Is new Gottheimer campaign commercial a “hate crime”?

By Rubashov

Whenever he gets caught in some hypocrisy or in an outright lie, Congressman Josh Gottheimer tries to deflect criticism from average folks by accusing them of something terrible. It’s a trick Gottheimer picked-up from his former boss, Bill Clinton, who trashed the reputations of the women he forced himself upon.

Gottheimer calls his Right-of-Center critics “extremists” and accuses his Left-of-Center critics of “anti-Semitism”. It seems he has a pejorative for everyone.

Think back to January of this year, when he tried to pin the “anti-Semitism” label on the Left-of-Center Working Families Party. The New Jersey Globe reported it:

Assembly Speaker Pro-Tempore Gordon Johnson has asked the Bergen County Prosecutor to investigate a September 2021 incident where a protestor allegedly screamed “Jew” at Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) as a possible hate crime.

In a speech at Rutgers University last month, Gottheimer claimed that a member of the Working Families Party hurled the anti-Semitic slur at him at a Glen Rock event with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Raimundo is backing up Gottheimer’s allegation.

Working Families state director Sue Altman said last month that her group reviewed footage from the protest and interviewed several participants.

“To be absolutely clear, if that ever happened at a WFP event, the person would have been rebuked instantly and asked to leave,” Altman said. “However, we do not believe Gottheimer’s explosive allegation ever occurred.”

Johnson wants the organization to dig deeper.

Well, the Times of Israel published a piece that dug so deep it got to the bottom of this so-called “hate crime”. It is written by Dr. Russell Miller, a research psychologist at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and adjunct assistant professor of Children and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College.

Dr. Miller is also a journalist who has published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Ha'aretz, and Corriere della Sera. Dr. Miller’s column is titled: “I called Josh Gottheimer a Jew – it wasn’t a slur.” Dr. Miller’s column begins:

A couple of weeks ago, David-Seth Kirshner, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, in Closter, New Jersey published a commentary here on the indisputable truth that even among the most well-meaning, compassionate, and socially engaged, there can be people who hate. His impetus? The charge by US Congressman. Josh Gottheimer that a progressive adversary, the Working Families Party, is sheltering an antisemite.

The piece rehashed Rep. Gottheimer’s claim that at a rally in September in support of “Build Back Better,” President Biden’s social services bill, a WFP member attacked the “reputable and respected Congressman” with the Jew-hating epithet “Jew.”

There’s only one problem. The claim is patently false – and Gottheimer almost certainly has to know that. Anyone following this phony blood libel would know it’s false. And how am I so certain it’s false? I’m the “attacker.”

The first time Gottheimer mentioned the supposed antisemitic attack was on December 13 at Rutgers University, three months after the fact. Since then, he’s speechified, fundraised and called in chits around the WFP’s alleged antisemitism. The US Secretary of Commerce signed on. A New Jersey state senator demanded a hate-crime investigation. The ADL announced, “we take him at his word.” Rabbi Kirshner came forward as character witness.

Meanwhile, the WFP scoured its ranks to find the offender. I was late to hear of this; I’m not a member. But as soon as I did, I contacted a reporter and “confessed” on a national podcast. That was four days before Rabbi Kirshner’s indictment of the WFP.

As I told that reporter, like Josh Gottheimer, I’m a Democrat and, as my grandmother would say, oich a yid – also a Jew. Gottheimer has to have known this all along. Rabbi Kirshner may not have, because the Congressman conveniently neglects to report the full sentence I spoke last September — at precisely the place and time he’s vouched the slur was slung. The moment was heated, so my reconstruction of the syntax may be off, but it was something like, “Josh, as a Jew, it’s a shanda that you’re blocking Build Back Better.”

That’s right, “a shanda,” as generations of Ashkenazic Jews have cried in Yiddish: A disgrace. That’s not Jew hating. That’s Jewish shaming. That was one Jew addressing another in a time-honored voice.

If Gottheimer heard “Jew,” he would have almost certainly heard “shanda.” If he heard “shanda,” he would have certainly known his attacker was anything but antisemitic.

Now, the record does show Gottheimer has memory issues. At Rutgers, he claimed several of us were jeering “Jew!” Subsequently, he revised his recollection to one. As a research psychologist, I can understand how, hit where it hurts, his mind might have reframed the scene. I can only assume my podcast appearance jogged his memory since his office has since refused comment. Meanwhile, it appears he’s buying Facebook ads to keep Rabbi Kirshner’s condemnation afloat.

As for the rabbi, in the worrisome week after Colleyville, he might well have missed my interview and subsequent coverage in the Jewish press. Odds are Gottheimer’s team, busy fibbing on Facebook, failed to brief him on my clarification, which surely would have brought him relief.

But by the time his piece went public, no informed observer could believe the Working Families Party, or even a stray antisemite, was the source of the telltale monosyllable.

You can access the entire column at the Times of Israel:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-called-josh-gottheimer-a-jew-it-wasnt-a-slur/

Note how Gottheimer’s team appears to willfully misrepresent what was actually said in an effort to label someone “anti-Semitic”. As we will see, it works the same when Gottheimer is trying to label someone an “extremist”.

Gottheimer calls his Right-of-Center critics “extremists” and accuses his Left-of-Center critics of “anti-Semitism”. It seems he has a pejorative for everyone.

In Gottheimer’s latest campaign commercial, his team tries to label Frank Pallotta an "extremist" by using a quote he made in August of 2020 about the Oath Keepers group and then applying it to the actions of that group on January 6, 2021. Using this same tactic, would it be okay to apply the positive things many elected officials said about Democrat consutant Sean Caddle, as if is was commentary on him after he admitted to having someone murdered? Using the Gottheimer rule, it would be okay. So, maybe they will.

