Yes Alan Steinberg, once upon a time America did send people “back to where they came from”

What is a “Congresswoman of color”?  How does she differ from a plain old “Congresswoman”?  Are the duties, rights, and responsibilities different?

Terms like “Congresswoman of color” are generally used by people who come from mono-chromatic worlds – whether that world is an all Somali-neighborhood in Minnesota or a Palestinian enclave in Michigan.  You can tell such places by the flags they fly.  If a neighborhood flies a flag other than the American flag it’s a good chance you have wandered into a mono-chromatic world.

See, Americans are a mixed people.  Ethnically and racially – as was often pointed out by the great Harlem Renaissance poet Jean Toomer.  A Quaker, Toomer knew that Americans were a “people of the word” – what sets us apart are the words in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  Our freedoms make us who we are.  After spending many years traveling, Toomer lived and mentored in Doylestown, Bucks County, where he died in 1967. 

Those who think in terms of “people of color” and who are obsessed by the tint of one’s skin are almost always themselves 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.

Of course, 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 calling people “racist” is a nonsense game.  The actor Morgan Freeman got it right…

Enter Alan Steinberg, house “Republican” for a far-Left insider blog financed by some rather unsavory government vendors.  Steinberg longs for the days when the NJGOP was run by rich, so called “blue-bloods” (a mixed caste that claimed it could trace some measure of its history back to America’s colonial masters).  Unfortunately for Steinberg, all the rich “blue-bloods” are today Democrats, which is why Steinberg is such a decidedly anti-Republican “Republican”.  Like the writer Stefan Zweig, he longs for a lost monarchy, his queen, in exile. 

Alan Steinberg is a racialist.  He embraces the concept of race as central to our political, academic, economic, and cultural discourse in America.  He wants to elevate it to the center of all things, a thing that does not exist.  In some ways, Steinberg is like Donald Trump, who is also a racialist, albeit a tongue-in-cheek one.  Who can take half of what he tweets seriously?  How much of it is designed to arouse – like the comedic entertainer – simply for the pleasure of it.  Steinberg however, is very serious.  He applies heavy meaning to his racialism.

So do his allies in the Democrat Party.  As do those radical Democrats he claims he doesn’t like – Ms. A.O.C. and her posse.  They are racialists all. 

Alan Steinberg is deeply troubled by President Trump’s most recent taunt to Congresswoman A.O.C. and her… wait for it… fellow congresswomen of color, that they “go back to where you came from”.  Of course, they all came from here, from the America of made-up racial and ethnic “identities”.  All from mono-chromatic worlds.  Fake worlds, with flags from other places that are meant to impart some sense of false nationality, irrelevant to the place in which they actually live.  But fly them they do, in these make-pretend “colonies” that unwind and break-up as those within them meet, fall-in-love with, and are absorbed by the real place, by the nation that is, by America.

But as Steinberg fumes and pouts, it is funny to remember that – once upon a time – America really did send people “back where you came from”.  And for the most part, they could in no way be described as “people of color”.  Most of these people where Nazis, war criminals, and America was more than happy to use the words “go back to where you came from”.  Wikipedia notes:   

“According to a February 2, 2011 release from the United States Department of Justice, since 1979, the federal government has stripped 107 people of citizenship for alleged involvement in war crimes committed during World War II through the efforts of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI).  An unabridged 600-page Justice Department report obtained by The New York Times in 2010 stated, ‘More than 300 Nazi persecutors have been deported, stripped of citizenship or blocked from entering the United States since the creation of the O.S.I.’ The Los Angeles Times reported in 2008 that five such denaturalized men could not be deported as no country would accept them, and that four others had died while in the same situation.”

One wonders:  With Governor Murphy’s Sanctuary State directives and the unwillingness by many Democrats to in any way question an asylum seeker’s claims, how many sometime war criminals (or just plain violent criminals) will we be holding similar proceedings on some decades from now?  Stay tuned…

Top Booker advisor's firm guides Turkish authoritarian

Yes, and a top Menendez advisor and a top Christie advisor too.  What are the people who guide the political lives of the state's top elected officials doing in a firm that works for an Islamist strongman like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey?

