Billionaire Newhouse boys' obsession with girls' toilets

The Newark Star-Ledger is owned by Samuel Irving Newhouse (estimated net worth:  $9.5 billion) and Donald Edward Newhouse (estimated net worth: $10.5 billion).  Donald is the 2nd richest resident of New Jersey and the 56th richest person in the United States. He resides in New York City. 

These billionaires are well known for their foul treatment of working men and women.  They have broken blue-collar unions, cheapened the journalism, and degraded the working conditions of those who labor to put out the Star-Ledger each and every day.  Only the top brass at the Star-Ledger have grown fatter as they put out "the world according to Newhouse" in its narcissistic editorials.

So this is who we are up against.  And it is not enough that they have grown fatter while New Jersey's economy has become more fragile. Not enough that they have done well in the midst of high unemployment and worse underemployment, foreclosure, homelessness, debt, corrupt crony capitalism, the highest property taxes in America, increasing poverty, and record child hunger.  Now these people want to tell us how to live.  And don't think for one minute that they will share the lot that they dictate to us.  They are rich.  Very rich.  And they don't have to live in the manner they set for us.

In an Easter Sunday editorial the Newhouse boys handed down their version of what the future should be for us.  A mother goes shopping with her young 9 year-old daughter to a suburban mall.  The little girl has the usual fizzy soft drinks and so, nature calls.  Mom takes her child into the sanctuary that was once the "women's room" and they find that it is a sanctuary no longer.  And here is what that young mother and daughter will find if the billionaires Samuel and Donald Newhouse have their way:

Safety should come first.  In cities around the world -- in Cairo, Delhi, Tokyo, and Mexico City -- responsible government leaders have responded to gender-based harassment by providing women with the option of using female-only public transportation subway cars and buses during rush hours.  Here in New Jersey, they want to take away the option of women-only toilets.

Just because she needs to use a public restroom, a 9 year-old girl shouldn't have to come face to face with the genitals of a convicted adult male sex offender.  Our children shouldn't have to suffer for the deluded fashion statements of two billionaire brothers and the newspaper they own.