A Classless Society

“New York, New York, it’s a helluva town!” On the Town, 1944

The dream of every American communist, whether they pose as a Liberal, Progressive, Socialist or whatever name they’ve dreamt up for themselves, is to transform the United States of America into a “classless” society, succeeded the other night in Bryant Park in New York City.

Radio and TV host Glenn Beck and his wife Tania, at the suggestion of his daughter Hannah, went to Bryant Park for the HBO-sponsored Bryant Park Film Festival 2011, held every Monday night. Monday’s movie was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 classic, The 39 Steps, about a London man who tries to help a counterespionage agent and ends up being accused of his murder.

Glenn has been around New York City for quite awhile, having been on CNN, but has only become a true celebrity in the last two years or so since he began his conservative program on Fox News and took on Liberal icons such as George Soros.

Glenn and his family arrived early to spread out their blankets. As soon as the keen-eyed New Yorkers spotted him (who famously never look up from their brisk walks to their destinations), they began texting and tweeting about his unwelcome presence. They also began harassing him and his wife and daughter.

One angry, 20-something Liberal, according to reports from Glenn’s news organization, The Blaze, was tweeting about the notion of, among other things, spilling wine on them and rousing the crowd up to such a state that they would chase him the length of Manhattan and run him off the island to Staten Island.

Someone did spill what she and Glenn claimed was a glass of wine. The woman sneeringly admits that it had to have been more than half a glass of wine since both Tania and Hannah were soaked. Glenn says no one came to the family’s assistance. The twitter brained woman says people did come to them with napkins. Certainly no one called out the offenders, who insisted the incident was ‘accidental.’

But The Blaze uncovered tweets and photos from someone with this woman’s online name. In one photo, and subsequent tweet, she brags about holding up a sign that says “Fascist Pig” behind him and having a friend take the shot. The photos – in fact, the whole account – were removed.

The reporter also uncovered the name of the woman’s employer (roomorama.com – a provocative name), as well as past employers (Pepsico). If the information is correct, she’s an advertising and marketing “strategist,” nearer to 30 than 20. If she has an MBA, that means she’s held four jobs in five years. According to her own accounts, Glenn’s security team had to speak to this woman and her companions about their behavior. Some taunts in The Blaze’s “Comments” section on this story criticize his security team. Glenn, being a gentleman, probably instructed them to do nothing.

New York is a terrible city in which to be a Conservative, much less a Conservative celebrity. Already known for their rude, brusque, and frankly nasty manner, you couldn’t expect any better behavior from them than what they displayed in Bryant Park.

New York isn’t just the financial capital of the world – it’s also a “college town” – New York University, Columbia, Hunter, Pace, Adelphi, CUNY, Fordham, Manhattan College, The New School, Pratt, Wagner College, just to name a few. The Big Apple is also famous for its Broadway Theaters, its art galleries, and the United Nations. This is the city that even after the 9/11 attacks has no problem with Muslims building a mosque on the perimeter of Ground Zero.

New Jersey commuters (not so much Long Islanders) tend to shun the city once their workday is done. On any given day, throngs of commuters would stream up into the World Trade Center from the PATH trains, and the same number hurried right back onto the PATH train again to go home. The commuters heading for the Port Authority buses back to Jersey act pretty much the same way. Heaven help you if you fall out of the line of bus commuters. They will stampede you if you try to get back into the line.

Liberals, Progressives, whoever they are, desire a classless society. Their performance in Bryant Park was a good start. No matter what you think of this man, he’s a resident and had an absolute right to sit in that park unaccosted by anyone. If you have a problem with him, call his show and tell him. Better yet, start your own show, blog, YouTube site and criticize him all you want.

This sort of mob mentality, cat-calling someone who “dares” to take up residence in “your” city and threatening to run them out of town, is the path to anarchy and tyranny. We were better than that in the Tea Party. When it was suggested we hold our first rally in Newark, we said, “No way.”

No one came to the Beck’s assistance, Glenn says, or defense, to tell these croissant cretans to knock it off. Being New York, that’s hardly surprising. The name “Kitty Genovese” comes to mind. Rumor is that this murdered woman was a prostitute and possibly even a lesbian and so her Queens’ neighbors turned a deaf ear. Others say none of it is true, that the murderer didn’t give her a chance to cry out. The first lesson in New York attitude-training is MYOB (Mind Your Own Business).

