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Steve Lonegan Speaks in Lakewood Week of Senatorial Elections

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The Lakewood Scoop

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all right you guys ready see you again [Music] looking forward get closer sure sure perfect than the new Senator the next senator of the United States yes sir next newy Senator I'm the current president of the Republican Club in Lakewood the regular Republican Club of Lakewood we are the recognized political group here in Lakewood and we um are uh responsible for endorsing and Fielding individuals for political officers our members of the um executive board include um our first vice president and responsible for Gathering all of our speakers throughout the year Mr Mark seagull C individuals who aren't here today are Lee kleene he's our first vice president or our second vice president third vice president Hector Fuentes our recording secretary June DEA our um corresponding secretary Deber FES and our Treasurer Greg Stafford Smith along with our um sergeant-at-arms Ryan sbli I know the the campaign asked for brevity here because um mayor L again is on a is on a tight schedule he's been on a tight schedule for a couple of months you think he's pretty used to being on a tight schedule I'm sure he's getting sick of it can't wait till Wednesday night when he gets the the positive results but um you know it's it's gets pretty complicated because you know to prepare something about about the mayor's campaign and to put it into a few sentences is very very very difficult you I once heard that Dwight Eisenhower was passing through a town and they asked him if he can give a FIV minute speech and he told his people that he can't he can't do it he doesn't have time to prepare so they told him it's just five minutes so he said let me let me tell you to give an hour speech takes me 5 minutes to prepare but to give a five minute speech takes me many hours to prepare so how do you take a campaign so complex and just and stick it into a couple of minutes it's really and especially when you take up two minutes with the that Dwight Eisenhower story that complicate complicated matters even further didn't it but you know a few months ago if I had told you there was there was someone running against against Corey bucker of national Acclaim you would have told me that why would the guy bother and I actually recall there were many people who were thought to be the next the next Contender on the Republican side who dropped out because in such a short time how much could you accomplish in a US Senate race as you heard from Craig might my M my my Township committee race was a couple of months and even that was complicated and here you have to swarm the entire city with Lan paraphernalia and longan speeches and and it just I don't know how his campaign team puts up with it I'm sure I'm sure it's been a whirlwind of a few months and and just just up to last week there was there was no one saying other than the mayor himself that he's within a couple of points and this morning we got a report that the mayor's within three points and and these these meetings I mean I you know I have to thank Captain Mark Mark seagull he he got he got an email on Thursday from someone of the campaign asking for a venue for for mayor Lanigan and and he put it you know he he put it together with the help of Mr burck and Mr Frankle and and um I think that's been basically that's been the campaign everything last moment spur the moment to have Sarah Palin come in last moment on a jump jump on and say hey let me give this campaign a boost you know you never know what happens and and really if even even if it will be 11 points and which seems insurmountable I wouldn't put anything past this this this man sitt sitting to my left here I I told my wife on Saturday um you know we can't do anything on any any work on Saturday we're not we're not allowed to move anything that's outdoors and we're and someone had put in a Lanigan sign on my uh on my front lawn and it got blown down and my wife said I feel so bad you know the guy's behind in the poles and his and his sign got knocked down I said you can't keep this man down he came he came from so far and he's going to keep going and hopefully we'll get to see a victory very shortly a Cinderella true Cinderella story in New Jersey ladies and gentlemen it's my distinct honor to welcome mayor Steve again mayor thank you it's an honor to be here and you serve in the most important level of government and as a mayor of local community which I certainly know a lot about I want to thank Joshua bernac for hosting this today for opening up your home and allowing me to be here this is very important to me being in Lakewood with you today is very important important to me because what we have done in the last 15 weeks is we have pulled together not just every aspect of the Republican party and a majority of independent voters our message of individual liberty in which this campaign is built and the mayor said the campaign was very complex well it may be complex in respect to the work on the ground but the message isn't the message of this campaign has been Liberty it's about returning a country to a nation found on our belief that we are endowed by our creator with certain anable rights amongst them life liberty and the pursuit of [Applause] happiness this nation is founded on judeo-christian values one thing I learned a long time ago in my studies over the years is