Will the County Lines prevail? (and keep the GOP a less-diverse party)

By Rubashov

The GOP establishment in New Jersey likes to talk about “diversity” but in reality their idea of diversity is a package of the same cultural and economic attitudes wrapped in a different skin color or gender or sexuality. The same tired old wine, but in new bottles.

Real diversity isn’t based on surface differences but on different perspectives -- especially on economic realities. A Trenton lobbyist with dark skin isn’t very different from one with light skin. A female corporate executive is much the same as her male counterpoint or, for that matter, a transgendered corporate executive.

In a notable exchange during the last gubernatorial campaign, Jack Ciattarelli and Phil Murphy went back and forth about the goings on at their respective kitchen tables – forgetting that their kitchen tables have more in common with each other than they do with the average kitchen table in New Jersey.

In its by-laws, the NJGOP recognizes the perspectives of just a handful of groupings, noting that the following “may be invited upon invitation of the State Committee and participate in discussions, but shall not have the right to vote… the President of the New Jersey Federation of Republican Women, Inc.; the Chairman of the Finance Committee; the Chairman of the Black Republicans; the Chairman of the Republican Hispanic Assembly; the Chairman of the Republican Heritage Groups; Chairman of the College Republicans; Chairman of the Teen-Age Republicans; Chairman of the Senior Republicans; State Chairman of the Republican Lawyers Association of New Jersey; Chairman of the New Jersey Republican Asian Assembly.”

Designations by gender, race, ethnicity, and age aside; the chairmen representing these individual groupings could all share the same economic perspective – the same “kitchen table” if you will – shared by Jack and Phil. The only employment designation is that of lawyers – hardly representative of an average perspective anywhere in the world.

Nationally, there is a huge populist upheaval within the electorate, with groups detaching from former loyalties and up for grabs. Is the NJGOP ready to knock on their doors and sit down with them to share the vantage from their kitchen tables?

Some of the NJGOP’s designations just don’t make sense. A “Republican Asian Assembly” makes about as much sense as a Western Hemisphere Assembly would for a political party in India – lumping in U.S. expats with those of Brazil, Chile, Haiti, and Canada. Try figuring out what that “kitchen table’ would look like?

Blue-collar trade union workers have an economic perspective the NJGOP should consider with the same importance they give to lawyers. Working mothers have a unique economic perspective (and there are a lot of them, so if you are going to pander…). Parents of school children have an education policy perspective that fueled last year’s upsets in Virginia. Those concerned with medical freedom have a health and civil rights policy perspective. Wouldn’t it be more practical for the NJGOP to have standing organizations to represent groups that are motivated by these issues of the day?

Missing from the current debate over firearms is the divide by economic class – with wealthy suburbanites wanting to get rid of something they don’t need for personal protection because their communities are safe and well-policed. But if you are in a less than safe neighborhood, with rising violent crime and a demoralized police force, perhaps partially “defunded”, with a police response time that would ensure your untimely death if it came to it, then the perspective from your kitchen table might be a bit different. Wouldn’t it serve the NJGOP to have them represented as a group that could “participate in discussions”?

The county party “line” gets in the way of this. The “line” is designed to replicate what exists. Illegal everywhere else in the world, in New Jersey it is a failsafe to ensure permanent establishment hegemony. It prevents experimentation and diversity. It ultimately makes for a grey, dull, boring, and out-of-touch party. Of course, we could be proven wrong… and we are hoping to be proven wrong.

NJ Spotlight News reports on the Lawsuit against the Party Line.

Sen. Gopal proposes new bill to undo the curriculum law he co-sponsored.

By Rev. Greg Quinlan

Are Phil Murphy and the Democrat Party grooming your children?
 
The Center for Garden State Families continues to be inundated with calls from parents and concerned teachers from all over the state about the extreme comprehensive sex education materials being mandated in New Jersey government schools.
 
Since the beginning of the Murphy administration, there has been a move within government agencies and the New Jersey Legislature to change the culture in New Jersey. That culture includes grooming your children.
 
You may have heard of the term “grooming.” We are not referring to grooming your hair or how you style your clothing. According to the website Out of the Fog, “Grooming is an insidious predatory tactic, utilized by abusers. Grooming is practiced by Narcissists, Antisocial predators, con-artists and sexual aggressors, who target and manipulate vulnerable people for exploitation. Child grooming is the deliberate act of establishing an emotional bond with a child, to lower the child's resistance.”
 
Every citizen of the state has an obligation to guard and protect the most vulnerable among us. This is especially true of our children. The medical Dictionary defines child grooming as, “The constellation of psychological manipulations and actions taken by a predatory adult, meant to reduce a child’s fears and inhibitions, as a prelude to sexual abuse or exploitation by the predator or his/her associates.” This thoroughly describes the new comprehensive sex education curricula and education standards devised by Gov. Phil and his wife Tammy Murphy.
 
These Department of Education standards as developed will clearly desensitize and sexualize children. Parents are asking:  Why is it necessary to introduce sexually explicit, graphic sex acts to minor children? Why is it the responsibility of government schools to teach sex acts, with whom to have sex, and the mechanics of sex to any student? Frankly, it is not.
 
While Phil Murphy and the Democrat legislators (with the help of a few woke Republicans) are sexually exploiting our children, education standards and outcomes are plummeting. Post-Covid the damage to children emotionally, mentally, and educationally is a train wreck. But the Murphy Administration is not addressing helping children heal from the lockdowns and recover two years of lost diminished education. According to a research article that appeared in PNAS, “Learning loss due to school closures during the Covid 19 pandemic”, the preliminary indications are that the lockdown in the short-term did in fact contribute to learning loss. The study did indicate that the suspension of face-to-face instruction in schools during the Covid 19 pandemic has led to concerns and visible consequences to students learning. The Center for Garden State Families has observed in multiple school board meetings that parents have testified to the learning loss and significant psychological, emotional and education deficits in their children since the pandemic. The overwhelming concern from parents, teachers and the community is why hasn’t this obvious learning loss issue been addressed? Why is the Murphy administration and the New Jersey General Assembly focusing on sexually explicit, age-inappropriate and political indoctrinating material including LGBTQIA – XYZ for New Jersey government schools?
 
Within the last week, we’ve seen multiple news articles from national sources as well as inside the Garden State showing the panic of Senator Vin Gopal (Democrat, LD-11), Chairman of the State Senate Education Committee. Sen. Gopal begged Gov. Phil Murphy to suspend the controversial education gender identity standards for 1st and 2nd graders. Gov. Murphy agreed to pause the education standards to six and seven-year-olds until a study could be done to determine their age appropriateness. Let it be clear, this is not a suspension or an erasure of this inappropriate policy which causes children to question their sexuality before they know what sex is. This is a pause, only a pause. Senator Gopal’s panic is from a law that he eagerly co-sponsored and lobbied his fellow legislators to pass prior to his very slim reelection in 2021 while his two Democrat seatmates lost.
 
Now Senator Gopal is scrambling to reverse course and spin away the mess he made. He’s trying to claim that political operatives and politicians are causing parents to be fearful of the curriculum he mandated – so he’s proposing a new bill (“Transparency in Health & Sex Education Curriculum”) that he claims will undo the law he co-sponsored. It was Gopal and his fellow “woke” politicians who teamed up with the political operatives at Garden State Equality that came up with these intrusive curriculum “standards” in the first place. Now he’s embarrassed and afraid so he’s running away and blaming everybody but the face in the mirror.
 
The Center for Garden State Families opposes ALL of the new 2020 Comprehensive Sex Education Standards and the advancement and normalization of the developmental gender identity disorders of LGBTQ. The science is clear, “There are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biologic etiology for homosexuality.” American Psychiatric Association. Large-scale GWAS reveals insights to the genetic architecture of same sex-behavior concluded “There is no single gay gene.” Since the real replicated scientific research concludes that homosexuality is not genetic, why are we as a society grooming children to accept the fallacy of alternate sexual identities?

Dr. Michelle Cretella, a pediatrician and executive director of The American College of Pediatricians explains how leftist activist groups infiltrate schools, libraries, and even medical societies with transgender propaganda targeted at children.

She then explains the irreversible sterilization and long-term medical risks that can come from puberty blockers and gender reassignment surgery.

Murphy tries to wiggle out but his June 2020 Resolution is crystal clear

By Rubashov

Governor Phil Murphy is a desperate man. He’s losing the support of his own party. Yesterday, a prominent Democrat Party Senator – the Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, no less – walked away from Murphy’s radicalism and called for a halt to proselytizing age-inappropriate sex acts to school children.

That Democrat, Chairman Vin Gopal, did so after he was lied to by the Murphy administration. Senator Gopal (D-11) related the lie told him in a Facebook post yesterday:

In response to multiple articles relating to curriculum education in our schools, I have read through the 66 pages of the Department of Education Guidelines '2020 New Jersey Student Learning Standards - Comprehensive Health and Physical Education' as well have spoken in detail with New Jersey Acting Commissioner of Education Angelica Allen-McMillan. Here is what I have learned:

…According to the Department of Education Commissioner, these guidelines are not being mandated - they are recommended. It is up to a local board of education to use them if they want but they don't have to.

You can read the full post here:

https://www.facebook.com/100003265460331/posts/4911458728972927/?d=n

In a series of statements, Governor Murphy and his political allies at the NJEA and such, lied about where these standards came from and the nature of their enforcement. Unfortunately for them, the record is clear and is easily found on a state website.

After extensive lobbying by activists – including Governor Phil Murphy's wife, Tammy – the New Jersey State Board of Education, in a split vote taken in 2020, adopted new “Comprehensive Health and Physical Education 2.1 Personal and Mental Health by the End of Grade 5” learning standards. The New Jersey Department of Education instructed local boards of education to consider this new curriculum a mandate for the 2021-2022 school year.

