You have to hand it to this Senator, she has balls

She loudly campaigned against the tax reform package, proposed an alternative plan that scrapped every tax cut, vilified everyone who supported Tax Reform as the worst sorts of human beings, became a media darling by dumping on her fellow Republicans, voted against Tax Reform with its Estate Tax phase out and tax cut for retirees -- and then turned around and took credit for the very tax cuts she opposed.  That's some balls.

Much like those heroes at AFP who put out a fundraising appeal that took credit for passing the Estate Tax phase out and four other tax cuts worth $1.4 billion to taxpayers but failed to mention that AFP opposed the legislation that was painstaking negotiated to achieve those tax cuts.  AFP wants credit for the work others did and instead of helping, AFP pissed on the people who did the work while they were doing it.  Then AFP memorialize it by taking a dump on them with its screw card.  Real scumbag behavior. 

So why is Senator Tom Kean Jr. celebrating with AFP on April 24th? 

Is Kean out to make Codey Senate President?

There are two kinds of labor unions -- those whose rank and file membership voted for Trump and those whose membership voted for Clinton.

President Trump and Republicans who want to build a sustainable GOP majority for the future, seek to work with those unions whose members are inclined to vote Republican or who will consider voting Republican.  These are the largely blue collar trade unions -- Teamsters, Ironworkers, Carpenters, Cabinetmakers, Plumbers, Bricklayers, Electricians, Heavy Equipment Operators, Laborers -- the Building Trades and such. 

On the other end we have the teachers, professors, administrators, and white collar government bureaucrats, clerks and such.  They love everything the Democrats stand for.  They voted for Hillary Clinton -- although some would prefer a "real socialist."  We aint getting these people.  Ever.  Not unless we lose everyone else.

So why are some Republican candidates this year running around telling conservatives that they have the backdoor support of the NJEA and it is a "game changer"?  Haven't we been here before?  Doesn't anyone remember the aftermath of Whitman years when the NJEA and those other liberal unions whose butts we had kissed for eight years turned on us and helped usher in this endless Democrat legislative majority?

We get that Senator Tom Kean Jr. still holds a grudge against the Governor and Senate President for interfering in his leadership election in 2013.  He had every right to be pissed.  It was a legit gripe.  But there comes a point when you have to do the Christian thing and let it go.  But as the AFP screw card showed, it hasn't been let go, it's been expanded to those members of the GOP caucus who sided with the Governor. 

There was more evidence this week, when the Senate Staff -- those same folks who conspired with AFP on the screw card -- sought to crank it up the asses of a few GOP Senators with a release about repealing the tax reform package and replacing it with... Nobody seems to have got that far.

We could go with the plan Senator Jennifer Beck came up with that froze state education aid for seven years to ensure seven years of brutal property tax increases.  Any takers?

In suggesting that they can "repeal the gas tax" what these assbandits actually mean is that they will repeal the Tax Reform package, the whole thing.  So every assbandit candidate who tells the voters that he or she supports "repealing the gas tax" is actually saying that he or she wants to get rid of $1.4 billion in tax cuts, which is just another way of saying that you want to raise taxes by $1.4 billion.

Here are the $1.4 billion in tax cuts these candidates want to shit-can: 

- A tax cut on retirement income.  Most New Jersey retirees will no longer pay state income tax. This tax cut would be worth more than $2,000 annually to the average retiree.

- Elimination of the Estate Tax. This will protect family farms and businesses from being forced to close to pay taxes.

- Tax cut for veterans.  Honorably discharged active duty, guard, and reserve veterans get an additional $3,000 personal income tax deduction.

- Tax credit for low-income workers.  Worth $100 annually to the average worker.

- Sales tax cut.  Worth another $100 annually to the average consumer.

- TTF local government aid:  $400 million in property tax relief for local governments.

That's a pretty sucky platform.

If these machinations are successful and Senator Dick Codey replaces Senator Steve Sweeney as Senate President, conservatives and Republicans who believe in their party's platform will go from having a pragmatic Democrat who from time to time screws us in order to pander to the Democrat base; to a genuine far-left, true-believer, who will spend his every waking hour screwing us simply for the joy of it.  That's not to say that Senator Codey isn't a charming man with a certain integrity.  He just really doesn't buy anything we have on offer and thinks that conservatives and Republicans (the RNC platform variety) are all just full of horse manure. 

Take the Second Amendment for instance.  Senator Codey has proposed two bills to do away with the Second Amendment in New Jersey.  Both S-1159 and S-351 "prohibited the sale, importation, possession and carrying of handguns except by certain authorized persons."  Now why would anyone calling him or herself a conservative or a Republican or even an American ever want to see this despoiler of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights in ANY position of power?

Our worst nightmare will be Governor Phil "Jon Corzine II" Murphy, Senate President Dick Codey, and a Leftist Democrat Speaker.  Then we will know the meaning of being screwed.  Republicans and groups like AFP should not be conspiring to get us there.

AFP admits its score card was a screw job

Instead of transparency, the New Jersey affiliate of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has tried to cover-up their "process" by shoveling more shit over it. 

Instead of telling us who came up with the scheme to do away with the rating process AFP used when Steve Lonegan was in charge and which Trenton staffers AFP conspired with, they have tried to defend what is simply indefensible and inexcusable corruption.  This will be made abundantly clear to them when they have to explain themselves to the Internal Revenue Service.  After all, AFP is a tax exempt organization and their scorecard is meant to be educational -- not a thumb on the scale created for the purposes of party political communications in the form of direct mail, broadcast and cable advertisements, and Internet ads. 

Something is clearly wrong with an organization that puts out a press release taking credit for a vote that -- in AFP's own words -- "saved state taxpayers $1.4 billion in tax cuts-once completely phased in-in the final omnibus bill, including a repeal of the estate tax which saved taxpayers $320 million alone and will protect families from the government raiding inheritances when a loved one dies" -- and then uses that same vote to give every Republican Senator who voted for it an "F" grade.

AFP is either psychotic or sadomasochistic.

AFP actually bragged that the passage of A-12 last October was one of its biggest "accomplishments of 2016" -- before turning around and screwing everyone who voted for AFP's biggest accomplishment of 2016!

Here is the actual email AFP sent around in advance of its 2016 "screwcard":

Americans for Prosperity-New Jersey had some big accomplishments in 2016, and it's all thanks to you and activists like you who dedicated your time to fight for freedom in the Garden State.

As we ramp up our efforts for this year's battles, I wanted to highlight last year's victories to remind you how much we can accomplish.'

What AFP-New Jersey Accomplished in 2016

• Winter : Saved state taxpayers $60 million by fighting against corporate welfare and film production incentives.

• Spring : Saved Morris County taxpayers $1.5 million by fighting against a union mandate initiative for big public works projects.

• Summer : Saved state taxpayers $4-5 billion by fighting against a constitutional amendment that would have frozen current pension benefits as-is and prevented meaningful reforms to the system.

• Fall : Saved state taxpayers $1.4 billion in tax cuts-once completely phased in-in the final omnibus bill, including a repeal of the estate tax which save taxpayers $320 million alone and will protect families from the government raiding inheritances when a loved one dies.

• Playing defense: Blocked numerous legislative efforts to increase red tape in New Jersey, and defeated every attempt at increasing occupational licensing requirements that AFP-NJ engaged on.

You can see that AFP-NJ had a great 2016. It took a lot of hard work and dedication from all of our volunteers, and I sincerely thank you for your efforts to hold our government accountable and protect taxpayers.

There's no time to rest on our laurels-we must continue the fight to bring true affordability and good government back to New Jersey. Be sure to  Like us on Facebook and  follow on Twitter . AFP-NJ posts daily updates about developments in Trenton, Washington, D.C., and your local government.

I look forward to working with you this year to add even more to our list of accomplishments.

In Liberty,

Erica L. Jedynak
New Jersey State Director
Americans for Prosperity

This email was sent to: 
We respect your right to privacy - view our policy
Americans For Prosperity 1310 N. Courthouse Road, Suite 700 Arlington, VA 22201
Update Profile and Subscription Preferences | One-Click Unsubscribe

Here are just ten of the nearly 100 detailed questions regarding their screwcard that we have for the psychos/ sadomasochists at AFP:

(1) If the "Gas Tax" was the point of the exercise -- as has been suggested by bloggers, media types, Senate staffers, and AFP insiders -- then how did Republican Senator Sam Thompson get a "B" for proposing that the "gas tax" be increased without any tax cuts or tax reform at all?

