The elections are just six weeks away. In Cape May and Cumberland Counties (and Somers Point in Atlantic County), Republican incumbent Nick Asselta is running against Democrat Assemblyman Jeff Van Drew for State Senate. In most of Atlantic County, recently appointed Republican Senator Jim “Sonny” McCullough is running against Democrat Assemblyman Jim Whelan. Democrat Assemblyman Nelson is the only incumbent running for re-election in either district. His running mate, and the other six assembly candidates are newcomers. I still think illegal immigration is the most serious problem facing this country, and that every candidate should be talking about ways to deal with it. Yet not a single Democrat nor Republican candidate in all South Jersey (except Republican Atlantic County Freeholder candidate Joe McDevitt), has said a word about it.
There are 6.6 billion people in the world. Most live with misery, violence and poverty. Why? The short answer is that most are from “developing’ countries where the folks with power don’t agree with the words of our Declaration of Independence. They do NOT find it “self-evident” that all men and women “are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights”, including “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Governments there were NOT “instituted. . . to secure these rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” They don’t have prosperity, because they don’t have liberty!
Mexico’s Carlos Slim, who created nothing, is the richest man in the world with $59 billion. He has a billion dollars more than America’s Bill Gates who revolutionized computers around the world. Each week, millions of Mexicans illegally do unskilled work in our country because guys like Carlos Slim rig the laws to deny them opportunity to advance in their country.
This is not good for Mexico. The money sent home by illegal immigrants in the U.S. only keeps their rotten government from sinking. Ditto for the rotten and corrupt governments in dozens of other “developing” countries like Pakistan and Bengladesh. As things get worse there, more illegal immigrants come here.
The world population increased from 3 billion in 1960, to 5 billion in 1980, to 6.7 billion today. Almost all of that increase was in those “developing” countries that send us the most immigrants.
This is not good for America. Last week’s riot at the Atlantic County jail was caused by “overcrowding”. How many Atlantic County jail inmates are illegal immigrants? When officials in other states checked their jails, they found that 8% (Virginia) to 37% (Nevada) were illegals.
Galloway and Hamilton Townships “need” big tax hikes for a new high school. Egg Harbor Township “needs” new schools each year. How many new students are illegals? Atlantic City Medical Center and Shore Memorial “need” millions of “charity care” dollars each year. How many patients are illegals?
“Smart growth” charges for water and sewer hookups and permits jacked up prices of most new homes. State, county, and local governments are spending fortunes for “open space”. But without illegal immigrants, we would have plenty of houses without bulldozing a single tree! (Worried about who would then mow our lawns, flip our burgers, and scrub our floors? We and our parents worked those jobs when we were young. Why not our kids?)
Last week, the Press of Atlantic City reported “20% of the state’s population last year was born in a foreign country, up from 17.5 percent six years ago”. It also reported that these immigrants “are less likely than native-born residents to have graduated high school, less likely to speak English, generally earn smaller incomes, and are more likely to live in poverty”. The Press did not report how many of these “foreign-born residents” are illegals. And it did not say that these immigrants are far more likely to commit violent crimes and deadly traffic accidents.
Immigration laws can only be enforced at the local level. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996, lets any state, local, or county law enforcement agency be certified to enforce immigration laws.
Once a local police, prosecutors, and jail officials are certified, they can identify illegal immigrants and report them to federal officials. Once reported, the feds immediately pick up the tab for housing the illegals, and send a bus to remove them from local facilities every week.
New Jersey is one of only nine “sanctuary states”, where not a single state, county, or local agency is certified to enforce immigration laws. So far, only Atlantic County Republican freeholder candidate Joe McDevitt has demanded that officials at the Atlantic County jail get 287(g) certified.
The election is six weeks away. I urge you to ask every candidate for Sheriff, Senate, Assembly, Freeholder, Mayor, Town Council and Committee in Atlantic, Cape May, and Cumberland Counties in New Jersey about his or her plans to certify the County Jail, the Sheriff’s Office, the County Prosecutor, the State Police, or the local police department to enforce immigration laws under 287(g). Please let me know what they tell you, so I can inform the rest of the community BEFORE the election.
