The One Percenter who stalks GOPer Frelinghuysen

We like Rodney Frelinghuysen because, unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, he didn't try any bullshit, got drafted into the United States Army, and served in Vietnam.  That qualification alone carries him far in our book.

Last spring, a few media boys tried to create a "working class hero" out of a lawyer and bank executive named Saily Avelenda.   In covering her manufactured controversy with Congressman Frelinghuysen, the media boys consistently neglected to provide their readers with Ms. Avelenda's full title:  Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of a bank.  Yes, a fully-fledged member of the one percent!  Before landing her job with Lakeland Bank, in 2010, Ms. Avelenda was general counsel for Hann Financial Service Company, and was a vice president and counsel for Hudson United Bank.

The media tried to make Ms. Avelenda into Northwest New Jersey's version of "La Pasionaria" -- just an average employee standing up to a powerful member of Congress.  In fact, Ms. Saily Avelenda is the co-founder of her own SuperPAC.  You know, S-U-P-E-R-P-A-C, those largely unregulated tools of the super rich that allow the one-percent to wield enormous power to lobby and affect policy in the least transparent way possible.

Yep, Saily Avelenda started her own Super-PAC with GOOGLE multi-millionaire Jonathan Bellack.  Bellack uses his vast wealth to shout down working class voters who can't throw the kind of money around that he can.  While most people worry about their kids' college tuition, property taxes, and staying out of foreclosure, Bellack uses his money to select those who tell everyone else how to live.

Bellack is so stinking rich that he can afford to spend $33,400 on a single dinner ticket, just to hang out with Barack Obama.  $33,400 is what the average working American pays for a new car if they can afford it.  Hey, if you had $33,400 in your bank account could you afford to spend it on ticket to a political fundraiser?  Thought as much.

Now for a word from the great George Carlin.

Carlin is right.  The education establishment sucks.  The establishment media sucks.  And GOOGLE -- the richest corporation in the world -- sucks!  GOOGLE already exercises a creepy corporate control over way too much in our daily lives, but they want more.  Not only does GOOGLE off-shore what should be American jobs to low-paid sweatshops overseas, GOOGLE off-shores its profits to avoid paying taxes to the United States of America.  GOOGLE, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, corporate executives, bankers, one percenters, owners of SUPER-PACs... This is what your Democrats have become. 

They complain about Trump when they damned well know they gave us Trump when they rigged the Democrat presidential primaries to cut off Bernie's nuts.  For once, the "obedient workers" refused to do as they were told and rebelled against allowing the corporate establishment and their media to anoint "Big Mama."

And Saily Avelenda?  Well, the one-percenter Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of a bank has reshaped her media image into...

Yep... she's a "warrior princess"!  You see, this is what comes from playing video games too much and for too long.  You become detached from reality and actually believe yourself to be one of the characters in the game.

You also start to think that a good, decent fellow like Rodney Frelinghuysen is a monster because... well, that's how it is in those games.  There's the "baddies" and there's the "goodies."  Not the kind of character development you get in a novel, but who has time to read a book these days, right Saily?

Actually, the world is a bit more complex than our "warrior princess" would like us to believe.  Less black and white than she'd like us to think.  We'd like Ms. Saily Avelenda to examine with us the policy positions lobbied for by the corporations who paid her so handsomely.  We'd like her to tell us if she showed any compassion at all for those displaced, forced into foreclosure, made homeless by those policies and/or subsequent actions of the corporations she served.

In the real world -- the gray world -- maybe it is Saily who is a bit of a monster herself, and Rodney a bit of a hero? 

We'd enjoy debating Ms. Saily Avelenda or Mr. GOOGLE himself -- Jonathan Bellack -- about the need for Super-PACs in our already corrupt political environment.  We would enjoy a back-and-forth with these two walking, talking advertisements for Citizens United... and all the rest of what is wrong with our political process.

Phoebus votes to create Transgender Task Force

As President Ronald Reagan used to say:   "Personnel is Policy."