The Gottheimer team then claimed that GOP challenger Frank Pallotta used the term “manslaughter” to describe all abortion – when, in fact, Pallotta was describing the late-term, day-of-birth abortion laws supported by Gottheimer and signed into law in New Jersey by Governor Phil Murphy. Here is the exact statement, made by Pallotta, that the Gottheimer team used for their commercial:

“Advances in modern medical science expanded fetal viability even as politicians like Josh Gottheimer ignored science and pushed for laws that went in the opposite direction and essentially legalized manslaughter.

Roe v. Wade was founded on language that was nowhere in the Constitution, and it featured the usurpation of the elected legislatures' role in determining public policy by the unelected judiciary. We now have the opportunity for real bipartisan reform on the laws that regulate abortion. An opportunity to follow medical science in drafting those reforms.

Instead of following medical science, Congressman Gottheimer and his allies have pursued a wholly ideological agenda of more and more extreme abortion laws - including partial-birth abortion and abortion for any reason up until the moment of birth.”

Of course, Gottheimer and his campaign team are lying because they know that “partial-birth abortion and abortion for any reason up until the moment of birth” are unpopular and do not poll very well.

But the real shocker in the commercial is the Gottheimer team’s use of anti-Italian stereotypes in an attempt to conjure up the image of a Mafia crime figure. Darkening Pallotta’s image and using a photograph in which he is wearing dark glasses? We would object just as sternly if somebody used a photograph of a Jewish candidate wearing a yarmulke.

Remember how the state’s Democrats complained and hurled accusations of “hate” when then congressional challenger Andy Kim was stereotyped using the image of fish and a font associated with Asian restaurants? Would these Democrats have us believe that Italian-Americans are less worthy of their support?

So, is this commercial – paid for by Josh Gottheimer’s campaign and approved by him – a "hate crime"? Or is it simply a matter of poor judgment and poor taste?

Ciattarelli: Giving the Whitman campaign model one more try?

By Rubashov

Jack Ciattarelli’s handlers have started a new organization. It’s called the Mainstream Majority. That’s “mainstream” as in the Mainstream Media that conservatives, populists, and the Bernie Sanders Left so often complain about.

As a noun, “mainstream” means “the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.” As an adjective, “mainstream” means “belonging to or characteristic of the mainstream.”

Wikipedia reports: “The mainstream is the prevalent current thought that is widespread. It includes all popular culture and media culture, typically disseminated by mass media. This word is sometimes used in a pejorative sense by subcultures who view ostensibly mainstream culture as not only exclusive but artistically and aesthetically inferior.”

So, it appears “mainstream” is just another way of saying, “the status quo” or “the establishment” or “middle of the road” or even, “moderate”.

And yet, in common with all Republican political campaigns (and even some Democratic ones) this new group employs the “c” word. The email makes this pitch to us: Yes, we are establishment moderates, but we are also “common-sense conservatives” (as opposed to the other kind?) who focus on “kitchen-table issues”.

Even Bill Clinton used the “c” word. So did Christie Whitman. Who doesn’t?

The email is long on braggadocio, claiming responsibility for every Republican victory in November 2021 – even the defeat of “New Jersey’s powerful Senate President.” Was it Jack Ciattarelli’s “compelling message and strong campaign” that elected Ed Durr? It wasn’t the backlash against incumbent Phil Murphy's extremist policies combined with a textbook low-budget, grassroots guerrilla campaign that did it? Sure about that?

Ciattarelli’s handlers have refused to share the same stage with Steve Kush, the political operative who actually managed Ed Durr’s campaign. Going back to election night, we don’t remember anyone in the NJGOP establishment even expecting Ed Durr to win. If they had, wouldn’t they have thrown some money to the Durr campaign? But nobody bankrolled Durr. Now everyone wants to take credit for the upset.

The email claims that the new group intends to be “pro-taxpayer, pro-law enforcement, pro-parent, and pro-small business, one that makes sure smaller government better serves the people who pay for it.” That’s very aspirational, but we would like to see details, a legislative agenda. We will keep an open mind and wait to see how the “Mainstream Majority” unfolds.

Still, we wonder how Jack’s handlers are going to sell “Mainstream” anything, given the political and cultural baggage the term has…

mainstream sellout

Johnson’s “hate crime” revealed to be a Gottheimer scam.

By Rubashov

Whenever he gets caught in some hypocrisy or in an outright lie, Congressman Josh Gottheimer tries to deflect criticism from average folks by accusing them of something terrible. It’s a trick Gottheimer picked-up from his former boss, Bill Clinton, who trashed the reputations of the women he forced himself upon.

Gottheimer calls his Right-of-Center critics “terrorists” and accuses his Left-of-Center critics of “anti-Semitism”. It seems he has a pejorative for everyone.

Worse still, Gottheimer’s power and money means that he is never short of “friends” who will do his dirty work for him. A month ago, the New Jersey Globe reported on a case in point:

Assembly Speaker Pro-Tempore Gordon Johnson has asked the Bergen County Prosecutor to investigate a September 2021 incident where a protestor allegedly screamed “Jew” at Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) as a possible hate crime.

In a speech at Rutgers University last month, Gottheimer claimed that a member of the Working Families Party hurled the anti-Semitic slur at him at a Glen Rock event with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Raimundo is backing up Gottheimer’s allegation.

Working Families state director Sue Altman said last month that her group reviewed footage from the protest and interviewed several participants.

“To be absolutely clear, if that ever happened at a WFP event, the person would have been rebuked instantly and asked to leave,” Altman said. “However, we do not believe Gottheimer’s explosive allegation ever occurred.”

Johnson wants the organization to dig deeper.

Well, the Times of Israel has published a piece that dug so deep it got to the bottom of this so-called “hate crime”. It is written by Dr. Russell Miller, a research psychologist at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and adjunct assistant professor of Children and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College.

