Is the Dem Health Committee Chair qualified to discuss masking?

By Rubashov

Ego is no substitute for a background in medicine.

We know the chairmanship of the Senate Health Committee is a sought-after assignment, what with it being so important to some of the state’s most cash-fat industries and all, but shouldn’t the Democrats at least try to find someone with a background in medicine? What with the pandemic and opioid epidemic and ongoing health care availability crisis and the rapacious nature of Big Pharma – shouldn’t the Chair of the Senate Health Committee be someone whose qualifications stretch further than the ability to cash a check from some Big Pharma lobbyist?

Enter Senator Joe Vitale. He’s the Chairman of the Senate Health Committee and nobody’s ever accused him of being humble.

Earlier this year Vitale dismissed out of hand calls to investigate why Matthew Platkin and Phil Murphy signed-off on Executive Order 103 – which sent COVID patients into nursing and veterans’ homes – resulting in the deaths of up to 10,000 residents. Vitale claimed there was no need to investigate because he already had all the answers.

Vitale made headlines again today, this time for opposing Governor Murphy’s plan to lift his masking mandates on children. NJ.com’s Brent Johnson reported:

The chairman of the state Senate’s health committee told NJ Advance Media on Thursday he sharply disagrees with Gov. Phil Murphy’s decision to lift New Jersey’s statewide coronavirus mask mandate inside schools and child care facilities next month.

State Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, said he’s especially irked Murphy, a fellow Democrat, is removing the requirement in child care centers because children under 5 are not eligible to be vaccinated yet and remain “exposed.”

Last year, Vitale led the effort to repeal the law criminalizing the “act of a person knowing they are infected with venereal disease or HIV, committing sexual penetration without informed consent of other person.” Vitale generally follows fashion, not science, but there is a weird logic in allowing those with COVID to infect nursing homes residents while removing legal impediments to allow those with HIV to infect others. But how does that jive with keeping children masked forever?

As Chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Joe Vitale has been anything but a gentleman – or even a human being – when lording over his committee. We vividly remember him in committee arguing with a citizen over Senate Bill 1195 – then legislation, now law – which allows people to alter their birth certificates to whatever gender they wish, without undergoing sexual reassignment surgery. Yes, in New Jersey, people with penises can legally be women and people with vaginas can legally be men. Science anyone?

Senator Vitale was the main sponsor of Senate Bill 1195 and his exchange with this citizen exercising the right to speak before the New Jersey Legislature was anything but respectful. There was something of the sociopath in the Senator's behavior -- one moment he was dripping sensitivity, only to turn vicious the next. There's no remorse – he doesn't appear to care how he treats people who don't agree right down the line with him. Does he lack a conscience? We wonder.

We recall the way in which Vitale utterly dismissed the reputation of a scholar whose words were entered into the record by the citizen. Senator Vitale appeared to have no intellectual curiosity at all. Here is that exchange:

The Senator: "...You are citing some medical director, obviously he's a former medical director, probably for good reason."

The Citizen: "Because he retired."

The Senator: "Um, right, good thing."

Now someone with Vitale’s level of certainty must have some credentials to back up such a coarse dismissal. So, we wondered if the Senator was a doctor or a professor, after all, he is the Chairman of the committee through which passes all health care legislation in New Jersey. We looked up his biography and found out that he managed to make it through the 12th grade. Yep, born in 1954, went from high school to the family business, drifted into the muck of Woodbridge politics, became one of the boys, was selected by the boys as their Senator when Jim McGreevey ran for Governor.

And what about that "medical director" the one the Senator said was "obviously... a former medical director, probably for good reason" and that it was a "good thing" he was no longer working?

Well, that guy was born in 1931 and is a psychiatrist, researcher, and educator. He is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the author, co-author, or editor of seven books within his field. He was the son of a high school teacher and a homemaker. He graduated from Harvard College in 1952 and from Harvard Medical School in 1956. He was accepted into the neurology and neuropathology residency program at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he studied for three years under the chief of the Neurology Department.

From Massachusetts General, he went to the Institute of Psychiatry in London (where he studied under Sir Aubrey Lewis and was supervised by James Gibbons and Gerald Russell). Following London, he went to the Division of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He has held various academic and administrative positions, including, Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College (where he founded the Bourne Behavioral Research Laboratory), Clinical Director and Director of Residency Education at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Westchester Division and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oregon.

From 1975 until 2001, he was the Henry Phipps Professor of Psychiatry and the director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Johns Hopkins University. At the same time, he was psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is currently University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His own research has focused on the neuroscientific foundations of motivated behaviors, psychiatric genetics, epidemiology, and neuropsychiatry. During the 1960s, he co-authored papers on hydrocephalus, depression and suicide, and amygdaloid stimulation.

In 1975, he co-authored a paper entitled "Mini-Mental State: A Practical Method for Grading the Cognitive State of Patients for the Clinician." This paper details the Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE), an exam consisting of just eleven questions, that quickly and accurately assesses patients for signs of dementia and other states of cognitive impairment. It is one of the most widely used tests in the mental health field. In 1979, in his capacity as chair of the Department of Psychiatry, he ended gender assignment surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1983, he co-authored The Perspectives of Psychiatry, which presents the Johns Hopkins approach to psychiatry.

