McCann thinks he's backed by the wrong Steve Rogers

We all know who Steve Rogers is.  He is the character behind the mask in those Captain America comic books.

So when someone named "Steve Rogers" endorsed John McCann for Congress, McCann responded by calling him "an American hero."  He must have been thinking it was Captain America.

But it wasn't.  This Steve Rogers, the one who endorsed McCann, ran for Governor in the GOP primary last year and came in... fifth place.  Fifth place out of five candidates running. 

Rogers picked up 14,187 votes to Rudy Rullo's 15,816 votes to Hirsh Singh's 23,728 votes to Jack Ciattarelli's 75,556 votes to Kim Guadagno's 113,846 votes.  Rogers picked up just 858 votes in Bergen County.

We don't know how he managed it, because Rogers has all the makings of a good candidate.  He is articulate, handsome, with a good resume... but somehow he didn't click with voters. 

We know that he put off many movement conservatives -- especially donors -- by assuming that he had become "the leader of the conservative movement in New Jersey" just because he offered himself as a candidate.  Rogers' support of career liberal McCann won't strengthen his image among movement conservatives,  who remember McCann when he ran for Congress in 2002 as a clone of liberal U.S. Senator Arlen Specter.  McCann said that he wanted to give voters "a choice" besides Pro-Life conservatives Scott Garrett and Gerry Cardinale.  He soon dropped out due to lack of money.

McCann went on to become  what the Bergen Record (November 18, 2017) called the "longtime right-hand man to Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino" -- a Democrat who ran on the same ticket as Hillary Clinton in 2016.  How Rogers squares this is a matter for his conscience and we wish him well.

NJ.com should be fined for not reporting an in-kind for Murphy

We have reported before on the Newhouse media empire and its anti-worker, anti-union, anti-middle class practices.  A book was written about the Newhouse family, their media business, and how they roll.  It is a hoot, unless you lived through it, and it details how they crushed union activity, kept organizers from workers, paid people crap, but then offered them personal loans to keep them in debt and supplicant.  Real pricks.

Well, the pricks are at it again.  They want to crank it up the collective ass of every blue-collar worker in the state by suppressing their wages and breaking their ability to collectively organize for their rights as workers.  This is an old story with the Newhouse boys, who have made a career of taking good paying jobs with benefits and turning them into shit.

The Newhouse plan is to turn New Jersey -- the whole state -- into a "Sanctuary State."  What this means was outlined recently in a letter to concerned taxpayers:

"A 'sanctuary state' will mean a huge influx of people who will need the social services safety net more than average.  The Democrat gubernatorial ticket has promised to impose a so-called 'millionaire's tax' that will chase away those who currently fund the state's social safety net.  Those who are left... the middle class who can't leave because of a job, or because they can't sell their home for what they paid for it, or because their child wants to finish school -- they will have to make up for the shortfall in higher taxes.

That won't be easy, because at 26.1% of income, the cost of living in New Jersey is, according to Bloomberg, by far the most expensive in the nation.  Meanwhile, state household income is nearly seven percent lower than it was in 2008 and has only grown by a little more than one percent since then. 

Those coming to the new 'Sanctuary State' of New Jersey will enter the workforce of the gray economy, where the minimum wage doesn't apply.  But for everyone else it does -- which will leave trade union workers, manufacturing, medical care and health workers, service industry workers, and mothers with part-time jobs all at a disadvantage when competing for a job.  It will be bad news for people trying to pay their mortgage, their property taxes, those hoping to avoid foreclosure. 

And just where will all these newcomers to the 'Sanctuary State of New Jersey' reside?  Why in subsidized sanctuary housing -- courtesy of COAH and its plan to build tens of thousands of new subsidized no-questions-asked units throughout New Jersey. 

This will require massive infrastructure investment by taxpayers -- and an increase in property tax collections.  To pay for it, the Democrats intend to scrap the 2-percent cap on local government spending.  Under the Democrats property taxes rose an average of 6.1 percent a year -- triple the rate of inflation.  Since the cap, property taxes have gone up an average of just 2.1 percent a year."

In the furtherance of their scheme, the Newhouse media empire has directed one of their un-named operatives at the Star-Ledger/NJ.com to write a column that accuses those who wish to avoid the fate outlined above of... you guessed it, racism.  The accusation of "racism" is now the last refuge of those incompetent writers who simply can't make an argument.  So the column begins:

Actually, he was.  That is what making New Jersey a "sanctuary state" will do. 

Look it up, that is the traditional role of sanctuary.  It does not discriminate based on whether you have been accused of a crime or not.  Any place offering "sanctuary" worthy of the name, covers those accused of criminal wrongdoing.

If you are not going to go down this path, then don't use the word.  And words are important, as this scene from the film "Conspiracy" illustrates so well:

Words matter.  The scene above recounts a true event in the somewhat recent past.  It takes place in a country that had recently been a western democracy -- with an elected president, legislative chamber, and independent judiciary.  But in this country the law was used to drive out opposition voices and piece by piece replace the institutions of representative democracy with one-party, one point-of-view authoritarianism.  This country had grand ideas about its destiny and, to that end, committed itself to a program of foreign meddling.  So the country was soon at war.

The setting is a beautiful house on a lake, in a suburb outside the capital.  The house had been seized from its owners, by the government for its use, through a form of eminent domain.  And in the middle of winter, 15 bureaucrats and politicians met there.  Most were lawyers, others were prominent members of the civil service, many had impressive academic credentials.  Over fine wine they lunched (it calls to mind one of those Planned Parenthood videos) and for two hours twisted and contorted language and emerged with a euphemism -- "the final solution" -- that consigned millions to unimaginable horror and death.

If you watch the entire film, pay close attention to how everything they planned had to be "based in law."  And by-the-way, the uniforms are not military uniforms.  They are political party uniforms.  These bastards were not soldiers, they were attorneys. 

We should not allow Phil Murphy and the Newhouse media empire to use the word "sanctuary" as a means to drive down the cost of labor.  It is not "sanctuary" that they seek but union busting, cheap labor, and the continued decline of the middle class.  Don't let them dishonor the word "sanctuary" by turning it into a euphemism for their anti-worker schemes.

Words matter.  Politically correct euphemism is the enemy of truth.