Once upon a time, there were campaign managers who came up through the ranks alongside the politicians whose careers they helped to manage.  In Great Britain, they call them election "agents" and this is how they once operated in this country too -- wedded to the ups and downs of a particular political personality, often finding a job in the bureaucracy in between campaigns. 

From these manager/agents came the first campaign consultants.  Regional or statewide at first, but with the centralizing power of the national committees and national money there soon came to be the "national" consultant -- recommended by one of the party committees or put in place by them.  We recall a list, circa 1994, that the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) gave out, with the names of those "recommended" media consultants and pollsters on it. There were about a dozen names in all.

But as more money washed into DC and was funneled into campaigns, that changed.  Consultants proliferated and firms became larger.  Following the money, a few either merged with or morphed into public relations and lobbying (government relations) operations.  Why not?  Corporations paid big for access to politicians and there is nobody politicians love more than the person who got them elected.

It was only a matter of time that things went global.  And that is how three New Jersey political operatives became members of an international firm representing the interests of the Turkish government.  This firm itself is a subsidiary of an even larger international firm that handles the image-making  for Russian President Vladimir Putin, receiving credit for, among other accomplishments, getting Putin's face on the cover of Time magazine -- as the "Person of the Year" for 2007.

The three are Mo Butler, United States Senator Cory Booker's campaign consultant, former chief of staff, and "longtime advisor"; Michael Soliman, United States Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations Robert Menendez's political advisor and former State Director; and Michael DuHaime, Governor Chris Christie's campaign consultant and someone who has worked on several Republican presidential campaigns.  Two Democrats and a Republican.

Their firm is called Mercury Public Affairs.  Began in 1999 as a decidedly Republican shop with connections to the RNC and politicians like John McCain and Mitt Romney, around 2013 it embarked on a mission to "diversify" -- meaning making the firm "more bipartisan and full-service."  Mike DuHaime joined the firm in 2009, first as a "managing director" but swiftly rising to partner.  Michael Soliman joined Mercury in 2013 and became a partner this year.  Mo Butler joined as a "managing director" earlier this year.  Mercury Public Affairs has 10 partners and 160 employees.  Omnicom purchased Mercury in 2003.

Mercury Public Affairs has 18 offices worldwide -- including London; Mexico City; Washington, DC; New York; and Westfield, New Jersey.  The New Jersey offices (a satellite operates out of Trenton) of Mercury are the haunt of Messrs. DuHaime, Soliman, Butler, and other connected operatives like "seasoned lobbyist" Connor  Fennessy, newspaperman Darryl Isherwood (former top political reporter for the Star-Ledger and editor of PolitickerNJ), and "Christie campaign vet" Mark Mowers.  Mowers, who testified before the Legislature's BridgeGate inquiry, has recently joined the Trump campaign.

In January 2015, Michael Soliman registered with the United States Justice Department, pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as a person representing the Embassy of the State of Qatar.  You must have read about Qatar in the news...Amnesty International has accused Qatar of being complicit in human trafficking and modern-day slavery.  Yes, slavery.  In fact, in March of this year, the United Nations gave Qatar one year "to end migrant worker slavery" or face an international investigation. 

Qatar is just one of freedom's garden spots represented by Mercury.  Remember the controversy in Uganda, when the President of that country decided that homosexuality was a crime that should be punishable by death?  Well, the law he wanted passed was "moderated" in December 2013, substituting life imprisonment for the death penalty.   In 2015, Mercury was brought on to provide public relations, lobbying, and media monitoring services with regards to the Office of the President and the Ugandan government in general on subjects beginning with "human rights" and ending with "good governance."  For which the contract calls for Mercury to be compensated at the rate of $50,000 per month, with $150,000 up front.