everything I need to know about governing is in the Old Testament amen as a people to be so free and so prosperous that we can flourish in all of our communities and share our common values our beliefs in the sanctity of marriage as the Foundation Building building block of our culture of our families of our faith and our belief in the sanctity of human life would but I want to talk today about my experiences in Israel something I'd like to share with you because it's extremely important to me in my role as a mayor back in 2003 this this I think is um something you'll enjoy hearing about very much although parts of it are rather disturbing back into 2002 2003 you may have remembered the uh controversies about auses being placed up in tenly in other parts of the state and people were uh fighting against them for whatever reason and having been the mayor of Bot at that point for a number of years I had established some good working relations with some good friends in the Orthodox community in tenek right across the board and they had come to me my some friend of mine rabbis and whatnot and said mayor we want to bring an a roof through bot it's going to come down Queen n Road it will come down Fort Le Road wrap around your church up paly to Havey around the shore and um I was like fine sounds good to me let me go talk to some folks and I went to the pastor of my church and he was fine with it so without any OB in fact we embraced the AO in pagota while other towns were fighting this which for some I still don't know why they were fighting it um so we brought the aof in to bot it was established and uh and look I'm a good businessman I established a deal where we would share the utility truck that was used to service the area with wh bota so we got our we got something out of the deal too but um my friends in the Orthodox Community we did the whole traditional ceremony with the signing of the leas and with the rabbis and they were so happy to be able have done this they what they my friends from Tink asked me to come with them to Israel in the summer of 2004 with a trip sponsored by the heon fund um and I went to Israel that week um and we were going there to deliver as part of their mission an ambulance motorcycle that was equipped to go into bomb sites unfortunately because you can't get a regular vehicle in and the ambulance motorcycles were effective in getting immediate relief to victims and those bombings and as part of this we decided to go one step further to establish our relationship I decided we decided that we would do a sister city Proclamation between between the burrow of bod and Bell I had been familiar with bell I had been to the Bell dinners and sponsoring Bell in New York with my friends in the Orthodox communi earlier than that so I wanted to do the sister city Proclamation so we established a sister city Proclamation between the burough of bagot and bell and we went to deliver this Proclamation as a show of unity to the City of Bell in August of 2004 um when when we went to Israel the trip was for the purpose of V meeting with victims of Terror and delivering that ambulance motorcycle and I had that opportunity emotional one to meet face to face with people fathers mothers who had lost their families in only the recent year or two in bombings one family had lost their grandfather in stero which I visited uh when a a bomb came out of the strip a missile and struck him as he sat outside his grandchild's Nursery School another was a man who lost his wife and children sitting face to face and hearing their stories was deeply moving the one that stuck in my mind the most was a young lady named Lenor Hamish who I met with she was scarred all over her face and arms cu the event had only been tragically a year or so earlier and Lenor and her husband and two children were traveling in a Toyota on the way to their settlement from Jerusalem when they were bombed and the car was blown off the side of the road her two children her husband were killed instantaneously Lenor crawled from the car up to the side of the road bleeding and she was pregnant 5 months pregnant a vehicle pulled up with some unfriendlies in it they laughed her and drove away another vehicle sooner or later came along and she was rescued and survived to look into the face of someone who suff effort this way to meet with families of victims of Terror on this level is deeply moving and disturbing and under and gives you a full depth of understanding and the vision of what terrorism means at home and what the assaults on Israel mean and should mean to Americans It could only renew my commitment to straightening Israel as an ally in the Middle East and my understanding of the hards of terrorism and the enemy's willingness to kill name and destroy the most Innocents among us to bomb people off in their car a family peaceloving family just beyond description uh after having met with a number of these victims and traveled out to the Goda strip for the turnover um we went out to Bell this story was covered in the Jerusalem Post in AR Chev radio pretty heavily so we got on our bus and we of course were traveling in an heon fund bus it was bulletproof had to be to bring that Proclamation out to to Bell required an Israeli gun Jeep both in front and behind our vehicle as we pulled into Bal an ancient historic biblical city um this was the only Proclamation ever done before between an American city and an Israeli city outside the green line I believe till this day is the case we pulled up and the mayor MOA Rosenberg met me