NJbiz craps itself in TTF editorial

How are average citizens to understand the TTF crisis when professional journalists, writing on behalf of the business community, getting paid to do so, can't tell their arses from their elbows?  In a July 3rd editorial, the "masters of business" who run NJbiz wrote:

But what left us nauseous as we considered the bill, to extend the restaurant metaphor, was the process by which a sales tax cut suddenly took the place of the equally bad, but vetted in daylight, plan to cut taxes on retirement income and eliminate the estate tax.

The new plan, hatched at midnight, was the product of negotiations between Gov. Chris Christie and his new friend, Assembly Speaker Vincent Preto — last seen getting clobbered by Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney over Atlantic City — and in secret, which is not a hearty endorsement for democracy.

You could make the case that phasing out the estate tax — which is part of both “agreements” — has a business benefit that might encourage the wealthy to stay in New Jersey after retirement.

Maybe they filed that editorial in a hurry?  Maybe they were drunk when they did it?  Maybe they have been drunk all week -- because they certainly haven't been paying attention.  Anyone paying attention would know that the tax cut common to both plans is the tax cut on retirement income, NOT the phase out of the estate tax.

What the heck is going on?  Are you trying to confuse people?  NJbiz started its editorial by writing:

You know what they say about never wanting to see the kitchen of your favorite restaurant? Well, every so often, the public gets a look behind the scenes of how Trenton puts bills together, and it's no surprise few visitors to the State House ever visit the little restaurant within.

Well boys, with the misinformation that you're serving up, you just took a dump in the mixing bowl.

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Another source of misinformation in the discussion over how to pay for the repair and maintenance of our roads and bridges appears in the SaveJersey blog.  Over the weekend, one representative of "GOP youff" presented what he called "15 Reasons to Oppose the Gas Tax."  Of course, the writer is a functionary of the notorious Morris County GOP machine.  You know, the guys who hatched a solar scam that ripped-off taxpayers for $80 million.  Talk about dirtbags!  The whole deal is currently the subject of a federal, state, and county investigations.

The column reveals an appalling lack of knowledge of basic conservative economic theory as well as out-and-out misinformation.  The writer serves up warmed over Marxism with a garnish of populism to make it palatable.  Has he never read the conservative position on progressive taxation?  Does the writer really not know the conservative economic reasoning behind the user tax -- of which the gas tax is a prime example?  Did he forget that President Ronald Reagan employed the gas tax and other user taxes? 

The writer has no understanding of how haulage (trucking) is taxed in the continental United States and the Canadian provinces.  Worst still, when people who do know attempted to correct him by posting the data under the column, this knowledge was repeatedly pulled down.  Better to go with the lie if it fits the bullshit?

Besides, is this flower of "GOP youff" really so weak that he needs his editor to wipe his arse?  Would an open exchange of information harm his self-image to the point of catalepsy?  Is "GOP youff" really not up to it?

Is it a question of "GOP youff" taking an infrastructure, largely built by their grandfathers and great grandfathers, for granted?  Maybe they haven't served in the military -- or haven't been to places in which things like passable roads, electricity, and running water are looked upon as miracles, instead of birthrights.   

These youngsters have had it so good for so long that they have no memory of needing to pay for it.  They think it comes for free.  When it is pointed out to them that New Jersey still charges drivers the 1988 price to upkeep the roads they use, they cry, "So what, we don't want to pay more." 

When it is pointed out that other states charge drivers more than 50 cents a gallon of gasoline for the upkeep of the roads they use, while New Jersey charges just 14 1/2 cents a gallon, they cry, "We have grown up in an era of free music, free videos, free information -- we want more free shit." 

There's also the inner stress of being both young and a member of the GOP.  In contrast to the 1980's -- when to be a young Reaganite was cool, the future -- today's "GOP youff" have to be among the most uncool people on earth.  We're surprised that they can convince anyone to reproduce.  Their come-on is the apology, for which they are justly despised by their peers.  Lacking the ease of their convictions that older party members possess, they don't relate to the adult party either. 

The noise they make fails to account for the smallness of their numbers in any primary setting.  Take Senator Jennifer Beck's District 11 for example.  48 percent of all registered Republicans are aged 60 or over.  Just 20 percent are under age 45.  There are just 469 young (under 25) Republican voters in the district.  That's compared with 11,329 aged 60 or above.

66 percent of Republican super voters (3 of 4 or above) are aged 60 or over.  You could accommodate every young GOP super voters (52 in all) in the back room of some diner. 

While we won the argument within our generation -- Ronald Reagan won the youth vote -- today's "GOP youff" are abysmal.  Among those under 25 year olds to register to vote in District 11 since November 2014, "GOP youff" managed just 261 young Republicans out of 2,228 new registrations under 25.  So what's all this noise about?

