Federal Hill: A Lesson in Not Taking HUD Grants for Granted

In January of 2013, social media published by CD Publications (a newsletter publisher) reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development would submit, in April of that year, a new rule proposal targeting massive desegregation of each of the nation’s more than 74,000 census tracts.

 

“The plan, modeled on HUD’s Westchester County, New York [and, specifically, the ironically named city of White Plains] low-income housing mandate, will require that each census tract contain a similar percentage of minority families that now live in a concentrated area of a local or regional government’s jurisdiction. HUD determined that the county’s minority population is 10 percent, mostly concentrated in White Plains and Yonkers [and Yonker’s next-door neighbor, Mount Vernon.”

 

“While Westchester’s minority populations are miniscule, making it easier to apply sanctions on a percentage basis, it remains unclear how HUD would determine percentages to be applied to census tracts when minority populations in urban settings surpass the surrounding white populations by a large margin, such as Detroit.

 

“Under the proposal, any unit of local government that receives, or has received, any federal subsidy that specifies the application of housing provisions, such as Community Development Block Grants, must provide that it followed HUD’s requirements to provide housing for poor minority families. Failure to provide such proof would subject municipalities to the loss of subsidies or require equivalent housing for the minority poor in each of their census tracts – each contract contain[ing] about 4,000 residents.

 

“HUD kept its new plan under wraps for more than a year by delaying a release of its semi-annual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Sources tell [the authors of this particular publication, HAL], the Obama Administration deliberately withheld the Spring 2012 Unified Agenda (UA) because of the political volatility of some of the proposals.  The Office of Budget Management (OMB) delayed release of the Fall 2012 UA until after the November elections for the same reason.  The UA was finally released late [on] Dec. 21, after government operations were shut down for the Christmas holiday, keeping the issues well under the political radar.”

 

The newsletter went on to report:

 

“Calling it a new approach, HUD will apply the lessons learned from its Westchester County experience. The affluent New York City suburb [an entire county, actually], was taken to task in 2009 for failu7re to sufficiently apply its CDBG grants to provide housing for the poor.  A New York Metro fair housing organization sued [the county] in 2006 under the 1863 Federal False Claims Act, known as the Lincoln Law, which allows private parties to recover triple damages from anyone who fraudulently takes federal money.

 

“A federal judge found the county had failed to meet the pre-conditions of $52 million in CDBG awards by failing to analyze impediments to fair housing based on race and … misrepresented its efforts to desegregate overwhelmingly white communities when it applied for the revenue sharing.

 

The original 2009 lawsuit was brought by a Leftist housing activist husband-and-wife team, Greg and Lori Gurian, who charged Westchester County with falsely stating they were affirmatively furthering fair housing. Westchester County lost the case, the Gurians walked away with $7.5 million, and HUD had its legal groundwork for proposing Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, not to be confused with the Affordable Housing Act of 1968.

 

AFFH pushes the progressive agenda farther. Much, much farther.

 

The New AFFH rules for grant money require any municipality accepting the grant money to police itself for violations of the AFFH’s definition barriers or impediments to furthering fair housing by analyzing its demographics in comparison to nearby cities:

 

• Race
• Ethnicity
• National origin
• English proficiency
• Class
• Zoning Laws
• Public Housing Admissions Criteria
• Lack of Regional Collaboration

 

And community assets, such as:

 

• Quality schools
• Transportation hubs
• Public parks
• Jobs

 

If a suburban municipality that has accepted HUD grants lacks any of these “amenities” the community must provide them, at its own tax-payers’ expense.

 

Most of northern New Jersey’s northern suburban communities have accepted these grants – and continue to do so – making them vulnerable to federal lawsuits if they don’t comply with HUD’s standards. Hence, the recent cropping up of Transportation or Commuter Hubs, Consumer Hubs, and Higher Education Hubs.  These are all mini-cities built to meet HUD’s conditions for destroying the suburbs.

 

So what’s the big attraction to Federal Hill, which the Meer family sold out to Tilcon and to U.S. Concrete? Passaic County Community College in Wanaque, of course, which is right across Union Avenue (and Upper Twin Lake) from the current quarry and proposed Affordable Housing development, and the two entrances to Interstate 287.

 

At previous meetings, the town council claimed that the property could be used for an industrial park. That must have been before the 2008 meltdown, which gave northern New Jersey a surplus of vacant industrial parks.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency was instrumental in having an area of town declared an “urban blight zone” in the semi-rural town of Bloomingdale. The site was previously used as a motorcycle track by local teenagers and consequently, a dump.  That was all the EPA needed to help Bloomingdale’s regulators meet the requirements for building Avalon Bay.

 

The townspeople were basically jittered into accepting Avalon Bay. If they didn’t consent to this building, worse could come:  HUD could demand that the Meer Tract be developed.  However, back in 1996, when Route 287 was completed (“intended to result in improved regional access to and from Bloomingdale and its surrounding communities”), the Tilcon quarry and the Meer Tract were identified as an Economic Planning Area intended to increase tax revenue, utilize and redevelop vacant sites, and provide appropriate options for senior citizens, and the planning board recommended permitting residential development for the Meer Tract, and light industrial corporate use for the quarry area.