Unless you see a Conservative celebrity. Then you’re at liberty to run them out of town on a ferry, douse them with whatever liquor you have handy, accost them in the rest room, and generally disrupt whatever peaceful activity in which they had been engaged until you came along.

The Liberals (there’s no doubt about their partisan politics, so the word “Liberal” absolutely applies) cry tit for tat. Glenn and his “ilk” oppose homosexuality, fake science, illegal immigrants, Obamacare, and unions, so he’s got what’s coming to him.

They brag that they cheered as he left – after the movie was over. Well, we Conservatives applaud Glenn, too. For being the white-hat wearing, Good Guy, the Gary Cooper hero of the movie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RGGI Strikes Back

Just when we thought our electricity rates were safe, the N.J. Senate voted today to override Gov. Christie’s veto of the RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) bill – Resolution ACR-195. The Liberal Left is continuing its counter-attack against Gov. Christie’s decision to pull New Jersey out of the RGGI Cap & Trade scheme.   Tomorrow, the N.J. Assembly will vote on an override, so we need to get the message to them to support Christie’s veto and get our state out of this Progressive Ponzi Power Scheme. 

The Tea Party has sent out a notice saying that we believe it will raise electricity rates and cost jobs. This is not merely a belief; it’s a dead certainty, a sure thing, a foregone conclusion – it’s a fact.

Supporters of RGGI promote it as the first market-based regulatory program in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states have capped and will reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector 10 percent by 2018.  Market-based our tea party signs!

States sell nearly all emission allowances through auctions and invest proceeds in consumer benefits: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies. RGGI is spurring innovation in the clean energy economy and creating green jobs in each state.

What it’s actually doing is punishing businesses, already overwhelmed by New Jersey’s taxes, and driving them, and the jobs they provide, out of the state. New Jersey residents will be left with the burden of extremely high and unaffordable electric bills.

This bogus, eco guilt-trip legislation will do nothing more than increase government’s over-reach into our private lives and the business of doing business. The clean energy technologies the progressives promote will do nothing for our increasing energy needs. Real science has proven that not one of them can produce energy efficiently – certainly not by 2018. Studies have proven that green jobs have cost the state jobs, not created them. These “auctions” are nothing but a shake-down of businesses and, by default, consumers.

The legislation is in its last stages. If the Assembly cannot or will not support the governor, one more foundation will be laid for a bureaucratic, anti-Capitalist, anti-freedom government. This is the ultimate “power-grab”.

Send a message to your N.J. Assemblyman immediately, demanding that they vote against this override of Gov. Christie’s veto of the RGGI bill. This is our last chance in New Jersey for the people to keep their power.   The Assembly will vote on this on Wednesday (tomorrow) June 29th.  Our representatives in the Assembly need to hear from us!

 Here’s a sample of what you can say to the N.J. Assembly Legislators:

 http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/Default.asp

 “I’m calling to tell Assemblyman/woman (insert name) that I want NJ out of RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative), and want him/her to vote “NO” on A4108 and resolution ACR -195. I believe it will raise electricity rates and cost jobs.”

 When you call, you will get an aide and they will communicate your message to the legislator. They may also ask your town to determine that you are in their district.   It is important to call your legislator whether they are for or against RGGI.   Both need to know that you are a citizen that is tuned in and active.

Christie Slam-Dunks the Press

NBC’s Meet the Press host David Gregory tried to get N.J. Gov. Christie to eat his words. All he got were even more determined words. Gregory was trying to get Christie to admit that he sometimes goes overboard in blasting his critics, only to get blasted himself.

Gregory played back for the videotape of a woman at a town hall meeting attempting to lance the governor by questioning why he sent his children to parochial school instead of public school.

Christie’s answer, as we all know, was: ‘it’s none of your business.’ He reiterated to Gregory how Christie and his wife made the personal decision to send their children to a parochial school, how they for it themselves in addition to the property taxes they pay, and how he thinks every family in the state should have that same chance.

Bravo for Gov. Christie (and his wife)!

New Jersey is a tough little state and Christie is a tough guy. Gregory challenged him on his willingness to be interviewed and answer the tough questions. Christie reminded him that he was being interviewed and he had answered the question. Gregory just didn’t particularly like it. Neither will any of the union-member teachers in the Garden State.

Tough.

As long as the governor is in his best tough-guy mode, there’s another tough issue we’d like to see him tackle – the appointment of Sohail Mohammed to the Superior Court of New Jersey. The New Jersey State Senate Judiciary Committee will be considering this appointment today, with a possible full vote following the committee meeting.