The Minutes of the June 3, 2020, meeting of the New Jersey State Board of Education are crystal clear about this:

Resolved, the State Board of Education reaffirms its commitment to ensuring the Standards both set expectations for and meet the needs of New Jersey’s students and by adoption of this resolution hereby directs school districts to integrate the New Jersey Student Learning Standards – Visual and Performing Arts, Comprehensive Health and Physical Education, Science, Social Studies, Computer Science and Design Thinking, World Languages, and Career Readiness, Life Literacies, and Key Skills in kindergarten through grade 12; and be it further

Resolved, the State Board of Education hereby directs that the revised New Jersey Student Learning Standards – Visual and Performing Arts, Comprehensive Health and Physical Education, Science, Social Studies, Computer Science and Design Thinking, World Languages, and Career Readiness, Life Literacies, and Key Skills will serve as standards of quality for public school students in kindergarten through grade 12 programs in New Jersey; and be it further

Resolved, district boards of education shall fully comply with this resolution and shall implement the revised New Jersey Student Learning Standards for Science, Visual and Performing Arts, World Languages, and Career Readiness, Life Literacies, and Key Skills by September 2021 and Comprehensive Health and Physical Education, Social Studies, and Computer Science and Design Thinking by September 2022, align their curricula with the standards, and ensure students learn and are assessed as required by federal law; and be it further

The entire Minutes of the June 3, 2020, Meeting can be accessed here:

www.nj.gov/education/sboe/meetings/minutes/2020/June%203,%202020.pdf

…district boards of education shall fully comply with this resolution and shall implement the revised New Jersey Student Learning Standards… by September 2021 and… by September 2022, align their curricula with the standards…

With all due respect, Governor, this kind of screws your bullshit all to hell.

...that goes for you too, Mayor Sean Spiller, Democrat Party politician, feed bag to numerous political consultants, partisan hack, and (oh, yes) President of the NJEA.

Governor, it's time to take responsibility. Listen to parents and taxpayers. Do the right thing.

Make the word “democracy” actually mean something.

Is the Dem Health Committee Chair qualified to discuss masking?

By Rubashov

Ego is no substitute for a background in medicine.

We know the chairmanship of the Senate Health Committee is a sought-after assignment, what with it being so important to some of the state’s most cash-fat industries and all, but shouldn’t the Democrats at least try to find someone with a background in medicine? What with the pandemic and opioid epidemic and ongoing health care availability crisis and the rapacious nature of Big Pharma – shouldn’t the Chair of the Senate Health Committee be someone whose qualifications stretch further than the ability to cash a check from some Big Pharma lobbyist?

Enter Senator Joe Vitale. He’s the Chairman of the Senate Health Committee and nobody’s ever accused him of being humble.

Earlier this year Vitale dismissed out of hand calls to investigate why Matthew Platkin and Phil Murphy signed-off on Executive Order 103 – which sent COVID patients into nursing and veterans’ homes – resulting in the deaths of up to 10,000 residents. Vitale claimed there was no need to investigate because he already had all the answers.

Vitale made headlines again today, this time for opposing Governor Murphy’s plan to lift his masking mandates on children. NJ.com’s Brent Johnson reported:

The chairman of the state Senate’s health committee told NJ Advance Media on Thursday he sharply disagrees with Gov. Phil Murphy’s decision to lift New Jersey’s statewide coronavirus mask mandate inside schools and child care facilities next month.

State Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, said he’s especially irked Murphy, a fellow Democrat, is removing the requirement in child care centers because children under 5 are not eligible to be vaccinated yet and remain “exposed.”

Last year, Vitale led the effort to repeal the law criminalizing the “act of a person knowing they are infected with venereal disease or HIV, committing sexual penetration without informed consent of other person.” Vitale generally follows fashion, not science, but there is a weird logic in allowing those with COVID to infect nursing homes residents while removing legal impediments to allow those with HIV to infect others. But how does that jive with keeping children masked forever?

As Chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Joe Vitale has been anything but a gentleman – or even a human being – when lording over his committee. We vividly remember him in committee arguing with a citizen over Senate Bill 1195 – then legislation, now law – which allows people to alter their birth certificates to whatever gender they wish, without undergoing sexual reassignment surgery. Yes, in New Jersey, people with penises can legally be women and people with vaginas can legally be men. Science anyone?

Senator Vitale was the main sponsor of Senate Bill 1195 and his exchange with this citizen exercising the right to speak before the New Jersey Legislature was anything but respectful. There was something of the sociopath in the Senator's behavior -- one moment he was dripping sensitivity, only to turn vicious the next. There's no remorse – he doesn't appear to care how he treats people who don't agree right down the line with him. Does he lack a conscience? We wonder.

We recall the way in which Vitale utterly dismissed the reputation of a scholar whose words were entered into the record by the citizen. Senator Vitale appeared to have no intellectual curiosity at all. Here is that exchange:

The Senator: "...You are citing some medical director, obviously he's a former medical director, probably for good reason."

The Citizen: "Because he retired."

The Senator: "Um, right, good thing."

Now someone with Vitale’s level of certainty must have some credentials to back up such a coarse dismissal. So, we wondered if the Senator was a doctor or a professor, after all, he is the Chairman of the committee through which passes all health care legislation in New Jersey. We looked up his biography and found out that he managed to make it through the 12th grade. Yep, born in 1954, went from high school to the family business, drifted into the muck of Woodbridge politics, became one of the boys, was selected by the boys as their Senator when Jim McGreevey ran for Governor.

And what about that "medical director" the one the Senator said was "obviously... a former medical director, probably for good reason" and that it was a "good thing" he was no longer working?

Well, that guy was born in 1931 and is a psychiatrist, researcher, and educator. He is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the author, co-author, or editor of seven books within his field. He was the son of a high school teacher and a homemaker. He graduated from Harvard College in 1952 and from Harvard Medical School in 1956. He was accepted into the neurology and neuropathology residency program at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he studied for three years under the chief of the Neurology Department.

From Massachusetts General, he went to the Institute of Psychiatry in London (where he studied under Sir Aubrey Lewis and was supervised by James Gibbons and Gerald Russell). Following London, he went to the Division of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He has held various academic and administrative positions, including, Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College (where he founded the Bourne Behavioral Research Laboratory), Clinical Director and Director of Residency Education at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Westchester Division and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oregon.

From 1975 until 2001, he was the Henry Phipps Professor of Psychiatry and the director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Johns Hopkins University. At the same time, he was psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is currently University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His own research has focused on the neuroscientific foundations of motivated behaviors, psychiatric genetics, epidemiology, and neuropsychiatry. During the 1960s, he co-authored papers on hydrocephalus, depression and suicide, and amygdaloid stimulation.

In 1975, he co-authored a paper entitled "Mini-Mental State: A Practical Method for Grading the Cognitive State of Patients for the Clinician." This paper details the Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE), an exam consisting of just eleven questions, that quickly and accurately assesses patients for signs of dementia and other states of cognitive impairment. It is one of the most widely used tests in the mental health field. In 1979, in his capacity as chair of the Department of Psychiatry, he ended gender assignment surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1983, he co-authored The Perspectives of Psychiatry, which presents the Johns Hopkins approach to psychiatry.

The book "seeks to systematically apply the best work of behaviorists, psychotherapists, social scientists and other specialists long viewed as at odds with each other." A second edition was published in 1998. He also treated author Tom Wolfe for depression suffered following coronary bypass surgery. Wolfe dedicated his 1998 novel, A Man in Full to him, "whose brilliance, comradeship and unfailing kindness saved the day." He is a registered Democrat who describes himself as a "political liberal".

And you Senator... you made it through the 12th grade.

Maybe read one of the guy's books before dismissing him out of hand? Or don't. Perhaps this is why health care policy is what it is in New Jersey? Maybe New Jersey is in the shape it is in because of the lack of humility and unwillingness to learn exhibited by politicians who set policies – guys like Joe Vitale. Maybe a Committee Chairman too stupid to learn does result in substandard government and people being made to suffer?

Now here are two comedians – Jimmy Dore and Bill Maher – who can offer opinions as equally qualified as those of Senator Vitale – but who offer them with better punchlines:

“Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.”

Confucius

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

Murphy extremists are fighting to keep control of School Boards

By Rubashov

On Monday, Governor Phil Murphy’s state Democrat machine put out a press release attacking the concept of parents and property taxpayers having a voice in education by running for local school board. Calling it a “troubling trend among candidates running for school boards all over New Jersey” the Chairwoman of the NJ LGBTQ Democrats, Lauren Albrecht, issued the following statement:

“What we’re seeing is a very small but very loud group of individuals who are running for seats on Boards of Education all over New Jersey in a campaign coordinated by, and funded by an extremist and Evangelical agenda, with the singular goal of pushing animosity aimed at LGBTQ+ students and the LGBTQ+ community in general. These candidates, and their backers, have one goal: to fill school boards with fringe extremists whose sole aim is to destroy the progress that’s been made for the LGBTQ community in our state.”

“An extremist and Evangelical agenda”? Is Ms. Albrecht preaching hatred towards specific religious groups? And why does her organization not embrace the “+” in LGBTQ+? Her statement specifically accuses this “extremist and Evangelical agenda” of “the singular goal of pushing animosity aimed at LGBTQ+ students and the LGBTQ+ community in general.” But her group lacks the “+” so, why is that?

Could it be that part of that “+” is “K” for Kink? Is it that Ms. Albrecht understands sado-masochism as a life-style choice, at least for the moment, makes even politically fashionable suburbanites pause? Ms. Albrecht needs to explain just which part of “+” her organization is so uncomfortable with.

This attack by Governor Murphy’s NJ LGBTQ Democrats could be in response to the success of a group, formed by Pastor Phil Rizzo last year, which successfully fulfilled its mission under the leadership of Lafayette school board president Josh Aikens this year. The group, AriseNJ, has recruited more than 400 candidates statewide – representing both major parties, some belonging to no party or third parties – who are bracketed and running together in over 100 school districts.

AriseNJ helps people to run for school board who believe in parental and taxpayer control over education, who embrace the Bill of Rights, and who oppose Trenton authoritarianism in the form of unfunded mandates and curriculum diktats. That is not “extremist” but rather the very idea of democracy for which the Democratic Party is named.