 

In 2007, the Planning Board “re-examined its goals” which now included:

 

• Increasing tax revenue
• Providing for low and moderate-income housing in a strategic manner complying with state legislative objectives and court mandates

 

By 2013, now that AFFH had been implemented, the Planning Board presented its “Open Space Plan”:

 

• Open space has been acquired in the Federal Hill area including [three parcels]
  • The Bicoastal (U.S. Concrete) tract
  • The Higgens and Peragallo Tract
  • Provide 104.6 contiguous acres of open space
• Preservation of the Meer Tract and Tilcon Quarry are not “feasible”
  • Notes lands will be quarried
  • Reclamation Plan may include open spaceAmong the Town Planning Board’s many 2014 Master Plan Goals:

• Establish appropriate population density that contributes to the well-being of the community and region
• Plan for local economic sustainability
• Encourage Smart Growth principles in areas deemed appropriate for development

 

But Bloomingdale was in violation of the Highland Council Goals, which included preservation of contiguous areas of land in its natural state and protect natural, scenic, and other resources of the Highlands Region. Bloomingdale had the Superior Court of New Jersey on its side now:

 

“The purpose of the Quarry Overlay District is to implement an Order of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, and Passaic County for the development of affordable housing. The court recognized the potential to assist the provision of affordable housing on the Meer Tract, in conjunction with the existing Tilcon Quarry Tract.  The Court found that quarrying and related uses are not inconsistent with inclusionary development.”

 

“The district recognizes the existing quarry operation within the Borough [of Bloomingdale] and the need for affordable housing. Due to the presence of a natural resource suitable for the mining, the Quarry Overlay District can facilitate the preparation of the Meer Tract for construction of affordable housing.  The Quarry Overlay District addresses the need to protect the general welfare through regulation of the quarry operation and the associated excavation of natural resources.”

 

Natural resources to use to the construction of the affordable housing that will “transform” the town into a city.

 

HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation is some 377 pages long, full of the sort of legalese that confuses the average intellect and bores the uninitiated. One of its more obscure regulations states that not only may the local community organizing groups who “assist” a town’s planning board advocate for AFFH, citizens opposed to the ruling may not object, and can be fined or even jailed for expressing a negative opinion on the subject, citing that such opinions are racist and/or bigoted.

 

Some Bloomingdale residents came to the public meeting on Aug. 9. Mostly, they were conservationists and environmentalists, surprised to find that they were on the other side of Progressive fence.

 

Speaking of fences, residents complained that Tilcon had placed a fence around the quarry perimeter, warning off trespassers with threats of fines or jail. Or hospitalization.  What residents don’t realize is that the quarry has already chewed the entire hill out to the last tree line.  In other words, if you hike up Federal Hill from Union Avenue to the tree line, you’ll find there’s nothing but air on the other side.  Someone not realizing the true extent of the quarrying could well fall off a cliff, for the hill is sheared off on the other side.

 

The quarry is very close to being mined out already. As I pointed out to the town council at the meeting, at the rate Tilcon has been going since 2013, judging by the number of bomb blasts and the sound of rock slides, it won’t take them until 2050 to finish the job.  The mayor gave me a dirty look for that comment, for he denied ever saying that Avalon Bay would be the end of developing Affordable Housing and that it would take until 2050 before the building was complete.

 

A New Jersey Conservation policy wonk suggested a land swap for 100 percent Affordable Housing. The town council voted 5 to 1 to adopt the zoning ordinance that facilitates the expansion of Tilcon Quarry and the construction of “court-ordered” affordable housing.  But they also said they would take into consideration the possibility of requesting a land swap from the state involving Tilcon Quarry and the Bicoastal Acquisition.

The townspeople requested that the council identify who the owners of Bicoastal Acquisition were. Evidently, the council eventually complied but it was not identified in the local newspaper.

 

The owner of Bicoastal Acquisition is U.S. Concrete. U.S. Concrete is an interesting choice.  Supposedly, the land swap would stop the quarrying on the Meer Tract (it’s already too late for that, actually, and probably by the time the issue is resolved, the job will be finished).  Quarrying would then devolve to the 70-acre Bicoastal Tract.  Essentially, it would finish off Federal Hill and company.  By 2050.

 

Or quite probably sooner. There’s a little, itty bitty problem with U.S. Concrete.  According to financial trading website, “The Street Sweeper”, as of March of this year, U.S. Concrete’s stock was considered to be in trouble.  Highly overvalued, its own president and CEO sold off 6,500 shares of his own company’s stock.  To those in Bloomingdale (especially in The Flats), that’s not a good sign.

 

“U.S. Concrete’s trailing Price-to-Earnings ratio hit an incredible 544!” StreetSweeper wrote. “That means people are paying 22 times more for U.S. Concrete than the average 24 P/E seen within the industry overall.