Published in the Current Newspapers of Atlantic County, New Jersey. For more information, visit www.libertyandprosperity.org or contact Somers Point attorney Seth Grossman at seth@dandy.net or 609-927-7333. Seth Grossman hosts a two way talk radio program on 1020AM Mondays-Fridays from 3PM to 5PM, and breakfast discussion groups every Tuesday at 8AM at the Breakfast Shop, 910 Bay Avenue in Somers Point.
Anonymous for now please !
We are the ones being pushed out by these actions. Little by little. Experienced drivers and owner operators that are fed up with paying to be legitimate and then being pushed around and harassed by the mercantile dept. We just kinda realized that this stuff starts around the times of elections.
Happens every election year. The owners of the cab licenses have charged us right out of the cabs and every time we seemingly get stable, some more things happening. Takes about 4 or 5 years to get back on your feet after being psychologically terrorized by city hall. Makes it hard to concentrate on business and feel up on your toes, when your always in fear of what they might try next to harass you. Fearing to try to do business when your fully licensed and insured with decent hard working families. We have children to feed and cloth. We have medical bills and mortgages and must maintain our vehicles that is very expensive to do. Why is it that they can come to the licensed guy and harass him about something as minuscule as a trip sheet or dirty cab, but cannot stop the guys we see each and everyday picking up with there regular or rented vehicles and no proper licenses or insurance. If we complain about it they say, Oh well ! You need to sign complaints! If we see them running around the city, then why cant they see them? Why cant they write them up themselves? Isn’t this their jobs? Seems like their jobs are to keep the paying guys held down and kept in there place. Must insure that they pay and pay and get no more then to just survive.
While in the meantime, there are dozens of illegal parties running around doing business and getting away with it, with no rules to be threatened with. protect the cartel !! Thats what it is! Instead of focusing on the people doing the illegal things, They focus on beating down the actual legal guys by constantly stopping them or following them or threatening them with tickets and just being a nuisance. This should not be. Its bureaucratic thuggery. They keep us down and afraid and know we cannot afford to be going to court, fighting them or even suing them. We do not have the time or the money for this stuff. So as long as we’re down
it gives a leg up for the cartel to focus on there business, using licenses as weapons on foreign drivers that don’t have experience or even a clue on how to make good business and serve the public correctly. They are forced to pay outrageous fees so they can go around over charging the public and destroying the business. All the money goes to the license holders and no one even cares about how the public is really being treated. These license holders are getting free money. They pay only $150.00 dollars a year for it. Its easier for most foreign drivers to pay for this because they sometimes don’t have as many expenses as do people that have there families here or they have a lot of guys share the same home and live cheaper. They can also get benefits that other people cannot get, because there foreign. The owners are not caring about how business is really conducted with their license running a muck in the streets and at the casinos without any guidance of how to charge and take care of people accordingly. These guys are charging outrageous fees to the public and yellow cab has its prices raised to reflect what they need to collect for the leases.There is no laws that require a cab driver to charge a certain price for going outside of the city. The cabs in atlantic city have meters that are giving false impressions of people saving money.They claim its because the drivers were over charging the locals before and thats why they needed to cap the meter. Really theres more then one reason that they capped the meter. 1) Was to make sure that other honest dispatch companies could’nt possibly survive or compete or make enough money to obtain the licenses which were around 38,000 dollars at that time. 2) Was to give the inexperienced driver the chance to make any outrageous price he wanted to go outside the city, thus allowing him to pay higher premiums for his cab and allowing the market value of the license to be run up 500% in the last 7yrs. WOW!! Now it costs around $50,000 dollars a year for a driver to keep a cab on the road. Just one cab and the driver pays for eveything. The owners of the licenses have no expense what so ever. This is ridiculous and theres no business here to support this. Some of the foreign drivers believe that this freedom is great and think that they are going to make a business for themselves, but the license holders just keep raising the bar, by getting them to bid higher to get cab licenses. Now your thinking, what a great business plan huh? Problem is now that you got a bunch of guys that are not making money and they are now trying to get out. So lets bring more recruits in right? There is a law about this kinda thing. Its a rico act that has something to do with immigration. It was designed when the big corporations were actually going and