NJ’s Stockton Univ. Pays, Honors Depraved Criminal Who Invented Kwanzaa

by Seth Grossman

The fake seven day “holiday” called “Kwanzaa” began yesterday. Three weeks earlier, New Jersey’s Stockton University paid its violent and deranged inventor, Maulana Karenga (previously Ron Everett) to give a Zoom webinar on Kwanzaa for its students, faculty, and the community.

In 1969, two students, members of the Black Panther Party, criticized Maulana Karenga, the inventor of Kwanzaa, at a meeting of the Black Students Union on the University of California (UCLA) campus.  Minutes after the meeting, both were gunned down by members of Karenga’s “US Organization” (As in US against Them).  One year later, Karenga claimed that two women in his group were plotting to kill him with “poison crystals”.  To get them to confess, he tortured them for hours.  His methods included beating them with an electrical cord, burning them in the mouth and face with a hot soldering iron, and pointing a loaded gun to their heads.  He was sentenced to one to ten years in prison.  Four years later Karenga was granted parole and released from prison.  Soon afterwards he was hired by the Black Studies Department of California State University in Long Beach and quickly promoted to be its department head.  Last December 4, Karenga was honored and paid by Stockton University to hold a zoom webinar on Kwanzaa for students, faculty, and the community.

Stockton presented Kwanzaa as a normal “pan-African” holiday that is a “Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture”.  It introduced Karenga  as a respected “activist-scholar” who created the holiday in 1966.  Karenga was described only as the “chair of Organization US and the National Association of Kawaida Organizations, executive director of the African American Cultural Center and the Kawaida Institute of Pan-African Studies and co-chair of the Black Community, Clergy and Labor Alliance”.  Click here for Stockton’s complete official announcement.  

Karenga claimed his holiday was about “doing good in the world”.

Stockton’s program failed to say anything about the crimes, violence and hatred that sent Karenga to prison in 1971. It did not mention any of the inconsistencies or fake history used by Karenga in inventing Kwanzaa.  This month’s program was  yet more proof that Stockton is now little more than a very expensive school of indoctrination.  If it wanted its students to do critical thinking and independent research, its presentation would have included some of the  facts discussed in this post.

Ron Everett grew up on a farm in Maryland.  He moved to California to attend Los Angeles Community College in 1959 at age 19.  Everett later transferred to UCLA where he obtained a masters degree in political science and African Studies.

During this time, Everett became active in the radical “black power” politics and culture popular at the time.   He later called himself Maulana Karenga.  Maulana is an Arabic and Swahili word that means “our lord”, “our master” or “master scholar”.

A true master scholar of African history and culture would find that choice of name a bit odd for a proponent of black liberation seeking to improve the lives of former slaves.  It was Arabs and Muslim tribes speaking Swahili who captured and sold millions of East African blacks into slavery for roughly 1,300 years until they were stopped by Europeans in the 1800s!

During the summer of 1965, deadly riots and looting broke out in Watts, a black neighborhood in Los Angeles.  It began when white police officers arrested a black man stopped for driving while intoxicated.  Force, including use of police batons, was used when the man resisted and family members interfered.  Radical left activists and street gangs provoked riots and looting throughout the whole neighborhood by spreading rumors falsely accusing white police officers of beating a pregnant woman.  They also roamed the streets and systematically attacked police, firefighters, store owners, and any whites they could find.  They also broke windows, set fires, and looted shops and warehouses.  It took six days and 14,000 National Guardsmen to restore order.  There were 34 deaths, 1,032 injured, 3,438 arrests, more than a thousand buildings destroyed and roughly $40 million in property damage.

It was then that 24 year old Karenga emerged as a major leader in the black community of Los Angeles.  In 1966, he and Hakim Jamal (formerly Allen Donaldson), a cousin of Malcom-X,  co-founded the “US Organization” (as in “US against Them”),  published a newspaper called “Harambee” (Kenyan slang for “All Pull Together”), and put together armed militias of young men named “Simba Wachanga” (Young Lions) after the armed Mau Mau guerrillas who fought British soldiers in Kenya during the 1950’s.  Karenga also spoke to militant black groups throughout America and became a national figure.