 

“Why? A P/E of 544 is just as outlandish as the nearly $1 billion market valuation placed on a company that is not curing cancer or selling the fountain of youth.  Rather, a company that sells cement.  And it sells cement primarily in just three regions of the country.

 

“U.S. Concrete insiders have taken shares on a brisk walk to the auction block time and again over the last three months. In fact, insiders apparently had enough questions about the future of the stock that they didn’t bother making even one open-market purchase from December through March 2016.

 

“It’s always disheartening when executives sell the company stock. But CEO Sandbrook isn’t alone.  In the last couple of weeks, other executives and directors [five, in all, in 14 transactions] have jumped in to sell of chunks of the company’s [overvalued, by $55] stock.”

 

StreetSweeper attributes the company’s financial straits to overleveraging in order to make acquisitions. Why would a company that’s sitting on land slated for high-rise development bail out this way?   The website predicts that in time, and with the worst of circumstances, the company’s share price will fall to about $31 per share.

 

Tilcon, by the way has a parent company (Oldcastle) and a grandparent company, CRH plc, a global materials company which specializes in sustainable development.

 

Here’s what may possibly happen. U.S. Concrete’s executives are bailing out on their over-priced stock. CRH’s stock on the NYSE is at $33.46.  The Bloomingdale town council seems very eager for this land swap over to Bicoastal Acquisitions (U.S. Concrete), seemingly abandoning Tilcon’s present quarry.  But before you get too excited, you should know that Tilcon’s quarry is just about all quarried out.

Nothing is left but a tree line façade, as I’ve already noted. Bloomingdale gets the state to agree to the swap.  U.S. Concrete buys into the deal, but maxes out its credit and sells out to Tilcon, which winds up with license to basically flatten Federal Hill (I can still remember when I first moved to Pompton Lakes seeing Federal Hill.  I watched the planes flying over Federal Hill.  I remember the hill was only slightly lower than the airline beacon tower.  Now there’s nothing but space where the hill once stood.).

 

The mayor and town council point out how small an acreage they’re talking about Tilcon quarrying. What they don’t mention is how much of the hill has already been destroyed.  In its place high-rise apartments will arise, filled with the minorities Obama wants to send to destroy the suburbs altogether.

 

AFFH goes beyond the mandate to build affordable housing. The plan is for social justice.  Already other towns in the United States have been sued because a poor family wanted to live in the best neighborhood in town.  The town ordinances were declared invalid and high-density housing went up in a suburban neighborhood with at least a quarter of an acre of land.  HUD determined it was ‘unfair’ that some people could afford to live on such a large tract of land while poorer families could not.

 

According to an article in National Review magazine on July 20, 2015, “Affirmatively Furthering Housing: Obama’s Latest Disaster”:

 

“The plan has three elements:

 

1. Inhibit suburban growth and, when possible, encourage suburban re-migration to cities. This can be achieved, for example, through regional growth boundaries (as in Portland), or be relative neglect of highway-building and repair in favor of public transportation.
2. Force the urban poor into the suburbs through imposition of low-income housing quotas.
3. Institute “regional tax-base sharing,” where a state forces upper-middle-class suburbs to transfer tax revenue to nearby cities and less-well-off inner-ring suburbs (as in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.).

 

My parents bought our house in 1961. I believe the house is on 1/8^th of an acre of land.  We were poor.  But, as Al Frech of the North Jersey Regional Party says, “HUD doesn’t care.”

 

I spoke at the Bloomingdale public meeting as my mother’s representative (she still lives in the same house), but also on behalf of myself and my two brothers. The house is my mother’s largest financial asset.  Property values will go down when potential buyers realize that a city is going to be built right in the middle of the suburb and also, that HUD can build any size housing they want to right next door.  Or right on her property, for that matter.

 

With property values diminished, the houses on Jeffrey Drive and Knolls Road and vicinity will be ripe for the picking by wealthy developers like CRH. Given the choice of a much lower price by a potential homeowner or a higher price by a developer, my older brother (as executor of my mother’s will) will almost certainly choose the development price (he doesn’t care any more than HUD does) over a devalued homeowner offer.

That’s how the Progressives win: by blowing up hillsides, redistributing wealth, jobs, and populations through bureaucracy, and destroying the democratic process on the local and state level.

 

My mother predicted all this years ago. I’m just sorry that Mom was right.  Overpopulation, crime, drugs, traffic congestion, corruption, high taxes, and poor schools were why my parents fled Westchester County back in 1959.  We couldn’t afford to live in Westchester County and the city of Yonkers was overrun with people it’s now criminal to mention, no matter how dangerous of a place they made Yonkers for good people to live in.

 

Almost sixty years later, those same problems have followed us here, right to Mom’s doorstep practically. How ironic that the HUD activists chose Westchester County, and Yonkers of all places (it was used as the example by which to compare the rest of the county), as their example of a racist, non-inclusive suburb, and then chose Bloomingdale as the ideal suburban town to blow up in order to reorder society into their dystopian view.

