Platkin’s next letter: 51 family members of nursing home victims?

By Rubashov

It is always easy for those in power to obtain an unrepresentative sample of a particular group of people and claim it is otherwise. Earlier this morning, the Murphy administration posted the fruit of no doubt some considerable arm-twisting on NJ Globe: 51 political insiders who happen to be women.

Here is how the Globe characterized the letter: “51 New Jersey women sign letter praising Platkin nomination as attorney general, urging his confirmation. Support for Murphy nominee comes from some of the most powerful women in N.J. politics.”

But is this list of lobbyists, political patronage appointees, political operators, elected officials, and fronts for special interests representative of the women of New Jersey? Do they share the same daily concerns? Are they even interested in the same things?

People in politics – both male and female – are a rarified bunch. Their minds work differently, which is why they so often fail to sync up with those of average voters.

Would the average woman living in New Jersey want to work for a middle manager who ignored the rape of a coworker and refused to notify the boss? A middle manager who allowed the man accused of the rape to continue on, with no justice? A middle manager who thwarted not only justice for the victim, but the protection of every woman involved with that establishment, every woman who visited that establishment, and every woman who the accused might come in contact with?

No, we doubt the average woman living in New Jersey would think much of that middle manager. Not even if 51 other women or 51,000 other women signed a letter telling her that he was a great guy. Who would wish to work in such a place? Who would wish to send their wife, sister, mother, daughter, niece, or any woman they cared about to work in such an establishment?

And then we have Matthew Platkin’s signature on all those executive orders – closing churches, businesses, and schools. We have the greatest respect for folks like Sue Altman – but how can any self-respecting person of the Left fail to recognize the fact that in America when government blocks someone from earning a paycheck, it blocks them from the ability to pay for healthcare. So, unless that executive order entails some measure of temporary universal health care (not ObamaCare, mind you, but Clement AtleeCare) it isn’t really worthy of your support, is it? And the Murphy administration is swimming in cash, by-the-way, so shame on you.

Matthew Platkin was the legal mind behind all those strange contortions and permutations that went into those executive orders – like Executive Order 103. Platkin signed that executive order (see below). His nomination gives the survivors of those victims and their elected representatives an opportunity to ask Platkin questions about the legal, scientific, and medical reasoning behind Executive Order 103 and the other executive orders also signed by Platkin.

https://nj.gov/infobank/eo/056murphy/pdf/EO-103.pdf

Matthew Platkin’s signature on Executive Order 103, hurried between 8,000 and 10,000 nursing and veterans’ home residents to their deaths. Take a moment to watch this ABC News Nightline piece on the victims of just one of the nursing facilities involved and the impact Platkin’s actions have had on their families. This facility, in Andover Township, Sussex County, saw dozens of deaths…

Matthew Platkin signed Executive Order 103 that hurried thousands of nursing and veterans' home residents to their deaths.

Curiously, some of the political insiders who signed letters and expressed support for Matthew Platkin’s nomination are lobbyists for this same facility and others like it. More on this later.

In the aftermath of those deaths, county officials submitted Open Public Records Act (OPRA) requests seeking public information. Many of those requests are still pending, despite the Murphy administration coming to a monetary settlement with some of the families of veterans’ home victims who brought suit against the state. Matthew Platkin’s nomination provides an opportunity for transparency and to resolve some of these outstanding OPRA requests.

Lifting the stonewall with regards to these OPRA requests is a necessary first step to having open hearings on Platkin’s nomination. Anything less is a cover-up and taints the process and his appointment.

Has Senator Gordon lost his mind? Or is it just fashion?

There was this silly headline run in the Star-Ledger (NJ.com) last week.  It read:  To N.J. congressmen: If you're not battling travel ban, you're backing bigotry. 

Accompanying the silly headline were the faces of two Republican Congressmen who, if the author had taken just 5 minutes to study them, would understand that they are as far removed from bigotry as human beings can be.  Congressman Chris Smith and Congressman Tom MacArthur... bigots???  Then you know not a thing about them, their families, or their good works.

The opinion column underneath that headline was written by a young "progressive" political consultant.  A nice enough young man, recently married, who is starting on his journey in life.  We don't know his character or if it will ever match that of the men he has so casually maligned.  