In-between apologizing to their peers for their existence, the public voices of "GOP youff" are loudly attempting to tell the rest of us in the party what to think.  Time to go back to school.  Learn Reagan, learn Buckley, read your party's platform for crying-out-loud.  Call Professor Sabrin and ask him if you can take his class.  Don't fall into the trap of being a Marxist just because you never learned what being a Republican is.     

Politician Lobbyists straddle both parties

Too many voters persist in believing that the two political parties work in opposition to each other.  In fact, both are neo-liberal in their economic policies and both believe in crony capitalism.  The only difference may be which interests benefit from that crony capitalism. 

The Democrats fill the place of a traditional party of the Left -- a party of the poor and working class.  The Republicans play the role of a party of Middle Class conservatism -- of small business and traditional values.  In fact, the Democrats have worked to make the poor more dependent on politicians and have sided with big business to support immigration policies to drive down the value of labor, while supporting trade policies that have driven high-paying manufacturing jobs overseas.  For their part, the Republicans side with big corporations and wealthy special interests to offer tepid opposition to a rabidly commercial agenda set on destroying local businesses and imposing a global set of standards on both economic and human relationships.

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney summed it up when -- in the midst of an economic downturn, high unemployment and underemployment, no property tax relief, mass foreclosures, homelessness, debt, record poverty, and children going hungry -- he declared that same-sex marriage was the state's "top priority" and the most important thing on the legislative agenda.  Why not?  Billionaires like Paul Singer and Tim Gill were funding the project.  It was important to them and they have the money to push an issue to the front of the line. 

A recent Princeton University study nailed it when it reported that "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

Now you know why all those referenda voting down same-sex marriage meant jack dick.  Money uber alles.  Simply put, the citizen and his or her vote simply don't matter to the critters who run our legislative bodies.   

Witness the rise of the lobby/public relations/political consulting entity -- often an arm of a law firm -- that employs both Democrats and Republicans.  Gone are the days of simply relying on campaign contributions to make a legislator sweet.  Now a lobbyist is likely to be the party chairman of a county or municipality -- somebody who can knock a legislator off the party "line" in the primary or find a popular mayor to run against him. 

And forget the idea that Democrat lobbyists only lobby for "Democrat" issues and Republicans for "Republican" issues.  They lobby for whomever it is that pays them and simply use their party offices to beat legislators into voting the way the rich corporations or interests who pay want them to vote.  There was a long line of Republicans taking money to lobby for same-sex marriage.  Republicans have trousered George Soros' money and have lobbied for everything from corporate crony solar projects to raising taxes.

Republican voters are beginning to figure out that their party's establishment doesn't care what they think and uses their votes to get hired by people who do not have their interests in mind.  Social conservatives got the message first.  That's why we had historically low turnout in New Jersey in last year's Assembly races.  The Trump phenomenon -- which began after he made a no nonsense comment about the supposedly taboo subject of illegal immigration -- is further evidence that the old b.s. no longer works.

The Reagan-era alliance between the social conservative and Chamber of Commerce wings of the GOP has gone off the rails.  For years working class social conservatives voted against their economic self-interests for candidates who promised to respect their traditional values, only to watch those candidates do the bidding of the rich who fund their campaigns and piss on every traditional value.

Why should social conservatives vote to keep the taxes of a corporation like Johnson & Johnson low, when that corporation takes the money it saves and uses it to make propaganda media to push same-sex marriage or helps to underwrite the operations of Planned Parenthood.  A year ago, more than 100 of the richest and most powerful corporations signed an amicus brief in Obergefell v. Hodges in support of same-sex marriage and in direct opposition to much of the world's major religions.  Among those to codify this global corporate position on faith and morals was Johnson & Johnson. 

A New Jersey business organization that relies on Republicans elected with social conservative votes to support its agenda, rewarded this loyalty by inviting the former president of Planned Parenthood to be the keynote speaker at an event sponsored by Johnson & Johnson.  Will social conservatives be asked by this business group to support less regulation for Johnson & Johnson, now that it has lost a court battle that disclosed its callous disregard for women and children who use its products? 

When a resolution is proposed in the Legislature, calling for the condemnation of Johnson & Johnson's corporate leadership for failing to warn women that its talc-based products could cause cancer, will so-called women's advocates like Senator Loretta "Mother Roach" Weinberg sign on?  Will Senator Sweeney?  After all, these corporate monsters knew as far back as the 1980's that their products caused cancer but they were so addicted to profits that the greedy pigs kept selling it and kept quiet about the cancer.   

Wow, doesn't support for same-sex marriage and Planned Parenthood mean that you are "progressive," that you're one of the so-called "good-guys"?  Obviously not.  The same corporation that makes fashion statements in support of "LGBT rights" and "women's reproductive rights" was happy to expose women and children to the possibility of slow, painful, horrible deaths in order to keep its profits high.  Corporate fashion statements are a diversion, a scam. Money uber alles.