The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
UPDATE: In the matter of Paul Aronsohn and Roberta Sonenfeld vs. State of NJ Local Finance Board
the staff of The Ridgewood Blog
Ridgewood NJ, members of the State of NJ Local Finance Board met in public via Microsoft Teams on Wednesday, April 14, 2021, and did not accept Administrative Law Judge Jude-Anthony Tiscorina’s recommendation to overturn and dismiss the Notices of Violation and corresponding fines issued to Paul Aronsohn and Roberta Sonenfeld.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, in a direct slap in the face to Ridgewood residents and taxpayers a New Jersey administrative law judge has cleared two former village officials of ethics misconduct charges stemming from the development and posting of a 2016 video about a parking garage referendum on the village website.
“Don’t get me started on them. Aronsohn did so many questionable unethical things. Like trying to derail Mike Sedon’s original run for office by contacting his employer in Staten Island on a fake conflict-of-interest concern. He actually got the Ridgewood News to pull a letter to the editor that a citizen had written because he did not like the letter (yes, he was in the newspaper office constantly monitoring their articles and incoming letters). He tried to get an employer to fire a local citizen who had crossed paths with Aronsohn. He publicly went after Bernie Walsh (along with Gwenn and Albert) attacking her for ‘fixing” a parking ticket which she absolutely did not do. The three of them, led by Aronsohn of course, went after Tom Richie for a conflict with his company doing work for the Village, which was not a secret, nothing under the table, although they tried to imply that it was. They all went after Susan Knudsen for questioning residency requirements for civilian jobs, by bringing a labor attorney to the council meeting to attack her (this was met with a huge groundswell of anger against the three of them). Then of course you had Aronsohn and Hauck, who were both married, having a love affair while they were serving together. And Aronsohn tried to get the civil service list changed so that Keith Killion’s son would be bounced off. The list goes on and on. He is despicable by any standards. And Roberta? Oh my word. Remember when she wrote a letter to the paper attacking a citizen who had spoken up about Schedler??? What the hell kind of rogue Village Manager starts publicly attacking citizens? And she used to interrupt council deliberations incessantly with her opinions, clearly forgetting that she was not an elected official. Every time there was any kind of swearing-in or proclamation, she would come down from the dais with the elected officials and stand there for her photo ops. And no one can forget how she tried to physically block a citizen from getting signatures in Van Neste, the signatures were for the referendum to stop the garage – yes, there are photos of that incident, where she stepped in claiming she was trying to present the facts. When a citizen was assaulted during a council meeting they carried on like nothing had happened and refused to admonish the person who hit the other person. What a crew they were. Just horrible.”
IS THE SILICON VALLEY DYNASTY COMING TO AN END?
Ethical lapses at some of the tech industry’s biggest companies suggest a chilling reality of what really matters in the world’s most rollicking economy.
It has been said that Silicon Valley, or the 50 or so square-mile area extending from San Francisco to the base of the peninsula, has overseen the creation of more wealth than any place in the history of mankind. It’s made people richer than the oil industry; it has created more money than the Gold Rush. Silicon chips, lines of code, and rectangular screens have even minted more wealth than religious wars.
Wealthy societies, indeed, have their own complicated incentive structures and mores. But they do often tend, as any technological entrepreneur will be quick to remind you, to distribute value across numerous income levels, in a scaled capacity. The Ford line, for instance, may have eventually minted some serious millionaires in Detroit, but it also made transportation cheaper, helped drive down prices on countless consumer goods, and facilitated new trade routes and commercial opportunities. Smartphones, or any number of inventive modern apps or other software products, are no different. Sure, they throw off a lot of money to the geniuses who came up with them, and the people who got in at the ground floor. But they also make possible innumerable other opportunities, financial and otherwise, for their millions of consumers.
Silicon Valley is, in its own right, a dynasty. Instead of warriors or military heroes, it has nerds and people in half-zip sweaters. But it is becoming increasingly likely that the Valley might go down in history not only for its wealth, but also for creating more tone deaf people than any other ecosystem in the history of the world.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/is-the-silicon-valley-dynasty-coming-to-an-end
By Post Editorial Board
January 1, 2016 | 11:21pm
It turns out that Bill Clinton raked in millions from entities with matters before Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Oh, and the Clinton Foundation collected millions more from the same bunch.
In total, The Wall Street Journal reports, two dozen companies and groups, plus the Abu Dhabi government, gave Bill more than $8 million for speeches, even as they were hoping for favorable treatment from Hillary’s bureaucracy. And 15 of them also gave at least $5 million total to the foundation.
At her confirmation hearing, questioners raised the issue of her hubby’s global business. Hillary vowed to take “extraordinary steps . . . to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Count 13 million record fails for those “extraordinary steps.”
Hillary’s solemn promise recalls a line from George R.R. Martin: “Words are wind.” Heck, it must be the House Clinton slogan.
The issue first arose thanks to Peter Schweizer’s book, “Clinton Cash.”
“The really troubling thing about Bill’s speeches is the apparent correlation between his fees and Hillary’s decisions during her tenure as secretary of state,” he wrote.
“The timing of the payments, the much-higher-than-average size of some of them, and the subsequent actions taken by Hillary raise serious questions about just what those who underwrote these exorbitant fees were actually paying for.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon says “no evidence exists” connecting State Department actions under Hillary to Bill’s lucrative speeches.