As Ms. Albrecht knows, the Democrat Party has non-profit groups set-up to train and run candidates for school board. They understand the existential importance of this level of government. Unfortunately, the Republican Party does not.

Contrary to Ms. Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats’ assertion that the parents and property taxpayers who now want a say in their children’s education are “well-funded” – the NJGOP is not helping them at all. Quite the opposite.

The Chairman of the NJGOP, Bob Hugin, appears to favor funding a very different agenda. The former Big Pharma executive has busied himself with changing the face of the GOP. Since his 2018 campaign, Hugin appears to have more deeply embraced identity politics.

For example, an independent expenditure committee controlled by Hugin called Women for a Stronger New Jersey spent around $30,000 on direct mail, text-messaging, robo-calls, and social media in an attempt to defeat a conservative State Committeewoman in Mercer County and replace her with what would have been the first transgender State Committeewoman to represent the GOP. The effort ultimately failed, but one can only ask why such resources – scarce in the best of times – would be wasted on such a silly primary, for such a silly cause. $30,000 would be better used to defeat Democrats – or to fund parents and property taxpayers who want a say in their children’s education.

Lauren Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats are pushing for an agenda that interferes with the traditional role of parents – teaching their children how to negotiate their sexuality in the world – and with the traditional role of consumers – the right to choose which product they pay for. Property taxpayers are consumers. They pay for a product. They shouldn’t be forced to pay for a product they don’t like. Not without a way of exercising their right to petition the governing body. No consumer should. Democrats once understood that. Liberals – true liberals – still do.

But liberals are few and far between in the Democrat Party of today. Even Leftists – honest Leftists who don’t buy into the security state or the permanent war machine or bailouts that help Wall Street infinitely more than Main Street or executive orders that throw you out of a job but don’t make sure you have a means to pay for health care – Leftists like that don’t inhabit the Democrat Party. Instead you have Wall Street operators like Phil Murphy and government authoritarians like… also Phil Murphy. That’s your Democrat Party today, which is why they need Trump so much as a hate object to unite them.

Apparently without considering the institutions that founded education in America, Albrecht writes: “These candidates no more belong on Boards of Education than religion belongs in our public schools.”

So, is that the position of the New Jersey Democrats under Phil Murphy? If you believe in God or some form of higher consciousness or even possess a spiritually informed conscience of your own, you have no place on a school board? Do they really believe that education belongs only to those who make money from it? To greed alone? To the education establishment, the fat-paid administrators, the insider vendors (like Garden State Equality), and to all those politically-connected who trouser the green from the grease machine? Everybody else shut-up and just keep paying?

Even more disturbing, given recent moves by the National School Boards Association and the Biden administration to criminalize speech at school board meetings, is this weird threat from Lauren Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats:

“It’s time for our community and allies to identify and expose these extremist candidates (and their backers) who are exploiting this fraught moment for their own brazen political gain with little regard for the support, safety, and academic achievement of New Jersey public school students. It’s time to send a clear message at the polls that again, hate has no home in New Jersey.”

Lauren Albrecht proves Hank Bukowski right again: “The best at hate are those who preach love.”

Here Tucker Carlson exposes the Biden agenda for restricting the right of parents and property taxpayers to petition the governing school boards that tax them:

Will the Biden administration criminalize speech at school board meetings and use the Patriot Act against those who petition a governing body?

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
George Orwell

From the Debate: Murphy is allowing “drunk drivers” over the border

By Rubashov

At Tuesday night’s gubernatorial debate, Governor Phil Murphy compared those who choose to remain unvaccinated to “drunk drivers” who not only endanger themselves but endanger others as well. Fair enough, except that “drunk drivers” do not endanger everyone equally – as Governor Murphy suggested they do.

The threat that “drunk drivers” pose to the general population is relative and depends on a number of risk factors. For example, “drunk drivers” pose a greater risk to people in automobiles and on highways than they do to people in buildings.

The Governor should also consider that a law to prevent someone from putting too much of a controlled substance into their body – in this case alcohol – is very different from a law that forces someone to put a controlled substance into their body, like a pharmaceutical product. At Tuesday night’s debate, Murphy actually mocked that heretofore sacred phrase, “my body my choice”.

And then there’s this recent warning from the administration of President Joe Biden – in the person of the Secretary of Homeland Security – who explained that 20 percent of the folks who illegally come across the border are sick with an “unidentified illness”. In Governor Murphy’s parlance, that’s a whole heck of a lot of potential “drunk drivers”. Except that Murphy doesn’t have a plan to find out what ails them – to make sure they don’t spread it to the communities he’s responsible for protecting. In fact, the Governor plans to hand them a subsidized driver’s license to help put them on the road to spread it around.

Here is a very interesting segment from Tucker Carlson. The entire video is worth your time, but if your time is somewhat constrained, go to the 8:50 point of the video and hear the words of President Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security.

Towards, the end of the video, Carlson plays a clip of Murphy’s “drunk drivers” analogy and invites the Governor on his show to explain the logic behind it. Don’t hold your breath.

“We are confronted with a population of people that as a general matter have a rate of illness of approximately twenty percent.” United States Secretary of Homeland Security - Alejandro Mayorkas

Wow. That’s a lot of “drunk drivers”.

Given this… is Murphy’s “drunk drivers” analogy just more of his bullshit? Does he really believe his own words?

Or is he applying to each and every individual community in the state, the same logic he applied to each and every nursing home? Does Governor Phil Murphy intend to bring people into New Jersey – without testing them for COVID and knowing that 20 percent are sick (according to the Biden administration) – and inject them into the mainstream of our communities the same way he did with our nursing homes?

Maybe we should think of it as the placement of thousands of “halfway houses for drunk drivers” in each of our communities – except that these are secret, hidden, not subject to OPRA. Meanwhile, Governor Murphy promises to make life miserable for all those suspected “drunk drivers” he has in plain view. The same lips that demand clemency for some, drip with contempt for others.

Gubernatorial Debate: Murphy laughs about violence against women.

By Rubashov

There is a disturbing intensity about Phil Murphy -- and it’s something his campaign team evidently approves of and draws upon. In his recent attack ad on GOP opponent Jack Ciattarelli, his team selected a clip of a wildly gesticulating Murphy waving his arms up and down in the manner Fidel Castro. Disturbed as much as it is disturbing?

At last evening’s debate, Phil Murphy didn’t appear to listen to or consider the questions posed to him. At no point could you catch the wheels turning in the back of his brain somewhere. Instead, Murphy rabbited back his replies with all the thoughtfulness of a child repeating his catechism. Murphy exists not so much in a world of ideas as in one of certainties, which become more certain the more often repeated. This he did, stopping only to relish the “sacredness” of certain words. For example, Murphy genuflects before the phrase “Planned Parenthood” the way another Murphy, a generation or so ago, might have before the phrase “Virgin Mother.”

He seems genuinely beyond discussing anything with. A post-rational politician who is pursuing his own way into “heaven” – trying to be his version of “good” and unable to imagine any other versions. In short, an invincibly intolerant man.

Then there is Phil Murphy’s pride. He seems incapable of apology – even of acknowledging his own humanity. Phil Murphy does nothing wrong. There is no fault he needs to acknowledge. No wrong done that he needs to apologize for. It is always someone else’s fault or responsibility. To disagree with him is existential, to “go backwards” as he tells it. Murphy accuses others of inciting “them against us” divisiveness while he speaks incessantly about people based on the color of their skin or who they have sex with. Did he even once refer to the human whole – to people – as opposed to “black and brown” people or “LGBTQ plus” people or "white" oppressors???

A man, so lacking in original thought, unable to discuss ideas, hangs desperately on to the life preserver of mantra. A strange, distant man – ultimately tragic in his isolation.

That’s why Phil Murphy makes such callous gaffs – like treating the rape of one of his own staffers as if it were a systems flaw to be corrected with the right amount of training or the right number of female appointments (and then patting himself on the back for “getting it right”). His comments concerning the horrendous crimes faced by women realtors – sneering, dismissive, mocking – were particularly telling. Here is Murphy:

“He (Ciattarelli) supports concealed carry… for certain professions like that really dangerous one, realtors…”

The Democrats in the audience hooted very loudly and laughed with Murphy.

Well, Governor (and all your laughing supporters) please consider this video:

Play those screams, Governor. Hear her tell about how she feared she would be raped, Governor. Then tell us, Governor, if this is a laughing matter.

And here are a few headlines for you to consider before your next bout of laughter:

Attacks on Real Estate Agents Are Increasing Every Day
09/09/2019
“In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48 real estate professionals died while on the job in 2017.”

The Concerning Rise of Real Estate Agent Attacks
03/02/2019
“Experts on real estate safety agree that the reason so many real estate agents are attacked is because their job requires them to be alone with random members of the public. Unlike customer service jobs that typically include working with coworkers, many real estate agents work alone. They also make scheduled appointments to show homes and advertise when they will be having open houses, so it is easy for a potential attacker to ascertain a real estate agent’s whereabouts.”

Trend of Violence Against Women Real Estate Agents
04/04/2020
“It’s no secret that real estate agents do fear for their personal safety. According to a 2018 Inman survey, 41% of women surveyed said it was a major concern.”

How a Real Estate Agent Survived Attack By Man She Was Showing a Home to
02/12/2015
"And finally I said, we really need to go. So, we started out the door, and I reached down to pick up the lock box. That's when he struck me over the head."

Broker beware: From robbery to assault, realty agents face big risks
12/02/2017
“…in May, while showing a client a vacant property in Avondale, Figueroa heard footsteps and conversation on the second floor. She believes it was a drug deal. All she knows for sure is that a man began running down the stairs toward where she was standing.”

Should Realtors Wear Body Cameras?
03/01/2018
“An Elizabeth City real estate agent found herself in a scary and dangerous situation while showing a rental property this March. A man pretending to be working with a group of investors ended up touching the agent several times and refusing to let her leave the property once he had her inside.”

