Salant got it wrong: NJ Republicans didn’t reject pro-Trump candidates…

(1) Who were the explicitly anti-Trump candidates?

(2) Generally, too many anti-establishment candidates ran.

By Sussex Watchdog

NJ.com writer Jonathan Salant is widely considered to be extraordinarily biased against Republicans and progressive reformers by both Democrat and especially Republican campaign operatives. Even the moderates think he sucks (and we have that in writing). Establishment Democrats count on him to robotically repeat their line but everyone else has little use for him.

So, you can imagine the bemusement that came with Salant’s political prognostications on Sunday morning. Sure, everyone can have an opinion, but Salant’s understanding of the GOP borders on superstition. You can imagine him beginning the effort by placing a mouse in his pocket and a garland of garlic around his neck.

Post-primary, the NJGOP establishment is still in its cups, yet to recover from a series of shocks, near-losses, and outright losses – all at the hands of vastly outspent rightwingers. Even the line didn’t hold up in places like Bergen and Morris Counties.

Nowadays, nobody runs openly as a “moderate”. Not in the GOP, anyway. Not even in the New Jersey GOP. So, every Republican candidate in every contested primary is trying to convince Republican voters that he or she is the conservative in that race. It makes for a lot of confusion.

Salant was trying to make the point that anti-Trump Republicans defeated pro-Trump Republicans or, as he put it, “only in the 5th District did the apparent pro-Trump candidate emerge victorious.” But that’s not being honest because none of the Republican candidates was overtly anti-Trump, not even in the way that Seth Grossman is (and he’s actually pro-Trump) and certainly not in the intellectually honest way that conservative columnist Paul Mulshine is. Ask yourself: Who is the equivalent of Paul Mulshine in the New Jersey Republican establishment today?

Criticism of the former President is muted, and the phrase “anti-Trump” is found on campaign literature as often as a self-description of “moderate” is, which is never. But despite all that many Republican voters, motivated by dissatisfaction, do figure out who is who and they appear to be getting better at it.

During the height of the Tea Party movement, Joe Kyrillos, an establishment State Senator running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator defeated three Tea Party conservatives 163,817 to 19,238 and 17,161 and 12,823 respectively. Kyrillos got 77 percent of the vote. In conservative Sussex County – without a line – Kyrillos won the primary with 45 percent of the vote (Sussex County’s Bader Qarmout came in second with 24 percent).

In last Tuesday’s CD07 Republican primary, establishment candidate Tom Kean Jr. defeated six opponents who were running to the right of him. He did so on a vote of 24,106 to 12,481 and 8,102 and 2,907 and 2,576 and 2,176 and 414. That is 45 percent of the vote. The anti-establishment vote in CD07 now mirrors that of Sussex County a decade ago. And on Tuesday in Sussex County, Kean was defeated with 33 percent to 37 percent for Pastor Phil Rizzo. And that was with the support of the Sussex County political establishment.

In 2006, as the establishment candidate, Kean won the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Sussex County 4,809 to 2,414 – defeating a Steve Lonegan-backed candidate 66 percent to 34 percent. Now the relative strengths of the establishment and rightwing have been reversed.

Things have gotten a lot more crunchy, but maybe not in the way that people once defined it. Until quite recently, conservatives liked to talk about the movement’s three-legged policy stool of guns, babies, and taxes. More recently, especially since 2016, it was a four-legged stool of guns (the Second Amendment), babies (Pro-Life), taxes, and illegal immigration. That’s all in flux now.

The good news is that what it means to be a “social conservative” is changing and broadening. The bad news for some will be what those changes mean. Some talk of the rise of “bar stool” conservatism that is a reaction not to social changes, but to the bullying by movements associated with those changes.

Take same-sex marriage, for example. Many of the new “social conservatives” support it, just as they support basic civil rights protections for people regardless of their sexual preferences or identity. That said, these new conservatives (very often recent Democrats or with no party identification) loathe the religion-like proselytization by the LGBTQ+ movement, their demands that we fly their flag and celebrate their deal (and the name-calling if we don’t), and once in power their attempts to mandate their movement and indoctrinate children in schools and employees in the workplace.

A lot of “bar-stool” conservatives are former liberals (many still identify as liberals) – it is just that they still think they have the right to judge for themselves what a man is or a woman is, still believe they should be allowed to suggest that the science of chromosomes trumps the religion of faith-based feelings. They don’t like being threatened, they don’t care if they are “cancelled”, they have chosen to stand up to the bullying.

These new social conservatives have expanded the ranks but not the movement – because they are not “movement” people. They don’t want to be told. Not by a drag queen… or a religious leader. Nevertheless, they have potential for bringing together a loose majority.

