Outside the Tastee Sub shop on Route 27 in Franklin Park, a group of about 50 people dressed in heavy coats and hiking boots were discussing the democratic process. Signs proclaiming "We are the 99%" and "The Real Citizens United" lay on the ground or propped against a fence. Several helped direct traffic in and out of the small parking lot, while others policed the grounds making sure that all trash was collected and that the area was cleaner than when they arrived. The group, the majority of whom have spent time in Zuccotti Park in New York as part of Occupy Wall Street, is making its way …

More Americans are in need than at any time in more than five decades. That’s essentially the takeaway from a federal report issued Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. As reported by The New York Times, 2.6 million new people were deemed to live in poverty in 2010, increasing the number of Americans living below the official poverty line to 46.2 million people—the highest in the 52 years the bureau has been keeping track. The report also found that median income fell in 2010 to its lowest level since 1997, “the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for …

There are two ways you can look at the news that New Brunswick’s unemployment rate is lower than other New Jersey cities. You can, as some business owners and officials say, point to the city’s business climate and say the city knows what it takes to attract businesses. Or, you can acknowledge that the job mix in the city is the kind that has been less susceptible to the vicissitudes of the current economic malaise. Both views are accurate and good news for city taxpayers and residents, because it means that New Brunswick is weathering the current storm better than most while continuing its …

MTV used to be relevant. The network, which launched 30 years ago today with the apt “Video Killed the Radio Star,” helped usher in changes in the way visual arts were produced while also breaking cultural barriers in the music business. I remember watching it shortly after it launched here in Central Jersey – South Brunswick did not get cable until 1982 or 1983, so MTV was already established by the time we watched it for the first time in Annie’s living room in Kendall Park. We went out of our way to watch it back then. It was new and we were see videos from bands that were not on the radio…

For most of us today, there will be parades and flag-waving and lots of barbecues. But it is important that we take a few minutes to remember the origins of a day meant to honor America’s war dead. As David W. Blight writes in today’s New York Times, the holiday that we now know as Memorial Day began with a spontaneous commemoration of the end of the Civil War and a celebration by black workmen in Charleston, S.C., who went to the city racetrack where Union dead had been stored and “reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and …