EDITORIAL
BY DHIREN SHAH
Hello Readers,
A pedestrian was killed Tuesday morning about 7:30 am on Springdale Avenue in East Orange. There was no information about the driver. The investigation is going on and most probably the police will find the driver. Please drive carefully, especially in the morning and late afternoon time, when businesses will open and close.
Corruption is everywhere in the world. However, in the USA corruption is getting a little twist of legality. In Irvington, the state comptroller’s office found wrongful spending of about $632,000 on two concerts in 2023 and 2024. A little over $368,000 was paid to a Township employee, Antoine Richardson, to hire and manage musical performances. This was a part of opioid settlement funds. As I heard, it was Mayor Tony Vauss’s decision without getting permission and not informing the key departments or public health experts. There was no opinion sought from the township’s residents.
Newark’s budget is delayed. The deadline was March 2025. It is now three months delayed, and every single day it is delayed, there is a penalty. It is not a huge penalty, but it looks bad on the city. To hide things like this from the residents, big people in charge make adjustments so they can pass some time and make deals with the council. As per my understanding, if the mayor does not introduce the budget, the city council has a right to produce their own budget, which the mayor must accept.
Trump has given Russia 50 days to make the decision for a truce with Ukraine. Why 50 days? So for 50 days, Russia is allowed to invade Ukraine and hurt the people of Ukraine. The one only good thing that Trump did was agree to give US weapons to Ukraine via NATO members, in which the US will get some money for the advanced weapons. Under the Biden administration, we were giving weapons to Ukraine without a dime coming back to us.
New York’s general election is November 4, 2025. As we all know, candidate Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman, won the Democratic primary and is running for Mayor. However, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor who resigned due to allegations of sexual abuse, will run as an independent despite losing in the primary. Also running is current Mayor Eric Adams. Another independent candidate, Jim Walden, is also in the race. Finally, activist Curtis Sliwa, who ran four years ago, will run again as the Republican candidate. There has been jockeying between democratic leaders, Cuomo and Adams for one of the opponents to step aside because they run the risk of losing the election due to votes being split across the Democratic Party supporters.
Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is now mostly anti-Trump and has announced his intention to form a third party. Ross Perot formed the Reformed Party of USA as a third party in the 1990s, but was not successful in making any waves. There are some other parties, like the Libertarian Party (38 states), Green Party (23 states) and Constitution Party (12 states). Due to a lack of funding, all the fringe parties did not have any real growth for the necessity of being a legitimate third party in the USA. Right now, there are two major parties, but they is an understanding that it is mostly one party at local levels; the Republican Party runs the suburban areas, and the Democratic Party runs the urban areas.
Have a wonderful week. I’ll talk to you next week.
