right with the Compassionate Use Act, and actually allow them to responsibly provide Compassion to those in need in a proper Compassionate Alternative Treatment Center system that could have been up and running fifteen months ago, you would show a heart that would change the course of discussion in this country on all topics that matter. At that point, we could make and debate bold Conservative proposals. If we make corporate dividends tax deductible to the issuer, then (i) corporations are incentivized to issue dividends to be efficiently allocated by investors as opposed to being used as retained earnings for merger and acquisition to create mega-corporations, (ii) New Jersey is a wealthy state that would participate in that dividend windfall for spending and re-investing by our state’s investor-class residents, and (iii) securities would begin to be priced based on real cash flow and not on speculative figures. Win, win, win. You may completely disagree with that idea. You may have a team of advisors feeding you ideas, but I am sure that you have your own big bold ideas that have been brewing. Governor, with a change in policy from your administration on the thorn-in-our-side marriage equality and compassionate use issues, people from both sides of the aisle are going to start listening to you. The country’s attention will turn to you. The fighting could actually stop for a second in all of the issues that this great State faces. And you would have the opportunity and good will and political capital to speak your mind and bet everything that you have on your heart. We would have the opportunity as a state to actually talk about what the vision is for us all going forward… together… without acting like Star-Bellied Sneetches.

We were watching a Bob Dylan documentary and saw some of the old films of white cops in the South fighting with black protesters in the early 1960s, and we prayed that we would, as loyal operators of the state, have had the foresight and backbone to stand up for what is right, and not to be viewed by history as simple-minded. Governor, the simple truth is that we as Republicans are not going to be able to realistically move forward in the 21st Century if we drag these two dead dog issues with us. If we stop placing our judgment on the People for their singular traits, we are going to have the ability to actually again have those wonderful discussions and debates… the intellectual challenges that actually attracted us to into Government in the first place. We are going to be able to talk to each other again.

Governor, God has created us in his likeness. To have faith in humanity is in fact to have faith in God’s good judgment. Governor, if we are going to restore this country’s faith in God after all of the hypocrisy and the abuses and the insane foreign policies and the planes crashing into buildings in the name of religion, we are going to have to restore this country’s faith in humanity. Government is going to have to revert to its rightful and limited role of governing. Religion is going to have to take back on the responsibilities that were stolen from it by government when government took on the primary responsibility to provide compassion and relief and assumed the right to pass moral judgment. If we get rid of all of the tax breaks and unmanageable social programs and stop trying to insure everybody, and restore our faith in our fellow man to take actual responsibility to do the right thing, and let religious and Compassionate communities assume their rightful roles, we will have restored the People’s faith in God. The great and lesser religions can compete with each other and with all other Compassionate communities for the hearts and minds and money of The People based on the public services that they take on and the Compassion that they provide. It is incredible the moralities that a hungry man and a sick man will listen to as they are being fed and mended by someone out of the genuine goodness of their heart. Religion can only find its meaning in search of God’s intent that we be decent to each other out of our hearts. The government cannot provide that Compassion in The People’s stead, and it cannot criminalize morality and make The People feel like outsiders, because that is just plain wrong.

A Conservative government cannot bully its constituency. It needs to ensure that it does not treat people like outsiders just because they are different. With a simple statement, you and Senator Codey will be able to quickly move the marriage equality bill onto your desk prior to Thanksgiving, so that when Garden State residents get together with their families that have expanded in ways that we not long ago could never have imagined, we are able to treat our tablemates as equals, and judge them by their hearts, and give thanks for their friendship. You have the ability to end the vitriol. It is time for us to grow up and stop judging our friends and neighbors by any trait other than the size of their heart. Discuss this with Mary Pat, and we are sure that the proper path forward will illuminate itself.

Dear and kind-hearted Governor, you and Senator Codey have the ability to work together and speak to each other to find common ground and a mutual path forward. Let’s show the country (and the Republican Party) how to stop the arguing and begin the honest debating. New Jersey has more PhDs per capita than any other state in the nation. If we let The People of the Garden State be the great and diverse people that they were meant to be, our success will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And you, Governor, will never again have to worry about campaigning for any principle that does not come from the heart. And maybe, the good People of the Garden State will have the high honor to send one of its native sons to The White House in 2016.

Please let us know if you feel that Senator Codey will not be your right partner in this endeavor.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

The Path Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:49:00 +0000

Dear Senator Codey:

Changing the strings of a guitar is an intimate moment. One by one, the tired dull strings are removed and replaced with bright fresh strings that each sing based on its own thickness and tension. We make minor adjustments to bring the guitar in tune with itself and from a strum of the strings, it becomes clear that the guitar is playable.

Government is out of tune, and not playable, and it is difficult to change the strings. We have corrupted ourselves with a party system that no longer serves us well. Both political parties are equally culpable.

Senator Codey, Governor Christie is going to be our governor for the next two years. New Jersey does not have two years to wait for whatever brilliant plans you and the Democrats are going to come up with. New Jersey is going to have to, through the strength and education and ingenuity of its residents and through the wonders of its land and location, lead the country out of this recession. You, Senator Codey, are the dude in the Senate with statewide executive leadership experience. An effective executive cannot lead if half of his board of directors is working to undermine him. We are going to have to find a way to make State government in tune with itself so that when we strum it, it just plays beautifully, with each string vibrating at a frequency at which it is comfortable.

Now, the Governor is not without fault. He has a tendency to be caustic and abrasive, and these are traits that the Governor knows that he will have to personally work on if he is to be a national leader who is loved by the People. The Governor has shown bad faith to the ordinary citizens of The Garden State who at great risk to themselves have stood up and fought for a Medical Marijuana Compassionate Use Act law because it was morally right. They won their law and the Governor has burned through effective leaders in the Department of Health who could have implemented a program responsibly and compassionately. He designed a set of politically-based regulations that were universally panned as being unconstitutional, against the letter of the law, against the spirit of the law, and arbitrary and capricious. He had replaced Compassion with with secrecy, he had curtailed access, and he had shrouded the program in criminality. It is no wonder that townships do not want to grant locations for the six behemoth insiders who won their Alternative Treatment Centers (http://www.southjerseylocalnews.com/articles/2011/10/13/maple_shade_progress/news/doc4e96b7ff3f5da086406325.txt?viewmode=fullstory). Alternative Treatment Centers were meant to be small, operated by your friends and neighbors who fought so hard for the law, humanly providing natural medicine for those in need upon recommendation of their very real doctors. The Governor is too smart; we do not believe that he is incompetent, but we do have no qualms about claiming that he acts in bad faith, and that sadly speaks to the content of his character. But we are all capable of change.

