Vin Gopal: We need curriculum transparency

By Rubashov

We need transparency and open government. Patrick Henry said, “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

We need transparency about what is being taught to school children and what government is paying contractors to create the materials to teach them. The concealment of the truth exposes government’s lack of respect for parents and taxpayers.

Democracy is impossible without transparency.

Senator Vin Gopal seems to agree. This is important, because Senator Gopal is the Chairman of the Senate Education Committee. He recently posted:

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

1) Much of what I read in these articles is not in the guidelines. There is generic language on identifying gender roles and treating all kids, regardless or their gender, with respect. Anything that is more specific than that is coming from a specific Board of Education locally.

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

3) According to the Department of Education Commissioner, any parent can opt their kids out of this if they choose to. I have re-confirmed this with our Monmouth County representative to the State Board of Education which approves the adopted guidelines.

Given the amount of misinformation out there and questions coming from parents, as Senate Education Chair, I have formally called on the Department of Education and the Governor's office to provide clarity on all of these items and issue it publicly before any further action is taken on implementation.

This is an important public admission from a majority party politician. You can read the full post here:

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

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

What is the New Jersey State Board of Education? It is a state government agency. According to its website (www.nj.gov/education/sboe/):

The New Jersey State Board of Education has 13 members who are appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the New Jersey State Senate. These members serve without compensation for six-year terms. By law, at least three members of the State Board must be women, and no two members may be appointed from the same county.

The Commissioner of Education serves as both the secretary and as its official agent for all purposes. The State Board also has a nonvoting student representative selected annually by the New Jersey Association of Student Councils.

The State Board adopts the administrative code, which sets the rules needed to implement state education law. Such rules cover the supervision and governance of the state’s 2,500 public schools, which serve 1.38 million students. In addition, the State Board advises on educational policies proposed by the Commissioner and confirms Department of Education staff appointments made by the Commissioner.

The State Board conducts public meetings in Trenton on the first Wednesday of each month. The State Board Office publishes an agenda in advance of each meeting to notify the public of the items that the State Board will be considering.

The public is invited to participate by providing comments on proposed rules either at a public testimony session or by submitting written comments on proposed rules.

Proposed rules for education in the state are also published in the New Jersey Register. Written comments on proposed rules are accepted 30 to 60 days following publication in the Register and may be sent to the State Board office at the Department of Education.

The Minutes of the June 3, 2020, meeting of the New Jersey State Board of Education read:

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

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

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

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

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

If the above sounds like religious training, that's because it is.

Taxpayer-supported, faith-based assumptions.

A revolutionary Elite is getting paid by government to erase the past and replace it with some pseudo-religious vision of how things should be.

Nobody voted for this. It isn’t popular.

To paraphrase Joseph Stalin (and this is the view from Trenton): A single act of bullying is a tragedy, a million people bullied is a statistic.

Democrats keep public out of “open” meeting to make State House VAX only

By Rubashov

In the coming battles between authoritarianism and democracy, what the State Capitol Joint Management Commission pulled yesterday will be pointed to again and again – used as a cudgel to demonstrate the hypocrisy, lust for unchecked power, lack of rational balance, use of fear, and general bad faith that define the authoritarians. The culprits here are partisan authoritarian bureaucrats – paid by the taxpayer, with benefits superior to those of average taxpayers, and pensions that working people can only dream of.

On a 5 (D) to 2 (R) party-line vote, the Commission voted to block any citizen from entering the public legislative areas of the capital complex if they cannot show proof of vaccination or the negative results of a COVID test from the preceding 72 hours. This includes the public areas of the legislative chambers and the committee hearing rooms, where members of the public once had the right to testify for or against legislation under consideration. All citizens will be required to wear a mask inside the building.

New Jersey now has a vaccine-or-test mandate for entry into public political and policy forums. Citizens not in compliance will be blocked and confronted by men with guns. Any citizen wishing to speak his or her mind to power, whether individually or assembling as a group, to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, is no longer free to do so. Their papers must first be in order. Journalists will likewise be unable to provide the scrutiny that the powerful require.

When it comes to exercising the freedoms contained within the Bill of Rights, five members of a Commission have unilaterally decided that a proof of vaccination card is now more important than a passport. Indeed, the primacy of the proof of vaccination card rises as the need for a passport is diminished.

If this was really about public health, the Murphy administration would not welcome, support, and promote undocumented immigrants residing in the United States in violation of federal law. Especially as so few come from nations that have had the opportunity to offer their people vaccination against COVID-19.

In this segment, anti-authoritarian Democrat Krystal Ball examines the collusion between the Biden administration and the pharmaceutical industry to keep most of the nations of the world unvaccinated and vulnerable – while pursuing a policy of open borders. If this was about public health, the members of the State Capitol Joint Management Commission would be demanding that the national borders be as tight as are the borders they police – the doors of the state capitol building.

Of course, they will not make such a demand because they are aiding and abetting an act of hypocrisy. Now watch this video and listen to a fellow Democrat, a woman of the Left, and a believer in democracy (true to her party’s name):

“The consequences for our own population – of this greed, cowardice, and corruption – will be deadly. We can get every last solitary soul in our own country vaccinated and it is not going to matter much in the end if new variants are constantly emerging from an unvaccinated global south. The pandemic will never end so long as billions of people remain vulnerable as a laboratory for COVID to mutate and jump the vaccines that we’ve already created.”

“Stop worrying about the anti-mask Karens and start worrying about the real COVID criminals, the CEOs and the politicians who would let millions die to protect their profits.”

If Black Lives Mattered as much to the five Democrats on the State Capitol Joint Management Commission as their political bosses say they do, they would issue a statement demanding that American pharmaceutical firms drop their patent protections and allow nations in Africa to produce the vaccine. This would save a lot more lives than any Assembly resolution or protest-turned-riot-turned-looting-turned-arson ever has.

The five Democrats on the State Capitol Joint Management Commission really don’t believe in mass vaccination. This is about power, about crushing the Bill of Rights and bringing a formerly democratic people to heel. They ignore the billions of unvaccinated waiting to come to the United States illegally but demand full compliance from every citizen who wishes to exercise the Bill of Rights.

But the actions of the Democrats who run the State Capitol Joint Management Commission were actually much worse than that described so far. Apparently, someone with the keys to the State Legislature’s website was concerned enough to block access to the Commission’s virtual/remote meeting yesterday morning. We heard from numerous people who looked for the usual link on the Legislature's website to sign-up and provide public input and it wasn’t there. It had been removed.

This went against both the policy of the State Capitol Joint Management Commission and the Open Public Meetings Act. In an October 22nd memorandum to Commission members that was not publicly posted on the Legislature’s website, the Commission Chairman wrote:

Due to the current public health emergency, the State Capitol Joint Management Commission meeting will be conducted remotely. The next meeting of the State Capitol Joint Management Commission will be held on Tuesday, October 26th at 10:00 a.m. in Committee Room 4. All Commissioners will receive instructions for remote access. For anyone who wishes to submit comments on any agenda item, or to participate in the meeting, please have them contact Roger Lai at rlai@njleg.org. For anyone who would like to view the proceedings, they will be live streamed at https://www.njleg.state.nj.us. Enclosed is an agenda and briefing material for this meeting.

In other words, an average citizen, wishing to comment or provide perspective, would need to be invited by one of the Commissioners to do so, as this notice was not made public on the Legislature’s website where members of the public generally go if they wish to testify or comment. The October 26th meeting of the State Capitol Joint Management Commission was posted on the legislative calendar in the usual place on the Legislative website, but all links to testify were removed and the Commission Chairman’s October 26th memo was not publicly posted there.

In effect, public comment was suppressed by the Commission’s actions and indeed, no member of the public was heard from despite dozens going to the legislative website to sign-up to be heard from. Remembering those large numbers of citizens who showed up to the State Capitol to protest attempts to do away with religious exemptions to vaccination, perhaps this is the purpose of the new rule and not “public health” after all?

“The people in charge are intent on replacing our free democratic system with an authoritarian system, where they don’t convince you of anything, they simply make you do things. And they benefit from that.”

Tucker Carlson

Are Dems using the Public Defender’s office to field anti-police candidates?

By Rubashov

We have been keeping track of the local politics in a handful of “bellweather” towns across New Jersey. These towns are representative in some way of a segment or idea about New Jersey and are a good indicator of trends. One such town is Ringwood, in Passaic County.

On Thursday, we reported that a certain candidate for borough council, Jessica Kitzman, was running for office even though she works in the criminal justice system as a public defender. Her LinkedIn page and the state’s attorneys website all indicate this, as do numerous other public documents.

A press release, issued by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office on July 23, 2021, notes that Kitzman – an “Assistant Deputy Public Defender” – was the defense attorney on a case involving a man who attempted “to lure a 14-year-old girl he met on social media for a sexual encounter. The ‘girl’ in reality was an undercover detective participating in ‘Operation Home Alone,’ a multi-agency undercover operation… that targeted individuals who allegedly were using social media to lure underage girls and boys for sex.”

We wondered how any self-respecting system of justice could allow the politicization of prosecutors and public defenders. So, we Googled can public defenders run for office in new jersey, and came up with this:

(a) All State officers and employees within the Office of the Public Defender are prohibited from becoming candidates for election to any elective public office and from accepting appointment to same (e.g. to fulfill the unexpired term of an elected public official).

According to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, Jessica Kitzman has been a candidate for borough council since March 18, 2021. So, we asked: “Is there anybody out there who can clear this up? Can a public defender run for public office? Please let us know.”

The local Democrat chairman answered our question and posted that Kitzman had received a “waiver” from the state and is allowed to run as an openly partisan Democrat for borough council. While this might be the case, Kitzman and the Democrats are certainly not advertising this on their campaign material. A recent mailer described her as a “public interest attorney with government experience.”

Why not just tell the truth? You are an Assistant Deputy Public Defender.

