Did Star-Ledger collude with Murphy A.G. to produce anti-ballot question headline?

Journalism isn’t what it once was.  Today, there is a revolving door between journalism, government, politics, and lobbying.  Today’s journalist is likely to be tomorrow’s political director.

Look at the case of Mark Magyar, one of Senate President Steve Sweeney's top aides.  In December of 2014, Magyar was hired as the Democrat's new Director of Policy and Communications.  Magyar had been a statehouse reporter for the Asbury Park Press and the Bergen Record, as well as the editor of the New Jersey Spotlight.

The corporate and political empire of Democrat Party boss George Norcross – the political machine of which the Senate President is a part – has a history of co-opting or attempting to co-opt local and regional newspapers in that part of New Jersey where his authoritarian rule is almost uncontested.  The machine is in the process of solidifying its rule in its southern New Jersey base, while expanding its power across the state – and beyond.

Mark Magyar is the spouse of Elizabeth K. Parker, Co-publisher and Executive Editor of the New Jersey Hills Media Group.  The group is controlled by the Recorder Publishing Company, a privately held entity in Bernardsville, that owns and publishes 17 local newspapers in Republican Morris County, Somerset County, and Hunterdon County -- and in Republican towns in Essex County.  Their readership comes from towns that usually get the short end of the sick from the Democrats in Trenton.  The company also sells other services, including website development, search engine optimization, "Reputation Management", and "Social Media Management".

Newspapers were never as pure and disinterested as their cheerleaders would have us believe, but at least – once upon a time/ just yesterday – they did constitute a locus of power independent of political machines.  Not necessarily of their corporate advertisers (per Herman and Chomsky), but certainly of base political machines.  Those days are drawing to a close.

We saw evidence of this on Saturday, when the office of Gurbir Grewal, the state Attorney General appointed by Governor Phil Murphy, conspired with Star-Ledger/ NJ.com reporter Rob Jennings to concoct a news headline the Murphy administration could use to undermine the people of Sussex County’s right to vote on Murphy’s Sanctuary State scheme.  At issue was a public question on the November ballot, passed by the Freeholders in April, that asks the voters their opinion on whether Sussex County Sheriff Mike Strada should follow American law on illegal immigration – or the directives of the Murphy administration.

The Democrat Murphy administration is arguing that Sussex County taxpayers should not have the right to vote on issues that affect the performance of county functions that they pay for entirely out of their highest-in-the-nation property taxes.  Taxation without the right to vote sounds pretty un-American to us.

Concurrent with plans to allow illegal aliens to have drivers licenses and to give incarcerated violent criminals the right to vote and hire lobbyists, the Murphy administration is using Grewal in an attempt to bully and intimidate the elected Freeholders of Sussex County into ending plans to allow the people the right to vote on a public question on the November ballot.  Popular sentiment across the state has been running against Murphy, so Grewal’s office was charged with finding a reporter who would provide them with a headline they could use.

Jennings, a former intern with Democrat Governor Mario Cuomo, was used to provide it.  Grewal’s office leaked confidential correspondence to Jennings, who promptly wrote a story with the headline:  “Sussex County caves to Murphy AG, will not put immigration question on ballot.”  It was the journalistic equivalent of performing fellatio for Grewal’s office.

Of course, the headline was false.  Jennings lied.  The Star-Ledger printed fake news.  Only the County Clerk had “caved”.  In fact, the County Freeholder Board had hired a conservative attorney less than 48 hours before to fight the Murphy administration.  This special counsel was charged with creating an updated ballot question with language that defeats the legal objections raised by the Murphy administration, so that Murphy and his cronies cannot hold up its placement on the ballot through legal maneuverings.

Jennings refused to write about it.  Even after he was contacted by Freeholders and the Special Counsel, Jennings refused to correct or update his story.  The lie remained published.

Not only did Jennings break the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), but Grewal’s office may have broken its professional code as well.  Word is that both may face ethical enquiries.

Despite the false headline, the Sussex County Freeholders remain resolved to fight the Murphy administration, with or without the assistance of the County Clerk.  And the Freeholders could always bring a lawsuit to compel the Clerk to place the public question on the November ballot.

New Jersey is unique in its forms and ways of political corruption – especially of systemic corruption – in that it rides the wave just ahead of the rest of America.  Sadly, it appears that what we once called journalism is on a rapid descent into the realms of propaganda and in future will be little more than coarse party broadsheets -- advertisements using histrionics worthy of Pravda or the Völkischer Beobachter.

