Wednesday, April 30, 2008

What's Eating The Abbots?

A posting on Teaneck Progress by "is the election over yet" details specific examples of censorship by Tom Abbot. I always wondered what those removed posts were all about (ones removed within minutes).

here is the link- sorry i can't do anything fancy with it

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=28495920&postID=3977512904577253609

Two of the most vocal negative people(s) in this campaign have been Alan Sohn and The Abbot Family. And I am sure they will, and have been the first to criticize negative campaigning, but their failure to hold them selves to the same standards is modern day hypocrisy.

They probably justify it as spreading the "truth", a word we are very familiar with and appreciate here at Teaneck Truth. For the most part, we know Sohn's history and root of anger, but how do you explain the Abbots. They have painted a public picture as "we stand for all good and pure and can't accept the evil head of Ferriero or whatever his name is from Bergen County". But many in Abbot's circle of friends still questioned the extent of his dedication and drive to go against "what's his face" from Bergen County. To the extent of working and frolicking with the same group of people that have tormented, abused and badgered Mrs. Abbot while she dedicated many years to the Board of Education in Teaneck. The same group that aligned themselves last year with others to successfully oust Barbara Ostroth. The same group that has been vocal and antagonistic to almost every dedicated elected official from Frank Hall, to Kielizek, to Jackie Kate's husband to the current Mayor Katz. And yes, we know what Senator many in this group coincidentally have very close ties to, though we thought it was a coincidence.

I was ready to take this at face value that the Abbot's have switched teams, made amends, buried the hatchet, water under the bridge. It happens. This is politics.
But then I read last weeks Suburbanite and I couldn't help but notice a little article about a House of Worship on Queen Anne. And the most vocal critics were, that's right, the Abbots. (as well as his posts on Teaneck Progress re this topic)

Is this coincidence or is there some kind of connection between their over the top public dislike of Mayor Katz and Team Teaneck and the project in their back yard. Have they just discovered "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". Have they sold their principles and beliefs and genuinely believe that Monica Honis walk on water and the crew associated and endorsed by their former detractors are whats best for Teaneck.

I think in life when people have biases, they tend to have blinders on.

I think I know have truly seen the meaning of " Bite your nose, spite your face".
Good bye good Teaneck, the Abbots are mad.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Our policy

Our Policy:

I will not accept any racist or illegal comments. Teaneck Truth is a forum for the truth to come out. And while many may take exception to the vile and hateful comments by some, this is the forum that those vile and hateful people are using to express the Truth about themselves.

So if you go to the Supermarket- smile and wave to a fellow loving Teaneck resident. They may be on our blog dishing the truth about you. But, we will not tolerate bias crimes or comments and not only will we cooperate with any authorities, we will turn over the ip's voluntarily. So continue to be mean, continue to hate, continue to love and continue showing your truth, just no racial hate and keep it legal.

MESSAGE #2- Please forward to teanecktruth@gmail.com any of your own postings (with a byline) and I will put them up as their own posts for public discussion. That's what this- a forum to discuss.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Teaneck Divided Has Changed It Name

For Immediate Release
Contact: Teaneck Divided

It's official. Teaneck Divided has changed its name to Teaneck Abusive.

Ok, here is the latest email going around town. Rumor has it, A certain person, who's name we shall not mention, but let's just say he or she lives on Shepard (and may be one of the organizers of Teaneck Divided and member of the Northeast Block Association).

Ok, back to the story, she went to Teaneck Road Merchant (s) and said if you don't take down the Team Teaneck sign their store will be boycotted. It doesn't end there. She then (allgedly) called a TeamTeaneck supporter in the Northeast and used some very harsh sailor language, to the point that I understand there is a police report floating around. The rumors going around is that the Teaneck Abusive members have spoken to many merchants and residents that have dared to support TeamTeaneck.
I know that Tom Abbot and Alan Sohn will somehow draw a connection between the moon, the stars County Politics and Rudolph made her do it, and I understand. But, for the rest of us, I ask, is this the leadership we are looking for in Teaneck?
I may just be voting for Ned too.



and there is more to come...

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I'm taking out my "What If" Crystal Ball

There is a lot of talk about Monica Honis wanting to be the Mayor. Rumor has it, that she is already telling people that she will be the top vote getter and that Audra Jackson is not even going to win. Since Parker bumped her for Deputy, last time, Monica wants to return the favor this year.

