Congressman Gottheimer tries to cancel journalist Matt Taibbi.

By Rubashov

Josh Gottheimer is equal parts bully and crybaby. Quick to apply labels, tropes, and nasty sobriquets but emotionally vulnerable to the same when applied to him – excruciatingly so.

His own employees accused Congressman Gottheimer of workplace bullying. In a Ryan Grim column – titled, “REP. JOSH GOTTHEIMER IS A REALLY, REALLY TERRIBLE BOSS, FORMER STAFFERS SAY” – published in The Intercept (May 22, 2019), former aides to Gottheimer “painted a portrait of a man who pits staffers against each other, screams easily, and throws pens with abandon.”

As for tropes, this is the guy who was slammed just last year on allegations that his campaign darkened the skin coloring of his Italian-American opponent in order to make him look like a Sicilian mobster, while using language like “Fraudster Frank” on direct mail hit pieces. Josh Gottheimer can certainly dish it out.

But he can’t stand for long on the receiving end before crying foul – and looking for a referee of some kind to wipe his nose and smother him in a protective hug.

This happened again on Friday of last week, when one of the best investigative journalists on earth – Matt Taibbi – wrote a column titled, “Congressional Democrats heroic fight to save the rich”, which was published in the National Post on April 28th. Taibbi made the argument that the campaign by Gottheimer and other members of Congress to repeal the SALT cap is for the benefit of wealthier taxpayers rather than poorer ones.

Matt Taibbi is an intellectually curious man of the Left. He had the gig at Rolling Stone magazine once occupied by the great Hunter S. Thompson. Taibbi’s writing can be just as good but is more balanced, always fairer, with an always clear perspective. There is no bullshit about Matt Taibbi. It falls as it falls.

Josh Gottheimer appears to hate journalists like Matt Taibbi. So, when Taibbi re-messaged Gottheimer’s star issue, the powerful Congressman went to destroy him by accusing Taibbi of anti-Semitism. Gottheimer focused on this paragraph from Taibbi’s column:

“Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, made an inspired plea recently. The Harvard man and Alpha Epsilon Pi brother is a member of the so-called ‘SALT caucus,’ a group of congressfolk threatening to hold up Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill if it doesn’t include a full repeal of a Donald Trump-imposed $10,000 cap on deductions of state and local taxes.

‘It is high time that Congress reinstates the state and local tax deduction, so we can get more dollars back into the pockets of so many struggling families,’ intoned Gottheimer, one of 32 members of the SALT caucus, which includes 8 Republicans.”

Ah yes, did we mention that bipartisanship was another of Josh Gottheimer’s star talking points? Bipartisan this, bipartisan that – in reality just a bunch of establishment insiders, regardless of party, scratching each other’s ass in the furtherance of permanent incumbency.

To smear Taibbi, Gottheimer turned to a group that profits off hate – the ADL or Anti-Defamation League. If there was no “hate” to piss and moan about, there would be no cause by which the ADL could pocket the $80 plus million they take in each year. Hate is a commodity. Hate sells. And there can never stop being hate. If that happened, it would need to be re-invented. It is worth billions to some people.

On top of that, it is partisan political. The ADL is so political, in fact, that other Jewish organizations have labeled it a “Democratic Party auxiliary”.

And so, the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted: “Mentioning a member of Congress was in a Jewish fraternity in college in an article about tax policy is wholly irrelevant and plays into classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money. The National Post should edit this article ASAP.”

To which Matt Friedman, who writes for Politico and covers the New Jersey political scene, replied: “As someone of partial Semitic heritage, I had no idea that was a Jewish fraternity.”

So, Gottheimer turned to his old friend David Wildstein of the blog, New Jersey Globe. Yes, the same David Wildstein who was at the center of the scandal that ended the presidential ambitions of Governor Chris Christie – the self-styled “Mastermind of Bridgegate”. Wildstein obligingly wrote a hit piece on Friday, with the title: “Anti-Defamation League demands newspaper pull reference to Gottheimer’s Jewish fraternity. ADL leader says reference to congressman’s college fraternity ‘plays into classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money’”.

