Hoaxes and Frauds

Paid for by YOUR tax money!

06/19/14 - I don't like having to take on every problem in the City of East Orange, but someone has to do it. This article has just been published in TAP - The Alternative Press: "East Orange Recipient of Environmental Quality Award."

No names were published to go with this photo, so we have no idea who is being exploited.

Posted at the bottom of the fluff-piece article of useless (but sweet) information is the following list of contacts:

Jaffe Communications Inc.
45 Academy Street, Suite 501
Newark, NJ 07102
Phone: 973-315-0300
Fax: 908-292-1177

Web: jaffecom.com
Twitter: twitter.com/jaffecom
Wire: http://jaffecom.com/wire/
FB: facebook.com/jaffecomm

It will probably not surprise you to learn that Jaffe Communications is a public relations firm. That's right! The reason you can walk the streets of East Orange right now and find piles of litter blowing about the streets is because we are dealing with "Environmental Quality" by handing out trophies to kids and hiring public relation firms to tell us that everything is fine and dandy. Meanwhile, the litter is still clogging the street drains that send water into the Second River ( where it, in turn, gets dumped into the Passaic River which has environmental problems of its own).

If you follow the other link at the bottom of the article, it will take you to http://www.njclean.org where you will learn that New Jersey Clean Communities, under the leadership of Executive Director Sandra Huber, has the hubris to pass on almost Two Million Dollars of YOUR tax money to those who are in the business of applying for it and using it to enrich themselves:

Magician Bill Kerwood - who performs a comedy magic show called "Magic of Clean Communities."

Dave Street - who presents a show called "Let’s Slam Dunk the Junk" billed as an interactive, theatrical multi-media performance about litter, recycling, our human impact on the earth and slam dunking the junk.

John Bertles - who performs "Tales of Anansi", a “trashy” take on folk tales from Africa, with instruments inspired by African designs and made from recycled and reused materials.

Stephen Ringold - who presents a "Litter and Recycling Show" that uses magic, juggling, stories, songs, contests, plate-spinning, audience participation, and the mysterious Commonsensanator, whatever that is.

HERE you can see a complete list of some of the people who are taking our tax money and pretending to solve some kind of environmental problem for which the simple remedy of bending over, picking it up, and tossing it in the proper receptacle is not enough. We get that same kind of "educational enviro-speak" from our own Public Library which, every Earth Day for the past umteen years has had a "recycling craft workshop" to celebrate Earth Day. They provide nice clean styrofoam cups to "recycle" so kids don't have to get their craft materials by digging them out of the gutter, which actually might do some good and teach them more than they can learn inside a library or school room.

Solutions: We need to put a stop to this abuse of our tax money. The only way to do this is to shut down these so-called environmental agencies who know more ways to waste our money than you can even imagine. Recycling is NOT a craft project. It's a big business. It earns money for people who are smart enough to collect scrap metal and sell it. It ought to be earning money for our city - we have trucks assigned just to pick up recyclable materials every other weekend and take it...where? What happens to it? Who is making money from it? I guarantee you that SOMEONE IS! It belongs to the city and should be counted as revenue along with our tax money.

However, recycling is limited to neatly bundled and packaged cans and bottles and newspaper. No one is collecting and recycling the piles of cans and bottles and papers that get dumped onto our city streets. That's because there is no incentive for people to take their trash to a city recycling or trash can. We only photograph young people who receive trophies, not those who have their hands filled with litter standing over a recycling litter barrel. Our priorities are clearly in the wrong place. We need to stop being a part of the problem and start rewarding behavior that is worth rewarding.

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