Mercury also represents individuals.  Folks like Khalid bin Saqr Al Qasimi, who in 2003 led an anti-American demonstration in which he personally burned an American flag.  For its work, Mercury pocketed a $30,000 monthly retainer, plus expenses.

In January 2016, Mercury Public Affairs partner Morris Reid negotiated a contract with Amsterdam & Partners, an international law firm with offices in London and Washington, DC.  The document is marked "confidential and privileged" but is public information under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  In August of last year, Amsterdam & Partners signed a contract with the Turkish Ambassador to the United States to provide legal services related to a "matter of importance" to the embassy.  The government of Turkey pays Amsterdam a retainer of $50,000 a month.

While the contract stipulates that the greatest security and confidentiality be observed, under the terms of the contract between Amsterdam and Turkey, third parties may be hired "as the Firm and the Client agree in writing are necessary to further the Engagement."  And so, in March of 2016, Amsterdam hired Mercury to perform work on behalf of the Turkish government for $20,000 a month -- above and beyond what was being paid to Amsterdam by Turkey.  It is in the contract between Amsterdam & Partners and Mercury Public Affairs that we learn what all this cloak and dagger is in aid of:

The Amsterdam-Mercury contract references an "investigation into Fethullah Gulen and his organization in the United States."  So who is Fethullah Gulen?

Gulen has been in the news since the attempted coup in Turkey last week.  Gulen is a religious leader from Turkey, and a one-time political ally of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Erdogan is the increasingly authoritarian and Islamist President of Turkey.  He has been repeatedly in the news for purging the judiciary, jailing journalists who write unflattering reports, and successfully intimidating the opposition.  Erdogan had a law passed to allow the government to ban websites and he has promised to "rip out the roots" of Twitter.  He has even attempted to censor speech in other nations, last year demanding that Germany prosecute a poet who had written some verse critical of Erdogan.

Erdogan and Gulen had a falling out over allegations of political corruption by Erdogan in 2013.  Gulen's books were banned.  First, he was indicted on charges that a Turkish judge threw out, but then was indicted a few months later for treasonable offenses that carried the death penalty.  Gulen fled Turkey, came to the United States, and was convicted in absentia.  According to Wikipedia, Gulen was one of the first Muslim leaders to condemn the attacks on September 11, 2001, writing a "condemnation article" in the Washington Post, the next day.  He wrote:  "A Muslim cannot be a terrorist, nor can a terrorist be a true Muslim."

Gülen teaches a Hanafi version of Islam, deriving from Sunni Muslim scholar Said Nursi's teachings. Gülen has stated that he believes in science, interfaith dialogue among the People of the Book, and multi-party democracy.  He has initiated such dialogue with the Vatican and some Jewish organizations.

Gülen is actively involved in the societal debate concerning the future of the Turkish state, and Islam in the modern world. He has been described in the English-language media as an imam "who promotes a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work and education" and as "one of the world's most important Muslim figures."

The government of Turkish President Erdogan has attempted to extradite Gulen back to Turkey to face punishment, but the government of the United States hasn't cooperated.  In the hours after the coup attempt, Erdogan was quick to blame Gulen, while Gulen put forward the theory that Erdogan had staged the coup himself in order to consolidate power.

The Associated Press identified Amsterdam & Partners (the firm Mercury is working for) as "lawyer(s) for the Turkish government" and quoted Robert Amsterdam:  "There are indications of direct involvement (in the coup attempt) by Fethullah Gulen."  Amsterdam added that he and his firm "have attempted repeatedly to warn the U.S. government of the threat posed (by Gulen)."  Amsterdam said that "according to Turkish intelligence sources, there are signs that Gulen is working closely with certain members of military leadership against the elected civilian government."

Why does Mercury want to be a part of extraditing a moderate cleric to satisfy the rage of an Islamist dictator?  The close relationships with powerful figures in American politics that many of Mercury's partners and employees enjoy is a matter for deep concern. Given who their clients are and the relationship they have with them, shouldn't a client like Turkey's Erdogan be out-of-bounds?