Are open houses too dangerous to justify?
11/13/2019
“Jen Geisinger was holding an open house alone about a decade ago when she heard what sounded like someone rummaging through the master bathroom’s medicine cabinet…”

The Disturbing Reality of Real Estate Murders
04/15/2019
“According to Psychology Today, real estate professionals face a significant risk when they show homes to strangers. Every meeting with a client means trusting somebody new… Sarah Anne Walker’s body was found in a model home by a couple coming to view it. She’d been beaten, stabbed, bitten, and robbed of her jewelry. Police arrested Kosoul Chanthakoummane for Sarah’s murder thanks to DNA-related discoveries. He’d seemingly been targeting real estate agents he could rob.”

“She’d been beaten, stabbed, bitten, and robbed… and then murdered.”

Imagine if it was someone you knew? A neighbor perhaps? Or a family member?

Still laughing?

This is what happens when a politician stops listening and becomes too certain of his or her own bullshit. Because thinking you are “good” when you are just a fallen human fool like the rest of us is bullshit. It allows you to the laugh at the plight of people who don’t have 24-hour armed security, like Phil Murphy has. Who have to go out and maybe not come back just to put food on the table – something Phil Murphy doesn’t need to worry about.

It comes from an over-abundance of Pride. And a lack of empathy for others who don’t share your good fortune. And a lack of tolerance for those whose perception of the world was shaped differently from yours.

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
Mahatma Gandhi

Katie Brennan: Don’t make your cause political. It hurts victims.

By Rubashov

Katie Brennan is a long time Democrat Party political operative. She was a staffer with the campaign of Governor Phil Murphy when she made the claim that she was sexually assaulted by another staffer, allegedly a political favorite of the Governor’s spouse.

Katie Brennan tried to have her problem resolved internally. She went to politically appointed prosecutors and they declined to take her case. Finally, she went to the media and her story became front page news.

As Katherine Landergan of Politico notes:

Katie Brennan’s rape allegation against Al Alvarez and the way it was handled by the Murphy administration prompted hours of hearings, policy changes and a broader discussion about how women are treated in Trenton.

It also became a major scandal for the governor’s office.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli is now using the scandal as part of a website and digital ad campaign that was launched Wednesday. Brennan’s testimony in those hearings narrates the ad. And Brennan is not okay with it.

“Survivors are not your props. We are not your political pawns. To use me as such, without my consent, is disrespecting survivors. It is disrespecting women. Take note @Jack4NJ and Diane Allen,” Brennan said on Twitter, with a screenshot of the website.

Hey Katie, this isn’t the time to make this political. You made the allegation. You went public. When you do that, you lose control over who is allowed to comment. You don’t get to vet people who wish to take a position on the subject you raised. You can’t keep it a Democrat Party thing or a women thing or even a victims’ thing. It is now part of a national discussion. Sorry. Didn’t your lawyer tell you this?

Every entity that came forward to focus a light on what happened to you had a motive or could be accused of having a motive. The media uses scandal to put eyes on the page and increase revenue. Politicians, academics, bureaucrats, activists, and non-profits use it to their own advantage too. As in our adversarial legal system, two sides beat each other up to get to the truth. It is the way we move forward. Let it be.

Most of the women New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually abused were politically active Democrats too. Like you, they came forward. And like you, they took crap from other Democrat Party operatives. But right and wrong came before party. The same with Nixon and Watergate. It always should.

Don’t make this about politics. Don’t turn yourself into a prop for the Murphy Democrats. For every woman like you who had the opportunity to exact some measure of justice for what happened to you, there are dozens – maybe hundreds – who worked in the Trenton cesspit (for both parties) whose stories never made the front page. Who were abused and exposed to the world and who had to shut up and take it.

Don’t become a shield to the same two-party establishment power structure that abused you. Don’t get in the way of it tearing itself apart. Forget that party shit because party doesn’t matter. Right and wrong does.

Katie... you are not the only one it happened to. And not only women are victims of sexual abuse.

“The entire business model of the Democratic Party is to avoid dealing with its own populists’ concerns, so they’ve never seen the Sanders wing of the party as anything but a threat to what they do for a living, which is basically take corporate money and then sell themselves as socially progressive. That’s what they do for a living. That’s their business.”

Matt Taibbi
Journalist and author of Hate, Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.

Jim McGreevey-linked group smears Allen (and Biden) over border.

By Rubashov

Poor Phil Murphy must be getting desperate. He’s got to be to look to Jim McGreevey for a lifeline.

If the former Governor hadn’t employed his novel diversion, does anybody doubt that there would have been a criminal investigation into the part he played in his corrupt administration? Corruption and kink – those were the features of McGreevey’s tenure as Governor. Didn’t the Star-Ledger and The Record do fat exclusives on it? Wasn’t it reported that he assigned one of his own staffers to have sex with his First Lady? Some crazy stuff.

Having taken the same road as Nixon-dirty tricks operative Chuck Colson, the former Governor is now a preacher – lecturing anyone who will listen about right from wrong. Like Colson, Jim McGreevey’s ministry involves prisons, but he can’t seem to stay out of politics. Of course, politics is where the money is… and the attention… and the celebrity (and the former Governor is, and always has been, a supreme narcissist).

On Saturday, the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com ran an opinion column by a director at Jim McGreevey’s organization. This fellow is the vice president of something called the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition. He co-wrote the column with the president of the aforementioned – who is, according to the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, “very active in the Union City Clergy Association of Mayor Brian Stack.”

Hey, are these guys ward healers… or members of the clergy?

Now if you search the Guidestar website, which rates the reliability of charitable organizations and other non-profits, you will not find the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition. You also won’t find them in a search of the Internal Revenue Service’s website. The group doesn’t appear to be registered with the IRS as a non-profit organization. It’s not even listed as an existing organization – or one that ever existed – with the New Jersey Department of the Treasury’s Division of Revenue. And that’s the Murphy administration!

So, where did this group come from?

From news reports in the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, it seems the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition was formed during Phil Murphy’s first campaign for Governor. As reported in the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, Murphy spent heavily on a coalition building effort led by operatives like Al Alvarez and Derek Green.

According to the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, the Murphy campaign paid Green two million dollars for his efforts. Like Alvarez, Green was rewarded with a taxpayer-supported government appointment. Green became Murphy’s “senior adviser on diversity, faith, urban and regional growth.” Get the picture?

On July 6th, the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition held a press conference in Newark to formally endorse Governor Phil Murphy for re-election. Later that day, the Governor issued a statement accepting their endorsement.

The Star-Ledger/ NJ.com opinion column by the two men who run the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition followed the coordinated Democrat Party talking points that have been pushed by Murphy’s campaign, and by Murphy himself. Coincidence?

On August 9th, Governor Murphy attacked Diane Allen for suggesting that COVID-19 could be brought over the border by undocumented immigration. That’s undocumented – as in nobody got their names, let alone tested them for anything from STDs to COVID!

Murphy said that the idea that unmasked, unvaccinated people, kept in close confinement before being shepherded in tightly packed groups across the border, might pick up the virus along the way was “conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact”. He went on to suggest that even being concerned about the possibility of such a thing was “making people less healthy and putting their lives at risk”.

Murphy’s statements placed him in direct conflict with the administration of President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly extended the closure of the borders with Mexico and Canada due to concerns over cross-border transmission of coronavirus. The ban on all non-essential travel will continue to at least August 21st, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security announced. The restriction on non-essential travel began in March 2020 “due to the coronavirus pandemic” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

President Biden shares the same concerns as Senator Allen about cross-border transmission of COVID-19. Of course, being able to test those crossing the border is essential to containing the spread of coronavirus and its variants. Illegal border-crossings by undocumented immigrants totally defeats the ability to test, treat, and contain the virus.

Nowhere in their column do the two men who run the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition acknowledge that the borders with Mexico and Canada are currently closed, by the Biden administration, due to concerns about the transmission of COVID-19. People with titles like reverend and pastor shouldn’t openly lie like that. It damages their entire mission (if indeed they still have a mission beyond shilling for powerful people in government).

The leaders of the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition need to watch this video... and then issue an apology to Diane Allen (or make the same accusation against President Joe Biden).

One of the authors identifies as an American Baptist. The other was religiously educated at a seminary run by the Reformed Episcopal Church. We intend to write to both entities for their opinion about the dishonesty displayed by these two “clergymen” and by their use of a political candidate’s talking points in a deeply misogynistic attempt to smear a woman with a record that is clearly at odds with their mischaracterization of her. We will offer to debate the matter with them before both bodies.

And it gets worse. In their column, and on orders from God only knows who, these two deeply compromised men tried to label Diane Allen a “racist” for her words, while ignoring the words and actions of President Biden. Allen and Biden concur and the two cannot be separated.

We also find it strange that people who are ordained by color-blind religious denominations set themselves up as heads of exclusionary organizations that have more to do with voter-segmenting than the message of Christ that “all men are brothers”. Any honest reader of their column will agree that it has very little to do with Christianity and a whole lot to do with the campaign of Governor Phil Murphy and a political hit job. So, why put on your collars to do it?

In our opinion, a group with a name like “New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition” sounds exclusionary and racist. Why shouldn’t a church be open to everyone? Maybe that’s why Mayor Stack had the good sense to give his group a geographic-sounding name – “Union City Clergy Association” – instead of an exclusionary one.

So, who are the racists here?

Being political hatchet men may serve the personal needs of these two men, but we doubt it is the look desired by the American Baptist congregation or the Reformed Episcopal Church. In trading their clerical mantles for the misogynistic garb of political lowlifes, the only thing the leaders of the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition have smeared is their congregations and the broader church.

Again, this is the beginning. Stay tuned…

“The entire business model of the Democratic Party is to avoid dealing with its own populists’ concerns, so they’ve never seen the Sanders wing of the party as anything but a threat to what they do for a living, which is basically take corporate money and then sell themselves as socially progressive. That’s what they do for a living. That’s their business.”