Karenga’s message was that American blacks needed a completely separate culture and society from the rest of America.  To achieve that goal, Karenga and his followers wore African clothing.  Most men in the organization also shaved their heads like Karenga.  At that time, Karenga also invented the Kwanzaa so that blacks in America  would no longer celebrate Christmas together with other Americans.

Karenga told the Washington Post in 1978 that he used an African word as the name for his holiday because “black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American”.  Karenga was never challenged for using Swahili words for his holiday because hardly any American blacks know that almost all black African slaves were captured and sold by Arabs or other blacks, and that most of the other blacks who captured and sold black slaves were from Swahili speaking East African tribes.

Although Kwanzaa means “harvest” and is often said to be a “pan-African holiday”, there are no harvests or harvest festivals anywhere in Africa during December or January.  Karenga told the Washington Post in 1978 that he decided to have Kwanza run from the day after Christmas to New Years Day because “that’s when a lot of bloods (1960s Los Angeles slang for blacks) would be partying”.

Although Karenga and his US (United Slaves) organization preached black and African unity, most of their anger and violence were directed against other blacks in Los Angeles, particularly those associated with the Black Panthers.

The Black Panther Party was also formed in 1966.  Its founders, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale also urged blacks to build up and protect their own communities.  In particular, they urged blacks use the  Second Amendment to lawfully own and carry firearms.  However, Black Panther members later adopted Marxist slogans and programs, and shared resources with radical left whites, many with ties to Communist Russia and Cuba.  This caused the FBI to declare the Black Panthers as a subversive organization and national security threat.  Shortly after 1967, FBI Director J Edgar Hoover set up a special team to destroy the Black Panthers.

For the next three years, Karenga and his US organization battled the Black Panthers for control of the black community in Los Angeles.  In particular, Karenga was determined not to let the Black Panthers participate or influence the new Afro-American Studies Center being set up at University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA).   This caused many heated arguments between members of both groups at the college.  Members of both groups often carried firearms while on campus.

Karenga and his US followers accused the Black Panthers of selling out blacks and being too close to white leftists. The Black Panthers mocked Karenga and his US Organization as “United Slaves” who weakened their Marxist movement by distracting working class blacks from the need to work with working class whites in their common “class struggle” against the bourgeoisie capitalists running America.  The Black Panthers also accused Karenga and his group of being tools of the white establishment and collaborating with white law enforcement.

During January of 1969, roughly 150 students attended a special meeting called by the Black Student Union to work out a compromise between the two groups.  During that meeting, two Black Panther members harshly criticized Karenga.  After the meeting, two members of Karenga’s approached the two Black Panther’s and shot them dead in the hallway.

After these murders, Karenga’s US Organization continued to grow as a classic 1960s California cult.  It was part political and cultural organization and part street gang.  Assaults on rival groups, and robberies were part of its regular activities.  However, at some point during 1969, Karenga apparently fell into a deep paranoia.  He claimed that two of his female followers living in his house were plotting to kill him with “poison crystals”.  On May 9, 1970, Karenga and two other “US Organization” members sadistically tortured Deborah Jones and Gail Davis, two female members who were living in Karenga’s house.

Paul Mulshine is the only conservative staff member of NJ.com, once known as the Newark Star Ledger.  Back in 1999, Paul Mulshine, then a writer for the now defunct Heterodoxy Magazine, did extensive research on Maulana Karenga and his Kwanzaa holiday.  After days of searching, Mulshine was advised that transcripts of witness testimony from Karenga’s 1971 testimony could not be found.   Mulshine was forced to rely on this summary from the court’s sentencing report and the Los Angeles Times news story:

“The victims said they were living at Karenga’s home when Karenga accused them of trying to kill him by placing ‘crystals’ in his food and water and in various areas of his house.  When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in Miss Davis’ mouth and against her face.  Police were told that one of Miss Jones’ toes was placed in a small vise which then allegedly was tightened by one of the defendants.  The following day, Karenga allegedly told the women that “Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know”.  Miss Tamayo (the second defendant), reportedly put detergent in their mouths, Mr. Smith (the third defendant) turned a water hose full force on their faces, and Karenga, holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them”.

Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment.  He was sentenced to “one to ten years in prison” in September, 1971.  The sentencing judge read a psychiatrist’s report into the record.  It stated that since incarcerated, Karenga “has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers, and that his attorney was in the next cell.  . . Karenga now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and illusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.”

In 1975, Karenga granted parole and released from prison after four years.   By 1979, he was hired to run the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach.  Since then both Karenga and Kwanzaa have received nothing but favorable coverage from both national and local media.  His past crimes, violence and time in prison are hardly ever mentioned.   On the rare occasions when the subject is raised, Karenga merely says he was a “political prisoner” during the 1970s.

Every year, taxpayers fund Kwanza events at the Atlantic City public library.  Last December 4, New Jersey’s Stockton University paid Karenga to be an honored featured speaker at a special Zoom event for students, faculty, and the community.  At no time have any of the glaring contradictions and problems with Kwanzaa or of Karenga’s hatred, violence, or psychopathic cruelty ever been mentioned.

Part of this can be explained by the “progessive” Democrat (once called Communist) culture of “political correctness”.  Only facts that promote the “correct” agenda can be discussed.  Any facts that contradict or oppose it in any way are suppressed.  However, it also seems that the “Deep State” may have helped with the whitewash of Maulana Karenga’s sordid past,  and his fake holiday of Kwanzaa.

Although most criticism of Karenga and Kwanza comes from conservatives like Paul Mulshine, Ann Coulter, and myself, the most angry criticism comes from the radical or Communist left—especially from supporters of the old Black Panthers.  One of the most detailed criticisms was posted in 2012 by Victor Vaughn.  Vaughn is a radical leftist, even by Communist standards, who calls himself “The Espresso Stalinist”.

According to Vaughn, Ron Everett a/k/a Maulana Karenga and his Kwanzaa holiday are honored and respected today because Karenga and his US followers were protected agents or dupes of the Deep State, including the FBI.  Click here for link to his full post:  Kwanzaa: A CIA Creation to Promote Racial Separation – The Espresso Stalinist

Vaughn claims Karenga and his US followers achieved spectacular success in the 1960’s because they got thousands of dollars each month from the white establishment including the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller family, and the Los Angeles city government.  Many of Vaughn’s sources are statements supposedly made by informants and undercover agents.  I have no way of knowing if these sources are reliable  However, it is well documented that Karenga had several private meetings with the Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty and Police Chief Thomas Reddin.   It is also undisputed that then Republican Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, invited Karenga to Sacramento for a private chat.

Vaughn claims that the FBI helped two of Karenga’s followers murder the two Black Panthers at UCLA in 1969, and later arrange for their escape.  Click here for his post:  Kwanzaa:  A CIA Creation to Promote Racial Separation.

Why would the Deep State do that?  Vaughn claims that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with  destroying the Black Panthers any way he could.

Ann Coulter recently posted a blog which reaches the same conclusion.  Here is the link. Happy Kwanzaa! … The Holiday Brought To You By The Fbi – Ann Coulterv

I must give special credit to Newark Star Ledger opinion columnist Paul Mulshine.  On December 24, 1999, Mulshine did exhaustive original research and posted the most definitive history of Ron Everett a/k/a Maulana Karenga and Kwanzaa available online.  It was originally posted by FrontPageMagazine.com, but that post recently disappeared.  However, it was copied and preserved at https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/803137/posts.   Other articles on Karenga and Kwanzaa posted by Mulshine can be found at Kwanzaa: Fake news about a fake holiday that I debunked long, long ago | Mulshine – nj.com  and Unhappy Kwanzaa – the media are still falling for that fake holiday created by a felon – nj.com

InsiderNJ is owned by an insurance vendor grease machine: So why did they get to choose who’s who in NJ media?

