Senate Republicans provide the votes to pass Woke ESG agenda.

By Rubashov
 
S-3605 passed the Senate yesterday, even though the bill has not been certified by OLS for a fiscal note. In other words, we don’t know what it will cost.
 
This bill “requires the Commissioner of Community Affairs to adopt regulations implementing certain reductions in required on- and off-street parking spaces in the Statewide site improvement standards by 20, 30, and 50 percent, depending on a residential development’s proximity to certain public transportation services.”
 
The prime sponsors of the bill are Senators Paul Sarlo and Troy Singleton. As legislation goes, S-3605 has led a charmed life. It was introduced on February 16, 2023; referred to the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee, from where it was reported on May 8th. It passed the Senate on Monday, by a vote of 21 yeas, 12 nays, and 7 not voting.
 
Democrats Beach, Cruz-Perez, Gopal, Greenstein, Johnson, Lagana, Madden, Pou, Sarlo, Scutari, Singleton, Smith, Thompson, Vitale, and Zwicker voted “Yes”.
 
Republicans  Bramnick, Connors, Holzapfel, Oroho, Polistina, and Stanfield put them over the top with their “Yes” votes.
 
Republicans Bucco, Corrado, Durr, Pennacchio, Schepisi, Singer, Steinhardt, and Testa voted “No”. Along with Democrats Cryan, Diegnan, Sacco, and Stack.
 
Democrats Burgess, Codey, Cunningham, Gill, Ruiz, and Turner were “Not Voting”; along with Republican O'Scanlon.
 
Legislation like S-3605 is a major goal of groups like the U.S. Green Building Council. They rate buildings that incorporate a “reduced parking footprint”, claiming that they “save money, improve efficiency, lower carbon emissions and create healthier places for people” and “are critical to addressing the climate crisis, meeting ESG goals, enhancing resilience, and supporting more equitable communities.”
 
ESG points are given “to minimize the environmental harms associated with parking facilities, including automobile dependence, land consumption, and rainwater runoff.”
 
No Parking or Reduce Parking (1 point)
Do not exceed the minimum local code requirements for parking capacity. Provide parking capacity that is a 30% reduction below the base ratios for parking spaces.
 
Carshare (1 point)
Provide dedicated parking for carshare vehicles. Provide carshare vehicle parking space(s) for at least 1% of total parking spaces, rounded up. If the project has fewer than 100 parking spaces, provide one carshare vehicle parking space. Establish an agreement between the project and carshare company guaranteeing that new and existing carshare vehicle space(s) will be dedicated for a minimum of two years from the certificate of building occupancy. Existing carshare vehicles located in nearby on- or off-street parking areas do not contribute to credit achievement.
 
Unbundling Parking (1 point)
Sell parking separately from all property sales or leases. For owner-occupied projects, do not provide free or subsidized parking for employees. Implement a daily parking fee at a cost equal to or greater than the daily roundtrip cost of municipal public transit.
 
Advocates of legislation like S-3605 point to the “Seattle Model” where transportation options are being determined by parking availability instead of personal choice.
 
Most U.S. cities require residential developers to provide one or more parking spaces with each housing unit they build. An oversupply of parking can lead directly to… more vehicle ownership and driving. As such, oversupplying parking harms the environment, reduces housing affordability, and thwarts efforts to improve social equity.

Realizing these downsides, a growing number of cities are reforming their parking policies to let developers provide fewer parking spaces… in Seattle, after the city reduced its off-street parking minimums… developers built less parking… this allowed Seattle to increase its housing production and discourage reliance on automobiles.
 
In addition to pushing the Green agenda, less parking means more profit for developers. Unfortunately for those who must inhabit such places, human activities -- like family gatherings at Thanksgiving or birthday parties -- will need to be curtailed. No parking, you see.
 
The Heritage Foundation has a new video on the threat of ESG:
 

“Voters can’t make informed decisions unless they’re informed.  If you asked any self-respecting constituent of George Santos, they’d tell you they wish they knew then what they know now.”
 
Micah Rasmussen
Director of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University
 

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

George Orwell

Is Troy Singleton the most corrupt NJ Senator?

Is there anyone as casually corrupt as Senator Troy Singleton?  The first thing you need to know is that Senator Singleton is the former bagman for Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts – who has since retired and moved to a less taxed state than the one he ruled over and made the worst taxed in America. 

After that Singleton picked-up a union job for which he lacked any qualification at all… outside of his political connections.  And when he’s not picking the pockets of blue-collar union workers, Singleton adopts a nonchalance towards political corruption – oozing a partisanship that ignores the worst racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic tendencies within his own party.

Take Linda Sarsour for example.  Senator Singleton has practically crawled up the ass of Sarsour’s organization – the Women’s March – even as it has embraced open racists like Louis Farrahkan.  The Farrahkan movement has long referred to white-skinned people as “Devils” (reserving a particular hatred for women). 

Singleton’s jaws have been quick to flap whenever he has the chance to call a Republican a “racist” – even singling out Country & Western music artists and their fans as “racists”.  But when members of his own party openly behave like racists, Singleton gets a partisan version of lock-jaw.  Maybe he believes that racism towards some is an acceptable form?

