NJ Appleseed Partners with Hoboken411

Institutionally, we have no relationship to the "politics" of Hoboken.

-Renee Steinhagen, Director NJ Appleseed

Those words, written by the Director of NJ Appleseed, Renee Steinhagen to Tony Soares on March 6, 2011, denounced his suggestion that she was advocating against the HUMC sale for buddy Beth Mason and Mason's anti-Zimmer allies.  Soares had written:

Perhaps you can "shine some light" on who the officers are of your client "The Coalition for Quality Healthcare Hoboken".

As I understand it, it is made up of a group including politicos and Ms Mason herself.

You may recall Steinhagen's March 2 letter requesting a public hearing on the hospital sale- addressed to Mayor Zimmer and City Council President Beth Mason- two politicians- instead of the apolitical HUMC Board, whose jurisdiction it is to hear such requests.  A red flag right there.  And the Coalition for Quality Healthcare?  A political entity Co-Chaired by Mason ally and former mayoral candidate, Kim Glatt.

Fast forward to June 23rd, 2011.

NJ Appleseed Director Steinhagen launches an Appleseed petition to stop the HUMC sale on Hoboken411.

The only other local media outlet to feature the story, Hoboken Now, published it after it appeared in Hoboken411.  Further, another lovingly-crafted, labor-intensive Klaussen graphic hints this news didn't just drop in his lap.

Now, even MORE evidence of collusion between supposedly independent, public interest group NJ Appleseed and Mason political operative Hoboken411.   Check out their online petition.  Here's a screen shot.

There's something about that Appleseed graphic that looks familiar... where have we seen that before?

Oh, HERE:

Now, if anyone thinks that Klaussen did not offer his original graphic to Appleseed, you don't know the guy.  All images, graphics and photographs, including intellectual property he's lifted from others (such as weather.com's weather graphics) are all published with the watermark 'Hoboken411'.  He does not allow anyone to reproduce his watermarked graphics while he helps himself to the property of others.

Klaussen even reported me to Blogger.com once for posting a screen shot- here's the take down notice GA received:

Blogger has been notified,according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.)

Now that's what we, The Chosen, call some big-ass chutzpah!  The guy who never met an online weather graphic he didn't steal, reports me to Blogger!   So I guess GA does have a criminal record.  Sort-of.  (I scrubbed the offending image and re-posted).

Back to Steinhagen's public position:

Institutionally, we have no relationship to the "politics" of Hoboken.

Really?  Joint-venturing with a virulently anti-Zimmer political-operative that published this:

Does Director Steinhagen think Mayor Zimmer resembles a chimp?

Can NJ Appleseed seriously claim NOT to have joined anti-Zimmer political partisans in opposing the sale of the HUMC?  GA can't understand why a great organization like Appleseed would toss it's credibility in this mud pit.
 
Hoboken411 and NJ Appleseed: perfect together?

Appleseed's petition has attracted worldwide attention.