It didn't take long for Assemblyperson Gail Phoebus to go off the rails.  Since firing the conservatives on her staff just before Thanksgiving, her voting record clearly shows their absence. 

On Monday, Phoebus voted to establish a Transgender Equality Task Force.  The legislation, A-4567), is sponsored by liberal Democrats Valerie Huttle, Tim Eustace, and Nancy Pinkin.  Here's what it would do (taken directly from the official OLS Bill Statement):

This bill, as amended, establishes the Transgender Equality Task Force, which is charged with assessing the legal and societal barriers to equality for transgender individuals in the State, and providing recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor on how to ensure equality and improve the lives of transgender individuals, with particular attention to the following areas: healthcare, long term care, education, higher education, housing, employment, and criminal justice.

     The bill provides that the task force shall consist of 17 members as follows: a representative of the Department of Banking and Insurance whose duties or expertise includes insurance and banking services and policies as applied to transgender individuals; a representative of the Department of Human Services whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by minority populations to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Department of Health whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by minority populations to clinically appropriate healthcare services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of healthcare programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Department of Education whose duties or expertise includes protecting the rights of minority students or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of educational programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education whose duties or expertise includes protecting the rights of minority students in the higher education system or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of higher educational programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Division of Civil Rights in the Department of Law and Public Safety whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the delivery of the division’s programs, policies, or initiatives; and a representative of the Department of Children and Families whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives with regard to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth; a representative of the Department of Corrections whose duties or expertise includes protecting the safety of minority populations or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives; a representative of the Department of Labor and Workforce Development whose duties or expertise includes expanding access by minority populations to the department’s services or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of departmental programs, policies, or initiatives; two public members to be appointed by the Speaker of the General Assembly, one of whom shall be a physician who specializes in transgender health issues, and one of whom shall be a transgender individual; two public members to be appointed by the President of the Senate, one of whom shall be a  parent or guardian of a transgender individual, and one of whom shall be an attorney specializing in transgender rights; one public member to be appointed by the Governor, who shall be a representative of a social service agency that provides services and supports to transgender individuals; a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union; a representative of  Garden State Equality; and a representative of The Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey.

     The bill provides that the task force is to organize as soon as practicable following the appointment of its members, but not later than the 30th day following the appointment of its members, and that the task force is to select a chairperson from among its members.  The bill permits the task force to hold meetings at the times and places it may designate, and provides that a majority of the authorized members of the task force shall constitute a quorum. The bill also provides that the task force may conduct business without a quorum, but may only vote on a recommendation when a quorum is present. Pursuant to the bill, the task force is entitled to receive assistance and services from any State, county, or municipal department, board, commission, or agency, as it may require, and as may be available to it for its purposes, and The Division on Civil Rights in the Department of Law and Public Safety is to provide professional and clerical staff to the task force, as necessary to effectuate the purposes of the bill.   

     The bill requires that the task force prepare and submit a written report to the Governor and the Legislature, outlining its recommendations for advancing transgender equality in the State, not later than six months after its initial meeting. 

A-4567 ensures that the opinions of people with traditional or religious points of view are totally shut out -- along with the views of eminent researchers, medical professionals, scientists, psychiatrists, therapists, and experts in the field of child psychology.  This legislation is designed, in advance, to achieve an intended radical, far-left outcome. 

So get ready to pay more in health care costs after those transgender mandates are recommended and then voted into law by the Democrats who control both chambers of the Legislature.  Get ready to pay higher insurance premiums.

Here's Phoebus' vote (SOURCE:  New Jersey Legislature):

This is what happens when you get rid of conservatives who were Reagan-supporters from even before he was President and replace them with liberal lawyers who donate to Barack Obama.  What you get are votes worthy of Barack Obama.

Will the Phoebus supporters please grow up

Bill Hayden is the "administrator" of the Gail Phoebus campaign on Facebook.  He and his co-administrator post some pretty idiotic stuff.  Like the faces of prominent Sussex County Republicans photo-shopped onto vaginas or an aerial view of what he thought was the house of a political opponent with the words "target acquired" underneath.  It turned out to be the wrong house and the home of an innocent family with children.