 

When they’ve built their Social Justice City, HUD should give the place the name of the hill which they destroyed in the name of social engineering:  Federal Hill City.  It’s appropriate since it’s the federal and state government, not the residents, who created this monster.

 

 

 

 

 

Climbing to the Top the Hard Way

Stephen Rogata, aka Michael Joseph Ryan, really wanted to talk to Donald J. Trump. So do many of Trump’s advisors.  Suction-cupping your way to the top seems like doing it the hard way.  But Trump’s writers may soon be climbing the walls on Fifth Avenue themselves if The Donald doesn’t start listening.

 

Trump doesn’t listen to anyone, it seems, however, least of all a frustrated 19 year-old probably looking for attention or bearing some other psychology burden which, by contrast, climbing a 60-story building with suction cups seemed a piece of cake.

 

His mother, Gina Ryan, complained that her son was spending all his time on the Internet, writing “a blog on government issues in the United States,” according to the Associated Press, which reported on a Fairfax County, Va., police account after Stephen/Michael ran away from home in November 2014.

 

His parents had taken away his Internet privilege when they found his school grades were suffering. Which courses was he failing?  Calculus?  Physics?  Yeah, that’s a problem (if he even got past Geometry; writers tend to not do well in mathematics when they’re young, although this a grave mistake on their part).

 

But if he was failing Anti-American History II or Feminism in the 21^st Century or Acknowledging White Privilege and Guilt, who can blame him for skipping the books and failing the grades?

 

For someone who was reportedly so absorbed by the Internet and mesmerized by Donald J. Trump, it’s surprising that young Stephen/Michael didn’t reach out to Trump in Trump’s favorite medium – Twitter. It would have beat tearing his muscles out climbing Trump Tower.

 

But his parents disconnected Stephen/Michael two years ago and maybe that’s why our AWOL student decided to climb the building instead (ironically, wasn’t Trump was in Virginia that day, championing the plight of out of work miners?).

 

Parents can drive their late adolescent children to desperate measures when they disapprove of their children’s choice of career. Some want to go on to higher achievements – art, music, poetry, writing, photography.  Others are only too happy, like my good friend, to forego college altogether and study a trade.  Some don’t know what they want to do.

 

The young Conservative writer has the most difficult path of all, though. An engineering student must study – and memorize – formulas for hours on end, effectively ending their social life.  The writing student, though, immediately finds him or herself immediately trapped by the Socialist glass ceiling.

 

If you don’t study the 20^th Century Socialist Literary Greats – Shaw, Dreiser, Miller, Ginsberg come to mind – and of course, the philosophers – Plato, Mills, Rousseau, Marx, Engel, Dewey – you’ll never get a story published in your school’s literary magazine and never be assigned a story in the school newspaper.

 

To be a great writer – in any school of thought – requires not just a double major – Communications and Political Science – but really a quad major: Communications, English (Literature), History and Philosophy.  Regular science and a little discipline in mathematics wouldn’t hurt, either.

 

Nearly all modern journalists are double majors from the Communications or Journalism schools and the political science wing, which is just another way of saying philosophy. You have to be able to read before you write, and if you really expect to be published, you must be able to speak well in order to sell your book to an agent.  Good luck with that.  You really need to know somebody at the top first (hence Ryan’s Climb).

 

Writing is a glamorous occupation to the starry-eyed teenager dreaming of seeing their book made into a film someday. Reality sets in upon their first job in writing, most likely newspaper reporting – the editor.

 

The editor is the short-tempered, alcohol-consuming, coffee-bolting behemoth who stands between every young writer and their dreams. First lesson – shorter is better.  Lose the adjectives but do make your lede interesting.  Oh, the pain of seeing that first story returned to you, all marked up in red, looking like a diagram of a football game.

 

Don’t despair, though. It’s nothing personal; just the nature of the beast.  Every editor thinks they’re a better writer than the writers submitting the work to them.  They get their comeuppance though, because every company executive, especially those who’ve studied the law, thinks they’re a better writer than the communications specialist they’ve hired to write their speeches for them.

 

Writing is a thankless, merciless task. Public relations pays better than journalism, if you can get a job these days.  PR has gone the way of all socialist things.  Communications specialists only write for the top dogs these days.  They’re to be pitied more than envied.  I’ve known more than one communications strategist and communications team waylaid by an executive’s traveling schedule and penchant for thinking themselves a better writer, with a master’s degree or better to prove it.  They spend hours waiting for the edited red letter speech to return to them and then have to drive hours back to their own offices to rewrite the wheel.

 

Dad was right, all those years ago (and Mom, too). Still, it pays the bills.  Starving bloggers may have greater job satisfaction.  But the remuneration is non-existent.

 

Poor Stephen/Michael short-circuited his career by taking this strenuous short-cut to fame. Perhaps he figured he had nothing to lose.  I remember feeling that way at 19, having been sent to school to learn to type instead of learning to write.  Or rather, to read.  I had a second chance to immerse myself in the great literature of the West and got nearly all A’s doing so.