Heck, "public interest attorney" sounds like a lobbyist or someone pushing a policy agenda. And indeed, Kitzman does have an agenda as her statements and actions make clear, but there is a much larger question the New Jersey legal establishment and the taxpayers who pay the bills should be asking themselves: Is it really a good idea to turn the public defender’s office into a patronage holding area for Democrat candidates? Is that what it’s for?

A partisan candidacy for local office is only the first notch in climbing the greasy poll of elected office. A successful candidate for local office will naturally consider or be considered by party insiders for higher office. Do we want those partisan political considerations to get in the way of finding the truth through the justice system?

Would a prosecutor be inclined to go harder on someone whose politics he or she disagrees with? Conversely, would he let someone else walk? Careerism has already produced prosecutors who think primarily in terms of win/loss records and not of justice. Finding out what really happened comes second to “making a case.” And the consequences of that can be terrible for both the reputation of the process, as well as for the poor souls involved.

So too, with a public defender, looking to embellish a political career. Will he or she hold back on zealously defending someone the voting public loathes? Will he or she favor the cases that elevate standing with targeted political constituencies at the expense of justice? Ever aware of changing fashions, public defenders now routinely paint the police with a broad brush – can a political public defender be expected to pay less attention to partisan opinion?

And what is the ethos of the Public Defender’s office? What are the policies that its leadership has pursued? Just what do you get when you elect someone from that institution? Well, let’s start at the top, with Jessica Kitzman’s boss. This is from his public biography on his office’s website…

“He has become an influential stakeholder in the NJ’s justice system on many issues, having spearheaded NJ’s pretrial release reform that eliminated monetary bail, advocated for sentencing reform on NJ.s Sentencing Commission, and directed the filing of three successful Orders to Show Cause in the Supreme Court for release of jail and prison inmates during the pandemic.

…handled numerous death penalty cases until the abolition of the death penalty in December 2007. He served on the Death Penalty Study Commission as a strong advocate for its abolition.”

Okay, that is a clear policy direction.

In September of last year, Kitzman’s boss wrote an opinion piece in the Star-Ledger (NJ.com) which was unambiguous as to the ideology it embraced and in the policy direction it advocated:

“Social awareness and protests are important but not enough. People in positions of power must adopt policies and enact laws that take concrete steps designed to eradicate systemic racism. It is time to act.”

“The main culprit is the so-called drug-free school zone law that requires mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenses committed within 1,000 feet of school property. We have long known that it is a discriminatory law.”

This kind of honesty is to be applauded. The voters know exactly what to expect from the novitiates of such an institution as they pursue political office.

There is a network of non-profits, funded by Democrat party interest groups, that actively recruit and train candidates for public office. Kitzman is a graduate of one such group. They openly talk about building a “bench” from which to groom future county and state leaders. That so many on this bench hold patronage positions on taxpayer-supported payrolls is a good indicator of where the Democrat Party is heading.

When you recruit public defenders, special interest lobbyists, government regulators, and corporate “government affairs” careerists – instead of average property taxpayers, blue collar workers, retirees, and small businesspeople – your party takes a different direction and you get a different kind of government.

The politicization of the Public Defender’s office should be addressed. Trying to balance the scales of justice with the demands of electioneering is a fool’s errand. It is an injustice to everyone involved and a taint on our legal system.

“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

Coretta Scott King

Is public defender/Dem candidate breaking ethics rules to run?

By Rubashov

We live in very strange times. There is a kind of well-to-do, suburban street gang that visits itself upon people today – people who are exercising their right to have a voice in the way their government is run. People speak up, say something, and then the street gang descends upon them and almost always finds something to be offended about. Never in the history of mankind have so many people worked so hard at being offended.

We owe it to a Democrat candidate for providing us with a name for this street gang – the bleached bunghole brigade. They were operating last evening at a public meeting working to get needed aid from the Biden administration to taxpayers and small businesses. The bungholers showed up, led by an economically privileged millennial and a corporate executive from one of the more despicable New York firms. They were there to try to hang a blue-collar union worker – the only representative of his economic class on that public body – over the use of a single word that everyone uses, but over which the bungholers expressed “offense”.

And so, it goes. On any given day, in towns and byways across America, the bleached bunghole brigades are at work. Being offended. Causing the democratic process to grind to a halt. Making it about them and… their sore bungholes. But it is amazing what they miss while they’re trolling the social media pages for some new “end of the world as we know it” to be offended over.

Meanwhile, we have been keeping track of the local politics in a handful of “bellweather” towns across New Jersey. These towns are representative in some way of a segment or idea about New Jersey and are a good indicator of trends and such. One of these towns is Ringwood, in Passaic County. You might say the place is beset by bungholers.

The town is lovely, as are most of its residents, but Ringwood is a place where people count the political signs on your lawn… and they better be the right ones. If not, there is a busy social media “community” of bungholia ready to pounce. At the weekends, there are people who will spend a perfectly serviceable autumn day – warm and sunny – indoors, nursing grievances. They could be out walking, teaching the kids how to trap live animals, or at the very least getting drunk.

Some of them appear very excited about a certain candidate for borough council and have anointed her with the word, “idealistic.” How this word can be applied to a lawyer, we do not know, but apply it they have. And it caught our attention.

It seems this attractive idealist is a deputy public defender. A press release, issued by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office on July 23, 2021, notes that this “Assistant Deputy Public Defender” was the defense attorney on a case involving a man who attempted “to lure a 14-year-old girl he met on social media for a sexual encounter. The ‘girl’ in reality was an undercover detective participating in ‘Operation Home Alone,’ a multi-agency undercover operation… that targeted individuals who allegedly were using social media to lure underage girls and boys for sex.”

And then we remembered: Lawyers who serve as public defenders and prosecutors are not supposed to run for public office. We Googled can public defenders run for office in new jersey, and came up with this:

(a) All State officers and employees within the Office of the Public Defender are prohibited from becoming candidates for election to any elective public office and from accepting appointment to same (e.g. to fulfill the unexpired term of an elected public official).

A little further digging and we found this, from the OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER CODE OF ETHICS:

According to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, she has been a Democrat candidate for borough council since March 18, 2021. So, what’s up?

Is there anybody out there who can clear this up? Can a public defender run for public office? Please let us know.

“Hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse.”
Billy Connolly

Sorry Charlie (Wowkanech), women know what’s best for them and will make their own choices.

Charlie Wowkanech can’t get it through his head that there are a lot of creative women out there who don’t need Big Brother to negotiate for them.  They believe they can make their own arrangements, thank you very much.
 
Having never given birth himself, Charlie can’t quite understand how some moms like working outside the traditional arrangements that Wowkanech wants to impose on them – using government.  Ensuring compliance with such rules ultimately entails the use of force or the threat of force (aka ”men with guns”).   

As President of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, there are plenty of workers who want Charlie Wowkanech’s help.  Plenty who need his help. 
 
When a prominent Bergen County Democrat – a State Senator – held a fundraiser last year, the venue at which he held his fundraiser was undergoing some construction work.  Bricklaying was going on.  A few questions were asked and it turned out that the people doing the work were not union, they weren’t even legal residents.  They were abused by their employer – being paid near slave wages – while qualified union labor was being kept out of work.  All going on before the very eyes of the political class present.  These are the workers who need Charlie Wowkanech’s help – and in a hurry!
 
But instead, Charlie is up in arms because a lot of very savvy, educated, articulate  women have said “thanks, but no thanks” to his attempt to “show them the way” and be their “white knight”.  Hey Charlie, these women don’t need a Cinderella story.  They’ve figured it all out on their own.  They are making it quite well, their way, and now you want to destroy their lives in order to “save them”.  How backward is that?
 
Here’s Alida Kass, one of the smartest women in Trenton, to explain it…

Haven’t enough women testified at legislative hearings?  Haven’t they told the New Jersey Legislature that they don’t want this law?  What don’t you get about “No”?  “We don’t want it” doesn’t mean “maybe, we’ll think about it”.
 
Charlie, if you want to do some good, pass E-Verify legislation and apprenticeship requirements to make sure qualified trades union workers are hired, taxpayers and consumers get their money’s worth, and put an end to the near-slave labor of the illegal gray economy.

The buttheads on the Star-Ledger editorial board owe Sussex County an apology

By Rubashov

People in Sussex County have just spent most of the week without electricity, heat for warmth or washing, and hot food. They’re used to waiting for the government and government-sanctioned utilities to get around to them last. Sure they provide the drinking water to New Jersey’s cities – but that hasn’t stopped Governor Phil Murphy from wanting to turn the county into a dumping ground and cutting education funding to the county’s children.

Now the editorial board of the Newark Star-Ledger have directed their collective bungholes in the direction of Sussex County – to engage in a bit of unreserved dumping themselves. Over the weekend, the Star-Ledger let go a massive dump on folks still in the process of dealing with the damage done by that early December snowstorm.

According to the Star-Ledger, the arrest of two social outcasts – members of a biker gang – is a sign of a vast underlying social and political movement in Sussex County. The editorial board claims that in “sleepy Sussex County” there has been “a troubling uptick in hate crimes lately.”

Of course, this isn’t true. According to the official Bias Incident Report put out by the Murphy administration earlier this year – signed by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, State Police Colonel Patrick Callahan, and Civil Rights Director Rachel Apter – Sussex County experienced no increase in bias crime between 2017 and 2018 (the latest available figures). No increase… as in zero.

The same cannot be said for counties like Passaic, which experienced a 286% increase; or Union County, with a 200% increase; or Camden, with a 55% increase in bias crime; or Hudson County with its 43% increase. Of course, these are all Democrat-controlled counties, so the Star-Ledger would be hesitant to tie these genuine “up-ticks” to something like “White Extremism”. Far-better to just fashion a narrative around the arrest of a couple biker gang members in a relatively peaceful county – and then use them to characterize and smear the entire population.

The official figures – the data – reveal something else as well. Statewide, “bias crime” or “hate crime” has fallen. Since figures began in 2006, reported incidents have fallen from 825 that year to 569 incidents in 2018. Such crimes are actually quite rare – from 151 arrests in 2006, “bias crime” has fallen to just 59 arrests in 2018. Those are the official figures, direct from the Murphy administration.