The book "seeks to systematically apply the best work of behaviorists, psychotherapists, social scientists and other specialists long viewed as at odds with each other." A second edition was published in 1998. He also treated author Tom Wolfe for depression suffered following coronary bypass surgery. Wolfe dedicated his 1998 novel, A Man in Full to him, "whose brilliance, comradeship and unfailing kindness saved the day." He is a registered Democrat who describes himself as a "political liberal".

And you Senator... you made it through the 12th grade.

Maybe read one of the guy's books before dismissing him out of hand? Or don't. Perhaps this is why health care policy is what it is in New Jersey? Maybe New Jersey is in the shape it is in because of the lack of humility and unwillingness to learn exhibited by politicians who set policies – guys like Joe Vitale. Maybe a Committee Chairman too stupid to learn does result in substandard government and people being made to suffer?

Now here are two comedians – Jimmy Dore and Bill Maher – who can offer opinions as equally qualified as those of Senator Vitale – but who offer them with better punchlines:

“Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.”

Confucius

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

New Jersey Law Enforcement News blasts Sweeney

Yesterday, the leading figures of New Jersey’s legislative, governmental, legal, judicial, and political establishment (aka Trenton “insiders”) gathered together at a press conference to decry the state’s criminal justice system. NJ.com’s Blake Nelson did some great straight-forward reporting on this, with an assist from fellow journalist Brent Johnson:

Gov. Phil Murphy and leaders of the state Legislature said they’re planning to act swiftly on new recommendations to overhaul how people are sentenced in New Jersey, where prisons have had the worst racial disparity in the nation.

Murphy said during a news conference in Trenton on Thursday that he supports calls to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug and property crime and to speed up when people convicted of second-degree robbery or burglary are eligible for parole in the Garden State.

The recommendations were detailed in a new report by the New Jersey Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission.

Some of the changes, if adopted, could apply retroactively, although the Democratic governor emphasized that nobody was guaranteed release.
Murphy called the fact that black residents are incarcerated at far higher rates than whites “galling,” and he said the reforms would ensure that the criminal justice system works "for all communities.”

… State Senate President Stephen Sweeney said the changes were “long past due.”

“We’re destroying people," Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said. "People that made mistakes. They’re not criminals. But we turn them into criminals if we keep them in jail for a long period of time.”

Deborah Poritz, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the leader of the commission, said there was “overwhelming consensus” behind the proposals.

The hypocrisy here is rich.

If this was Pennsylvania – a state where the voters ELECT every judge and every prosecutor – there might be some cause for Establishment types gathering to point the finger at a system that they have only a partial hand in creating. But this is New Jersey, where EVERY facet of the criminal justice system is ENTIRELY controlled by this same Establishment. EVERY judge is a political appointment. EVERY prosecutor is a political appointment. The state Attorney General is a POLITICAL APPOINTMENT.

Trenton insider Deborah Poritz, who presented the recommendations, has worked in state government since 1981. Poritz was the APPOINTED state Attorney General from 1994 to 1996. Then she became the APPOINTED Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court from 1996 to 2006. She is critiquing the very system she played a huge role in creating!

Is it the sentencing… or the laws? New Jersey regulates or criminalizes some new behavior nearly every week. Even now, the Legislature is hard at work trying to criminalize menthol cigarettes. In his famous article on the subject, conservative columnist George Will argued that "overcriminalization" was responsible for the death of Eric Garner, a sidewalk merchant who was killed in a confrontation with police trying to crack down on sales tax scofflaws.

Will raises the question of how many new laws are created by state legislatures and by Congress in the rush to be seen to be "doing something". Will's brilliant column is a must read for legislators thinking about proposing their next round of ideas that will end up being enforced by men with guns. New Jersey has too many laws, too many restrictions, too many regulations. It suffers under a New Deal Era constitution that idealized the kind of authoritarian central-control necessary to fight a world war, but stifling in normal times. And to top it all off, it has the least democratic Legislature in America.

Perhaps those Establishment types should read a little before opening their mouths. We recommend Douglas Husak’s Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law or Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day. What we do know is this: Whenever the Legislature makes a law that requires blue-collar law enforcement officers to enforce it, when something inevitably goes wrong, you can always count on the white-collar Establishment to blame the cops who they sent to enforce the law. It’s a class thing.

To feign outrage over something created from the top down – as though you and your fellow Trenton insiders were innocent bystanders – is the height of hypocrisy. It is play-acting. The New Jersey Law Enforcement News summed up the politics behind the Establishment’s performance art…

New Jersey Law Enforcement News
“We’re destroying people," Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said. "People that made mistakes. They’re not criminals. But we turn them into criminals if we keep them in jail for a long period of time.”

WTF is Sweeney talking about? If you're in prison, you are in fact a "criminal." You committed a crime, you were prosecuted, sentenced and incarcerated. 100% leftist drivel here. The leftists believe you, the LEO are the criminal, the law abiding citizen is the "criminal," working people who want to enjoy the prosperity they've earned are the "criminals" To them capitalism is the crime, and "criminals" are merely political prisoners and victims of the "system." This is an evil philosophy. If you support, or vote for Murphy or any Democrat, in my opinion you are voting for self-destruction.
- NJLEN