Right now, it might seem like a good, political decision, a way to pick up votes in cities like Paterson with large Muslim communities. With the elections coming up, our senators will be tempted to approve this appointment. In this politically-correct climate in which we find ourselves, it’s considered not only thinkable but highly dangerous to contest appointing a Muslim to our Superior Court.

Every conservative scholar knowledgeable on the subject has written that the Muslims are playing a deceitful game of Good Muslim/Bad Muslim. Organizations such as CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) have one goal in mind – the establishment of Sharia law in the United States. The governor can consult such authors as Mark Levin, Lawrence Wright, Gerald Posner, Robert Spencer, Ronald Kessler, Norman Podhoretz, Brigitte Gabriel, and Andrew McCarthy. McCarthy was a U.S. District Attorney, so Christie ought to be able relate.

Despite their manifest friendliness, the moderate Muslims seek the same thing their radical brothers do – a worldwide Islamic caliphate. There is no middle ground for them; it’s their way or the highway. Moderate Americans seek to build bridges between the two cultures; the Muslims seek to build a one-way bridge over which they will drag us and separate us from our heritage and our freedom. Once over their bridge, there is no going back.

We Tea Partiers would ask Gov. Christie to seriously reconsider this nomination. The short-term political gains aren’t worth the long-term loss of every sort of freedom we are privileged to enjoy in America. The terrorists who struck on 9/11 didn’t operate in a vacuum. Their whole culture revolves around this one overriding goal. They are not what politicians think they are or wish they were.

Once they are in power – as the governor is about to place one of them – they will never relinquish their position. By the time we realize that we were wrong to trust them, it will be too late, just as it was on 9/11.

 Then, when we object and try to undo the damage, their answer will be, “Tough.”

 

 

 

The New Generation Gap

Matthew Shaffer has a very interesting article in the June 20th issue of the National Review about social media’s effect on the Generation Gap. He says that between trendy retirement communities, highways, suburbs, and social media, the gap between the generations is growing ever wider.

Young people today have a loathing of the elderly and dying. To young people, the elderly are troublesome, cranky, and hard to get along with. However, older people are being shipped to those retirement communities in cattle cars; they’re entering quite willingly. It takes two to make a generation gap and this generation of senior citizens doesn’t suffer foolish children and grandchildren lightly.

Shaffer notes that if families kept their communities together, that grandparents would be available to look after their young grandchildren while the moms go to work. NR is published in New York City. Young families are fleeing grandma and grandpa; they’re fleeing the rising taxes in New York and New Jersey, bound for places like South Carolina where the living is cheaper and easier.

Families are also being forced to flee because their companies are fleeing those states. My co-workers have that option before them: move to Georgia or Texas, or start looking for another company. Some of them are mobile and are glad to leave, as parents and grandparents already live in those places. Others aren’t mobile unless they can persuade their families to go with them.

Friends have asked me why I don’t go to Atlanta or Dallas.  They can read all about it in Shafer’s article, Ages Apart. Mom is too old at this point to be moving.   Facebook is wonderful for keeping up with distant friends.   But human beings, if they’re to remain human, need human contact, face to face, mano o mano.  My brothers (being Mama’s Boys) do the bulk of the caregiving (one helps her with electronic business transactions, the other does the manual labor, and they both keep her busy cooking). My job is cheerleader and referee. I’m also the stand-by caregiver.

Frankly, any family who doesn’t take up our company’s offer to move someplace – anyplace, else is out of their minds. The pioneers took up roots and moved West. They had to – and they didn’t have cell phones, digital cameras, laptops or Facebook. Mom and Dad weren’t a phone call away. Letters took weeks to arrive and one party or the other could be dead from any number of diseases including smallpox, diphtheria, consumption (tuberculosis) or an Indian attack before the letter came.

Any number of things about the younger generations annoy the elderly no end, beginning with their music. They don’t go to the theaters because the Surround-Sound would render them permanently deaf and the new 3-D films won’t endear themselves to our seniors. Profanity is another biggie with the seniors. They just don’t think it’s “cute” when they find tiny little Caitlin, all of 2 years old, has learned the “fudge” word before she’s learned to say her bedtime prayers.

The kids are rude, disrespectful, undisciplined and unpleasant to be around. Some grandparents, desperate to be with their grand off-spring, will put up with just about any sort of behavior. Others head for the retirement community where the rules absolve them from overnight babysitting chores.