(2) While handing Thompson a "B" for his gas tax increase only legislation, AFP cranked it up the buttholes of five Republican Senators who voted for that big "AFP accomplishment" of $1.4 billion in tax cuts (including the elimination of the Estate Tax) because the legislation also contained a gas tax increase.  Why did Thompson get a "B" and those five GOP Senators get an "F"? 

(Of course, we know why.  AFP was asked to help out with Thompson's primary by members of the GOP Senate staff and AFP complied.  Politics as usual.)

(3) AFP actively campaigned for the passage of Public Question 2 at the November 8th General Election last year.  The debate over Question 2 was directly related to the gas tax/tax reform discussion.  Somehow AFP forgot this or didn't think it important enough to include.  Most probably because it would have helped the scores of those it was meant to screw.  

(4) Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon (R-13), a candidate for the Senate received an "A+" for his vote on the so-called "gas tax" (actually, the Tax Reform package that included 5 tax cuts as well as the gas tax increase), while Senator Joe Kyrillos (R-13) got an "F" for taking the exact same vote on the "gas tax."

(5) Legislation to get rid of the Estate Tax in five years that went nowhere, is marked as a positive.  The legislation that actually did get rid of the Estate Tax in less than two years, is marked as a negative. 

(6) Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-26) gets credit for sponsoring legislation (A-1059), while running-mate Assemblywoman BettyLou DeCroce gets no credit for co-sponsoring the same legislation.

(7) A bill (ACR-213) proposed by far-left Democrat John Wisniewski (D-19) which would allow voters to over-turn all of Governor Chris Christie's vetoes of anti-Second Amendment legislation passed by the Legislature was rated as a POSITIVE by AFP.  Does that make AFP anti-gun?  It certainly seems so.  On top of this, they assigned credit or blame incorrectly.  For instance, AFP credited Senator Michael Doherty even though he hadn't sponsored a Senate version (none exists).

(8) Legislation to spend millions to fund Planned Parenthood, legislation to oppose ObamaCare, legislation regarding Paid Sick Leave, and legislation to provide Welfare to Drug Dealers -- none of this was important enough to include in AFP's screwcard.  On the other hand, legislation regarding interior designers, hair-braiding, music therapy, and drama therapy all were more important, according to AFP.  Really?  Did someone take a dump in their brain and forget to flush it?

(9) AFP is apparently hostile to legislation proposed by Senator Steve Oroho, called the Human Trafficking & Child Exploitation Prevention Act.  It appears to fly in the face of what AFP national chair David Koch calls "free trade." However, the scores of some legislators, such as Senator Tom Kean Jr., improved dramatically.  Kean, who just a session ago was in the high 50 percentile range, suddenly got an "A"!

(10) Of all the hundreds of votes taken in the Legislature, AFP "counted" just nine Assembly votes and six in the Senate -- and one of those they got wrong because they cherry-picked it from a previous session.  In other words, either the ass-monkey can't read a date correctly or somebody really wanted to screw someone.

Now we come to Jersey Conservative's weekly corrective to the AFP screwcard.  Yes, AFP sucks large and somebody has to step in and make it right.  We didn't look for this duty, but as Ronald Reagan once said:  "If not us, who?  If not now, when?"

One of the good things that came out of the Tax Reform package was the increase in TTF money going to fund local road and bridge maintenance.  That's real property tax relief at a time when many local governments are setting their budgets and property tax rates.

A bill (S-3076) to send $400 million to county and municipal governments was passed in the Senate on March 13th.  Only one Senator voted against it -- Democrat Ray "Lord of Ass" Lesniak (lifetime ACU rating ZERO).  Thirty-six other Senators, from Mike Doherty to Jennifer Beck, from Steve Sweeney to Dick Codey, all voted "Yes". 

Yesterday, it was voted on in the Assembly.  Three voted against it.  Democrat John Wisniewski (lifetime ACU rating ZERO), Erik Peterson (R-23), and Jay Webber (R-26) voted "No", while 67 voted "Yes". 

We found it strange... and worth mentioning.

Stay tuned...

NJ GOP legislators who screwed Trump this week

Should legislators be required to disclose tax returns?

A lot of Democrat legislators appear to think so. . . then again, maybe not.  They believe that Presidential candidates should or at least a certain Presidential candidate who is now the incumbent President.  Fair enough.  This is the New Jersey Democrats' version of what some southern Republicans got up to after Barack Obama was elected President.  Their tool was to mandate production of birth certificates.  The Jersey Democrats want tax returns.

It seems America now does that third world country thing of de-legitimizing the winner of every national election.  We now place faction or party ahead of country.  Hopefully we don't go the whole hog and start the violent coup thing any time soon, but there are an awful lot of idiots out there on both sides.

Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick raised the question of having legislators and gubernatorial candidates disclose their tax returns at Thursday's Assembly session.  It is good to see some Republicans calling the Democrats out.  Unfortunately, there are others who would rather back the Democrats up .

Yes, it is time for the first installment of Jersey Conservative's weekly corrective to the ridiculous "screw card" scores shat out by the crew over at AFP (Anarchists for Petroleum. . . subsidized petroleum, that is).  We didn't want to go down this road, but the sheer ignorance and blissful trashing of the state's most consistently pro-business/ pro-tax cut legislators left us no choice.  We have been forced to apply balance.

On Monday, the Senate voted for S-3048, which is legislation designed to screw over and embarrass Republican President Donald Trump.  The bill "requires candidates for President and Vice-President of United States to disclose federal income tax returns" in order to be allowed to appear on a ballot in New Jersey, and it "prohibits (the) Electoral College electors from voting for candidates who fail to file income tax returns." 

Yep, that is a middle finger to President Donald Trump.  Look, we all get why the Democrats are doing this -- they are in deep denial and are allowing tribe to come before country (they wouldn't be in this mess if they had let Bernie win, but that is a story for another time) -- but why would a Republican join in? 

Here's what you need to know about the anti-Trump Koch organization that runs AFP.  One of their heroes is Republican Senator Jennifer Beck.  She got a good mark on the "screw card," and she also voted to screw President Donald Trump on S-3048.  Two other AFP "heroes" who also happen to be GOP Senators joined in on the screwing too.

Shouldn't Senator Beck and her colleagues be required to release their tax returns too?  This is all they have to release at present:

In their effort to embarrass and demean President Trump, AFP "hero" Beck also took a shitty vote that instructs state officials not to cooperate with federal officials on matters of national security and terrorism.  S-3011, "directs State and local governments to refrain from disclosing to the federal government personally identifiable information, regarding the religious beliefs, practices, or affiliation, or national origin or ethnicity, of any individual, which the federal government requests for compiling a list, registry, or database of individuals based on religious affiliation, national origin, or ethnicity... The bill further prohibits the use of money, facilities, property, equipment, or personnel by State and local law enforcement authorities to investigate or enforce any criminal, civil, or administrative violation, or warrant for a violation, of a requirement that individuals register with the federal government or any federal agency based on religion, national origin, or ethnicity."

Apparently the Senator and her colleagues who voted for this (thankfully, she was joined by just one other Republican, also an AFP "hero") have never heard of a religious group called the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ.  It was founded in 1955 by the Reverend Jim Jones.  According to Wikipedia, the group preached a religious message that mixed "Christianity with socialist politics, with an emphasis on racial equality." For a time, it was headquartered in San Francisco and boasted more than 20,000 communicants.  Later, the group moved to Guyana to establish a commune.  In 1978, the group murdered five people -- including a United States congressman and three journalists -- and forced or induced 918 people to consume poison or otherwise take their own lives.  276 children were murdered as a direct result of the "practices and beliefs" of this religious affiliation.  It was "the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act" until September 11, 2001.

Another bad, bad vote this week by AFP "hero" Senator Beck was intended as a slap in the face to efforts by President Trump to make good on his campaign promises regarding illegal immigration.  You won't believe the language in SCR-134:  "As amended, this concurrent resolution expresses the Legislature’s intent that school districts and public institutions of higher education continue to serve as safe zones and resource centers for students and families threatened by immigration or discrimination; and that school districts and public institutions of higher education continue to protect the data and identities of undocumented students, family members, and school employees who may be adversely affected by future federal policies or executive action that results in the collection of personally identifiable information.  Since the conclusion of the 2016 presidential election, school districts, public institutions of higher education, and the students and families they serve have raised increased concerns about the possibility of impending action by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that may impact undocumented students and their families.  As a result of this heightened concern, school districts and institutions of higher education across the country have adopted resolutions and policies reaffirming their intent to continue to act as safe zones and resource centers for students and families threatened by immigration or discrimination and to protect the identities of and data related to undocumented students and their families."

