Carol Clark

James Gerrish

I have already expressed many of my opinions about Carol Clark before, mostly based on her actions of blocking me (and others) from her Facebook page simply for asking her to explain her goals in writing (EXAMPLE). That is equivalent to her, as mayor, of slamming the door in my face when I go to city hall. If that is how she treats constituents who question her statements or who do not share her views, she is not worthy to be elected mayor, because she then has to be mayor of EVERYONE, regardless of race, or color, or religious creed, or political party, or social status, etc. She has shown me, by this action, that she cannot handle the job.

After seeing Carol in action during several Mayoral debates, I understand why she is reluctant to explain herself in writing. She is a "preacher." She expresses herself best face to face with audiences of her "congregation." Like a religious preacher, she gets them excited by her rhetoric and can build up political fervor within them, feeding on their verbal responses to her invocations. (EXAMPLE).

When she has to resort to writing down her plans, the "platform" on her flyer, for example, she is less convincing. One can read her words without the "excitement" she generates in speaking, and see through her arguments to cold, hard facts.

Her "platform," which is written on all of her publicity fliers, mentions "Expanding and Improving community health and Planned Parenthood Clinics." To anyone who has studied the history of Planned Parenthood and its founder, Margaret Sanger, she is talking about abortion clinics. She is talking about murdering African American babies, whether she will admit that or not. Expanding the number of such "clinics" in our community means that Carol is planning on using OUR taxpayer money to fund even more abortions that are currently happening in the clinics that even now operate in our city. Instead of killing babies by the dozen, we could perhaps kill them by the hundreds. By "normalizing" these murders using such nice phrases as "Planned Parenthood," she forgets that people with their eyes open know that what she really means is "Planned Non-Parenthood." This frees young people to have sex without the consequences of having babies and all the responsibility that entails. Carol is advocating (whether she knows it or admits it or not) Planned Parenthood's active attempts to get rid of laws requiring parental consent for minors who want to abort their babies. Finally, lest you think the recent stories about Philadelphia's infamous Kermit Gosnell are an isolated incident, you may want to research a little further into Planned Parenthood's Delaware Clinic, Women's Health Care Clinics in Kansas, and the Aaron Women's Clinic in Texas. I know you can find more examples on your own if you can stomach it.

 

Let's get off the subject of baby murders and see what else Carol has on her platform that will cost us taxpayer money. Her plans to "Construct a Skate & BMX bike parks and state of the art Community/Recreation & PAL Centers" shows that she is living in the past and not considering the expense to taxpayers of such projects. These ought to be funded privately, not by taxpayer money, and I doubt she will find many people who even know what BMX bicycles are capable of in terms of injuries to the riders. There's a reason why all the public parks in East Orange have begun posting signs prohibiting bike riding. Bike lanes and bike trails (such as those once planned for making use of abandoned railroad tracks) are one thing, but crowding bicycles together for trick riding is not a good use of public funds.

 

In her speeches, Carol has mentioned "setting up a bazaar with kiosks" several times, although she has not yet put this statement in her "platform." Listen to her answer to Question 1 from the debate on 5/15/13. Contrast this with her desire to "revitalize" Central Avenue and Main Street with fine restaurants and "boutiques." If we are trying to move up from resembling a flea market, as several of the candidates have agreed as being one of our city's problems, the "bazaar with kiosks" is a bizarre response.

That is similar to Carol's plan to "Advance, innovate & create green space revitalization & Green Job programs." Carol seems unaware of the federal government's disasterous adventures into Solyndra, A123, Abound Solar, and Beacon Power to name just a few failed "Green Job programs" that made the newspapers. With who's money and at what cost does she plan to do this? Our money, of course, and the cost will be enormous.

Finally I take issue with her plans for "creating homebuyer incentive programs for public servants, urban professionals, & men of color." Public servants have some of the best paying jobs in the city and should not need her incentive programs as much as people with real jobs in the private sector. Likewise, urban professionals are usually much better off than those who simply work a 9 to 5 job. As for her racist and sexist selection of "Men of Color" for inclusion into these incentive programs, she obviously has a poor view of males of her own race being able to stand on their own without her help and incentives. However, my primary reason for objecting to her homebuyer incentive programs is because the last time government got into the housing market with "homebuyer incentives" it was credited as being the "primary cause of the recession of 2007 -2009 in the United States." East Orange should be able to learn from this recent history and stay out of the housing business.

In rendering this opinion, I have not listened to any gossip, rumors or political "attacks" from her opposing candidates for mayor, just as I will pay no attention to her blistering attacks on them. I do note, however, that in all of the debates that I have attended, she is the first one to begin the attacks, inciting her opposition to counter with attacks of their own. You can listen to her and verify it for yourself using the video and audio samples and transcripts provided on this Web site.

Additonal note: 5/28/13 - As a taxpayer I personally found it reprehensible that Carol Clark used her position as Freeholder, which allows her to appear in our city's annual Memorial Day parade honoring our veterans on 5/27/13, to make use of that privilege to continue her campaign for mayor from within the parade itself.

Even mayor Bowser simply rode in the parade as mayor, not taking advantage of his position to disrespect the veterans by using their parade for his personal campain for re-election. By contrast, Carol Clark had her sycophants chanting her name and election slogans as they marched along with her and rode in her decorated car. Behind her Freeholder car came a line of other cars driven by her supporters, and bearing only her campaign signs on the sides of the cars.

Carol Y. Clark Campaigning for Mayor from the Memorial Day Parade 5/27/13 from James Gerrish on Vimeo.

5/29/13 On Monday, Carol Clark confronted me at City Hall Plaza and accused me face to face of lying about her. I responded with a challenge to her to point out where I have lied about her. As anyone who is reading these words can see, everything I have stated about her on this Web site has come from her own campaign propaganda, her own words, on her own flyers and in her own interviews and debate answers. I cannot be lying about her unless she is lying about herself. It has been three days now, and she has not responded about these so-called lies on her Facebook page, nor has she sent me an e-mail (perhaps she doesn't know where to send it even though it is published everywhere on this Web site- it's [email protected] , Carol). If she can identify even one lie- even a small fib, I will be happy to apologize publicly and retract it.

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