Stalker Alert! Why we had to disable comments

Here at watchdog, we welcome the participation of readers and writers and we are always happy to publish commentary or work on a lead passed on to us.  That said, our website has recently fallen victim to individuals who use it to post false personal information about private citizens.  This information is of a personal, rather than a political or policy nature and those involved are not elected or appointed officials.

Watchdog is not the place to get back at your girlfriend for breaking up with you.  It is not the forum for discussing how or why your husband met another woman.  That is your personal business and really none of ours.  So until those misusing the comments section move on to find other means of working out their personal dramas, Watchdog will keep comments disabled.

NJ Herald continues its attack on reality

Let's be clear, the New Jersey Herald is not a non-profit entity representing Sussex County.  It is owned by the for-profit Quincy Media corporation of Quincy, Illinois.  It is mainly a broadcast company, owning radio and television stations throughout the mid-west.  The corporation's only holding on the east coast, one of two newspapers it owns, is the New Jersey Herald. 

This corporation makes its millions in profit off advertising revenues.  It is not the words written by the reporters or the news shows on radio or television that matter -- they simply get eyes on the page -- it is all those advertisements for vinyl siding, used cars, socks, and suppositories.  That is where the money is, let's be clear on that.  Let's also be clear that the Herald isn't published for the benefit of the community, it is published to make a profit by a for-profit corporation over 1,000 miles away.  The day it doesn't make money and they see no hope of it making money, it will be gone. 

The Herald is still pissed off at Senator Oroho for suggesting that property taxes could be reduced by not requiring state, county, and local governments to pay media corporations to place all those public legal notices and advertisements in the back of newspapers.  Governmental entities have their own websites on which they could publish all those notices and advertisements for free.  Forcing them to pay newspapers to do so appears redundant and it costs taxpayers millions in property tax revenues.  It's like a mandated direct government subsidy to the newspaper/advertising industry.

Has the Herald ever covered this subject?  Have they ever written about it?  This is millions in property tax revenue that could be saved.  Doesn't that at least warrant a discussion?  But instead of a mature, honest, above-board discussion about a way to save taxpayers' money and maybe use that money to cut property taxes, what we have instead is a hissy fit followed by the big hate.

So now the Herald is in hate mode.  Big hate.  They want to screw somebody, and to do so they will blatantly ignore the facts about an issue, and will fashion a narrative by selectively using the voices of others, while preventing some from being heard.  This is accomplished by publishing letters to the editor from people who are attacking the object of the newspaper's hatred, while not publishing others.  On the comments page, they permit some to post comments but not others.  Both the Herald staff and its attorney admit to doing this by applying selective "criteria" in determining who gets to post -- something unique to the Herald.

Sunday's Herald was a case in point.  The New Jersey Herald published the letters of three Oroho haters (Nathan Orr, Troy Orr, and Bob Klymaz) who often publish in the Herald.

One letter, by Assembly candidate Nathan Orr, takes aim at Watchdog itself and calls us "an anonymous blogger".  Now as every reader of this website knows, we are a collective and we print whatever is sent to us and withhold names only upon request.  We do so in keeping with the longstanding American tradition of anonymous speech.  Benjamin Franklin published his attacks against the establishment of the day, anonymously, and one of the central documents in our founding are the Federalist Papers, also written anonymously.  Indeed, no less than the United States Supreme Court has defended the right to publish anonymously.  In its 1995 decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, the Court ruled:

"Anonymity is a shield... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular:  to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation."

Ask yourself this question:  What would have happened to the county worker who tipped us off about the unsafe work environment in its offices a couple years back?  We published, the Herald and others followed, and the situation was corrected.  If we had published the name, that employee would have been retaliated against and when the Herald reporter called, too scared to tell the truth.  The same goes for the scheme to sell the county dump and a dozen others.   

When citizens had information regarding the solar scam, it was Watchdog -- NOT the NJ Herald -- who brought their information to the FBI, the United States Justice Department, and Attorney General's office.  It was Watchdog -- NOT the NJ Herald -- that arranged those meetings. Where was the Herald? This website has protected the anonymity of dozens of whistleblowers.  Would candidate Orr have us turn whistleblowers over to be punished? 

Just last week, the NJ Herald was ignoring the upcoming solar presentation until we published and they followed in the nick of time to help make sure citizens turned out.  But where is the Herald's editorial about the NO-BID CONTRACT handed to the law firm that both George Graham and Gail Phoebus said should have been fired for their handling of the bailout?  There is none. 

It was left to Watchdog to point out this turnabout by Freeholder Director Graham, who is now the biggest cheerleader for the firm he wanted fired last year.  The Herald doesn't rock the boat with advertisers.

In his letter, candidate Nathan Orr makes much of the 11 percent he picked up in the 2015 Republican primary for Assembly, in which he edged out Marie Bilik for third place (Parker Space and Gail Phoebus won easily).  What candidate Orr doesn't realize, and any political scientist will tell him, is that in a highly contested, negative-filled primary like that was; one in which every candidate was being attacked -- except for Orr, who was being entirely ignored -- he served as a kind of "none-of-the-above" opt-out for voters.  People weren't so much voting for him, because he did nothing to communicate his message, as they were voting against everyone else.  In fact, Nathan Orr has tested so poorly in subsequent polling, that he is no longer tested at all.  It is a waste of a question because nobody knows him.  Sorry.

