Sweeney camp says African-American legislators guilty of endangering children’s lives

By Rubashov
 
There is an increasing sense of desperation in the attempt by Senate President Steve Sweeney and his camp to pass a series of controversial and unpopular bills that they waited until after the November election to spring on the voters.  That’s right, everyone who is now pushing so loudly for things like this forced  vaccination bill didn’t have the balls to make so much as a squeak before the election, when the voters could do something about it. 
 
Everyone party to this lame duck scam now is being dishonest with the voters – and the voters know it.
 
Sweeney’s latest act of desperation happened late yesterday, when the Democrat Senate President trotted out Senator Declan O’Scanlon (R-13) to suggest that Assemblyman Jamel Holley (D-20) would be culpable in the deaths of children.  Yes, that is how desperate they’ve become.  In an exchange on InsiderNJ, Senator O’Scanlon made this statement about Assemblyman Holley:
 
“Let’s be absolutely clear, the science is overwhelming, vaccines save lives.  Children’s lives.  As our solid, high levels of vaccination rates have fallen the occurrence of outbreaks of preventable, potentially life-altering or even deadly diseases has increased.  If Assemblyman Holley, or any other legislator, is successful in his effort to derail this bill he/they must accept responsibility for the results of their actions.
 
“It is not inconceivable that those results may include needless, preventable deaths of children.  And please don’t try to compare the infinitesimally smaller risk of vaccines to the dramatically greater risk of failure to maintain a high level of vaccination.
 
“Lastly, it isn’t just the optionally non-vaccinated that are at risk.  The elderly, the very young, the immunocomprosmised who can’t be vaccinated, the 1 in 10 children who are vaccinated who don’t develop immunity and wide swaths of the population whose immunity has lessoned over time. It will be these potentially permanently impacted lives that Assemblyman Holley will have to answer for.”
 
The Sweeney camp – with Republican Declan O’Scanlon as its spokesperson – are a group of non-scientists playing with science.  They make the claim that New Jersey’s vaccination rates have fallen and we are now facing a crisis.  Like it wasn’t a crisis before the election, but it is one now.  Now, in lame duck, children are going to die – and it’s going to be Assemblyman Holley’s fault!
 
But this simply isn’t true.  According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), New Jersey’s vaccination rates are higher than the national average.  So why did this crisis suddenly materialize after an election.  Isn’t that what you have an election for – to discuss issues like this, openly and honestly? 
 
Everyone know that the lame duck session is when you sneak through all the legislation average voters don’t want or care about as paybacks for those special interests who supported you during the election.  You know, the election where you didn’t discuss all these controversial issues in an honest and transparent manner.
 
Skepticism towards the pharmaceutical industry is not without reason.  After all, didn’t they tell us that opioids were the bomb, that they were just the thing for all our troubles, and not to worry?  Didn’t a court just rule that a major pharmaceutical company suppressed evidence that their product gave women uterine cancer?  And they suppressed it for three decades! 
 
So why should we listen to Sweeney and O’Scanlon’s assurances that Pharma knows best?  Isn’t that how the opioid crisis came about?
 
This is why you don’t do this kind of legislation after the election.  You do it before the voters have cast their votes, so that they have a say, so democracy can work.  Instead, we have the lame duck scam, and a lot of chest beating about a problem that wasn’t a problem the politicians wanted to talk about just a few months ago. 
 
And the desperation of the Sweeney camp is palpable.  Just look at the madness of the language employed by Sweeney spokesperson O’Scanlon:  “If Assemblyman Holley, or any other legislator, is successful in his effort to derail this bill he/they must accept responsibility for the results of their actions.  It is not inconceivable that those results may include needless, preventable deaths of children.” 
 
O’Scanlon is employing a very weird, highly unethical, form of bullying.  Afterall, given so loose an argument, wouldn’t this make Sweeney and O’Scanlon responsible for all the deaths resulting from their exemption?  If you really, really believed the b.s. you are laying on Holley, why would you exempt ANY child?  Would not their amendment be a kiss of death for those students? 
 
The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases reports the risk of death from measles is higher for adults than for children.  So why isn’t the Sweeney camp mandating the vaccination of every public employee, everyone on any form of public assistance, every incarcerated adult and juvenile, and everyone attending a state supported institution of higher learning? 
 
