New Postmaster South Amboy
This has been my first official week and it is a great honor to serve South Amboy as your new Postmaster. In my years with the United States Postal Service, I have seen firsthand the role the Postal Service plays connecting neighbors and our community to the nation. Our Post Offices serve as a lifeline for our small businesses to reach customers no matter where they are.
About a year ago, the United States Postal Service published an ambitious but achievable 10-year strategic plan, Delivering for America. The plan established a route to building a Postal Service that is financially strong and consistently delivers on-time for the American public, our top customer.
A year into our 10-year plan, and under the leadership of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, we are taking action on its four key pillars: investing in our most valuable resource – our people, modernizing our network, providing service excellence, and creating financial sustainability.
Our actions are already leading to concrete results. We had an exceptionally positive peak holiday season in 2021, learning from the failures of 2020, and followed that up by successfully delivering more than 350 million COVID-19 Test Kits to the American public this winter. And in the 2021 Fall election, we delivered completed ballots from voters to election officials in an average of 1.4 days. We’ll take that success into delivering this year’s midterm elections. All of this on top of delivering mail and packages to more than 161 million addresses across our nation every day.
On behalf of the 650,000 women and men of the U.S. Postal Service, I thank you for continuing to support the Postal Service. Providing reliable mail delivery while strengthening the future of this treasured institution is our commitment to you.
Carmella Ambrose
Postmaster
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Those Poor Babies
Here we go again – more bad dreams for those mothers trying to get baby formula and paying a high price for it. Yes, this man-made baby formula shortage is a shame and who do we blame? Those clowns that control our lives. I’ll bet those baby formulas were sent to the south of the border for a reason. The White House was blaming working mothers for hoarding baby formula. What an excuse! Remember that old saying: “When you control the food – you control the people!” Did you learn this yet?
Orlando “Wildman” Perez
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Remembering Jack McGreevey
I read your editorial Remembering Jack McGreevey. It is eloquently said as the statement from our local legislators. I remember Mr. Jack McGreevey. The last time I saw him at his legislative office in Woodbridge, we laughed. He was a jokester, but don’t make him mad because he had a temper and spoke his mind. I am glad I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Jack McGreevey and his family – one of the Best of Humanity.
Gone, but not forgotten.
Jerome Billings
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Support Local Restaurants
In these difficult economic times, it is important to patronize your favorite restaurants and honor the employees who make them a success. Now that most of us have received our COVID-19 vaccine, let’s all celebrate May 21st National Waiter and Waitress Day.
Let your server(s), cooks and owners know how much you appreciate the excellent food and service.
Try to tip 20 percent against the total bill including taxes. If it is an odd amount, round up to the next dollar. Why not leave a 25% tip in honor of this day? If you can afford to eat out, you can afford an extra dollar tip. When ordering take out, don’t forget to leave a dollar or two for the waiter or cook.
The people who work at your favorite restaurant are our neighbors. They work long hours for little pay and count on tips, which make up a significant portion of their income. If we don’t patronize our local restaurants, they don’t eat either. Your purchases keep our neighbors employed and the local economy growing.
Drop off a box of candy, cookies or some other treat for your favorite waiter or restaurant staff to celebrate this day.
Sincerely,
Larry Penner
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Congressman Pallone: The Time is Now to Save Lives From Opioid Addiction
From Piscataway to Carteret, New Brunswick to Asbury Park, there isn’t one community in New Jersey’s 6th district that has been spared the ravages of the opioid crisis. Communities and families have been devastated by the losses of loved ones.
There isn’t a week that passes when someone doesn’t share with me the story of their loved one who was injured at work, or whose child suffered a sports injury or had wisdom tooth surgery. The stories all start the same – opioids were prescribed for their acute pain. After a few days, dependency and addiction began. Sometimes the story ends in treatment and recovery; many times it ends in heroin addiction, fentanyl use, overdose and death. And a lifetime of pain for the survivors.
My own Bayshore community has buried far too many victims of opioids, and it is not unique. What is unique is that New Jersey residents have some protection that other state residents do not. In New Jersey, a law requires prescribers to discuss opioids’ potential for dependency and addiction, as well as pain-relieving alternatives that exist. We have a right to know this information before we even get a prescription for an opioid. A Brandeis University study of the law’s impact in New Jersey, the first state to implement it, found that the number of patients prescribed opioids for acute pain significantly decreased after the law went into effect. In the month after the law was signed, nearly 5,000 fewer patients were started on opioids.
Residents of other states are not so fortunate, which could be the reason that the number of opioid overdose deaths in New Jersey – while still unacceptably high – has held steady as other states have continued to see the number of residents lost to opioid overdoses and opioid use disorder climb. Congressman Pallone, isn’t it time to ensure the same protections for all families regardless of whether they live in our beloved 6th District and state? I implore you to introduce the bi-partisan Opioid Patients’ Right to Know Act — H-1185 — introduced in Congress in February 2021 by Rep. David Trone, D-Maryland, along with Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pennsylvania, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-New Mexico, and David McKinley, R-West Virginia.
It will save lives. You can help save lives in Middlesex and Monmouth counties, throughout the rest of New Jersey and around the nation by giving H-1185 a floor vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee.
That vote can ensure that our cousins in Tennessee, our old college roommates in Virginia, our grandchildren in Oregon, and our parents who retired in Texas will have the same protections and the same rights to information about opioids before they are prescribed, as you and I have here in New Jersey. And our state will also benefit from this legislation – as we will have the opportunity to educate more doctors and more dentists on life-saving safe prescribing strategies, and to empower parents and patients to make decisions to protect themselves and their children.
I believe you care and want to save lives. I believe you are as saddened and as tired as I am of hearing the same tragic stories of addiction stemming from a prescribed opioid. Please act so that there isn’t one more mother, wife, father, friend or neighbor that we have to help live without their loved one taken by opioids.
The time to act is now. Move H-1185 to the floor.
Angela Conover
Director of Opioid Response and Prevention
Partnership for a Drug-Free NJ
