The Corruption Protection Acts are before the Assembly on Monday

By Rubashov

On Monday, at 10am, the Assembly State & Local Government Committee will take up three bills that can collectively be called “The Corruption Protection Acts”. A-4889, ACR-166, and A-4094 all seek to undermine the already weak ethical transparency laws that were created to afford New Jersey taxpayers some measure of defense against the predatory actions of the political class in what has become widely known as “The Soprano State.”

Note: When you remember that the last Republican to win statewide in New Jersey – Chris Christie – did so based on a career battling the exact kind of political corruption “The Corruption Protection Acts” seek to shield, one cannot imagine any minority party member having anything to do with this stuff. But in case they have forgotten, let us remind them:

“Politics in New Jersey is organized crime.”

(from the documentary)

A-4889 “removes the requirement that local government officers disclose their property addresses, including their home address, in certain financial disclosure statements.  Instead, this bill will only require local government officers to disclose the county and municipality where their property is located.”

In other words, the property taxpayers of a municipality will no longer have an easy way of finding out if the politician who just raised their property taxes pays his property taxes.
 
This legislation acts as a shield to the kind of corruption in local New Jersey government that investigative journalist John Stossel uncovered a few years ago…
 

“Is it true that four (members of local government) get loans from (a bank controlled by a big developer) and is it true that (the mayor) gets a discounted apartment in (that developer’s) building?”

Investigative Journalist John Stossel

This video and an earlier one on the subject were watched on YouTube more than two million times.

In an investigative report, Stossel details how the town’s mayor and three members of council had financial ties to a local developer under federal indictment. The only way a citizen could figure this out was through a local government ethics financial disclosure statement that listed the politician’s address and the address of property he owns. But that could never happen under A-4889.
 
Court records – both criminal and civil – are all tied to property addresses. So are tax liens and liens for unpaid debts, foreclosures and bankruptcies, lawsuits and ethics proceedings. Often the only way to confirm which common name is connected to which legal action is by an address. Under A-4889, voters will not be permitted to have the information necessary to make an informed judgment about the actions of someone they employ to collect and spend their property taxes. Voters will have to take politicians at their word, there will be no way to “trust but verify”.   
 
By-the-way, the current law is already lax because the local government ethics financial disclosure statement form states that reporting of a home address is “optional”. This makes it impossible for a citizen to check to see if the elected government official actually resides at the address he is registered at. A cursory review of recent filings (2022) uncovered that at least one county official was collecting rental income from the address at which he was registered to vote.
 
A-4889 will further restrict the taxpayers’ right-to-know by blocking access to the address of every parcel and property owned by every local elected official and their spouses in New Jersey. We understand that the impetus behind this is the recent boom in mega-warehouses in New Jersey. Some politicians have some prime parcels that they’d like to sell at inflated prices and some developers would love to buy them.
 
ACR-166 is a “concurrent resolution” that “amends the Legislative Code of Ethics to remove the requirement that legislators disclose their property addresses, including their home address, in annual financial disclosure statements.  Instead, legislators will only be required to disclose the county and municipality where their property is located.” This resolution is designed to “take effect immediately and apply to financial disclosure statements filed in 2023 and thereafter.”
 
In other words, incumbents on the ballot next year could have their dealings with property developers shielded from the eyes of the very electorate who will be asked to vote for them. How can people make an informed judgment if they don’t know, for example, that a legislator is enjoying a substantial property tax break by operating a “fake farm”?
 
With the Murphy administration’s push to convert more agricultural land – even preserved farmland – into lucrative solar fields, voters should know if a politician is profiting from a taxpayer-subsidized industry while benefiting from a property tax break. ACR-166 will protect this kind of institutional corruption.
 
A-4094 goes even further and extends this protection to candidates for elected office in New Jersey. That’s right. Under this bill, you don’t even need to be elected, you just have to run for office.
 
New Jersey has seen every imaginable kind of scumbag run for office, from murderers to pedophiles – there was even a candidate for county office who was later convicted for his role in a plot to kidnap, murder, and eat (yes, eat) his victims. Does the average voter really want to know less about these critters before being asked to vote them into power?
 
According to the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, A-4094 “prohibits the disclosure of the home address of a person seeking election to a public office, a current elected official, and a former elected official.  Under the bill, ‘elected official’ means any person holding a State or local government office which, under the State Constitution or by law, is filled by the registered voters of a jurisdiction at an election, including a person appointed, selected or otherwise designated to fill a vacancy in such office...”
 