In fact, the only “bias crime” evidenced by the Star-Ledger’s editorial board is the crime of bias committed by said board against the people of Sussex County.

In August of this year, NJ 101.5 went through the Murphy administration’s Bias Incident Report and listed the 49 municipalities with the worse incidence of “bias” or “hate crime”. Guess what? None of those municipalities were in Sussex County. None.

Now guess which towns were listed? Number one for “hate crime” was East Brunswick, in Middlesex County. Number two was Evesham Township, Burlington County. Woodbury (Gloucester), Hoboken (Hudson), South Brunswick (Middlesex), Cherry Hill (Camden), Fort Lee (Bergen), Princeton (Mercer), Hackensack (Bergen), Livingston (Essex), Montclair (Essex), West Orange (Essex), Jersey City (Hudson), Edison (Middlesex), and New Brunswick (Middlesex) all appear to be hotbeds of “White Extremism” if the Star-Ledger is to be believed.

Funny thing… some of these towns are the places of residence of those very same members of the Star-Ledger’s editorial board. Which means, next time they want to take a dump on somewhere, they should just step outside, pull down their drawers, and do it on their own front steps – because apparently, that’s where all the action is.

So why would the Star-Ledger just make this crap up and defame a whole county and its people? Well, we’ve been here before…

All this puts us in mind of the Great Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s. The media went crazy reporting on every salacious detail, hundreds of suspected “witches” and “cultists” were investigated while politicians and prosecutors pontificated and made their careers, dozens were arrested, many of whom were convicted and spent years in jail – before the truth pushed through to reveal that it was all just media hype. A public circus of show trials and fake stoked fear.

The New York Times covered this in one of their Retro-Report series…

Those convicted were eventually released. Instead of the media, the politicians, and prosecutors who convicted them being made to pay – the taxpayers paid out millions as some measure of restitution to the people whose lives were destroyed (for a story, a headline, a conviction). Writer Aja Romano wrote an interesting piece on the Satanic Panic a few years ago…

In 1980, a since-discredited memoir called Michelle Remembers became a scandalous bestseller based on its purported detailing of a childhood spent undergoing a wealth of shocking occult sexual abuse. Its co-authors were controversial psychologist Lawrence Pazder and his wife Michelle Smith, a former patient Pazder claimed to have regressed into childhood through hypnosis. Pazder purportedly helped Smith uncover memories of past abuse at the hands of members of the Church of Satan, which Pazder insisted was older than LaVey’s group by several centuries.

Almost from the moment of Michelle Remembers’ publication, its claims and allegations were repeatedly and thoroughly debunked. However, thanks to widespread and credulous media praise, Pazder and Smith were able to double down on their story, and Pazder became seen as an expert in the arena of what would come to be called satanic ritual abuse.

Despite the wild implausibility and unverifiable foundation of its stories of grisly abuse and sex orgies, Michelle Remembers was presented during the ’80s and early ’90s as a textbook for legal professionals and other authorities. It also spawned numerous copy-cat memoirs like 1988’s Satan’s Underground, all equally false, which embellished and mainstreamed the idea of a massive, intergenerational, clandestine satanic ritual sex abuse cult — one that could be occurring in your very own neighborhood.

“The devil worshippers could be anywhere,” writer Peter Berbergal said in summing up the zeitgeist. “They could be your next-door neighbor. They could be your child's caregiver."

The false narrative of Michelle Remembers would directly impact the nation for over a decade. Its dark occult fantasies helped to spark the rash of wildly dramatic, highly unfounded accusations of satanic ritual abuse that were attached to a string of daycare centers throughout the 1980s…

This fear would ravage communities and ruin multiple lives before it finally subsided — and lead to two of the most notorious criminal trials in US history.

…In 1980 in Bakersfield, California, social workers had been reading the just-published Michelle Remembers as part of their training when a number of children came forward to declare that they had been molested as part of a clandestine local occult sex ring. Two of the girls had been coached by a grandparent who was believed to have a history of mental illness. Over the coming months, their story of strange occult sex acts would grow more and more bizarre, as they claimed to have been hung from hooks in their family’s living room, forced to drink blood and watch ritual baby sacrifices, and much more.

Between 1984 and 1986, the investigation into these labyrinthine claims of satanic ritual abuse would send at least 26 people to jail in interrelated convictions, despite a complete lack of corroborative physical evidence for any of the claims.

Nearly all of those convictions have since been overturned, including that of a local carpenter named John Stoll, who spent 20 years of his 40-year sentence in jail. Parents Scott and Brenda Kniffen were each sentenced to 240 years in jail after their own sons were coached, through coercive investigative techniques and overeager therapists, to accuse them of child molestation. Both children later recanted and the Kniffens were released after serving 12 years in prison. As adults, several of the children involved in the trials professed to have been traumatized by their own earlier false testimony and the subsequent damage it caused.

But these children weren’t alone; the Kern County abuse case was the first, but would not be the last, to spiral hopelessly out of control.

…Among the many failed prosecutions of satanic ritual abuse in daycares was the McMartin trial, which became the largest, longest, and most expensive trial in California history. This massive investigation began in 1983, when one parent accused one of the staff members at the McMartin pre-school in Manhattan Beach, California, of abuse. During the police investigation into the abuse claims, a child-service nonprofit group known as the Children’s Institute conducted examinations of 400 children who attended the daycare. The examinations were run by a woman named Kee MacFarlane, who was an unlicensed psychotherapist.

MacFarlane had no psychological or medical training, and boasted a welding certificate as her highest academic credential; still, she and two other unqualified assistants were allowed to conduct the investigations, famously using “anatomically correct” dolls and other questionable methods of interrogation. These extremely coercive interview processes led to false memories among children, which then led to highly fantastic claims of abuse directed at even more staff members. Out of 400 children, the interviewers determined that 359 of them had been abused.

The accusations collected by the Children’s Institute resulted in a staggering 321 counts of child abuse being leveled at seven daycare staff members by 41 children. (Pazder, now considered an “expert” in satanic ritual abuse, was among the consultants in the case.) Among the litany of outlandish claims children made in the case were that daycare owners would flush them down toilets, that they had built secret underground tunnels to transport them to ritual ceremonies, that they had ritually sacrificed a baby, and that they could turn into witches and fly.

After six years of investigation and litigation of a five-year trial, the case ultimately essentially evaporated due to an utter lack of evidence. The original accusing parent in the case was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the investigative techniques used by the Children’s Institute were thoroughly discredited by the psychological community, and one by one, all charges against the daycare staffers were dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Due to the over-the-top nature of the allegations in the McMartin case, the public gradually became skeptical of claims of satanic ritual abuse. “After scouring the country, we found no evidence for large-scale cults that sexually abuse children,” Dr. Gail Goodman, a psychologist who conducted a wide-scale survey of US case workers about the hysteria, told The New York Times in 1994. What criminal allegations were made had generally come about due to a mix of mental illness, false memories implanted during therapy and witness investigations, and, most frequently, reports from people who were being influenced by histrionic media reports of satanic ritual abuse — a pattern very similar to the current outbreak of clown scares.

The writer goes on to outline a dozen or so similar prosecutions. All built on literally insane allegations. All debunked in time – but not after causing a remarkable degree of harm on those who were falsely accused.

Where were the members of the Star-Ledger editorial board in the 1980s and 90s? Maybe they were covering the Satanic Panic? Maybe they were fanning the flames of illogic and fear? Maybe they believe enough time has passed, that people have forgotten, and that maybe they’ll do it again? Let’s hope not. But then again, it’s not the 1980s… and who reads newspapers nowadays (besides the advertisers, many of whom rely on customers from… Sussex County)?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Hey Fred… It is called getting “Frelinghuysened”

By Sussex County Watchdog

InsiderNJ’s Fred Snowflack can’t think of a single Republican who was targeted by the Left and then driven out of office?  Well, we can.

Was there a nicer gentleman than Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen?  The Antifa Democrats targeted him and upset the old guy so much that his doctor told him to give it up.  They tormented a man whose public service began in the jungles of Vietnam and drove him out of office.  And it didn’t end – even after he agreed not to run again.  Remember how the Antifa Democrats held a party and mocked him, even as he closed his office?   

Two of these Antifa Democrats are now running for the Assembly – Lisa Bhimani and Darcy Draeger.  They and their comrades showed up to the old gentleman’s office on its last day open – to “celebrate” by acting like dirtbags.  Well good for you.  You showed all the world what measure of class and grace you possess – obviously the kind of folks who get their jollies by pulling the wings off flies.  

Well, nobody is getting Frelinghuysened in Sussex County.  Antifa can hold its breath and kick and scream and all they are ever going to get in Sussex County is a sympathetic flip of the bird and the sincere advice to suck it. We give as good as we get and will keep on and on… until all the participants are dust.

God always saves a remnant.  Here, in Sussex County, we are that remnant.

We remember who we are.  We remember that America is a Republic.  That we are a nation of laws.  We have due process.  We have the Bill of Rights.  We do not succumb to the emotional howls of lynch mobs.  We do not honor vendettas or fatwas.  We don’t give in to terrorists.  We don’t let them have their way.  We are… Americans. 

Which brings us to Fred’s silly comparison between the NAACP’s Jeffrey Dye, who held a taxpayer-funded state Labor Department job, and the Sussex GOP’s Jerry Scanlan, who is a volunteer county college trustee.  Dye lost his taxpayer funded job for (as reported in InsiderNJ) having “authored some Facebook posts that were anti-Semitic and anti-Hispanic.”

In the dismissal of Jeffrey Dye, we hope that the Murphy administration followed the law and there were work rules that addressed Dye’s actions.  We hope that Dye was afforded the due process that is the right of every worker when facing the often arbitrary power of an employer.   

The two great protections of the working class are the Bill of Rights and the right of workers to collectively organize.  If it ever becomes routine that an employer can simply fire someone when any old mob of people claims that he or she did something that gave “offense” then employers will have a ready tool to sweep away every protection that the working class has. 