 

That year’s time didn’t afford me the opportunity to soak it all in, but I did get the degree – and the idea. Thirty years later, with spare time on my hands, thanks to the Obamabust of 2008, I’ve managed to more or less complete the task (Tom Jones.  Check!  Crime and Punishment (yikes, what a grim tale).  Check.  War and Peace.  Check!  The Gulag Archipelago (non-fiction, but what a story – the real story of Communism).  Check and double-check!!

 

I had the wisdom on my second round in college to study some philosophy and a bit of the Founding Fathers’ inspiration. I read both The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers.  I finally got around to reading The Communist Manifesto and even heard about it third-hand from a friend who was an avid Communist.  “The ends justify the means” and “Well, Stalin wasn’t exactly the role model of Communism but it could work under the right circumstances” and this ditty – “it would mean you wouldn’t have to work; you could concentrate on your writing.”

 

Oh yes, indeed, and I would spend every free minute denouncing Communism and Socialism. But I would also denounce the tyrants of the corporate world who, like editors in journalism, think they have a capitalist right, if not a divine right, to brow-beat and verbally abuse their underlings.

 

At 19, Ryan still might have a chance to salvage his reputation. Go to school and learn a trade, as a professor once advised me.  You’re not going to learn anything worthwhile in today’s socialist-oriented universities anyway.  Find one in which you can meet many people of all varieties.

 

Or, taking a job with one of the many delivery services might be a good idea, too. Retail stores are closing up.  Companies like Amazon.com are opening warehouses everywhere and need drivers.  It’ll get you out of the mind-numbing cubicle environment and on the road, where you can meet people and not be stuck in one place all the live-long day.

 

At night, you can study on your own. My advice would begin with the Christian Bible.  It’s where history begins, whether communist atheists like it or not.  Absolutely all of history starts there and most of literature up until the 20^th Century takes it cues from the Good Book.

 

You’ll need help figuring it out, so get in with a good Bible study group. The second book you should take up is “”The Two Babylons:  Or, the Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod,” by Alexander Hislop.

 

“The Two Babylons” is an obscure book and seriously anti-Catholic. If you can stomach its anti-papist language (whew!), the book rips the cover off most classical Greek literature and Greek and Roman gods, Roman Catholic teachings and even some Protestant beliefs.  In a word:  all this for one guy – Nimrod – and his adoring Semiramis (note:  most historians discount Hislop’s claims about Semiramis but if you read carefully his linguistic assertions, you won’t be in much doubt).

 

If you’re already immersed this classics (unless you’re in the upper class, it’s not likely that you are), you’ll think of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses with a different mindset. You’ll certainly think twice about celebrating Halloween or hanging that sprig of mistletoe at Christmas or if you even want to celebrate the Lord Jesus’ birth – at that time, at least – ever again.  The pagan-worshippers have been trying to tell us, sneeringly, for years, but we haven’t been listening or paying attention, thinking they’re just full of it.

 

From there, you can go on to reading the Greek classics. You should, because the Greek classics, especially Plato’s Republic, inform Socialist theories.  Then read on to the later philosophers.  Read the great literature.  Read Shakespeare, and Milton and all those other high-falutin’ Greeks.

 

Don’t just read literature to be able, as Henry Fielding wryly warns us in Tom Jones, to say you read the book. Enjoy it.  Think about it.  Discuss it with others.  Yes, Moby Dick contains about forty pages of blubber.  But Melville’s language is amazing.  War and Peace, the most famed of all literature is a long book, yes; but it’s an incredibly fast read, a real page turner.  Will that idiot Pierre ever grow up?  Will he find the true God?  Will he find love?  Find out.  Don’t fear the length.  Don Quixote and Les Miserables are long books too.  But nothing is longer than a dreadfully boring book like that of Thomas Hardy or Henry James, while shorter than the aforementioned take infinitely longer to get through.

 

Read, read, read. That’s the big mistake those who don’t go to college make.  Followed by money, money, money – that that’s all there is to life, meeting the basic needs.  Work, work, work.  That’s the big mistake those who do go to college make – thinking that thinking alone will get them through life and lead them to greatness.

 

Donald J. Trump built his way to the top. He read some.  He published a number of books that it turns out he didn’t write.  He plasters his name onto everything he builds or does, including putting his name in huge, brightly-lit letters above the podium at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last month.

 

The question in the minds of the college-educated is: does the elevator, figuratively speaking, go to the top floor in regards to his bid for the presidency. The college-educated have been trying to tell the high-school educated that it certainly doesn’t.  The elevator pretty much stops around the 25^th or 30^th floor, at best.

 

But like Mr. Rogata/Ryan, the high-school educated plugged along, pushing Trump to the top with a Herculean effort, only to find he wasn’t home (Trump’s home is in the Trump Tower, but he wasn’t there the other day). The Trumpsters began to discover this when their allegedly “attacked” Mrs. Khizir, the silent Muslim wife standing obediently beside her Clinton-minion husband.

