Senator Raymond Lesniak delivered the following speech at the Memorial de Caen International Human Rights Competition in Caen, France on Sunday, February 1, 2009. The competition included lawyers from Washington, D.C., France, Belgium, Guinea, Senegal, and Switzerland with speech topics ranging from governmental to military abuses of human rights.
The Senator's speech below won first place in the international competition. He will donate his first-place winnings, roughly $9,740 from the Caen City Council, to The Road to Justice and Peace: a non-profit started by the Senator to advance the abolition of the death penalty around the globe, to support the families of murder victims, and to promote humane alternatives to incarceration.
I come here today not to plead a case for a victim whose fundamental human rights have been violated. But, rather, to plead the case that the death penalty violates the fundamental human rights of mankind. In my country, The United States of America, over 3,000 human beings are awaiting execution, some for a crime they did not commit. I plead the case that the death penalty in the United States, Iraq, Pakistan, Japan, wherever, exposes the innocent to execution, causes more suffering to the family members of murder victims, serves no penal purpose and commits society to the belief that revenge is preferable to redemption.
Post a comment | View comments (6)The following statement will be delivered by Senator Raymond Lesniak on Monday, January 22, 2009 during the Senate Economic Growth Committee.
Our President Barack Obama, in his Inaugural address, said "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."
Today, we will heed that wise advice.
New Jersey, our new President and new Congress, which includes two former members of this house: Leonard Lance and John Adler, are focused on taking action to boost our economy and reduce rising unemployment.
The following is Senator Lesniak's statement opening a Senate hearing to be held later this month on reforming the policies of the Council On Affordable Housing (COAH).
I come here today not to praise COAH, but to bury it. In my 31 years of working with government's bureaucracy, I have never experienced an agency that has so totally failed its mission as COAH has. If the legislature fails to act, and act quickly, COAH's policies will continue to not produce necessary affordable housing and will stifle job production and the state's recovery from the worldwide recession. Governor Corzine and the Legislature have embarked on a bold plan to restore economic viability to our state and for our residents. Our efforts will fail, if we do not quickly stop COAH from dragging our state into an economic abyss from which we will not be able to recover.
Cutting our nose off to spite our face, which has been embraced by COAH, and to a certain extent our Courts, is not an option. Stopping economic development if affordable housing is not provided for is a zero sum game where the residents and taxpayers of New Jersey are the losers. Affordable housing is the responsibility of the State. We need to treat affordable housing as an infrastructure need to be provided for by the state. There are many ways we can fulfill our affordable housing needs. One of them is not trying to pound a square peg into a round hole as COAH, and again to an extent the Courts, have tried and not surprisingly failed to accomplish.
Senator Raymond Lesniak will deliver the following remarks at the Smart Growth Coalition's membership meeting tonight in Newark.
Proposals currently moving through the legislature represent nothing less than the future of the State of New Jersey. If revisions to the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit, the Revenue Allocation District and Affordable Housing bills do not pass, we will see the words of Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown" come true: These jobs are going boys and they ain't commin' back.
In his recent speech to the Legislature, Governor Corzine proposed a financial recovery package that will spur economic growth, create jobs and lessen the pain of many of our residents in danger of losing their homes. But for that economic recovery to continue and grow, we need the tools in these three legislative proposals.
COAH has failed to address the affordable housing needs of New Jersey during a growing economy and booming housing market. Under the current economic downturn, its approach will not only fail to spur low income housing development, it will stifle moderate income housing development and dampen New Jersey's chances for an economic rebound. Our unemployment rate will continue to increase causing more pain for our residents.
We need an integrated approach to development. Forcing the subsidy of low income housing by the private sector without an economic viability standard will be like trying to put a round peg in a square hole. It just won't work.
Affordable housing development needs to include moderate income housing, called workforce housing, as well as low income housing. Most firefighters and teachers and many secretaries do not qualify for affordable housing, but would under workforce housing criteria.