Matt Taibbi
Journalist and author of Hate, Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.

Did Murphy forget that Biden closed the border with Mexico because of COVID?

By Rubashov

“Tin-foil hat”?

Phil Murphy must have a tin-foil bunghole that he’s talking out of.

Earlier today, the Governor tried to chastise Senator Diane Allen, GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli’s running mate, for suggesting that COVID-19 could be brought over the border by undocumented immigration. That’s undocumented – as in nobody got their names, let alone tested them for anything from STDs to COVID!

Murphy said that the idea that unmasked, unvaccinated people, kept in close confinement before being shepherded in tightly packed groups across the border, might pick up the virus along the way was “conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact”. He went on to suggest that even being concerned about the possibility of such a thing was “making people less healthy and putting their lives at risk”.

Murphy did not explain how, but his words do remind us of Murphy’s histrionics back when he was trying to cover up the rape of one of his staffers. He gets a little nuts, all emotional, and goes overboard – like a Wall Street pitchman trying to explain the benefits of paying young Asian women less than 20 cents an hour to work in unsafe conditions – and then locking them in after work in “dormitories” that make today’s women’s prisons seem like hotels.

In any case, Murphy’s statements today place him in direct conflict with the administration of President Joe Biden. Maybe Murphy missed those press reports last month announcing that the Biden administration was extending the closure of the borders with Mexico and Canada due to concerns over cross-border transmission of coronavirus. The ban on all non-essential travel will continue to at least August 21st, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security announced. The restriction on non-essential travel began in March 2020 “due to the coronavirus pandemic” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

President Biden shares the same concerns as Senator Allen about cross-border transmission of COVID-19. Of course, being able to test those crossing the border is essential to containing the spread of coronavirus and its variants. Illegal border-crossings by undocumented immigrants totally defeats the ability to test, treat, and contain the virus.

Only a complete festered bunghole would fail to recognize this. Governor, we hate having to say this, but it appears you is it. And to compound this bungholery further, the Governor juiced up his crazy hyperbole…

“It’s just fantasyland. Folks are saying stuff and believing stuff that’s just not true. Irresponsible behavior, irresponsible words – actions or words that are not based on fact have to be called out.”

Hey Governor, stop dumping on President Biden. Old Joe is taking prudent and cautious steps to keep us safe. Senator Allen gets it. God only knows what you are up to.

“The entire business model of the Democratic Party is to avoid dealing with its own populists’ concerns, so they’ve never seen the Sanders wing of the party as anything but a threat to what they do for a living, which is basically take corporate money and then sell themselves as socially progressive. That’s what they do for a living. That’s their business.”

Matt Taibbi
Journalist and author of Hate, Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.

Goldstein a Democrat first. Supported Eliot Spitzer even after corruption.

By Rubashov

Trenton has a very selective memory. That’s why a blog, run by the “Mastermind” of one of the worst political scandals in memory, can express horror at someone having an opinion not in line with that conjured by Trenton pollsters, and then trot out someone like Steve Goldstein as a corrective.

When New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was mired in scandal, the Trenton blog PolitickerNJ (funded by Jared Kushner) trotted out Steve Goldstein to defend the embattled New York Governor. Goldstein lavished praise on Spitzer, reminding readers: “I was Eliot Spitzer’s press secretary in his successful 1998 campaign for New York State Attorney General.” Indeed.

Well, not even the pollsters could save Spitzer. The infamous “Client 9” resigned from office. And despite his Princeton-Harvard background and “Sheriff of Wall Street” reputation (not to mention all that polling) Spitzer could not win a victory and return to public office. Even his wife left him.

Nothing is ever “settled” in politics.

Steve Goldstein is a Democrat operative and the founder of a political lobbying organization called Garden State Equality. GSE has morphed from a group concerned with issues like same-sex marriage into a government vendor that uses political pressure and vendor money to lobby government for even more taxpayer money.

Like so many good ideas that turn into scams, GSE succumbed to mission creep once they achieved the goal of same-sex marriage. The current controversy they’re embroiled in has to do with teaching children a new, unfunded mandate from Trenton, called the LGBTQ+ curriculum. And everyone in New Jersey who pays property taxes is going to foot the bill.

One of the controversies surrounding the new curriculum is how it presents such sensitive issues as anal sex – and to what age groups. Now a clinical presentation, run by a group like the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) would focus, at least in part, on the spread of specific diseases associated with this manner of sexual activity (not to mention the wear and tear on muscles not particularly designed for the purpose).

Unfortunately, Trenton’s political class handed the job to its allies and campaign underwriters – Garden State Equality. This is the corrupt Trenton Establishment all over, isn’t it? Take a serious issue – turn it into a scam for the boys to make money from.

The central question in this debate is who owns your children. Are they part of a million individual social organisms, called families – or does the government own your kids?

Governor Phil and Tammy Murphy certainly act like government owns your children. They don’t hesitate inserting the government between child and parent on the most sensitive of levels.

New Jersey enjoys a great diversity amongst its millions of families. Whether agnostic or Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or any of the thousands of permutations possible, it has been the role of each individual family to pass along its moral values and manners, generation to generation. This, above anything else, preserves the idea of diversity.

Phil and Tammy, who had the opportunity to pass on their moral values and manners to their children, now wish to take that opportunity away from you. They want conformity. On that most personal issue of sexuality, they wish to cut out the parent, and to bring in a lobby group looking for a payday – Garden State Equality.

Hey GSE, it is not our fault that you won and did not have the dignity to declare victory and fold your tent. You became addicted to the money and the power. You will never return to the private sector because of this. You will never mind your own business and seek to live and let live. For you there can only be crisis and turmoil and the endless froth of campaigning… because that is how you are paid.

If Phil and Tammy want to cut out the parent, at least they should be prepared to pick up some of the expenses of raising a child.

Government certainly doesn’t pay for your children. From the child poverty and food insecurity figures in New Jersey, we know that government doesn’t care enough to feed them. From the foreclosure figures, we know that government doesn’t care enough to house them. And we damned well know that government doesn’t give a hang about ensuring they have adequate health care.

So, we suggest a compromise. If government wants to cut out the parents and impart its moral values and manners to the next generation – then government owes the parents of that next generation a tax cut to cover the raising of that generation. The government’s generation. Generation “G”.

Finally, why has Steve Goldstein gone so prudish? Why is it such a big deal to him to call anal sex, anal sex? Or oral sex, oral sex? The legal term for that – and Goldstein can ask Spitzer about it – is “sodomy”.

The legal definition of sodomy includes any sexual penetration aside from vaginal intercourse, including oral and anal sex. Neo-Victorians like Steve Goldstein appear to want to banish such coarse and realistic definitions from our language and replace them with saccharine formulations that make references to “love”.

Love may become part of it. But more generally it flourishes at the end of the process, not at the beginning. Any honest person will acknowledge this.

Be honest, humans are attracted to these practices because we derive pleasure from them. It isn’t so much a case of “love is love” but rather, “pleasure is pleasure”. An attachment may follow, or it may not, or it may and then be broken. These are deep waters that no lobby group-turned government vendor can adequately plumb. Leave it to the families. Preserve diversity.

Douglas Murray Explains The Internal Politics Of The LGBT Community.

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Eric Hoffer

Cruz joins with Sussex Dems to oppose broadband in Sussex-Warren.

By Sussex Watchdog

If you lived through the pandemic in Sussex or Warren County you know how important Internet connectivity is. If your Internet service wasn’t reliable, you couldn’t work from home, or learn from home, or even order food from home. And it’s not just for the pandemic – expanding broadband in Northwest New Jersey so that there’s reliable access to the Internet is crucial for the region’s economic development – now, and in the future.

Elected officials from BOTH political parties understand the need for greater broadband access in the region and reliable Internet connectivity. That’s why they place their ideological differences aside to broadly work together on what should be an issue of mutual agreement.

So, on Friday, when Governor Phil Murphy and Congressman Josh Gottheimer visited Lafayette to announce $190 million in American Rescue Plan funding that includes broadband expansion in Northwest New Jersey, they were joined by Republicans who have worked side-by-side with them to achieve this. Only an asshole would oppose reliable Internet access for Sussex and Warren Counties.

Enter Dan Cruz, a former Democrat, who is the teachers union’s answer to the problems facing Northwest New Jersey. It’s not enough that many teachers opposed returning to the classroom – apparently Cruz opposes students having the Internet access they need to learn from home as well.

Cruz took to social media to go on a rampage against Republicans who have put their partisan feelings aside to help get Sussex and Warren Counties the 21st Century Internet service we need. Cruz attacked Senator Steve Oroho and, by extension, Assemblyman Hal Wirths, County Commissioner Director Dawn Fantasia, and the Republican mayors of Blairstown, Hardwick, Belvidere, Sussex Borough, Frelinghuysen, and others. All of whom showed up in support of expanding broadband access for rural New Jersey and to support state legislation to create a Broadband Access Study Commission.

Apparently, Cruz saw red when Governor Murphy said, “Along with our congressional delegation and our Legislature, we are working to ensure that those living and working in New Jersey have access to reliable high-speed broadband services.” Cruz profoundly disagreed with that statement and with the one made by Congressman Gottheimer:

“For the sake of our families, economy, schools, and health care, we must continue fighting for communities across Warren and Sussex Counties to help boost their broadband connectivity… Now, every county and town in Sussex and Warren County will be clawing back federal dollars that they can use to improve connectivity. We also need to get the dollars sent to the State of New Jersey for rural broadband to right here in Sussex and Warren. With partners on both sides of the aisle and at every level of government, I believe we can get this done.”

NJBPU President Joseph L. Fiordaliso, who was also at the announcement, said: “Ensuring the most hard-to-reach areas of New Jersey have access to high speed Internet is an absolute necessity, especially in light of the last year. It is crucial that we close the digital divide, so our schoolchildren and businesses have the same educational and economic advantages regardless of where they are located.”