at the bus and there was a falling of Israeli military that lined the walk way 25 ft or so between the bus and the municipal building in military with their rifles and black jackets and helmets to protect us from terrorism and of course we went into that City Hall exchanged our proclamations was a beautiful ceremony and that Proclamation still hangs on the wall of bell today I'm proud of that but what struck me in my travels in Israel as well the moving meetings with those victims of Terror is that when I visited the neighborhoods in Jerusalem I noticed that the Jewish neighborhoods had to be surrounded by barwi and guards for protection but the Arab Naes didn't that Israel is a peac loving Nation one of prosperity uh who simply wants to grow and prosper in the middle of the Middle East and they are our best allies and our best best path to peace in the Middle East and diplomacy and control is to maintain a strong Israel amen and having met with those victims of Terror and seen the violence and the evil of terrorists willing to attack and Destroy innocent people renews my commitment to that and the understanding that that threat comes to our very soil and if it's not here now it will be so I am committed to a strong Israel on a number of levels not just because it sounds good politically a lot of people say that sounds good politically because it's essential to peace and it's essential to humanity I saw it I looked into the eyes of Lenor and others and uh and I think I understand what it means so as I stand here today as your Us Santa can I want to renew my commitment to our foreign policy of building a strong military I am deeply concerned that under this President we're watching our military being weakened and dismantled our Navy is at its all-time low in the number of ships on sea is going to be even less over the next two years we're actually less than the number of ships we had at Sea during World War I this is critically important because it is the way we protect free trade and our trade routes against Pirates Y and attack by others um and this leaders of this nation prior to recently always understood the importance of trade by shipping around the world and why it's important to maintain a strong military and of course air defense and military defense and the greatest technology possible is the best path to peace and prosperity for us and our allies in the Middle East to protect and Restort by others from bombs and terrorist attacks um I am fundamentally committed to economic Liberty my forte is economics and financial policy when I get into the US Senate my goal is to serve on Max bak's finance committee um I want to focus on uh dealing with the massive body of regulations that are thoring economic growth in this country if you're in the financial sector you're seeing it out of the rules and regulations that are pouring out of the dodf Frank bill every day there are four to new rule making committees and commissions established under do Frank uh many many people in the market financial sector have already seen the choking effect of compliance requirements and they've only made their way to about onethird of the Committees they want to establish to create rules and regulations and those are the easy ones they haven't even gotten to the hard ones yet the regulations on manufacturing and Industry and small business I am committed to small business I am committed to creating an economy where people can enter the marketplace grow a business free of government interference and overregulation I intend to introduce a bill in the um intend to introduce a bill to set it that will require that on a regular basis and this is negotiable every six years 7 years eight years that's where negotiations come into play is uh that all the regulations of a rulemaking body are sunsetted so for example 2018 we take the EPA we sunit every regulation and we start from scratch we examine each regulation we make sure it's effective or if it's contradictory and we simply do not continue to allow regulation on regulation and regulation to pile up on top it's crushing our economic growth and our industrial strength what we've seen under this Administration is for the first time in the history of keeping um e economic statistics on economic Cycles going back to the 1800s of recessions and recoveries depression recession recovery this is the first recovery what they call a recovery during which the income of middle inome and low-income families is actually dropping during a recovery that's called the recover recovery I hate to see what the next recession is going to look like that's a recovery um and I'm also deeply concerned with our currency with the stability of our currency under Federal Reserve Bank policy under what's now called qe3 in which they are just printing approximately $85 billion a month in New American dollars to sustain the marketplace uh to sustain government spending it's just a matter of time in my opinion that the world wakes up and realizes the American dollar is nothing but a piece of paper uh and it's backed only by we believe it's worth uh we need to figure out how they're going to taper they can't figure out how to taper because they don't know how to get out of the spending problems so economic issues confronting this country are are extraordinarily important to the prosperity and the stability of our communities and our families and our nation's future and our military strength I'm also you have to get frustrated with the failure of the entitl in state you know in 1960 there were 