Dr. Miller is also a journalist who has published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Ha'aretz, and Corriere della Sera. Dr. Miller’s column is titled: “I called Josh Gottheimer a Jew – it wasn’t a slur.” Dr. Miller’s column begins:

A couple of weeks ago, David-Seth Kirshner, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, in Closter, New Jersey published a commentary here on the indisputable truth that even among the most well-meaning, compassionate, and socially engaged, there can be people who hate. His impetus? The charge by US Congressman. Josh Gottheimer that a progressive adversary, the Working Families Party, is sheltering an antisemite.

The piece rehashed Rep. Gottheimer’s claim that at a rally in September in support of “Build Back Better,” President Biden’s social services bill, a WFP member attacked the “reputable and respected Congressman” with the Jew-hating epithet “Jew.”

There’s only one problem. The claim is patently false – and Gottheimer almost certainly has to know that. Anyone following this phony blood libel would know it’s false. And how am I so certain it’s false? I’m the “attacker.”

The first time Gottheimer mentioned the supposed antisemitic attack was on December 13 at Rutgers University, three months after the fact. Since then, he’s speechified, fundraised and called in chits around the WFP’s alleged antisemitism. The US Secretary of Commerce signed on. A New Jersey state senator demanded a hate-crime investigation. The ADL announced, “we take him at his word.” Rabbi Kirshner came forward as character witness.

Meanwhile, the WFP scoured its ranks to find the offender. I was late to hear of this; I’m not a member. But as soon as I did, I contacted a reporter and “confessed” on a national podcast. That was four days before Rabbi Kirshner’s indictment of the WFP.

As I told that reporter, like Josh Gottheimer, I’m a Democrat and, as my grandmother would say, oich a yid – also a Jew. Gottheimer has to have known this all along. Rabbi Kirshner may not have, because the Congressman conveniently neglects to report the full sentence I spoke last September — at precisely the place and time he’s vouched the slur was slung. The moment was heated, so my reconstruction of the syntax may be off, but it was something like, “Josh, as a Jew, it’s a shanda that you’re blocking Build Back Better.”

That’s right, “a shanda,” as generations of Ashkenazic Jews have cried in Yiddish: A disgrace. That’s not Jew hating. That’s Jewish shaming. That was one Jew addressing another in a time-honored voice.

If Gottheimer heard “Jew,” he would have almost certainly heard “shanda.” If he heard “shanda,” he would have certainly known his attacker was anything but antisemitic.

Now, the record does show Gottheimer has memory issues. At Rutgers, he claimed several of us were jeering “Jew!” Subsequently, he revised his recollection to one. As a research psychologist, I can understand how, hit where it hurts, his mind might have reframed the scene. I can only assume my podcast appearance jogged his memory since his office has since refused comment. Meanwhile, it appears he’s buying Facebook ads to keep Rabbi Kirshner’s condemnation afloat.

As for the rabbi, in the worrisome week after Colleyville, he might well have missed my interview and subsequent coverage in the Jewish press. Odds are Gottheimer’s team, busy fibbing on Facebook, failed to brief him on my clarification, which surely would have brought him relief.

But by the time his piece went public, no informed observer could believe the Working Families Party, or even a stray antisemite, was the source of the telltale monosyllable.

You can access the entire column at the Times of Israel:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-called-josh-gottheimer-a-jew-it-wasnt-a-slur/

Meanwhile, we have a high-powered Democrat political consultant from Gottheimer’’s district – a guy who controlled numerous political action committees, SuperPACs and other entities – who admitted to having another Democrat operative murdered, and nobody in Gordon Johnson or Josh Gottheimer’s circles seem concerned about getting to the bottom of it. Nobody is demanding that anyone “dig deeper”.

Fake hate crimes are a growing phenomenon in America, as is “crying wolf’ when there’s no wolf…

Incidents of reporting FAKE "hate crimes" are on the rise.

Is illegal labor being used to build cemetery? Was there a conflict in the approval process?

Park Lawn Corporation, a publicly traded Canadian-owned funeral, crematorium, and cemetery company, recently started work on a 78-acre cemetery in Lafayette Township in Sussex County.  Park Lawn is empire-building and doing so in one heck of a hurry. Since 2013, it has grown from six cemeteries in Toronto, Ontario, gobbling up other companies along the way. This new cemetery will be operated as part of Park Lawn's CMS Mid Atlantic subsidiary, which currently operates, manages and provides financial services for seven other cemeteries in New Jersey (6) and New York (1).

When local residents attempted to communicate their concerns to workers preparing the site, they faced a language barrier and were ignored.  Sussex Watchdog did some digging and discovered that part of the acreage contains wetlands and that site preparation will be on-going for two years.  Once in operation, the grounds will hold up to 30,000 corpses and is expected to be in operation for 200 years.

Based on the concerns expressed by local stakeholders during the approval process, good communications between residents and those preparing the site is essential, as potential problems with traffic, egress, parking, and water run-off were all expressed.  There are also safety issues, as much of the heavily equipment being operated is potentially hazardous.

As of the posting of this column, Watchdog has not been able to determine if the company sub-contracted to do the work follows E-Verify protocols or hires workers who have had the benefits of a state-certified apprenticeship training program.  Surprisingly, the Land Use Board of Lafayette Township failed to ascertain these important considerations before granting their approval. Again, this presents issues regarding safety as well as value for money. And if the workers are not properly trained or properly paid – if they are being exploited for profit – this robs local taxpayers in Lafayette Township and/or Sussex County of a potential source of income.  

When undocumented immigrants illegally resident in New Jersey are exploited, it harms the immigrants, the taxpayers, and the American workers.  It is an inhuman way to make a profit…

What Watchdog did find was a conflict-of-interest in the approval process.  When one Land Use Board member properly reported that he was a “friend” of the engineer handling the project, the board attorney inexplicably allowed him to remain involved in the process and even vote on its approval.  Perhaps the whole approval process should be re-evaluated and site preparation placed on hold pending said re-evaluation?  