Social conservatives – once a movement coasting south – have been provided a new urgency, a new momentum, by the overreach of the flag wavers, curriculum mongers, and pronoun Nazis’. But prognosticators like Jonathan Salant would be wrong to believe it’s the same movement it was just a few years ago. Here is an interesting discussion between two younger writers on the subject – one who was just published in the New York Times.

The NEW Culture War After the Religious Right | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Premiered Jun 8, 2022 Krystal and Saagar have Marshall Kosloff interview National Review columnist Nate Hochman about the evolving culture war on the right due to secularization and the waning of the religious right.

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

Repeal the income tax and provide quality education

By Professor Murray Sabrin

In a recent Star Ledger column conservative pundit Paul Mulshine argues that Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposal to increase the income tax to 10.75% for individuals making more than $1 million a year so he can hike property tax rebates is terribly flawed.  Right on. 

The property tax rebate would only available to a senior homeowner or a disabled citizen making no more than $75,000 annually.  In New Jersey that would exclude a substantial number of homeowners, even those who make $75,001. 

New Jersey's income tax, which was enacted at the end of Gov. Brendan Byrne’s first term in 1976, although politically unpopular, set the stage for the governor to send out property tax rebates in 1977 just before his reelection.  In short, the governor deftly used homeowners’ own money to bribe them to win a second term. This is a classic example of democracy in action – – fooling people that they're getting something from the state, when in fact what the state was doing was taking money from the people’s one pocket and putting it in their other pocket.

The current debate over hiking income taxes on millionaire earners and increasing property tax rebates underscores the fundamental issue that both political parties are unwilling to address, namely how education should be funded and who should pay for it.

Although the state Supreme Court effectively imposed the income tax on the people of New Jersey, because the New Jersey Constitution calls for the state to provide a "thorough and efficient education" to all students especially in urban school districts, with the promise of property tax relief, the more than four decade experiment in the income tax has been a colossal failure. 

The first question that needs to be tackled is who is responsible for a child's education?  In a free society that means parents using all the skills and tools and resources at their disposal would educate children up to a certain point, when schooling would become more appropriate. 

The current model of public—compulsory--education is nearly 200 years old.  At one time public schools did a relatively outstanding job of teaching youngsters the 3Rs so they could become productive and financially independent individuals.  Under the auspices of so-called educational experts, social justice cultural warriors and massive political interference, especially from the federal government, public schools have become “politically correct” institutions for the past several decades.  In addition, the cost of public education in New Jersey has skyrocketed well above the rate of inflation since the income tax was enacted more than four decades ago.

The results in New Jersey urban school districts, where the cost of education rivals that of elite private schools, have been abysmal. Unfortunately, the clamor for more taxpayer dollars to prop up the expensive and relatively ineffective urban school systems needs to be questioned.

The lessons of the past four decades regarding funding New Jersey public schools should be obvious to any objective observer. First, the income tax should be repealed.  Two, teachers and parents should create nonprofit educational organizations in their communities to provide high-quality education to youngsters from K-12.  In addition, school property taxes should be repealed as well. There is absolutely no compelling reason for taxes to fund education.  Funding would come from fees, tuition, grants and other voluntary means.

The assertion that education is a "collective" responsibility is a bogus proposition. If this assertion is true, then the state should not stop at education but provide healthcare, housing, transportation, supermarkets, entertainment, and all other goods and services that people want.  In other words, is socialism the answer as Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez assert? 

Socialism is not the answer whether in education, housing, transportation, medical care and the dozens of other programs that all levels of government currently fund.  In a free market both the nonprofit and profit sectors would provide all the goods and services the public wants. That has been the history of America for more than 200 years.  But government has co-opted the free market for decades. 

Gimmicks like property tax rebates to soothe the pain of income taxes are counterproductive. The state income tax has become a political football and avoids the most important question in our society: what is the role of government in a free society?

With another financial crisis on the horizon as the current "everything bubble" will burst in the not-too-distant future, it is imperative that we look at the big picture, how can we create a free and prosperous society with an educated young generation without an income tax?  This is the debate that should be front and center in Trenton.   

Murray Sabrin is professor of finance at Ramapo College and author of the forthcoming, Why the Federal Reserve Sucks: It Causes Inflation, Recessions, Bubbles and Enriches the One Percent.  Sabrin was recently interviewed about his new book, http://www.sanfranciscoreviewofbooks.com/2019/05/cottogottfried-does-federal-reserve.html#more

The GOP is the natural party of suburban New Jersey.

Matt Rooney is right.  The Democrats’ “unwillingness to end the redistribution of funds from the suburbs to failing urban schools remains the single biggest driver of our state’s nightmarish, neighborhood-killing property taxes.”

The Democrats could – and should – be challenged on their cruel insistence that economically distressed families in suburban and rural New Jersey be made to subsidize rich corporations and wealthy professionals in places like Jersey City and Hoboken.  The tax breaks with which urban Democrat bosses favor contributors to political campaigns are paid for with subsidies from struggling communities throughout New Jersey. 

