By Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein
In an April 23 article published in the NJ Globe, Jose Arango, titular Chairman of the Hudson County Republican Committee came out playing defense for Democrat New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. Murphy’s effort to get federal tax dollars to bail out decades of bad budgeting, overspending, risky investments, and a swollen political bureaucracy has been highly criticized by responsible government advocates. Both an increased cost of living and exodus of native-born New Jersey residents out of state prior to Covid-19 has been attributed to the policies Governor Murphy wants the federal tax payer to now subsidize.
Arango, who collects a tax payer fundedsalary, perpetuated the mythology that the federal government’s refusal to subsidize the pre-Covid-19 partisan agenda and bad decision making of left wing run states “will lead to more economic hardship.” Sadly, he ignores the fact that most economic hardship New Jerseyans face comes from trying to navigate the high taxes, surprise fees, hidden fines, and red tape and regulations that come with living in a blue state. Some speculate that Arango, himself on the government dole at what many believe is a low-to-no show job as “Director of Economic Development” for Jersey City, does not want reform of New Jersey’s politically blue bureaucracy as he is part of its system putting patronage and loyalty over competency and efficiency.
In keeping with the far-left propaganda points coming from Governor Murphy’s office, Arango misidentified the cause of the state fiscal challenge as he stated “we would hope President Trump would not support states going bankrupt in the wake of this illness.” Yet the reality, published by NJ.com on April 24, is that the federal government has so far sent the State of New Jersey, our municipalities, small businesses, and residents $14 billion dollars in response to the Covid-19 crisis. This historically unprecedented amount of aid for New Jersey’s governments and residents includes, but is not limited to, the $1.8 billion from the Corona Relief Fund that Governor Murphy and Arango are arguing should be used as a slush fund to cover for municipal and state mismanagement going back decades. This fund, a subset of aid within the overall $14 billion dollars in aid New Jersey has received, is meant for states to cover expenses due to the Covid-19 crisis not systemic bad budgeting and lack of fiscally responsible practices going back decades.
While Governor Murphy, Arango, and fellow far-left partisan New Jersey Representative Gottheimer, who stated (in a NJ.com article published on April 23) that he “can’t understand why we would stick it to firefighters, law enforcement, EMS, and our schools,” may pretend that this portion (less than 15% of the federal aid New Jersey has received) does not support first responders and public education, the Federal Treasury Guidelines on Corona Relief Funds show this is to be false. The Treasury Guidelines include everything from the duties of law enforcement, hospitals, and EMTs/ambulance corps during the Covid-19 crisis, the cost of e-learning for schools, Covid-19 testing, temporary medical facilities, medical transportation, the acquisition of PPE supplies, funding Covid-19 compliant safety measures at state prisons, and much more.
In the NJ Globe article, Arango states that “if we want to come out of this crisis better, we cannot burn it all down” to bolster his non-argument conflating aid to New Jeseryans with the desire of out-of-touch partisans to prevent the reform New Jersey needs to rebuild economically after the Covid-19 health crisis. Why Arango, supposedly a Republican, is joining a partisan line of attack which pretends that the historic $14 billion dollars in overall federal aid New Jersey has received, including support for our first responders and education, doesn’t exist may be inexplicable but burning anything down $14 billion in aid is not. Rather what Arango, Governor Murphy, and the rest of the disconnected leftists in our state fail to admit is that the tax, fine, fee, and spend policies of the state and municipal governments in New Jersey was out of control long before the Covid-19 virus. Their policies resulted in a substandard job generation, high taxes, high cost of living, and a lower standard of living than what could be for New Jerseyans across the economic spectrum.
Arango’s efforts to push left-wing attacks against President Trump at a time of national crisis and in defiance of the facts lay bare the type of Republican he is. Not only does he confuse the issues of pre-Covid-19 unsustainable state and local government spending (from which he benefits) with the economic needs of New Jersey’s working and middle classes, but he is directly contradicting a statement he made on social media earlier in the crisis about refraining from criticizing leadership.