By covering former elected officials, it could shield some of the folks involved in the Sean Caddle murder-for-hire investigation, making it more difficult for local journalists to get to the truth. Even more troubling is the fact that it creates a “political class” in New Jersey with special privileges in law. At its founding, America rejected the idea of creating a nobility. The title “Citizen” was supposed to be as good as it gets. All equal before the law! Everyone on-the-level.
 
Taken together, these Corruption Protection Acts are profoundly un-American and anti-democratic. They create a privileged nobility in New Jersey law that is protected from public scrutiny but has the power to tax, regulate, and spend the public into debt.
 
We will be examining the Corruption Protection Acts and how they relate to historic cases of political corruption and possible current corruption throughout December and into the new year. Stay tuned…            

"We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary."
George Orwell

Eustace & Gusciora: Silent on Slavery in Qatar

Was it only a week ago when Democrat Assemblymen Tim Eustace and Reed Gusciora acknowledged that issues like poverty and funding the Transportation Trust Fund were more important than LGBT vanity tropes?  What a difference a week makes.

Today, legislation sponsored by Eustace and Gusciora will be rushed to the Assembly floor for a vote. This legislation is so important -- more important in fact than tackling child hunger, poverty, foreclosure, the lack of jobs, homelessness, and every other problem facing New Jersey -- that it had to be rushed to the floor without the benefit of public comment.  That is correct.  Public comment was not permitted.  Citizen participation was denied. 

Wow.  Is the LGBT movement really that afraid of public opinion?

The bill is A-3613.  It "prohibits state-sponsored travel to states adopting religious freedom statutes without protection against discrimination."  Now those last four words should give us pause -- and hope.  Pause, because the phrase "without protection against discrimination" is very subjective.  Hope, because by adding that condition, the two Assemblymen appear to be indicating that they would be open to "religious freedom statutes" that address and protect against wanton discrimination. 

We're going to go with hope.  We're going to reach out to Brother Eustace and Brother Gusciora and ask them if we can meet together and jaw a while.  We'll keep you up to date on our progress.

Now for the sad part.  When the members of the New Jersey Assembly take the momentous step of banning travel to places within the United States of America today, here is what they won't be doing.  They won't be banning travel to Qatar.  Why should New Jersey take a stand on Qatar?  Because Qatar is using slave labor to build projects related to the World Cup.

Don't believe us?  This is a headline from the Guardian(U.K.):  "Modern Day Slavery in Focus in Qatar" (March 30, 2016).  From Mother Jones:  "Qatar is treating its World Cup workers like slaves" (May 26, 2015).  From Reuters:  "Qatar complicit in modern slavery" (October 28, 2015).  Here is what Amnesty International had to say about Qatar: 

The authorities arbitrarily restricted the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. A prisoner of conscience was serving a lengthy sentence for writing and reciting poems.

Amnesty just issued a report (March 31, 2016) titled, "Qatar World Cup of Shame."  Here are a few excerpts:

Migrant workers building Khalifa International Stadium in Doha for the 2022 World Cup have suffered systematic abuses, in some cases forced labour... “The abuse of migrant workers is a stain on the conscience of world football. For players and fans, a World Cup stadium is a place of dreams. For some of the workers who spoke to us, it can feel like a living nightmare,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty.

“Despite five years of promises, FIFA has failed almost completely to stop the World Cup being built on human rights abuses.”

...Amnesty International uncovered evidence that the staff of one labour supply company used the threat of penalties to exact work from some migrants such as withholding pay, handing workers over to the police or stopping them from leaving Qatar. This amounts to forced labour under international law.

“Indebted, living in squalid camps in the desert, paid a pittance, the lot of migrant workers contrasts sharply to that of the top-flight footballers who will play in the stadium. All workers want are their rights: to be paid on time, leave the country if need be and be treated with dignity and respect,” said Salil Shetty...

Qatar’s kafala sponsorship system, under which migrant workers cannot change jobs or leave the country without their employer’s (or “sponsor’s”) permission, is at the heart of the threats to make people work... Some of the Nepali workers told Amnesty International they were not even allowed to visit their loved ones after the 2015 April earthquake that devastated their country leaving thousands dead and millions displaced.

My life here is like a prison... a metal worker from India who worked on the Khalifa stadium refurbishment, complained when he was not paid for several months but only received threats from his employer:  “He just shouted abuse at me and said that if I complained again I’d never leave the country. Ever since I have been careful not to complain about my salary or anything else. Of course, if I could I would change jobs or leave Qatar.”