 

Trump, for once, was right; he didn’t attack her. He only stated the obvious.  Yet, for this politically incorrect observation, he was slammed by the Left and the Right, and he was slammed by his now-timorous supporters who, finding the Left-Wing Media descending upon their candidate, fled in terror.

 

We thought you wanted him to speak out? The answer:  “Well, we meant after the election.”  Which means, translated, after his re-election, because during his first term, Trump would have to carefully toe the politically cautious line that the Republicans themselves have drawn.

 

We find this lack of support – disturbing. We’ve long known that there is very little, if any, difference between Republicans and Democrats anymore.  We should have thought that the loss of elections by Republican presidential candidates since 1992 made this lack of distinction all too apparent.  Republicans have gone over to the dark side.

 

Trump is no Conservative. He’s already on the dark side.  He’s no good at public speaking, at least not the kind that wins presidential candidates respect, esteem, and elections.  He has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth in regard to inaccuracies and resorts to wrestling-match tactics which won’t work with the college-educated, mendacious lawyer (who no longer as a license to practice law) Hillary Clinton.

 

Hillary is shrill and unappealing herself at the podium, in addition to being infamously crooked. It’s hard to believe we’re this close to catapulting a felon into the White House.  Why hasn’t Trump brought forward some of his female executives to speak on his behalf?  His children are great, but they’re obviously biased towards their father.  Those female execs would help his cause.

 

He also needs to listen to his speech advisers. They need to leave him alone about his opinions on the big issues; he needs to learn how to put his views into more intelligible language.  With only a few weeks to go, he needs to hit the vocabulary-builder if he insists on winging it at press conferences.

 

He needs to listen to his wordsmiths. He needs to listen to his Melania, his wife.

 

If he refuses to listen – and he’s notorious for not listening to anyone – then maybe his speechwriters, consultants, and campaign manager need to borrow Stephen Rogata’s suction-cup plungers and scale the walls of Trump Tower right up to the penthouse on the 60^th floor to get his attention.

 

Eighty-eight days until the election. In numeral figures – 88 days.  That’s how long Trump has to learn how to convey a cohesive, coherent, Conservative message.

 

The first word he needs to learn is: freedom.  Free-dom.  Two syllables.  The second?  Humility.  Hu-mil-ity.  Three syllables.  That’s a lot of syllables, Donald, but you can do it.  You can make your speeches great, if you try.  Superb.  Inspiring.  Soaring.  You’re not Harry Truman, and this is not the 1940s.  He couldn’t speak, either.  But then, television was in its infancy and people were better educated, even the lower classes.  He could speak to the common man.  But they were Democrats, not Republicans.

 

If you don’t learn to speak more intelligently, you’ll scare away the college-educated, brainwashed Millenials and give the college-educated Tea Partiers pause. We’re behind you, but like the New York City crowds watching the Social Media climber, our teeth are clenched as we watch you dangling, oblivious, from the precipice.

 

The question is: will someone yank you in before it’s too late?

 

 

 

The Federal Hill Impasse

A town hall meeting has been scheduled for tomorrow evening, Aug. 9, at the Bloomingdale Municipal Building, to allow the public a chance to give their (non-binding) input on the proposal to demolish the Meer Tract, also known as “Federal Hill,” in order to comply with the Mount Laurel Housing ruling to provide the “affordable housing” that will meet Bloomingdale’s social justice requirement.

 

Current residents are up in arms over this proposal. The demolition will be accomplished by Tilcon Quarrying, which has quarries throughout New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.  Tilcon will be allowed to destroy the hillside, while making millions from the profits, and the town will be given the land, cost free, which it will then turn into an urban blight zone.

 

We must always keep our emotions in check in regards to this move, as some 60 years ago, the residents of that time complained vociferously about turning their little rural factory town into a bedroom suburb. But the realtors did not blast any of the hillsides away nor did they fell any more trees than necessary.

 

A new ally has come to the aid of Sustainable Development – the so-called oak tree fungus, which goes by the name of “oak wilt” or Ceratocystis facacearum. Not surprisingly the federal website on this fungus does not open up.

 

However, Wikipedia tells us: “Oak wilt is a fungal disease affecting oak trees caused by the fungus Ceratocystis fagacearum.  Symptoms vary by tree species, but generally consist of leaf discoloration, wilt, defoliation, and death.  The fungus spreads from diseased to healthy trees from insects or by connections between tree roots.  Management of the disease historically meant preventing infection by avoiding tree wounds, removing diseased trees and breaking root connections with vibratory plows, trenchers/rocksaws or hoes.  Present methods focus on the area of monocultures and restoring correct ecosystems using soils. Fungicide treatments, used in urban areas, are available and are mostly preventative as well. Oak wilt is an important disease of oak for timber production and of oak trees in urban areas.”

 

What a convenient argument in favor of blasting Federal Hill to kingdom come. Will Bloomingdale, or the Federal Government, do anything to help the acres of trees on Federal Hill?  What?  And spend money on oak trees when it’s easier to cut them down,  make money from the land, and build high-density housing for generations of Progressive-Communist voters in perpetuity?  Not on your treehouse, friends.