AFP "hero" Senator Jennifer Beck, was the only Republican to vote for this howler.  There are many important votes.  Illegal immigration matters.  Terrorism matters.  Defending America matters.  Don't let the Trump-haters at the Kock organization tell you that only the gas tax matters

Senator Beck and her collaborator at AFP push their pro-illegals, anti-Trump, social liberal agenda.

This ends the first installment of Jersey Conservative's corrective to the AFP "screw card."  Stay tuned. . . 

Measuring voting records for 2017

2016 was a very strange year, in that you had Tea Party people running around calling Senator Jennifer Beck a "conservative."  That's funny, because not even Senator Beck calls herself "conservative."  In fact, it's a label she actively runs away from.

There are those who called Seth Grossman, an activist and former Atlantic County elected official,  a "conservative" -- even as he pushed a radical left social agenda that many liberals think goes too far.  His plan to repudiate the state's debt is a solution only if your town and county and state want to pay cash for everything -- up front -- from now on.  Try building a bridge without financing and see what that does to your property taxes.  It is the Argentina model.  Hardly what you would call "conservative."     

Then there are the raters -- groups like the American Conservative Union (ACU) take their cues from GOP legislative leaders who are not especially "conservative" when they choose the handful of votes by which they rate a legislator.  And so they miss big ones like welfare for drug dealers and liberal legislators suddenly become more "conservative" without changing their voting habits at all.

The truth is that what it means to be a "conservative" has changed a lot since Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1980.  That year, one of the Koch brothers who have come to so dominate modern conservative politics ran against Reagan on a libertarian ticket with a platform that made many liberals blush.

Instead of swallowing a special interest group rating hook, line, and sinker -- we need to examine who is doing the rating, what is their history, their agenda as it pertains to the votes they selected, and what did they leave out.  Knowing these things will give the reader a better idea of who the rater is.

No one rating system is going to satisfy everyone calling themselves "conservative," so for 2017 Jersey Conservative is going to put together ratings based on a  broader range of conservative identities.   In this way, individuals can decide which legislator or candidate comes nearest to their selected "identity."

There are Reagan conservatives with issue interests different from libertarians, Tea Party conservatives, Evangelical conservatives, the Pro-Life movement, the Second Amendment movement, Trump conservatives, Chamber of Commerce Republicans, and "It's My Party Too" Republicans.  We also have the platform of the Republican National Committee as a benchmark. 

If you are a traditional Reagan conservative, it would be helpful to know not only how a legislator or candidate rates based on a "Reagan" issues grid, but on a "Trump" one as well, a "Koch" one, or a "Whitman" one.  It will broaden the perspective and provide more information than the simple "conservative" label does currently.  

This is going to be a collaborative effort, so we will be looking for your input on both issues and votes.  Write to us with your ideas.

Which one do you identify with?

Gas-tax repealers pass Black-Lives Matter bill

Last week, the New Jersey Senate passed legislation that will throw EVERY police officer who has to make the decision to use deadly force in front of a state-appointed special prosecutor.  Under this legislation, a police officer who arrives at a school shooting incident in the nick of time and uses his firearm to stop a would-be mass murderer of children will be presumed to have done something wrong and then tossed in front of a persecutory special prosecutor. 

This legislation -- S2469 -- could not become law without the support of two Republicans, Jennifer Beck and Gerald Cardinale.  Without their votes, the bill would not have passed the Senate.

The premise behind this legislation is that county prosecutors -- just by existing within the borders of a particular county -- have too close a relationship with the police officers of that county and therefore cannot objectively investigate an incident when a police officer makes a mistake or oversteps his or her authority. 

While this might be argued for states that elect their prosecutors, such as Pennsylvania, where police unions are active in that political process; in New Jersey all prosecutors are appointed by the same person -- the Governor.  So whether you are a county prosecutor, appointed by the Governor, or the Attorney General, also appointed by the Governor, you do not run for election and there is no potential for that kind of conflict.

If a county prosecutor is too conflicted to investigate a matter within his jurisdiction simply because he or she lives and works there, then the whole idea of county prosecutors needs to be scrapped and replaced with something like the United Kingdom's Crown Prosecution Service, where attorneys are appointed to prosecute on a case-by-case basis.  But the idea of dragging a police officer in front of a special prosecutor, simply because that officer did precisely what he or she was supposed to do in a deadly situation, is preposterous. 

All this legislation will do is to create a species of state prosecutor whose worth will be determined by the number of police officers' scalps collected and careers destroyed.  It will deteriorate the quality of police organizations  and with that, the safety of every community in New Jersey.

The Assembly might consider a "sensitivity training" amendment for special prosecutor designees.  It would include eight weeks of putting on a police officer's uniform, strapping on a sidearm, and engaging in day-to-day police work like traffic stops and domestic calls.  Call it prosecutors' boot camp.   

Just why two Republican Senators -- Beck and Cardinale -- would cross party lines to vote for this misguided legislation is open to question.  We suggest that it is because they find the contemplation of labor unions and working people disagreeable.  Senator Beck is a career  politician and lobbyist, while Senator Cardinale is a politician with a profession, as well as the owner of a luxury property in the Caribbean. 

According to a press release put out by the ACLU, Beck and Cardinale casts their votes on behalf of that organization as well as Black Lives Matter Morristown, Black Lives Matter Paterson, Black Lives Matter New Jersey, the Drug Policy Alliance, Garden State Equality, New Jersey Citizen Action, and the New Jersey Policy Perspective.  Beck and Cardinale stood with the far-left to screw working police officers and their families.

Gas-Tax Repeal Rally a No Show

If the gas-tax repeal is Senator Tom Kean Jr.'s plan to save the endangered liberals in his caucus, it totally crapped the bed on Saturday when the kick-off rally to a series of rallies across the state was cancelled and a pro-Senator Steve Oroho rally popped up in its place.  The repeal is being pushed by "Red Shirt" movement leader Bill Spadea, cultural leftist Senator Kip Bateman, and the petroleum lobby. 

Slated for Newton Green on Saturday, October 22nd (11am-2pm), the rally was organized with support from the petroleum lobby by people claiming to represent the Tea Party and other groups.  The run-up to the rally benefitted from paid advertising and media coverage, including a front page story on the New Jersey Herald the day before.  Organizers claimed that the response had been huge and claimed to had lined up a dozen speakers -- including 5th District congressional candidate Michael J. Cino. 

Cino, has attacked conservative Congressman Scott Garrett and the Republican majority in Congress for its "traitorous" votes.  Cino runs a group known as the "Red Dogs" who are described as a sort of vanguard in the "rebellion against the establishment."  We don't know if there is a relationship between the "Red Shirts" and the "Red Dogs."

The morning of the rally was rainy and the forecast called for a light drizzle.  The rally was set expressly "rain or shine" but was canceled a couple hours before it was scheduled to begin "due to weather."

Having explicitly described the rally as "public" in its advertisements, gas-tax-repeal organizers became concerned when they heard that people who didn't agree with them were thinking of attending their public meeting.  The gas-tax repealers asked the police to intervene to "segregate" the rally.  The gas-tax-repeal camp was asked about the criteria they intended to use to "segregate" members of the public at a public rally.  They wouldn't provide a criteria.

A building trades union representing thousands of families in Northwest New Jersey stepped in and obtained  its own permit, which lay outside Newton Green.  But in the end, it wasn't necessary, because with Newton Green vacated by the gas-tax-repeal organizers of the advertised public rally, the people who they had attempted to keep out had the Green to themselves.    

So at 11am on Saturday morning -- instead of the gas-tax-repeal rally that was advertised -- 250 people showed up in support of the Tax Restructuring plan passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Chris Christie.  They came to support conservative Republican Steve Oroho, who has been under attack by the Legislature's two most liberal Republicans -- Kip Bateman and Jennifer Beck -- and they came to combat the lies put out by the petroleum lobby that the 23-cent increase applies to home heating oil and baby ointment and polyester clothing.  All lies designed to frighten people and to inflame hatred and even violence.