General Majority PAC and NJ Democrats should give back Melgen money

Great work by the I-Team at NBC News 4 New York.  They are pushing politicians you took money from crook Salomon Melgen to give it to charity.  And they are getting results:

"New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez said his campaign has given away $19,700 in donations it received from convicted Medicare cheat Dr. Salomon Melgen. Melgen was sentenced last month to 17 years in prison after prosecutors said he stole nearly $100 million from Medicare over the years."

But two organizations that haven't given the money back are the New Jersey Democrat State Committee and the General Majority PAC run by Sue McCue.  You remember Sue, don't you?  She's the far-left Democrat whose SuperPAC gave Republican legislators so much trouble the last few cycles.

For screwing over and defeating Republican legislators, McCue was rewarded by Governor Christie with an appointment to the Rutgers Board of Governors.  That's right, the two-party paradigm is an illusion in New Jersey.  Christie made the appointment as a genuflection to Democrat party super-boss George Norcross.

According to sworn statements she made to the federal government, Rutgers Governor Sue McCue did political consulting work for such decidedly un-progressive corporations as Walmart and the American Gaming Association, a national lobby group for the casino gambling industry.  McCue provided "consulting services" for Walmart and "public relations and policy consulting" for the gambling industry.  Both are described as ongoing "clients" of "Message Global" which is, according to McCue sworn statement, a company formed in 2009 that she owns in its entirety.

McCue was also pocketed consulting fees from the notorious lobby group that advocates for continued and unrestrained violence in entertainment, the Motion Picture Association of America.  McCue provides "consulting services" to this ongoing client of Message Global.

McCue also runs the Rutgers SuperPAC (AKA General Majority PAC) that inflicted serious damage on Republican legislators in Monmouth, Somerset, and Cape May counties.  One attack leveled at these legislators was their position on the Second Amendment.  It is deeply dishonest to not address the issue of gun control in its context of violence in our culture.

Think about it.  France passed legislation a few years ago that bans overly thin models from the fashion industry because studies show that young women are influenced by the sight of these models to develop eating disorders.  Britain is banning the consumption of alcohol on broadcasts because government studies show that it leads to alcohol-related disorders.  Here in America, we have long banned tobacco commercials for the same reason.  But DC party gal McCue and her Rutgers SuperPAC would have us believe that subjecting an average child to 8,000 murders on TV before finishing elementary school and, by age eighteen, 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders, has no effect on his or her development at all.

We've known that violent-content acts like a drug on childhood development since President Bill Clinton first highlighted the problem in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings.  He pointed to study after study and the marketing documents of the entertainment industry itself.  All the evidence was there.  Then he went further and ordered a study by the Federal Trade Commission.  The study, released on September 11, 2000, can be accessed below:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2000/09/ftc-releases-report-marketing-violent-entertainment-children

In response, the entertainment industry increased its campaign contributions by 1,000 percent and spent hundreds of millions on lobbying and soft money to convince Congress to forget every study it had read.  Then September 11, 2001, occurred and concerns over media violence were ignored in the run-up to war.

We are sick of watching self-righteous drug and violence advocates like Senator Loretta "Mother Roach" Weinberg happily allowing grandchildren to watch a Tarantino bloodbath on TV, while they strip single moms of the right to defend themselves and their children.  "Rely on the police," they are told when -- because of the economy people like the Senator has bestowed on them -- they must live and work in dangerous areas and police response times are simply too long.  You and your children can not hide for that long a time and expect to survive. 

Of course, the Senator and her colleagues have money and live in low crime areas with good police protection.  And although they work in Trenton, they work in buildings protected by dozens and dozens of men with guns.  Thick, burly, well-trained men who know how to kill if the need arises.  Politicians value their lives, even as they devalue the lives of everyone else.  As do the rich "activists" like the billionaire Bloomberg and all those Hollywood people and New York celebrities from the ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY.

In 2019, Sue McCue and the Rutgers SuperPAC will again want to make a fashion statement that overturns the Bill of Rights and leaves the poor, working, and middle classes defenseless -- while she lobbies for an industry that makes wheelbarrows full of money feeding the culture of violence.  We need to be ready for her -- and make sure that she gags on her own attacks.