Many of the seniors agree with Shaffer: Facebook’s okay, but it shouldn’t be a substitute for real human contact. Some of them shun electronics altogether, knowing it’s a trap for the lazy. They’re not cranky; they’re just right but the younger generation is tuning them out.

Kids have been tuning out the older generation since the 1960s or even earlier. “Never trust anyone over 30.” The divide began with rock music and widened as the drug culture wrapped our society in a moral haze. If you can’t see where you’re going, you will eventually drive off the road.  Facebook is just the new way to rude, crued, and booed.

My friend moved to California in 1979 and didn’t return to this area until this past week. We reconnected on Facebook. She had a lot of stops to make and couldn’t stay long. Basically, we just had enough time to catch up and then she was off again. She was always that way. Sometimes, friends move away but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to drift completely apart, though your lives aren’t as closely intertwined as they were.

When we were both younger, while she was still living here, she cautioned me that she had three kids, many friends, and many more activities. If I could live with that, we’d be okay. As it happened, I enjoyed hearing about all her adventures and still do, so we’re still okay.

We left Westchester County when I was just a baby, and my mother left all her closest friends behind when we moved out to California. Finally, we moved back East to New Jersey, within fairly easy driving distance and a telephone call from those friends. One friend died, her sister has become too frail for visitors. Two newer friends moved away, one to Oregon, the other back to Holland. Mia and Mom corresponded for a quite a long time, but illness and age have come between them at last.

Facebook wouldn’t be my first choice for maintaining a relationship. But I’d rather do things electronically than not at all. A fiber optic cable always trumps a broken heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What The Devil Hath Joined Together

With passage of the gay marriage bill in New York State, Americans are put on an awkward edge between God and civility.  The New Yorkbill includes a proviso that clergy will not be forced to marry homosexual couples.  But how long will that withstand the test of the courts?  Unfortunately, it will probably be a very short honeymoon.

This generation is not easy with the idea of shunning people for their race, religion, or sexual orientation.  The latter is the one they’re least comfortable with, but are willing to overlook as God’s problem.  The legalization of gay marriages, as opposed to civil unions, will make civility (ignoring what they do) rather more difficult.

No matter how you size it up, Mr. & Mr. Jones or Mrs. & Mrs. Smith, has an awkward sound to it.  In the best boiled-frog method, we will be expected to become accustomed to such things.  No one would really care what these couples do, in truth.  People have enough to worry about in their own lives without worrying about what someone else in doing in theirs.

Now that it’s legal inNew York, New Yorkers (New Yorkliberals have never been ones to balk at social progress anyway) will be duty-bound to recognize these couples.  Accepting them is one thing; recognizing such marriages as normal is quite another.

Jesus taught us not to judge others.  Fair enough.  But one can’t help thinking God is looking over our shoulders.  What does He think of our silence in this matter?  Does He regard us as weak or merciful in acknowledging homosexuality as “normal”?

Progressives have placed numerous legal barriers against our own better judgment.  Their definition of discrimination is very loose.  Just about any sign of disapproval or even just discomfort is now a punishable offense.   That we should be merciful, as Christians, is rather obvious.  The argument that the government should dictate our values to us to protect homosexual “rights” is not so clear.

Some have complained about extra-judicial laws against violent crimes against homosexuals.  They didn’t see my co-worker come to more than one meeting with a black eye simply because he had a different sexual preference.  Once, hoodlums threatened to shoot him.

Mercy and pity – voluntary acts – are fine.  Being forced to write someone up as Mr. and Mr. doesn’t quite feel right.  It feels wrong, like running your fingernails down a chalkboard.  If it feels wrong, it probably is wrong.  Tolerance can only go so far before it runs into the immutable fence of morality.  Morality has become a dirty word.  When morality becomes a despised concept, you know a society is in trouble.

There’s somebody who hasn’t been mentioned for generations – Lucifer.  Somehow, it has become an offense to take the Devil’s name in vain, while God’s name is daily cursed and sullied.  No one dares to speak the name of His Son.

Yet homosexuals want His blessing in marriage.  In order to get the bill passed, activists agreed to add the stipulation that clergy need not marry anyone they deem unfit for the privilege.  If they would do this thing they know perfectly well is against God’s will (have they read the story of SodomandGomorrah?), they’ll have no compunction about eventually forcing the clergy to unite un-unitable couples in matrimony, holy or not.

All is needed is a change in the wording of the vows:  “What the Devil hath joined together, let no one put asunder.”