The facts, as provided by the Office of Legislative Services, are that nothing new is taxed and that all the exemptions that were in place remain in place. This means the increase does not apply to home heating oil or baby ointment or polyester clothing.  In fact, the law now INCREASES the number of exempt products.  We will discuss these additional exemptions in detail in an upcoming column.

Saturday's crowd -- numbering more than 250 -- was made up largely of trade union members and their families, but many local Republicans turned out, including two Sussex County Freeholders and several local elected officials and GOP municipal leaders.  About a dozen Pro-Life activists were present as well as that many grassroots Second-Amendment campaigners.  About a half dozen people attended who were drawn by the newspaper coverage. 

Three speakers addressed the crowd.  Rev. Greg Quinlan of the Center for Garden State Families reminded those present that Senator Oroho is a leader in the fight to preserve traditional values in New Jersey and America.  He added that those who want to drive Senator Oroho out of office are followers of the two most culturally left-wing members of the GOP in the Legislature and that earlier this week the two had celebrated the deaths of millions of unborn children by honoring the racist memory of eugenicist Margaret Sanger and her Planned Parenthood organization. 

Economics professor Murray Sabrin explained how the gas tax is a user tax and that this is a moral form of taxation.  The gathering was reminded that President Ronald Reagan, the founder of the modern conservative movement, favored user taxes and used the gas tax to fund road and bridge construction in America.  Sabrin went on to remind the audience that those "Red Shirts" who are trying to make the gas tax the big issue of 2017 are doing so to deflect attention away from the real problem tax in New Jersey -- the property tax -- which is a driver of the state's highest in America foreclosure rate.  Those who say the gas tax is the problem do so to support the Abbott-system of spending the state revenue from income taxes.

Finally, a union leader from Sussex County reminded the rally that "this was supposed to be their (the petroleum lobby's) rally" and that they had been there to spread lies about the Tax Restructuring plan and hatred for Senator Oroho.  He went on to thank the working men and women present from Sussex, Warren, and Morris counties and the thousands of union families they represent who live, work, and vote in the 24th Legislative District.  He promised that they would be back again and again and again and again, door-to-door, to carry the message to EVERY household in the 24th District.

The event was topped off with two announcements:  First, that Franklin Mayor Nick Giordano, who had been moved to oppose Senator Oroho after listening to the propaganda of "Red Shirt" lies, had written a letter endorsing the Senator and the Tax Restructuring plan.  And second, that the Senator's youngest daughter had safely delivered a child.  Steve Oroho's new grandson.

More Republicans are now vulnerable

The NJGOP is a party organization without a base of support -- and after the Governor leaves, the views held by its leadership will not match the aspirations of a heavy majority of its natural electorate.  They disagree on issues like abortion, upholding the Second Amendment (as well as other Bill of Rights issues), and gender morphism (the new fundraising tool of the same-sex marriage lobby). 

They will also be more deeply divided than ever along lines of class.  If New Jersey Republicans were already living in a time-bubble of Kean-Whitman attitudes, that will get worse as they react to the flood of blue-collar and post-collar voters into the party, courtesy of Donald Trump.  As the GOP's voters become poorer and grungier, the NJGOP's leadership will want less and less to do with them.

At the same time, the unification of the powerful New Jersey Democratic Party, the joining up of massive resources and a huge activist base behind a single mega-wealthy candidate for Governor sets in motion an existential struggle for the NJGOP in 2017.

In the era of SuperPACS, Republicans would have been lucky to have had the resources to defend all their incumbents in the General Election next year. But the way in which the TTF debate was handled this year has made the prospects for next year much worse.  The antics of Jennifer Beck, Bill Spadea, AFP, and some in the tea party movement have opened the door to several expensive primaries. That will spend down an already limited supply of money and drive up the negatives of the eventual GOP candidate in a growing number of districts.  Given the resources of the now unified Democratic Left the TTF debate itself has opened the way for them to contest a growing number of heretofore "safe" Republican seats. 

The Democratic Left has the resources.  Remember too that the Democrats already hold all three legislative seats in the 1st District -- the 5th most Republican district in the state.  In theory then, there could be just 12 Republican legislators left standing when the dust settles.  But the Democrats have won even in rock-ribbed Warren County, where they held the Freeholder Board within memory, and pre-Oroho they were able to contest and win a seat on the Sussex County freeholder Board.  Given the right candidate and resources, the Democrats have been able to elect a Senator in Morris County.

The failure of legislative Republicans to debate their policy choices in an adult manner has led to everything from accusations of criminal misconduct to death threats against those traditional conservatives concerned about the monstrous growth of debt.  The tone of the TTF discussion within the Republican tent has been suicidal and whatever is to be gained from building the radio career of former GOP candidate Bill Spadea will be lost in the pointless rage he has directed with malice and on purpose at Republican legislators.  Through one-sided interviews, misrepresentations, and outright lies, Spadea magnified the significance of a 23 cents-a-gallon tax increase and taken the focus away from New Jersey's highest in the nation property taxes and highest in the nation foreclosure rate.

Liberal GOP insiders, like Senator Jennifer Beck, have stoked Spadea, given him permission to behave so irresponsibly.  While refusing to address the TTF debt and opposing spending on roads and bridge repairs, Beck called for new spending for Planned Parenthood.  Then she got Spadea to put out lies about a Republican colleague who is the Prime Sponsor of the most important piece of Pro-Life legislation this session.  How is that for killing two birds with one stone! 

This Republican on Republican fratricide will most certainly lead to primaries that the NJGOP and the Republican legislative committees cannot afford.  The hatred driven by the Koch Petroleum-funded AFP, some Tea Party groups, and especially Bill Spadea at NJ101.5, is such that it should come as no surprise when legislators on both sides of what should have been a mature, civilized policy discussion end up with primary challenges next year.

Good job Beck!  Good job Spadea!  Good job AFP!  Good job Tea Party! 

Instead of a rational discussion, we have had an emotional mob forgetting that while their Social Security payouts have been increasing for inflation each year, for 28 years the tax on gasoline used to fund the TTF has not been adjusted for inflation.  Let's run those numbers:  The federal cost-of-living-adjustments were 4.0% in 1988, 4.7% in 1989, 5.4% in 1990, 3.7% in 1991, 3% in 1992, 2.6% in 1993, 2.8% in 1994, 2.6% in 1995, 2.9% in 1996, 2.1% in 1997, 1.3% in 1998, 2.5% in 1999, 3.5% in 2000, 2.6% in 2001, 1.4% in 2002, 2.1% in 2003, 2.7% in 2004, 4.1% in 2005, 3.3% in 2006, 2.3% in 2007, 5.8% in 2008, zero in 2009, zero in 2010, 3.6% in 2011, 1.7% in 2012, 1.5% in 2013, 1.7% in 2014, and zero in 2015.  But the price we paid to maintain our roads and bridges remained the same.  Didn't we ever wonder how?  

One of the most interesting aspects of the operating style of Beck, Spadea, AFP, and some tea party groups is the way in which they vilify their opponents. A policy discussion over a long neglected adjustment for inflation of a revenue source was turned into an existential drama.  As Paul Mulshine noted earlier this week, how did all these people survive when gasoline was $4 a gallon not so long ago? 

The displacement of reason by emotion is the classic way of the fascist.  So is the necessity of dehumanizing your opponents.  That is how you get people to wish someone dead, to threaten it, or even to act on it.  A colleague who you have known personally for years, who has been over to your home for supper, who has met your wife and children and you his, suddenly becomes an insignificance unworthy of human understanding. 

The followers of such people are told that it is right to despise Republicans like Joe Kyrillos and Steve Oroho and Jon Bramnick and Betty Lou DeCroce.  Their followers are told that under no circumstances should they meet with these "RINOS" because meeting another human being, on-the-level, person-to-person might give rise to thoughts of moderation, to an understanding that though we disagree on this issue, we agree on much else, or to at least the recognition that in another person's face, there is humanity.

"No, that is not the way," they hiss, "you must hate these people as you hate a cancer."  All this dark energy over a policy discussion regarding how to address a long-neglected debt, over how to repair and maintain the roads every one of these people use every day.  Wow!  Wow!  Wow and wow again!

Beck-AFP-Spadea don't measure up to Lonegan

In 2009, Steve Lonegan collected 11,220 hand-written signatures in just a few weeks of going door-to-door.