Wildstein’s column notes: “Jason M. Shames, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, echoed the ADL’s criticism.

‘Say what you want about the SALT cap or tax policy, but Taibbi’s unnecessary mention of Gottheimer’s membership in this article for the National Post only serves to perpetuate anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews and money,’ Shames said.”

Warming to his hit job, Wildstein continued:

“Incidents of anti-Semitism are at a historic high nationally, with 295 recorded incidents in New Jersey last year, according to Alana Burman, the associate regional director of the ADL.

Burman said that New Jersey was the second highest in the nation in 2020.

The Rutgers University chapter of Gottheimer’s fraternity was vandalized earlier this month during a 24-hour Holocaust Remembrance Day reading.”

That headline alone accuses Matt Taibbi of the sin of anti-Semitism. But only if you discount the “classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money” that David Wildstein has served up over the years. Beginning in 2018, David Wildstein has called Josh Gottheimer “the human fundraising machine”. Wait… a Jewish congressman being referred to as a “human fundraising machine”? You can’t get more tropey than that!

Of course, there is a difference. Josh Gottheimer likes that “classic anti-Semitic trope about Jews and money”. He doesn’t cry about that. Doesn’t mind it at all.

Of course, the real question is this: Did Matt Taibbi use the mention of a college fraternity to make a point about Josh Gottheimer’s religious affiliation, or did he do so to make a point about Gottheimer’s economic class affiliation?

Well, according to the United States Census Bureau, only 35 percent of Americans attend college. Pew has put together some interesting research on which religious groups have the greatest access to higher education. Here’s a hint – it isn’t Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists. Those thinking about playing the role of the oppressed should check it out.

Those who belong to fraternities are an even more select group. Just 2 percent of Americans have belonged to a fraternity or sorority. Journalist Cleo Chang wrote:

“Each year, 2 million university students prepare to enter the most prestigious enclave of what is already an exclusive set of American institutions. Think less along the lines of Harvard or Yale and more about the Greek letters that come to define them.

Selective colleges are merely the starting point for concentrated success. One only needs to browse the Greek life section of Cornell’s official website and see the slogan ‘The Power of 2%’ to recognize the perks that come with Ivy League admittance and Greek acceptance, especially when it comes to men.

As Cornell’s official website states, while only 2 percent of America’s population is involved in fraternities, 80 percent of Fortune 500 executives, 76 percent of U.S. senators and congressmen, 85 percent of Supreme Court justices, and all but two presidents since 1825 have been fraternity men, according to Cornell.”

So maybe, just maybe, Matt Taibbi wasn’t trying to make a point about Congressman Josh Gottheimer’s religion and all this pissing and moaning has just been an attempt to smear a good journalist for reporting the truth and messing with crybaby Josh’s message. In which case, the lot of you should be ashamed of yourselves.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
Hunter S. Thompson

Gottheimer denies Commissioners’ legal counsel at NJOHSP briefing.

On March 22nd Congressman Josh Gottheimer sent an invitation to the Sussex County Board of Commissioners to attend a “briefing” by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) on “the latest domestic terror threats in our State.”

The invitation, signed by Congressman Gottheimer and on official stationery, did not contain the date and time for the briefing or the location at which it was to be held. It did contain this paragraph:

“I will follow up with specific details on the briefing with NJOHSP and look forward to working together to stop hate, domestic terror, and extremism in all forms.”

But Congressman Gottheimer never did follow up with specific details. According to InsiderNJ’s Fred Snowflack, he instead politicized the briefing, using it as a political hit piece on the Commissioners. On a March 25th InsiderNJ post, Snowflack wrote:

“Today, Gottheimer, whose 5th District includes most of Sussex County, released a letter he sent to the county commissioners on March 22.”

Despite Gottheimer’s attempt to use the briefing as the basis for a political attack, his congressional office was contacted by Sussex County Commissioner Chris Carney, a union worker with Local 825 of the Operating Engineers. Carney, who was selected to fill the remainder of Josh Hertzberg’s term and who is running this year for a full term on the Board, demanded that Gottheimer hold the briefing.