Once upon a time – back when Bill Clinton still had the memory of being a blue-collar boy from Arkansas – he and his party, the Democrat Party, understood illegal immigration.  It was all about protecting American jobs and not exploiting the labor of illegal immigrants to suppress American wages. Now that the Clintons have become members of the One Percent – and the Democrat Party’s leadership is composed of Wall Street One Percenters like Jon Corzine and Phil Murphy – it is all about making a fashionable excuse for exploiting vulnerable immigrants who are here illegally.

We need mandatory E-Verify in New Jersey.  And in a state that requires tree-trimmers to be certified, make sure all those employed in the trades hold apprenticeship certification.  It makes sense for safety, for taxpayers, for American workers, and it protects those who are being exploited for profit.

The same NJ media that covered up for Clinton, tries to do the same for Menendez

Remember how the newspapers tried to discredit the source for the claim that Bill Clinton had seduced Monica Lewinsky in the White House?  Remember how the media told us that Linda Tripp was a “liar” and that she used “right wing” media outlets to peddle her "meaningless" allegations?

All part of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” Hillary Clinton assured us.  And NOW – the National Organization for Women – stood by their man, and so did legions of Democrat women politicians.  They all assured us that Bill Clinton would NEVER act so inappropriately.

Yep, the media was right on that!  We all know today that Bill Clinton DID NOT have sex with Monica Lewinsky, right???

And as more and more evidence piled up, the media just dismissed it.  When other women came forward and said they were raped.  The media trashed them, called them trailer park trash, said it was all a plot to damage the good name of William Jefferson Clinton.  They advised us to Move On…

One New Jersey newspaper published an editorial with the title:  "GOTCHA" POLITICS HIT A NEW LOW WITH STARR'S SEX INVESTIGATION. 

Another New Jersey newspaper did an editorial that simply said:  TIME TO END IT.

Well, it’s déjà vu all over again!

On Wednesday, there was United States Senator Bob Menendez and, like Bill Clinton once upon a time, he was surrounded by NOW and a bevy of female Democrat office holders whose political fortunes (for better or for worse) are tied to the Senator’s.  There was Bob Menendez himself, doing his best… “I did not have sex…” imitation of Bill Clinton.  And there was the media, once again failing to read what they wrote last time, talking about “gutter” politics and “right wing blogs” and trashing the women, and the prosecutors, and the GOP. 

Hey Tom Moran, Fred Snowflake, Hand of Hand, Moe of Moe, and all those media mavens who want to shake their tallywhackers at us to make it so…

Guys, you bullshit us once.  Then – along comes Brett Kavanaugh – and you went back on your bullshit and said the opposite of everything you said when it was Bill Clinton.  Now (and it’s just been a few weeks for Christ sake!) you want to go back on everything you just said about Brett Kavanaugh and tell us there’s a new set of rules – and why?  Because it’s about Bob Menendez???

Fellas, keep your bullshit.  You have the collective credibility and moral authority of an unwiped ass.  Nobody is buying it besides those phonies from NOW.

What kind of "enterprise" is Gottheimer really about?

"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870 - 1924), Founder of the Soviet Union

The corporate lobby has always been transactional.  They will place short term profits ahead of long term goals every time. 

It is important to remember that the corporate community isn't "conservative" in any recognizable way.  Corporations exist to make a profit and to expand market share to make more profit.  They naturally seek a monopoly and, to that end, employ thousands of lobbyists and expend billions of dollars to subvert the free market and hobble competition.  Their monument is the crony-capitalist state.

American corporations have done more than New Left Marxism to undermine traditional values and deference paid to the religious and cultural institutions of the West.  These corporations were far more effective because they put massive resources behind this transformation.  Money does change everything.  So it was out with the church and in with the mall as the center of human life.  Instead of a community with a common culture, we had atomized consumers -- the easier to (endlessly) market to.

The corporate community isn't even American in outlook, but rather it is globalist and acts accordingly.  The international trade deals favored by the corporate community have brought Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters together, have united main street business with organized labor. 

Organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have promoted outsourcing of jobs to countries overseas and the illegal immigration policies that suppress wages and drive-up unemployment here at home.  And they've backed bailouts for Wall Street while recommending foreclosures for the rest of us.  They get the property tax breaks in places like Jersey City -- and everybody else just keeps on paying more.

On the U.S. Chamber's website there is an entire globalist agenda with sections on "international affairs", "international agenda", "international policy", "global initiatives", "global regulatory cooperation", "Africa", the "Americas", "Asia", "Eurasia", "Europe", the "Middle East and Turkey", and "India".  But there is no section on the American worker.  Nowhere is he or she listed.  Nowhere.

All this came to mind the other day, when Democrat Congressman Josh Gottheimer scored the U.S. Chamber's "Spirit of Enterprise Award" -- something bestowed each year on whatever lackey in Congress happens to be advancing the globalist agenda in a way that attracts attention.  As an expert in public relations, Josh Gottheimer has the inside track on such things.  He knows the ropes.

How?  Well, before getting elected to Congress in 2016, Josh Gottheimer followed his buddy Mark Penn, the Clintons' polling guy, to take over an international public relations/lobbying corporation called Burson-Marsteller.  These folks are a real piece of work. 

Hey, don't take our word for it.  Here's what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow had to say about the firm where Josh Gottheimer held the number two position as International Vice President (his buddy Mark Penn was International President):

Yep, Josh Gottheimer and his pal Mark Penn ran the "PR Firm from Hell"!  And now you know what kind of "enterprise" the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is talking about.