We had just finished Yom Kippur. We skipped the fasting as being one of the symbolic acts of our religions that are all-too-often confused for the concrete acts which were supposed to be the principles of all of our religions. It is not enough to fast or to confess, absolution lies in our actions going forward. The past helped develop us, but it does not define us. We wish to be defined by the future and the work that we undertake to shape it. Senator, the old strings of the political parties no longer serve us. Both parties have learned to rape the system and the discord that comes from strumming the strings makes us inclined to leave the instrument in the corner. However, guitars are meant to be played.

There are robust changes that need to be made, they may not all be 100% right, but they can’t be more wrong than the path we were on and the stagnant path that we appear to be on. We need to begin to look at government through a new prism. Team New Jersey. We need our elected representatives to debate robustly, not in front of television cameras, but in front of their friends and families and over drinks. You, as the Democrat Statesman of the Senate with executive experience, are going to have to have to work with the Governor to achieve the things that we can jointly agree upon. We can start with the little things and build up trust and move on to some of the bigger things. We need to repent our sins together and forge a path forward. We are going to have to focus Government on governing and restore the roles of charity and morality to non-binding religion. Religion is dying because it has lost its purpose. Religions began fighting with each other over silly doctrines and past definitions of normalcy that did not evolve with culture, instead of competing with each other to build hospitals and schools and support networks, because their charitable missions were assumed by insurance companies and governments which became sick with power. We need to encourage the poets and the artists and the dreamers to rewrite God’s intent. We will need to find a way to place faith in the basic goodness of humanity by making sure that charity comes from the heart and not from a tax break or a government entitlement.

As we move forward on the new path, we are going to have to make effective use of our Federal legislators. Our Federal legislators are going to have to be responsive to the needs of our State legislators. We are going to have to stop the fighting between state governments and the federal governments by having our federal legislators demand that the Federal government cease interfering with the fifty social laboratories of the fifty states. There are bold choices that can be made if we work together. New Jersey is a wealthy state. If we ask our Federal legislators to redesign tax policy to encourage dividends that are tax-deductible to the issuer (instead retained earnings used to fuel cancerous growth through merger and acquisition) and to discourage U.S. companies from offshoring profits (and all investment that could have come from those profits), we would actually have a windfall of dividend income for corporate shareholders here in The Garden State. A large portion of that income would naturally be spent on investment and improvement and leisure right here in The Garden State.

But we need to think boldly. And we need to work with all of the diverse people of the Garden State. We will need to be inclusive of foreign ideas. We came this close to a major step backwards in using government dollars to divide our communities along cultural and religious lines with the whole Charter School thing. And it was ugly and divisive. Thank you for your help with that issue. How are you going to lead us now? How are you going lead by example and show us what working on Team New Jersey looks like? We have the possibility to send a native son of The Garden State to the White House in the next five years. Do you want to be a part of that morale victory? We want to send Governor Christie to the White House because he was loved, not because he was feared. We want to send Governor Christie to the White House because he inspired and not because he evoked fear. We want to send Governor Christie to the White House because of the new directions he leads us in and not because of the directions that he could lead us in if only he were to crush his opponents. You, Senator Codey, are the key to this plan. You have to find a way for the Senate to make the Governor be the best governor he can be. You will have to encourage the Governor to participate in open and robust debate, in public and in private. You will have to convince the Governor that we cannot get there together if we continue to discriminate against our gay friends neighbors and family members… we have to move past this here in The Garden State. You will have to convince the Governor that he cannot act in bad faith against The People. Government will have to actually relax regulations and allow the diverse interests of the residents of the Garden State to blossom. That same torch of Liberty that draws people to our country's shores can draw new residents and business and tourism to our simple State. We must learn to heal the divisions and prejudices in this State so that we all can live honestly and govern honestly and love honestly and live in Pursuit of Happiness. The Governor must know that you are his partner in the path forward.

Welcome to the New Year. Please call Governor Christie and let him know where you think we can begin.

The Beginning is here.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

Talking to Each Other

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:15:00 +0000

Dear Senators Lautenberg and Menendez:

We are kind of glad that that is over, huh? I suppose that we are better off not having our governor prance around the country for twelve months performing the kabuki theater that is so far removed from the actual tests of the Presidency. Something struck us about the Governor’s press conference though. The governor had said that he thought, “[t]hat the country would be better by making sure that President Obama is a one-termer.” (10:00-10:20 http://livestre.am/141Y9). Even though we are classic Conservatives, we disagree with the Governor. The country is sick and cannot wait the year for President Obama to be designated as a one-termer. The country will in fact be better if the leadership in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, were to work together to make the remainder of President Obama’s tenure, whether four or eight years, to be productive. The truth is that despite the collapse of the Country on the President’s tenure, which may very well affected by his lack of clear leadership, the Country knows that the blame lies ultimately with the Country’s leaders, Democrats and Republicans, in the many years (Ten? Twenty? Thirty? We could debate it over a beer) leading up to the Obama Administration. President Obama will likely be re-elected, if only because the Country will not put up with the stuffed-shirts propped up by Fox News.

We are in an interesting spot here in The Garden State. Assuming the President’s re-election, Governor Christie will become the heir-apparent to the Republican nomination for 2016. Gentlemen, would it not be a tremendous source of pride for The Garden State to send one of its native sons to the White House? What is it, I ask you Democratic Senators, that would cement Governor Christie’s nomination and election? The answer is clear… New Jersey would have to find a way to lead the country out of this worldwide economic recession.

