Daily Mail – by Ollie Gillman

An illegal immigrant who allegedly posed as a dead veteran for years to claim VA and social security benefits has been arrested.

Rene Ortiz Quintana, 69, has been accused of stealing the identity of late veteran Ruben Gallardo, who died in 1994.

Quintana has been in the United States illegally for around 50 years and assumed the identity of Mr Gallardo in October 2012, police said.   Continue reading “Illegal immigrant ‘posed as veteran who died in 1994 for YEARS to get VA and social security benefits worth $30,000’”

Weird NJ

New Jersey’s first royal governor, a first cousin of Queen Anne, took office in 1706, and quickly gained the dubious distinction of being one of our state’s most loathed leaders.

Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury, (1661–1723) had already rubbed Americans the wrong way during his years as governor of New York. The people there had come to view both him and his wife as leeches after they’d repeatedly helped themselves to that colony’s wealth, asking for large special allowances, throwing sumptuous parties (for which they’d charge admission), and simply taking things they liked from citizens’ homes. New Yorkers were likewise disgusted by the governor’s atypical sexual fetishes; including his penchant for ears. At one meeting of the New York Assembly, the royal appointee digressed into a speech about the beauty of his fair Lady’s ears, at the end of which he invited all present to fondle her lovely lobes for themselves.   Continue reading “A Governor In Queen’s Clothing”

CBS News – by Tony Guida, January 7, 2012

The economic recovery may be painfully slow for most Americans. But for the more than 630,000 people who are homeless, the improvements can seem non-existent. For them, it’s about surviving and in New Jersey, even that’s threatened.CBS News correspondent Tony Guida looks at one particular group.

Angelo Villanueva was working as a mason until the housing market collapsed.
Continue reading “2012: N.J. homeless find refuge in the woods”

The Village Voice – by RC Baker

The meticulous line work in Mark Lombardi’s huge, hand-drawn chart about the 1991 BCCI bank collapse is interrupted by a pattern of rusty drips: The sprinkler system in the artist’s studio went off a week before the 12-foot-wide piece was to be exhibited at P.S.1 in 2000. Although the reddish splatters add a vibrant expressionism to the surface, Lombardi couldn’t view this accident as a serendipitous enhancement the way Duchamp accepted the cracks that careless truckers left in The Large Glass. Lombardi worked feverishly on a pristine copy for the exhibition, replicating his signature lines, arrows, circles, and lettering, which graphically enmeshed Arab sheiks and U.S. officials in a web of fraud. Then, during the run of the show, he hanged himself.     Continue reading “Mark Lombardi’s World Conspiracy, Corruption, and Vatican Hit Men”