 

Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate, assured her supporters that they will prevail in establishing United Nations standards. Stein may be green, but only in the monetary sense.  You won’t see her or her supporters in Bloomingdale tomorrow, picketing and protesting the destruction of Federal Hill and all the wildlife that inhabit it.

 

That’s what’s so risible about the Progressives – their key issues, like the environment. People bad, nature good.  Except when you want to build low-cost housing for low-rent people who will cause suburban home prices to plummet and taxes to skyrocket.  Bloomingdale won’t be fit to live in by the time they’re through, and that’s just what they had in mind.

 

The Progressives are wealthy, limousine liberals who will be living on the heights of Kinnelon and perhaps West Milford, enjoying the progress of the destruction of the Pequannock Valley (which includes Bloomingdale).

 

Let the valleys flood. That will just give more federal bureaucrats more federal tax dollars to spend.  Some future Progressive governor or president will helicopter in for a photo op, tell the flood victims how sorry they are, and sign a bill extending funds to federal bureaucrats to help them.  Don’t criminals call that “protection money”?

 

The Feds, and their municipal minions all over our area, will have the nerve to tell us that we don’t have the right to stand in the way of “progress;” a so-called progress that put us in our homes. Never mind the fact that the Feds despised the earlier residents.  The hills on which Bloomingdale homes of the 50s, 60s and 70s were built were the scenes of some fairly heinous meetings of some unsavory groups.  This is the Progressives’ chance, led by the notorious suburban-hating Obama, to even the score.

 

Even though the bedroom community residents had nothing to do with that activity. Really, Federal Hill’s demise began back during World War II when the land belong to a Nazi sympathizer.  He allowed a youth group from Berlin, Germany, to hold summer camps there, in which they indoctrinated Nazi youth.  After the federal government seized the land (and the property was in dispute for some time before the government won), it was sold to the predecessor of Tilcon.  They’ve certainly been blasting away at Riverdale Hill before the war, and Federal Hill since before some of us were even born.

 

Glenn Beck said on his radio/television show last week that he really couldn’t understand the Eastern suburban outrage at housing development. Beck grew up in Washington State.  He said he’s kind of an “indoor guy” (and hunter) who couldn’t care less about the bunnies and the squirrels.  He also owns a sizeable ranch in Texas.  So what if the government forces Easterners off their property and into housing prisons?  So what if they destroy the environment here and insist they’re preserving the environment (or at least its resources) out West?  So what if they’re hypocrites?

 

Well, we do care about the squirrels (who can survive anywhere; they’re hardly in danger) and the birds, and the bears and the hares, not to mention skunks, possum, deer, coyotes, beaver (they were pretty much hunted into extinct in the 17^th Century), and other four-footed critters who wander about our woods.

 

New Jersey is a blue state, although we here happen to be red. That doesn’t mean we can’t or don’t or shouldn’t care about the environment.  Apparently, we care more about than the agencies who were supposed to be protecting it.  We prefer to take our chances with the four-footed animals than the two-footed kind.

 

Looking at Federal Hill from the east, I was correct: the quarry has chewed away to the peak of the hill.  The sight is depressing, at least for those of us who have lived here all our lives and loved the hills, the oak trees, the trails, the little brooks and streams (the town claims that hikers are trespassing on private property).  Even the Iron Door.  This is the last stand for Federal Hill and the residents of Bloomingdale.  Like a dam bursting, Bloomingdale will be flooded with crime and criminals, even more drugs, litter, filth, and decay.

 

At this critical time, the best thing defenders of Federal Hill and the town of Bloomingdale can do is arm themselves with information. The Sustainable Freedom Lab is an excellent source.

 

They send out frequent e-mails to their subscribers, keeping them apprised of the fight on all fronts:

 

Dear [Whomever], Barack Obama is spending the next months dismantling the last shreds of our free market America. HUD is his weapon and he wields its new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule like a concrete block. He batters communities into changing or ignoring their own zoning laws and allowing the government to dictate community planning. Local officials submit to the government out of fear they will lose grant money or face bankrupting lawsuits. As civil rights plaintiff firm Relman, Dane and Colfax said, just the threat of removing the money is enough to bring most communities in line.  If it takes lawsuits to force them to abide by HUD, says attorney Michael Allen, “My firm stands ready to do its part.  Anyone with me?”

 

• Legal motivation is only the beginning.  On June 8, 2016, the AFFH program evolved into a master plan that enables federal control of virtually every aspect of local planning and community living.

 

For months, the agency warned officials that the new AFFH was merely a platform for HUD’s aggressive interpretations of the Fair Housing Act.  Interpretations that impact education, transportation, jobs and housing.   Affordable housing is now nothing more than a launch pad for total community control. In June, HUD sent an official letter stating their intention to partner with the Departments of Education and Transportation to introduce “socioeconomic diversity” into elementary and secondary classrooms. Here is why. HUD is not content with people living in in areas they can afford. The administration argues if low-income families cannot afford to live in affluent areas, then local zoning laws are depriving them of opportunities.  That means the community must correct the imbalance or risk facing charges of economic segregation and discrimination.