Spadea lands candidate against Oroho

Franklin Borough Mayor Nicholas Giordano, a Republican, recently bragged on Facebook that he had voted for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  The Mayor, who is said to be seeking a political appointment at the Sussex County Municipal Utilities Authority (SCMUA) while dodging questions about a land deal that benefits his family, has been a controversial figure since replacing longtime Mayor Paul Crowley in January.

CONSTITUENT:  Don't talk conservative when you brag about voting for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama Mayor.

Franklin Mayor Nick Giordano: Yup cause I vote best candidate at the time not by party.

"He's a critter in a big hurry," said one county insider, while another dismissed Giordano as "Mayor Thuglife".

Mayor Nicholas Giordano:  Obama was the "best candidate".

Nonetheless, Giordano seems ready to heed former GOP candidate turned talk radio host Bill Spadea's call for candidates to primary the anti-debt Republicans who stood up and took on the Transportation Trust Fund debacle after 25 years of deficit spending, debt, and lies to cover up the can being kicked down the road.  He's told supporters that he's preparing to run and will launch a recall effort against Senator Steve Oroho (R-24).

The Mayor has also trashed the state League of Municipalities for taking a position opposite his on the TTF.  On Facebook, Giordano exhibits a stunning lack of knowledge on the subject of how the TTF is funded, operates, and about the Tax Restructuring legislation passed on Friday.  Just one example is that Giordano insists that the 23 cents a gallon tax is on home heating oil and is unmoved by evidence to the contrary.

Given Bill Spadea's political history, a Giordano candidacy makes sense.  Spadea's campaign manager in his last attempt at elected office (Assembly) was none other than Tea Partier Leigh Ann Bellew.  She challenged Republican Senator Joe Kyrillos in 2013 the year after she ran Spadea's effort against conservative darling Donna Simon.  Her campaign was dreadful and ended even more dreadfully.  A popular video was circulated to describe the effort, start to finish:

This is the way with so many "Tea Party" members.  Rational discussion is suspect.  It is the anger that matters (aka, "Heart and Soul").  Welcome to Spadea's toilet.

The Clintons and tax cheat Marc Rich

The New York Times has been beating its partisan drum regarding Donald Trump's taxes.  But, as Sussex County citizen activist Harvey Roseff points out, there is an even larger tax story out there that "better deals with proper ethical behavior."

Roseff writes:

"Today's NY Times story is that Trump filed his taxes and it was proper. That's all that matters - nothing was avoided or illegal.  In fact, Trump filed to laws and regulations that Bill Clinton was in charge of.  Irrespective of if we are for or against Trump or Hillary, the story that taxes were 'avoided' is wrong - the government got what it wanted.

So let's look at Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.  A tax cheat who was on the FBI's most wanted list.  Rich undermined US sanctions and hugely profited. Rich was pardoned and many leading Democratic leaders (and of course Republican) denounced Clinton's act. So compared to the Trump tax story, here we have one person thwarting the will of the people's government.

And ever since, Rich's interests have taken care of the Clintons."

Roseff links to a story from the New York Post (January 17, 2016):

Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich continues to pay big

By Peter Schweizer

January 17, 2016 | 6:00am

Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”

Congressman Barney Frank added, “It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.”

Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going back decades. He had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979.

Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy’s Libya, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Little surprise that he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Facing prosecution by Rudy Giuliani in 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland and lived in exile...

Read the rest of the story here:

http://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/

Must read re: 2016 presidential campaign

This wonderful piece of writing was recommended to us by poet & author Alice Walker.  We consider it to be the most insightful bit of punditry we came across the whole year.  Written by Professor Richard Behan (Ph.D, UC Berkeley), it was published just before the June primaries, but with the national party conventions underway, we'd like to share it with you now.

The Chaos of a Hillary Clinton Presidency: Corporate Dominion and Open Rebellion

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a

good thing, and as necessary in the political world

as storms in the physical……It is a medicine necessary

for the sound health of government. 

—Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787       

If Hillary Clinton occupies the White House her presidency will be unpleasant for her and chaotic for the country. Ms. Clinton will encounter a nationwide rebellion she cannot comprehend and hence will not address.

The rebellion is already underway, and it will continue. It is not a violent, man-the-barricades revolution, but a visible one in which millions of voters in both parties are openly rejecting conventional candidates. They are seeking a radical transformation of American governance.

Ms. Clinton will take office because she gamed the nomination process brilliantly, but she was victimized by classic tragedy. In the most bizarre political season in memory, she was the right person in the right place at the wrong time.

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s day only Bill and Hillary Clinton have completed three presidential campaigns, so Ms. Clinton was armed for the fourth with unique experience and savvy: she knew precisely what had to be done, how to do it, and when. She amassed a war chest of hundreds of millions long before anyone else. She recruited 400 superdelegates even before she had opponents. She set up campaign offices in the states with early primaries. And by happy accident or clever arrangement the co-chair of her 2008 presidential campaign, Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, was put in charge of the Democratic National Committee.

When you know a system as well as Ms. Clinton does you know how to game it: she effectively preempted the candidate-space. Of the early prospective candidates, only Governor O’Malley and Senator Sanders moved on into the primaries; she out-polled both of them by monstrous margins.

Ms. Clinton then undertook an orthodox campaign of inoffensive platitudes, defining the issues with customary clichés, and proposing vacuous solutions: doing more for this cause, making improvements in that one, assuring everyone’s access to the American Dream, I’ve been working all my life to benefit the downtrodden, and let’s build on President Obama’s successes.

Her campaign was exquisitely choreographed, but it was a campaign-by-formula, unimaginative and conventional.

Ms. Clinton was in the right place, however. Her two opponents were so far behind they were scarcely visible.