It's been on-line since December 2015, but Senator Jennifer Beck has managed to get just 10,978 on-line signatures on her petition in opposition to raising the tax on gasoline. That's statewide.  In a state of 9 million people. 

And that's with Americans for Prosperity (AFP) putting a full-time effort into promoting Beck and Bill Spadea slavishly dishing up an amazing gruel of lies and distortions in an effort to arouse his listeners' anger towards those who are trying to find ways to fund the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF).

Lonegan got his signatures in the cold weather, by getting people to open their doors, talk to him, and sign his petition by hand.  Those who wanted to sign had to wait until someone travelled to them or they travelled to someone with a paper petition attached to a clipboard.

Beck's supporters can sign her petition from literally anywhere.  So why has the effort produced such an anemic response?

* * *

And now for the latest lie from Connecticut's own 101.5...

Yesterday, Bill Spadea let loose with this one:

"Then he (Sen. Steve Oroho) and other legislators changed the deal on us to one where gas taxes could have more than tripled! That’s why I’ve taken to calling him #DarthOroho..."

No.  That is false.  Not true.  A lie.

Actually, it is the other way around.  Senator Oroho changed the legislation so that the tax hike was capped so that it could not increase, let alone triple.

And the reason why Spadea has taken to calling Steve Oroho #DarthOroho is that his prefrontal cortex is developmentally stuck in its adolescent stage.  This also explains the need to foment group rage. 

Of course, the corporations who own the 101.5 station appear to care only about cranking up the ratings no matter what -- if their employee lies to this end, if the anger he stirs leads to threats of violence, it is all justified by being in the service of greater corporate profits.

Again, we remind those concerned that the federal government grants for-profit corporations a monopoly on the use of a certain radio frequency provided that they abide by a few rules and regulations.  One is that they should at least try to be honest.  The FCC website states:

"As public trustees, broadcasters may not intentionally distort the news. The FCC has stated publicly that 'rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest'."

What this means is that a radio station shouldn't out and out lie just to inflame public opinion in an effort to jazz up the ratings in order to sell more advertising and reap a windfall in corporate profits.  Facts and a fair presentation of the arguments on BOTH sides is the only course worthy of the name journalism.

Beck dismisses tax cut for vets as "cosmetic"

Sen. Jennifer Beck dismissed two tax cuts aimed at helping veterans and commuters as "cosmetic."  Her comment was made to reporter John Reitmeyer, and appears today in NJ Spotlight. 

One of those tax cuts is a $3,000 income-tax cut for honorably discharged veterans and the other is a new state income tax deduction worth up to $500 annually for commuter households making $100,000 or less.

To balance these tax cuts fiscally, the plan is to scrap a proposed state income tax deduction for wealthy people who contribute to charities.  The deduction on charitable contributions was strongly supported by Senator Beck and the leader of the Republican caucus, Senator Tom Kean Jr. 

* * *

Why is Bill Spadea out-and-out lying on NJ 101.5 and why is his station manager, the Townsquare Media corporation, and the Oaktree Capital Management corporation allowing him to lie?  It appears that he has something for Senator Beck that causes him to lose all semblance of objectivity.  While this might be understandable, the lengths to which Spadea has taken it are remarkable.

Again, we remind those concerned that the federal government grants for-profit corporations a monopoly on the use of a certain radio frequency provided that they abide by a few rules and regulations.  One is that they should at least try to be honest.  The FCC website states:

"As public trustees, broadcasters may not intentionally distort the news. The FCC has stated publicly that 'rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest'."

What this means is that a radio station shouldn't out and out lie just to inflame public opinion in an effort to jazz up the ratings in order to sell more advertising and reap a windfall in corporate profits.  Neither should it do so because it finds the spokesperson for one position more personally appealing than that of another.  Facts and a fair presentation of the arguments on BOTH sides is the only course worthy of the name journalism.

Bill Spadea, Sen. Beck and what's really going on?

Townsquare Media is the corporate entity that owns the license (Townsquare Media Trenton License, LLC) to operate radio station NJ 101.5 (FCC Facility 53458).  The license is a for-profit monopoly granted by the Federal Communications Commission. 

Townsquare Media is owned by Oaktree Capital Management.  This corporation dates from the mid-1990's.  Media sources note:  "Oaktree quickly established a reputation in the high-yield and distressed-debt markets."  The Securities & Exchange Commission fined Oaktree and ordered them to disgorge profits after the SEC ruled they had "sold securities short".

According to Oaktree Capital Management's filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission, it has important holdings in the petroleum sector, with one of its most important funds dependent on oil and gas profits from Alaska's North Slope.  So yes, boys and girls, raising the price of gasoline is not in their economic self-interest.

The federal government grants for-profit corporations a monopoly on the use of a certain frequency provided that they abide by a very few rules and regulations.  One is that they should at least try to be honest.  The FCC website states:

"As public trustees, broadcasters may not intentionally distort the news. The FCC has stated publicly that 'rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest'."

What this means is that a radio station shouldn't out and out lie just to inflame public opinion in an effort to jazz up the ratings in order to sell more advertising and reap a windfall in corporate profits.  But this is exactly what the corporation that owns NJ 101.5 has allowed Bill Spadea to do for months and allowed him to do again today.

Townsquare Media/Spadea has continued to use a report from the Reason Foundation that other journalists have investigated and called into question to make the case that road construction costs are "12 times the national average."  They have continued to broadcast and publish this very dubious figure, knowing that for months a much more detailed and full study has been available to them and that they would have been doing their listeners (and readers) an educational service by citing the several conflicting studies that now exist on this subject. 

The most detailed study made on the cost of road construction and maintenance in New Jersey was made by Rutgers University's Voorhees Transportation Center.  Information on the study, as well as the study itself, can be accessed below:

http://bloustein.rutgers.edu/new-study-by-voorhees-transportation-center-estimates-cost-to-build-and-maintain-njdot-roads/

http://www.state.nj.us/transportation/publicat/2016studyconopmaint.pdf

Bill Spadea should pull himself away from selling vinyl siding, used cars, and suppositories longenough to hold a rational discussion regarding the comparative strengths and weaknesses of each study.  While not trying to disparage the work of the author of the Reason Foundation study, who is known to us, his is a very different kind of effort to the one undertaken by Rutgers.  The Reason Foundations does a cursory thumb-nail review, taking as much space to review 50 states as Rutgers does to review one.  Rutgers is, by far, the more thorough effort.

* * *

Last week, the SaveJersey blog featured a story by NJ 101.5's Bill Spadea, who has been trying to justify his position against funding the TTF.  Aside from the ratings boost he's received, he is having an understandably tough time wrapping his intellect around the indefensible position that a user's tax is poor economic policy.

Spadea keeps looking for a way show that roads and bridges can be maintained and repaired in 2016 -- at the 1988 price-per-gallon of 14 1/2 cents.  So he's come up with a list of things to cut and he published the list on SaveJersey.

The trouble is, Spadea's newest heroine, Senator Jennifer Beck, has blown a hole in his argument.  Not only did Beck vote last month for over $100 million of the cuts Spadea wants to make this month, Beck's record shows that she supports NO spending cuts in any area of government and, IN FACT, supports increased spending.   All you need to do is visit Project Vote Smart and look at the answers Senator Beck was kind enough to provide us, herself.

So much for Bill Spadea's plan to fund the TTF by cutting spending.  Since Spadea started talking, all Senator Beck has done is to vote for more spending -- like the $7 million more for funding Planned Parenthood. 

But Spadea doesn't appear to notice these incongruities.   The talk radio host has already handed out the black hats and the white hats in his stage production of "a little masturbation ritual" -- and he doesn't want to reassign the "goodies" and the "baddies".  Hey, stick to playing with your electric blue phallic symbol.  Facts are too much for you.

Beck set off GOP primary stirrings for 2017

It started with GOP Senator Jennifer Beck, looking for an issue to run on next year, and soon got crazily out of hand.  Beck, a member of the GOP Senate leadership no less, got NJ 101.5's Bill "pulled-pork" Spadea to start the movement to publicly call for running primary campaigns against Republican legislators in 2017 and it took off from there.