Gentlemen, I put it to you that the State would be better, not by making sure that Governor Christie is a one-termer (we can’t afford the two-year waiting period to turn our fortunes around), but by forging that path forward for the State’s economy. We understand how hard it is to be an actual leader; the Sword of Damocles hangs by a single hair. But the hardest decision that will be yours to make is, “Where does our allegiance lie? Is it to our Party, or is it to our State?”

Dear Senators, the allegations against both parties are abundantful. Through mortgage deductions the Parties tipped the scales of owning a home, which drove the mortgage industry, which the Government took on as a public risk while privatizing the upside for those who funneled money back to the Parties as campaign contributions. To say nothing of the Education Bubble which is one prick away from similar collapse (Seton Hall wouldn’t just cut their tuition by 60% if demand is not falling precipitously (http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/30/new-jersey-college-offers-21k-tuition-cut-for-good-grades/)).

How did we get here?

Democrats and Republicans stopped speaking to each other. They stopped debating. They became talking points put out by the media that was supposed to be covering them but instead had the power to make them into stars. Gentlemen, I put it to you that if we as a country are faced with the prospect of putting up a Michelle Bachmann as a leading contender for the nomination of either party, then it does not matter what party to which you belong, we have all lost. And when we all lost and we stopped debating, the only thing that really mattered was the re-election war. And the money flowed. And we were afraid to lead or offend because too much was at stake. And promises were made that cannot possibly be kept. Retirees relied on accountings that in the private sector would have been criminal offenses. Students bought into the system with their student loans, not realizing that the banks, yes, the same ones that received bail outs, would lobby the Parties to make government-guaranteed student loans non-dischargeable, leaving the young graduates in the forever-gray limbo of unconstitutional indentured servitude. Homeowners set down their roots in towns with McMansions that seemed like a good idea at the time. Bankers and lawyers and accountants thought that they were doing good by shuffling paper and as the Internet emerged at the turn of the millennium, we found that we could shuffle papers so much faster digitally. It is no wonder that the house of cards would collapse, but those who were best able to account for systemic risk, the banks who tried to diversify risk by printing it on paper and handing it out to people, they reached for a bailout rather than fall honorably on the sword of Capitalism. And those Occupy Wall Street protesters? Those protesters saw it happen and have been told to go read the writing up on the side of the barn one too many times.

So where does that leave us now? We had already given up on The Big Three religions’ –isms when they could not protect our children, gave us a ridiculous unsolvable foreign policy for three generations, and flew airplanes into our buildings. The other –isms… Socialism, Capitalism, Liberalism, Conservatism… they have all been proven to be fallible.

What is the new plan? How do we get ourselves out of this mess and get back on the road to good times when we don’t live in abject fear of the actions of our governments? Senators Lautenberg and Menendez, we are not elected leaders of our State, so take forgive us if we are naive, but we do not believe that we are going to get there if you do not actually regularly speak to the Governor (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/nyregion/for-christie-and-2-nj-senators-no-love-lost.html?_r=1). And it is killing us. One hand has no clue what the other is doing or thinking. Go grab a drink together once in a while. Chill together. Invite each other over for barbecue. Maybe if you actually spoke to each other once in a while you would find that there might be common ground on the things that you believe.

Perhaps our Federal government could actually embrace Federalism and help our states rather than obstruct them. We are supposed to have fifty experiments going on in this country, just as, here in the Garden State, we are supposed to have over 600 experiments going on. That’s what this form of government was supposed to be about. But it had all become sick from the top down when this visceral fighting started at the advent of this twenty-four hour media that started during the Clinton Administration. We have argued ourselves sick. How do we get back to civil discourse amongst men and women of honor?

You might even be able to solve some of the big cultural issues that have divided us. Perhaps, if you have a few drinks together once in a while, you might even be able to settle the fact that life begins sometime before birth and that to take a life is sometimes justifiable and often times forgivable and periodically abominable, and that to make certain procedures rare, we are going to have to create a society where a woman in her reproductive prime in her early twenties does not feel like a complete societal reject for having a baby and possibly bypassing that government proscribed formal educational gravy train… as if there could be any greater instructor than Life itself. We have educated ourselves out of doing anything humane or useful.

And those protesters down on Wall Street, the ones who look at all of the lies and hypocrisies and can easily look up on their foreign-built iPhones what the writing on the wall used to say, they don’t care whether there is a “D” or an “R” after your name, because they think that you all broke the system. If you spoke to the Governor once in a while, maybe you could fix this conundrum where the federal government is trying to shut down purely intra-state medical marijuana businesses authorized by State law in ways that those who fought for the proven-ineffective Eighteenth Amendment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution) would have thought was unconstitutional. Maybe there are new industries about which these protesters are passionate where they could responsibly start new businesses and create jobs, if only given the chance. In a world where fifty-year-old dudes are arrested (http://www.app.com/article/20111003/NJNEWS/310030082/2-arrested-23-pounds-marijuana-seized-Toms-River?odyssey=nav) trying to bring medicine into retirement communities, and the Governor is now realizing that he has no wish to preside over the Seventh Circle of Hell where morality is defined by sending an MS patient to jail, away from his family and loved ones, for growing his own medicine to relive the pain from his immune system attacking his nervous system (http://www.nj.com/times-opinion/index.ssf/2011/08/post_2.html), in trying to establish an Alternative Treatment Center program in New Jersey, the Governor should not have to do battle with the Federal government. Do you think you can restore just a little bit of power to the states and to your home state? Can we lay claim to the Tenth Amendment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)? Ever?

Do you think you ought to begin speaking to each other? Do you think that by working together, you might be able to get more done? Do you think that by breaking bread together you could make it so that our friends and neighbors don’t feel like outsiders, less than worthy, just because they are sick, or gay, or pregnant, or have different religious or cultural traditions and problems, or pulled the short end of the stick from Capitalism’s promises? How can we learn from each other and grow with each other rather than stream our thoughts from the “news” channels? How do we reduce the naked vitriol and lay our rightful claim as living and growing human beings to define the moralities of our time and return our governments to The People? As our understanding of the formation of the Universe grows, how can we free our poets and artists and dreamers to re-imagine God’s intent? Neither Government nor Organized Religion can protect us from every ill. We’ve got that. But Organized Religions can compete for the hearts and minds and charitable works of The People while Government can restore equality of opportunity to every individual. We need to make Government work for the People who wish to live their lives in Pursuit of Happiness and we need to free our religions to compete to provide the best charitable services in this country.