There’s an old saying among machine politicians in Philadelphia.  It goes like this, “If you say you’re the boss, and nobody says you aint the boss, then you’re the boss.”

John F.X. Graham probably heard it back in the day, when he was prowling around amongst the ward healers in that sainted city of brotherly love.  Back when “ethnic” meant second or third generation Irish or Polish or Italian and individual neighborhoods developed their own dialects (yes, people really did talk like Rocky back then).

John F. X. moved to New Jersey where he followed the yellow brick road of selling insurance to government entities.  Unlike South Jersey’s George Norcross, John F. X. wasn’t really interested in building a political machine.  He was content with a money machine – the old-fashioned kind, the grease machine that uses campaign contributions to lube the representatives of the taxpayers, so that their money pumps out in a nice, steady stream.

Last December, the Observer wrote about John F.X. and his operation – the Fairview Insurance Agency – in a “special report” about “How Insurance Brokers Reap Public Funds Without Disclosure.”  It makes for interesting reading:

Insurance brokerages that make political donations are declining to disclose large amounts of money received indirectly from public entities.

One of the biggest goldmines for contractors in New Jersey is selling insurance plans to public entities, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers across the state.

But an Observer review of dozens of public documents shows that in some cases, it’s difficult or impossible to get a complete accounting of the money going back and forth between insurance brokerages — some of which are deep-pocketed campaign donors — and the public entities that award lucrative insurance contracts.

For instance, Fairview Insurance Agency Associates is one of the largest political donors in New Jersey, giving more than $120,000 to various candidates and committees in 2016, the ninth-highest among businesses in the state, according to the state’s campaign finance watchdog agency.

The Verona-based brokerage is also a big contractor, raking in at least $1.1 million through public contracts or agreements across New Jersey in 2016.

Under state law, the firm is required to report annually all of its political donations and public contracts to the Election Law Enforcement Commission, provided it gets at least $50,000 in public contracts and makes at least one political donation of any amount. Curiously, however, some of the money Fairview gets indirectly from public entities is then reported to ELEC as $0.

The effect is that, to the average observer reading ELEC reports, Fairview would appear to have made much less from public entities and institutions than it actually got — directly and indirectly — in a given year.

Observer reviewed ELEC disclosures for five companies, only three of which were required to itemize their contracts and donations.

A review of six ELEC disclosure forms, 29 invoices, four contracts and eight resolutions by school boards and local councils revealed a loophole in state law that allows brokerages such as Fairview to not report to ELEC tens of thousands of dollars, or more, that they receive as a result of working for governments or public entities.

In 93 cases, three brokerages reported receiving $0 from public agreements in 2016 on their disclosure forms filed with ELEC...  In one case, Observer found that Fairview was paid $54,000 indirectly from Jersey City’s school board but later disclosed $0 to ELEC.

It works like this. Brokerages — which sell insurance plans to local governments — are often paid commissions or fees by third-party companies. In this scenario, the actual contract does not go to the brokerage, but to the third-party company, while the brokerage still gets a cut of the business.

In some cases, the dollar amount of these fees or commissions can be traced back by filing public records requests with local governments. Some public entities that answered such requests from Observer provided copies of the original public contracts, which in turn detailed the actual fees or commissions paid to insurance brokerages that were reported to ELEC as $0.

In other cases, there is no mechanism to piece together what a third-party company paid to a brokerage in commissions. Some public entities did not disclose or could not say how much their brokers were paid indirectly by their contractors.

In March 2015, the Jersey City Board of Education passed a resolution to award Fairview a $54,000 contract to be the school district’s prescription insurance broker for fiscal year 2016.

Fairview did not end up receiving an actual contract. The school board struck a deal two months later with Express Scripts to manage its prescription benefits plan, and in that contract, it directed Express Scripts to pay Fairview $4,500 per month on its behalf, according to a copy of the contract provided by the Jersey City school board. The school district essentially paid someone else to pay Fairview.