If anyone knoweth any reason why these couples should not be joined together in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.

Timing is Everything

A Close Encounter of the Doomsday Kind

If we depended upon the Media to tell us important news, rather than issuing Progressive press releases, we’d still be living in the Stone Age.  “Man Invents the Wheel” would be the latest headline.  Or:  “Obama Invents the Wheel.”  He certainly wants to send us back to the Stone Age with his Luddite, Anti-Technology policies.

Thanks to NASA and the Space Weather Channel website, we have learned this startling piece of scientific news:

ASTEROID FLYBY: Newly-discovered asteroid 2011 MD will pass only 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) above Earth’s surface on Monday June 27 at about 9:30 a.m. EDT. NASA analysts say there is no chance the space rock will strike Earth. Nevertheless, the encounter is so close that Earth’s gravity will sharply alter the asteroid’s trajectory:

Just so there’s no mistaking how close this flyby is going to be, SWC includes a diagram of the event.

This is going to be a really, alarmingly close-call.  According to this item, the asteroid will not simply pass within 7,500 miles of Earth’s orbit, but within 7,500 miles of Earth’s surface.  That’s about the distance from New York City to Tehran.

I picked a swell day for my first day of summer vacation.  Vacationers flying that morning will have some incredible pictures to show the family at the next reunion.  So everyone with a camera – keep your eyes peeled at 9:30 a.m. (EDT) this Monday.

But wear a helmet.

Holland, Unbound

A Netherlands judge reluctantly acquitted popular Hollander politician and right-wing film-make Geert Wilders of charges of hate speech and discrimination against Islam. The judge ruled that no matter how many Muslims might be offended by Wilders’ views, his statements fell within the legal bounds of political debate.

Wilder has called to halt Muslim immigration and ban the Koran as the purveyor of a violent religion. The judge, Marcel Van Oosten said his claims must be seen in a wider context of debate over immigration policy. While he felt Wilders’ statements about a “tsunami” of immigrants overrunning the country and threatening its culture as “crude and denigrating,” they were also legal. Wilders lives under constant security due to death threats, although he has never called for or endorsed violence, according to Fox News.

In 2008, Wilder produced a film, “Fitna” (Arabic for “ordeal”), a 15-minute documentary featuring Koranic versus against news video of terrorism. Muslims around the world protested its release. But Wilders said his statements represent the views of millions of Hollanders and are protected by freedom of speech laws. He also claimed the charges were politically motivated. Last April, the same court acquitted the chairm of the Arab European League, Abdoulmouthabil Bouzedra, for publishing a cartoon questioning the authenticity of the Holocaust.

American laws bind us even tighter than Holland’s does. Only a few nationally-known authors dare criticize Islam, such as Andrew McCarthy. Between threats of lawsuits, ostracization and even death, even those who dare to criticize Islam perform a nervous dance around their own statements, throwing water on the fire and extinguishing the truth.

Meanwhile, the terrorists grow bolder, especially under the new leadership of al-Zawahiri. Today, a second Fort Hood bomb plot was uncovered. The Media loves to publish stories of “homegrown terrorism.” We don’t need to look abroad for foreign terrorists; they’re right here, within our own boards. What we don’t do is question how they got here or why they’re allowed to remain. Freedom of religion suffices to stifle any debate.

With every day that passes, they remain unacclimated to American culture; it is we who must become acclimated to them, instead. Wilders compared them to the Nazis and he wasn’t that far of base in his assessment. A violent minority can have a devastating effect on freedom.

Wilders is a ram among the Dutch sheep, a border collie who knows how to nip at the heels of his flock and ward off the Islamic predators.

Near-Miss Accident or Terrorist Incident?

Sometimes, it happens.  A pilot turns onto the wrong runway and tragedy happens.  The New York Post reports this morning that “a Lufthansa jumbo jet speeding toward takeoff was forced to a screeching halt on a Kennedy Airport runway to avoid a catastrophic collision with an EgyptAir plane that made a wrong turn into its path.”

If it had been a simple commuter flight or the airline of any Western nation, you’d just say, “Whew!  That was a close call.”  But when the other airliner involved, the one on the wrong runway, is from the Middle East, we have to put our antennas up and take a closer look at the radar.

The Post report continue:  “Cancel take off! Cancel take off plans!” yelled a frightened air controller who saw that the Munich-bound Lufthansa Airbus A340 was headed toward a collision with an Egypt Air Boeing 777 at around 6:50 p.m. Monday.