Wouldn't it be better if American political consultants stuck with helping to elect the best candidates to serve the American people?  With all this money from foreign powers floating around, at what point does a political advisor to a United States Senator and prospective candidate for Vice President, a Governor with national aspirations,  or the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, find himself in an existential conflict of interest?

Sen. Weinberg: Tell Obama "Cops Lives Matter" too

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That picture on her Facebook page is curious.  Is that Senator Loretta Weinberg (D-Corzine) tickling the former confidant of the "Love Gov"?  It certainly looks like she is doing something to make Steve Goldstein smile. 

The "Lov Gov" is, of course, Eliot Spitzer of New York.  Goldstein was Spitzer's campaign mouthpiece when they were blazing their own version of the sexual revolution.  "Whatever floats your boat" is the mantra of the Kinsey-besotted "Swingers' Lobby."  Spitzer, whom Goldstein insisted was "an incredibly nice man in real life" -- even after the Lov Gov was caught hiring young women for sex, was recently in the news again.  This time he was accused in the New York media of losing it and then trying to strangle a young woman.  He was accused of this kind of "role playing" before, in a book authored by one of his young victims. Now the latest subject of his attentions has fled the country. 

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The lifestyles of rich insiders never ceases to amaze:  Sex, power, money, and let's change the world to do whatever we want.  Average people and their talk of "democracy" doesn't matter.  "Only the rich, the powerful, the well-connected, count and we decide who and what matters.  We set the fashion."

Which brings us to the misdirected "Black Lives Matter" movement that works to pit some Americans, based on their skin color or ethnic origin, against other Americans, based on their employment as law enforcement officers.  Never mind that black police officers are as ubiquitous as Irish cops once were -- especially in the higher ranks.  Black employment in policing of all types is a growth industry.

While United States Justice Department figures indicate that the number of Hispanic and Asian police officers lag behind their proportional representation of America's population as a whole, that is not the case with black police officers, who more than match it.  In some urban police departments, black officers make up more than half the department.  63 percent of Detroit's police officers are "African-American." 

In spewing hatred towards working class police officers, many of whom are black, the "Black Lives Matter" movement is allowing itself to be used by the political establishment, which is now thoroughly anti-police.  Some dislike the police because it is fashionable to do so, just as it was fashionable to hug a first responder in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.  Fashion changes.  Blue is out this year.  Others want the best police protection, but they don't want to pay for it.  For them, undermining the police weakens their position at the bargaining table.  If they can get a police officer to risk his or her life at a cut rate, that leaves more money for the vendors who fund their campaigns or for their criminal friends on Wall Street.

The real target of the "Black Lives Matter" movement should be the very politicians who have duped them into attacking the police.  In a 2014 column titled, "Eric Garner:  Criminalized to death," conservative columnist George Will wrote:

Overcriminalization has become a national plague. And when more and more behaviors are criminalized, there are more and more occasions for police, who embody the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, and who fully participate in humanity’s flaws, to make mistakes.

Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties attorney, titled his 2009 book “Three Felonies a Day” to indicate how easily we can fall afoul of the United States’ metastasizing body of criminal laws. Professor Douglas Husak of Rutgers University says that approximately 70 percent of American adults have, usually unwittingly, committed a crime for which they could be imprisoned. In his 2008 book, “Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law,” Husak says that more than half of the 3,000 federal crimes — itself a dismaying number — are found not in the Federal Criminal Code but in numerous other statutes. And, by one estimate, at least 300,000 federal regulations can be enforced by agencies wielding criminal punishments. Citing Husak, professor Stephen L. Carter of the Yale Law School, like a hammer driving a nail head flush to a board, forcefully underscores the moral of this story:

Society needs laws; therefore it needs law enforcement. But “overcriminalization matters” because “making an offense criminal also means that the police will go armed to enforce it.” The job of the police “is to carry out the legislative will.” But today’s political system takes “bizarre delight in creating new crimes” for enforcement. And “every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence.”