As a member of the Assembly Democrats, Singleton was quite comfy with a fellow Democrat Assemblyman who had been convicted of a federal crime and who had been charged with stalking women.  Singleton obviously doesn’t get the #MeToo movement.

And when fellow Democrat Cory Booker came out with some Israel-hatred recently, Senator Singleton’s head merely bobbed in agreement.  He can’t quite figure out how to address a subject that involves a fellow partisan like Booker.  What’s up with the normally loud-mouthed, opinionated Singleton?  Either he’s too scared, too stupid, or too partisan to publicly disagree with Booker.

Here’s Singleton’s pal Booker, calling for the end to the border wall and other fortifications that protect Israel against terrorists.  This is like calling for a second Holocaust.  It is not enough that Cory Booker’s international allies have driven Jews out of every country they control, now he wants to tear down Israel’s protective barrier and allow them to march in to commence a pogrom of terror, torture, rape, and murder.

And to make matters worse, thanks to the Philadelphia Inquirer, now we know that Booker's fellow Democrat - Bob Menendez - is allowing his campaign to be run by a lobbyist for the foreign government of Qatar, one of the worse anti-Jewish culprits in the world and a government criticized by the United Nations and Amnesty International for its relaxed attitude towards modern slavery - human trafficking and the exploitation of children. 

Perhaps the best way to understand Senator Singleton is the way in which we understand Senator Booker?  That is, to remember Jack Nicholson’s answer to this question…

Stay tuned...

Asm. Singleton vs. Saint Patrick's Day

Today is Saint Patrick's Day.  So named in honor of the first bishop of Armagh and the patron saint of Ireland, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean island of Montserrat, parts of Spain and Australia, the Archdiocese of New York, of Newark, and of Boston.  There will be revelry tonight to mark the anniversary of the death of this missionary who brought the Christian gospel to the Ireland.

Saint Patrick spent his early adult life as a slave.  When Patrick was about 16, he was taken from his home in Great Britain by Irish pirates and was made an agricultural and household slave in Ireland.  He was a slave for six years until he escaped and returned to his family.  He later entered the clergy, and in an act of Christian charity, returned to Ireland to preach the gospel and minister to those who had once enslaved him.

Last year the murder of innocent Christians at a church in South Carolina was conflated with a long-simmering complaint against the government of that state:  That since the 1960's, and in direct response to the movement to obtain civil rights (particularly voting rights) for all its citizens, the government of South Carolina had flown the old battle flag of the breakaway Confederate States of America as an act of defiance to federal efforts to ensure those rights.  Those who advocated for the flag to be lowered at the State House used the incident to finally win their reasonable request.  But it did not end there. 

The makers of fashion in this country decided that this was an opportunity to pit plebeian against plebeian based on nothing more than their attitude towards this flag, forgetting that it had long been used as a kind of cultural backdrop by everyone from rock bands to Democrat politicians.  Here are just a few examples:

In its rush to make a fashion statement, the political class developed a kind of crude mob psychology.  This mob behavior was particularly developed among those who regularly attended Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraisers, held in honor of those two slave holding Presidents who regularly took by force, for their sexual gratification, the women they considered to be their chattel. 

One such member of the political class, an Assemblyman by the name of Troy Singleton, proposed a resolution that was so broad as to effectively condemn any state flag that acknowledges a heritage deriving from the politically-oppressed, formerly enslaved portions of the British Isles.  One silly, silly fool of a Republican actually signed on as a co-sponsor -- and the misguided piece of theatre passed with just 7 Assembly members refusing to vote for it. 

Assemblyman Singleton's resolution is a kind of ethnic profiling.  It attempts to smear every flag that resembles a flag that didn't exist until 1861 (and that wasn't formally adopted until 1863).  It doesn't appear to matter to the Assemblyman that the Cross of Saint Andrew and the Saltire of Saint Patrick graced the flags of those Celtic nations from 1385 and 1783, respectively.  In 1800, these flags were combined to form the flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.  It was warships flying this flag -- after Parliament voted to abolish the slave trade in 1807 -- that blasted the slave traders off the seas, seizing 1,600 of their ships and freeing over 150,000 people bound for slavery.

Assemblyman Singleton's resolution  ignored the Celtic heritage of our early states and forgets the condition of enslavement that brought many of those Celts to America.  Uprisings against the Crown in Ireland and Scotland saw many political prisoners sent to America under a penalty called "transportation."  After the Scottish uprising of 1745, the display of tartans was banned and the Cross of Saint Andrew remained a way to acknowledge a heritage that was officially suppressed.  There were no less than six risings in Ireland that were suppressed during this period -- with prisoners of war often given the choice of "transportation" to America or death.   The Saltire of Saint Patrick was one of the few ways that they could remember. That is why today it features as part of the flag of Jamaica. 

Unfortunately for Assemblyman Singleton and his co-sponsors, the ethnic group his resolution effectively profiled is a very significant one.  The flag under which march the benevolent society called The Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick is the Saltire. 

 We think an apology from the Assemblyman is in order.