In the end, Fairview reported that it received $0 in 2015 and 2016 from its work for the Jersey City Board of Education, according to its annual reports filed with ELEC. The firm noted that the amounts it disclosed “do not include commissions received from the insurance carriers.” (Observer, December 6, 2017) 

Campaign contributions flowing one-way, huge contracts flowing the other… minimal to no transparency. That’s New Jersey. 

The problem is… the Fairview Insurance Agency owns the news agency (InsiderNJ) that just handed out the designations as to who is who in New Jersey media. 

Yep, there’s John F. X. Graham who owns both the Fairview Insurance Agency and InsiderNJ (he holds titles of founder and publisher, respectively).  Michael J. Graham is Chief Operating Officer of both the Fairview Insurance Agency and InsiderNJ.  Ryan Graham is the Director of Business Development for the Fairview Insurance Agency and the Associate Publisher of InsiderNJ. 

That’s it folks… John F.X.’s grease machine has its own media mouthpiece with which to skew perceptions.  And that’s a handy thing to have in an age of hollowed out local coverage and a dearth of what was once called “investigative journalism.”  The press is now routinely used to punish the whistleblower, the taxpayer advocate, citizen activist, the underdog.  It’s easy to see why.

Now don’t get us wrong, just because John F.X. is all about the money… and the money… and the money… and the money… That doesn’t mean he’s not above playing the part of the noble, the enlightened, crony capitalist.  Hey, didn’t some notorious mob boss put a roof on a church?  Doesn’t Johnson & Johnson make up for failing to warn women that their product could cause uterine cancer by being oh so woke on LGBTQ?  It pays to have fashionable connections and to assist those connections in the higher causes of fashion.

John F.X. is a friend of Hillary.  Yes, that old wind bag.  You could forgive him being a friend of Bill because, heck, who wouldn’t want a night out on the town with Bill Clinton?  He’d make a Saturday night seem like a month of weekends.  But Hillary?  You know that’s just fashion.

Nevertheless, John F.X. has been called “a top Democrat fundraiser” by newspapers like the Bergen Record and the Newark Star-Ledger.  In addition to Hillary Clinton, John F.X. raised money for John Kerry in his 2004 presidential race, and he’s been a big giver to United States Senator Bob Menendez.  In fact, it was John F.X. who pushed the idea of Menendez on a national ticket as vice president:

In January 2008, the Jersey Journal along with other media outlets reported that “John F.X. Graham, one of Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Co-Chairs, thinks that New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez would make a great choice if Clinton wins the Democratic Primary… Graham fired off an email this morning to Clinton Campaign Manager Terry McAuliffe listing politicians who would make good vice presidential material, including the choices most often brought up:  Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards and Joe Biden.  But Menendez, a Clinton campaign national co-chair, would be the “most intriguing” choice, Graham wrote.”

“The name Richardson does not sound exactly Latino,” wrote Graham.  “The Latino voting block is becoming the most influential in this election, especially with the immigration and other economic issues confronting our prosperity.  For lack of a better term, he is the Latino Barack Obama with the experience.” 

Why would John F.X. think that encouraging people to vote along racial or ethnic lines is good public policy?  Has he not heard of the former Yugoslavia? 

Finally, John F.X. made his pronouncements while Senator Menendez was the subject of an FBI investigation.  Not that something like that matters when you are making a fashion statement.

Yes, so it seems that InsiderNJ can also be considered an outpost of the far-flung Clinton Empire.  Ahhhh, corruption at its most tasty. 

And it looks as though John F.X. is quite a big deal.  Even Wikileaks picked up loads of correspondence between John F.X. and his fellow Clintonistas.  Here is an example:

As far as the money goes, national contacts and a national reach does have its advantages.  We found dozens of John F.X.’s insurance agency’s outposts around the country.  All making him money – but northern New Jersey and Essex County in particular is his base.  It was reported in Politico (November 24, 2014) that Essex County Democrat Party boss Joe DiVincenzo’s son worked for John F.X.’s insurance agency.  He also held a full-time public job as well.   

So it was no surprise that the most corrupt political machine in the state – the Essex County Democrats – inducted John F.X. into their “Hall of Fame” in March of 2015.  InsiderNJ editor, Max Pizarro wrote the panegyric, which we suppose was less messy than the alternative. 