Senators, do you think that our Governor is an honorable man? Yes or no? As public officials, we believe that you should be able to publicly state your opinion. Is the Governor a decent man with whom you are bound to have disagreements? Is the Governor a family man with whom you could have a beer and discuss the trials and tribulations of life? Senators, the Governor is not of your political party. The Governor, as proven by his press conference, is as likely to use the political whip as deftly as any Party playa. But you are the Statesmen. You are the gentlemen negotiators. You have the opportunity to show our young Governor, a way above party politics. This country is going to have to move beyond party politics if we are to move forward. There is no time left here in the Garden State. We are going to have to figure out ways to build a new –ism where people are not left to feel like outsiders from the system and that they should have equal access to the laws and opportunities. The Garden State must lead the country out of the recession. Our residents are the best educated and live in the saddle between two major metropolises. Tourists should be flocking to our beaches, which are amongst some of the most beautiful in the Continental United States. Ingenuity should come to us naturally when we are free to live our lives wrapped in the flag of Liberty. New Jersey, through the power and strength of its many independently self-responsible townships, can foster innovation and be a model for the rest of the country. If you all spoke to each other once in a while, and socialized, you might find that there is much to agree upon. This is your God-given mission. It is your opportunity for greatness.

And if you succeed… and if you succeed, you will have shored up the nomination and election of one of The Garden State’s native sons for the Presidency, despite the fact that he is a Republican. We suppose that that is the definition of Honor. And it is a lesson that everyone… you, us, and the Governor could well learn. It will take leadership and it will take resolve. And you must develop a closer working relationship where you can honestly discuss ideas and have our levels of government work with each other to push down responsibilities from the Federal Government to the state governments to the townships to the people. We still believe in the United States of America, even though she is sick. We have to carve out the cancers and nurse her back to health.

All of those protesters down on Wall Street have seen the hypocrisies of tax policies that encourage mergers and acquisitions as opposed to dividends, and mega-corporations of efficiency rather than equal opportunity for all to enter new and legitimate industries, and the endless cycle of breaks for those who can afford to fund the political campaigns. But we are going to have to find a way back onto our feet without restricting speech. We are actually going to have to begin speaking more. To each other. Over a beer, if only so to recognize that we are all sinners. We are going to have to find a way to make President Obama successful now. We are going to have to find a way to make Governor Christie successful now. The age of the political parties is over. We are all on Team New Jersey. We are all working to bring our best ideas from the People of the Garden State to lead ourselves out of the recession.

Whose team are you on? Please help us make our Governor successful. Show us true leadership and please share in the high honor of sending a native son of the Garden State to the White House in 2016. We are all in this together. Welcome to Team New Jersey.

Sincerely,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

P.S. For so long as we are now all about helping the common people and not just the wealthy and connected who are in a position to funnel money sucked out of the government back into political donations, my band, The Stiff Joints (www.thestiffjoints.com) would love to play in Atlantic City and maybe invite a couple hundred or thousand of our suburban parent friends out for a night of partying and getting to know each other and creating some New Jersey camaraderie and maybe jump start the State’s economic engine turning again. If you could introduce us to some of the folks that you know from the casino industry, we would surely appreciate it and would welcome you as our guests for a night of rock n’ roll as you hang with the common folk who work hard to make their local New Jersey townships the best possible world for raising their children. In advance, thanks for helping us out.

The Religious New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Awake. Shit, is it 5772 already? And the Universe is 13.5 billion years old? Perhaps it is the right of the poets and artists and dreamers in every generation to reimagine God's intent as we gain a greater understanding of the Universe that He has created. Welcome to the rest of our lives. Let's stop fighting the petty battles of our ancestors and work on living with and amongst our neighbors. Happy New Year.

Running for President

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:47:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

Thank you for siding with The People on the whole Charter School thing. The People like you. The People want you to succeed. The People believe that you have the ability to succeed. But many of the People are extremely cautious about you. They get the fiscal responsibility stuff but you leave them fuzzy on the moral responsibility stuff.

We went to visit the protesters down on Wall Street again. A lot of folks with a lot of time on their hands. They can’t piece together a good argument to save their lives (so much for all of that formal education), but they know that somehow they have been cast out of the System.

Governor, we lost faith in The Big Three “–isms” when they could not protect our children, gave us an insane foreign policy that can’t be fixed over three generations, and flew airplanes into our buildings, but we still believed in Capitalism. We as Republicans were supposed to be defenders of the idea that with risk came reward and that every man and woman has an equal opportunity. But when the Banking System looked into the abyss of systemic collapse, rather than honorably falling on the sword that it carried, it blinked, and saved itself. And it turned out that the entire system, from higher education to Wall Street was just designed to move paper around. Those kids down on Wall Street, they saw the Republicans and Democrats together bail Wall Street out. It was the costume we were never supposed to wear.

I spoke with hundreds of individuals from all across the Garden State from diverse working-class backgrounds who were willing to risk all of their capital to open Medical Marijuana Alternative Treatment Centers. Charge them a thousand bucks for a license and they were ready to responsibly grow supply to meet demand. And your Republican administration did exactly what we Conservatives should not do; you limited the rules and the application and award process to only wealthy well-connected individuals. That was wrong. And you knew it, Governor. And a new system that you were charged with operating, decayed on the vine.

Then it seems like more and more, at family functions or when out with friends, we get introduced to same-sex couples. How are we defend your aversion to Equality of Marriage and still seem like nice people who hope for the best in people. A Republican administration is supposed to be about limiting government intrusion so that people individually could be the best that they can be. The recording of a marriage was supposed to be a service of the government, so that a couple living together could be commonly recognized as living together. It wasn’t required, it was elective.

In this life, we are each entitled to pursue Happiness. Who is the State, especially under a Republican administration, to stand in the way between a couple and their request that the truth be recognized… that they are in fact a married couple?