In response to Commissioner Carney, Gottheimer’s office sent a follow-up to the Board of Commissioners, slating the briefing for today at 12:30pm by Zoom. The Board responded that it would be attending, along with the Board’s special counsel. After initially agreeing to this arrangement, Gottheimer’s office contacted the Board to inform them that their attorney would not be allowed to hear the briefing.

Why?

Why would the Board’s attorney not be permitted to hear a briefing by the Director of the NJOHSP? Might he ask some difficult questions? Would his presence make it more difficult to smear the names of private citizens and open the participants up to civil suits? Would he provide some unfortunate clarification as to what is or isn’t an actual crime?

So many of the NJOHSP “incidents” involve “flyers, pamphlets, and signs” that promote “white supremacy”, “white nationalism”, “neo-Nazism”, and “hate” of various kinds. But is this a crime when anyone can purchase Mein Kampf, by Adolph Hitler, on Amazon.com. What is more Nazi than Mein Kampf? Does each purchase count as an “incident” or is it uncounted?

The truth is that any government agency can increase or decrease the number of “incidents” by defining or redefining them in a way that expands or contracts their numbers. Is this what’s going on?

And here is another curious thing about this briefing. In January, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Congressman Gottheimer to the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. But this is the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) – a STATE agency that has nothing to do with Congress.

As a Congressman, Josh Gottheimer has no responsibility for or oversight of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP). He doesn’t vote on their budget – the STATE legislators who represent Sussex County do. In fact, Senator Steve Oroho and Assemblyman Hal Wirths are ranking members of their respective chambers’ budget committees. So why were they not invited to this briefing? Might they ask questions too?

Is this briefing anything more than political theater, for the benefit of a political ally, provided by the appointee of a Governor facing re-election? As such is it an abuse of power, a fraud, and a waste of taxpayers’ money?

We suggest a proper, academic review of the history of terrorism and the causes of extremism. One that does not whitewash the part played by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. It could be named in honor of that great liberal – a true, old-fashioned liberal – United States Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho.

“In examining the CIA's past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public.
The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.”

U.S. Senator Frank Church
(Veteran. Burma campaign. WWII)

Lykins, Fortgang, and Clarke support 1970’s-style busing and driver’s licenses for illegals

The Latino Action Network is an admittedly radical organization. The group is behind a lawsuit filed against the State of New Jersey (and its taxpayers) that demands the return of busing to achieve racial and ethnic “balance” in each and every school in New Jersey.

Here’s their plan: You work hard and pay property taxes so your kids can be placed on a bus and shipped to another school district far away. A school district that has no connection to the property taxes that you are forced to pay… the highest property taxes in America. Busing was tried in the 1970’s and it failed, but when has abject failure stopped radicals from pursuing a foolish course?

The lawsuit is called Latino Action Network v. New Jersey and was filed in May of last year. Even many Democrats think they’re crazy, which is why they don’t seek the group’s endorsement or even fill out its questionnaire. But some Democrats – like Deana Lykins in District 24, and Laura Fortgang and Christine Clarke in District 26, embrace this radical agenda. They sought and received the endorsement of the Latino Action Network.

And it doesn’t stop with busing. Latino Action Network doesn’t respect national borders either. They believe that driver’s licenses should be issued to illegal immigrants simply because they want one. What’s next… the right to open your front door, go through the fridge, and sleep on your sofa? We wonder if the people who run Latino Action Network operate their homes as a public convenience?

Unfortunately, this nonsense is becoming mainstream in the Democrat Party.

Why are so many Democrats obsessed with race and ethnicity? Do they need to convince people that they belong to this group or that, so they can then claim to be their “leaders” and collect a gratuity for said leadership?

Hey, if you want to find a pure bred somebody – go admire some Neanderthal fossils. We are a world full of mutts. What is an Englishman? An Iceni diddled by a Roman, mated with a German (Anglo-Saxon), rogered by a Norseman (Viking), sired by a Frenchman (Norman), mixed up with Celts, married to a Jamaican, a Pole, a Pakistani…

And what is a Jamaican, a Pole, or a Pakistani but a function of politics? This army got so far, this group came to this place, the borders were drawn thusly, and so on. Politics! Not science.

