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Seth Grossman is a regular guest on WPG Radio’s, Talk With A Purpose every Saturday morning.
Listen to July 13 episode.
The New York Times is the real big story this week. In just three days, this one newspaper completely changed the national conversation about Joe Biden and the whole campaign for President. President Biden has had severe mental decline for more than a year. Nothing changed during the past two weeks. But look at how quickly the news coverage changed completely. Until two weeks ago, every mainstream newspaper and radio and TV network reported that Biden was fine. So did every Democratic politician and Hollywood celebrity who spent time with Biden. They ridiculed and attacked any Republican or conservative news source suggested otherwise. Not a single late-night TV comedian even joked about Biden! Then in just three days everything changed completely.
It started when somebody persuaded Biden to debate in June, three months sooner than normal. Whose idea was that? Who got Biden to go along with it? How did they do it? Did they flatter him or bully him?
Trump was better than usual in that Thursday night debate two weeks ago. This may have been because of new rules that kept him from interrupting and speaking out of turn like he did in 2020. However, Biden was awful. The following morning, the New York Times published an editorial stating that Biden was unfit for office and should step down. What happened next was incredible. Almost every daily newspaper, online outlet and radio and TV news network repeated nonstop what the New York Times had just said. Then all sorts of reporters from many news outlets told details of Biden’s mental decline that they observed for more than a year. . . but never before reported. Hollywood celebrities who eagerly supported Biden before suddenly told their own stories of they had personally noticed Biden’s mental decline. Late night comedians who previously told jokes only about Donald Trump and Republicans, suddenly told one joke after another about Biden.
The real story is not that Biden is unfit to be President. That was well known by insiders for more than a year. The real story is why the national media and Washington/Hollywood establishment completely covered up Biden’s mental decline until the New York Times editorial gave them permission to do so. Who controls the New York Times? How do they do it?
New Galloway Township School Board Members Pushing Back Against Gov. Murphy’s Woke Agenda. There are roughly 600 public school districts in New Jersey. During the past year, Governor Murphy appointed people who are telling every public school to adopt a number of policies that are very bad for kids, for parents, and for taxpayers. You never hear about any of this because 95% of New Jersey school boards are quietly approving them without any complaints or opposition. Only a handful are pushing back. Two of them are Ethel Hermenau and Ginny Larea in Galloway Township. They were both elected to the nine-member school board last November.
Last Monday, July 8, there was a Board of Education meeting in Galloway Ethel Hermenau came prepared. She explained in detail why several state proposals were bad for kids, parents, and taxpayers. She also explained in detail how none of them were mandated, and how Galloway Township could legally reject them. Hermenau said all this at the public meeting, which is recorded on video and made available online. The link to the Galloway Township Board of Education website is BOE Main Page | Galloway Township Public Schools (gtps.k12.nj.us) Here is the link to the YouTube video of the July 8, 2024 public meeting:
Unfortunately, it appears that most of Ethel Hermenau’s presentation is NOT on this video. According to the Galloway Board of Education YouTube Administrator, ” Jul 9, 2024. Please be advised that during the July 8, 2024, Board of Education meeting there were some technical difficulties during the live stream of the meeting and loss of internet connectivity. Therefore, the YouTube video link for July 8th contains all portions of the meeting and content that we were able to captured. We apologize for any inconvenience.”on video at a public meeting. You can access the video by going to the Galloway Township Board of Education website. We hope to obtain those comments and post them on our LibertyAndProsperity.com website.
Taxpayers getting clobbered in suburban towns. Three main causes:
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- First, most elected local and school board officials care far more about the public employees, professionals, unions and contractors who get them elected, than most taxpayers. These officials routinely approve full health and pension benefits for public employees, regardless of cost, along with “cost of living increases. This is why the cost of government is going up twice as fast as the incomes of most taxpayers who are forced to pay for this.
- Democrats like Governor Murphy routinely give most “Property Tax Relief” funds to Democrat run cities and a few Republican towns that make deals with Democrats. New Jersey adopted its first state income tax in 1976. The State Constitution guarantees that all money from the state income tax goes into a “Property Tax Relief Fund” that allows counties, towns, and school districts to cut property taxes. However, roughly 2/3 of that property tax relief fund goes to about 32 public school districts run by Democrats. Democrat run towns and towns run by Republicans who make deals with Democrats usually get a bigger portion of the remaining third. This causes additional tax hikes in most Republican run suburbs.