9.6 million what was called low-income families families who qualified below below the poverty level in America 9.6 million then they launched the war on poverty in 1964 under Lynden Johnson and they said they were going to eradicate poverty in this country in the in the decades to follow if we poured all these millions of dollars into welfare programs HUD housing food stamps school lunch programs this was the path to eliminating title mistake well or eliminating poverty well if you keep a score of success as of last year the number of poverty families in this country in the poverty level are 16.8 million up from 9.6 million if you have a war in poverty and you're living in poverty it would seem the need for low income housing and food stamps would diminish instead it has increased every year we need more and more low-income housing every year they want more and more food stamps food stamps are up 40% the war on poverty has failed because they have thwarted economic growth in a capitalist system free market system you know prior to the explosion of entitlement spending poor families were poor families for a short period of time people would immigrate to this country you know they get off a boat little or no money orever they came here and they would be poor yeah maybe you'd be living in a low a cold water flat in New York City maybe working as a garment worker as many of our parents or grandparents or great grandparents did mine did but through hardwork initiative you worked your way up saving money building a better future the establishment of the entitlement state in this nation has institutionalized poverty it has created generations of of families who remain in poverty because that's how they learn it's easy to just get money from the government or for whatever reason we have actually created a poverty industrial complex which is surrounded by a bureaucracy that makes their living off of a big population of people in the low-income sector if you take the amount of money our federal government has spent on welfare programs federal and state governments and divided by the number of poor families according to a senate budget committee report we're spending $61,000 for every family in this country in poverty if you add that to their regular or incomes they already have in addition to that every one of these families would be an upper middle class income family but they talk that not enough money gets to these families that's because of the viig what we call up in my neck of the W the vigorish um that's the course of the bureaucracy we need to return America to the fundamental principles of individual liberty and with individual liberty comes individ responsibility it comes communities like bot like Lakewood where we share our values where we teach our values to our children where we're free to teach our values to our children where we teach to worship the way we please to build our businesses to keep the fruits of our labor it's a vision of the founders that was based on not just you know the whole idea of we are endowed by our creator it wasn't a sudden new idea that came out of nowhere it wasn't cop CL up at some Pub up in Massachusetts or in Virginia it was result of 2,000 years of suffering and learning and philosophy dating back to Plato and Aristotle through the Old and New Testament through John Lock through Francis Baker through Adam Smith through surom and tyan until suddenly in this land people came together for the first time ever with this profound vision of individual liberty never seen before on the planet Earth and with it laun the freest most prosperous Nation this world has ever seen one in which we can grow we can flourish and in our our communities and our families free of government but that's threatening us right now the explosion of government that wi witnessing around us every day every week every month every year threatens our families our freedoms and our communities with overregulation invasion of our privacy assaults on our freedom of speech and it's core of this and the core of this are individual liberties so I'm here today to tell you my simple message is this individual liberty returning America to a nation founded on the belief in an un in limited government that releases the unlimited potential every one of us to reach a highest level of success to fail along the way to stumble along the way but to prosper and to keep the fruits of our labor that's my message and my number one measuring stick when I'm in Washington DC on every vote I cast is simply this am I defending your Liberty if I can do that in the course of my political career I've achieved everything I've set out to achieve so I want to thank you for having me today and uh I'll take any questions thank you I have a question um I'm concerned with my social security I'm 54 years old um and many people say that uh by the time I'm going to retire I'm not going to get my Social Security yet I've paid into it all my whole life what are your thoughts on our soci I thank you for bringing that up and I'll tell you in in some polling and and focus groups that I did a year ago young young people in college they don't think Social Security is going to be there for them um Social Security System needs to be fundamentally reformed in the near future it is not sustainable when you have the number of payes coming into the system dropping every year in the ratio uh if you go back 25 years ago was roughly 25 pay to one recipient now it's in the neighborhood of 5 to one and dropping with the explosion of the Baby