Senator Lesniak delivered this speech today at the Annual Training Conference of the NJ Office of the Public Defender where he was honored for blazing the trail to end the death penalty in New Jersey
Murderers who commit heinous, life destroying acts of violence should not precipitate a policy that hurts America and Americans. A policy that results in the execution of innocent persons and cruelly places many on death row for years, even decades, waiting to be executed for a crime they did not commit. A policy that does not allow the families of murder victims to grieve in private, as most have expressed the desire, on a timetable of their choosing. A policy that deprives law enforcement of resources better spent, in their words, fighting gangs, drug dealers and gun runners.
But that's what we're doing when we believe we need a death penalty. We turn our backs on the innocent, on the family members of murder victims and on law enforcement officials. The death penalty doesn't discriminate. It affects the good as well as the bad.
Senator Raymond Lesniak delivered the following speech at Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice on October 15, 2008.
I wrote the introduction to today's topic, "Why abolishing the Death Penalty in New Jersey was Important" weeks ago, before the market crash and fear of a depression engulfed our country. It's understandable that everyone is focused on keeping their homes, their jobs and preserving their retirement savings. Not Troy Davis however. Troy Davis is waiting on death row in Georgia to be executed for a crime he likely did not commit. If he is executed and if he is innocent, he won't be the first innocent person put to death in the United States. And until the death penalty is repealed in 36 more states and by the federal government, he likely won't be the last.
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Why was abolishing the death penalty in New Jersey so important? After all, no one has been put to death in New Jersey since 1963.
Let me count the ways the death penalty was harmful to New Jersey and our residents:
I was thinking this morning how Christmas would not be the same this year because of the economic plight facing us and the rest of the world. How much shopping for presents would be curtailed?
Wow! What was THAT all about? What does shopping and economic plight have to do with Christmas? Didn't Mary and Joseph spend Christmas in a stable unable to get a comfortable room for their newborn child?
It's difficult these days to think about anything other than the economy. Not the presidential campaign, not the World Series, not even Paris Hilton or Brittany Spears.
The article below is schedule to run in the November edition of Commerce: The Business of New Jersey magazine.
As a veteran member of the Democratic Party with sterling party leadership credentials: former Democratic State Chair and New Jersey Chair for the Clinton-Gore and Gore-Lieberman campaigns; and as the sponsor of liberal legislation for the repeal the death penalty in New Jersey, far reaching environmental protection laws and pending legislation to legalize gay marriage, I have raised some eyebrows in my Democratic caucus and blood pressure within the education establishment with my sponsorship of the Urban Enterprise Zone Scholarship Act: legislation that will permit 20,000 children from low income families to attend private schools through scholarships funded by corporate tax credits.
The school employees union, which yields enormous power through its well organized membership, over 200,000 strong, and control over most of the school boards and administrators (attained through success at the polls at school board elections where historically 12% of registered voters participate), oppose this scholarship program despite, or because of, the following:
1. Many private schools over the last ten years, mostly Catholic, are closing - costing taxpayers $600 mil a year. If the remaining close, the cost to taxpayers will be an additional $800 mil a year PLUS the cost of expanded school construction, which would increase the yearly tax burden to well over a billion dollars. The scholarships, which will be available to only 15% of the private school population, will allow most of the private schools to stay open and avoid the extra billion dollars plus tax burden.
Senator Raymond Lesniak delivered the following speech on Thursday, September 11, 2008 to members of the National Association of industrial and Office Properties.
A few months ago, while the Senate Democratic caucus was debating pension reform for government workers which would do nothing more than balance off the increased pension costs due to Governor Corzine's early retirement proposal, a Senator remarked, "We're upsetting too many apple carts". My response to the veteran Senator was, "If you're afraid to upset apple carts, you shouldn't be here."
New Jersey has been cruising along for decades, benefiting from its advantageous location between New York City and Philadelphia, a high concentration of chemical and pharmaceutical companies, one of the largest ports in the world, and its wealth of natural resources: most notably the Jersey shore.