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/03/qatar-world-cup-of-shame/

But Assemblymen Eustace and Gusciora are not going to peep about Qatar.  You see, it is easy to pick on Americans living in North Carolina, but not so easy to stand up to the powerful people in New Jersey who represent the State of Qatar. 

We happen to have a copy of the signed contract between this powerful firm and the Embassy of the State of Qatar -- signed last December -- courtesy of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (enforced by the United States Justice Department).  This powerful partnership of lobbyists, political consultants, and public relations specialists receive a retainer of $100,000 a month just for making sure the State of Qatar isn't embarrassed by the likes of Eustace and Gusciora.  Last year, they pocketed as much as $155,000 a month just in consulting fees. 

Among the New Jersey politicians who have accepted money from these folks (and whose names appear on various Foreign Agents Registration Act statements) are Assembly Speaker Vinnie Prieto, Senator Bob Gordon, Senator Theresa Ruiz, Assemblyman Nicholas Chiaravalloti, Assemblyman Jon Wisniewski, Assemblyman "David" Lagana, and Mayor Steven Fulop. There's also a host of county and local elected officials on these statements too, which has to make you wonder.

So go ahead boys.  Make your fashion statement.  Spite your fellow Americans for their religious freedom -- while you cower before the State of Qatar and its slavery and abuse of human rights.  We have no anger for you.  Just pity.

Migrant workers in Qatar helping to construct offices for the 2022 World Cup reportedly haven't been paid after a year of toiling in the desert heat in slum like conditions. Sharan Burrow from the International Trade Union Confederation thinks Qatar should be boycotted until fundamental labor laws are in place.

Thursday: NJ Assembly votes on abortion

On Thursday, the New Jersey Assembly will vote to celebrate abortion in this country.  Yes, SCR-78 is a Loretta Weinberg special -- sponsored in the Assembly as ACR-119 by her ever faithful "me-too" Valerie Vainieri Huttle. 

Abortion is sad.  It is about emotional anguish and death.  Celebrating abortion is like celebrating war for its own sake.   How many ex-military pen testimonials about how much they liked killing?  Or how it was a great "life choice" to take an entrenching tool and shred another man's face until he was dead.

We may debate the ends, but the means of war and the means of abortion turn our stomachs.  It is a dark time informed by darker means. 

Nobody should lightly dismiss what a woman goes through when she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant.  Life is shockingly altered.  You are different, often ill and uncomfortable. Something is growing inside you that you cannot escape and if you don't take to it, find you cannot accept it, you want to claw it out of you and go back to how you were. 

Then the decision to terminate the pregnancy.  The knowledge that whatever that something is that you cannot accept inside you, it is real.  Those are human cells with a human potential. "It might have been a girl with hazel eyes like my mother."  "She might have loved music and walks at the shore and the cool touch of the wind."  But none of that will be.  This will remain a book unwritten. 

In the debate over humanity and viability, one thing is certain:  Abortion ends a human story.

We have recently seen a campaign to normalize the ending of these stories, by some, in what they self-describe as the "pro-choice" community.  Some actress gets up and talks about how great her abortion was.  Is she acting -- or just a psychopath?  How would we react to a military leader who stood up and told us how much he enjoyed roasting people with napalm?    

We need to be honest about abortion, as we do about war.  We should not "celebrate" either or defend it with chants -- whether they be "choice for women" or "USA, USA."  Like war, abortion is a terrible business.  A matter for adult contemplation -- not juvenile celebration.

The old Left knew a thing or two about educating people as to the truth of a thing.  A hundred  years ago, Europe was engaged in what became known as the Great War, and later, as World War One.  That war began with cheering crowds, celebrating.  After it was over, a triumphant parade was organized in Paris, with all the allies there to participate.  Soldiers from every winning nation were formed to march.  A wise soul suggested that a contingent of wounded soldiers be placed up front, which ended up being an enormous assemblage of many horribly wounded veterans -- les mutiles -- the mutilated.  It placed things into context and turned a juvenile celebration into an adult consideration.

As followers of the New Left's Herbert Marcuse, Weinberg and Huttle flit between "summer of love" rhetoric and an intolerant "tolerance" that they adopt when making laws.  And they are absolute ghouls on the subject of abortion.  Seeking to "celebrate" something that, like war, cannot really, with any sanity, be celebrated.

But then, there are the profits.  There is a business of abortion, like the business of war, and it is about market-share, and monopoly, and cashing in.  Oh all those New Lefties who grew up to be Wall Streeters. . . and members of the New Jersey Legislature!