In the case of Jerry Scanlan, the Board of Trustees of the Sussex County Community College failed to create a written policy to address the private use of social media by trustees, faculty, administration, and staff.  Scanlan broke no SCCC rules and did not use SCCC property.  He has no charge to answer for.  The Board’s only real course was to ask him very politely.  This they failed to do (and ultimately they placed the college in legal jeopardy).

Nobody would wish to live in a country in which the opinions of any old screaming mob constitutes the law.  Or a country in which laws are made up to appease the mob and then applied retroactively.  That would be a vigilante nation, a lawless nation. 

That might happen in other places… but not here.

Could Fred Snowflack pass a lie detector test to prove his moral superiority?

It’s bad enough Fred Snowflack writes for a blog owned and operated by a government contactor – an insurance operation no less – part of that grease-machine for which New Jersey is so famous.  Back in the day, when Snowflack was employed by actual newspapers, those journalists had a phrase when describing what you got from the grease-machine… they called it the “corruption tax” that made everything your tax dollars paid for more expensive.

But Fred doesn’t criticize the folks he works for these days.  These days, he argues against the Bill of Rights.  Snowflack claims that any time some Internet mob decides somebody has done anything they consider to be “offensive”, the mob has the right to have that person fired.  And Fred doesn’t seem to think this kind of extra-judicial mob “justice” will have a chilling effect on Free Speech??? 

Hey, if somebody broke the law… charge him.  If somebody broke the rules… discipline him (or her).  But if we are really going to demand someone’s head every time somebody writes or says or even “re-tweets” something somebody else finds offensive… then we better have pretty darn perfect people to start out with.  Because the Internet mob can be fickle about who it destroys… just ask former United States Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota). 

We think it time to break out the polygraphs.  Lie detector tests for everyone! 

Every member of the Board of Trustees of Sussex County Community College (SCCC) should be made to take a lie detector test.  They should be asked every question under the sun to cover every possible kind “offensive” behavior that could be imagined at some later date by some Internet mob.  From adultery and bad words to excessive drinking and the veracity of how they file their taxes… have they ever lusted after one of the SCCC students (even in their mind, because thought crime is the real crime, didn’t you know).

We should make Fred Snowflack take it too… and the monsters he works for.  It would be a blast…

Speaking of monsters.  There’s an old saying among machine politicians in Philadelphia.  It goes like this, “If you say you’re the boss, and nobody says you aint the boss, then you’re the boss.”

John F.X. Graham probably heard it back in the day, when he was prowling around amongst the ward healers in that sainted city of brotherly love.  Back when “ethnic” meant second or third generation Irish or Polish or Italian and individual neighborhoods developed their own dialects (yes, people really did talk like Rocky back then).

John F. X. moved to New Jersey where he followed the yellow brick road of selling insurance to government entities.  Unlike South Jersey’s George Norcross, John F. X. wasn’t really interested in building a political machine.  He was content with a money machine – the old-fashioned kind, the grease machine that uses campaign contributions to lube the representatives of the taxpayers, so that their money pumps out in a nice, steady stream.

In December 2017, the Observer wrote about John F.X. and his operation – the Fairview Insurance Agency – in a “special report” about “How Insurance Brokers Reap Public Funds Without Disclosure.”  It makes for interesting reading:

Insurance brokerages that make political donations are declining to disclose large amounts of money received indirectly from public entities.

One of the biggest goldmines for contractors in New Jersey is selling insurance plans to public entities, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers across the state.

But an Observer review of dozens of public documents shows that in some cases, it’s difficult or impossible to get a complete accounting of the money going back and forth between insurance brokerages — some of which are deep-pocketed campaign donors — and the public entities that award lucrative insurance contracts.

For instance, Fairview Insurance Agency Associates is one of the largest political donors in New Jersey, giving more than $120,000 to various candidates and committees in 2016, the ninth-highest among businesses in the state, according to the state’s campaign finance watchdog agency.

The Verona-based brokerage is also a big contractor, raking in at least $1.1 million through public contracts or agreements across New Jersey in 2016.

Under state law, the firm is required to report annually all of its political donations and public contracts to the Election Law Enforcement Commission, provided it gets at least $50,000 in public contracts and makes at least one political donation of any amount. Curiously, however, some of the money Fairview gets indirectly from public entities is then reported to ELEC as $0.

The effect is that, to the average observer reading ELEC reports, Fairview would appear to have made much less from public entities and institutions than it actually got — directly and indirectly — in a given year.

Observer reviewed ELEC disclosures for five companies, only three of which were required to itemize their contracts and donations.

A review of six ELEC disclosure forms, 29 invoices, four contracts and eight resolutions by school boards and local councils revealed a loophole in state law that allows brokerages such as Fairview to not report to ELEC tens of thousands of dollars, or more, that they receive as a result of working for governments or public entities.

In 93 cases, three brokerages reported receiving $0 from public agreements in 2016 on their disclosure forms filed with ELEC...  In one case, Observer found that Fairview was paid $54,000 indirectly from Jersey City’s school board but later disclosed $0 to ELEC.

It works like this. Brokerages — which sell insurance plans to local governments — are often paid commissions or fees by third-party companies. In this scenario, the actual contract does not go to the brokerage, but to the third-party company, while the brokerage still gets a cut of the business.

In some cases, the dollar amount of these fees or commissions can be traced back by filing public records requests with local governments. Some public entities that answered such requests from Observer provided copies of the original public contracts, which in turn detailed the actual fees or commissions paid to insurance brokerages that were reported to ELEC as $0.

In other cases, there is no mechanism to piece together what a third-party company paid to a brokerage in commissions. Some public entities did not disclose or could not say how much their brokers were paid indirectly by their contractors.

In March 2015, the Jersey City Board of Education passed a resolution to award Fairview a $54,000 contract to be the school district’s prescription insurance broker for fiscal year 2016.

Fairview did not end up receiving an actual contract. The school board struck a deal two months later with Express Scripts to manage its prescription benefits plan, and in that contract, it directed Express Scripts to pay Fairview $4,500 per month on its behalf, according to a copy of the contract provided by the Jersey City school board. The school district essentially paid someone else to pay Fairview.

In the end, Fairview reported that it received $0 in 2015 and 2016 from its work for the Jersey City Board of Education, according to its annual reports filed with ELEC. The firm noted that the amounts it disclosed “do not include commissions received from the insurance carriers.” (Observer, December 6, 2017) 

Campaign contributions flowing one-way, huge contracts flowing the other… minimal to no transparency. That’s New Jersey.

The problem is… the Fairview Insurance Agency owns the news agency (InsiderNJ) that hands out the designations as to who is who in New Jersey media.  And so we come to the quote used earlier…

“If you say you’re the boss, and nobody says you aint the boss, then you’re the boss.”  It is a scam, perpetrated by a bunch of b.s. artist insurance salesmen.

John F. X. Graham owns both the Fairview Insurance Agency and InsiderNJ (he holds titles of founder and publisher, respectively).  Michael J. Graham is Chief Operating Officer of both the Fairview Insurance Agency and InsiderNJ.  Ryan Graham is the Director of Business Development for the Fairview Insurance Agency and the Associate Publisher of InsiderNJ. 

That’s it folks… John F.X.’s grease machine has its own media mouthpiece with which to skew perceptions.  And that’s a handy thing to have in an age of hollowed out local coverage and a dearth of what was once called “investigative journalism.”  The press is now routinely used to punish the whistleblower, the taxpayer advocate, citizen activist, the underdog.  It’s easy to see why.

Now don’t get us wrong, just because John F.X. is all about the money… and the money… and the money… and the money… That doesn’t mean he’s not above playing the part of the noble, the enlightened, crony capitalist.  Hey, didn’t some notorious mob boss put a roof on a church?  Doesn’t Johnson & Johnson make up for failing to warn women that their product could cause uterine cancer by being oh so woke on LGBTQ?  It pays to have fashionable connections and to assist those connections in the higher causes of fashion.

John F.X. is a friend of Hillary.  Yes, that old wind bag.  You could forgive him being a friend of Bill because, heck, who wouldn’t want a night out on the town with Bill Clinton?  He’d make a Saturday night seem like a month of weekends.  But Hillary?  You know that’s just fashion.

Nevertheless, John F.X. has been called “a top Democrat fundraiser” by newspapers like the Bergen Record and the Newark Star-Ledger.  In addition to Hillary Clinton, John F.X. raised money for John Kerry in his 2004 presidential race, and he’s been a big giver to United States Senator Bob Menendez.  In fact, it was John F.X. who pushed the idea of Menendez on a national ticket as vice president:

In January 2008, the Jersey Journal along with other media outlets reported that “John F.X. Graham, one of Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Co-Chairs, thinks that New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez would make a great choice if Clinton wins the Democratic Primary… Graham fired off an email this morning to Clinton Campaign Manager Terry McAuliffe listing politicians who would make good vice presidential material, including the choices most often brought up:  Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards and Joe Biden.  But Menendez, a Clinton campaign national co-chair, would be the “most intriguing” choice, Graham wrote.”

“The name Richardson does not sound exactly Latino,” wrote Graham.  “The Latino voting block is becoming the most influential in this election, especially with the immigration and other economic issues confronting our prosperity.  For lack of a better term, he is the Latino Barack Obama with the experience.” 

Why would John F.X. think that encouraging people to vote along racial or ethnic lines is good public policy?  Has he not heard of the former Yugoslavia? 

Finally, John F.X. made his pronouncements while Senator Menendez was the subject of an FBI investigation.  Not that something like that matters when you are making a fashion statement.

Yes, so it seems that InsiderNJ can also be considered an outpost of the far-flung Clinton Empire.  Ahhhh, corruption at its most tasty. 

And it looks as though John F.X. is quite a big deal.  Even Wikileaks picked up loads of correspondence between John F.X. and his fellow Clintonistas.  Here is an example:

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As far as the money goes, national contacts and a national reach does have its advantages.  We found dozens of John F.X.’s insurance agency’s outposts around the country.  All making him money – but northern New Jersey and Essex County in particular is his base.  It was reported in Politico (November 24, 2014) that Essex County Democrat Party boss Joe DiVincenzo’s son worked for John F.X.’s insurance agency.  He also held a full-time public job as well. 

