Jim McGreevey-linked group smears Allen (and Biden) over border.

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By Rubashov

Poor Phil Murphy must be getting desperate. He’s got to be to look to Jim McGreevey for a lifeline.

If the former Governor hadn’t employed his novel diversion, does anybody doubt that there would have been a criminal investigation into the part he played in his corrupt administration? Corruption and kink – those were the features of McGreevey’s tenure as Governor. Didn’t the Star-Ledger and The Record do fat exclusives on it? Wasn’t it reported that he assigned one of his own staffers to have sex with his First Lady? Some crazy stuff.

Having taken the same road as Nixon-dirty tricks operative Chuck Colson, the former Governor is now a preacher – lecturing anyone who will listen about right from wrong. Like Colson, Jim McGreevey’s ministry involves prisons, but he can’t seem to stay out of politics. Of course, politics is where the money is… and the attention… and the celebrity (and the former Governor is, and always has been, a supreme narcissist).

On Saturday, the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com ran an opinion column by a director at Jim McGreevey’s organization. This fellow is the vice president of something called the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition. He co-wrote the column with the president of the aforementioned – who is, according to the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, “very active in the Union City Clergy Association of Mayor Brian Stack.”

Hey, are these guys ward healers… or members of the clergy?

Now if you search the Guidestar website, which rates the reliability of charitable organizations and other non-profits, you will not find the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition. You also won’t find them in a search of the Internal Revenue Service’s website. The group doesn’t appear to be registered with the IRS as a non-profit organization. It’s not even listed as an existing organization – or one that ever existed – with the New Jersey Department of the Treasury’s Division of Revenue. And that’s the Murphy administration!

So, where did this group come from?

From news reports in the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, it seems the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition was formed during Phil Murphy’s first campaign for Governor. As reported in the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, Murphy spent heavily on a coalition building effort led by operatives like Al Alvarez and Derek Green.

According to the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, the Murphy campaign paid Green two million dollars for his efforts. Like Alvarez, Green was rewarded with a taxpayer-supported government appointment. Green became Murphy’s “senior adviser on diversity, faith, urban and regional growth.” Get the picture?

On July 6th, the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition held a press conference in Newark to formally endorse Governor Phil Murphy for re-election. Later that day, the Governor issued a statement accepting their endorsement.

The Star-Ledger/ NJ.com opinion column by the two men who run the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition followed the coordinated Democrat Party talking points that have been pushed by Murphy’s campaign, and by Murphy himself. Coincidence?

On August 9th, Governor Murphy attacked Diane Allen for suggesting that COVID-19 could be brought over the border by undocumented immigration. That’s undocumented – as in nobody got their names, let alone tested them for anything from STDs to COVID!

Murphy said that the idea that unmasked, unvaccinated people, kept in close confinement before being shepherded in tightly packed groups across the border, might pick up the virus along the way was “conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact”. He went on to suggest that even being concerned about the possibility of such a thing was “making people less healthy and putting their lives at risk”.

Murphy’s statements placed him in direct conflict with the administration of President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly extended the closure of the borders with Mexico and Canada due to concerns over cross-border transmission of coronavirus. The ban on all non-essential travel will continue to at least August 21st, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security announced. The restriction on non-essential travel began in March 2020 “due to the coronavirus pandemic” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

President Biden shares the same concerns as Senator Allen about cross-border transmission of COVID-19. Of course, being able to test those crossing the border is essential to containing the spread of coronavirus and its variants. Illegal border-crossings by undocumented immigrants totally defeats the ability to test, treat, and contain the virus.

Nowhere in their column do the two men who run the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition acknowledge that the borders with Mexico and Canada are currently closed, by the Biden administration, due to concerns about the transmission of COVID-19. People with titles like reverend and pastor shouldn’t openly lie like that. It damages their entire mission (if indeed they still have a mission beyond shilling for powerful people in government).

The leaders of the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition need to watch this video... and then issue an apology to Diane Allen (or make the same accusation against President Joe Biden).