There is more than enough corporate and professional money in urban New Jersey to cover the education of the children who live there.  If those interested parties were made responsible for the children of their communities the educational systems there would be subject to a greater degree of local oversight and on-the-spot scrutiny by those stakeholders.  Absent that, under the current system of subsidy from afar, those subsidized stakeholders are more than content to allow political corruption to flourish, just so long as they keep getting their discount. 

It is shameful for One Percenters like Phil Murphy, Steve Fulop, Lacey Rzeszowski, and Saily Avelenda to don their pussy hats and try to argue that their tax breaks are about “helping poor children”.  Not when their “philanthropy” is paid for by over-taxed, working class families trying to stay out of foreclosure. There is nothing LIBERAL about screwing over working class families to pay for propping-up corrupt urban political machines. 

As far back as the administration of Governor Jim McGreevey, the Democrats knew that half of the state’s economically disadvantaged children lived outside the over-funded urban Abbott school districts.  More than a decade has passed since the state Supreme Court issued its report on this – and NOTHING has been done to overturn the fundamental unfairness of the state’s system of funding education. 

Since the economic crash of 2008, suburban and rural poverty has grown in New Jersey and throughout the United States.  That’s what the liberal to centrist Brookings Institute has argued in their published studies.  Brookings’ experts also note that, since the 1960’s, most of the nation’s anti-poverty programs have been aimed at the cities.   

Rural and suburban New Jersey lack even the basic infrastructure to help get people back on their feet – on top of which local municipalities are robbed of the property taxes that could help with this.  Everything is taken from them – in the name of the urban poor – but for the use of the One Percent and the corporations they control. 

Corrupt urban political machines, corrupt vendors, rich corporations, and wealthy professionals all make out under the Abbott regime.  The genuinely poor remain trapped in schools that, for all the money spent per pupil, fail to educate their students or prepare them for the working world.  The kids are used as pawns, as an excuse, for the corruption and those getting rich from it.

More than a decade ago a prescient writer by the name of Paul Mulshine argued that the life of every child mattered and that the state needed to provide a uniform baseline of funding.  Instead, the Democrats have ensured that the money continues to miss those poor children living outside the Abbotts, while failing to help those living within the Abbotts. 

The question is, will those currently charged with leading New Jersey Republicans into their next battle recognize these stark facts starring them in the face?  Will they make use of them?  If not for their own political ambitions and those of their party – Republican leaders should be urged to do so on behalf of over-taxed working people, their children, and for the child pawns being used but not served.

New Jersey Republicans face extinction.  Their fighting prowess is minimal.  It has reached the point where any plausible Democrat candidate with a modicum of funding can expect to simply march in and take most of their remaining legislative seats.  Not in Northwest New Jersey mind you, where every Democrat on the ballot was just ruthlessly slaughtered and where the Democrat who challenged Senator Steve Oroho in 2017 lost her school board seat.  This is where the pussy hats run into a phalanx of flannel shirts (and those are the women!).  

In his column (https://savejersey.com/2018/11/n-j-republicans-are-letting-sweeney-appropriate-their-strongest-argument-rooney/), Matt Rooney raises the question of whether Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick is up to the task of fighting the Democrats next year.  Whether he is a “wartime consiglieri” or not.  We hope that he is, but at the present, he appears to be more concerned about how he is perceived within the “bubbles” of Trenton and Westfield (whose median income is double that of Sussex County). 

Assembly Leader Bramnick would do well to break out of this bubble.  “Bubble land” doesn’t understand America.  It is too rich, too privileged, too unconcerned with the basics of shelter and debt to worry about those who are.  Bubble land never understood the rise of Donald Trump.  Never got the levels of pain and disappointment that the eight gray years of Barack Obama brought to those working class people who voted for him in 2008.  They put it down to “racism” when it was really about the threat of foreclosure – of losing… everything.

We urge Jon Bramnick and the other leaders of the NJGOP to embark on an experiment in listening and learning.  Not the usual photo-op in Newark… go to where the new poverty is.  Visit a food pantry in what everyone thinks is a middle class town.  Watch the people who once had a good job, with benefits and a pension, but who now work three without.  Notice the high priced automobiles, now over a decade old.  Drive around and take note of the “for sale” signs.  Visit an encampment of working people who have lost their homes.

This isn’t a time for rallying around a corrupt Establishment that – uses poor people as an excuse to rape working people to make rich people richer.  No matter how you personally feel about the Democrats responsible, these are bad policies and they must be challenged.  The choice must be one of clear-blue-water between the parties.  Again, if not for your own political ambitions and those of your party, do it for the over-taxed working people, for their children, and for the child pawns being used but not served.