Governor, we admire the weight of the decision that you are making, whether to run for President. If you run, it will not be enough for you to steer the train along the rails in the path of least resistance. We have President Obama for that. We are going to need a President Christie who will be able to haul the locomotive off the tracks and throw a rope over his shoulders and drag it through the sand in the right direction. And as much as muscle may help you, it is going to take a lot of heart to get The People to get behind the locomotive and push. But we, as Americans, believe that if we work together, we can drag and push this train, together, over the mountain.

We are going to have to work to bridge the divide between the Wall Street Protesters and, not the folks drinking champagne up in the balconies, who are cartoon characters who in their own way were chewed up by the system, but the suits walking to work who feel uncomfortable walking by the protests. We are going to have to bridge the divide between the religious fundamentalists and those who believe that our morality grows by responsibly pushing the boundaries and pursuing Truth. We are going to have to begin to build a system that recognizes that information travels at the speed of light and that Truth is readily exposed and lets people feel free to have their work acquaintances be their Facebook friends. That kind of world, in pursuit of Happiness, is the only one that can get us out of this funk. A President who is in pursuit of Truth is going to have to stare at himself in the high-definition television screens and publicly declare his intentions, from the depth of his heart, despite the moneyed interests that feel that a debt is owed.

Governor Christie, only say yes if you are ready to tap your heart and publicly state your real intentions. We have an entire slate of Fox News stuffed-shirt candidates who will let us slide down the rails in the direction of least resistance, a direction that most of the country that fueled the coal for this 20th Century engine is tired of going in. We need 21st Century a tax system that encourages the efficient reallocation of capital through dividends that are tax deductible to the issuer but taxed at ordinary income to the recipient. That single flame will kill the cancer of the mega corporation. If will free capital to be reallocated to the entrepreneur. It will light the flame of R&D and slow the passion for merger and acquisition efficiency, which has made the American worker a simple binary switch on the motherboard of the economy. We are efficient at the speed of light now, and we are losing the flavor for life. We need you to trust the diversity of the American public. We can learn from each other faster than we could ever learn from a federally subsidized for-profit University. Let’s not rebuild the old system. Let’s start fresh and build a new system together. We can’t do that if we have a leader who is looking to divide us along economic, religious, or social grounds. You, Governor Christie… you have a big heart. You could be that leader. But you would have to have faith in yourself and stick along that path until we get to the Promised Land.

Best wishes in your decision this weekend. Do the right thing.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

Letter to West Essex Tribune re: Charter Schools

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 02:16:00 +0000

Dear West Essex Tribune Editor:

It dismays us to read that some of our town council members are working to dismantle our local public schools (http://njjewishnews.com/article/statewide/orthodox-forum-hears-pleas-for-tuition-relief).

Public funding of narrow-tailored ideological education is a new play out of the same religious fundamentalist playbook that won the battle in my hometown of Monsey, NY. If you win control of the schools, you win the town. The Mandarin Charter schools are Trojan Horses for other foreign language charter schools, which themselves are all-too-obvious Trojan Horses for The Big Three religions. It’s not $500,000 for 30 students; it’s $5 million for 300 students that transfer from religious day schools to language-based charter schools. And it will grow.

And it’s not like we wouldn’t be willing to pay for the education of those kids if they would go to our public schools and become a part of our community and share their best customs and ideas with us and learn together with us. We’d happily pay for their education. But if we publicly fund these religious and quasi-religious schools, it would break down the sense of community which the 600-some-odd school districts in The Garden State have strived to create.

We need to have a serious discussion. Which way do we want The Garden State to grow? Through our diverse communities, or through our sectarian communities? It’s the 21st Century folks. We are on the verge of some incredible scientific discoveries about the origins of the Universe. We are teaching our children to question and seek out and learn. Our moralities grow as each generation is entitled by obtaining adulthood to change the rules. It’s fine to wear your religious traditions proudly, but if we are going to get along in this world, we are going to have to learn together and incorporate foreign and new traditions together. This serious question of our time needs to be addressed both in our houses of worship and in our larger community. There is a proper place for religion in our lives as a set of guiding principles, but when those guiding principles prevent you from learning and growing with your larger community, then you have missed the point of those guiding principles. Government dollars cannot be used to divide our children. Our children must learn together if they are to learn to live together. The new experiences we get from our diversity are the engine that will drive The United States to continue to lead the world in the 21st Century.

This past Saturday night, may band, The Stiff Joints, played to 300 of our diverse Livingston friends. We’re going to be okay. Our kids go to the same schools. We are in it together. And we have fun and expose ourselves to new ideas in the process. We have seen the past and all of the carnage in history that comes from living divided. We can preserve our religious traditions, but we must move forward as united citizens of this Township by educating our children together.

Justin Escher Alpert
www.justinalpert.com

The Work that is Cut out For Us Republicans

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:56:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

We went to go see the protests down on Wall Street. Kids, mostly in their early twenties. They had done what they were told, studied hard, took out loans to go to the right schools, and a generation is seemingly left behind by the capitalist system which we have been preaching would be the rising tide that lifts all boats. They sit there in the park, protesting the suits that walk by to their Wall Street jobs. If there is a silver lining to their heavily tattooed and pierced bodies, it is that they seemingly have made the permanent choice to be excluded from a work life where they would be slinging collateralized debt obligations on to an unsuspecting public.

We mentally rewind time and see the tattoos peel off the body and the piercings close, and the hair shrinking back into the scalp and we see kids that look a lot like ours. A group of young women sit together on a bench, bare-chested, protesting a system that they don’t understand (a system that we, as Republicans have been preaching as righteous system). We think back to our days of working on Wall Street at the turn of the millennium. We never saw these protests before. These kids always had something better to do than sit in a park in downtown Manhattan with their tits hanging out. It gets us thinking…

Now that they have repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, what surprises us most about all of the comings out of members of the military is that the title of Rear Admiral seems to have been nothing more than the butt of an inside joke amongst sailors who have been performing their duties to the highest levels of skill and honor. Given the trajectory of the gay rights movement, we believe that the Republican Party cannot build a coalition to capture the executive or legislative branches of government by being anything other than the Big Tent party, and even if we could, we no longer want to. The gay rights activists in the State have not been pushing hard for their marriage equality bill, most likely because they do not wish to face a demoralizing veto out of your office. Governor, perhaps the time has come for you to reach deep within your heart, and call Assemblyman Gusciora, and let him know that if he is able to weave his marriage equality bill through the Legislature to land on your desk, that you will sign it, because it is the right thing to do and we have bigger fish to fry.