So Mayor Monica, will lead the charge for no more progress, continued reduction in services, and more tax increases. She will appoint Bill Morning as community relations specialist, Marty Cramer as Township Attorney, Ron Schwartz as Zoning Board Attorney, Mildred Tucker as Planning Board Chair, Sandy Loft as Board of Adjustment Chair, they have a Manager already interviewed and waiting.

Teaneck's future is not looking good.

The nice community we all love will be turned upside down. You can't manage a town with hate and anger.

I just woke up in a cold sweat. Is it May 13th yet?

Good bye Mayor Katz (and your ugly green tie) say hello to Mayor Monica.

Save Teaneck!!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Kids, It's Time for a Time Out

With this Election getting very, very hot. I needed something to cool it down. I once again looked towards my sister blog for a distraction and guidance. Well, the hamburger was her preferred method of change. There was also a person holding a cup of coffee and saying something, but that seems to be gone.

So I decided to take something more local.

I could talk about Toffler's rage last night, or I could mention the actress Honis Bonus Tax, or maybe say a word or two about Rose the flip flopper. But instead, today I will. criticize someone I happen to be fond of, our Mayor.

If you got to see last nights Council meeting you would see that our Mayor stood out like a soar thumb in his new brown suit. Matching what looked like an ugly green tie. My suggestion to our Mayor is stick to running our town well and ask for a little advise with the clothing selection. Lucky for you, this blog doesn't judge a book by its cover.

Speaking of books, I have to get back to my Final Accounting by Mrs. Toffler.

Monday, April 14, 2008

PBS Expose

(as cut and pasted from a comment in the prior post)

PBS Exposed Barbara Toffler as an Unethical Ethicist
Cheating for Arthur Andersen and Enron—Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars at a Time Snatched to Feed Her Fancy Habits and Grandiose Ego

Barbara Ley Toffler: The Culture of Greed
May 2, 2003 Episode no. 635
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week635/cover.html

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This week, 10 of the biggest banks and brokers on Wall Street agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle charges that for their own profit, they had knowingly misled millions of investors.

Phil Jones has the story of one woman caught up in the unethical culture that brought down Enron, Arthur Andersen, and many others.

PHIL JONES: Bob, it was in the early 1990s that business ethics actually became a business unto itself. With concerns over business scandals, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which is an independent federal agency that advises courts, basically said to corporations, "We are going to sock you with huge fines when you break federal laws dealing with white-collar crimes -- but if you have tough, formal written programs dealing with ethics and standards, the fines will be less." So businesses began to hire experts to draw up ethics codes. One of the nation's leading accounting-auditing companies saw a chance to cash in on the ethics consulting business. And before it was over, ironically, one of the nation's ethics experts had lost her own ethical compass.

BARBARA TOFFLER (Business Ethics Consultant): I remember when I walked into the building, 1995 -- the flagship office of Arthur Andersen -- and I was starting a new adventure.

JONES: Barbara Toffler's adventure came in the midst of the 1990s bubble economy. Wall Street was on a high. During this period, Toffler, a leading expert on management ethics, got a call from the Arthur Andersen auditing firm. They asked her to run an ethics consulting service for Andersen clients. Little did she realize what was happening inside the firm.

Ms. TOFFLER: Everybody was trying to grab business from somebody else. I mean, that was my daily activity -- fighting. It was like one piece of bread, and 10 of us there, "Got to get it! Got to get it!" It doesn't matter whether I like bread, whether I know what to do with the bread. But, "I've got to get it."

JONES: Toffler was making about $300,000 a year back then, living in style in New York. She was now playing in the big game -- which even included company pep rallies and clients of Arthur Andersen that one day would become notorious.

Ms. TOFFLER: We had this huge light and sound show -- fabulous -- for the "client of the future" -- our best client and the one that everyone should be going out and getting more of. And up on those screens comes the upended E -- Enron.

JONES: Barbara Toffler, who had built a career in the field of business ethics, was asked to do unethical things, and she complied.

(to Ms. Toffler): Were you told by your bosses not to be aggressive on billing and ethical matters?