But the moment in time was not hers. By adopting the Obama template for governing, she through-bolted her campaign to the status quo—while a rebellion was stirring among the American people. And if Jefferson’s dictum was correct the rebellion ought to continue, as...a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

The rebellion would blossom, as Ms. Clinton soon discovered.

The template for governing she adopted is the modus operandi of the “New Democratic Party” that Bill Clinton and she helped construct in the early 1990’s, and Barack Obama nurtured. It masquerades as the champion still of working class America, but it is in fact a centrist, even neoliberal party, awash with corporate campaign contributions, and driven by corporate interests. Rigorous scholarly research documents this, as does a voluminous popular literature.

Ms. Clinton failed to see the nascent political rebellion because she was not tuned to the deeply felt anxieties of nearly every family in the nation—i.e., all but the “One Percenters.” Comfortably within that stratum herself, she was turned instead only to the mechanics of winning the presidency.

Prominent among working families’ anxieties is the loss of wealth and incomes occasioned by the financial crash of 2008 and the off-shoring of 30 million well-paid manufacturing jobs. These events were driven by policies of the Bill Clinton Administration, granting corporate interests priority over the common good, and the Obama Administration expanded on them. The “New Democratic Party” betrayed and abandoned the working families of the nation.

This was not lost on Senator Bernie Sanders, and something similar was soon made apparent to Donald Trump.

No one will accuse Senator Sanders or Mr. Trump of running conventional campaigns. In his very first speech Mr. Sanders acknowledged and Mr. Trump soon discovered the simmering rebellion Ms. Clinton ignored. Tens of thousands of cheering citizens attended Mr. Sanders’ rallies, applauding his call for political revolution. Mr. Trump, in his startling destruction of sixteen opponents, discovered the political patience of Republican voters was exhausted as well. The nascent rebellion burst into the open: huge blocks of voters consciously rejected their respective “establishment” parties.

Mr. Sanders’ vision has far greater clarity and his proposals are far more detailed than Mr. Trump’s. Advocating quantum changes in healthcare, higher education, trade, energy, infrastructure, and taxation policies, he seeks to recapture American democracy, to “make government work for all of us, not just the corporations and the billionaires.” His rebel partisans—nearly half the Democratic Party—display a degree of enthusiasm not seen in years.

Mr. Trump’s mind is not so disciplined as Mr. Sanders’. Linguists say it works in the wild and simplistic ways of a fourth-grader’s, but he intuits the damage done to the domestic economy by the corporate export of American jobs. The idiots in Washington don’t know how to do trade deals. They’re idiots. I know how to do deals. Hell, I wrote a book about it. I know how to do deals.

His intuition is also accurate respecting the Affordable Care Act: it is a triumph of corporate profiteering at public expense.

The reason so many more people have health coverage today is easily grasped. They were forced by law to buy it. Absent the “public option” President Obama quickly surrendered, however, there is no constraint on costs. The insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical corporations charge anything they please, so the costs to consumers—and corporate profits—are astronomical and rising. Obamacare is a money machine. In Mr. Trump’s vernacular, it is an incredible deal for the health corporations, an incredible deal. But it’s a disaster for the American people. It’s a disaster.

In contrast to Mr. Sanders’ specific prescriptions, Mr. Trump suggests a profoundly generic remedy: Make America Great Again.

For millions of voters this holds great intuitive appeal. We used to be great: America was first in life-expectancy, first in infant survival, first in education, first in health care, first in technology, first in equitable income and wealth distribution, first in home ownership, first in industrial productivity, first in innovation, first in per capita income and wealth, first in reserves of foreign exchange, first in exports, and so on and on. But we don’t win any more.

Mr. Trump’s rebel partisans—more than half of the Republican Party—yield nothing to Mr. Sanders’ in enthusiasm.

A Hillary Clinton presidency, then, would face a national majority of citizens in open rebellion.   Either intuitively or consciously they are incensed with the dominance of corporate political power. This is the template of governance Ms. Clinton helped create, the one in which she is historically and demonstrably comfortable, and the one which finances her campaigns for elected office. Wed to those donors, and locked into this mindset of the New Democratic Party, her presidency could not and would not alter significantly the status quo. Proudly she claims as much: “Let’s not start from scratch,” she says. Corporate dominance would remain unchallenged, the rebellion ignored.

Rebellion scorned will escalate; first to spirited demonstrations we have already seen, conceivably to violence. Only substantive reform can accommodate it.

Reform is neither difficult nor unprecedented. Our history displays a number of means of subordinating corporate interests to the welfare of the American people. More than a century ago—in the “Gilded Age”—the nation faced a similar crisis and dealt with it successfully. And a century before that, effective mechanisms were in place to restrain corporate dominion, even though the threat of it was already visible.

This is what Thomas Jefferson said about the issue: 

“I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations,    which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Note Jefferson’s concern was merely prospective, wary of potential. Corporate enterprise was not yet dominant, only pushing to be. At the time, corporations were very strongly circumscribed, to assure their subservience to public well-being. Perhaps Jefferson feared they would escape the control mechanisms early corporations faced:

- they were chartered for a limited period of time, typically twenty years

- they were chartered for a single specific purpose, say to construct a toll road

- the charter could be revoked if the corporation’s behavior violated public interests

- stockholders, directors, and officers of the corporation were personally responsible for the corporation’s obligations or transgressions

- a corporation could not buy or otherwise merge with another corporation

Mr. Jefferson’s fears were realized.

As the 1800’s progressed corporations in America—particularly the great railroads—fought vigorously and successfully to have these constraints relaxed, and all of them were. The corporate structure escaped any meaningful public control.

Eventually, corporations could grow without limit by absorbing others; they could live in perpetuity; they could undertake multiple tasks and change them at will. Personal liability was limited to a pittance, and charter revocation virtually disappeared. Then, in 1866, corporations as artificial persons became legal persons: the Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad extended the rights of U.S. citizenship to corporate entities. They were granted equal protection under the law, their rights protected by the U.S. Constitution. (The grant of legal personhood, Thom Hartmann discovered, was technically illegal, but it has endured. See his book, Unequal Protection.)