 

But that hasn't stopped Nathan Orr from giving us all the benefit of his "wisdom" on some very complicated issues.  Orr is fond of stating the obvious, such as "our Legislature should be decreasing taxes" and even more so of putting down others with snarky, juvenile comments.  Nathan Orr is Sussex County's Rachel Maddow.

Here are some questions for this candidate and public figure:  Have you worked out a detailed plan to solve any problem, even a little one?  Can you come up with even a minor reform and then follow it through:  Meet with your legislators, ask them to set up a meeting with the Department of Transportation, and show them your better way?  Have you ever gone down to Trenton to testify for or against a piece of legislation?  Any legislation?  Anything at all?  Do you get involved in the local government of your town?  On an economic development committee even?  Have you ever worked with a democratic body of any kind to learn how difficult it is to find agreement?

And while we're at it, let's pose those questions to the other letter writers who seem to have all the answers, but who somehow never show up to do any of the hard work to actually make it happen.  Frankly, the NJ Herald letters page is beginning to sound like a stream-of-consciousness play set in a bar. Everything is simpler looking through the bottom of beer glass.  "Come on Joe, let's have another, if we keep drinking like this we'll solve all of America's problems and the world's too!"

Nathan Orr is a particularly young version of an Ann Smulewicz type.  The comment pages of the Herald are full of this type:  People who are in politics but who lack the honesty to own up to it.  Instead, they push the idea that elected officials are some alien life form -- "bad", to their "good".  And corporations like Quincy Media exploit this to sell newspapers. 

They dehumanize fellow human beings so they can more easily urge others to destroy them.  So Steve Oroho, a neighbor, the football coach at Pope John, active in community organizations and charities, is portrayed as this evil alien being.  And they've done the same thing to farmer Parker Space, and military mom Alison Littell McHose, and businesswoman Gail Phoebus, and high school sports hero Gary Chiusano, and platoon leader Mike Strada, and businessman Jeff Parrott, and the list goes on and on.  All our neighbors, all people we know, all people who we can walk up and talk to anytime. 

The Nathan Orrs of the world don't talk to people, they talk at them.  They dehumanize them, turn them into "things" that need to be destroyed.  And corporations like Quincy Media exploit this to sell newspapers.  Maybe it's time we've learned more about the person behind the corporate label -- Mr. Ralph Oakley of Quincy, Illinois -- before allowing him to manipulate us into hating our neighbors?

How popular was the sale of the Homestead?

In his campaign for re-election in June, Freeholder Phil Crabb highlighted his role in the sale of the Homestead -- the county nursing home -- to a private business.  His campaign literature referenced it, as did he in his public appearances.

Unfortunately for Freeholder Crabb, that message worked against him with Republican Party primary voters.  We got hold of some polling numbers on the subject which indicate a lot of hostility to the sale.  In fact, the decision by the all Republican Freeholder Board to sell the Homestead plunged the favorability of the Freeholder Board down into the 40 percent range -- among Republicans.

To make matters worse for the Sussex GOP and its all-Republican Board, those who support the sale are generally lukewarm about it, while those who oppose the sale do so much more passionately.  So the campaign team of Freeholder Crabb was actually driving up turnout against its candidate by highlighting the sale of the Homestead in Crabb's literature. 

This could account for Crabb's somewhat anemic showing against a candidate who had given up campaigning and spent no money on lawn signs, campaign literature, direct mail, or radio advertising.  In contrast, Freeholder Crabb's campaign spent lavishly on lawn signs, literature, direct mail, robo-calls, and radio ads -- and had the support of the GOP establishment and its elected officials.

What effect this will have on the General Election between incumbent Crabb and challenger Bill Weightman is anyone's guess.  It will depend on how it is used and if Freeholder Crabb continues to run on the issue.  

Another wrinkle that could be used to disadvantage the incumbent is Sentosa Care LLC, the private company that was allowed to buy the Homestead from the county. This was the subject of a very interesting story by the old Sussex GOP Watchdog:

http://sussexgopwatchdog.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/welcome-to-the-neighborhood-look-who-is-running-the-homestead

In a 2012 letter to the editor, published by the Herald, a Newton resident added to this argument:

The company Sentosa Care of Woodmere, N.Y., has made the highest bid for the purchase of the Homestead. The website sentosacare.com lists 17 Sentosa Care affiliated care facilities. The websitewww.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare rates long-term facilities using several criteria. The Sentosa Care facilities received aggregate ratings as follows:

8 much below average -- 47 percent

3 below average -- 18 percent

1 average -- 6 percent

5 above average -- 29 percent

As 65 percent of the current Sentosa Care facilities were rated by Medicare as below average (most much below average), this should be considered when the bid is reviewed. The Homestead's employees and volunteers provided quality care to Sussex County residents for many years. The successor owner should have a track record of providing the same high quality of care.

In a questionnaire regarding the sale of the Homestead and obtained by us, County Administrator John Eskilson could not fully answer this question:  "What cost savings did the county achieve as a result of the sale?"

Aside from tax revenue to the county of approximately $45,000 per year, Eskilson could not enumerate the benefits because "some of the cost savings associated with the privatization of staff to not kick in for two years due to a number of factors."

The results of Freeholder Crabb's June 3rd primary election suggest that the residents of Sussex County are still not fully sold on the idea and benefits of the sale of the county's Homestead nursing home.  Whether this becomes an issue in the November election only time will tell.