BlueWaveNJ Endorses Four Democratic Incumbents and Five Democratic Challengers
In alignment with our goals, BlueWaveNJ is endorsing four incumbent and five non-incumbent candidates for New Jersey Assembly. This includes candidates in the 40th, 35th, 34th, 27th, 26th, and 25th legislative districts.
A Clear and Present Danger
BlueWaveNJ Statement:
A Clear and Present Danger
Outrageously, President Donald Trump, without informing Congressional leaders or his own Departments of Defense or State, has just told the Turkish autocrat Recep Erdogan that he will remove the small number U.S. forces protecting our Syrian Kurdish allies and permit Turkish tanks to enter northern Syria. At this juncture the prospect for the Kurds, who sacrificed thousands of lives to defeat ISIS terrorists, looks bleak, since the Erdogan regime has vowed to confront, and likely massacre the Kurds. In addition, there is the danger of setting loose thousands of Islamic State detainees that the American-backed Kurds have been holding in makeshift wartime prisons. The terrible message this sends to our friends and our adversaries around the world is that America can’t be relied on when it counts. New Jersey’s Bob Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has concluded that the president’s action will “invite a fresh wave of terrorism, insurgency and chaos in the Middle East, providing conditions for ISIS to regenerate and allowing Iran and Russia to further entrench themselves in Syria.”
Trump's Bid To Destroy Medicare
By Andrew Sprung
It's clear that Trump is working to destroy U.S. democracy -- selling U.S. aid and favors to countries in exchange for pursuing trumped-up charges against his political opponents.
Now he's following up via executive order with a bid to destroy Medicare.
In the runaway train that is U.S. healthcare costs, public insurance (Medicare and Medicaid) is the only substantial brake, in that the government sets prices paid to providers. Medicare hospital rates are about half* those paid on average by commercial insurers. Rates paid to physicians average about 78% of commercial rates. In high-demand specialties and regions with few providers, commercial insurers often pay four, five and six times Medicare rates.
Trump to The World: How About a “Favor”?
Small “d” democracy
By Mark Lurinsky
We have “been very good to Ukraine … [but] I wouldn’t say it’s reciprocal.”
“I would like you to do us a favor though.”
The rapidly mushrooming fallout from this no longer secret July telephone conversation between Donald Trump and the new Ukrainian president, in which Trump blatantly demanded foreign interference to assist his reelection campaign by digging up dirt on Joe Biden has led any number of observers to consider it “the ultimate impeachable act,” well beyond the crimes that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report already laid at Trump’s door in great detail. [1]
President Trump Must Be Impeached
BlueWaveNJ strongly supports the immediate initiation of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump by the House of Representatives and asks all New Jersey representatives to support this effort.
BlueWaveNJ Hosts Voter Security Rally
BlueWaveNJ held a rally Tuesday morning to demand immediate action by the U.S. Senate to fund upgrades in voting security across the country. Representatives from the offices of New Jersey’s Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, Essex County Freeholder President Brendan Gill, and dozens of activists joined BlueWaveNJ's call for voting security funds.
The Next Five Days Of Fighting For The Moratorium
We are living through unprecedented times. From this summers record melt of the polar ice caps, to the horrific devastation wrought by Dorian, the climate crisis is here and now and increasingly harder to ignore. But as last weeks historic climate town hall demonstrated, we also find ourselves on rapidly transforming political terrain. Could anyone predict that the entire field of Democratic presidential candidates would spend hours detailing their climate policy plans for a national television audience, many of which would have been viewed as impossibly radical less than a year ago?
Mueller: “They’re doing it as we sit here!”
Small “d” democracy
By Mark Lurinsky
Special counsel Robert Muller worried aloud during his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee that the Trump campaign’s openness to accepting Russian assistance during our 2016 elections would become “the new normal”. Then a few moments later, he exclaimed to chairman Adam Schiff that the Russians are continuing to interfere in our elections “as we sit here.”
All 50 state election systems probably targeted
A Real Plan For Climate Crisis
By John Reichman
This is an urgent moment with regard to our climate crisis. We need your help next week to ensure that New Jersey has a real plan to combat our climate emergency and to address the needs of our most vulnerable communities. There is an important opportunity for each of you to be heard a week from Thursday, August 8th, in Newark.
Time to Support the Warren Cummings (CARE) Act and End the Opioid Crisis
By Donna Ward
Last week on Facebook, a friend posted a remembrance of the second anniversary of the death of her 32-year-old niece due to a fentanyl overdose. Similarly, one of our neighbors in Montclair lost their 27-year-old son this year to heroin laced with fentanyl. The opioid epidemic is still wreaking havoc in New Jersey. While the rate of opioid prescriptions in New Jersey declined from 2016 to 2017, (the latest data available) and is below the national average, deaths from drug overdoses skyrocketed +29% to 2,685. The state’s rate of drug overdose deaths of 30.0 per thousand in 2017 is still well above the U.S. average of 21.7. Nationally, deaths have increased six- fold over the past 18 years, and have contributed to a lowering of overall US life expectancy.