One of the authors identifies as an American Baptist. The other was religiously educated at a seminary run by the Reformed Episcopal Church. We intend to write to both entities for their opinion about the dishonesty displayed by these two “clergymen” and by their use of a political candidate’s talking points in a deeply misogynistic attempt to smear a woman with a record that is clearly at odds with their mischaracterization of her. We will offer to debate the matter with them before both bodies.

And it gets worse. In their column, and on orders from God only knows who, these two deeply compromised men tried to label Diane Allen a “racist” for her words, while ignoring the words and actions of President Biden. Allen and Biden concur and the two cannot be separated.

We also find it strange that people who are ordained by color-blind religious denominations set themselves up as heads of exclusionary organizations that have more to do with voter-segmenting than the message of Christ that “all men are brothers”. Any honest reader of their column will agree that it has very little to do with Christianity and a whole lot to do with the campaign of Governor Phil Murphy and a political hit job. So, why put on your collars to do it?

In our opinion, a group with a name like “New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition” sounds exclusionary and racist. Why shouldn’t a church be open to everyone? Maybe that’s why Mayor Stack had the good sense to give his group a geographic-sounding name – “Union City Clergy Association” – instead of an exclusionary one.

So, who are the racists here?

Being political hatchet men may serve the personal needs of these two men, but we doubt it is the look desired by the American Baptist congregation or the Reformed Episcopal Church. In trading their clerical mantles for the misogynistic garb of political lowlifes, the only thing the leaders of the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition have smeared is their congregations and the broader church.

Again, this is the beginning. Stay tuned…

“The entire business model of the Democratic Party is to avoid dealing with its own populists’ concerns, so they’ve never seen the Sanders wing of the party as anything but a threat to what they do for a living, which is basically take corporate money and then sell themselves as socially progressive. That’s what they do for a living. That’s their business.”

Matt Taibbi
Journalist and author of Hate, Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.

Good - bye Joe?

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Suggested Reading by Prof. Sabrin, Ph.D

I emphasize that this is a lefty news channel that put this out.

Then there are the curious developments around Hunter Biden where details of the DOJ investigation of Hunter was first broken by the left-leaning mainstream media news outfit Axios.

Then The New York Times (aka The Queer Black Lady) published a news analysis that started this way:

Now Politico is running with a story that starts this way:

The federal investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been more extensive than a statement from Hunter Biden indicates, according to a person with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.

On Wednesday, Hunter Biden said he had been contacted about a tax investigation out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware.

In addition to Delaware, the securities fraud unit in the Southern District of New York also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s finances, according to the person with direct knowledge of the investigation. The person said that, as of early last year, investigators in Delaware and Washington were also probing potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Are many covid deaths really caused by other factors? The data suggest that.

Kyle Becker on Twitter: “SOURCE (based on National Center for Health Statistics, CDC)

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

STIMULUS - the new round

Governors have in effect amputated the legs of small business owners and then tell them your prosthetics will be coming soon. The federal government has to borrow all the "stimulus" money, which is monetized by the Federal Reserve. Get ready for higher prices. The solution: open the economy immediately.


More Cronyism

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Suggested reading by Prof. Sabrin, Ph. D

Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden's choice for Homeland Security chief if he becomes president, was flagged in 2015 by the agency's internal watchdog for improperly intervening to help Democrat-connected foreign investors involved in the EB-5 work visa program, records show.

Then-Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth wrote that the Mayorkas interventions as President Obama's deputy homeland secretary proved exceedingly rare because as many as 15 "courageous" whistleblowers inside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service came forward to report his behavior and nearly all wanted to keep their identities secret to avoid retaliation.

"Each conveyed the same factual scenario: certain applicants and stakeholders received preferential access to DHS leadership and preferential treatment in either the handling of their application or petition or regarding the merits of the application or petition," Roth wrote at the time.

He added: "Being a whistleblower is seen to be hazardous in the Federal Government, and a typical investigation would have one or perhaps two. That so many individuals were willing to step forward and tell us what happened is evidence of deep resentment about Mr. Mayorkas' actions related to the EB-5 program."