It's not that we didn't do some things right to keep us going in the right direction at the time. My environmental protection legislation during the early 80's saved us from a toxic calamity and enabled economic development to continue in a productive and healthy fashion.
Senator Raymond J. Lesniak delivered the following speech to members of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty at Yale University on September 9, 2008.
Last year New Jersey, under my sponsorship and Governor Corzine's signature, repealed its death penalty. It took a monumental effort lead by organizations such as New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation, and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty to achieve a one vote majority in the State Senate and a four vote majority in the State Assembly. And New Jersey hadn't executed a convicted murderer in 45 years.
The coalition, and I, used all of the logical arguments available against the death penalty to achieve this narrow victory.
Kean University President Dawood Farahi announced today, at the commencement of fall semester classes, the recipients of the Lesniak Scholarships for The Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Senator Lesniak endowed these scholarships to further the study of human rights and to help students pursue their interests in understanding how societies and governments could promote or allow to occur mass murder.
In explaining why he endowed these scholarships, Senator Lesniak said, "I saw the German concentration camps in Poland. I read the accounts of those persecuted, like Ann Frank. I've shared in the lives of numerous survivors like Joe Wolf, Sam Halpern and Ziggy Wolfsen. I visited the museum Yad Vashem in Israel. And, like many others, marveled at the depiction of Nazi persecution and heroic responses in movies like A Beautiful Life, Schindler's List, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Sophie's Choice, and the Piano Man. My experiences left me struggling with the questions: how could some human beings do this and how could others allow this to occur?
Many legislators from across the nation are struggling with the same issue: finding the funds necessary to rebuild an aging infrastructure. It should not be a struggle. It should be a slam dunk with both Democrats and Republicans joining together to make the investment. It's certainly worth the price - by a thousand fold.
In New Jersey, we need to invest $2B of a total $8B cost to build a new Hudson rail tunnel called the ARC, an acronym for Access to the Region's Core. The additional rail capacity would ease the commute to New York City from train stations in 73 municipalities - from having to change trains and wait for a connecting train, to a direct ride, saving time and adding comfort and convenience. Commuters using stations at 66 other municipalities would get more trains and express service as well.
The numbers are startling. Even before the spike in the price of gasoline, our trains were at capacity. The 100 year old rail infrastructure services 75 million rail trips annually. The ARC will provide more frequent and more comfortable rail service to those travelling within New Jersey as well as for commuters to New York City.
The following testimony was deliever today by Senator Lesniak to the National Conference of State Legislators' Budget and Revenue Committee and Law and Criminal Justice Committee.
In 1992, Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) despite opposition from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Through this legislative measure, Congress stripped individual states of their ability to conduct betting on professional and amateur sports.
Much has changed in the 13 years since PAPSA was enacted. We need new, innovative solutions for the economic challenges we face. And the reasons given by the supporters of the ban are no longer valid, or have been proved to be not valid in the first place. The time is ripe for NCSL to re-state its opposition to the ban, so states can decide for themselves if legalized sports betting is good for their individual state.
Much credit is given to President Ronald Regan, Pope John Paul II and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa for the collapse of the Soviet Union's stranglehold on Eastern European countries. All well deserved.
That hero's list, however, is one name short: Bronislaw Geremek, a Holocaust survivor who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto when he was 11 and hid from the Germans until the end of the war. His father was not so fortunate, dieing at Auschwitz.
The workers strike lead by Lech Walesa at the shipyards in Gdansk, with backchannel encouragement and support from the Catholic Church and its Vicar Pope John Paul II were not enough to topple the Communist regime.
Third time's a charm. Having previously proffered on this forum and others Wesley Clark and Senator Jim Webb (My suggestion that Obama could win with Sponge Bob as his runnngmate doesn't count since I was just kidding. Well, half kidding.) as the ideal runningmate for Barack Obama, I have now come up with a match made in heaven: Richard Luger.
Yes, that Richard Luger, Republican Senator from Indiana.