Now can we ask this again?  What are these people doing handing out the rankings on New Jersey journalists?  Shouldn’t some organization, like the Society of Professional Journalists, be doing it?  Or the Columbia School of Journalism?  Or anything but the god-damned grease machine itself!

Ten years ago, the authors of The Soprano State – two old-school investigative journalists – joined with journalists like Josh Margolin to decry the corruption tax that added to the cost paid by New Jersey taxpayers on everything to do with government.  Could they have guessed that, ten years later, not only would the tax be more imbedded and less transparent, but that the very news agencies responsible for exposing and reporting on it would now be wholly-owned subsidiaries of the same grease machine responsible for the corruption?

New Jersey… you can’t make this stuff up.

Why is the Grease machine picking who’s who in the media?

There’s an old saying among machine politicians in Philadelphia.  It goes like this, “If you say you’re the boss, and nobody says you aint the boss, then you’re the boss.”

John F.X. Graham probably heard it back in the day, when he was prowling around amongst the ward healers in that sainted city of brotherly love.  Back when “ethnic” meant second or third generation Irish or Polish or Italian and individual neighborhoods developed their own dialects (yes, people really did talk like Rocky back then).

John F. X. moved to New Jersey where he followed the yellow brick road of selling insurance to government entities.  Unlike South Jersey’s George Norcross, John F. X. wasn’t really interested in building a political machine.  He was content with a money machine – the old-fashioned kind, the grease machine that uses campaign contributions to lube the representatives of the taxpayers, so that their money pumps out in a nice, steady stream.

Last December, the Observer wrote about John F.X. and his operation – the Fairview Insurance Agency – in a “special report” about “How Insurance Brokers Reap Public Funds Without Disclosure.”  It makes for interesting reading:

Insurance brokerages that make political donations are declining to disclose large amounts of money received indirectly from public entities.

One of the biggest goldmines for contractors in New Jersey is selling insurance plans to public entities, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers across the state.

But an Observer review of dozens of public documents shows that in some cases, it’s difficult or impossible to get a complete accounting of the money going back and forth between insurance brokerages — some of which are deep-pocketed campaign donors — and the public entities that award lucrative insurance contracts. 

For instance, Fairview Insurance Agency Associates is one of the largest political donors in New Jersey, giving more than $120,000 to various candidates and committees in 2016, the ninth-highest among businesses in the state, according to the state’s campaign finance watchdog agency.

The Verona-based brokerage is also a big contractor, raking in at least $1.1 million through public contracts or agreements across New Jersey in 2016.

Under state law, the firm is required to report annually all of its political donations and public contracts to the Election Law Enforcement Commission, provided it gets at least $50,000 in public contracts and makes at least one political donation of any amount. Curiously, however, some of the money Fairview gets indirectly from public entities is then reported to ELEC as $0.

The effect is that, to the average observer reading ELEC reports, Fairview would appear to have made much less from public entities and institutions than it actually got — directly and indirectly — in a given year.

Observer reviewed ELEC disclosures for five companies, only three of which were required to itemize their contracts and donations.

A review of six ELEC disclosure forms, 29 invoices, four contracts and eight resolutions by school boards and local councils revealed a loophole in state law that allows brokerages such as Fairview to not report to ELEC tens of thousands of dollars, or more, that they receive as a result of working for governments or public entities. 

In 93 cases, three brokerages reported receiving $0 from public agreements in 2016 on their disclosure forms filed with ELEC...  In one case, Observer found that Fairview was paid $54,000 indirectly from Jersey City’s school board but later disclosed $0 to ELEC.

It works like this. Brokerages — which sell insurance plans to local governments — are often paid commissions or fees by third-party companies. In this scenario, the actual contract does not go to the brokerage, but to the third-party company, while the brokerage still gets a cut of the business. 