Nation-states matter because we derive protection and stability from them. They are the artifice upon which we hang our lives. Towns matter because it is where we live. We have more in common with our neighbors than we do with some ethnic group we choose to “identify” with. But race? Race is a nonsense proposition.

Those who use race as their measurement for every human interaction – who think in terms of “people of color” – are called racialists. Wikipedia notes that “Racialism is the belief that the human species is naturally divided into races, that are ostensibly distinct biological categories.”

The philosopher W.E.B. DuBois argued that racialism was merely the philosophical position that races existed, and that collective differences existed among such categories. DuBois held that racialism was a value-neutral term and differed from racism in that the latter required advancing the argument that one race is superior to other races of human beings.

But science has largely erased such arguments. Aside from some genetic correlations in the incidence of diseases in this subset or that, the idea of “racial identity” that is forced down every American child’s throat, that haunts our society in everything from census forms to employment applications, is entirely a political construct. The American idea of “race” is nonsense and as is the sport of labelling anything the Democrats disagree with as “racist”. The actor Morgan Freeman got it right...

The Democrats’ insistence on the primacy of race is an inverted return to their past. Like then, Democrats today are obsessed with what measure of blood from this group or that flows through someone’s veins. They seem to forget that our blood – the blood of our common humanity – is categorized, not in terms like Black or White or “of color” or “not of color” – but as O, A, B, and AB.

The Democrats need to end their obsession… and embrace humanity.

On Bramnick, Murphy Democrats put virtue-signaling before racial justice

In an attempt to distract attention away from the attempted cover-up of a rape within his own administration, Governor Phil Murphy and the Trenton Democrats have attacked Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick, a trial attorney, for his firm’s pledge to zealously defend those accused of sex offenses. That is right, Jon Bramnick’s law firm believes in the Bill of Rights and the very American idea that someone is innocent until proven guilty.

Not long ago, so did every good liberal…

The Innocence Project is not a group that anyone would call right-of-center. They take up the cases of those they consider to have been wrongly convicted – and wrongful convictions happen when law firms don’t do what Jon Bramnick’s firm promises to do… to defend their accused clients zealously.

The Innocence Project reports that the first DNA exoneration happened in 1989. There have been 367 DNA exonerations to date. All people wrongly accused or let down by lawyers who didn’t do what Jon Bramnick’s firm is being attacked for doing.

These innocent people – mainly men – served a total of 5,907 ½ years in prison for crimes they did not commit. The average time served in prison before exoneration was 14 years.

The average age at the time of their wrongful conviction was 26 ½ years. The average age at exoneration was just under 43 years.

42 percent of these cases involved cross-racial misidentification. 225 of those falsely accused and convicted were African-American. That is 61 percent.

Most exonerations involved sex offenses that they were falsely accused of committing. After these innocent people were exonerated, 162 actual assailants were identified. Those actual perpetrators went on to be convicted of 152 additional violent crimes, including 82 sexual assaults, 35 murders, and 35 other violent crimes while the innocent sat behind bars for their earlier offenses.

Apparently, Governor Murphy and the Democrats only cry “racism” when it involves a be-in , a protest, a statue, or a flag… real racism – by white collar, professional, prosecutorial and judicial elites – they could not care less about. That kind of racism involves their people, rich people, and rich people are always right… Just ask Wall Streeters Phil and Tammy Murphy. They’ll tell you how good they are.

Murphy and the Trenton Democrats are phonies. B.S. marketing reps who sell a line of crap they don’t really believe in. They lack character.

Governor Murphy and the Democrats should be ashamed of what they tried to do here. Especially given the backdrop of sexual assault and rape within their own administration.

Hypocrisy, War, and “Islamophobia”

By Rubashov

The New York Times is the newspaper of record in America. So if you ever want to know which way the Establishment is blowing in the good old U.S. of A., consider this: The last time the New York Times endorsed a Republican for President was in 1956. His name was Dwight Eisenhower. If you voted for him then, you would be 84 years old today. That’s the American Establishment.