So it was no surprise that the most corrupt political machine in the state – the Essex County Democrats – inducted John F.X. into their “Hall of Fame” in March of 2015.  InsiderNJ editor, Max Pizarro wrote the panegyric, which we suppose was less messy than the alternative. 

Now can we ask this again?  What are these people doing handing out the rankings on New Jersey journalists?  Shouldn’t some organization, like the Society of Professional Journalists, be doing it?  Or the Columbia School of Journalism?  Or anything but the god-damned grease machine itself!

Ten years ago, the authors of The Soprano State – two old-school investigative journalists – joined with journalists like Josh Margolin to decry the “corruption tax” that added to the cost paid by New Jersey taxpayers on everything to do with government.  Could they have guessed that, ten years later, not only would the tax be more imbedded and less transparent, but that the very news agencies responsible for exposing and reporting on it would now be wholly-owned subsidiaries of the same grease machine responsible for the corruption?

New Jersey… you can’t make this stuff up.

Democrat councilman slams Murphy Sanctuary scheme as illegal and un-American

Now here is an old-fashioned Democrat.  The kind of Democrat who doesn’t believe the American flag is racist and that law enforcement is the enemy. 

We hope that every elected Republican in Sussex County has the spine to emulate this elected Democrat from Middlesex County.  Given the party machine and party radicals he has to deal with, what he faces is vastly worse than anything a quibbling Republican must deal with.    

The movement to stand up to Murphy that began with individual towns, then with Sussex County, and now in Monmouth, Ocean, Cape May, Warren, Hunterdon, Salem, and Morris counties, will continue to grow.  Republicans and their Democrat allies will defeat a Governor who is more comfortable making excuses for criminals than he is protecting the families of taxpayers.

The Sussex County Freeholders and Sheriff Mike Strada are resolved to fight the administration of Governor Phil Murphy and its attempts to bully and impose its illegal Sanctuary scheme on the taxpayers of Sussex County.  They are resolved to give the voters a say in the matter.

This week they will be meeting with counsel to devise a way to defeat any legal objections the Murphy administration may throw up to deny the people their right to vote on a function of county government for which they pay entirely from their property taxes.  Godspeed to them.

Dem. hypocrite criticizes Space & Wirths for opposing Gov. Murphy’s RAIN TAX.

If you don’t think you pay enough in property taxes already – and if you really believe you need to pay more – then do we have the candidates for you…

Democrats Deana Lykins and Dan Smith.

These two Democrats are running for Assembly against Republicans Parker Space and Hal Wirths.  On July 5th, Democrat Lykins posted a video on YouTube in which she criticized Parker Space and Hal Wirths for voting against Democrat Governor Phil Murphy’s controversial RAIN TAX.

Governor Murphy’s RAIN TAX scheme allows government to establish new local bureaucracies with taxing power.  Once established, these “stormwater utilities” would impose a new property tax on local taxpayers based on an estimate of the water run-off coming from their “impermeable surfaces” such as roofs and driveways.  Do you feel the need to pay an extra $100 or so each year in property taxes?  Does that sound good to you?  Because it does to Deana Lykins.

Deana Lykins claims that we need to pay more in property taxes.  Lykins says we need Murphy’s RAIN TAX now to prevent things like the recent algae bloom that closed down Lake Hopatcong to swimmers.  Actually, 15 years ago the Democrats told us the Highlands Act was going to solve the problem and make sure that things like the algae bloom weren’t going to happen.

The Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act was signed into law by Democrat Governor Jim McGreevey on August 10, 2004 – just days before he held a press conference to announce his resignation.  Of that press conference, many people still only remember how McGreevey successfully diverted attention from his legal issues, by raising his sexual “identity”.  Many forget that among the host of corruption investigations into McGreevey at the time was one related to land use.  Wikipedia explains… 

David D'Amiano, a key McGreevey fund-raiser, was ultimately sentenced to two years in prison for extorting $40,000 from a farmer, Mark Halper, a Middlesex County landowner cooperating with investigators. In the 47-page indictment, there are repeated references to the involvement of "State Official 1," later revealed to be McGreevey. In a conversation with Halper, McGreevey used the word "Machiavelli," the code arranged by D'Amiano intended to assure the farmer that his $40,000 campaign contribution would get him preferential treatment in a dispute over his land.

The Highlands Act put 859,000 acres – one ninth of the entire state – under the supervision of the state Department of Environmental Protection.  The Act specifically dealt with the issue of stormwater run-off.  In return for 880,000 residents in Sussex, Warren, Morris, Passaic, and Hunterdon counties surrendering their property rights and losing the use and value of their property, issues like algae bloom on Lake Hopatcong were supposed to be resolved.  But the Democrats LIED… as they always do.

Now it is 15 years later and Democrats like Phil Murphy and Deana Lykins claim they need a new PROPERTY TAX (the RAIN TAX) to solve the problem we paid for (in the loss of property use and value) a decade and a half ago!    

Even more disturbing are the lies Deana Lykins tells in her video.  She talks about going to “the lake” as a child… but leaves out that she isn’t from Sussex County and that “the lake” wasn’t Lake Hopatcong.  Deana Lykins is from Kentucky. 

Lykins got a degree in journalism from the University of Kentucky in 1993.  Then she went to work for the New York City Housing Authority – that state’s local version of COAH.  Lykins worked for the Senate Democrats in New Jersey when they rammed through the Highlands Act and sent it to Governor McGreevey for his signature.  Lykins was a legislative staffer in Trenton who assisted in locking up our property use and killing our property values… and for what?  Now she’s back 15 years later to tell us we need to pay more in property taxes to fix what her bosses promised they would fix with the Highlands Act!   

Once she got enough experience from government she joined that never-ending “revolving door” between government and special interests.  Deana Lykins cashed-in and became a lobbyist, first for the pharmaceutical industry and then for the insurance industry.   Lykins was National Policy Manager for Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals at a time when the drugs giant was being accused by regulators (and the New York Times) of making “payoffs to doctors for prescribing the company’s pharmaceutical products.”  She is associated with some of the insurance industry’s worst practices (but that is for another day).

The hypocrisy of this politician is incredible.  Deana Lykins’ embrace of Governor Murphy’s RAIN TAX is yet another reminder of the Democrats’ contempt for, and their malevolence towards, taxpayers.

Tea Party leader: Monmouth GOP “caved” on Sanctuary State stand

As the Save Jersey news website sadly reported earlier today, the Monmouth County Freeholder Board caved to a crowd of far-Left Democrats brought in by Democrat Party operatives – including several former Democrat candidates (defeated) who reside up the backsides of Governor Phil and First Lady Tammy Faye “Friend of Alvarez” Murphy.  There is no accounting for this level of fear and weakness.  Could it be the reason why so much of the Republican base is disgusted with Establishment types?

https://savejersey.com/2019/06/update-freeholders-table-anti-sanctuary-state-resolution-in-murphys-home-county/

Skylands Tea Party President Bill Hayden posted this spot-on commentary…

So recently, in Sussex County NJ, our Freeholders and Sheriff have pushed back against the sanctuary state nonsense Governor Murphy has pushed upon the taxpayers.

In Monmouth County, the freeholders there, under pressure caved like a cheap suit.

And why? The only people that win in this battle are big government types. Because read the Democrats statement on the Freeholders caving, and it is essentially the same plan of entitlements that have kept the people in the cities in poverty, and the Dems in power there. And you, the taxpayer funds this folly. Because NOTHING is free, it is always paid for by the taxpayers.
67% of illegals are on some assistance. And we know, even on the federal level they are receiving assistance as well.

Again to the tune of $138 billion a year on the federal level, $3 billion from NJ, out of a $38 billion dollar budget!!!!!

And all this to give special status to those that cut in line!!!

We as taxpayers were never meant to fund things that were illegal, but we do.......when is there going to be a fund to help take care of the downtrodden taxpayers???

Here is the Democrats’ idiotic statement:

One citizen observed: “Priorities directly impacting Monmouth and ALL NJ counties residents would be the amount of freebies handed out to illegals instead of helping OUR HOMELESS, OUR VETS, OUR CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE. So it ALL impacts the TAXPAYING LEGAL RESIDENTS OF NJ.” 

Another wrote: “We encourage our Freeholders to focus on priorities directly impacting Monmouth County's residents every day.... " Um, yea....... the burden on paychecks is an everyday thing!

Still another pointed out… “Illegal aliens cost us $250 billion!”

The Sheriff and GOP County Chairman of Monmouth County is Shaun Golden, a potential candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor in 2021.  How can he seriously consider running and winning conservative votes if he allows his Freeholders to kowtow to the Democrats like this?  Do they really think they picked up any votes from the people who attended their meeting and who issued the ridiculous statement above?  Joe Biden is too liberal for them!  They are holding out for an American version of Lenin.  They don’t vote Republican… ever.

There is a window to correct this and it needs to be corrected.

Candidate brags to local media about NBC “hit job” on Sheriff

By: Sussex County Watchdog

Since its founding in 2012, the contributors here at Watchdog have generally been just ordinary citizens, not professional journalists.  Nevertheless, we have got the ball rolling on a number of big stories in Sussex County – including the illegal negotiations to sell the county solid waste facility (caught in time and prevented), the solar program that ended up going bust (which ultimately cost taxpayers $26 million), the corruption at the county college (leading to the resignation of several trustees), and environmental issues impacting the health of county workers (CWA members) in Newton (which was addressed after our report).  Whether via tips or submitted columns, we publish stories that address the bad behavior of the government and corporate establishment.  

Generally we work with for-profit corporate media, which is advertising based. As we do not run ads, we do not have a need for click-bait, as they do.  Nevertheless, we respect them for the work that they do.  So we were shocked when a local media person had a story concerning a media organization outside the county – in New York City, in fact – that was using Sussex County to attract viewers.  