You can read the report here.

File

DHSOIGMayorkasReport2015.pdf

The IG report sharply rebuked Mayorkas for creating the "appearance of favoritism and special access" by intervening in three EB-5 visa matters involving companies that "were prominent or politically connected" to Democrats.

"Mr. Mayorkas was in contact, outside of the normal adjudication process, either directly or through senior DHS leadership, with a number of applicants and other stakeholders having business before USCIS," the report said. "This method of communication violated established USCIS policy for handling inquiries into the program."

In the three cases cited by the IG, the report alleged that Mayorkas:

  • "[P]ressured staff" to expedite the review of a Las Vegas casino investment at the urging of the then-top Democrat in the Senate Harry Reid.

The Legacy of Thanksgiving is Free Enterprise

Thanksgiving is normally a time of family festivities, when relatives and good friends come together for a fine meal, catching up with what has been happening in everyone’s life, and a general good cheer. A month later Christmas and New Year’s brings an end to the old year and the start of another. But things are very different this time around because of the coronavirus and the government response.

Government regulations restrict or ban other than minimal sized groups gathering in one place. Everyone is cautioned or commanded to wear face masks and stay at least six feet apart. And the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) strongly recommends that people not travel for Thanksgiving, and instead isolate at home with no one else or only with the smallest number of others. 

The idea that people should be free and at liberty to make their own best judgments on such matters without the heavy-handed control and command of the government seems to be a thing of the past – at least for now. We far too willingly and easily allow our self-responsibilities and our self-governance to be taken away and transferred to the decision-making of political paternalists who presume to know how we should act, with whom, and for what purposes. 

Political Paternalism Thwarts Self-Responsibility

But don’t we need government to take on these duties and responsibilities for us, since we oftentimes seem irresponsible and thoughtless in our actions in general, and certainly in the company of others? But even if this may sometimes be so, how shall people be expected to learn how to act more wisely in terms of themselves and others, if the need and opportunity to act in more thoughtful and responsible ways are increasingly narrowed or taken away by government agents telling us, instead, what to do and not do, and where and when?

In one of his famous essays, the 19th century British social philosopher, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), suggested that less responsible people can only hope for a benevolent dictator to guide them until they have matured enough for self-rule. His British contemporary, the historian, Thomas B. Macaulay (1800-1859), replied that such a prescription reminded him of the fool in the old story who said that he would not go into the water until he knew how to swim. If you wait under paternalism until you are ready for self-responsibility, you will never have learned the lessons through the necessities of everyday life by which the ability for more mature and thoughtful decision-making are acquired. 

Now we are facing an acceleration of such paternalism with a new incoming presidential administration in Washington, D.C. starting in January 2021 that proposes and promises even more political paternalism at ever-increasing costs. These increasing costs will come not only in the form, perhaps, of higher taxes and increased business regulation and more income redistribution, but in the rising cost of less personal liberty of choice and decision-making in more corners of our lives. 

Embracing or Avoiding the Word, “Socialism”

The use of the word “socialism” is being bandied about in the face of these prospective political changes in the United States. There are some more radical “progressives” who say that we should embrace it and not be afraid. Others are afraid of it, not because they don’t support a more and bigger government, but due to the fact that it carries a negative connotation that some of those holding or running for political office do not want as an ideological albatross around their neck when facing the voters.

Others use “socialism” as a word of criticism and condemnation. But sometimes some of those using it in this fashion, it turns out, are conscious or unwitting advocates, themselves, for a larger orbit of activist government policies without thinking a bit that some of what they take for granted or propose are also aspects or variations on the socialist theme. 

Few are the voices, I would suggest, who really understand that a free society is one with a lot less, indeed, a far more minimal, government than most people realize or can conceive as feasible because they have lived so long under forms of political paternalism that they cannot imagine life without it. (See my book, For a New Liberalism [2019].)