Back to the tattooed and pierced protesters… The truth of their arguments about the evils of corporations is not the important matter; what is of importance is that the economic principles that we as Conservatives hold dear, have left a generation of kids cynical of government. This, after they have been left cynical of God by The Big Three organized religions being morally corrupt, destabilizing, and hypocritical. The question arises as to whether we are going to continue to judge people by single traits that have no impact on the content of their character or whether we are going to work to bring these tattooed and pierced and lost kids back into the fold... with compassion What are we going to do as Republicans, after the bail-outs of banks, and the creation of medical marijuana oligopolies for the wealthy and connected, and the imposition of government from the top down over education and the war on drugs and tax breaks for mega-corporations?

Right now, for better or worse, you are one of the leaders of the Republican Party on a national basis. Despite the Democrats’ equal culpability for the collapse of the economy, as a leader of the Republican Party, you will be branded, rightly or wrongly, as affiliated with excess and greed and the corruption of government that, at least in the eyes of these young activists, no longer represents the interests of the People.

Perhaps those kids are right. Maybe, just as Christianity and Judaism and Islam can be corrupted, perhaps the -ism that is capitalism has been corrupted. When tax policy discouraged dividends by taxing them twice and companies find it cheaper to grow and grow into mega-corporations which fix the laws to their advantage, perhaps we need a new plan to restore government to the People. The decisions that you make over the next four years (assuming your re-election), will be determinative as to whether we are able to send a native-son of the Garden State to the White House.

Governor, we believe that the principles by which we ought to move forward are simply stated: Each man and woman is entitled Liberty and to Pursue Happiness, without undue influence by the government (to say nothing of a government that jails MS patients for growing their own medicine). We agree with the protesters that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles as shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. However, we do not believe that drastic revolutionary actions are necessary. We believe that government, under your administration and guidance, is capable of correcting itself and its long train of abuses and usurpations.

Government can no longer declare war against its own people, especially after it has been exposed as violating the very principles by which it was established. You, Governor, are the face of the Republican Party. You have earned a position of leadership. God has granted you a gift of wit that has the ability to charm an audience. The time has come for you to decide how to use that gift in pursuit of Good. Are we going to continue to divide our communities by single traits that have no impact on the content of character? Will we become stronger working to exclude our neighbors who already feel outcast by the system? I sincerely doubt it.

We don’t envy the work that is cut out for you. These kids, despite having nothing better to do than sit out half-naked and protest, they remain well-connected to the Internet. They have been educated by the system and they have turned to reject it. They will continue to organize and exercise the rights which God has endowed upon them. We look at the inside dealings of the Republican Party and our loss of principle and we have nothing to say to these kids to defend the system. We can no longer afford to fight our neighbors who may look different or act differently than us. We need to find a way to capture their anger and resentment and channel it for the betterment of society.

Our children are now in grade school. They are the next generation to be turned out by the system. We can either turn them out with hate or love. We can either be honest or dishonest. We are really scared for them. We can recognize that the rules must change if we are going to find a way to bring the lost generation back into the fold before we release our children into the world in ten years. We have to. That is our mission. We need to show why capitalism works and we need to be honest when it does not… when it has abandoned its principles in the course of self-dealing.

We are educating our children just fine out here in the leafy green rolling hills of suburban New Jersey. They are going into the world and they are going to call it like they see it. We ought to be reading up on the mistakes of the Johnson and Nixon administrations in dealing with their counter-culture problems. If America is to truly make its diversity (more than just including a Christmas song and a Hanukah song and a Kwanza song in the school holiday talent show) the engine of its economy, we will have the innate ability to lead the world back onto the tracks of economic success. We need more carrots and less sticks. We need to be inclusive and welcoming of the diversity of individuals. And we need to capture the imaginations of the current generation of kids that have lost confidence in the system.

Good luck. If you approach it honestly and correct past mistakes and divergences from principle, we have every confidence that you will be able to pull it off.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

P.S. I was sorry to hear from your office that you will be unable to attend the Stiff Joints show (http://www.thestiffjoints.com/) this Saturday night at the Ringside Pub in Caldwell, New Jersey. If you and Mary Pat are having a quiet dinner and change your minds, feel free to fire up the chopper and make your way up to the show. We would love to have you as our guest.

Stuffed-Shirt Fox News-Cast Republican Presidential Hopefuls

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:39:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

Welcome to fall. We ended our summer on the pristine beaches of Long Beach Island, where the joyous shrieks of children unplugged from the intravenous drip of television caused the sun to stay out minutes longer than it otherwise should have.

Governor, we don’t always tell the truth. Sometimes truth is unnecessary and sometimes it doesn’t serve quite the same purpose as hyperbole. Governor, no one believed you when you said you wouldn’t run for President because of the pressures that it would put on your family. We believe that The Office of the President is a calling. No man can request volunteer soldiers to sacrifice time with family if he cannot make similar sacrifice in the course of service to his country. It is not a matter of timing. We are never “ready” for the challenges that confront us and define our character, for if we were, they would not be challenges.

And we Classical Conservatives look to the upcoming Republican debate and the podiums full of stuffed-shirt Fox News-cast characters and ask, “Where is our savior?”

It could be you. It is not too late.

But here is the problem…

Out here in the rolling green hills of suburban New Jersey, where we commute too far and watch too much television and try to raise our children to simultaneously blend in with society and keep unique tastes and honest perspectives, we aim to lead by example. So we have booked our rock n’ roll cover band, The Stiff Joints, to play at The Ringside Pub in Caldwell on Saturday, September 24 at 9 pm, and three hundred of our friends and neighbors (you know suburban parents of diverse backgrounds, all well-educated professionals, with a median age that exceeds the retirement age of even the best Major League Baseball players), will be there to blow off a little steam, dedicated to the proposition that we cannot take ourselves seriously all of the time.