What responsible leader would oppose working together to achieve a bi-partisan outcome that materially helps the people of Sussex and Warren Counties?

Is Cruz nuts, stupid, or just a liar? Are we really supposed to believe that Cruz would rather have an Internet desert in Northwest New Jersey if it means working with the Democrats who run Trenton (the Murphy administration) and Washington (the Biden administration)? He’s too educated to be that stupid – so it’s down to being a nut or a liar.

But it gets worse.

It is bad enough when a political wannabe is on the make and will do anything, say anything, to try to score – but when the Executive Director of the Sussex Democrats cheers him on and shops around such a stupid attack, that is truly remarkable. Especially as the Executive Director in question has just trousered a fat patronage job – courtesy of the very same Governor Murphy.

Speaking for the Republicans, who are a minority in the Legislature, Senator Steve Oroho said: “High-speed internet is an absolute necessity in our world today, yet there are too many homes and communities in New Jersey that lack the broadband service many of us take for granted. The last year with so many employees and students working from home through the pandemic, it underscored the need of being wired for reliable internet connectivity. The creation of the Broadband Access Study Commission will examine the logistics of developing community broadband networks in order to deliver high-speed internet access, especially to underserved communities like many in rural areas. From a competitive standpoint, closing the digital divide is a must.”

Unfortunately, Dan Cruz and the Sussex County Democrats would rather play politics than get anything done. Being spiteful losers might make them feel good, but it doesn’t address the problem, which is a very real one – all across America.

Here is an educational video, provided by the Wall Street Journal, for the edification of Dan Cruz and the Sussex Democrats.  These idiots should watch it.  Maybe they’ll learn something?  But don’t hold your breath.

 

“The more inept you are, the smarter you think you are.”

Tom Stafford

Murphy goons target COVID nursing home whistleblower

By Sussex Watchdog

In a coordinated, one-two punch, Democrats allied with Governor Phil Murphy delivered a vicious attack on journalist/whistleblower Jennifer Jean Miller. She’s the former New Jersey Herald reporter featured in the New York Times and ABC News who broke the story that Governor Murphy’s infamous Executive Order 103 was causing the deaths from COVID-19 of dozens in nursing homes in Sussex County.

Eventually, the deaths from COVID in New Jersey’s nursing and veterans’ homes would surpass 8,000 lives. New Jersey would earn the terrible distinction of having the worst rate of death (per 100,000) in long-term care facilities (nursing/veterans’ homes) from COVID-19 among the 50 states. As the Star-Ledger pointed out, if New Jersey were its own country, it would have the worst rate of death from COVID-19 in the world.

The first attack came on Sunday – from a blogger known by the pseudonym Jabba the Angry Fat Man. Jabba is a big supporter of Congressman Josh Gottheimer and has bragged on his blog that his death threats against President Donald Trump earned him a visit from the United States Secret Service.

Jennifer Jean Miller is interviewed through this video by ABC.

Jabba has attacked this testimony, calling journalist Jennifer Jean Miller a “liar” and her articles in the New Jersey Herald, a “PR stunt”.  When Miller, who is not only a courageous whistleblower but who served as a support system for many of the families of the victims, drew parallels between what her family suffered during the Holocaust (at Auschwitz) and the fear and isolation suffered by the those who died, she was viciously attacked by the Democrat, who called her a “wacko”.     
 
These histrionics and the nastiness of the attacks lead us to wonder if Jabba is on the payroll of the highly insider, international Public Relations/ Lobbying/ Political Consulting group (Mercury) that was hired to protect the nursing home operators (and, by extension, the Murphy administration) from the families of those who died and their supporters.  Is Congressman Gottheimer at all connected to these – or other nursing homes operators – or to their lobbyists?  We’re just asking.  Is the lobbyist/ public relations firm owned by the Congressman’s spouse and in-laws connected?  And what about contributions to the master fundraiser’s campaign?  
 
Given Gottheimer’s background as the Number Two executive at a similar insider international Public Relations/ Lobbying/ Political Consulting group, perhaps the Congressman hooked them up?  Gottheimer’s was the firm that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called “the PR firm from Hell.”  And remember what else Maddow said about Josh Gottheimer’s firm:
 

"When evil needs public relations, evil has (Josh Gottheimer’s firm) on speed dial."
Rachel Maddow

 
We wonder if Congressman Gottheimer and the members of his Problem Solvers Caucus believe that journalists who uncover misfeasance by government and/or private nursing home operators should suffer retribution by Democrat Party operatives in the form of being labeled “a lying, has-been, right-wing sleaze artist”?  We will be asking them – each of them – directly about this, as they are all up for re-election next year (some having to pass through the filter of a Republican primary).  We suspect, in turn, that Caucus Co-Chairman Gottheimer will be hearing from them.
 
Earlier today, the Sussex County Democrats issued their own attack in support of the one launched on Sunday by the blogger Jabba the Angry Fat Man.  In it, they attacked people for asking questions.  In a press release of more than a thousand words, they never once mention Executive Order 103.
 
Instead, the Democrats attack everyone who wants answers, everyone who has submitted an unfulfilled OPRA request to Governor Murphy's administration, everyone who has called for bi-partisan legislative hearings, everyone who has asked for an independent investigation into why more than 8,000 people died.  In their fear for what the truth may reveal about Governor Murphy – the Democrats attack everyone looking for the truth. 
 
Sussex County Democrats even attack the whistleblowing journalist who broke the story.  In the most vicious way – mocking the suffering of her family in Auschwitz.
 
In their press release, the Sussex County Democrats claim that the nursing home operators “chose PROFIT over PEOPLE, which led to bodies being stacked up in makeshift morgues and families and employees left with enduring trauma for years to come.”  They further state:
 
“The Sussex County Democratic Committee has been inundated with first-hand accounts from both current and former employees who want to set the record straight about the horror they witnessed.”
 
Good.  But why are the Sussex County Democrats resisting the means to set that record straight?  Why are they not supporting the victims’ families, the county government, and legislators like Senator Steve Oroho – who are demanding transparency from the Murphy administration.  Why the cover-up?
 
Why have OPRA requests about those nursing homes gone unfulfilled?  Does it have anything to do with the boast made by a nursing home operator to a local government official about their donations to Governor Murphy and his Democrats?  This local government official would like to have a hearing at which to testify – on the record!  Will the Sussex Democrats work to give him one?
 
Sadly, it doesn’t seem so.
 
Rather than uncover who is responsible for what happened, the Sussex County Democrats want everyone to accept their perspective that Governor Murphy and his administration acted perfectly, there is nothing to see here, so move on.  They make this clear when they suggest that Republicans “should be exploring viable ways to make sure these examples of failure, negligence and mismanagement are never able to happen again under these circumstances.”  Just so long as those viable ways do not include fact-finding of any kind – from OPRA requests to open public hearings into why more than 8,000 died – all fact-finding is strictly verboten! 
 
The Sussex County Democrats want Watergate without the hearings.  Someone should pull them back to reality and tell them it doesn’t work that way.
 
We have a suggestion. 
 
The Sussex County Republicans should invite the Sussex County Democrats to debate this issue and how to address it.  Openly, in public, with full transparency. 

The Democrats could bring Jabba the Angry Fat Man as part of their panel.  The Republicans could ask the whistleblower/ journalist the Democrats have attempted to smear, Jennifer Jean Miller.  Perhaps the Democrats could ask Governor Murphy himself to attend… the Republicans, Jack Ciattarelli. 
 
If they really want to get to the bottom of this, the Democrats need only look to their name and live up to it – democracy and the transparency that democracy is supposed to be synonymous with.  Supposed to be… in practice, not so much.  Not at all, these days.    

GSI Poll: 44% of New Jersey residents planning to leave. Is NJ the new East Germany?

Yesterday was a voting session in the New Jersey Legislature. Regina Egea of the Garden State Initiative (GSI), a think tank that closely monitors the various home-grown diseases that beset the state’s economy, sent around fresh data from a poll conducted for GSI by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s School of Public & Global Affairs. Ms. Egea had this to report:

According to the survey, 44% of New Jersey residents are planning to leave the state in the not so distant future with more than 1 in 4 (28%) planning to depart the Garden State within 5 years. Unsurprisingly, Property Taxes and the overall Cost of Living were cited as the main drivers. The results also debunk two issues frequently cited in anecdotal accounts of outmigration, weather and public transportation, as they ranked 8th and 10th respectively, out of 11 factors offered.

These results should alarm every elected official and policymaker in New Jersey. We have a crisis of confidence in the ability of our leaders to address property taxes and the cost of living whether at the start of their career, in prime earning years, or repositioning for retirement, New Jersey residents see greener pastures in other states. This crisis presents a profound challenge to our state as we are faced with a generation of young residents looking elsewhere to build their careers, establish families and make investments like homeownership.

This out-migration of people should come as no surprise to anyone who has kept track of how and where former New Jersey elected officials spend their retirement. After lifetimes spent raising people’s property taxes, voting for all manner of other taxes and spending – while building up pensions and other benefits for themselves – they move to states less liberal with money, with markedly lower taxes. They escape the taxes they are responsible for, the failing economy they are responsible for. There are actual colonies of former New Jersey elected and appointed officials popping up in states like Florida and North Carolina – all being mailed pension checks from New Jersey!

So how did the New Jersey Legislature spend the voting session on the day the poll was released that showed nearly half the inmates of the garden spot they’re running were planning their escape? In the words of Republican Assemblyman Hal Wirths, the Democrats who control the Legislature decided to make it “criminal appreciation day”.

Yep, the Democrats gave the vote to convicted criminals and also provided them with education funding – just months after they gave millions in education funding to illegal immigrants – while slashing education funding to the children of property tax payers across the state. Of course they did, that’s how they roll.

The Democrats in New Jersey have gone crazy. Everybody can see how this story is going to end. The only thing that can change that ending are Republicans. Elect a Republican as Governor, change the make-up of the Legislature by adding more and more Republicans – and you will give anxious movers-to-be the breathing space to reconsider and give the state a second (or third or fourth) chance.