In some cases, the dollar amount of these fees or commissions can be traced back by filing public records requests with local governments. Some public entities that answered such requests from Observer provided copies of the original public contracts, which in turn detailed the actual fees or commissions paid to insurance brokerages that were reported to ELEC as $0.

In other cases, there is no mechanism to piece together what a third-party company paid to a brokerage in commissions. Some public entities did not disclose or could not say how much their brokers were paid indirectly by their contractors.

In March 2015, the Jersey City Board of Education passed a resolution to award Fairview a $54,000 contract to be the school district’s prescription insurance broker for fiscal year 2016.

Fairview did not end up receiving an actual contract. The school board struck a deal two months later with Express Scripts to manage its prescription benefits plan, and in that contract, it directed Express Scripts to pay Fairview $4,500 per month on its behalf, according to a copy of the contract provided by the Jersey City school board. The school district essentially paid someone else to pay Fairview.

In the end, Fairview reported that it received $0 in 2015 and 2016 from its work for the Jersey City Board of Education, according to its annual reports filed with ELEC. The firm noted that the amounts it disclosed “do not include commissions received from the insurance carriers.” (Observer, December 6, 2017) 

Campaign contributions flowing one-way, huge contracts flowing the other… minimal to no transparency. That’s New Jersey.

The problem is… the Fairview Insurance Agency owns the news agency (InsiderNJ) that just handed out the designations as to who is who in New Jersey media. 

Yep, there’s John F. X. Graham who owns both the Fairview Insurance Agency and InsiderNJ (he holds titles of founder and publisher, respectively).  Michael J. Graham is Chief Operating Officer of both the Fairview Insurance Agency and InsiderNJ.  Ryan Graham is the Director of Business Development for the Fairview Insurance Agency and the Associate Publisher of InsiderNJ. 

That’s it folks… John F.X.’s grease machine has its own media mouthpiece with which to skew perceptions.  And that’s a handy thing to have in an age of hollowed out local coverage and a dearth of what was once called “investigative journalism.”  The press is now routinely used to punish the whistleblower, the taxpayer advocate, citizen activist, the underdog.  It’s easy to see why.

Now don’t get us wrong, just because John F.X. is all about the money… and the money… and the money… and the money… That doesn’t mean he’s not above playing the part of the noble, the enlightened, crony capitalist.  Hey, didn’t some notorious mob boss put a roof on a church?  Doesn’t Johnson & Johnson make up for failing to warn women that their product could cause uterine cancer by being oh so woke on LGBTQ?  It pays to have fashionable connections and to assist those connections in the higher causes of fashion.

John F.X. is a friend of Hillary.  Yes, that old wind bag.  You could forgive him being a friend of Bill because, heck, who wouldn’t want a night out on the town with Bill Clinton?  He’d make a Saturday night seem like a month of weekends.  But Hillary?  You know that’s just fashion. 

Nevertheless, John F.X. has been called “a top Democrat fundraiser” by newspapers like the Bergen Record and the Newark Star-Ledger.  In addition to Hillary Clinton, John F.X. raised money for John Kerry in his 2004 presidential race, and he’s been a big giver to United States Senator Bob Menendez.  In fact, it was John F.X. who pushed the idea of Menendez on a national ticket as vice president:

In January 2008, the Jersey Journal along with other media outlets reported that “John F.X. Graham, one of Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Co-Chairs, thinks that New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez would make a great choice if Clinton wins the Democratic Primary… Graham fired off an email this morning to Clinton Campaign Manager Terry McAuliffe listing politicians who would make good vice presidential material, including the choices most often brought up:  Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards and Joe Biden.  But Menendez, a Clinton campaign national co-chair, would be the “most intriguing” choice, Graham wrote.”

“The name Richardson does not sound exactly Latino,” wrote Graham.  “The Latino voting block is becoming the most influential in this election, especially with the immigration and other economic issues confronting our prosperity.  For lack of a better term, he is the Latino Barack Obama with the experience.” 

Why would John F.X. think that encouraging people to vote along racial or ethnic lines is good public policy?  Has he not heard of the former Yugoslavia? 