Boomers now you know I don't know who my opponent in the primary talked about how you know we have to maintain the system just the way it is because you have these PES he said at the top and they're relying at these incoming no I'm sorry the recipients at the top like this he says and the payes at the bottom and that if you don't have enough payes coming in to sustain the recipients the system will collapse so if you bring the two together that by definition is what's called a Ponzi scheme when you have a system that relies on the people coming at the bottom to stain the people at the top you are defining a Ponzi scheme it wasn't supposed to be that way they told us well you put your money in and that's your insurance policy but that's simply not the case um so we need to maintain social security for the individuals who are in the system like you and me by the way and especially for people who already retired like my mom who were invested and been forced to invest in this remember forced to be invested in the system for the last 25 30 40 years or so of your working life so you they've got your money but what I want to see going forward is a system similar to the Chilean system which was remarkably successful that allows an alternative to the new people coming in starting at some point in the near future and that Alternatives would be you either invest in the current system if you feel it's very safe or you pick from a series of other investment instruments they could be mutual funds um you will follow the same guidelines your employeer would still put the same match you'd put the same amount in you wouldn't begin to collect on until you're retired but you would own your account you would on person County you could choose what they did in Chile is they had six or seven mutual funds that people could invest this was 1981 that they launched this program and they offered the Chilean people um an alternative they said either go into the current system and when you retire your guaranteed your whatever your guaranteed pay or invest your money into your own personally held account and of course when this was done people this is ridiculous you can't possibly you know trust the market the free market and you can't expect people to make their own investment decisions although the decisions were limited to six or seven you know relatively lowrisk funds um and by the way Chile had an over 60% illiteracy rate how can you expect these illiterate workers to worry about their own Investments it's remarkable how literate people come become when it comes to money absolutely remarkable and uh what happened when they rolled out the system 95% of Chileans chose the personal accounts that was 1981 this started exact month Ronald raag was sworn in its president 32 years later now Chile has become South America's most prosperous Nation they have virtually no debt they have a massive accumulation of personal wealth the average Chilean worker over the last 32 years has seen an average 99.2% return in their investment chilian workers every month pull out their their social security savings book to see what their new net worth is they can they can leave their investment to their children without inheritance taxes and continue to roll over it so Chilean has established this enormous amount of personal capital and Independence the system is remarkably successful had we adopted that situation in 1981 America would be a far more prosperous place today what concerns me the most too about the future of our own system as it heads towards its inevitable insolvency um and and everybody knows this politicians know it Washington they simply have their head in the sand they don't want to address it is that as you and I you're standing here right now the nation of China and its four billion inhabitants who have no such system are considering to adopt a system like Chile's they've had representatives in Chile examining it for a while concerns me where that we'd be 30 years from now if those 4 billion Chinese put their yen into their special little savings accounts every year and the wealth accumulation that can occur there infecting so I this is something I want to address boldly I think it's something that will Ben I know it's something will benefit Americans greatly so thank you long answer to a question question is uh we know New York City the administration is uh limiting Religious Freedom by actually prohibiting certain circumcisions and you know uh putting uh stores that they can't have mesty guidelines from the federal level how would you address some this this issue by upholding a little document called the United States Constitution it's really it really becomes kind of simple it's about the Constitution the Bill of Rights relig Religious Freedom Is Fundamental to this nation um and it always has been and uh and and it's something that is actually critical to me you know I am deeply Disturbed as a Catholic about Catholic institutions being forced under Obamacare to distribute contraception um my mother happened to be this this uh secretary to the president of St Vincent Hospital who was one of the last nuns to run that hospital deeply disturbing to see this assault on our religious Liberties by the government what happened to the separation of church and state the left only talks about that when it's convenient to establish their goals so um I will be fighting to reestablish the United States Constitution this election in New Jersey on Wednesday is a referendum on the Constitution the Bill of Rights in many many ways