Matt Rooney makes the point very clearly:  “Taxpayers want an advocate… not a mediator.”  Amen.

ICYMI: Mulshine explains the gas tax

Paul Mulshine is New Jersey's top conservative columnist.  He writes for the state's largest circulation newspaper.   

The 23-cent gas-tax hike: Pigs will fly before the opponents find an alternative.

By  Paul Mulshine | The Star Ledger

October 06, 2016

The weather was sunny with a light breeze outside the Statehouse Wednesday after the state Senate took a key vote on a package that would raise the gas tax by 23 cents a gallon.

It was perfect flying weather for pigs.

My reference is of course to that fabled Statehouse rally in 2008 at which a talk-show host from NJ 101.5-FM presided over the release of hundreds of flying-pig balloons to protest a prior attempt to bail out the Transportation Trust Fund.

That was then-Gov. Jon Corzine's  plan to generate billions by having the toll roads run by a state-owned hedge fund that would bond against future toll hikes.

"Pigs will fly over the Statehouse before there's a realistic level of new taxes or spending cuts that can fix this mess," Corzine told the legislators as he introduced his scheme.

But the plan came crashing down to Earth when drivers learned that it called for tolls to eventually rise by800 percent. 

When those balloons rose over the Statehouse, the plan was dead – laughed to death by the voters. So score one for the guys at 101.5-FM.

But if we weren't going to fill the hole in the TTF with toll money, just what source of revenue could we use?

On that score, the talk-radio guys are all talk. The guys at NJ 101.5 have become the loudest opponents of the gas-tax hike.  But a lot of porkers will have to turn into pilots before the critics can come up with a good alternative for funding the TTF.

The three main objections to this plan simply don't make sense.

The first, which is repeated like a mantra among the radio talkers, is "It's too much money" or some variant thereof.

No, it's not. If they had implemented this tax hike when it was first proposed earlier in the year, drivers would have forgotten it by now. There would still be stations charging a bit over $2 a gallon. A few years ago we were paying almost $4 a gallon.

We survived.

Another objection is that the total package is slanted in favor of that group that liberals love to demonize: "the wealthy." The Sierra Club is one of many liberal pressure groups making that point.

"We believe in a plan to fix the TTF with a gas tax, but this would be on the backs of the middle class by tying it to two other tax cuts that benefit the wealthy," Sierra's Jeff Tittel said in a release. "This plan is a complete sellout to working families and will give a huge tax break to the wealthy."

One part  of the plan is the elimination of the estate tax, which now kicks in at the $650,000 level. The plan would eliminate taxation on pension income up to $100,000 a year for a couple.

Given the cost of living here in Jersey, that would include a lot of the middle classas well as thewealthy.

But the more the merrier, I say. So does state Senate President Steve Sweeney. The South Jersey Democrat teamed up with Republican Gov. Chris Christie to push the bill, which passed the Senate yesterday on a procedural vote and is expected to win final passage in both houses Friday.

Sweeney said those cuts will help keep people home after retirement.

"Those are the people who get up and move to other states," he said. "We recently had one person, David Tepper, leave and it cost us $100 million."

Tepper is the billionaire hedge-fund manager who moved himself and his business to Florida. He didn't cites taxes as the reason, but plenty of other retirees become legal residents of Florida to escape our taxes.

Oroho said his fellow financial planners have no choice but to inform retirees Florida's the best option.

"We're losing income. We're losing wealth. We gotta be competitive," he said.

Then there's the third objection. Some critics of the package argue against it on the grounds that the TTF will still have to keep borrowing even after the gas-tax hike.

That's regrettable, said Oroho. In a perfect world, we would be able to put the TTF back on the pay-as-you-go basis that existed after Gov. Tom Kean last hiked the tax in 1988.

But ensuing governors just kept borrowing money rather than raise the tax a few pennies. Now we're so far behind that returning to pay-as-you got would mean some real pain at the pump.

"If you wanted to pay off the current debt plus have no future debt,  then you'd have to raise the tax by almost a dollar a gallon," Oroho said.

Or in other words, if we want to fix this mess we don't need a flying pig.

We need a time machine.

Unless the critics have one stashed somewhere, they need to accept the inevitable.

ADD - THE REAL MISTAKE: The real mistake the Trenton crowd made was to fail to index the gas tax for inflation back in 1988. Pegging it to the price of a gallon of gas did not account for the time value of money. If it had been pegged to inflation, the tax would have slowly rose from 14.5 cents a gallon to 30.5 cents a gallon.

No one would have even noticed such a small hike and the trust fund could have remained solvent. 

Instead we had the usual gutless politicians of both parties who were glad to borrow the money while pretending to be responsible by not raising the tax.

That's what got us into this mess. Judging from the comments, you readers fell for it.