The Plymouth Colonists Practiced Plato’s Communism

It is not surprising, then, how few Americans really know and appreciate the meaning and relevance of Thanksgiving in terms of its origin in the history of the Puritans – the “Pilgrim Fathers” – who came 400 years in November 1620 to the New World, landing at what today we know as Plymouth, Massachusetts. Desiring to turn their back on what they saw and considered as the material corruption of the Old World, they wanted to erect a New Jerusalem that would not only be religiously devout but be built on a new foundation of communal sharing and social altruism.

Their goal was the communism of Plato’s Republic, in which all would work and share in common, knowing neither private property nor self-interested acquisitiveness. What resulted is recorded in the diary of Governor William Bradford, the head of the colony. The colonists collectively cleared and worked the land, but they brought forth neither the bountiful harvest they hoped for, nor did it create a spirit of shared and cheerful brotherhood.

The less industrious members of the colony came late to their work in the fields, and were slow and easy in their labors. Knowing that they and their families were to receive an equal share of whatever the group produced, they saw little reason to be more diligent in their efforts. The harder working among the colonists became resentful that their efforts would be redistributed to the more malingering members of the colony. Soon they, too, were coming late to work and were less energetic in the fields.

Collective Work Equaled Individual Resentment

As Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony explained in his old English (though with the spelling modernized):

“For the young men that were able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children, without recompense. The strong, or men of parts, had no more division of food, clothes, etc. then he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labor, and food, clothes, etc. with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignant and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc. they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could husbands brook it.”

Because of the disincentives and resentments that spread among the population, crops were sparse and the rationed equal shares from the collective harvest were not enough to ward off starvation and death. Two years of communism in practice had left alive only a fraction of the original number of the Plymouth colonists.

Private Property as Incentive to Industry

Realizing that another season like those that had just passed would mean the extinction of the entire community, the elders of the colony decided to try something radically different: the introduction of private property rights and the right of the individual families to keep the fruits of their own labor.

As Governor Bradford put it:

“And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end . . . This had a very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted then otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would a ledge weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

The Plymouth Colony experienced a great bounty of food. Private ownership meant that there was now a close link between work and reward. Industry became the order of the day as the men and women in each family went to the fields on their separate private farms. When the harvest time came, not only did many families produce enough for their own needs, but also they had surpluses that they could freely exchange with their neighbors for mutual benefit and improvement.

In Governor Bradford’s words:

“By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their planting was well seen, for all had, one way or other, pretty well to bring the year about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others, so as any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”

Rejecting Collectivism for Individualism

Hard experience had taught the Plymouth colonists the fallacy and error in the ideas that since the time of the ancient Greeks had promised paradise through collectivism rather than individualism. As Governor Bradford expressed it:

“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst the Godly and sober men, may well convince of the vanity and conceit of Plato’s and other ancients; — that the taking away of property, and bringing into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”

Was this realization that communism was incompatible with human nature and the prosperity of humanity to be despaired or be a cause for guilt? Not in Governor Bradford’s eyes. It was simply a matter of accepting that altruism and collectivism were inconsistent with the nature of man, and that human institutions should reflect the reality of man’s nature if he is to prosper. Said Governor Bradford:

“Let none object this is man’s corruption, and nothing to the curse itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in his wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”

The desire to “spread the wealth” and for government to plan and regulate people’s lives is as old as the utopian fantasy in Plato’s Republic. The Pilgrim Fathers tried and soon realized its bankruptcy and failure as a way for men to live together in society.

They, instead, accepted man as he is: hardworking, productive, and innovative when allowed the liberty to follow his own interests in improving his own circumstances and that of his family. And even more, out of his industry result the quantities of useful goods that enable men to trade to their mutual benefit.

Giving Thanks for the Triumph of Freedom

In the wilderness of the New World, the Plymouth Pilgrims had progressed from the false dream of communism to the sound realism of capitalism. Whether our family gatherings this Thanksgiving be small or almost nonexistent due to the regulations and intimidations of government, we need to recall and remember the lesson to be learned from that first Thanksgiving.