The problem is that most of these folks at that Stiff Joints show… people who should naturally be in the sweet spot of the Grand Old Party… those folks have no intention of re-electing you as Governor.

When the Republicans abandoned their free market principles and bailed out their banker friends, it had pulled back the curtain on all of government being corrupt… Democrats and Republicans had together used laws and loopholes to funnel money in an endless loop that had brought the economy to its knees. It was difficult to lose government after we had lost our faith in The Big Three religions at the turn of the millennium when they could not protect our children from harm, influenced an impracticable foreign policy, and showed a blatant disregard for humanity and the humanities. With our loss in faith of two of the main pillars of our lives, we rested on the last pillar of our families and communities.

When we were asked to sacrifice on behalf of our families, we did so without hesitation. We attended school board meetings to protect the interest of our children and communities from unfunded mandates of charter schools by your Department of Education, only to find that the Department is being led by a shill for the movement to privatize the public obligation of education. You had done such a fine job of calling out the teachers’ unions as being corrupt, but in place of providing leadership and vision for the individual teachers to make them feel like professionals and letting them know that they would be an important part of the change in public education for the 21st Century, you substituted an equally corrupt organizational structure, thereby completely turning off those Stiff Joint concert attendees from any interest in seeing any more of your administration.

Once we lost our faith in big government and big religion, we were free to call out the lies. That you, Governor, knew that it was wrong for the State to fail to recognize as fact that some of our friends, neighbors, and family members are living in same-sex committed relationships and should be beneficiaries of equal status under the law. It was one of the great civil rights battles of our time, but at best, you demurred instead of showing leadership, all at our expense in the name of playing to the vague interests of voters in other states. How long do you think Miss Ashmore or Mr. Drewniak can withstand defending to their children the legacy of their acting as the ears and mouthpiece of the perpetuator of what surely in the future will look like civil rights violations?

After looking to the unholy alliance between organized religion and government, we looked to the unholy alliance between industry and government. Governor, your administration had sought to put a man with multiplesclerosis in jail because he could not wait for government to recognize his inherent right to liberty. Government expected him to succumb to purchasing the legal and expensive synthetic opiates manufactured by Big Pharma instead of seeking out natural alternatives that, after a collective enlightenment, are now recognized by State law to be effective and legal (notwithstanding, twenty months into the law, the first patient has yet to receive legal and effective and compassionate relief).

Governor, your administration had impeded on the one pillar that we had left… our family and community. And it was out of lies and misshaded truths and fear of rocking the boat. But, Governor, the boat has capsized. We are not looking for the Captain to swim back to shore and get another dinghy for us. We are looking for someone who can honestly analyze why the boat capsized. We are looking for someone who can help us build a bigger and better and stronger boat. Someone who can grant us the freedoms that we as adults are entitled to in making judgments within our families and communities as to what is right and wrong and where we can push the boundaries and grow as individuals, setting real examples for our children as to how to live a life well-lived.

Governor, we cannot choose the timing or the temper of our battles, but we can fight them with knowledge and dignity. You could make a phone call and instantly be a part of any Republican Presidential debate, but how would you be different than those other stuffed-shirt Fox News Republicans standing at the other podiums, some of whom we would hardly want to serve as our secretaries?

You could start by speaking the truth (with risk, comes reward). You could show by example how when New Jersey envelops itself in the flag of Liberty and truly free markets (where you don’t have to be wealthy and connected to become a player in the state-sanctioned oligopoly that will operate a newly legalized industry), we can all be a part of the solution that will lead us as engineers and craftsmen to build a new boat based on our collective experiences.

Governor, please come to The Stiff Joints’ show on September 24. Meet the voters who will cast judgment on you. We strive (but don’t always succeed) at being honest with our families and communities. Those moments of honesty tend to come at times when we are at play… between lovers and between teammates and between bandmates and even between housemates vacationing on the majestic shores of Long Beach Island. Come to the show on September 24 and bring Mary Pat with you. Come get silly with us as we reprieve from the order imposed on us by autumn’s school schedule. Share life with us and maybe you will be able to have an honest back and forth with the People of the Garden State, who are just trying to get by on their own wits.

If you can connect with us, Governor, and be honest with yourself, and going forward have an administration that reflects the true values of our communities (not as dictated by government bureaucracy and organized religion and connected businesses), there is no reason why you could not be standing at a podium at the next Republican Presidential Debate as a breath of fresh air and a real alternative.

We would be proud to send a native son of the Garden State to the White House. But you owe us honesty. And it will take personal sacrifice.

Sincerely,

Justin Escher Alpert

www.justinalpert.com

The Stiff Joints - Getting Tight

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:45:00 +0000

What does it feel like to sit in practice six weeks out before a gig?

There is a lot of focus. Things start coming together. Bandmates start working together. Presence becomes a singular state of mind.

We play a song. Nice… not thrilling, but nice. It was good but it was not tight. Let’s try that again. Feel the groove.

There is something that happens when you are tight. An energy flows through the room and pierces the heart of every participant, band members and audience. Being tight is not a question of individual talent; it is the ability to make it work together. It’s not that there aren’t any levels of tight… James Brown’s band was probably the gold standard… but either you are tight or you are not, and everyone, band members and audience, can instinctively identify it.

We play the next song. We feel it. We fall into the groove. And we each know it. We play around the edges. Layer rhythms. Bend time. The song ends and for a split second there is silence before we all in unison agree that we fucking nailed it.

Pressure builds because we played beyond expectations at our last gig. We stole the minds of our audience for three hours and gave them a fantastic ride together. Word got around. The show is now legendary in that it exists in the minds of people who were not there. Friends-of-friends who experienced it together became close friends because of it. People were inspired by it to play an instrument for the first time. It, for some people, band members and audience, changed, if ever so slightly, the direction of their lives. And it was good.

But a nervous energy still exists. What if there was some element that we did not recognize that was responsible for our groove at the last show? What if we play but we can’t get it there? What if we fail?