Next it was taken up in the pages of the SaveJersey blog, with a call for open Republican-on-Republican warfare:

And who are these offending Republicans? Here’s the Rogue’s Gallery – read it and make them weep:

Jon Bramnick, LD 21 (Union, Somerset and Morris); Chris Brown, LD 2 (Atlantic):  Rob Clifton, LD 12 (Monmouth, Ocean, Burlington and Middlesex);  BettyLou DeCroce,  LD 26 (Morris, Essex and Passaic); Joe Howarth, LD 8 (Burlington, Atlantic and Camden);  Sean Kean,  LD 30 (Monmouth and Ocean); Nancy Munoz,  LD 21 (Union, Morris and Somerset); David Rible,  LD 30 (Monmouth); Maria Rodriguez-Gregg, LD 8 (Burlington, Atlantic and Camden) and Scott Rumana, LD 40 (Passaic, Bergen, Essex and Morris).

Note that many of this exceedingly motley crew are in the GOP leadership in the Assembly, including Assemblyman Bramnick, the putative leader of the caucus.

...For their support of the gas tax-hike abomination, the Gang of 10 need to be primaried, hounded, called out, denounced, condemned and run to ground as traitors to the state’s already oppressed taxpayers.

The writer also explicitly fingers the new GOP "Solutions NJ" super PAC as being "GOP up-and-comers who loathe the idea of a gas-tax hike." 

Why did the leadership of the Senate Republican Caucus encourage one of their members to negotiate a tax cut/TTF-funding deal, while a member of GOP leadership itself was allowed to publicly make war on that deal?  That miscalculation has opened up the possibility of primaries against legislative Republicans across the state.

The so-called "left" of the conservative movement in New Jersey -- represented by the anti-government, libertarian-leaning Liberty & Prosperity group of Atlantic and Cape May counties -- got into the act, calling for an Argentina-style "repudiation" of the $16 billion debt used to fund the TTF.  Yes, they want to default on the debt, walk away from it, and they have what could be a sound legal argument for doing so.  They also want to "identify, recruit, train, and support qualified candidates to run against (Assemblyman Chris Brown and others) in the Primary Elections next June."

Assemblyman Brown is one of three Republicans in the state who share a legislative district with two Democrats.  He is hyper-vulnerable in 2017.  If he is defeated for re-election, it will be the fault of Senator Jennifer Beck and the GOP Senate leadership for riling up and galvanizing the opposition against him.

Coming from the social-conservative "right" on this issue is the New Jersey Family Policy Council.  In an email blast in which they remind readers that they "don't usually get too involved in fiscal issues," the NJFPC goes after Governor Chris Christie, Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick, and other Republicans for voting for A-12, which increased the gas tax while reducing the sales tax and eliminating the tax on retirement income for most retirees.

Curiously, the NJFPC uses the talking points of far-left former Democrat State Senator Gordon MacInnes' Policy Perspectives group, and lifts its points directly from another publication.  MacInnes is an old-Great Society social warrior and former White House staffer under LBJ (for those of you too young to remember, that stands for President Lyndon Baines Johnson).

This is being follow-up with a political campaign seminar tomorrow at the Church of Grace & Peace in Toms River.  The seminar is run by a campaign professional from out West named George Khalaf, dubbed by NJFPC's Len Deo as "the Lebanese Lion from Arizona."  We don't know a soul who calls him that, by-the-way, apart from maybe his pal Paul Weber. 

George Khalaf is the former political director of the Arizona Republican Party, who started his own polling and general consulting firm two years ago and is now out looking for new clients.  The seminar tomorrow promises to "change the culture by winning campaigns... at all levels of elected offices, from School Board to Town Council, to County Office and all the way up to the State and Federal elections!"

Well the Lion has come to the right place to do some hunting.  New Jersey is one of the last breeding grounds of that nearly extinct creature -- the culturally far-left Republican elected official.  These people can't even tell the difference between boys and girls.  They want adult male sex offenders showering with the high school girls' soccer team.  In Arizona, their heads adorn every political consultant's office in every county. 

But it gets better.  The NJGOP lost legislative seats even with a popular Governor at the helm.  The GOP couldn't pick up a single Senate seat even when the Governor was winning by 20 percentage points.  In contrast, in Pennsylvania the GOP won 12 new legislative seats while their incumbent Governor was LOSING by 10 points!  Going into 2017, the NJGOP isn't going to have enough money to protect its vulnerable incumbents in the GENERAL ELECTION.  Forget about having the spare money for one or two or more or a bunch of primaries.

And as a pollster of some repute, George Khalaf will soon discover that most Republicans in the Garden State are over 60 years old and think culturally more like average Republicans do in Arizona than GOP "leaders" do in New Jersey.  New Jersey Republicans are utterly turned-off by these creatures who claim to represent them, their culture, or their country.  So let the Lion loose and... good hunting!  Or should we say, good dining?

By-the-way, great work Senator Beck... great work!

How indecision damaged the NJGOP

Somehow we ended up with four plans to fix the TTF.  Here is a brief review of those four plans and how they developed (courtesy of Sussex County Watchdog):

(1) The Democrat Plan.  This is the plan pushed by Democrats like Senator Ray Lesniak and Assemblyman John Wisniewski.  It recognizes that the TTF has not been funded properly for decades.  That since 1988, New Jersey has charged drivers just 14 1/2 cents a gallon of gasoline to maintain and repair our state's roads and bridges -- whereas states like Pennsylvania have had to charge their drivers over 50 cents a gallon.  Instead of pay as you go, New Jersey has been running up the state's credit card to pay for roads and bridges.  That's why the first dime (10 cents) of any tax increase will have to be used just to pay the interest on the debt.  The Democrat plan is to raise the Gas Tax to pay for the TTF.  Period.  No tax cuts.

What stands in the way of the Democrat Plan is Republican Governor Chris Christie.  Of course, after the Democrats take back the Governor's office in 2017, they and their overwhelming majorities in BOTH chambers of the Legislature will enable them to easily pass a gas tax of any amount they choose WITHOUT any tax cuts.  That is 18 months away and counting.

(2) The Oroho Plan.  Economists have long believed that one of the main reasons New Jersey ranks 49th out 50th for business environment is its high Estate Tax.  Where most states have got rid of the Estate Tax and few have an inheritance tax, New Jersey has both.  The Estate Tax kills job creation and results in the flight of capital and people from the state.  New Jersey's tax on retirement income is another major factor in driving away people from the state.

Knowing that the Democrats don't need the GOP to pass a gas tax after 2017, Republican leaders gave Senator Steve Oroho the nod to negotiate a compromise with the Democrats that would address TTF funding in 2016 in return for tax cuts.  Oroho did his job well and ended up with an economic recovery plan that not only phased out the Estate Tax and eliminated the tax on retirement income for over 90 percent of retirees, but cut four other taxes as well.  It was an incredible accomplishment that few expected to happen.  Unfortunately, the thinking within the GOP Senate leadership had changed by then.  Now they were looking for a political angle.

(3) The Beck Plan.  While Senator Oroho was negotiating in good faith, Republican leaders in the Senate decided to launch a political plan, on which they believed they could build a statewide campaign for the majority in 2017.  This plan was sponsored by a member of leadership, Senator Jennifer Beck, who claimed that it could fund the TTF without an increase in the gas tax by borrowing $4.4 billion and freezing aid to municipalities and school districts (K-12) at the current level for seven years.

In addition, property tax relief was to be frozen for seven years -- along with tuition aid grants, NJ Stars, student financial assistance, higher education funding, hospital funding, and the State Police -- all frozen at the current level for seven years.  The Beck plan also raided the state's Clean Energy Fund. 

The Beck plan's numbers were seriously flawed and entirely reliant on economic growth.  The plan would have bankrupted the TTF in the event of an economic downturn.  Beck's rosy estimate of 3.15 percent growth was more than double the current year revenue growth of 1.5 percent.  And her plan depended on the Democrats to enact $1.4 billion in health plan savings and on timely savings from the mergers of departments and agencies. 

While Beck's plan did look at spending, she undercut her own argument when she voted for over $7 million in new spending for Planned Parenthood, the operators of abortion centers across the country. 

There are no tax cuts in the Beck plan, no attempt is made to address the out-migration of income and capital.  But the real risk to taxpayers represented by the Beck plan was two-part.  First, that by freezing aid for seven years, it would force local governments and school boards to raise property taxes. Second, that the plan's flawed numbers would send the TTF into bankruptcy and result in a property tax explosion.