Indeed, Arango, as covered in The Ridgewood Blog, posted on social media that people should not criticize
Governor Murphy in a time of crisis as if the constructive criticism he was responding to, offered by Jack Ciattarelli, a state GOP leader, was not giving voice to millions of New Jerseyans. It is clear that Arango meant “grand standing” when he stated that criticism of Governor Murphy’s handling of the crisis was “political grand standards,” but the question remains - if according to Arango one cannot criticize Governor Murphy because he is the leader of the state during a crisis, how can Arango criticize President Trump, the leader of the country in his handling of it? Moreover, by the tortured “logic” that one must not criticize the governor even though that governor has increased the cost of living for residents and badly mismanaged the state, Arango must also be against the vocal disapproval of Governor Murphy’s policies the NJGOP started offering after following Ciattarelli’s lead. Like the far-left Democrats he allies himself with, if Arango didn’t have double standards, he wouldn’t have any at all.
Some speculate the Arango is publicly taking the side of the left-wing Democrats in their counterfactual battle with President Trump because he is concerned about his job security. The logic goes that if state and local governments are forced to right size due to decades of expansion and cost-of-living-increase policies, which has stymied collections and for which they have borrowed money to make up the difference on their overspending, Arango and those with low to no show jobs may be forced to retire. Indeed, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who was a serious contender for the 2018 Democrat gubernatorial nomination before Governor Murphy’s massive round of donations to Democrat Party institutions all but ensured his nomination, has attempted to shrink Jersey City municipal government by offering early retirement buyouts to 400 municipal employees, freeze salaries, and suspend new hires.
While many public employees perform valuable functions (first responders and educators in particular), it is clear even Democrat Jersey City Mayor Fulop believes at least 400 of them to be non-essential to a functioning city. The question for New Jeseryans is how many more off the hundreds of thousands of state and municipal full-time equivalent employees are a non-essential use of our money? How many are, as many believe Arango to be, political appointees who do little to nothing other than cost New Jerseyans more and more of their paycheck? Does Arango believe that state and municipal government should continue to mismanage the people’s money and overcharge residents, reaching deeper into the people’s wallet during economically tough times such as the current crisis?
While we may never get an answer to these questions, the recent past suggests he cares more about serving the Democrat power structure than defending the New Jerseyans. While the Jersey City Board of Education is infamously known for raising taxes in March during the Covid-19 crisis, and one of the votes in favor was Noemi Velazquez (well known for religious bigotry), what is less known is that not only did Arango use his nominal title to endorse Velazquez and her ticket but he also used official Hudson County Republican Committee funds to do so in a mailer. Surely then, as Arango has remained silent on the JCBOE tax increases by the extremist Democrats he supported, it becomes clear he does not care about lowering the cost of living for New Jerseyans during the crisis nor for creating a climate of job generation and economic prosperity. Rather, to all but those asleep or with a vested interested pretending otherwise, it is painstakingly clear that Arango only comes out publicly to support the Democrat bosses he de facto works for.
From supporting those who increase the cost of living for the people of Jersey City to attacking real Republicans leaders such as Jack Ciattarelli; from benefiting from the corrupt system of political patronage which keeps New Jersey from its full potential to taking Democrat Governor Murphy’s side in his partisan crusade against President Trump - Arango has a demonstrable history of standing both against Republicans and hardworking New Jerseyans. From always growing budgets to ever increasing regulatory fee’s, highest in the nation property taxes to risky investments, an army of thousands upon thousands of official and unofficial political appointees to a constantly rising cost of living, New Jersey cannot afford more of the same. The out of touch Democrats – Governor Phil Murphy, Representative Gottheimer, the JCBOE, “Republican” Jose Arango and many more, may never get it, but New Jerseyans understand that if we are to recover after Covid-19 we need more than complaining that the $14 billion dollars in federal aid to New Jersey is not enough, we need real reform.
Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein currently serves as a Member of the Republican State Committee representing Hudson County.
NOTE: We invite Jose Arango, Chairman of the Hudson County Republican Committee, as well as anyone else mentioned here, to write their own column (separately or in response to this column) and we will publish it.
"At any given moment there
is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking
people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this,
that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian
times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone
who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising
effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair
hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
(George Orwell, aka Eric Blair)
Quoted by Chris Hedges, in his
bestseller, “Death of the Liberal Class" (2010).