Apparently, a candidate for Sheriff in the upcoming GOP primary – Andy Boden – bragged to local media that he had arranged for a “hit job” on his opponent, Sussex County Sheriff Mike Strada.  It seems that Boden said the “hit job” would be about how Strada has suspended him for running, and that now he must work construction and that his wife had to take a job.  Boden claimed that the “hit job” was being done on his behalf by a friend of a friend who has a show on NBC out of New York City.  

Andy Boden is a rather sad case.  Earlier this year, a police psychologist found him “unfit for duty” and he was placed on leave.  Boden went to Sheriff Strada and asked him to restore him to duty – which meant giving him back his power over people, a firearm, handcuffs, and badge.  The Sheriff’s office told Boden that he needed to get well first and re-evaluated by a mental health professional, before he could be re-instated. 

Boden’s case mirrors the current national debate concerning mental health and gun laws.  Should employers act when they observe traumatic stress in employees (in this case, confirmed by a mental health professional) or should they wait until after something actually happens?  It is a complex issue.

Boden’s case has been further complicated by his candidacy, which was not his idea, but rather that of a local union fighting to preserve the jobs of corrections officers at the Sussex County jail (the Keogh-Dwyer Correctional Facility).  The jobs of many who work at the jail were put in jeopardy by the passage of Bail Reform, a bi-partisan bill aimed at reducing the number of people incarcerated while waiting for trial.  Before bail reform, many innocent people were locked up for weeks or months simply because they couldn’t afford the cost of bail.  They often lost jobs, homes, and relationships while they were locked up – only later to be found “not guilty” or have the case against them dismissed.

After bail reform became law in New Jersey, jail populations began to diminish drastically and elected officials started to consider shared services agreements that would allow them to close or scale-down some facilities and save money for taxpayers.  The August 2014 “needs assessment” on the Sussex jail (Keogh-Dwyer Correctional Facility), conducted by Pulitzer/Bogard Associates LLC, clearly outlined the devastating impact keeping the jail open would have on county taxpayers.  Making the jail compliant with basic standards would cost $11 million in short term and $64 million in long term expenditures. 

At the insistence of county Freeholders, Sheriff Strada has been working to scale-down the jail and enter into shared services agreements with Morris County. An agreement to house Sussex County’s female inmate population has recently been reached (and the quality of life for female inmates markedly improved, according to media reports).  

A working group that includes county bureaucrats, elected officials, and union leaders has been working to place every corrections officer likely to be displaced by the plans for the jail.  It is our understanding that County Administrator Greg Poff will shortly announce that positions have been found for every officer likely to be displaced.  Unfortunately, some union people have continued to oppose any changes to the jail.  They’ve complained about the length of the commutes to other facilities and such.  And it is this group who recruited Andy Boden as their candidate and spokesperson.  

They have been using their media contacts to shop around “dirt” on Sheriff Strada and even used a fake Facebook account to distribute a fake video of an “incident” between the Sheriff and a female firefighter, which was later found to have been doctored by the media (including the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com and the New Jersey Herald).  After the media spoke with the female firefighter, who confirmed that the incident never happened, Andy Boden claimed to have had no knowledge of it – despite the fact that Boden’s campaign managers had met with the local party chairman and threatened him with the release of the video some 48 hours before it was released.  This according to a legal statement given by the party chairman.

Boden’s managers went to a well-known statehouse blog in Trenton with their “dirt” – but after the reporter reviewed the transcript of the public hearing Boden asked for regarding his “unfit for duty” status – the story that was written was not to Boden’s liking:  

Incumbent Sheriff Mike Strada faces a challenge from corrections officer Andy Boden, who suspended earlier this year after a police psychologist ruled he was unfit for duty.

Following his suspension, Boden has mounted an offensive against the three-term sheriff, accusing him of endangering his deputies and misusing public funds.

“My decision to run is to end the culture of harassment and mental abuse that Strada has created and fostered. His actions, along with his posse’s, will come out in the upcoming weeks,” Boden said. 

Boden has been suspended since early March. The New Jersey Herald first reported his suspension.

In testimony provided to the New Jersey Globe by Strada’s campaign, a police psychologist said he or she could not rule out the possibility of Boden harming someone if he was allowed to continue working while receiving therapy.

The psychologist recommended the corrections officer receive additional treatment to restore fitness for duty.

“Lt. Boden was to engage in individual treatment outside of the treatment that he had already been receiving with his wife with the sole purpose on managing his stress level, identifying coping mechanisms that work for him so that he could return to his position,” the psychologist said.

For further reading, visit New Jersey Globe at…

https://newjerseyglobe.com/local/sussex/mud-flies-in-sussex-sheriffs-race/

Watchdog is attempting to find out just who the NBC person is who Andy Boden was speaking about when he told local media that a “hit job” was being done on Sheriff Strada.  Stay tuned…

Matt Rooney calls out the Democrats on their hypocrisy

This is a must read from Matt Rooney – one of New Jersey brightest Republican stars (and, hopefully, a future candidate for public office).  Rooney is a South Jersey attorney and editor of the Save Jersey news website.  He often teams up with NJ 101.5’s Bill Spadea both on radio and on Fox’s Chasing News program.

Rooney’s latest column is titled, As rich white guys battle for control, N.J. Democrats’ rhetoric doesn’t match their reality.  In it, Rooney makes these important points:  

For all the progressive/woke/social justice warrior BS we hear from New Jersey Democrats these days, their party’s power structure is remarkably simple and boils down to two mega rich white guys (Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and Norcross, a labor leader turned insurance industry titan) battling over the Garden State’s Iron Throne.

Power, money, tax credits, crony capitalism, special legislation… even loyalty oaths.

…My issue here is one of intellectual integrity. The public sector unions are powerful, you bet, but the NJEA couldn’t touch Steve Sweeney (the Senate President and the Norcross-led machine’s top elected asset) in the 2017 election.

Diversity gets a lot of lip service from the Left in this state, but New Jersey’s most powerful Democrat decision-makers (Murphy, Sweeney, Norcross, Assembly Speaker Coughlin) are all older white dudes. We hear a lot about the “working class” from Trenton, but each and every policy and budget are designed to put the screws to taxpayers in favor of keeping these rich guys and their power structures chugging right along.

What I’m saying is that Democrats’ lofty rhetoric doesn’t match their reality. On either side of this fight. New Jersey’s true form of government is a blend of socialism and oligarchy (with a sprinkle of kleptocracy for good measure).

They may disagree with one another on tax credits and a small handful of other issues, but Leftist economic policies supported by both sides of the Murphy-Norcross divide haven’t helped the Middle Class in this state. New Jersey’s women, minority communities, and millennials are being left out of the economic BOOM sweeping the rest of the country as a direct result of the aforementioned bad decision and sometimes self-serving business decisions of the Democrat power elite which has dominated the legislature (and therefore Trenton) for almost two full decades.

Helping the Middle Class = lowering property taxes. None of these guys are talking about that. Ever wonder why?

Yes, why indeed?

You can read Matt Rooney’s entire column here…

https://savejersey.com/2019/05/as-rich-white-guys-battle-for-control-n-j-democrats-rhetoric-doesnt-match-their-reality/

Jeff Brindle just destroyed NJELEC's reputation

Jeff Brindle is the NJELEC executive director who recently waded into partisan political campaigns in two legislative districts.  Brindle posted a column on David Wildstein's old website, Observer.com (formerly PolitickerNJ.com, AKA PoliticsNJ.com) which was quickly picked-up by Wally Edge alumnus Matt Friedman over at Politico.

For the record, here is what Wally Edge wrote about Jeff Brindle at the time of his appointment:

Brindle was active in Republican politics before taking a post at ELEC. He worked as a political consultant in the 1970's, served as New Brunswick GOP Municipal Chairman, worked on the legislative staffs of State Sen. John Ewing and Assemblymen Walter Kavanaugh and Elliot Smith, and as Deputy Somerset County Clerk. He was the Republican candidate for State Assembly in the 17th district in 1977, but lost the general election to Democrats David Schwartz and Joseph Patero. He joined state government after Thomas Kean's election as Governor and was the Communications Director at the Department of Community Affairs from 1982 to 1985.

http://www.politickernj.com/wallye/30639/elec-picks-ex-gop-operative-executive-director

Old Wally knew his stuff.  By-the-way, did you catch the name of Brindle's political godfather? 

For someone who is supposed to be a fair-dealer in these matters, Brindle's tone and language in his Observer column is in marked contrast to what he employed in the past.  For instance, when commenting in 2015 on the more than $3 million raised by a SuperPAC named the General Majority PAC, Brindle was positively sanguine about it:  "Usually, an election with just Assembly candidates on the ballot is a low-key affair.  But the involvement of the independent committees is definitely adding some drama this year."

"Drama," is it?  Well compare that with Brindle's breathless -- and deeply subjective -- alarm in Thursday's Observer column:

"The active participation of Stronger Foundations Inc. in the Republican primaries in the 24th and 26th legislative districts is a fresh example of why legislation needs to be enacted to require registration and disclosure by independent groups.

The group has spent $275,100 on these primary races in North Jersey, but the public knows very little about where the money is going or what the group’s agenda is."

As opposed to what?  The General Majority PAC?

We know that "this group" spent $275,000 on two primary races in New Jersey., which Brindle, using the group's disclosures with NJELEC, was able to break down.  From these disclosures, Brindle was able to discover that the money was being spent on advertising and polling, as well as who was behind the group and why it was organized:

"To its credit, Stronger Foundations Inc. filed independent expenditure reports with ELEC, showing it had spent $63,300 in the 24th district and $211,800 in the 26th district as of May 25.

Among the information the public can glean from Stronger Foundations expenditure reports is that that the group is working with MWW Group, a highly regarded public relations firm, and McLaughlin and Associates, a nationally respected polling firm.

...A Google search did indicate that the person who registered on behalf of the group is employed by International Union of Operating Engineers Local 825 in Springfield. The union helped spear-head last year’s successful efforts to raise the state gas tax and enact a new long-range transportation improvement plan. It’s political action committee also is a top contributor to New Jersey campaigns."