Of course, since 1956, the American Establishment – with the New York Times as its lead mouthpiece – has endorsed a whole series of wars which actually are not “official” wars because, per the Constitution, Congress did not declare them. Of course, the media doesn’t focus on the illegally of these seemingly endless wars, only the often made up justifications for them.

The same Establishment media that makes a show of displaying its morality – with fashionable admonishments like “how dare you be Islamophobic” – has for nearly two decades marched people off to wars in which they have been killed and maimed and left psychologically damaged by the Islamic combatants of the other side. And our own side has been asked to kill and maim and break the Islamic peoples against whom they have been cast. Ask any combat veteran. Killing is not an antiseptic business. It stirs the emotions. One cannot be fond of those you are asked to kill.

During and after the Great War (World War I) German-sounding place names across New Jersey were eliminated, changed to something else. Was it racism? Or was it in the nature of people who have been asked by their government to get angry enough to kill? Was it racism? Or was it the pain of a dead son or husband or father? Was it racism? Or the loss of a limb or limbs or eyes or psychological wholeness? Forty years after the end of the Second World War, there were still people who refused to buy Japanese automobiles. Racism or the residuals of a prescribed anger? Anger and loss…

The same Establishment media that decries “Anti-Muslim” thoughts or speech supports the wars in which actual Muslims are bombed, shot, starved, made homeless – and we are asked not to notice. They are our moral superiors, the arbiters of what is good and what is evil. Just do as they direct and know that to kill a man (as directed by government) is not as great a sin as to think an unsanctioned thought. Thought is the only real crime. Thought and its attendant, speech.

This is why Establishment media so hates the Ron Pauls and Tulsi Gabbards of the world. Anyone who questions war is job one on their hit list. The honest Left and the honest Right know this, which links them forever as “outsiders”.

Who is Tulsi Gabbard?

Tulsi Gabbard is a military combat veteran serving as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Elected in 2012, she became the first Samoan American and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress.

Gabbard served in the Hawaii House of Representatives from 2002 to 2004. When she was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives at age 21, she was the youngest woman to be elected to a U.S. state legislature. Gabbard served in a field medical unit of the Hawaii Army National Guard in a combat zone in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and was deployed to Kuwait from 2008 to 2009.

Gabbard was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2013 to 2016, when she resigned to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

Gabbard opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She is critical of interventionism in Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, and Syria.

Gabbard is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in 2020.

Bill Hayden: On 2nd Amendment, Lesniak is “laughable”.

By Bill Hayden

Former State Senator Ray Lesniak believes the AR15 is an assault weapon, only owned by white supremacists....laughable.

There are several things wrong with his assumptions.

First, he is already assuming a certain class of people own a product, hence profiling.  A form of racism from the Left?

Secondly, and AR15 assaults nothing, only a person can assault. My rifle can sit peacefully in the corner and not bother anyone for days. The Left’s assumption that you can legislate evil away is insane.

Think of this, the new craze is red flag laws. They come because they believe you have a defect that would prohibit you from owning a weapon. Yet, once gone with your guns, they leave you with the most dangerous weapon known to man, your car.

But let's get to the core of the Second Amendment, freedom. Because at the time of its writing, Americans had just won a revolution against tyranny, using the same exact weapon the tyrants had. Take a look at Venezuela for instance, a country that had all private guns taken away in 2012, and you see that an unarmed citizenry loses its voice, and freedom slips away. The Second is all that keeps the Leftists from really screwing life here in America up. It's the great equalizer.

The Senator also forgets that more people are killed every year with a hammer, than all rifles combined (FBI data), and I haven’t seen a hammer buyback yet.

Maybe the good Senator should read several Supreme Court cases that codify the AR15, as a protected weapon as it is in common use. Heller, and Miller come to mind.

Ray Lesniak should pick a battle he has some level of knowledge on.

 

Bill Hayden is President of the Skylands Tea Party in Sussex County.  Bill is a leader in the petition drive to Recall Governor Murphy.  On Saturday, May 11th, at 11am, there will be a rally to Recall Murphy on the Newton Green, Newton, Sussex County.