And posting pictures of your handguns on Facebook should not be done if you are going to use the same page to threaten people.  Also, it is not a good idea to claim to have handed out Halloween candy to children from a candy bowl stuffed with automatic magazines and Glock handguns.  This is stupid and it does your cause no good.

In your inarticulate ramblings, you claim to be "conservatives" -- well then act like traditional conservatives and not like juvenile delinquents.  Conservatives don't post pornography, they don't wave their guns around (even metaphorically on Facebook), and they don't write like members of the cast of Deliverance. 

Grow up!  And part of that growing up is coming to terms with some basic facts of life.  First, you or your candidate or your Tea Party are not the center of the universe.  You do not get to decide who is conservative or not, or who is Republican or not.   There are many people -- adult people -- who have come before you.  The world didn't begin yesterday, when you decided to show up and vote.

Second, just because you have a personal dislike for elected Republicans like Senator Steve Oroho and Assemblyman Parker Space, that doesn't make them "liberals".  It doesn't work that way.  They have the best pro-Second Amendment, Pro-Life, and consistent conservative voting records in Trenton.  And that is just how it is.

Third, just because you are loud, sport a bull neck, and talk about all your guns, it doesn't mean that you can intimidate anyone into ignoring the actual VOTING RECORDS of these conservatives.  When a Tea Party group ignores a conservative voting record, that doesn't make the conservative a liberal, it means the Tea Party group is liberal or ignorant or both. 

 In fact, it is your candidate who is being advised by the only genuine liberal on the scene -- a guy who was mentored by that Bill Ayers-loving Marxist William Kunstler, who lobbied Phoebus to vote pro-abortion, and who supported Barack Obama.  Here, check it out...

PEREZ, DANIEL M MR

WEST CALDWELL

NJ

07006

MARC ECKO ENTERPRISES

SPECIAL COUNSELOR

OBAMA, BARACK / JOSEPH R. BIDEN VIA OBAMA FOR AMERICA

12/06/2007

500.00

(SOURCE: Federal Elections Commission)

If you want to have an adult, non-pornographic, rational discussion about policy issues, I'm sure the people whose faces you have photo-shopped onto vaginas will put that aside, consider the source, and then have a constructive discussion with you.  They are adults.  That's what adults do.  You should try it sometime. 

Sussex County's Obama Republicans

Many county insiders know the story of how George Graham, now the boss of the Sussex County Freeholder Board, when an elected local official switched from Republican to Democrat in order to vote in the 2008 Democrat presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  Graham had been a Democrat before switching to Republican but later switched back to Republican, his current party today (from D to R to D to R). 

Graham is not alone.  In February, Daniel Perez got a plum appointment to be a Commissioner at the Sussex County Municipal Utilities Authority (SCMUA).  Those old-line GOPers probably had no idea that Perez was a donor to the presidential campaign of Barack H. Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.  An attorney, Perez' liberal views on abortion and other issues are not well known outside legal circles.

According to the SCMUA website:  "The SCMUA Board of Commissioners are appointed by the Sussex County Board of Chosen Freeholders.  Commissioners are appointed to serve a five-year term as provided for under NJSA 40:14B.  The Board of Commissioners serves as the governing body to the SCMUA which oversees the Sussex County Solid Waste Facility and the various wastewater treatment facilities, including the Upper Wallkill Water Pollution Control Facility.  Meetings are conducted in accordance with the NJ Open Public Meetings Act NJSA 10:4-6 et. seq. also known as the Sunshine Law."

Borough of Franklin Mayor and Facebook warrior Nicholas Giordano is another one.  Nominally a Republican, Mayor Giordano bragged on Facebook to constituents that he had voted for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  The Mayor, who is said to be seeking a political appointment at SCMUA, has been a somewhat controversial figure in Franklin since replacing longtime Mayor Paul Crowley last year.

What's up with the Sussex County GOP?  Who is doing the screening?

Obama voter: Mayor Nicholas Giordano

Black Lives Matter not supported by facts?

