A challenge to AFP

Yesterday, AFP circulated an arrogant missive filled with lies about Senator Steve Oroho, one of the most consistently conservative legislators in New Jersey.  You know the Steve Oroho we're talking about  -- the guy who started attending Right to Life marches when he was a teen.  Oh, that's right, AFP doesn't support the Right to Life, we forgot.  On the Second Amendment, Steve Oroho rates an A+ for his leadership -- but that wouldn't impress AFP, because they couldn't care less about the Second Amendment. 

The people who fund AFP aren't much on Religious Freedom or traditional values, but they wouldn't mind legalizing prostitution and narcotics.  The thing they are really passionate about it not raising taxes on petroleum products -- like gasoline.  And that's because they make their billions in the petroleum industry.

The email was circulated by AFP's field director, a young man who doesn't need to worry about property taxes, because his mom and dad do.  There's nothing wrong with being young, but should he really be the one lecturing us on life choices?    

Steve Oroho has spent his life trying to squeeze the most out of a dollar.  As a young CPA, he worked for W. R. Grace when the leadership of that company was charged by President Ronald Reagan to find ways to cut spending and make the federal government run more efficiently.  Steve honed those skills as a senior financial officer of an S&P 500 company, as the Sussex County Freeholder who saved money and reformed the budget process, and as the conservative leader on the Senate Budget Committee.

The state is faced with a very difficult choice on how to fund roads and bridge repair -- raise property taxes or raise the gas tax.  Approximately one-third of gas tax revenues in New Jersey come from out-of-state drivers.  All property taxes come from the people of New Jersey.  So which do you think is the best way to pay for improvements to roads and bridges, an increase in the gas tax or an increase in property taxes?

Steve Oroho has worked very hard to fashion a plan so that raising property taxes will not be necessary to fund road and bridge repairs.  Instead, a modest increase in the gas tax to fund the TTF would be balanced with several tax cuts.  These would include the elimination of the tax on retirement income and a phase-out of the estate tax. 

So who at AFP instructed their young field director to tell us that a property tax increase is preferable to a gas tax increase, that the end of the tax on retirement income isn't worth fighting for, and ditto for the phase out of the estate tax?

How does AFP decide on which issues to fight for and  which to ignore?  Who decided that the tax on retirement income should remain and that property taxes should fund roads and bridges instead of a tax on petroleum products, and at what level was the decision made?

The paid staff at AFP have titles like "field director" and "executive director", but excuse us -- did anyone vote for you?  Did anyone elect your state chair or your leadership? Steve Oroho is a Senator because he won a contested election in 2007 and then three more elections after that.  Steve Oroho won an election in which every member of the Republican establishment in Trenton supported his opponent.  And this wasn't his first victory as an underdog, in 2004 he defeated an incumbent Freeholder Director who had the support of her county party.  What elections have you won?

AFP's executive director loves to brag that the group has over 100,000 "members."  Okay then -- do those members get a vote?  Are they really members or just consumers?  You know, consumers of the bullshit AFP dishes out to them when its real "members" -- its billionaire shareholders -- decide to turn it on to lobby to prevent at all costs a tax on one of their petroleum products?

We're just asking.  Now AFP can prove that their "members" are really members.  All it takes is a vote.  Here in America, we're big on votes.  So here's the challenge to AFP. Send a private mailing to each of your members and ask them to mark on a secret ballot which of these taxes they would most like to see eliminated:

-- the gas tax

-- the property tax

-- the tax on retirement income

-- the estate tax

Then, with the consent of your "members" and guided by their will, they can direct that young field director as to which issues to push and which to ignore.

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