- Divide and conquer. Politicians of both parties routinely offer tax break gimmicks to some taxpayers at the expense of others. That divides taxpayers and stops them from demanding cuts in government spending. Why demand cuts in government spending if your taxes can be cut by getting politicians to raise taxes on somebody else. These gimmicks include freezing taxes for some senior citizens by raising taxes for everybody else. They include raising assessments on business properties and vacation homeowners who don’t vote. This often causes businesses to raise their prices or cut their service. This also included special “tax abatements” for developers connected to insiders. Much of what is built is “affordable housing” that require more spending for schools and law enforcement.
- We get real estate tax bills just before August 1. We pay taxes in August and November based on this year’s county, local and public school budgets. We paid our February and May bills based on last year’s budgets. When taxes go up 10%, we pay more than this year’s increase. We have to pay extra to make up for paying February and May at last year’s rate. That’s why a 10% increase in property taxes often means we get a 20% increase in what we pay for August and November.
We Are Wasting Money On Useless “Green” and “Climate” Projects Because Most Americans Are Ignorant Of Basic High School Science:
- Young people today think there is a climate crisis when we have hot summers or bad storms. Young people don’t know we had hotter summers in 1930’s. They don’t know that we had superstorms about every 20 years. A bad northeaster knocked out the bridge to Brigantine in 1938. Captain Starn made lots of money bringing people back and forth until they fixed the bridge. People said that’s where he got the money for his Captain Starn’s Restaurant and tourist attraction at the end of Atlantic City in 1950’s and 1960’s. We had the Hurricane of 1944 that took down the old Margate Boardwalk. I remember when Atlantic City was completely flooded during the March Storm of 1962. We had “The Perfect Storm” during Halloween of 1991.
- Many young people were never taught that we had an Ice Age 10,000 years ago with woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers. Giant ice sheets covered most of New Jersey. They pulverized rocks from North Jersey and dragged the sand down here to make our beaches so special. Then the world got warmer, and the ice sheets melted. The world has been slowly getting warmer ever since. Was it because cavemen had too many barbecues 10,000 years ago?
- Many Americans have no idea that we make electricity by moving a magnet around coils of wire. This converts the mechanical or kinetic energy used to move the magnet into electrical energy. They also have no idea that we lose energy every time we change it from one form to another. That is why it is ridiculous to think that cars, trucks and buses run by electricity use less fossil fuel than when fossil fuel powers those vehicles directly. An electric airplane is even more ridiculous. It is nothing other than a very expensive toy paid for by our taxes. I understand why Democrats support this stuff. They want Americans to be broke and dependent. What do Republicans support these projects?
- Recycling is also ridiculous. How do we save fossil fuel by washing half our garbage and calling it recycling. Then we pay double to have it picked up separately. Then we ship it up to Bayonne and Elizabeth where it is loaded onto freighters and shipped to Third World countries where it is dumped into rivers and ends up in the ocean.
- Planning Board Meeting on Ocean Turbine transmission lines in Egg Harbor Township this Monday evening at 5pm.
NJEA is getting ready to bail out NJ Public employee pensions. NJ Pension funds are insolvent and being run like a Bernie Madoff/Ponzie scheme. State is collecting pension contributions from young workers and paying that money to current retirees instead of investing them for young workers. That is because NJ pensions are paid based on salaries of workers just before they retire–not on how much they contribute to system. It is normal to give public employees big pay hikes just before they retire to “juice up” their pensions. Robert Codey, brother of former Democratic State Senate President Richard Codey is collecting a pension of $99,600 per year even though he earned only about $45,000 per year during most of his career. He was appointed to three state jobs with combined salary of $140,000 per year just before he retired. However, the same thing happens routinely in almost every public school district and local and county government.
In 2017, the NJEA demanded a Constitutional Amendment to impose massive real estate tax increases to pay these pensions. Then Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney refused to let State Senate approve it and put it on the ballot. That is why he NJEA Teachers Union spent millions of dollars to defeat Sweeney in 2017. Sweeney was finally defeated in 2021. Sweeney announced last December that he was running for NJ Governor next year. His big backer was power broker George Norcross. Last month, Governor Murphy’s Attorney General indicted Norcross for alleged political corruption that took place in 2012.
Click Here For Link To Previous Post: Does Norcross Indictment Clear Path For Endless New Taxes To Bail Out NJ Pensions? – Liberty and Prosperity
With both Sweeney and Norcross out of the way, it is almost certain that the NJEA Teacher’s Union will again demand a State Constitutional Amendment with Massive New Taxes to pay all pensions in full. We are now handing out a postcard we prepared in 2017. That postcard is true and relevant today. It reminds us that there are only three ways to fix the pension mess:
- Massive New State Tax Hikes To Pay All State Pensions In Full
- Cut Pension Payments to What Is Available In Pension Funds–Probably around 40 cents on dollar
- Limit or Cap Pensions Over $50K. That way, the most politically connected retirees who caused the mess will pay a larger share for cleaning it up
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