“Lufthansa 411 heavy is rejecting takeoff,” the pilot radioed back.

The aborted liftoff came as the German airliner was roaring down Runway 22R, where an EgyptAir plane was precariously perched less than a mile away, officials said.

“Those two were coming together,” radioed an unidentified pilot who witnessed the near-disaster.

A few minutes later, a pilot aboard a Virgin America flight arriving from Los Angeles piped in: “That was quite a show.”   The Lufthansa plane was cleared for takeoff seconds before the incident.  Its pilots had to slam the brakes so hard, they worried they might be overheated.

“It was close,” said an air-control source who believes the EgyptAir flight ended up in the path of the Lufthansa jet after its crew took a wrong turn.  Officials could not say how close the two planes came to colliding. FAA spokeswoman Holly Baker said it might take few days for investigators to sort out some of the basic details of the incident.

A collision would have been an epic tragedy. The Lufthansa jet had 286 passengers, plus crew, the airline said. EgyptAir declined comment, but its Boeing 777s can carry up to 346 passenger, plus crew.  An Airbus A340 has a normal takeoff speed of 180 mph — meaning that if they’d reached full-speed a half-mile from the Egypt Air plane, the Lufthansa pilots had at best 10 seconds to safely stop their jet.

After the Lufthansa plane pulled off the runway, controllers sent a Port Authority crew to help check its brakes. After a stop at the airport terminal, it headed back to the runway, and finally departed about an hour and 40 minutes after the incident.   It arrived safely in Munich.  The EgyptAir jet took off for Cairo about 90 minutes after the incident.

Investigators spent an hour and a half with the Egyptian plane but eventually allowed it to take off.  When the report is released, we’ll learn whether the plane’s pilots pleaded innocent and how much of their story the investigators believed.  We’ll find out whether investigators checked their backgrounds, or whether political correctness has banned such research.  It would be interesting, too, to see the plane’s manifest, to learn if anyone important was on board the plane that terrorists would be interested in targeting.

There are no simple mistakes or misunderstandings when it comes to radical Islamists and airliners.

The Hypocrites Are Coming! The Hypocrites Are Coming!

The New Jersey Senate yesterday crossed the Garden State’s public employee unions to pass a bill requiring significantly higher contributions for health benefits and pensions from more than 500,000 government workers.  In addition, the bill suspends unions’ ability to bargain over health care.

The bill, which passed 24-15, must still win over the Assembly committee, then pass to the lower house and then make its way to the Governor’s desk.  Gov. Christie is the driving force behind the legislation.  The full Assembly is expected to hear the bill on Thursday.  Tea Partiers, take note.

An amendment to remove a provision which would have limited public workers’ access to out-of-state medical care unless similar care wasn’t available in state was approved earlier by a similar margin.

“This is a watershed moment for New Jersey, proving that the stakes are too high and the consequences all too real to stand by and do nothing,” he said in a written statement.

“As a result of Democrats and Republicans coming together to confront the tough issues, we are providing a sustainable future for our pension and health benefit system, saving New Jersey taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and securing a fiscally responsible future for our state.”

According to Fox News, “the legislation is intended to shore up badly underfunded retirement systems. A new tiered system would require teachers, police and firefighters and other public workers to pay a portion of their health insurance premiums based on income. Pension contributions would also rise by 1 percent immediately, and by an additional percent or more after a seven-year phase-in.

“Public-sector unions are vehemently opposed, in part because the measure limits collective bargaining over health care. Hundreds turned out at the Capitol on Monday for another day of protests that started with a march across the Delaware River into Trenton.

“The bill was moving through the Legislature as a result of a deal struck among Senate President Stephen Sweeney, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver — both Democrats — the governor and GOP legislative leaders. Bill Dressel, the head of New Jersey’s League of Municipalities, told lawmakers the state’s unfunded pension liability is “a ticking time bomb” that they now have a chance to defuse.

“Sweeney said the changes ‘will ensure that we are able to live up to our goals of keeping more of our health care dollars in New Jersey while not eliminating the choices that are so important to employees and their families.’ Senate Majority Leader Barbara Buono said the health care provision, even after being amended, is still too restrictive.

“I don’t think there is any physician that would knowingly sign this certification,” she said. “It doesn’t need to be watered down. It doesn’t need to be amended. It needs to be stricken.”