Should Democrat legislator resign over conviction?

We've been waiting for the campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin to step up and fire back at the group of hypocritical Democrats who accuse him of "racism" because he sought the endorsement of a conservative Assemblyman who attended a Hank Williams Jr. concert and who was photographed standing near a Hank Williams Jr. band banner (which consists of Hank Williams Jr.'s face, some lyrics to a Hank Williams Jr. song, and the rebel flag).  The worst this Assemblyman could be accused of is poor taste.  Racism is a lot deeper than that.

Of course, one would have to be a person of more than Twitter depth to actually understand that racism isn't about one's fashion accessories.  And as this is the Democrat Caucus of the New Jersey Legislature, you are not going to get much in the way of deep thinking.  This caucus has already done so much to infantilize political discourse. 

Instead of remaining silent, Hugin's camp could have reminded these Assembly Democrats that they have in their caucus, at least one member who has faced criminal charges and who has been convicted of a federal crime.   And maybe they should do something about it, before going after someone who has questionable taste, but who hasn't broken any laws.  Oh, but wait, the hypocrites will say... he has a Dukes of Hazard tattoo!

What a bunch of handjobs... they probably watched the show themselves (and perhaps salivated a little over the bodacious Daisy Duke). 

The Assembly Democrats need to clean up their own caucus, starting with this guy...

In attack on Sen. Doherty, Mandelblatt ignores class

It is becoming clearer by the day, that the anti-Trump backlash led by the Women's March organization, is an inverted revolution -- a revolt of the One-Percent against what they see as a threat to the imposition of their world view on the rest of us.  Make no mistake.  Their economic well-being is not threatened.  They will continue to privately smile when they cash checks from their unearned income, while demonstrating to the world that they are outraged at their "privilege". 

Once upon a time, the behavior of the One-Percent was constrained by a moral code that was broadly democratic -- in that it applied to everyone.  Even the very rich were advised "not to frighten the horses."  That however is no longer the case, and it will be some future historian who will draw the exact line when we, as a culture, slipped from being a vaguely Christian one to something decidedly Post-Christian, even Anti-Christian.  Like when the Emperor Constantine decidedly to make his subjects put aside their old gods for the new, we are... quite suddenly... somewhere else.

This dislocation has affected people -- ordinary people -- as much as has the imposition of a global economy on what had, until recently, been a Main Street one.  We are not a nation of immigrants, so much as refugees.  We are lost, cut-off from our past, unable to return to it or even, to find it.  A character in a novel by Evelyn Waugh once mused on the nature of memory... "These memories, which are my life -- for we possess nothing certainly except the past."

doherty-large.jpg

Enter Senator Mike Doherty, an honest man living in dishonest times.  The Senator expresses himself... honestly.  We say we value honesty when we do not.  What we value is the show of "virtue" above all else.  Like Pharisees, we wear our virtue so that the world can know our goodness and can reflect back that goodness .  Of course, we are not good.  We are simply blind to ourselves.  We fear speaking honestly, exchange honesty for a script of virtuous catch-phrases, homilies, and sentiments.  We say we hate "hate" while engaging in an endless pursuit of hate objects.  We exchange new hates for old hates -- and call it virtue.

Mike Doherty is a convenient hate object.  He expresses the dislocation that so many feel.  He does so in an honest, almost bewildered fashion.  He is concerned for his working class neighbors, concerned for the guy who maybe lacked the money or luck to get into college -- and who must now live by his muscle and grit.  Or the lady who ended up a victim of the sexual revolution, whose husband ran off with a younger gal at work, and who must now make ends meet and chart a way for her children.

The One-Percent don't care about them.  They call Doherty a "nativist" and a "racist" because he worries about how that man will compete in a market glutted with "illegal" labor.  Cheap labor.  The One-Percent love it.  There's nothing like having servants to puff up the ego.  Cheap labor was behind the murder of Julius Caesar.  With slaves pouring into the Republic, he wanted a law that ensured the future employment of Roman Citizens -- but the Patricians weren't having it, so out came the knives.  Oh, and the greedy pricks tried to justify it by saying they were striking down a tyrant.  Same as today.