The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases recommends that all adults born in 1957 or later get “at least one dose of the MMR vaccine” and that all college and university students, healthcare personnel, and international travelers “receive two doses of the MMR vaccine.”  Heck, if we are talking science, that’s what the actual scientists are advising.
 
And the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases makes this politically-incorrect observation…
 
FACT: Most cases of measles in the US result from infections acquired in other countries or are linked to imported cases.
 
Holy dog crap!  So how come Sweeney, Murphy, and the Democrats are so committed to porous borders???  Like… if they were really committed to stopping the measles and protecting children…
 
Why is O’Scanlon silent on this point?
 
Have you noticed yet that the Democrat Senate President has successfully co-opted a Republican and got him to do his dirty work?  Sadly, this has happened before, on issues ranging from the imposition of the state income tax to the repeal of the death penalty.
 
Meanwhile, a host of very important issues go entirely unaddressed – beginning with property taxes.  Yeah, that thing that New Jersey leads the world in.  The highest property taxes in America, along with the highest foreclosure rate, along with the worst for business climate and job creation.  Why are none of the issues that average voters actually care about being taken up by the Legislature?
 
Why?  Because average voters don’t pay lobbyists, that's why… 

It’s like the Princeton University study says…
 
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
 
The Democrats know this – just as they know that they will always be able to find a Republican to help them push one of their special interest scams over the line.  Maybe Republicans should just refuse to participate in Sweeney’s scams until he agrees to actually address the important jobs that the average voters want the Legislature to do – like lower property taxes. 

Will Robert Hugin meet conservatives half way?

It's "the-past-as-future" for the neo-Whitmanites who want to make the New Jersey Republican Party their private, personal playground.  Yep, just like the good-old-days of "pass the cigars" and "let the interns beware."  And that was just what the ladies got up to! 

The current mantra coming from some GOP establishment types in New Jersey is that only a "moderate" can win statewide.  This is, of course, simply an opinion and an opinion that ignores the fact that the only Republican who has won statewide in the last twenty years has been Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and opposed to Same-Sex Marriage.  

Besides, in these very partisan times, merely having an "R" next to your name -- leave out supporting Donald Trump or Chris Christie -- is enough to preclude any significant support from voters who self-identify as Pro-Choice on Abortion, Pro-Gun Control, and Pro-LGBT.  If these are your first tier issues, what floats your boat, you are not voting Republican.  Period.

Despite this, there is a full court press to mint Republican candidates at all levels who intentionally suppress key parts of the GOP base.  And the trend has got worse, with the suppression of actual conservative candidates by key players in the neo-Whitman, "My-Party-Too" crowd.  Like true greedy crony capitalists, it's not in them to share.  But in elections that increasingly depend on identifying and turning out anyone who will even consider voting Republican, this is a disastrous trend. 

Of course, squishy candidates are real popular with the dregs of the GOP's Whitman-era glitterati --  cocktail-party liberals and crony capitalists who still want to show that they run the NJGOP -- and who are increasingly uncomfortable in the knowledge that they make up just a thimbleful of actual Republican voters.  Unfortunately for them, most voters are not looking to transfer more wealth and power to the one-percent, while infantilizing various "groups" deemed worthy of protection. 

Working class Republican voters and working class Democrat voters are really not that different.  They care about being able to have the means to life.  They want jobs, the opportunity to start a small business; to be free from the worry of foreclosure; an education system that balances costs with results; a safety net that hasn't all been spent before they need it, and a justice system that looks on them a free citizens and that keeps safe the places where they live, work, and shop. 

The  needs of working people are pretty straight forward.  If it were an ice cream shop it would be plain vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.  Of course, the oligarchs of the Democrat Party can't provide that -- so they advertise a dozen flavors other than vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry -- while the "My-Party-Too" Whitman Republicans have placed out a sign that says, "Closed for business, we've run out of ideas."

Why this is so was the subject of a study conducted by Princeton University.  Take the time to listen to this video.  This is an issue that unites both Left and Right:

Which brings us to Mr. Robert Hugin of the Celgene corporation.  He is the promising candidate for the United States Senate that has the whole GOP establishment buzzing.  They say this erstwhile Marine is the man to beat Bob Menendez.  And a big reason they are so excited about Hugin is his ability to fund his own campaign.