More than 3,000 public workers showed up at the statehouse Thursday to protest when the bill was up for a vote in a Senate committee.  On Monday, hundreds returned.  Protesters in Revolutionary War costumes gathered in Morrisville, Pa., and marched across the Delaware River in what union officials called ‘the second Battle of Trenton.’ Union members also set up more than 125 tents on a lawn behind the statehouse, along with a mock graveyard for collective bargaining rights. Public employee unions want any changes in their benefits made at the bargaining table, not through legislation.

“This is the defining moment for the labor movement in our generation,” New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech wrote in an email to enlist support for the rally, the latest and most ambitious of several recent Capitol protests.   A provision to allow collective bargaining over health care to resume after four years did little to quell union objections.

The Liberals have apparently decided that our Tea Party costumes weren’t so “silly” after all.  They think what worked for us can work for them.  They’ve been depending on our sketchy history of the American Revolution – they claim if we really knew the facts about the Revolution, that we’d be embarrassed.  Well some of us do remember our history, and continually refresh our memories.

Problems began with the British taxes.  Their main goal was to raise money to pay for the French & Indian Wars, which had gone on for at least 100 years.  But they also wanted to let the Colonials, or Yankees, know who was the boss.  At the time, the Colonials were not necessarily looking for severance and independence from Britain but justice.

The Colonies were taxed without representation, representation being difficult to achieve over a wide ocean sailing in wooden boats.  The colonists had had the right to vote on their own taxes through the House of Burgesses, with the consent of the monarch.  Parliament, fearing a growing population that would eventually overwhelm, took the right to represent themselves away from them.

This came about after increasing unrest over taxes and unfair trade practices.  Britain was basically using America as her garden and farm.  The colonies could produce raw goods, but they could not manufacture them.  They had to sell the raw goods to English manufacturers, and buy the goods back at exorbitant costs, putting many colonists, even George Washington, who was wealthy, into debt.  The additional taxes, which most colonists had means to pay, were the last straw.  The Colonists began boycotting British goods, and smuggling in what they needed. 

So much for Progressive claims of Colonial lawlessness.

Or our ignorance of Colonial history.

The British did not keep their word to veterans of the French & Indian Wars, if they, in fact, gave any word at all, concerning pensions.  Many of the veterans were left destitute, and according to The Real George Washington, our first president, then a colonel, was very generous in his charity towards these veterans whom he had led.  Anyone who came to his door was to be given the food or clothing for which they asked.

Our overpaid union government workers, who make more money than we do, are hardly the pitiful, ragged transients of Washington’s Day. They have more than the necessary means to keep themselves in their retirement without any pension at all, much less the extravagant pensions they are receiving or will receive.

In Boston, the British garrisoned many troops to keep the peace among the rioting Bostonians, the Sons of Liberty whom our present-day Progressives so revile, and to collect the taxes, leaving the frontier unguarded.  The Bostonians certainly harassed the British troops and were at fault in the Boston massacre.  Washington, Franklin, and John Adams all disapproved of the Boston Tea Party, feeling that Boston should have repaid the defaulting East India Company for the tea.  East India was nearly bankrupt, so Britain gave them the exclusive monopoly on the American trade.   Tea Partying Americans are too peaceful and law-abiding to wreak havoc on General Motors cars, but our government bail-out of General Motors and other faltering companies bears a striking resemblance to the East India Company.

We don’t have an army of soldiers in the United States.  But we do have a considerable army of union members who are just as violent, unprincipled, and ruthlessly destructive.  There are not pictures yet of these “Revolutionary War” companies.  Doubtless, these union members are wearing the tricorn hats and blue and duff of the Colonial rebels.

 At heart, however, they’re “lobster-backs” and Americans need to hold the standard of “Don’t Tread on Me” against their treacherous attack on the state capitol in Trenton.  Anyone who can get to Trenton on Thursday needs to remind them of who the real “patriots” are.

 

 

 

It Is Wal-Mart, Hear It Roar

The Women of Wal-Mart thought they had too many women to ignore – 1.6 million, to be exact. But today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided they just had too many numbers to file a class-action lawsuit against the Wal-Mart chain, the largest employee class-action lawsuit in U .S. history.

According to Fox News, the court agreed unanimously that the litigation could not proceed as a class action in its current form, reversed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The jurists were split along 5-4 lines over whether the group presented a common claim. Justice Anton Scalia called the lawsuit “one of the most expansive class actions ever” to have been given the go-ahead by lower courts.