Ms. TOFFLER: Not to be aggressive on billing?

JONES: Mm-hmm.

Ms. TOFFLER: No. I was certainly not told I should not be aggressive. I mean, I was told, of course we were going to be aggressive.

JONES: The billing was maddening?

Ms. TOFFLER: And one of the phrases that we used to describe it was "billing our brains out."

JONES: But as Toffler has recalled her nightmare in a book called FINAL ACCOUNTING: AMBITION, GREED, AND THE FALL OF ARTHUR ANDERSEN, she claims that on at least one occasion she was coerced by a partner to overbill a client.

Ms. TOFFLER: Our piece of this particular budget was somewhere around -- stretching it -- $75,000. It wasn't that big a job. I gave him my budget. He looked at it, threw it back at me, and said, "Double it." I said, "Double it? That's it. We can't double it." "That's what you do," he said. "I want that doubled. Double it. Don't bring it back to me until it's doubled."

JONES: And?

Ms. TOFFLER: Back I came with a $150,000 [budget]. I did.

JONES: And did you say anything?

Ms. TOFFLER: I just gave it to him. And we stretched it! We added hours. We added tasks.

JONES: However, she admits that sometimes she overbilled on her own. The game, she said, was to make a client dependent on her, especially when the client was new to the ethics business.

Ms. TOFFLER: It gave us the wonderful opportunity to say, "Well, this is what you need. And you certainly are not prepared to do this on your own, so here are the very many things that we can possibly do for you. And we'll set up weekly kinds of activities for you to do." So if this person's doing something every week, then, obviously, he has to come back to us. We have to be there. Well, suffice it to say, within a very short time, we had set up a planned program to bill this firm $250,000 a month to basically do work that their employees should've been doing. The CEO got wind of this and he basically said, "Enough, enough."

JONES: So you sort of got caught on that one.

Ms. TOFFLER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was somebody I know, somebody I still know. But I was enormously embarrassed. I mean, I had never ever done something like that.

JONES: But you never went to your bosses and said, "This isn't ethical."

Ms. TOFFLER: Sure, I did. But I was seen as kind of a pain in the neck. I mean, I know I was seen as a pain in the neck. My feeling was like, "There goes Barbara again."

JONES: Toffler's experiences occurred before the scandals of Enron, WorldCom, Quest Communications, and Global Crossing. But before she finally left in 1999, three years before Arthur Andersen collapsed, Toffler herself had become a victim of what she calls a new greedy culture at Arthur Andersen.

JONES: So while you were working there, what happened to your ethics?

Ms. TOFFLER: I don't want to say that I forgot everything that I was raised with, but you know, when you spend time working in an organization -- particularly one that has a strong culture -- you find yourself being drawn into that culture and beginning to behave the same way the people around you do.

JONES: Toffler argues that she never did anything that was illegal, but she's spent a lot of time thinking about how she managed to get caught in a web of unethical behavior.

(to Ms. Toffler): As you look back, why do you think you did these things?

Ms. TOFFLER: I did them for many reasons. One, I was making very good money, living a very comfortable life, and I didn't want to give that up. Two, I had brought several young people into the firm, creating opportunities for them to start to build their career. And I felt that if I left, or if I created too much of a disturbance, I might be harming them. Three, I always thought of myself as a competent person, somebody who could be successful in most environments that I had been in. I'd been a professor at Harvard. I had a very successful, honest, ethical consulting firm. I couldn't believe that I couldn't be successful at Arthur Andersen. Oh, I felt -- well, of course, I felt like I was failing. I felt like I couldn't play the game the way they did.

.

Ms. TOFFLER: If I am given a target, and the only way I can achieve that target is by doing something that's ethically questionable, or even illegal, but my boss is unrelenting and I have got to do it -- most people are not morally courageous. And many people will say, "Look, I've got kids in school. I've got aging parents. I've got a mortgage. I've got all kinds of commitments. Who am I to be so cavalier to say, 'I'm sorry. I will not work under these conditions,' and walk out?"


also- see another one: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/dml/engine.php?action=viewMedia&genreFilter=8&listPlace=8&mediaIndex=148&rootCategory=1&source=category&typeFilter=0

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Alan Sohn for Board of Ed

Can I reccomend to all a write in for Alan Sohn for Boad of Education. Am i the only one wishing that more then three people are running?