Democrat Senate President Steve Sweeney has spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince New Jersey’s business community that he is for them. They even backed his guys in District 1 (and lost).

But Sweeney’s promises and plans are not really “bi-partisan” or “pro-business” or “pro-jobs” at all. He showed this when he specifically targeted Republican-voting school districts for his education funding cuts. And again, during the campaign, when he allowed top staffer Mark Magyar’s newspapers to trash even friendly Republicans. And after the campaign, with a $9 million pay-back to abortionist Planned Parenthood for supporting Democrat candidates. And again, when Sweeney proposed S-4204, which will crush working mothers and drive businesses out of the state.

Steve Sweeney always returns to what he is. He is reminiscent of those lines from one of Kipling’s poems:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

These Democrats – all of them, in one way or another – are a form of slow motion disaster. Post-election, they have merely increased the speed. All the evidence suggests that with these Democrats, in the end, the only good Republican is one who no longer holds office (just as the only good business or good worker is one who pledges fealty to the corrupt machine). Those 44 percent of New Jerseyans who are so desperate for leadership they are willing to move to seek it elsewhere, will not be assuaged by “bi-partisan” cohabitation. More dramatic measures are in order – clear, unambiguous Republican measures.

Governor Murphy caught in an act of cultural appropriation?

The Left calls it “cultural appropriation”. It’s what they complain about when a member of the so-called “dominant” culture appropriates elements of another culture – especially a disadvantaged “minority” culture. Well, Phil Murphy is certainly a mega-wealthy one-percenter, so having a can of PBR would probably count as cultural appropriation. But in this case, he dressed up…

This photograph was posted by the Governor’s own communications guy, a “proud alum” (as he puts it) of Hillary Clinton, Bill DeBlasio, and Barack Obama. So he should know all about the rights and wrongs of political correctness. Or is it only incorrect when someone you don’t like does it? Of course, that could be anyone from Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.

Was this a case of cultural appropriation or just an attempt at pandering? Will the Governor wear a kilt on St. Andrew's Day? A sombrero on Cinco de Mayo? Will he do a dance too… maybe end up on a remake of Coldplay’s Dancing Politicians (Violet Hill)?

Governor Murphy is always up to something. One day he is issuing directives on providing Sanctuary and millions in aid to illegals – while slashing education funding to the children of taxpayers. The next he is instructing local law enforcement on how to incarcerate the sexes together – can’t wait for the lawsuits that will result from this brainstorm. But somehow he can’t seem to address the highest property taxes in America, or the worst foreclosure rate in America, or the lousiest business climate in America.

Phil Murphy runs away from the big stuff. He likes to meddle in the lives of “lesser beings” (average folks like us) and he like photo ops. And he likes to feel morally superior to everyone else (we suppose it goes along with being economically superior). What you see here is what you are going to get. This is what he is good at.

Trentonian: The lives of hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans are about to be destroyed.

The Trentonian newspaper put out a warning yesterday…

Attention fellow New Jerseyans: We are about to get screwed like we've never been screwed before by state Sen. President Steve Sweeney, the rest of the legislature, and Governor Phil Murphy.

…I need you to understand bill S4204, introduced by Sweeney in November, and fast-tracked for passage in the coming weeks. In short: It will eliminate the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans. Plain and simple.

The bill would upend the current system of people who operate as independent contractors. Basically, you won’t be allowed to offer your services unless you’re hired as an official employee of the business. That’s a simplistic reading of the bill, but that’s it in a nutshell.

For example: Let’s say you’re a kindergarten teacher and, on the side, you’re a wedding photographer. Maybe you shoot four or five weddings a year, and you get the work through Jimmy’s Wedding Photo Emporium. You like photography, you like weddings, it’s a fun little side gig for you, and Jimmy pays you $200 a wedding, and you’re happy. Or maybe you’re not a teacher; maybe you’re a stay-at-home mom trying to make a few bucks. Maybe you’re a college student looking to pay down your debt. Maybe you’re retired and you enjoy taking pictures. Doesn’t matter; unless Jimmy hires you as an employee, you will not be allowed to shoot weddings for him. You cannot be an independent contractor of wedding photography anymore.

So.

Are you a photographer? A truck driver owner-operator? A freelance writer? A tree trimmer? A dog groomer? A lawyer? A locksmith? A tow-truck driver? A million other things? Yeah. You’re screwed.

And woe is the small business owner, because this cuts both ways. Remember Jimmy, our old pal from Jimmy’s Wedding Photo Emporium? Yeah, he won’t be able to afford to hire all these employees, won’t be able to afford the taxes that go along with having all these employees. So yeah. If you’re Jimmy - or any small business owner that hires people to do piecemeal work, guess what? You’re screwed.

You can read Jeff Edelstein’s entire column here: https://www.trentonian.com/news/the-lives-of-hundreds-of-thousands-of-new-jerseyans-are/article_91e95642-0c08-11ea-a16d-e311dc18d1ae.html

Why are they doing this in the face of data that clearly indicates the current structure helps working mothers and others? United States Census data has chronicled this common route back to work for women trying to balance motherhood with gainful employment. And there is a large academic literature on the subject. As New Jersey 101.5’s Bill Spadea noted:

That's right, If you're a working mom who took some time off to have and raise your children, you may be at risk.

The latest attack on our economy from the radicals in Trenton is a new bill that would all but eliminate the ability for a person to work as an independent contractor in New Jersey…

The restrictions placed on employers in order to essentially force them to hire W2 employees only will be most hurtful to working moms. So many mothers need the flexibility of returning to work and controlling their own hours like ride share drivers, food delivery, special education providers, among many, many others.

As we know, the so-called 'gender pay gap' is a very complicated issue and has everything to do with choices many women make to stay home with their kids for a number of years. Naturally, returning to the workforce after a gap in experience results in reduction in pay as many women are essentially starting again. The idea of returning to work as an independent contractor offers the kind of additional income and flexible hours, which empowers moms to continue managing their homes, balancing child care and of course, paying NJ taxes.

We heard from Alida Kass on Monday from the NJ Civil Justice Institute prior to her testifying before the Assembly committee discussing the new law. Then Jon Bramnick, the recently re-elected Assembly Minority Leader, explaining that this is all about new taxes for NJ businesses and another reason that many business owners will look to leave NJ. They can simply head across the river to PA or DE and not pay the additional taxes at all.

Read More: Murphy's and Sweeney's new tax target: Moms returning to work

Hear Bill Spadea interview Alida Kass…

The NFIB noted that the New Jersey Democrats are merely copying a California law that totally screwed working mothers and small businesses in that state, but apparently those pushing this legislation don’t care. The only kind of business they favor is the crony capitalist kind – businesses big enough to collect corporate welfare and then kick-back to the right politicians and their superPACs. Real dirtbag stuff.

Hopefully there’s a Republican on the horizon who will stand up for moms and cut the nuts off these Democrats.

The Reparations Racket is an exercise in vote-buying

Most of those alive today are descendants of slaves. Wikipedia defines slavery as follows:

Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. However, and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs.

Slavery existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations. A person could become enslaved from the time of their birth, capture, or purchase.

Slavery was legal in most societies at some time in the past, but is now outlawed in all recognized countries. The last country to officially abolish slavery was Mauritania in 1981. Nevertheless, there are an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide subject to some form of modern slavery. The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In other areas, slavery (or unfree labour) continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slavery today, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.

Race doesn’t enter in to it, as all manner of human beings, all colors and creeds, have enslaved their fellow man since the beginning of time. If it is, as some suggest, our original sin (and it is high on the list of sins) then it is a sin shared by all mankind, one that in our humility we must all account for.

The Bible tells us that the Israelites often found themselves enslaved as a people – by the Egyptians, and later, by the Romans. Slavery existed in the Americas at the time of its first contact with Europe. At the start of the American Republic, there were two African-based slave trades. One, out of sub-Saharan Africa, provided human beings to slaveholders in the United States and European colonies in America. The other, based in North Africa, brought European slaves and others to Islamic markets. The United States fought two wars to end the latter (1801-05 and 1815) and a civil war (1861-65) to end the former.

Politically, the Democrat Party was the institutional face of the slavery in America. You need only read the Democrat Party platforms prior to the Civil War to recognize this. Long after the Democrats were forced to give up on slavery, they continued to commemorate their slave-holding heritage. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders… they all have attended Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners and have, by doing so, honored those two slave-owning Democrats.

Slavery in America ended with the advent of the Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, was elected in 1860 with 39.8% of the vote. Lincoln was sworn-in on March 4, 1861. The American Civil War began a month later, on April 12, 1861. By then seven Southern states had seceded from the Union.

At the 1860 census, it was recorded that those in slavery made up 13 percent of the United States’ population. Slavery existed in 14 of the then 33 states (by the end of the war there would be 36 states). 3.9 million people were enslaved, but only 8 percent of American families were slaveholders. Slaveholders did not constitute a majority in any of those 14 states in which slavery was tolerated. But though a minority, slaveholders were an exceedingly rich minority.

All the anti-slavery states (as well as some of the slaveholding ones) produced soldiers and sailors for the holy cause of abolition. New Jersey furnished 76,814 soldiers and sailors – 1,185 of whom were African-American. This was a smaller contribution than neighboring states like Pennsylvania (337,936) and New York (448,850). It was claimed that New Jersey was less enthusiastic than more Republican states. In 1864, in the middle of the war, New Jersey would field the Democrat candidate against Lincoln, who won the state’s 7 electoral votes and a 53% to 47% popular vote win.

Nevertheless, 5,754 New Jersey soldiers/sailors gave their lives in that war to end slavery. Again, neighboring states gave more to the cause. Pennsylvania lost 33,183 of its sons. New York lost 46,534. Regiments were segregated then, so we know that most of those who gave their lives were classified as “white”. But it should be noted that they fought alongside comrades who were classified as “colored” – 36,847 of whom died. In all 178,975 “colored” soldiers and sailors served in the war.

