The Jaffe Briefing - May 12, 2022

STATEWIDE – Towns with their own e-newsletters spend plenty of time and effort to develop lists of local residents, who voluntarily opt-in to receive municipal information. And now a non-profit is suing 30 municipalities, demanding access to those email lists to send out its own information, the Record reports. The entity is called “Rise Against Hate,” founded in 2020, and wants the email addresses to inform residents about what it perceives people should know about racial injustice. Organization leaders believe people have a right to know “if their life is at an increase in danger because of race.”  OK. But a couple of important facts: Towns typically get email addresses by asking for them at street fairs, community programs and the like; there’s no “master list” of email lists that can be used. And if a town just gives away the valuable lists it creates over time, via its own resources, residents would be overwhelmed with spam from many groups and potential political candidates, prompting people to unsubscribe. And then the town would no longer have the ability to communicate via email, a considerable cost savings over printed mail.  If any group wants email addresses in a certain town, they should do what local leaders do: ask residents, one at a time.

TRENTON – As women across the land shudder as the conservative Supreme Court attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade, Gov. Phil Murphy is looking for ways to expand access to abortion in New Jersey, Politico reports. Creating a safe haven here, Murphy is trying to eliminate any out-of-pocket costs for those seeking an abortion and is pushing a state law codifying who can perform abortion procedures. Not only that, the governor also wants to create a “reproductive health access fund,” defraying the cost of getting an abortion, while making sure facilities that offer abortions have better security. And, finally, his plan would also give grants to medical providers who perform abortions, just to make sure they have the right training. All these ideas go to the state Legislature.

BRIEFING BREATHER

You spray 2.5 drops of saliva per word

TRENTON – New Jersey has the most segregated schools in the United States – the reason there’s a lawsuit now before a Superior Court judge. The common example: Check out the ethnic makeup of the Newark schools, just a few miles from the Millburn schools. And then compare the historical performance between the two school districts. Now, a couple of rural Republicans are trying to ensure things stay just the way they are. Assemblymembers Hal Wirths and Parker Space are calling for an amendment to the state constitution to block students from attending a public school other than the one closest to their homes, even if that school may be horrible. ”It almost seems crazy that you wouldn’t send kids to school where they grow up,” Wirths tells New Jersey Monitor, while clearly ignoring the bigger picture. Meanwhile, the civil rights and social justice organizations that filed the lawsuit in 2018 argue New Jersey’s system has led to generations of obvious segregation, pitting the haves v. the have-nots.

NEWARK – You’re likely unaware, but the largest city in the state re-elected its mayor on Tuesday. It was an enormously sleepy election in Newark, where just 11% of voters actually made it to the polls, as Mayor Ras Baraka trounced an unknown opponent.  But Baraka says the low voter turnout wasn’t just apathy. For some reason, the county election board switched a number of polling places just days before the election because of Congressional redistricting. Baraka, in his victory speech, spoke of how a busload of seniors were taken to a new polling place, in a basement, completely inaccessible to people in wheelchairs, TAPInto Newark reports. “I saw people turn around and go home today, like we were in a white-supremacist area of Mississippi,” the mayor said. No comment yet from the election board. Meanwhile, for Baraka, four more years.

IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS

BERLIN – Dead, again. Students at a high school in the western German town of Schleiden on Wednesday finally buried a longtime friend – a classroom skeleton that served as an educational specimen for generations of students. About 80 students and teachers joined in the ceremony at a local cemetery, where the bones of the unknown woman were buried in a small coffin featuring symbols of all major world religions. The skeleton had been in the school’s biology department since 1952; DNA samples have just been taken in the hopes of ultimately identifying who she was. (From post- WW2 in Germany.) In the meantime, the school has decided to go with a plastic skeleton for future studies.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

It was this day in 1993 when Norm finally gave up his corner bar stool; “Cheers” signed off on NBC.

WORD OF THE DAY

Vitrine – [vəˈtrēn/] – noun

Definition: A glass display case

Example: Trust me, a vitrine is not a good Mother’s Day present.

WIT OF THE DAY

“Take a good look at me, because you'll never recognize me once my opponent gets done with me.”

- Leonard Boswell

BIDEN BLURB

“Look, I know this is a tough town. I came to office with an ambitious agenda, and I expected it to face stiff opposition in the Senate. I just hoped it would be from Republicans.”

-Joe Biden

WEATHER IN A WORD

Breaks