(4) The Christie Plan.  On Monday, June 27th, the Governor entered into negotiations with Assembly Democrats on his own compromise plan.  Throughout the day, the Governor's office ran the numbers in an attempt to reduce the amount of the tax increase on gasoline, but with the first 10 cents going to cover debt service, there was little he could do.  Just before midnight, Governor Chris Christie and Speaker Vincent Prieto emerged from the Governor's office to announce their compromise.

The gas tax would still be raised 23 cents a gallon, the Republican Governor said there was no way around it if we wanted to keep roads and bridges safe and maintained.  The Estate Tax phase out was gone, as were the other tax cuts negotiated by Senator Oroho -- with the exception of the elimination of the tax on retirement income.  Oroho had negotiated an elimination of the tax for over 90 percent of New Jersey retirees.  The Governor's plan lowered that to 80 percent.

The big change was the cut in the state sales tax to 6 percent.  A half-cent in January and another half-cent by the end of 2017.  The Governor's numbers show that whereas the gas tax increase will cost the average household $200 a year, the sales tax cut will save that household $400 a year.

* * *

Why did the leadership of the Senate Republican Caucus encourage one of their members to negotiate a tax cut/TTF-funding deal, while a member of GOP leadership itself was allowed to publicly make war on that deal?  Whatever the calculation, it has stirred-up a shitstorm and opened up the possibility of primaries against legislative Republicans across the state.  A column run in yesterday's SaveJersey blog called for open Republican-on-Republican warfare:

And who are these offending Republicans? Here’s the Rogue’s Gallery – read it and make them weep:

Jon Bramnick, LD 21 (Union, Somerset and Morris); Chris Brown, LD 2 (Atlantic):  Rob Clifton, LD 12 (Monmouth, Ocean, Burlington and Middlesex);  BettyLou DeCroce,  LD 26 (Morris, Essex and Passaic); Joe Howarth, LD 8 (Burlington, Atlantic and Camden);  Sean Kean,  LD 30 (Monmouth and Ocean); Nancy Munoz,  LD 21 (Union, Morris and Somerset); David Rible,  LD 30 (Monmouth); Maria Rodriguez-Gregg, LD 8 (Burlington, Atlantic and Camden) and Scott Rumana, LD 40 (Passaic, Bergen, Essex and Morris).

Note that many of this exceedingly motley crew are in the GOP leadership in the Assembly, including Assemblyman Bramnick, the putative leader of the caucus.

...For their support of the gas tax-hike abomination, the Gang of 10 need to be primaried, hounded, called out, denounced, condemned and run to ground as traitors to the state’s already oppressed taxpayers.

The writer also explicitly fingers the new GOP "Solutions NJ" super PAC as being "GOP up-and-comers who loathe the idea of a gas-tax hike."  Does anyone really believe that they are going to primary Assemblyman Jon Bramnick?  Should we really be spending down the slim resources we have in Republican on Republican battles?

Have the actions of the Senate Republican leadership attracted resources or driven them away?  And now we face independent expenditures against our candidates.  Why did Senator Jennifer Beck feel the need to be so militant and personal in her attacks on fellow Republicans?  She's never treated the pro-abortion crowd that way and continues to vote for more spending for Planned Parenthood.  Beck and Spadea stirred up an internecine mess that will be very difficult to rollback.

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.

* * *

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.     

Sen. Beck votes for Planned Parenthood

At the State House on Thursday, liberal Republican State Senator Jennifer Beck voted for every piece of legislation she could to help assist Planned Parenthood, the number one provider of abortions in America.  In its 2014 Annual Report, Planned Parenthood bragged that it had performed 324,000 abortions that year.  It's annual revenue is $1.3 billion -- with at least $530 million of that coming from government funding.

S-1017 expands Planned Parenthood's government subsidized services to a greater portion of the population -- in this case "individuals with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level." 

Led by Senator Steve Oroho (R-Sussex, Warren, Morris), most Republicans opposed the bill.  Senator Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth) was the only Republican to support the bill.

S-2277 spends more of your tax dollars on a "FY 2016 supplemental appropriation to the Department of Health for $7,453,000 for family planning services."  That's $7.4 Million in extra spending. 

Again, led by Senator Oroho, every Republican opposed the bill -- except for Senator Jennifer Beck.  She voted for it.

One of those looking on while Senator Beck did this was Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Communications Director Mike Proto.  Mike himself is Pro-Life and must have been embarrassed by AFP's support of Senator Beck.

NJ 101.5 impresario Bill Spadea ran for Congress as a Pro-Life candidate.  We wonder if he will ask Senator Beck about her votes when he next has her on his talk radio show.

State Senator Mike Doherty is a Beck cheer-leader.  Doherty also claims to be Pro-Life.  Perhaps Doherty can convince Senator Beck to stop spending money to support the nation's number one abortion provider.  That is a cost savings that can definitely be made.

Spadea's electric blue phallic symbol

Now here's a weird guy.  A politician (still has an open Congressional campaign account for any of you who would like to slip him a check) who role plays as a journalist, who role plays as a character from Star Wars. 

Is this the result of too much Dungeons & Dragons when he was a teen?

Here's a costs saving measure for NJ 101.5 to consider.  Instead of having impresario Bill Spadea actually interview guests, maybe he could dress up as them?  Spadea could role play the guests and then interview himself.  He'd make a very convincing Jennifer Beck. 

Listen to NJ 101.5... the Dadaist network.

Sen. Doherty is wrong to attack Lonegan

Politics is the realm of any number of social pathologies, but the inability to feel or to express gratitude is one of the least attractive.  We were reminded of this yesterday, when we read Senator Mike Doherty's comments on Steve Lonegan in PolitickerNJ.

Evidently, Senator Doherty now looks upon his old friend with a dismissive arrogance born of pride.  Doherty has been hanging out with establishment liberals like Senator Jennifer Beck.  Nowadays Doherty gets to sit at the cool table.  What use has he now for Lonegan, who Doherty mocked as "the Howard Cosell of politics." 

We recall when Steve Lonegan was New Jersey's Mr. Conservative.  The man who had pushed Bret Schundler off the pedestal to establish himself as the standard-bearer of the movement.  In the spring of 2009, Lonegan was in the fight of his life with Chris Christie.  Both wanted the Republican nomination for Governor to take on Democrat incumbent Jon Corzine. 

Assemblyman Mike Doherty had just been rejected by the members of the Republican county committee to succeed Leonard Lance, elected to Congress the previous November, as the Senator from District 23.  Doherty would now have to face an incumbent in the primary -- Senator Marcia Karrow -- and all Trenton was betting against him.

In stepped Steve Lonegan.  First, Lonegan sent one of his own gubernatorial campaign consultants to Doherty to help him organize his campaign.  Lonegan asked conservative legislators like Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll and Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose to back Doherty.  Most importantly, Lonegan raised money for Mike Doherty, practically all of it.

Day after day, when he was finished with the grueling schedule of running for Governor, Steve Lonegan would go into a windowless room at the heart of his campaign headquarters to make money calls for Mike Doherty.  He brushed aside complaints from his own campaign people with the words, "I got to do this for Mike." 

And not only did he raise nearly every dime Doherty spent on that Senate campaign, when Doherty seemed too depressed or unable, Lonegan found him a strong running mate in Hunterdon County Freeholder candidate Jennifer McClurg.

Lonegan placed Doherty, Ed Smith (Assembly), and McClurg on his ticket -- but it was Doherty who benefitted from a Lonegan GOTV operation that pushed just two names in Warren and Hunterdon Counties:  Lonegan for Govenor and Doherty for Senate.   

Lonegan won Legislative District 23 with 11,384 votes and Doherty won with 11,049.  But while Mike Doherty was elected to the Senate, Steve Lonegan lost statewide to Chris Christie.  And so Lonegan began a long slide from the scene in New Jersey, while Doherty, now a Senator, has established himself as a middling sort of legislator, known for his criticisms of government rather than for his constituent service or legislative accomplishments.

Last year, Lonegan re-emerged as a strong figure on the national presidential campaign of the United States Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.  Doherty, a one-time backer of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, supported billionaire Donald Trump over Congressman Paul's son, the U.S. Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul.

Now Lonegan has become a leader in a rather broad group of conservatives who are questioning the wisdom of nominating Donald Trump for President, at the Republican National Convention this summer.  Lonegan's effort is quite different from those of more mainstream Republican leaders who seek the same end.