Some Democrats have come up with the ridiculous fable wherein they argue that the parties “switched” ideologies. No, you will not find support for slavery in any Republican Party platform. Unfortunately, the Democrats cannot make that claim. Slavery is the sin of their party. Burdened by such a sin, it is natural that the Democrats wish to deflect the blame for it onto a wider population. And so they have come up with the idea of “reparations”.

What the Democrats propose is a tax (it’s always about a tax with them, isn’t it) on some people – regardless of whether or not their ancestors had slaves, or fought and died to end slavery, or even were in the United States before 1865. Then the Democrats propose that they make a gift of this money to a different group of people.

This satisfies the Democrats’ need to publicly proclaim their “goodness”. It also absolves their party of its unique blame by vastly expanding that blame to others, regardless of whether they have any specific guilt at all or of the sacrifices made by their ancestors. And finally, the Democrats calculate that by taking from Peter and giving it to Paul, Peter will be silenced into submission and Paul will reward the Democrats with his vote. Yes, the Democrats are without shame.

Later today, you can catch this shameless performance at the Assembly Appropriations Committee, Committee Room 11, Fourth Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, New Jersey. The performance is for the benefit of the Democrat Party of Phil Murphy, Steve Sweeney, and Craig Coughlin.

Stay tuned…

Voters in Washington reject Affirmative Action ballot measure… while NJ Dems push Reparations bill

In Washington State, the affirmative-action measure known as Referendum 88 has gone down to defeat after a week of counting ballots. Had it been approved, it would have implemented affirmative-action legislation known as Initiative 1000. Passed by the state Legislature earlier in the year, Initiative-1000 codified affirmative action for public contracting, employment and education.

While recognized as a generally more liberal state than even New Jersey, Washington has embraced direct democracy in a way the party bosses in New Jersey wouldn’t dare. In response to the Legislature’s passage of Initiative-1000, a group called Let People Vote was formed by a group of immigrants, many of whom were originally from China. They argued that the policy reminded them of their country of origin, that it was a divisive policy, and that it created a system of racial quotas that would allow state government to discriminate. They won.

Back in New Jersey, the likes of Democrats Phil Murphy, Steve Sweeney, and Craig Coughlin don’t have much to fear from Initiative & Referendum. Even when people do manage to get something on the ballot, Governor Murphy sends the Attorney General’s office (i.e. men with guns) to try to prevent the democratic exercise of voting. Maybe they should consider changing the name of their party? Or maybe someone should sue them for false advertising? Because the last thing these Democrat party bosses are is democratic.

In the post-election lame duck session of the Legislature the Democrats have put so-called “criminal justice reform” at the top of the legislative agenda. No, not property tax relief… criminal justice reform. You know, that hobby horse of the very rich – of everyone from George Soros to Koch Industries. This so-called “reform” argues for the decriminalization of actual crime – assaults on human beings and their property – while it seeks to make thinking the “wrong” thoughts or expressing the “wrong” opinions illegal.

On Thursday, a performance has been scheduled, hosted by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. It will begin promptly tomorrow, November 14, 2019 at 1:00 PM in Committee Room 11, Fourth Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, New Jersey. Proceeds benefit the Democrat Party of Phil Murphy, Steve Sweeney, and Craig Coughlin.

Among the bills being considered is A-3722/S-2055. This legislation “permits incarcerated persons to receive student financial aid.” And A-5823, which “removes prohibition on voting by persons convicted of indictable offense who are on parole or probation.”

By the way, these are the same Democrats who slashed education funding to New Jersey school children across the state… causing property tax increases. Now they are proposing to provide funding to convicted criminals.

But it doesn’t end there. The Democrats are not only going to ignore property tax relief, they intend to ignore the high rate of foreclosure and the low rate of job creation too. And instead of addressing these important issues, the Democrats will opt to discuss… reparations for slavery. The Civil War ended in 1865 but rather than discuss a problem staring them in the face – like child hunger – the Democrats want to go back and take on history. Hey, Governor Murphy could address child hunger with more jobs and less foreclosure… but nooo, let’s talk reparations. It’s the process by which rich people like Phil Murphy seek to take money from these working class folk to give it to those working class folk, in order to buy votes.

A press release was issued late yesterday by a group calling itself the “Institute”, from which we have taken the following excerpts: “NJ Legislators to Address Voting Rights Restoration and Reparations Legislation This Thursday… Institute, Partners, and Supporters Will Show Support for Full Voting Rights Restoration and Policy-Driven Solutions to Systemic Racism in New Jersey… At 2 pm, the Institute and its partners will join legislators for the introduction of legislation to create a Reparative Justice Task Force in New Jersey. The Task Force will focus on repairing structural racism in New Jersey that can be traced back to slavery in the state and around the country, and recommend targeted policies and investments…”

“Partnering” with the “Institute” include any number of well-funded lobbying organizations – including several affiliated with Rutgers University. So let’s see… property tax relief, high foreclosure rate, low job creation… or reparations? Which will they get to first? We’ll let Princeton University answer that question…

It’s like the Princeton University study says…

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Are we one generation away from scrapping the First Amendment?

Journalist Collin Anderson did some excellent work reporting on a recent poll conducted by The Campaign for Free Speech. According to the poll, a majority of Americans believe the First Amendment should be rewritten and are willing to restrict free speech, as well as the media. Anderson writes:

More than 60 percent of Americans agree on restricting speech in some way, while a slim majority, 51 percent, want to see the First Amendment rewritten to "reflect the cultural norms of today."

The Campaign for Free Speech said the results "indicate free speech is under more threat than previously believed." Bob Lystad, the group’s executive director added: "The findings are frankly extraordinary. Our free speech rights and our free press rights have evolved well over 200 years, and people now seem to be rethinking them." Anderson continued:

Of the 1,004 respondents, young people were the most likely to support curbing free expression and punishing those who engage in "hate speech." Nearly 60 percent of Millennials—respondents between the ages of 21 and 38—agreed that the Constitution "goes too far in allowing hate speech in modern America" and should be rewritten, compared to 48 percent of Gen Xers and 47 percent of Baby Boomers. A majority of Millennials also supported laws that would make "hate speech" a crime—of those supporters, 54 percent said violators should face jail time.

Hostility towards the First Amendment did not stop at speech. Many would also like to see a crackdown on the free press. Nearly 60 percent of respondents agreed that the "government should be able to take action against newspapers and TV stations that publish content that is biased, inflammatory, or false." Of those respondents, 46 percent supported possible jail time.

Here is a five-minute explanation of the First Amendment by constitutional attorney Floyd Abrams…

In an era of politically-correct curricula – with laws like the one that Governor Phil Murphy and Democrat legislative leaders used to force a silly LGBTQ curriculum on New Jersey school districts – it is clear from the numbers above that we are forgetting to teach the basics of citizenship. The maintenance of our Bill of Rights and the preservation of American freedoms depends on electing the right people to the Legislature and to local school boards. School boards are a vital line of defense in the effort to curb the embrace of openly fascist, anti-freedom ideologies by future generations.

What we teach America’s children is now more important than ever.

SCCC Trustee Burrell (D) running for Mayor of Vernon

So now we know what tonight’s circus is in aid of…

Politics.  Real scumbag politics.  The kind that masquerades as self-righteousness when it is really only about self-dealing.

It turns out that for some time now, SCCC Trustee Howard Burrell has been discussing and planning a comeback political career.  Trustee Burrell was a Democrat Freeholder until he was defeated for re-election in 2002 by 4,000 votes.  Sussex County Democrat Committee Chairwoman Katie Rotondi and Murphy county coordinator Leslie Huhn are both Burrell backers.  

We understood why Democrats like Dan Perez and Lorraine Parker wanted to hold an anti-Trump rally disguised as a special public meeting of the SCCC trustees, but we couldn’t figure out why SCCC Board Chairman Bill Curcio went along with it.  Now we know. 

SCCC Trustee Howard Burrell managed Democrat Dan Perez’ 2017 Freeholder race against Republican Freeholder Director Herb Yardley.  Perez lost by 7,000 votes.  Now Perez is returning the favor and supporting Burrell.

The SCCC Board of Trustees dumped a Sussex County firm as its attorney and hired the Union County Democrat machine firm of former State Senator Ray Lesniak.  So it is official.  The facts surrounding this appointment are shocking and will be dealt with in length but suffice to say that Ray Lesniak was a big defender of the corrupt practice of pay-to-play.

So now we know why some players on the SCCC Board of Trustees have dragged their colleague of seven years through the dirt for something he’s apologized for again and again…

Politics.  Dirtbag politics.  The kind of politics that sacrifices human decency, forgiveness, and pity for self-advancement. 

Sussex County Community College isn’t supposed to be about politics.  The SCCC Board of Trustees aren’t supposed to create venues by which to hang one trustee so that another can launch his political comeback campaign.

In fact, using SCCC facilities for partisan political purposes is explicitly against the rules of the Internal Revenue Service.  The process by which an executive session of the Board was called (a trustee is not “personnel” and no lawsuit has been filed by any party) and a public meeting held could pose legal hurdles for the SCCC.

Curiously, Howard Burrell launched his original political career 30 years ago in the midst of the same rhetoric being used by some Democrats today… accusing anyone they don’t like of “racism” and “bigotry” while they push legislation that even most Democrats say is anti-Semitic.  It seems some Democrats have learned nothing in 30 years.

Also worth noting are the assurances made by Trustee Burrell to the Freeholder Board at the time of his appointment just last year.  Burrell’s appointment had been held up by an earlier Freeholder Board over concerns that he would use his position on the SCCC Board of Trustees as a springboard to political office.  The current Freeholder Board appointed him after being assured that politics would not be part of it.  This has obviously turned out not to be the case and Trustee Burrell will have some explaining to do.

It looks like former Freeholder Carl Lazzaro was right about Howard Burrell and Watchdog was wrong to have advocated for Burrell’s appointment to the SCCC Board of Trustees.  We admit our mistake.