Carter continues: “It’s unlikely that the New York Legislature, in creating the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes, imagined that anyone would die for violating it. But a wise legislator would give the matter some thought before creating a crime. Officials who fail to take into account the obvious fact that the laws they’re so eager to pass will be enforced at the point of a gun cannot fairly be described as public servants.”

Last year the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice issued its report on the Ferguson Police Department.  The report was the result of a lengthy investigation, commissioned as a response to the shooting death of a young black man by police.  The report's most notable finding -- placed front and center, although ignored by many in the mainstream media -- was that "(Ferguson's law enforcement) practices are shaped by revenue rather than by public safety needs."

That's right, the Legislature criminalizes behavior as a means of obtaining revenue for state and local governments.  The Legislature turns the police into privateers, pushing them to "earn" more for government.  Then, when something goes wrong, the very same politicians who pressured police into becoming revenue agents turn on them, setting their "movement" political allies on them to devalue police lives in order to make it easier to reduce their salaries, cut benefits, and hollow out pensions.

All you have to do is look at the way President Barack Obama has criminalized investigative journalism and whistleblowers to get a taste of how many new "offenses" have been added to the statute books.  New Jersey leads others states in adding regulations that will ultimately be enforced by men with guns.  If Weinberg and Goldstein have their way, the police will soon be used to issue citations and collect fines from people whose speech critters like the Love Gov (he of the Swingers' Lobby) finds insulting or bullying or "hateful." 

And as they add more and more for the police to enforce, they seek to make fashion statements and dupe black voters by engaging in irresponsible attacks on working class police officers.  Well, the seeds of their rhetoric has borne fruit and we are beginning to see the harvest their words have conjured.

Last week, the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a police officer's union, reported that violence against police had escalated to the point where seven police officers had been killed in just six days.  This is the kind of headline we more often saw coming from a warzone like Iraq or Afghanistan -- not from within the borders of the United States.

National FOP @GLFOP

7 officers have been killed serving their communities in the last six days. Please pray for their families

11:11 AM - 11 Feb 2016

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President Obama has been mute about the violence this rhetoric has unleashed against working police officers and their families. 

Big government legislators, like Senator Weinberg, and their lobbyist allies, like Steve Goldstein, have been mute as well.  Now is the time for them to step up and start to undo what they have done. 

First, take responsibility.  We challenge Senator Weinberg to propose a resolution that reminds legislators, Congress, and the President that police officers only enforce the laws that the political establishment makes them enforce; that there is an inherent danger in this transaction; and that police officers are often injured, wounded, or lose their lives in carrying out the directives of the political class. 

Second, tell the President to speak up.  We challenge Senator Weinberg to sign a letter to President Obama that urges him to acknowledge the costs involved in police work.  This cost is measured in lost or damaged lives and in the stress and trauma dealt with by families and loved ones.  Making the police into villains for enforcing the laws written and decided upon by the political class is outrageous hypocrisy.

Third, make the police "peace officers" not "privateers."  Make policing about public safety and not a source of revenue.  Create a Sunset Committee to review the thousands of laws and regulations that impact police conduct and place police officers on a collision course with the growing number of out-of-work or under-employed citizens who are having difficulty paying the economic sanctions imposed on them by legislative bodies at all levels of government.  Recognize that every time you send a man with a gun to collect money for government, you run the risk that someone will die. 

Because of the vote Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Norcross) made to end capital punishment, the lives of serial killers, those who rape and murder small children, those who torture to death young women, mass terrorists, and cop killers are all spared the death penalty in New Jersey.  Let's stop legislative action from inadvertently imposing the death penalty on people who can't pay a few traffic tickets or who are selling a couple cigarettes to someone who can't afford a full pack. 

It is insane for a legislative body to spare the life of a Jesse Timmendequas while causing the death of an Eric Garner.  It is monstrous for the political class to blame the police for following its orders.