By the end of the century, unrestrained corporate enterprise rampaged through the economy—exploiting labor, polluting the environment, concentrating wealth—and dominated the political system. Corporations had learned the art of disguised bribery: financing political campaigns to ensure the passage (or repeal) of legislation in their interests. It was a vivid preview of the conditions we face today.

But their appalling behavior eventually became too egregious to sustain even with graft. A great wave of reformist and anti-trust legislation was enacted. Finally in 1906 Theodore Roosevelt submitted to Congress the Corporate Donations Abolition Act, prohibiting the practice. He signed it into law on January 26, 1907, and that was the end of corporate money flowing to elected officials.

Theodore Roosevelt undertook a revolution, to reclaim American democracy. Perhaps we need a Roosevelt surrogate today.

The Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1910 superseded and greatly strengthened the abolition law. It specified a further and brilliant means of assuring the independence of elected officials: it put stringent limits on campaign expenditures. If you can’t spend much, there is no need to solicit much, even from individual donors.

History displays, then, determined efforts to foreclose corporate dominance.   But history also shows a failure of political resolve in the late 20th century, because American corporations escaped public oversight and control once more. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 repealed the Federal Corrupt Practices Act and legalized political action committees or PACs. A convoluted trickle of corporate campaign contributions flowed once more. Then two Supreme Court cases opened the floodgates. First Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 and then Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 gave birth to the Super PAC: contributing money, the Supreme Court decided, is a form of free speech.

No longer prohibited but encouraged to seek political dominance, corporations have lots of money with which to speak freely. There are laws they want passed, and others they want repealed, like the Glass-Steagall Act. That law was a firewall protecting the public interest from high-flying finance, but eleven Wall Street banks hated it. Those eleven banks speak with loud voices, having contributed $83,720,000 over the years to the Clintons’ presidential and senatorial campaigns.

Glass-Steagall was repealed during Bill Clinton’s Administration. Doing so was a direct cause of the subprime-mortgage crisis and the economic collapse of 2008. The banks were bailed out with taxpayers’ money and continue to prosper. The American people continue to suffer.

This is now the template. Corporate interests thrive—exploiting labor, polluting the environment, concentrating wealth, and dominating the political system. But the interests of the nation at large languish, and this will not change until governance is returned to democratic processes. Overturning Citizens United and reinstating The Federal Corrupt Practices Act would be an excellent beginning. Overturning Santa Clara County, to rescind corporate personhood, would be an epochal finale.

None of this will ever appear on the radar screen of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

She is indeed a victim of historic tragedy. Even supposing her intentions were worthy, she gamed the nominating process with a first-and-most strategy. But history intervened when the American people clamored for a radical reclamation of democratic governance, something she did not see, does not comprehend, and cannot possibly deliver. The sheer momentum of her campaign has carried her to the edge of success, but her nomination is by no means inevitable. Many states have yet to vote and the Democratic convention promises to be unruly. There is a good chance she will fail. For the good of the nation she must.

We don’t need a Hillary Clinton. This election must be pivotal. We need a Theodore Roosevelt surrogate.

The Left asks: What happened to the Democrats?

There is a new book out by Thomas Frank, a journalist who writes for Harpers magazine.  His book was recently reviewed by the magazine In These Times. 

In These Times was founded in 1976 by author and historian James Weinstein to "identify and clarify the struggles against corporate power now multiplying in American society."  Weinstein was joined by noted intellectuals Daniel Ellsberg, E.P. Thompson, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Julian Bond and Herbert Marcuse, all of whom were among the original sponsors of the magazine.

Thomas Frank's new book is titled:  Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?  The title In These Times chose for its column on the book is even more explicit:

HOW DEMOCRATS WENT FROM BEING THE ‘PARTY OF THE PEOPLE’ TO THE PARTY OF RICH ELITES

The column is in the form of an interview of Thomas Frank, conducted by Tobita Chow, chair of The People’s Lobby, an independent progressive political organization based in Chicago. Below are some excerpts from the column:

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ONCE THE PARTY OF THE NEW DEAL and the ally of organized labor. But by the time of Bill Clinton's presidency, it had become the enemy of New Deal programs like welfare and Social Security and the champion of free trade deals. What explains this apparent reversal?

...According to Frank, popular explanations which blame corporate lobby groups and the growing power of money in politics are insufficient.

Frank instead points to a decision by Democratic Party elites in the 1970s to marginalize labor unions and transform from the party of the working class to the party of the professional class... The end result is that the party which created the New Deal and helped create the middle class has now become “the party of mass inequality.” 

***

The book is about how the Democratic Party turned its back on working people and now pursues policies that actually increase inequality. What are the policies or ideological commitments in the Democratic Party that make you think this?

The first piece of evidence is what’s happened since the financial crisis. This is the great story of our time. Inequality has actually gotten worse since then, which is a remarkable thing. This is under a Democratic president who we were assured (or warned) was the most liberal or radical president we would ever see.  Yet inequality has gotten worse, and the gains since the financial crisis, since the recovery began, have gone entirely to the top 10 percent of the income distribution.

This is not only because of those evil Republicans, but because Obama played it the way he wanted to. Even when he had a majority in both houses of Congress and could choose whoever he wanted to be in his administration, he consistently made policies that favored the top 10 percent over everybody else. He helped out Wall Street in an enormous way when they were entirely at his mercy.

He could have done anything he wanted with them, in the way that Franklin Roosevelt did in the ’30s. But he chose not to.