Hugin earns over $20 million a year -- making him one of the best paid bosses in the pharmaceutical industry.  Before joining Celgene, he worked for Wall Street's J.P. Morgan & Company.  Hugin is a longtime member of Chris Christie's fundraising inner-circle, whose allegiance was transferred to Donald Trump after Christie dropped out of the 2016 presidential contest.  Hugin even served as a Trump delegate.  This biography strongly defines the man, making it hard to see how the average Bernie or Hillary voter could ever mark a ballot for him. 

But sure enough, it has emerged that Hugin is conveying to people the idea that he is "a different kind of Republican" and not one of "them" -- as in Pro-Life, et al.

Hey, you donated six figures to Chris Christie and served as a Trump delegate... so do you think you're going to fool a committed Democrat with that Pro-Choice on Abortion line?  You will only drive away thousands upon thousands of voters who want to vote for you, but for whom you will make it so that they can't, in good conscience.

Could Hugin run as the kind of populist who doesn't need cultural conservatives?  Sure, as a Democrat.  Those chocolate and vanilla "kitchen table" issues are grafted onto a cultural worldview that makes you a Trump populist or a Bernie populist.  Neither could have attracted so many voters had they adopted the other's cultural positions. 

In trying to have it all their own way, the "My-Party-Too" crowd might end up destroying the Republican Party in New Jersey.  Ideas matter to most voters and it is ideas that draw people to identify with a political party in the first place.  But in New Jersey, ideas are merely advertising gimmicks for the lobbyists, vendors, and consultants who increasingly run the GOP.  It is something almost unknown to most Republican voters... but too, too easy to demonstrate.  So few don't have Democrat money in their DNA. 

Many GOP leaders make money off Democrats -- or with Democrats.  Lots of money.  While most Republicans just get taxed by Democrats.  That's the great divide.  So where do you stand?  And would you like to know?

Already, conservative libertarian Dr. Murray Sabrin is thinking about another third party run -- like the one in which he almost sunk Christie Whitman.  Perhaps an even stronger candidate will emerge.  Surrendering cultural issues conservative voters to these candidates would not be a good strategy for Mr. Hugin. 

If cultural conservatives, reform conservatives, good-government conservatives, non-insider/crony capitalist conservatives, were to figure out that the fix was in, and that no matter how hard they worked with the GOP establishment they would never get a break, then who knows  -- in these troubled times of Trumpian rebellion and Bernite reaction -- how this could flower?  Would we see its fruit in the low, low turnout 2019 elections?  Would a third-party, seeking that elusive 10 percent, find its way?

Instead of trying to stand-out and apart from the "usual" Republican through the tired and ultimately unconvincing trope of "a different kind of Republican" when it comes to issues like abortion and LGBT rights, Robert Hugin could act boldly to unify Republicans -- the establishment thimbleful and the conservative majority -- by finding a way to meet both half way. 

Yesterday, Senate Democrats blocked an effort to bring the United States into line with most of the nations on earth in preventing abortions after 20 -weeks, the point at which science has shown that an unborn child is sensitive to the pain of being... killed.  Every other country on earth recognizes this fact except North Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and the Netherlands.  Isn't it time we bring our laws into line with science and the rest of the civilized world?

The Senate's vote was on whether to stop the Democrats’ filibuster of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.  This legislation highlights how unborn children feel intense pain when they are killed in abortions. Fifty-one senators (forty-eight Republicans and three Democrats) voted to take the bill up for debate, but 60 votes were required.  Because Republicans don’t have 60 votes in the chamber to overcome the filibuster, Democrats successfully stopped the bill, which came after President Donald Trump indicated he would sign the bill into law.

Hey, you can still support Roe v. Wade and acknowledge the scientific fact that after 20-weeks, a child should not suffer the kind of death that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn't apply to serial killers, mass-murder terrorists, and rapists who murder children in the commission of a sexual assault.  That, the Court would argue, is "cruel and unusual" for the worse criminals... but for unborn children... are we supposed to look the other way?

So be "Pro-Choice" on abortion.  But support the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act too.  Give conservatives something.