a win here will will be a huge step towards reestablishing constitutional government the limits of government and open up the unlimited extent of religious freedom yes sir uh I'm Dr fiscus and I'm very much been following following the events with Obamacare and uh what I see coming actually shakes me to the core realizing how our Health Care system is going to be destroyed and I want to know your thoughts of what you think can be done at this point well we see um what the government did in their war on poverty that was a promise and that's complete failure um we see how they run divisions of Motor Vehicle and I don't think you're going to expect any much better if the government assult on our Healthcare um I would like to see Obamacare repealed um I will vote for any effort there is to defund it or to stall it because I we be one vote and I will also work to be an articulate voice for New Jersey Manhattan Institute reported last week that New Jersey under Obamacare will have the most expensive health insurance rates in the nation a 40-year-old man can expect a 47% increase in his health insurance premiums across this state almost a million people in last three weeks have received letters that they were being thrown off their health insurance and they have to find new health insurance through the exchanges president told us if you like your insurance you'll be able to keep it unless you're those million people um so it is it is and as a physician I we need to free up the animal spirits of the doctors and nurses who work so hard in their education to serve in your profession not to be thwarted by the overregulation and intrusion a big government so I am committed to that Senor would you be able to talk about family values your opinion on Family Values um our our our whole nation our whole culture is established it's all about the family it's all about our fam's um the strengthen the family as the center of Education of religious upbringing of our value system of our commitment to community you know it's remarkable to me I'll see somebody a young girl the other day who's a an ambulance Corps volunteer because her father and mother had been Ambulance Corp volunteers I mean this is the way you you teach values you hand them down from generation to Generation Um and what I'm seeing in this expansion of big government we're seeing its impact by the way of this failed welfare state on your you know Urban and and rural areas both White black families that have F fallen into you know the Trap of the welfare state is the dismantling of the family you know single mothers with kids dads that aren't dads anymore they're simply hang out on street cours or out wherever on the streets because they're not needed any longer because they've been replaced by government um so you know when my my mom and dad were married my M my wife and I were married and my daughter and I were married in the same church over 50 years and those values of Traditional Values of family we've been handed down from generation to generation Our democracy cannot continue to exist without maintaining the family as a central unit of our of our nation our society thank you folks I gentlemen I appreciate it very very much to thank the mayor Josh for having me here and uh I I truly believe no I think we all know my values and my belief should will resonate through L with through the state of New Jersey and on Wednesday October 16th we are going to have a historic victory in this state so it's only appropriate that uh you know out of Ocean County that we hear in Ocean County because it's Ocean County where the tidal wave of change is going to roll towards Washington DC so thank you everybody thank you good and you'll see it same way 100% Pro traditional marriage 100% pro life well good luck to you thank you very and school vou school I didn't even bring that up I should have I support School vouchers on this is Captain Mark great to see yeah you know I didn't even bring up school vouchers maybe maybe get a statement now about school vouchers it's very important we do that oh I I I'm 100% support of school choice I you know this public school like sort of uh uh uh they they have this cartel on our children's Minds I want to dismantle the Federal Department of Education I want to return education to parents and families and I want to see school vouchers you the country always always will and uh so that's something you can count on for me make phone calls get our people to the polls get the people who believe in the sanctity of life the incredible importance of traditional marriage maintain fighting this assault on our marriage of a man and a woman which is the Foundation Building Stone of the family who believe in school V TR who believe in individual liberty and economic freedom to get them to the polls on Wednesdays everything's on the line a Wi on Wednesday in New Jersey will be an earthquake it will reestablish constitutional principles and the core principles that that we share here today if a loss Wass to occur we're not going to let that happen it will validate the attack on our families will validate what you're seeing come out of Washington the whole country is watching this race gentlemen the whole country is watching this race and they're all coming in in the next couple of days to help the me and they're going to come in try to help the other guy so I need your help it's going to come down to us and Lakewood I think Lakewood can be a huge factor in this election in a low turnout rate so I thank you very much for the hard work