Why is that? This is supposed to be the Democratic Party, the party that’s interested in working people, average Americans. Why would they react to a financial crisis in this way? Once you start digging into this story, it goes very deep. You find that there was a transition in the Democratic Party in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s where they convinced themselves that they needed to abandon working people in order to serve a different constituency: a constituency essentially of white-collar professionals.

That’s the most important group in their coalition. That’s who they won over in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. That’s who they serve, and that’s where they draw from. The leaders of the Democratic Party are always from this particular stratum of society.

... Money in politics is a big part of the story, but social class goes deeper than that. The Democrats have basically made their commitment [to white-collar professionals] already before money and politics became such a big deal. It worked out well for them because of money in politics. So when they chose essentially the top 10 percent of the income distribution as their most important constituents, that is the story of money.

It wasn’t apparent at the time in the ’70s and ’80s when they made that choice. But over the years, it has become clear that that was a smart choice in terms of their ability to raise money. Organized labor, of course, is no slouch in terms of money. They have a lot of clout in dollar terms. However, they contribute and contribute to the Democrats and they almost never get their way—they don’t get, say, the Employee Free Choice Act, or Bill Clinton passes NAFTA. They do have a lot of money, but their money doesn’t count.

All of this happened because of the civil war within the Democratic Party. They fought with each other all the time in the ’70s and the ’80s. One side hadn’t completely captured the party until Bill Clinton came along in the ’90s. That was a moment of victory for them.

***

Do you think there’s a connection between the fact that the Democratic Party has turned against workers and the rise of Donald Trump?

Yes. Because if you look at the polling, Trump is winning the votes of a lot of people who used to be Democrats. These white, working-class people are his main base of support. As a group, these people were once Democrats all over the country. These are Franklin Roosevelt’s people.

These are the people that the Democrats essentially decided to turn their backs on back in the 1970s. They call them the legatees of the New Deal. They were done with these guys, and now look what’s happened—they’ve gone with Donald Trump. That’s frightening and horrifying.

But Trump talks about their issues in a way that they find compelling, especially the trade issue. When he talks about trade, they believe him.

... Millenials’ take on the world is fascinating. Just a few years ago, people thought of them as very

different. But now they’re coming out of college with enormous student debt, and they’re discovering that the job market is casualized and Uberized. The work that they do is completely casual. The idea of having a middle-class lifestyle in that situation is completely off the table for them.

Every time I think about these people, it burns me up. It makes me so angry what we’ve done to them as a society. It really gives the lie to Democratic Party platitudes about the world an education will open up for you. That path just doesn’t work anymore. Millenials can see that in their own lives very plainly.

 READ THE FULL COLUMN HERE:

HTTP://INTHESETIMES.COM/FEATURES/LISTEN-LIBERAL-THOMAS-FRANK-DEMOCRATIC-PARTY-ELITES-INEQUALITY.HTML

 OR BUY THE BOOK:

http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

Should NJGOP be "outsiders" in 2017?

The disastrous 2015 legislative elections are behind us.  Now the NJGOP, and especially those Republican members of the Legislature who expect to be candidates in 2017, are in the process of positioning themselves for the elections two years from now -- when both chambers will be up, as well as the Governor.

The first question to consider is whether or not to run as members of the party of government or to run against the Trenton establishment.  Republican legislators do have an option, for while a Republican Governor has held power for the last six years, the Democrats have controlled the Legislature for more than twice as long.  Since 2002, and under four Governors, the Democrats have run the legislative process in Trenton.

If polls are anything to go by, it might serve the GOP well if its legislators were to put away their "party of Governor Chris Christie" slogans and replace them with an up-to-date "outsider" populist perspective. 

Take these numbers for example:  In 1958, 77 percent of the American public "trusted government always or most of the time."  The Pew Center tests that question regularly, and when tested this year, that 77 percent had declined to 19 percent.  As late as the first term of President George W. Bush, that number had stood at 60 percent. So the decline has been as sharp as it's been rapid.  That decline just happens to mirror the period during which the Democrats have run the Legislature in Trenton.

Trust in government is greater among Democrats, but at 26 percent, still nothing to brag about.  For those with no party affiliation/independents it is 16 percent and for Republicans it is 11 percent.

In a study titled, Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government, released by the Pew Research Center for U.S. Politics & Policy on November 23, 2015, only 20 percent of the American public believes that government programs are well run.  74 percent believe that "most elected officials put their own interests before those of the country."  And 55 percent believe that "ordinary Americans would do a better job of solving national problems."

Only 25 percent of the American public views the federal government positively, with 33 percent viewing large corporations positively.  Just 25 percent view the news media favorably, and for the entertainment industry, that rises to 32 percent.

Labor unions are viewed positively by 45 percent, churches & religious institutions by 61 percent, and small businesses by 82 percent.

Back when Bill Clinton was President, Americans were evenly split on whether or not there was a great difference between the two major political parties.  Today, 45 percent believe there is a "great deal" of difference between the two parties, with 32 percent saying there is a 'fair amount" of difference, and 19 percent saying "hardly any" difference.

Only 18 percent of Americans report they are "basically content" with their government.  57 percent report they are "frustrated", with another 22 percent describing themselves as "angry".

On government competence to deliver, only 2 percent report that government programs are being run in an "excellent" fashion vs. 33 percent who say they are being run in a "poor" way. 18 percent report "good" vs. 44 percent who report "only fair". 

More Americans now describe their government as an "enemy" -- 9 percent -- than as a "friend" -- 8 percent.  On the government's management of key issues, it appears to let down both Republicans and Democrats, with just 28 percent saying that it manages the immigration system well, 36 percent saying that it helps people get out of poverty, and 48 percent saying that it ensures a basic income for seniors.

The choice for 2017 is being discussed now.  Will the NJGOP and its legislative candidates -- incumbents as well as prospects -- choose to position themselves as anti-establishment outsiders or the party of government?