Though he claims to be a numbers man I am a bit confuised about how he only got 228 or so petitions. I know, it is a conspiracy.

His public comments show that he does not want to work with this Council or probably anyone for that matter. He mentions all of the private meetings he has had with Cramer, Zucker and Harris but publicly comes out and condemns Katz, Feit, Rudolph and Gussen. I have not spoken to any of them, but I will bet dollars to donuts that Sohn never sat down for a whole day and tried communicating the issues with Council. So what we have here is good old fashion hypocrisy and viciousness. I hope the people Sohn is supporting in this election come out and honor their campaign pledge to condemn Sohn's actions. Maybe Sohn should write something about himself and how his comments violate these pledges.

My only surprise is why do these stupid Councilmen appoint these nasty and angry people to boards. Alan Sohn and Howard Rose both people that have publicly denounced Council's actions for a public cheer and both people that have been appointed by this Council to several boards.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Race Baiting or too much "Truth"

There has been much chatter about the most recent Jewish Voice article. The question is did the Voice cross the line or accurately depict the inappropriate actions of several residents.
I don't have that answer, but just some observations of different actions and comments that I have heard.

We have Mildred Tucker. Many have suggested that she is simply acting as a mouthpiece for Naomi Cramer and Laura Zucker. But her flyers, comments and emails are the questionable material. "Gentrification", "discriminatory zoning" and words like that. (wait until you see some of the emails i have collected- will post over the next two weeks- preview "this isn't monsey")

Ok, how about Jordan Wouk. Was it not Jordan that publicly raised questions about "certain members on the Council and Planning Board".

Ok, how about Barbara Toffler....we know about her NY times debut and her very public Councilman Feit dialogue. Then there was her public attack and attempt to embarrass former Councilman Stern after she sought his help. What about the recent Councilman Rudolph attack, ok that was politics.

Then we have the Joe Harris email from two years ago: I believe "Bigot" was the word of choice.

And who is this new Suburbanite letter writer. I believe its one of the Teaneck's Divided organizers. Is he not the same former Councilman that caused a public stir with his very very public comments about synagogues in Teaneck opening on West Englewood. Check out Mike Kelly's book Color Lines..or check out the minutes from the council meetings dating back DECADES.

Let's see, what do all these people have in common? Oh I know, they are all part of the Teaneck Divided group.

Paging Alan Sohn, Paging Alan Sohn, please report to the Teaneck Truth desk and bring your broken moral compass, you have some more writing to do.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

So i am a few days late...

We had our first debate/ forum....

But no questions were answered. What I heard sitting in the audience was tension, Rudolph attacks, and Monica Honis the new brains behind everything good in Teaneck. Teaneck would cease to exist if not for Honis and all of her great work on the Council.
What was really missing was the small minor detail called issues. What do these people stand for. If we elect Monica will there still be a drama queen that gets nothing done. Will Audra be the new Gussen? Will Toffler just be Rude. How about Rose, will he yell at everyone at good and welfare. These are all important questions, and the residents of Teaneck deserve to know what and who they are voting for. And what about Cramer....how does he fit in with all of this? We need answers.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

The lineups....

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!!!!!!

Monica Honis, Audra Jackson and Barbara Toffler are a ticket. The three people that stand for ???, oh yes, The "Weinberg" ticket. In our beautiful non partisan town, how could it be? I am shocked.

What is their platform- their goals and objectives. What do they want to achieve. Its been two years of complaining with no other ideas- LETS HEAR IT

Let's analyze them one at a time. You have our "ethicist" that embarrass former Council members publicly by reading sound bytes of private emails. You have the incumbent that has a very, very strong record of doing NOTHING and then you have Mrs. Jackson, that could probably do a very good job on the Council.
I find it a little unfair to her cousin Monica (they are cousins)that will no longer get away with her public rants, taking everyone elses credit and just keeping a seat warm. This should be a very interesting race.

Too bad for Goldman and Rose, they got left flapping in the wind.

I must admit, I was a little shocked that Teaneck Divided did not endorse Elnatan. Maybe Cramer can't state in the papers his groups sole mission is to unseat Elnatan.

Next up- the recap from the first debate