bringing the foreignors here to work for less in there factories and driving out the experienced local people. Paying less money and driving the other people out of work and into poverty. Now we are getting to the point where theres so much over charging going on in atlantic city to the public that its taking a toll and actually hurting the business. People are now afraid to try and take a cab or are getting left at front doors of casinos because the drivers wont take them unless they pay some outrageous price to take them home. Why doesnt the mercantile inspectors do something about these guys not taking the fares when they are next in line. They are refusing to take people. This is not right and needs be stopped. Trying to serve the public and give them the right pricing and keep them coming back is a very hard task. So now thats when the good guys come in with their towncars and vans to try and service these local and out of town people with good service and pricing. But the cabs dont like this and complain about it. They feel as if they can charge what ever they want, because there is no laws on this. Its ruining the economy really. Yellow cab for instance is a major player in all this and has been able to support this way by having to many licenses and powerful lawyers and political connections that keep everything afloat. So they can do what they want. They do little things that make it look like they are good business people. For Example: They have a policy that if you want to lease a license from them you must replace your car with a newer one. sounds reasonable right? Well what they do is go to auctions and buy a bunch old police cars and state vehicles that are seemingly in good shape, sometimes throws a paint job on them and then says you must buy this car to get my license. Now they say this is to keep the cars upgraded and newer thus showing that they are the best to the city for making these guys do this. But really each and every car that they have sold has not even past an inspection and needs work and also never makes it past a year in service. What do they charge for these cars? $4000.00 to $8000.00 dollars. Some of the guys this year were really screwed, they already had replaced there cars with newer ones, made them pass inspection and then when they went to renew with yellow they either lost there license or had to buy another car from yellow. This is blatant extortion ! And the mercantile dept. knows this. They know it.!! The city hall protects these people and, so that they will be afraid to complain or fight or even do anything to protect them selves for fear of being out of work. Now because its election year and also because of all the hype about corruption, the merchantile dept has seen fit to start hammering out some rather annoying ordinances that are on the books and enforce them to make it look like they are just doing there jobs. Some of these laws are meaningless ones now a days.But really its going to just keep us and the cab drivers afraid and on edge all the time. Murray makes these guys sign contracts that say they want his goods, and that they are paying to have his yellow cab name and that they want the signage that he collects money for the advertising. And also his radio dispatch system. He claims he is the best price around for leasing the license. Thats because he collects on all the other goods he makes the drivers take with the license not leaving them a choice of going to another company for dispatch services. If the man does this with his own licenses then so be it, but he also has control of other peoples licenses and shouldnt be allowed to do that. He’s doing what microsoft got in trouble for. Its the same thing. All these things are true and everyone in the cab business knows it, but are afraid to fight to much about it, because like we said, they fear for there jobs ! Oh and by the way, we just want to tell you that the press of Atlantic City has also played a part in the ways of masking what is really going on. By not putting everything in your articles and also changing things around to make Murray and the city look like some kind of heroes. Also some silly little articles that do not really open up truth as to why a poor immigrant cannot make any money. Silly little meaningless articles about the life of a cab driver in Atlantic City and the guy that was picked for the article has no clue. We would really like to know how that guy was picked to do an article this? It was a guy that just sits in lines and goes across town and doesn’t even know of whats going on for real around here. What about an article on the people that have tried to do business for the people and have tried to train drivers and have decent business ethics and actually produce something meaningful and worthy to the city and its growth. The way things are now is the worst its ever been. The owner of yellow cab has never even driven a cab, Nor does he even own a cab now. He just controls the licenses and city hall, and sits back and collects, with the rest of his fellow cronies that sucked up the licenses and dont even care about who it hurts or who it destroys. He doesnt know his customers and the customers don’t know him. If he has any customers that he knows? He only knows them because of maybe a towncar ride that he gives them when they are in town, some kind of big business person with a lot of political pull or maybe even a politician