Senator Doherty seems to believe that he can make someone a conservative simply by saying it is so, rather like bestowing it on someone.  Just who he is to believe that he has this power is the question here.  What Doherty suggests is rather like a nun believing that she can "bestow" virginity on a tart, simply by saying it is so.  Next he'll be telling us that Senator Beck is a conservative.

Doherty also mistakes boorish ways for evidence of a conservative intellect.  Loud talk and obnoxious carryings-on, threat-facing and other primate behaviors, do not make a conservative... it makes a baboon.

If Senator Doherty wants to be a good conservative, he should conjure up some gratitude for the conservative leaders who wet-nursed him and gave him the career he has today.  Mike Doherty owes a great deal to Steve Lonegan.  In future, he should show it.

Sen. Beck: Tax policy is black or white/ gender is not

Jennifer Beck is a moralizer.  If you disagree with her on something as banal as tax policy, it makes you a bad person -- and that extends to your family too -- you are all somehow less than human. 

But on issues such as whether a woman or her daughter can object to an anatomical male showering with them, or sharing their changing or toilet facilities, Beck insists on acceptance.  You see, for Beck, gender is loosey goosey.

But not tax policy -- something on which normal, rational people can have different positions and take different approaches.  On tax policy, Jennifer Beck becomes emotional. You are either with her -- or you are pond scum.  She'll get a colleague to accuse you of criminal activity if you disagree with her, or a group like AFP to run a campaign attacking your child, or a talk radio host like NJ 101.5's Bill Spadea to spread false information against you.

And what that means, if you are on the wrong side of Senator Beck, what that means is that you'll get compared to a dead bloody pig or that your legislative staff will get phone calls telling them to "burn to death in a car crash."  Irrational emotion can have its consequences, just ask former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Ah, the joys of talk radio.  We're not so sure that Jennifer Beck's district is the talk radio crowd, not so sure they're down with the Koch Brothers' AFP.  She'll have to shed these friends before changing into a costume more suitable for home.  But talk radio... if it was in 1968 what it is today, we would probably have seen the election of George Corley Wallace as President of the United States.

Here is a question for Senator Jennifer Beck and her allies to answer -- in between their ranting and raging on talk radio:  If New Jersey has the most expensive roads, then why have we paid the least for them -- for decades?

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in America.  Nowhere else are so many people so packed together.  More people = more wear on the roads = more maintenance and repair.

On top of that, we're sandwiched in between New York City and Washington, DC, with Philadelphia and Baltimore thrown in for good measure.  All that traffic back and forth on the northeast corridor. 

And yet, for decades, we have been getting by on 14.5 cents a gallon, while states like Pennsylvania need to charge drivers a tax of more than 50 cents a gallon on gasoline (over 65 cents a gallon on diesel). 

New Jersey has a population density of 1,196 people per square mile.  Why does Pennsylvania, with a population density of just 284 people per square mile, need to charge over three times what we do to fund their roads?  And Pennsylvania has 4 million more people than we do.  That translates into a lot more in-state drivers to tax. 

So how come we pay so little to fund the roads... despite those lurid claims on talk radio that we pay the most?

The answer is simple.  Debt is Trenton's crack cocaine.

Our politicians are credit card junkies.  Trenton has been able to get by on charging drivers just 14.5 cents a gallon tax because Trenton has been borrowing the rest in return for votes.

Cheap gas for cheap votes... don't worry, somebody else will pay... like your kids, or maybe, your grandkids.

In Pennsylvania, they pay their way.

In New Jersey, they put their children into debt.

Senator Beck should drop support for trans-men in girls' toilets bill

If we are to avoid another performance like 2015, the Republican legislative caucuses of both chambers should use 2016 to prepare for 2017.  The most important thing is to do yourself no harm. 

We've detailed before how bills like S-283 have no base of support and how they could do enormous damage -- not only to the prospect of turning out our base -- but with any voters who believe in privacy between the sexes and with protecting vulnerable women and girls.  Polling shows large majorities in favor of traditional privacy no matter how the question is posed. 

Such a poll was recently conducted in the Eleventh Legislative District in Monmouth County.  More on that later.

Suffice it to say that modesty might draw barbed mockery from some, but in a district in which 48 percent of all registered Republicans are aged 60 or over and 66 percent of Republican super voters (3 of 4 or above) are aged 60 or over, it is a safe bet that it still counts for something.  And we can't wait to find out.

When educated as to the number of convicted male sex offenders who could use a law like S-283 to gain access to girls and women for their self-gratification, the response is off-the-charts.  Republicans, Democrats, Independents -- it doesn't matter.  Many in the LGBT community break ranks with their lobbyist class and oppose S-283 on the grounds that it leaves too many people vulnerable to sexual abuse, rape, and even murder.

We understand from a highly placed source in the Legislature that S-283 will be making an appearance again.  This source also confirmed that S-283 will have GOP support. Prominent among those GOP supporters is Senator Jennifer Beck, a co-sponsor of S-283.

We didn't expect such a betrayal of the Republican base in an election cycle as rebellious as 2016-17 is turning out to be.  Of course, Senator Beck is making a lot of noise on other issues in an attempt to get conservative voters to forget who she really is, and her decades-long record as a lobbyist and legislator devoted to the liberal causes dear to the heart of the political and corporate establishment.     

If passed into law, Beck's legislation allows a man, with a penis, to become a legal "woman", simply by saying that he is seeing a therapist and then re-submitting his birth certificate to reflect his "new sex".  No surgery required. 

And it won't be recorded as an "amended" birth certificate.  It will be filed as the original.  The government will pretend that it can go back in time to correct the "perception" of the doctors and nurses who saw a child with a penis and checked "male".  The government will, in fact, lie and pretend that the attending physician checked "female" when, of course, he did not.    

What S-283 will do is endanger the lives of women and girls in New Jersey.  And come election time every legislator who supports S-283, regardless of their party, is going to have to answer some tough questions from average constituents about why you had to do this and not something important, like lowering property taxes, ending the tax on retirement income, or fixing the Transportation Trust Fund. 

Watch the video below and see if you are ready to answer those questions:

Beck & Doherty join left wingers to oppose tax cut for retirees

At yesterday's back to back press conferences at the State House in Trenton, GOP Senators Jennifer Beck and Mike Doherty joined with Democrat Senator Ray "Lord of Ass" Lesniak and Democrat Assemblyman John Wisniewski in opposing a plan that would give retirees an average $1,200 tax cut and phase out that destroyer of small businesses and family farms, the estate tax, while preventing an increase in property taxes to pay for local road and bridge repairs and maintenance. 

Beck and Doherty have their own plan, also supported by GOP Senator Gerald Cardinale, that freezes property tax relief to local governments for seven years and borrows heavily to run the state deeper into debt.  The Beck plan makes no tax cuts -- something the state teachers' union agrees with -- and leaves New Jersey's tax structure the worst in the region for retirees and the worst in the nation to grow a business and create jobs.

By refusing to fund roads and bridges through a petroleum-based user tax, the Beck plan gives out-of-state drivers a free ride while pushing the costs of maintenance and repair onto property taxpayers and future generations.  Groups  like AFP, which is funded by the petroleum industry, support Beck and Doherty, as do liberal organizations like the New Jersey Education Association and the Sierra Club.

When it comes to opposing the phase out of the Estate Tax, Liberal Assemblyman Wisniewski and talk show host Bill Spadea are both adamantly opposed.  They part company on a user tax on gasoline, with Wisniewski in support of an increase in the current tax, whereas Spadea would rather see no tax on gasoline at all and instead a substantial property tax increase to pay for roads and bridges.

All this is bound to have ramifications for the 2017 elections -- with the primaries now less than a year away.   How would retired voters behave if individual legislators voted against their $1,200 tax cut?  What would the effect be if it failed to become law and the state's retirees saw their $1,200 tax cut taken away?

In Jennifer Beck's District 11, 48 percent of all registered Republicans are aged 60 or over.  Just 20 percent are under age 45.  66 percent of Republican super voters (3 of 4 or above) are aged 60 or over.

42 percent of all registered Republicans in Mike Doherty's District 23 are aged 60 or over.  Just 21 percent are under age 45.  58 percent of Republican super voters (3 of 4 or above) are aged 60 or over.

In Senator Cardinale's District 39, 47 percent of all registered Republicans are aged 60 or over.  Just 18 percent are under age 45.  64 percent of Republican super voters (3 of 4 or above) are aged 60 or over.

Can these legislators afford to vote against a tax cut for retirees?