Of course, "progressive" these days is defined as establishmentarian, globalist, corporate, and politically somewhere between Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair.  This is what the Democratic Party's incumbent class is made of and to it must bend the knees of people like our young writer.

If this headline had been written by a member of the Tea Party -- about a couple of Democrats -- it would have read something like this:  To NJ congressmen:  If you're not backing travel ban, you're backing terrorism.

The hysteria of it.  Both headlines.  We can already see the campaigns that will be run -- the terrorists vs. the bigots!

And it will be all such bullshit and so unedifying.  But that is how we communicate to each other now -- via twitter or Facebook or even face-to-face.  Whether snarky or roaring, nowadays we speak "asshole" to each other. 

We speak "asshole" to each other because our knowledge is limited and our emotions unchecked.  We are scared shitless of something, so shitless and so lost for solutions that we act like so many cats stuffed into a sack, suffocating, clawing at each other in our darkness.  And so we get headlines like the ones above.

And talk about limited knowledge.  The nations engaged in the so-called War on Terror can't even agree on what a terrorist organization is.  The military wing of Hezbollah is a terrorist organization according to the European Union and the United Kingdom but not the United States.  The Muslim Brotherhood is recognized as an Islamic terrorist group in such Islamic countries as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates -- but not in the United States. 

Our Department of Homeland Security understands so little that they processed the visa of a woman using the name of a male jihadist, with a false address, and a plethora of red flags concerning her social media.  She ended up participating in the 2015 massacre of 14 people (22 others were seriously wounded) in San Bernardino, California.  And this happened a decade and a half after student visa-holder Hani Hasan Hanjour flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 184 people, including everyone on the flight.

Our knowledge is flawed, our process faulty, but the deaths and injuries are very real.  If we don't want more and possibly a lot worse, we need to accept that we don't know, place the emotion and name-calling to one side, stop speaking in "asshole" and start communicating to each other so that we can -- together -- work the problem.

Fritz Kuhn, that old Nazi who led the German American Bund back in the 1930's clothed his organization in the red, white, and blue too.  Kuhn used accusations of "bigotry" towards those who attempted to close down his organization.  The ACLU defended him too.  A Democrat State Senator even spoke at one of his rallies, held at a Nazi camp in Andover Township, Sussex County. 

Now Senator Bob Gordon and others are attempting to interfere in the federal government's work to keep us safe from terrorist attack.  Legislation Gordon is sponsoring, S-3006, would prohibit personnel of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from providing "any aid, resources, assistance, or support to any federal employee or representative in enforcing the provisions of a United States Executive Order issued on January 27, 2017 regarding Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, nor may any resources or facilities of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey be used for such purpose."

Wow, imagine if the State Legislature in Alabama had passed such a law affecting the Alabama National Guard in 1963.  Remember your history and remember well that it was the federalized Alabama Guard led by General Henry Graham that affected the end to Governor George Wallace's "schoolhouse door" blockade of African-American students attempting to register for classes at the University of Alabama. 

Senator Gordon should be careful of the precedent he is setting, for he might just be taking a major step in turning our federal Republic into something akin to the Wild West.  Has the Senator thought this through, or is he simply caught up in the "be-in" surrounding the opposition to all things Trump?  Is this helping or is it merely a fashion statement?

Last year, Gordon supported legislation that directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to take extra-measures, above and beyond those of the federal government, to prevent hunting trophies from coming through the transportation facilities (airports, etc.) controlled by the Port Authority.  This too was a reaction to something that had gone viral on Facebook.   

The language of last year's legislation couldn't be more direct:  "Any Port Authority agent or Port Authority police officer shall have authority to enforce the prohibition in subsection b. of this section and, where necessary, to apply for and execute any warrant to search for and seize..."

It is a question of language and of priorities.  Representing counties in a state that suffered so much death and misery at the hands of terrorists, why is there no similar language regarding the vigilance against terrorism in S-3006?  Where is the insistence that no more innocent victims suffer death or maiming?

It's not there, because it's not "trending" on Facebook.  Not at the moment, anyway.  But legislators like Senator Gordon must be keeping their fingers crossed.