Brindle then writes this most curious sentence:

"A voter reading the independent expenditure reports filed by Stronger Foundation Inc. wouldn’t know any of this."

Well hell, has he seen what information is required by NJELEC to file a political action committee subject to full disclosure?  To find out anything really useful about the mission or policies or current political goals of any organization subject to full disclosure by NJELEC, you would have to use Google and find the group's website or news articles written about it.

At present, NJELEC requires only the vaguest information be disclosed by political action committees and those filing an A-3 are required to disclose practically nothing at all.  As weak as the NJELEC's D-4 PAC registration form is to start with, it soon becomes useless as an organization grows, adds or removes leadership, or changes its direction.  Why isn't the D-4 required yearly?  Without a yearly D-4, even for basic information, any voter would have to consult Google.

And yet, knowing this, Brindle bangs on and on about "the group" painting an ever-darkening picture of what is -- at the final accounting -- perfectly LEGAL behavior that has been codified as such by the UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT.

Writing as one might about gay marriage, Brindle employs phrases to give the impression that something very bad is going on when, in fact, it is perfectly legal and has been ruled so by the highest Court in the land:

Let's start with the headline:  "Mystery Spender on NJ Races Again Shows Need for More Disclosure."

"...the public knows very little about where the money is going or what the group’s agenda is."  Under NJELEC's weak rules, they never do.

"These groups do have a First Amendment right to be engaged in the electoral process and spend unlimited sums. That much is clear. At the same time, the public has a right to know who is behind the group and what it stands for."  That is Brindle's opinion (and we agree) but unfortunately, neither NJELEC or, more importantly, the United States Supreme Court appear to agree with us.  And, as Brindle works for NJELEC (and it follows federal law, we assume), why is he painting this nefarious picture?

"Political parties, candidates and political action committees are subject to registration and disclosure requirements. Why shouldn’t the same guidelines apply to these groups?"  Brindle knows darn well why -- the Supreme Court said so.  Besides which, Brindle's NJELEC "registration and disclosure" requirements are a joke and are out-of-date.

"...If they finance advertisements that do not specifically call for the support or opposition to a candidate in their communications, there is no filing requirement at all. And anyone familiar with the process knows it is easy for high-powered operatives to finesse the language and avoid reporting."  Once again, Brindle full well knows that this is federal law.  As for finessing language, that is precisely what he is doing here.

"Disclosure is important because independent groups can become surrogates for candidates they support, undertake harsh attacks against the opponent, and do so with no accountability."  Yes, we agree, but -- once again -- no law made in New Jersey will overturn a U.S. Supreme Court decision.  So, why are you writing as though it would?  Simply to paint a nefarious picture?

"At the same time, the candidate who benefits from the independent spending can claim to have no association with the group, thereby not being accountable for its activities."  Now this shows Brindle to be something of an accomplished liar.  He darn well should know that it is illegal for a candidate to have an "association" with such a group.

"Because it is the mission of the Election Law Enforcement Commission to bring disclosure of campaign finance information to the public, the staff often will dig more deeply into these organizations to ascertain where its support comes from. When that information can be obtained, ELEC makes the information available to the public."  So NJELEC is doing opposition research on groups operating legally under the Constitution of the United States of America?  Why?  Because E.D. Brindle thinks the law is wrong and so a little spying is in order?  And you are using taxpayers' money for this?

"The public, however, does not have the time nor inclination to investigate these groups and therefore is often robbed of the opportunity to make informed opinions about a group’s motives or even the veracity of its message."  Maybe they don't care about it in precisely the way E.D. Brindle does -- or whoever put him up to writing this obvious hit piece.  In any case, it is NJELEC Brindle's "motives" that are at question here because, after all, they are taxpayer-funded.

"This is why it is important for the Legislature to pass legislation that would bring greater transparency to the process by requiring registration and disclosure by independent groups. Both parties have introduced bills to bring about more disclosure."  Yes, we agree, start with an annual D-4 for those who currently do disclose and then fashion legislation that will pass Constitutional muster.  Don't spend a lot of taxpayers' money and waste a lot of taxpayer-paid staff's time only to have your law chucked out by a federal court.  If your staff have so much free time on their hands, cut some and save the taxpayers some money.

"...If the primary figure is any guide, these largely anonymous groups will once again dominate the general election at the expense of more accountable political parties and candidates.  It is long past time for matters to be set right in New Jersey by bringing balance back to the electoral system, by strengthening the political parties, requiring registration and disclosure by independent groups, and offsetting the growing influence of organizations that would often operate anonymously."  This is coming from the man who, in 2015, dismissed this as little more than "drama"?  What's changed? 

What this is, is a hit piece, written by a political consultant turned career bureaucrat with a mentor named Tom Kean.  It was a disgraceful act for NJELEC's executive director to wade into partisan political campaigns the weekend before an election and offer his words in a way he knew or should have known would have an outcome on that election. 

 Jeff Brindle is himself an undisclosed independent expenditure.  We cannot be sure who put him up to this.  What we can be sure of is that he should go, for so long as he is at the head of NJELEC its veracity is in question and its trustworthiness is shit.

Did Guadagno and others "hide" from fiscal reality?

By Wm. Winkler

From all quarters, this is the season of madness.  We have the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" of the Left and in New Jersey, we have the irrationality of those who believe that you can go on forever without paying the cost of basic infrastructure.  And the madness is growing in its intensity and violence.  Recently a GOP county committeeman showed up at a meeting looking for me, walking up and down the rows of folded chairs, brandishing a firearm -- and all because I had disagreed with him on the gas tax. 

The police have had to investigate this and other incidents because certain demagogues have painted as monsters those who said it was time to face up to a debt crisis.  What should have been a rational, civil debate over tax policy has produced such violent emotion that there are now a number of people who wouldn't mind relieving themselves on our graves -- and the sooner the better, they say.  Hence a political environment where a gunman comes calling.

Is this America -- or Weimar?

Two recent direct mail pieces by Republicans illustrate the irrationality that has poisoned the debate.  One mailer, by Assembly candidate John Cesaro, attacks an opponent for voting to increase the tax on gasoline that funds the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF).  Mr. Cesaro, an incumbent Morris County Freeholder, makes his attack apparently oblivious to the fact that the county he runs and the half-dozen municipalities he works for have applied for and received millions in TTF funding for road and bridge repair and maintenance, as well as for other construction projects.  Without the money from the TTF, those repairs and maintenance would have to be paid for by increases in local property taxes.

Another mailer, this one from the gubernatorial campaign of Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno, goes into histrionics over the "outrageous 23 cents gas tax hike" that she was directly responsible for.  Even before taking power, her transition team endorsed $1.2 billion in new borrowing for the TTF.  They kicked the need for a gas tax increase down the road by relying on massive borrowing -- the very thing that they had criticized Governor Jon Corzine for and claimed that they would not do.

There was another enormous influx of borrowing in 2012, with the Transportation Trust Fund Renewal (V) that authorized $1.6 billion in spending each year until 2016.  More spending was authorized despite the fact that the last time the gas tax produced enough revenue to pay for transportation infrastructure needs in New Jersey was in 1990. 

The gas tax remained at 14 1/2 cents since 1988.  While every other state in America raised its gas tax to keep up with inflation, while President Ronald Reagan doubled the federal gas tax to keep up with inflation, New Jersey's political establishment did the dishonest but popular thing of not raising the gas tax and instead borrowed more and more -- and New Jersey fell deeper and deeper into debt.

While everything else was adjusted for inflation again and again, the gas tax was not.  Why?  Because politicians could point to low gas prices whenever a property taxpayer complained about having the highest in the nation property taxes.   As property taxes doubled and then doubled again -- costing taxpayers thousands upon thousands each year -- politicians would point to the gas tax and tell them they'd saved a couple hundred. 

But they hadn't saved anything.  They just passed the costs on to their children and grandchildren. 

It was all an illusion, a dishonesty willingly believed by a public who on some level must have known that it was all bunk.  After all, the average new car cost $10,400 in 1988.  Today it is $33,560.  It went against every knowledgeable fiber in their bodies to believe the nonsense that the cost to maintain the roads and bridges they drove those cars on would remain the same for 28 years.

The average citizen understands "adjustments for inflation" because they depend on them.  Retirees and others on social security receive yearly cost-of-living increases based on such inflation adjustments.  Here are the adjustments for inflation that should have triggered increases in the gasoline tax, year-by-year, since 1988:  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, zero in 2015, and .3% in 2016.  But instead, New Jersey's gas tax remained at 14 1/2 cents since 1988.

They ignored the fact that the principal revenue source funding transportation in New Jersey hadn't been adjusted for inflation since 1988 and hadn't produced enough revenue to pay for New Jersey's transportation needs since 1990.    Because of the debt that was allowed to accumulate, by 2015 the annual cost of that debt to taxpayers was $1.1 billion -- outstripping the $750 million in revenue from the gas tax.

Last year, we were treated to cries about how much it cost to build a road in New Jersey.  The source was a report from the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank.  One was led to believe that the report was a singular event.  In fact, these problems were first identified in October 2008 and then annually after that.  Why were they not addressed?  Why was there no outcry over "road costs" from the politicians, the press, and the public when more billions were borrowed in 2009 and again in 2012?  Why was no one concerned about "road costs" so long as the state was borrowing more and kicking the costs down the road?  Why did it only become a problem when some people suggested that, after 28 years, it was time to face up to reality?

In public the politicians fretted about the size of the gas tax increase, but all the while they knew exactly why.  If members of New Jersey's political establishment wanted to know why it was necessary to raise the gas tax by 23 cents, all they had to do was look into a mirror.  23 cents a gallon, all in one hit, is what you get when politicians suspend the iron rules of economics and tell people that they can have something for nothing.  This is what happens when you don't adjust the cost of something for inflation.  A business would have gone bankrupt, but politicians know they can be heroes today and get re-elected, by passing the bill to a future generation.  It will be some else's problem.

