The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
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Ridgewood NJ, the Teamsters Union has chosen not to endorse a presidential candidate for the 2024 election, signaling frustration with both major candidates’ commitment to labor issues. This decision comes at a time when union power is rising, fueled by an increase in strikes and growing public support for organized labor across the United States.
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Upper Saddle River NJ, from time to time the Ridgewood blog does book reviews and we just finished the “King of Con ” by Thomas Giacomaro and Natasha Stoynoff published in 2018 . We received a copy from the author Tom Giacomaro , the “King of Con: himself through a mutual friend in early February and finally got to reading it this past weekend .
Continue reading The King of Con by Thomas Giacomaro and Natasha Stoynoff
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Ridgewood NJ, Biden Administration announced a $35.8 billion bailout of the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund (which Jimmy Hoffa gave to the mob to build casinos in Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s). That’s just over $100,000 for each person covered by the pension plan.
Continue reading Biden Administration Bails Out Teamsters Pension Plan
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Saddle River NJ, Well, it was twenty years ago today…when a bunch of FBI guys got hit in the head with a million bucks, falling from the New Jersey sky.
Until that moment, April 2002 had been going okay for NJ con master, Thomas Giacomaro, author of the 2018 memoir The King of Con: How a Smooth-Talking Jersey Boy Made and Lost Billions, Baffled the FBI, Eluded the Mob, and Lived to Tell the Crooked Tale.
True, he was doing 18 months for embezzlement at Fort Dix prison, just south of Trenton. But it was easy time in a low-security prison. And he was such a clean, neat inmate…he was a shoo-in to get out by Christmas.
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Saddle River NJ, Childhood memories of spring are usually happy and bright: Icicles dripping, chocolate Easter bunnies, putting your sneakers on after a long, Jersey winter.
For local anti-hero, Thomas Giacomaro, spring reminds him of the day he saw his father almost kill two men.
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Saddle River NJ, Was Will Smith having a mental breakdown when he assaulted Chris Rock at the Oscars on Sunday night? Was he on drugs?
I’ve heard both theories—and more. But Denzel Washington has the one Smith likes best because it takes the blame off him.
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Saddle River NJ, in honor of last night’s Academy Awards—and actor Will Smith’s unhinged outburst—local bad-boy-turned good, Thomas Giacomaro, tells us his nickname was once “the Italian Hannibal Lecter.”
The Anthony Hopkins drama, The Silence of the Lambs, swept the Oscars exactly 30 years ago winning five main categories—Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.
A decade later, Giacomaro—who penned his 2018 memoir The King of Con: How a Smooth-Talking Jersey Boy Made and Lost Billions, Baffled the FBI, Eluded the Mob, and Lived to Tell the Crooked Tale, earned the moniker—in prison.
Continue reading AND THE OSCAR FOR BEST PSYCHO PERFORMANCE GOES TO…
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Saddle River NJ, If you try to Google-map it, the house is shrouded in shrubbery and leafy Northern Red Oak.
But it’s still there, the 8,000 square-foot mansion on Fox Hedge Road in Saddle River, NJ—a potential upcoming shooting location this fall for the upcoming docuseries, The King of Con, and former home of local legend, Thomas Giacomaro.
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Saddle River NJ, Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead had pizza purists yelling molto bene when the show delivered a reprimand to ignorant Pizza Hut eaters: Never, ever, put pineapple on a pizza.
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Saddle River NJ, The colorful bloom of spring always reminds New Jersey businessman Thomas Giacomaro of his first enchanted meeting with celebrated mystery novelist, Mary Higgins Clark.
Continue reading MARY HIGGINS CLARK: “HE’LL MAKE ME RICH AND FAMOUS!”
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East Rutherford NJ, It’s no wonder the American Dream megamall—dubbed “the ugliest building in the world,” by ex-Gov Chris Christie—is down in the dumps.
The 3 million-square-foot eyesore and retail fiasco is situated where the old NJ Meadowlands dump used to boil and fester fifty years ago. And for those of you who have a nose for remembering, the stinging odor of that swamp on Route 20 in East Rutherford still lingers.
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Ridgewood NJ, Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had scolding words last Sunday for his one-time ally and friend, Donald Trump.
“He actually told the truth by accident,” Christie said on ABC’s This Week, “he wanted the election to be overturned.”
Christie’s no stranger to liars and conmen. He came face to face with the best almost 20 years ago.
Continue reading CHRIS CHRISTIE AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY CON MEN
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Clifton NJ, the 88-year-old dilapidated Route 3 Bridge will finally be renovated to the tune of $143 million, the Department of Transportation announced last week.
Construction begins in two years…forty years after one of our local celebrities, Thomas “The King of Con” Giacomaro, busted up the guardrails during a mysterious, high-speed chase that made the newspapers.
The businessman tells the tale in his memoir, The King of Con, which is in pre-production for a docuseries to be filmed in North Jersey this year.
Casting for the new King of Con docuseries is underway and filming will begin this summer, so North New Jerseyites will be seeing those fold-up director chairs and movie lights soon.
For all you wanna-be actors, filmmakers need locals to be on camera “to give an authentic NJ ambience,” says one KOC producer, “and fill the diners, streets, and stores with real-life faces of the residents who live here.”
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Trenton NJ, in an effort to further incentivize movie, television and other digital media projects to come to New Jersey, a bill sponsored by Assembly Democrats Gordon Johnson, William Spearman and Raj Mukherji would expand the state’s film and digital media content production tax credit program. The legislation passed the full Assembly and Senate on Monday, by a vote of 65-12-0 and 31-2, respectively.