Jason O'Grady's Blog

Millie Messina is a committeewoman in Weymouth Township, New Jersey and she’s a perfect example of a career politician that plays dirty and will stop at nothing to get elected. Don’t let her serene, grandmotherly smile fool you, she’s got a mean streak a mile wide.

Case in point: A few days before the November 8, 2011 election Millie wrote a five-page political tirade filled with vitriol, hatred and more concerning, lies and mailed it to all of the registered voters in Weymouth Township. The first part isn’t illegal of course, it’s well known that Millie is a hateful and vengeful person, so that’s par for the course. In my opinion, the real issue is her lies — and their timing.

You see, Millie’s no stranger to the political ropes, she’s been collecting a salary and padding her pension on the backs of taxpayers for over 30 years. She’s seen it all — including her share of dirty political tricks. For this year’s election she pulled out one of the dirties tricks in the book: an 11th hour letter to voters that twists and distorts facts about her opponents in order to further her political agenda.

Anyone could tell that her little “love letter” was obviously full of lies.

How? It’s easy really. If her claims were truthful she would have distributed the letter in advance of the election. That way voters could digest the information and make up their own minds. Some lead time would also allow the victims of her smear campaign to respond to her allegations well in advance of the election.

But did she do that?  Of course not.

She timed it so that voters would receive her letter on the day before the election

Millie knew that her letter was filled with distortions designed to discredit her political opponents. She also knew that her letter wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. That’s why she mailed it on the eve of the election. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the dirty political playbook, and Millie executed it perfectly, like the seasoned politician that she is.

In fact, her desperate political rant reads more like a dossier of someone planning an attack, rather than an innocent letter. This is also troubling because rather than discussing issues that she has with Township Committee (and perhaps, get them resolved?) she suppressed the information and kept a secret journal of other’s perceived shortcomings. Why did Millie intentionally cover up issues with the Township Committee? So she could “use” the information on election eve in a desperate attempt to mislead her constituents.

Anyone with a shred of fairness would smell a rat here. Why didn’t she schedule a debate? Why didn’t she send a letter to the editor of the newspaper? Because the newspaper wouldn’t print an obvious political attack on the eve of the election without giving the victims a chance to respond. In fact, newspapers have a strict policy about being fair and balanced in their reporting. 

Millie must have missed the class on ethics. And she must have cut the class on morals. Instead it looks like she was teaching the class on how to run a dirty, smear campaign.

Millie will stop at nothing to further her political agenda and her ”friends” should step in line and do as she says, because if you think independently or, heaven help you, have an opinion of your own, you too could find yourself the victim of Millie’s next attack.

[Aside: If Millie made the thousands of copies of her five page manifesto at the Township municipal building, she effectively underwrote her political attack with taxpayer dollars. Millie needs to produce a receipt for the copies she made or promptly reimburse the Township for her late-night use of the Township copier for political slander.]

It’s come to light that the Chinese faked/taped/used computer generated (CG) fireworks (2) during the opening ceremony during the Summer 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. Video is here and here.

You may already be familiar with a letter that I sent to Northfield about corruption in the City’s Building Department. If you’re not, I encourage you to read the letter.

I wrote the letter because I had heard that the Building Department was conducting a covert investigation of me and my residence in an attempt to get “dirt” on me because I am running for City Council. The problem with it is that salaries of city employees is paid for by taxpayers (you and I) and is supposed to be bipartisan and neutral.

In addition to spreading lies about me being an illegal renter (which Mr. Jim Dickinson in the Building Department told me to my face) and being ineligible to run for office, Northfield employees were digging through city archives looking for building permits about my Geothermal installation in my home, which was featured in The Current.

I caught them in the act when I stopped into the Building Department one day to address the lies that were being spread about my residency status. Sitting out on the counter in the Building Department was a copy of my the Building Permit issued for the Geothermal heating system installed at my home in 1999. That’s right, an eight year old building permit for my residence happened to be sitting on the counter waiting to be picked up. What a coincidence!

When I asked Jim Dickinson who requested it, he lied to my face and said that he “didn’t know.” Um, right.

Did I mention that Jim Dickinson is the Treasurer of the Northfield Republican Club?

When the City Administrator investigated the issues brought up in my letter, Mr. Dickinson immediately “lawyered up” and had union representation at the meeting. His response? The building permit wasn’t there!

Jim Dickinson lied to the City Administrator.