himself. But its not for real customer service taxicab riders stuff. Its not about the person that needs a cab to work or school or maybe they are poor and cannot afford a car or missed there train or bus. All that is cared about here in this city is how to grab the drivers money and do everything they can to build there own wealth. What has these license owners ever done for the city? or any organization? All this money they get? Wouldn’t you like to know if any of it goes to any kind of good deeds? Besides political contributions? What charity maybe? Anything in this city thats good for the people or the visitors? What does this money do and where is it going? There is an awful lot of money not being accounted for. How about the Bangladesh guy that just came here because he was told that He is going to make a lot of money if he buys his own cab license and works for himself, he pays upwards of 180,000.00 for his license, only to find out months later that he’s not making the money he was convinced of and now has a real problem. He’s stuck! What did the person he bought the license from do with that money? How was this money for an Atlantic City license controlled or accounted for? Was it cash? Is there an accounting of this transaction in city hall? Was there a representative from the city there to witness this transaction? Was the car sold with this? Has there been a thorough investigation into the back round of these individuals? How long has this guy been in this country and how much experience does he have to be driving around our citizens and who’s going to teach him? Were there taxes paid on this? Why don’t you do some good in your writings and find out these questions? Do a little investigation into the real cab world!
How about an article on the Egyptian shark. Theres a story for you, this is one of Murray Rosenbergs cronies that makes his money by being a third party i.e.: (agent) going around bidding on the licenses to owners every year with letters and offerings of bigger payments by the thousands, driving up the market and re-leasing the licenses to drivers for even more money. Then he takes the money over to Egypt and builds a kingdom for himself. This guy is considered a very very wealthy man in his country, but over here he claims to be just a poor hard working immigrant. Why isn’t that money being spent here? Why is it being invested somewhere else? Go to the Hilton cab line one day and ask an Egyptian cab driver where the shark is. They will know who you are talking about. He takes advantage of even his own people and builds wealth for his family and has learned to do this from Murray the so called good business men? Some of these guys are actually afraid for there lives if they talk to much. We have been told that by a guy that used to be a third party guy like the shark. He became a sacraficial lamb . Collateral damage after alot of complaints. we learned a lot of things of what goes on behind the curtain and this guy was an insider that actually said, i am sorry, but i am in the public service business, i am wide open for retaliation, I cannot speak to the authorities. i fear for my family. This is also why we must keep our identities anonymous for now!
We too have a families to protect. If we could get some assurances from a government entity that our jobs were safe and that something could be done as far as anonymity. Then can we get more to speak up of these crimes of bad business practices, monopoly,extortion,tax evasion, unfair trade practices, bribery, all of these things have harmed the consumer coming to and living in and around Atlantic City. Think about the visitors, what do they see when they first come here? and what do they deal with when they have to leave? Most likely a cab driver or limo driver or shuttle. first and last impressions!! thats right!
Anything else you would like to know? We know that we are probably just wasting our time here. and you will just say oh, its all sour grapes!! If you think it is, then just say so. What we do not want you to do, is build more security for these thieves by writing some stuff that really has no merit behind it and also misleads the public. Theres alot more stuff to tell. Oh by the way. A while ago you or someone else had wrote articles about calloway and also marilyn goodman the merchantile inspector that had a city celphone bill that was outrageous amount like 9000 or something. Maybe like a year ago. Well she just disapeared one day and the office just says she retired. What a joke. Retired? Why didnt anyone try to find out about this and put this in the newspaper, after all, you were eager to write about her city owned celphone bill. Why didnt you continue the writings to find out what else went on with her? We got some news for you. It was a coverup. They didnt want this stuff to leak out. She was taking lease money from cab drivers and extorting them and also married a cab driver for money. So he could stay in the country. She was also in trouble for being on disability and working at the same time. All the while having a drug problem with one of the third party guys. Not all of the third party guys were bad. This guy was actually bad though. He had a drug problem. Not all of them have that. o.k. theres a mouth full for ya. talk later. So why dont you put together a story about the real deal in atlantic city !
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thank you