Plaintiffs “wish to sue about literally millions of employment decisions at once,” Scalia wrote. “Without some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together, it will be impossible to say that examination of all the class members’ claims for relief will produce a common answer the crucial question, ‘why I was disfavored.’”

Had the plaintiffs won, the suit would have cost Wal-Mart potentially billions of dollars in damages. A similar case, based on racial discrimination, put oil giant Texaco out of business.

“The court’s ruling erects substantially higher barriers for working men and women to vindicate rights to be free from employment discrimination,” the plaintiffs said in a statement after the decision. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee suggested that the ruling shows that “an activist majority of the Supreme Court is making it more and more difficult for any American to have their day in court.

“Over the past two years,” he claimed, “the American people have grown frustrated with the notion that some corporations are too big to fail. Today’s decision will undoubtedly make some wonder whether the Supreme Court has now decided that some corporations are too big to be held accountable.”

The case started a decade ago when Betty Dukes said the management at the Pittsburg, Calif., Wal-Mart store where she worked was bypassing her for promotions. “I could see the men going forth and the women in the store stayed in the basic positions they were always in,” Dukes once told an interviewer.

Dukes’ discrimination claims were folded into a class-action lawsuit covering all current female Wal-Mart employees and anyone who worked for the company going back to late 1998. In a conference call with reporters after Monday’s ruling, Dukes said she was disappointed in the ruling but added, “we will persevere even though we didn’t get the ruling we hoped for.”

Lawyer Joseph Sellers said the ruling reverses 40 years of court decisions and raises the hurdles that workers have to clear to file discrimination claims. He emphasized that the decision made no judgment whether the company discriminated against its female workers and that he’s “determined to proceed” on behalf of his clients. This could be through scores of individual lawsuits against Wal-Mart or smaller class-action claims.

Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg led the four-member dissent, saying the court’s holding “disqualifies the class at the starting gate” for putting too much of a burden on the plaintiffs to show their individual claims are sufficiently similar to form a class-action suit. The ‘dissimilarities’ approach leads the court to train its attention what distinguishes individual members, rather than on what unites them.” Ginbsurg was joined in her opinion by Justices Stephen Breyers, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of Wal-Mart, said the unanimity of the case came when all the justices agreed that the lower court “radically lowered the standard for certifying class actions.

“Too often the class-action device is twisted and abused to force businesses to choose between settling meritless lawsuits or potentially facing financial ruin. Our economy would be better served if businesses could spend more resources creating jobs and few resources fighting frivolous litigation,” said Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center.

These are amazing statements by the plaintiffs, the Progressive judges, and the Democrats. Years ago, they lectured schoolchildren not to make “value judgments” or “stereotype.” It was every woman for herself, which meant what you thought about one woman, you couldn’t think about any woman. In those days, most women were happy to stay home and raise their children. A few malcontented women wanted to go play with the boys. Now we all have to play with them, whether we want to or not.

The female camel got her nose into the executive tent, and now all the women (seemingly) want to get their noses into the tent. Or do they? This sounds like the work of the Female Camel Workers of America trying to unionize the female camels. They don’t want the executives work, necessarily, just their pay. Those female executive camels work long hours and have to travel. If the caravan goes across the country, they have to load up the house on their backs and travel with it.

Lower-paid camels don’t have to travel, though, because they are less paid. There are plenty of camels out there in California to do what they do. Therefore, they can stay wherever they are and keep their children in the same schools. Still, if they can get on the union caravan and have some of that nice, executive pay redistributed, they’ll sign on. The company might have a problem enticing their female executives to caravan out to California, but that’s the company’s problem, not theirs.

If the Women of Wal-Mart want the better pay and be able to travel and get away from the kids, they’re going to have to prove they can do more than bag the merchandise. Why should they, though, if they can sue the company for the same money?

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw through the ruse. Sen. Leahy had an amazing charge, accusing this more Conservative court of having an “activist majority.” Note how he also rails against the court’s ruling, erecting “substantially higher barriers for working men and women to vindicate rights to be free from employment discrimination.”

How did those men get their noses under the Progressive activists’ tent, anyway? Working men and women. That sounds like something from the 1930s. Executives, managers, and supervisors would be very surprised to hear that they don’t “work.” There used to be something called manual laborers, who didn’t have enough education to do anything else.

Wal-Mart’s “sales associates” are very pleasant people. It did a wise thing in opening non-union stores. Let us hope that the union camels don’t get their noses under Wal-Mart’s tent and turn what is an amazing American success story into Ali-Baba and the 1.6 Million Thieves.