Freeholder Cesaro and Lt. Governor Guadagno are not bad people.  In their records of public service, there is much to commend them for.  They are both good Republicans who have had positive effects on the growth of our party and on the well being of their communities.  As a stand-alone position, their opposition to a tax increase on gasoline is perfectly defensible and could well be described as "conservative."  But it is not defensible in the context of the immoral dereliction, nonfeasance, and dishonesty by the political establishment in New Jersey, who wantonly ignored the fact that for decades the gas tax had not produced sufficient revenue for the state's transportation infrastructure needs as defined by the Legislature and the Executive. 

And the violence of the emotions, deliberately stirred-up, hasn't illuminated the discussion any. 

Are social conservatives being duped by AFP?

On Monday, the state director of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) put out a letter outlining the economic problems in New Jersey and opposing any new tax on petroleum products.  Of course, AFP is run by David H. Koch, a New York City billionaire ($43.3 billion and counting) who is an owner at Koch Industries and whose core business is the refining and distribution of petroleum. 

The letter was signed by six organizations whose principal mission is the advancement of traditional values and conservative social and cultural ideals.  They backed-up AFP, but would AFP ever back up them?  That's not likely, because the Chairman of AFP -- yes, the same David H. Koch -- is a social liberal.  But don't take our word for it.  Here is what Wikipedia had to say about him:

(David) Koch considers himself a social liberal,[22] supporting women's right to choose,[23] gay rights, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research.[3][24] He opposes the war on drugs.

Ditto for Frayda Levin, the co-founder of AFP's New Jersey chapter.  AFP has been AWOL on every issue from same-sex marriage to illegal immigration. 

Ronald Reagan was a social as well as an economic conservative.  He believed in an America built on Judeo-Christian values and the Western tradition of free speech and free markets.  David Koch is no Reaganite.  In fact, he opposed Ronald Reagan in 1980 -- as the Libertarian Party's candidate for Vice President -- running on a platform  that included the following planks:

"We therefore call for the elimination of all restriction on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for those people who have entered the country illegally."

" We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children. We further support the repeal of all laws restricting voluntary birth control or the right of the woman to make a personal moral choice regarding the termination of pregnancy."

"We defend the rights of individuals to engage in (or abstain from) any religious activities which do not violate the rights of others. In order to defend religious freedom, we advocate a strict separation of church and state."

"The repeal of all laws regarding consensual sexual relations, including prostitution and solicitation, and the cessation of state oppression and harassment of homosexual men and women, that they, at least, be accorded their full rights as individuals" 

"We believe that 'children' are human beings and, as such, have the same rights as any other human beings. Any reference in the Platform to the rights of human beings includes children."

"The repeal of all laws prohibiting the production, sale, possession, or use of drugs, and of all medical prescription requirements for the purchase of vitamins, drugs and similar substances".

"The repeal of all laws interfering with the right to commit suicide as infringements of the ultimate right of an individual to his or her own life".

"We support recognition of the right to political secession. Exercise of this right, like the exercise of all other rights, does not remove legal and moral obligations not to violate the rights of others."

"We call for the withdrawal of all American troops from bases abroad. In particular, we call for the removal of the U.S. Air Force as well as ground troupes from the Korean peninsula."

"We favor immediate independence for all colonial dependencies, such as Samoa, Guam, Micronesia, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico".

"Government interference in transportation is characterized by monopolistic restriction, corruption, and gross inefficiency. We therefore call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, the Federal Maritime Commission, Conrail and Amtrak. We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system."

And that, as they say, is how David H. Koch rolls...

AFP's letter takes a stab at the nagging problem of finding the money to keep our roads drivable and our bridges from falling down on our children's heads. Mainly it tells us what not to do -- don't increase the retail cost of a product that billionaire Koch makes money off of.  It doesn't give us a pathway forward.

A couple weeks ago, AFP released its own version of the state budget for 2017.  It reminded us of an earlier budget, written by the same expert, back in 2011. The current document is less explicit, but you can see where things are heading quite clearly in the earlier one.  Under the section "Department of Transportation", there is a discussion about how road projects should be prioritized.  There we find this gem:

"Projects with the least cost and greatest benefit to the state should be chosen first, there by encouraging local governments to commit greater resources in order to 'tilt' the cost-benefit ratio towards their projects.  AFP believes this method of incentivizing local participation will not only help bridge the funding gap but more importantly provide a model for moving forward with more efficient utilization of taxpayer funds for future projects."

That word -- "resources"-- scares us.  Isn't that bureaucrat-speak for "tax money"? 

So let's see.  Local governments (municipal and county) get their "resources" from property tax revenue.  AFP is advocating that local governments increase the "resources" they pledge towards a road project, thereby decreasing the cost to the state.  But not to the people who pay property taxes.  Their cost will go up because property taxes will go up.

Really?  Is this how we are going to "bridge the funding gap"?  With higher property taxes?  The highest in America... still going higher?  Really?  Think again.

GOP for 2017: Abolish the State Income Tax

Why not?  The tax is a scam based on a lie.

It was passed on the promise of property tax relief... and then the Courts, that failsafe of the political and corporate establishment, got in on the action to redirect (steal) most of the money paid by suburban and rural taxpayers to urban political machines so that they can give generous tax breaks to their corporate co-conspirators.  Of course, they gave the poor as their reason for doing so and forty years later... New Jersey is facing a poverty explosion with the highest poverty levels in 50 years. 

So it wasn't done for the poor because the poor are still poor and there are more of them than ever before, but there are lots and lots of politicians who got very fat and very rich off the income tax scam and lots and lots of corporations that got millions in tax breaks because of it.  Why should suburban and rural taxpayers subsidize rich corporations and make corrupt political machines more powerful?

After 40 years, maybe suburban and rural taxpayers are tired of the scam, built on a lie?

After 40 years, maybe the urban poor are tired of having their hunger-wracked bodies used as a means to make the rich richer and the corrupt more powerful?

Maybe it is time for some truly revolutionary action like abolishing the state income tax?

Professor Murray Sabrin thinks so.  Here is his opinion column from today's Bergen Record/ NorthJersey.com:

Opinion: Why New Jersey should abolish the state income tax

JANUARY 27, 2016    LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2016, 1:21 AM

BY MURRAY SABRIN

THE RECORD

NEW JERSEY'S motto, "Liberty and Prosperity," was adopted in 1777, a year after the colonists declared their independence. Although the state motto implies that New Jersey would be a free and independent state, the truth of the matter is that New Jersey's state government has adopted an anti-liberty agenda for decades.

In a free society, which is based upon a market economy, all participants make voluntary choices in order to improve their lives. I call this a Mutual Consent Society, where no one is coerced to buy or sell any good or service against their will. Isn't this the "American" way? The freedom to choose?

In other words, involuntary exchanges — theft, robbery, murder, etc. — which Frederick Bastiat identified as "illegal plunder" in his 1850 monograph, "The Law," are prohibited in a civilized society, because these acts violate the natural (property) rights of every individual in society.

Conversely, Bastiat then concluded that governments must not engage in "legal plunder," for the same reason individuals cannot engage in illegal plunder. They are acts of aggression and coercion. Bastiat identified legal plunder — progressive taxation and public schools, among other government polices — as detrimental to a harmonious society.

For Bastiat, the law (force) should not be used to force people how to live their lives and spend their money. Using the law to coerce people, argues Bastiat, negates the principle of justice and violates the rights of individuals.

Although most people across the political spectrum consider "public education" an indispensable institution in a democracy, the truth of the matter is that education has become a political football. Instead of providing students with the skills necessary to become independent thinkers, our public schools have become indoctrination centers.

In place of having a curriculum that focuses on basic skills, yes, the three Rs, K-12 public education has morphed into a cheering gallery for anti-free-enterprise propaganda, extolling the virtues of activist government policies to solve social problems.

Legal plunder

An income tax, whether it is progressive (tax rate increasing as incomes increase) or flat (one rate on all incomes, usually with a substantial standard deduction, making a flat tax somewhat progressive in reality), is a classic example of legal plunder, because it is a gross violation of private property.

In the 20th century, a stinging critique of progressive taxation by Frank Chodorov, "The Income Tax: Root of All Evil," was published. He argues that the so-called ability-to-pay doctrine is a pernicious assault on private property and undermines the productivity of the economy. Chodorov shows that the income tax, ironically, hurts poor people more than wealthy income earners, because taxation in general and the income tax specifically reduces the amount of capital in society and therefore job creation.

As far as New Jersey's 40-year income tax is concerned, it began in 1976 with only two rates, 2 percent and 2.5 percent, and was enacted to provide property tax relief and increase school aid. As the U.S. economy was on an upswing from the depths of the 1973 — 1975 recession, tax revenue flowed to Trenton, making Gov. Brendan Byrne's promise a reality.

Over the years, New Jersey's income tax has become more progressive. Currently, incomes less than $20,000 are taxed at 1.4 percent and incomes greater than $500,000 are taxed at 8.97 percent, a far cry from the relatively flat tax that was imposed in 1976.

The income tax was supposed to provide tax relief for all taxpayers but instead has turned into a massive redistribution of income from suburban taxpayers to urban school districts, courtesy of a series of state Supreme Court decisions calling for more state aid to provide a constitutionally mandated "thorough and efficient education" to all public school children.

Eliminate school funding

The reforms needed to create a Mutual Consent Society in New Jersey is clear: Abolish the state income tax and eliminate taxpayer funding for K–12 education and pre-K, so education decisions can be made by parents and provided by competent teachers instead of career bureaucrats in Washington and Trenton.

In addition, abolishing the income tax would provide the fuel for a more robust economy, the best anti-poverty program there is.

The wisdom of both Bastiat and Chodorov is more relevant today given the widespread legal plunder that exists in New Jersey and throughout the country. If the people of New Jersey want to live up to the state's motto, "liberty and prosperity," we must abolish the state income tax and return education decisions to parents and teachers.

Murray Sabrin is a professor of finance at Ramapo College.