I know what I saw and I saw a copy of the building permit for my residence sitting on the counter. Mr. Dickinson fears losing his taxpayer funded cushy job because of his deception, lies and his use of municipal resources for political gain. He may have been able to lie to the Administrator, but a lot of other people are aware of what he did and are starting to pay attention.

I would like to see a full investigation of the security tapes from the hallway outside the Building Department between August 22 and September 24 to see if that helps Mr. Dickinson “remember” who requested a copy of my building permit.
I have my theories about who is behind this heinous taxpayer-funded witch hunt, but you be the judge. Here’s a time line:

- A certain “green” resident of Northfield and member of the Republican Party Executive Committee gets some PR in The Press and on HGTV about his solar panels. He also calls certain radio programs every day to boast about his solar panels.

- A nice piece written about the Geothermal heating and cooling system in my house in The Current on August 22, 2007. (Geothermal is a renewable energy source and very environmentally friendly. Dare I say that it’s “green?”)

- Many Northfield residents read The Current and probably read the story about me.

- A couple of days later I hear rumblings that I am being smeared and covertly investigated by members of the Northfield Building Department that are also on the Republican Party Executive Committee.

I can’t prove who was investigating me on the taxpayers dime, but I have my suspicions… Stay tuned.

City workers should should be bipartisan and impartial, especially when our taxes are paying their salary. I’m wondering why the Building Department has so much extra time on their hands that they can conduct investigations of private citizens?

With my opponent’s recent rash of lies and slander about me and my family I’m left to wonder who’s running the ship at the Northfield Republican Club?

The Northfield Republican Club has endorsed Mr. O’Neill as their Second Ward candidate and have taken out numerous ads with the headline “Leadership for Today. Vision for Tomorrow.”

Is Mr. O’Neill’s idea of “Leadership” lying to The Current about his record, lying to The Press of Atlantic City about me, or lying to his neighbors? How many other times has he lied?

The other Northfield Republicans have been suspiciously quiet about their candidate lately…

What about the rest of the Republicans on City Council? Do they endorse Jim (Mr. Negative) O’Neill for City Council?

Guilty by association?

Next up: I’ll take a hard look at the Northfield Building Department.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the campaign trail these past few months and I was very troubled by a few things that I heard on the street last night.

• One resident in Sutton Woods told me that Mr. O’Neill promised to “reduce their property taxes by 15 percent.”
• Others told me that he was telling everyone in Dunkin Donuts at New and Tilton Road that I run “a porn site.”

When is Mr. O’Neill going to realize that no one wants to hear his lies? His negative campaign is the worst that Northfield has ever seen and even his own party is distancing themselves from him.

One thing that I find ironic is that my opponent in the upcoming election for City Council Mr. Jim O’Neill, found a picture that I posted on my blog over two years ago highly objectionable, so what did he do with it?

He took it to his pee wee game, where he is a coach (!) and he distributed it at the game. Besides the fact that this is an obvious cheap shot at discrediting me, he took what he considered to be an objectionable photo and distributed it at pee wee game with lots of young children around.

Say what you will about the picture, but would you distribute it at a pee wee game? I think that Mr. O’Neill should have used better judgment in this case. Is this the kind of person that you want representing you in City Hall? Should he be coaching your children?
Northfield is the city that I love and a city that I’m proud of. I want to be on City Council to keep Northfield great.

In an unfortunate turn of events, my opponent in the race for Northfield’s 2nd Ward City Council seat slandered me today in the Press of Atlantic City.

The reporter, Linda Cohen, was calling candidates to get information on our background, bio and platform for a piece in the Press of A.C. about the local Northfield candidates–pretty standard stuff.

Rather than talk about himself and his record, Mr. O’Neill use the opportunity to slander me and my family name saying to the reporter “he’s got a porn site.”

Ms. Cohen latched onto Mr. O’Neill’s allegation and published the story in the newspaper under the headline “Northfield candidate accused of running ‘porn site’”

Obviously nothing could be further from the truth. Please read through my alleged “porn site” (yes, this site) and come to your own conclusions.

This appears to be a pattern of negativity for Mr. O’Neill.

When he was contacted by The Current newspaper for the usual bio and background piece, Mr. O’Neill was the only candidate to bash someone else–in a piece that was supposed to be about him!

What’s worse is that he also used that article as an opportunity to lie about his record, boasting that he’s already “accomplished” making Northfield green.

Nobody likes a negative campaign Mr. O’Neill and you took the opportunity to slander my family name in the newspaper or record.