the staff of the Ridgewood blog
SOUTH PLAINFIELD NJ, Authorities this morning canceled a Labor Day Parade here this morning as they undertake “an active investigation” in this blue collar Middlesex County town, according to the South Plainfield Police Department.
The event was the first scheduled stop on Governor Phil Murphy’s two-stop campaign kickoff tour today.
According to NBC news , “Multiple small explosive devices have been found on a property near the Labor Day parade route that New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was supposed to be marching in Monday morning, senior law-enforcement officials tell NBC 4.”
Thomas G. Kaiser, 55, of South Plainfield was arrested and charged with one count of possession of a destructive device for an unlawful purpose, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office. It is anticipated that additional charges will be forthcoming.
An investigation began in Monmouth County when a suspicious package with a destructive device was left at Donovan’s Reef in Sea Bright. An investigation by the Sea Bright Police Department and the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office led to Kaiser’s residence in South Plainfield, according to the Monmouth County prosecutors Office.
During the investigation, it was learned that there were other destructive devices near his home which was located in the vicinity of the start of the South Plainfield Labor Day Parade, prompting its cancellation, according to the MCPO.
Yeah. M-80s, right? Or some other items that all reasonable people would characterize as “fireworks”?
Big deal (not).
When our governmental entities and news organizations make mountains out of molehills, we really need not encourage them. Instead, we should mock them heavily until they find something real with which to occupy their time.
Yep.
It was fireworks.
Reactions like the ones these municipal leaders had to one crummy firework in a bag in the back of a beer-soaked barroom may look like acts of power and gravitas, but in reality they are the epitome of effeminacy.
This is blatant bureaucratic virtue signaling that should disgust all red-blooded Americans (like it apparently disgusted the Star Ledger’s Paul Mulshine).
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By Paul Mulshine
Star-Ledger Columnist
After the 9/11 attacks, we began to hear that cliche about how “the terrorists will have won” if we let ourselves become so consumed with fear that we no longer act rationally.
Well, the future is now.
That’s my reaction to that decision to cancel the annual Labor Day parade in South Plainfield because a guy left some fireworks in a bar in Sea Bright.
When I got an email from the Governor’s Office Monday morning saying this year’s parade had been canceled, I figured it might be because of the weather.
I covered the parade a year ago and the sun was bearing down on the pavement to the point that I actually felt sorry for the politicians who had to march.
I figured that this year it might be raining on the parade route. The skies were clear at my house, but the weather’s been weird lately.
Nope. It soon turned out that the parade had been canceled because a guy from South Plainfield had left some fireworks in a bar in Sea Bright as a present for his favorite band.
The band, which is called “Guns for Hire” acoustic trio, put up the following on its Facebook page:
“A fan of our band who has been coming to see us for many years and who always brings us gifts (lights, back drop banner, etc.) made an error in judgment and brought fireworks to the show. Unfortunately, these fireworks were left behind around the stage area after a great night at the venue.”
The police arrived and confiscated the fireworks. By Sunday night they had arrested 55-year-old Thomas Kaiser and searched his home, which, like about a thousand other homes, is near the seemingly endless parade route in South Plainfield.
There they found about “half a dozen” destructive devices similar to pipe bombs, authorities said.
But in an interview (see below) with nj.com, Kaiser’s brother disagreed with that description.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s one firework. I know they’re illegal in the state of New Jersey, but it’s a firework. It’s not a bomb.”
That may be a distinction without a difference. Cross the state line into Pennsylvania and you will encounter billboards for stores that sell fireworks so big they might as well be bombs.
Whatever they were, however, the authorities had confiscated them by the time the parade was scheduled to kick off, which was 10 a.m. Nonetheless the town canceled the parade out of what was – in another post-9/11 cliché – “an abundance of caution.”
Perhaps, it’s time to change that to “a reasonable amount of caution.” If Kaiser was a real terrorist, I doubt he would telegraph his intentions by giving bombs to an acoustic trio that sings the sort of syrupy ballads that made the 1970s such a horror for rock fans.
There’s another cliché that applies here. It’s the one about closing the barn door after the cow has gotten loose.
Back in 2016, when there was a real terror attack on the Jersey Shore town of Seaside Park, the officials in many nearby towns panicked and canceled their weekend events.
Not Seaside Heights. When I drove down there that evening, I found the place packed with people. A barbecue festival was going ahead as if nothing had happened.
I found the guys I used to work with on the boardwalk games and asked them why the town didn’t shut down. They told me it was a simple matter of probabilities.
Sure they were situated within a mile of where an actual terrorist had made a failed attempt to bomb the participants in a 5K race. But such incidents are by their very nature random. If you shut down one night, you might as well shut down every night, they reasoned.
“The people didn’t panic,” Mayor Tony Vaz told me at the time.
South Plainfield did, even though the devices in question – whether you call them bombs or fireworks – were not powerful enough to be lethal, according to authorities.
But once the Department of Homeland Security gets into the act, panic is the order of the day. We’re still taking our shoes off before flights because one wannabe terrorist long ago tried to set off a bomb in his shoe.
Homeland security is no longer a goal; it’s a career. An internet search shows there are 104 colleges that award degrees in Homeland Security.
I take that as evidence that the terrorists are winning. So did one commenter on NJ.com:
“Wherever he is, bin Laden is laughing devilishly, knowing he has achieved his goal of instilling terror in the minds of those infidel Americans. We may have won the battle, but have surely lost the war.”
We no longer need terrorists to spread panic.
Homeland Security does it just fine all by itself.