When you look at who owns newspapers like the Star-Ledger, with their record of anti-worker, anti-union, greedy behavior -- you can trace back every one of their editorial page screeds to corporate self-interest.  George Carlin was right... "They want more for themselves and less for everyone else... rich c*cksuckers who don't give a f*ck about you."

Ever wonder why the only people that these pricks pay well are the columnists?  All the hard news reporters have been reduced to the level of piece-work stringers, but the owners maintain a stable of well-fed, well cared-for columnists who can largely be relied upon to advance their agenda.  They don't pay for facts.  For hard news.  They pay for hit jobs.  For opinion pieces to push their self-interest. 

Hell, the Gannett organization was sued by its own employees for maintaining a regime of systemic corporate racism... and then they have the balls to employ opinion writers to call other people "racist"?  Look at me, don't look over there, look at the pretty opinion writer balloon, don't focus on the bucket load of shit that we're standing in.

Enter Lisa Mandelblatt, Democrat candidate for Congress.  Such a pretty lady with a winning personality... it almost hurts to have to criticize her.  And she sure looks cute, marching against The Donald in that pink pussy cat hat with all those other rich suburban ladies.  But really?  She is going to make pronouncements about the working class... from Westfield???

Westfield is bubbleland!  It is practically the center of the bubble universe.  They have neighborhoods with names like Country Club Estates, The Gardens, Manor Park, Indian Forest, and Stonehenge... WTF!  They say they love people here illegally who can't speak English when what they really love are people here illegally who will work for nothing and who can't backtalk them. 

And working class people?  They have a name for them too.  If you said it about anyone else they would call it "hate speech" but hell, blue collar folk are this season's fashionable hate object.  They call them "trailer park trash."

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So perky Ms. Mandelblatt took a shot at Senator Doherty today, calling him out for what she alleged are his "anti-immigrant and nativist statements."  Come again?  This guy was in the Army... who do you think he lived with, worked with, and would have died to protect?  His three sons all signed up.  Who do they live with?

And there sits Ms. Mandelblatt, sitting pretty in Westfield.  You could have chosen to live anywhere... why Westfield?  Isn't that kind of anti-immigrant and nativist of you? 

Gannett tries to hide its real racism

There is a reason why the Gannett news organization wants to keep your eyes focused on flags and the like.  Gannett doesn't want anyone looking at their behavior or the behavior of some of the corporation's media outlets. 

Like the recent federal class action lawsuit brought against Gannett alleging that the corporation is "running a racist workplace that makes it impossible for black workers to be promoted".  The 26-page lawsuit, with 23 pages of attachments makes for interesting reading:

workplace-discrimination.jpg

"Gannett ran a sophisticated scheme and cover 'in the form of focus groups and other means and methods that are subjectively manipulated by Gannett to achieve its discriminatory goals and objectives.'


According to the lawsuit, Gannett 'has a corporate custom, policy, pattern, practice and procedure of not promoting African-Americans to director and leadership positions and utilizing a ‘one-and-done policy’ that disparately impacts African-American employed within the company.'

Gannett, based in McLean, Va., is best known for its flagship newspaper, USA Today. Its chain of newspapers, TV stations and other media reach than 110 million people a month, according to the complaint."

A journalist employed at Gannett added:

“In sum, the overall employment atmosphere and attitude at Gannett is hostile toward recruitment, training, leadership, management and advancement of African-Americans into top broadcasting leadership positions and opportunities.”

The EEOC found that it could not certify that Gannett is in compliance with federal anti-discrimination law.  The federal class action lawsuit "seeks class certification, restitution, and compensatory and punitive damages for Civil Rights Act violations, loss of prospective earnings and a court order 'to enjoin the discriminatory practices.'"

Gannett was also recently sued for age discrimination over its practice of replacing older employees with younger, less expensive ones.  Over 1,300 Gannett employees have been "fired" since 2011.

Gannett is a ruthless corporation that points fingers in a public relations spin operation designed to take your focus off them.  We will keep you informed about who they are.  Stay tuned...