Here is a very interesting column by writer John Hinderaker, followed by links to two other related stories.  Is the violence that we are seeing being manufactured by the media or is the problem as disproportionate as some claim?  Read for yourself and decide.  We will provide more data as we find it or it becomes available.

ARE BLACKS DISPROPORTIONATELY INVOLVED IN POLICE SHOOTINGS?

Listening to liberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, you would think that enormous numbers of black men are being gunned down by police officers. When the issue is debated, many take it for granted that a vastly disproportionate number of blacks are involved in police shootings–in fact, if you didn’t know better, you might think that only blacks are ever shot by policemen.

The numbers tell a different story. Like all statistics, they bounce around from year to year, but let’s go with the Washington Post’s study of police shootings in 2015. The Post found that 990 people, almost all of them men, were shot and killed by law enforcement last year. Before you start calling them victims, however, note that the Post also found that in three-quarters of these incidents, police were defending either themselves or someone else who was, at that moment, under attack. That leaves around 250 cases that were not obvious self-defense or defense of a third person. That doesn’t mean, of course, that those shootings were unjustified.

What was the racial breakdown of those who were shot by police in 2015? The largest number, 494, almost exactly half, were white. 258 were black, 172 were Hispanic, and the remaining 66 were either “other” or unknown. (Interestingly, Asians are rarely shot by police officers.)

The 258 blacks represent 26% of the total. That is about double the percentage of blacks in the American population. Is that prima facie evidence of racism on the part of law enforcement? Of course not. It is common knowledge that blacks have an unusually high rate of contact with the police, both as victims and as perpetrators. In 2012-2013, the Department of Justice found that blacks were the perpetrators of 24% of all violent crimes where the race of the perpetrator was known (in 7.8% of violent crimes, it was unknown).

So the percentage of blacks fatally shot by police officers (26%) is almost exactly equal to the percentage of blacks committing violent crimes (24%). Indeed, given that the black homicide rate is around eight times the white rate, it is surprising that the portion of blacks fatally shot by policemen is not higher.

Liberals might argue that blacks are disproportionately the victims of unjustified shootings by law enforcement, but I have not seen anyone try seriously to make that case. The Post took a pass at supporting the liberal narrative by arguing that “unarmed” blacks are shot at a higher rate than whites. But the Post failed to note that, according to its own data, blacks are much more likely to attack police officers while unarmed. I don’t know why this is, but in general, I think that unarmed people who assault police officers are likely to be high on drugs. The Post also failed to point out that blacks are much more likely to assault police officers with motor vehicles. That counts as “unarmed.” We had a case like that recently in Minnesota, where a black perpetrator tried to run down a police officer and the officer shot him in self-defense.

One can slice the Post’s 2015 data in various ways. One question is whether there is a racial disparity with regard to whether the policeman or someone else is under direct attack by a perpetrator–i.e., an obvious case of self-defense. I did the math, and it turns out that, for whatever reason, the percentages are a little different for each ethnic group. (You can measure anything by ethnic group, and in all likelihood the numbers won’t be exactly the same. If it is to your political advantage, you can call that difference a “disparity” or a “gap.”)

According to the Post’s numbers–and you should bear in mind that a subjective process of classification lies behind each instance–80% of whites who were fatally shot by police officers in 2015 were in the midst of an attack on the policeman or someone else. According to the Post, 71% of blacks were shot while attacking someone, while 66% of “others” and 62% of Hispanics were shot while attacking the policeman or someone else. If you take these differences seriously, which you probably shouldn’t since re-classifying a small number of instances would dramatically change the results, they might be an argument for discrimination against Hispanics and Asians. Blacks turn out to be a relatively favored group, by this measure.

In short, the data on police shootings show that blacks are involved in such incidents just about exactly as often as one would expect, given their violent crime rate. Slicing and dicing the numbers is interesting, but doesn’t generate any obviously relevant correlations that would change that finding. Which means that, unless someone can make a compelling argument based on the data, which we have not yet seen, the Black Lives Matter movement is founded on a lie

Two related articles: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html?_r=0