As Bono would say, “Live… LIVE… LIVE.” If it were easy, everyone would do it. This is the challenge. We need to be able to take an audience on a journey with us for three sets. Things go wrong live. The sound goes out. You hit a wrong chord. You miss the timing. The art is in making it work. And we, by taking the stage, will again stake our reputations that we can get it right.

It felt real good last night in practice. We hit some old songs and some new ones. We know where we need work. The focus starts becoming more intense as we go home and work on our weaknesses. Practices become more regimented. Set lists become set.

You are at a bar and you start talking to people and, “OMG, you are in that band?!? We heard about the last time and we are totally going.” Thoughts fly at work. We are looking up chords more often than we should be.

We are, quite literally, humming with anticipation. And we are working hard to get it right.

The Stiff Joints – Live (The Back-to-School tour)
Saturday, September 24, 2011, 9 PM
The Ringside Pub
Caldwell, New Jersey
www.thestiffjoints.com

www.justinalpert.com

Right and Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Escher Alpert) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Dear Governor Christie:

Brother, are we seriously going to put a dude with MS into jail for ten years (http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20110726/NEWS02/110726042/Conviction-sentence-upheld-MS-patient-s-N-J-marijuana-case)? For what?!?

You could imagine that as the multiple sclerosis ravaged John Wilson’s body, and his own immune cells attacked his nervous system, he chose to grow medical marijuana for his own use in lieu of synthetic opiates at a time before the Compassionate Use Act passed. Which gets us thinking… Under your administration, when the Alternative Treatment Center program is up and running, do you foresee marijuana arrests in New Jersey going down because people have compassionate access, or going up to protect the interests of the ATC’s? It is a scary question.

At the second DHSS Compassionate Use Act regulations hearing on March 7, 2011, you know, the one where no questions were answered and no notes were taken, a man stood up and he had no fingers or toes and he claimed that medical marijuana was the best thing going for his phantom pains and that he would be left out as an unqualified patient under the draconian regulations. Governor, even if that man were flat out lying as to the efficacy of his medicine, with what greater affliction must that man walk the Earth before he earns our sympathy?... our compassion? How heavy must his cross become? What if that man, in waiting the arbitrary and capricious two years for DHSS to even consider new ailments (to speak nothing of the regulations to get a new affliction approved, creating a bureaucratic nightmare the likes of which we have not seen since Comicus tried to pick up his unemployment check), what if that man out of necessity chooses to grow his own medicine? Would he likewise face the full extent of the law?

Governor, what happened to us? Where did we as a society lose that sense of compassion? We think of the Catholic education that you provide your children and ask what would Jesus do if he were confronted with these ailing folks? The answer is simple; as an enlightened individual, his heart would have been filled with compassion. At what point do we each as individuals become responsible for the actions of our society in general? We believe that it is our duty as adults to stand up and speak the truth and fight for what is at its most basic merely the decent thing to do. But certainly, as Governor, it is your duty to prevent a miscarriage of justice.

Governor, this is not a Democratic or Republican thing; it is merely a matter of right and wrong. If a religious education is so important to us, and we can still sit in judgment of a man for how he confronts his personal issues, then, dare I say, we have missed the point of a religious education.

Now, I know that in all likelihood you cannot interfere, pardon, or commute until Mr. Wilson has exhausted his final appeal. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be thinking about it and thinking about all of those other patients who are left out in the cold from the Compassionate Use Act, all because their affliction may not have been politically popular (sounds like a good Equal Protection argument to me).

***

Governor, I welcome you to come and watch my band, The Stiff Joints, play at the Ringside Pub in Caldwell, New Jersey on Saturday, September 24, 2011, at 9 pm. I welcome you to come and enjoy the night with my friends. We are all suburbanites, mostly in our forties, and well-educated. We bought into the American Dream and watched as Democrats and Republicans together tore it all up and bailed out their banker friends. Meanwhile, we have too much in school loans and our houses were too expensive when we bought them. These are the folks who will be coming to our show, and if we do our job right on stage, we will all blow off a little steam through the spirit of rock n’ roll. But Governor, these are the folks who should naturally be looking to vote for you. But these folks, Democrats and Republicans, black and white, and every shade of the prism of sexual orientation, they need to see more from you. They need to know that you are one of us. They need to know that you have your own issues and that you appreciate the gravity of our issues in our own lives. They need to know that you have a plan to sell the idea that New Jersey is more than just oil refineries off of the Turnpike… that we have some of the most beautiful beaches and mountains in all the country for residents and tourists to enjoy… that we have a highly educated work force that has the potential to make New Jersey synonymous with Silicon Valley, if we only promote a business and tax friendly climate for entrepreneurs, and not just oligopolies for wealthy connected individuals… that we have a unique tapestry of sociable neighborhoods with strong local control… places where people are free to live their lives solidly in pursuit of happiness in the shadow of the forever waving flag of liberty. But these people attending our show… the ones raising kids, and working hard, and trying to figure things out in this crazed new world, they are not going to give you more time to address these problems if the values that you are telling them are right to hold, conflict with the idea of basic right and wrong that they are trying to instill in their children. It really is about content of character… not that an individual is perfect, but that he fights his personal battles with diligence and honor and makes his friends and family members better people in the process.

Governor, putting a man with MS into jail for alleviating his burden in a private way that he deems fit conflicts with our sense of right and wrong. We all-to-sadly know first-hand the toll that age takes on the body… however, we cannot imagine the pain of the body’s immune system attacking the nervous system. We leave it to a higher authority to sit in judgment as to how free men deal with the crosses that they burden.

Governor, come to the Stiff Joints show on September 24. Meet my friends and neighbors. Have a beer. Forget about the arguments. Enjoy the moment. Prove that you are one of us. Start trying to win our votes by tending to the productive things that a government of free men and women is capable of doing and let the world know, that when you relocate your business to New Jersey, and you vacation on the pristine beaches of New Jersey, and you move to the great State of New Jersey, you will have all of the freedom to honestly pursue happiness with you and your family (however you may define that) in The Garden State.

Thank you for your attention to these matters, Governor.

Warm regards,

Justin Escher Alpert