Finally, John F.X. made his pronouncements while Senator Menendez was the subject of an FBI investigation.  Not that something like that matters when you are making a fashion statement.

Yes, so it seems that InsiderNJ can also be considered an outpost of the far-flung Clinton Empire.  Ahhhh, corruption at its most tasty. 

And it looks as though John F.X. is quite a big deal.  Even Wikileaks picked up loads of correspondence between John F.X. and his fellow Clintonistas.  Here is an example:

As far as the money goes, national contacts and a national reach does have its advantages.  We found dozens of John F.X.’s insurance agency’s outposts around the country.  All making him money – but northern New Jersey and Essex County in particular is his base.  It was reported in Politico (November 24, 2014) that Essex County Democrat Party boss Joe DiVincenzo’s son worked for John F.X.’s insurance agency.  He also held a full-time public job as well. 

So it was no surprise that the most corrupt political machine in the state – the Essex County Democrats – inducted John F.X. into their “Hall of Fame” in March of 2015.  InsiderNJ editor, Max Pizarro wrote the panegyric, which we suppose was less messy than the alternative. 

Now can we ask this again?  What are these people doing handing out the rankings on New Jersey journalists?  Shouldn’t some organization, like the Society of Professional Journalists, be doing it?  Or the Columbia School of Journalism?  Or anything but the god-damned grease machine itself!

Ten years ago, the authors of The Soprano State – two old-school investigative journalists – joined with journalists like Josh Margolin to decry the corruption tax that added to the cost paid by New Jersey taxpayers on everything to do with government.  Could they have guessed that, ten years later, not only would the tax be more imbedded and less transparent, but that the very news agencies responsible for exposing and reporting on it would now be wholly-owned subsidiaries of the same grease machine responsible for the corruption?

New Jersey… you can’t make this stuff up.

Germany introduces women-only trains

Billionaires like Samuel Irving Newhouse (estimated net worth:  $9.5 billion) and Donald Edward Newhouse (estimated net worth: $10.5 billion) live in a bubble. They wouldn't know what real life was if it jumped up and bit them on the arse (which we suspect to be their fondest dream).  Like the Koch brothers, the Newhouse boys like to throw their money around to remake the world the way they want it.  That's what all that money does to you.  It makes you a crazy megalomaniac with god delusions.  

The Newark Star-Ledger is owned by the Newhouse boys.  In fact, Donald is the 2nd richest resident of New Jersey and the 56th richest person in the United States.  That makes him real nuts -- off the charts god delusional.  Recently he had his newspaper editorialize about opening up women's toilets to men, with penises, who fantasize about being women.  Only in bubble-world does this make sense.

In the real world, responsible people are trying to make the world safer for women and girls.  So while the Newhouse boys and their organ, the Star-Ledger, advocate making New Jersey women and girls less safe, in Germany they are advancing international efforts to make women and girls more safe.  Here is a story that appeared yesterday in a European newspaper, the Daily Mirror:

German train operator introduces women-only carriages amid fears over 'migrant sex attacks'

A German train operator has announced it is introducing women and children-only train carriages amid fears over sex attacks in the country.

The Regiobahn line between Leipzig and Chemnitz will introduce the carriages to increase security for women.

The carriages will be next to the train conductor in a bid to make women feel more safe.  

A spokesman for the railway said: “The local proximity to the customer service representative is chosen deliberately.”

Germany is still reeling from a string of sex attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve, allegedly carried out by dozens of migrants.

In total more than 800 complaints were made to police and the incidents have sparked criticism over German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to refuse to limit the number of refugees allowed into the country.

But the railway has said the measure is not a direct reaction to the Cologne incidents but is about increasing security generally.

The idea of gender segregated carriages was suggested by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last year as a measure to reduce sexual harassment on public transport.

He said: “Some women have raised with me that a solution to the rise in assault and harassment on public transport could be to introduce women-only carriages. 

“I would consult with women and open it up to hear their views on whether women-only carriages would be welcome – and if piloting this at times and on modes of transport where harassment is reported most frequently would be of interest.”

The measure is also currently in place in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Egypt.