 

• That is what happened to Baltimore County when three HUD residents joined with the local NAACP to complain to HUD that they did not live in prosperous enough areas. HUD forced the County to build 1000 new affordable homes and move 2000 section 8 recipients, all into affluent areas.

 

Obama then moved beyond affordable housing into classrooms. He wants to desegregate schools that have been integrated for decades, using enforced diversity quotas. The administration will convert existing federal offices into regional Equity Assistance Centers for “the preparation, adoption, and implementation of plans for the desegregation of public schools.”   Got that.  Obama says your community is guilty of discrimination if people live in neighborhoods they can afford, and HUD will address the problem by desegregating your school and calling it “socioeconomic diversity.”  This change will happen regardless of local officials’ opposition, regardless of local school board decisions and regardless of voters’ choices.    DOT is involved in the partnership because, according to Transportation Sec. Anthony Fox, “too many people lack the transportation options they need to pursue…high quality education, good paying jobs, and affordable housing.”   That means the HUD partnership will soon dictate planning outcomes that include high-density housing and mixed use developments near transit-oriented living.   Does that sound like regional planning?  It should.  The new AFFH application requires grant recipients to merge their zoning plans with those of the larger region, thereby enabling the region to annex the nearby smaller communities.   HUD’s platform has spilled over to Common Core in an effort to control what HUD calls, “adult outcomes.”   In Westchester County, still fighting back from 7 years of HUD’s relentless attacks, the government is shutting down parents that oppose Common Core.  

• Obama is threatening to withdraw Title I funds, the education money the feds send to the states, if the County has more than 5% of its students skipping the Common Core high stakes testing. 

 

  Obama knows that nearly 20% of parents already pulled their children from the damaging tests.  

• In spite of three laws prohibiting the federal government from interfering in local educations, they are not only interfering, they are hostilely taking it over and silencing any opposing parents or school boards.

 

  We must stop HUD and all federal agencies from crushing local rule and turning community members into subjects.   Obama’s America is not the America we want for our children.  Shelly, I need your help today to stop these atrocities!

 

John Anthony Sustainable Freedom Lab Sustainablefreedomlab.org

In another group e-mailing, Anthony writes,

 

Two-hundred years after signing a declaration protecting Americans’ right to pursue life, liberty and property, the stewards of the very government our Founders formed, began stealing all three. The story of why and how our government, through federal agencies like HUD and the EPA implement global law is the story of America’s return to slavery. To understand the importance of the story we must first recognize the importance of property rights. For example, if you own a farm, but another person tells you what to plant, where you can mow, and whom you must have for neighbors, your ownership becomes worthless.  That other person controls not only your land, but also what you can and cannot do.  When any person or government controls your property, they control your behavior.  Your obedience to that control is the beginning of slavery. In 1976, while Americans were distracted watching a manly Bruce Jenner ace the Olympic decathlon; while two Steves formed a company called Apple, and millions mimicked “meow, meow, meow, meow” to the Meow Mix commercial, two United States delegates signed an international agreement in Vancouver, Canada that accelerated the demise of our Founders’ protections.

 

The document concluded that land “contributes to social injustice,” and “cannot be controlled by individuals.” With those signatures, our government’s official position on private property ownership reversed.  The U.S. government now agreed that “public control of land use is…indispensable.” A decade later, the globalist Brundtland Report added the environment, poverty, the economy and even global warming as further causes to place private property, and therefore those who own the property, under government control. The report labeled the massive initiative, “Sustainable Development.”  The United Nations introduced the concept to the world in their world in their 1992, 40-chapter, Agenda 21 action plan. President Clinton inserted that plan’s goals into our federal agencies’ objectives.  To assure no departure from the international aim of diluting property rights, the authors of the action plan teamed with HUD, the EPA and other agencies to write federal regulations relating to sustainable development. Today, those anti-property rules exist in every federal agency and every branch of our U.S. government. Most Americans trusted their government and never saw the deception coming.

 

The Endangered Species Act, originally intended to protect the Bald Eagle, today ignores the windmill slaughter of our national symbol, while restricting homeowners’ activities on their own land the EPA may designate a critical habitat. According to Karen Budd-Falen, a property rights’ Attorney in Cheyenne, Wyoming, under President Obama, a series of regulatory changes place property owners at even greater risk. Should the government establish your property as a critical habitat, they can limit your activities purely on the theory that sometime in the future an endangered species might find your land contains the necessary sources to “feed, breed and shelter.” In other words, the government can deem your private property a critical habitat for an endangered species, even if none lives there.  

 

Americans are practical and independent.  They would never surrender their property rights on some federal whim.

 

They are also, some of the most generous people on earth.  When government calls for programs to help the poor and protect the environment Americans respond. After all, our communities have helped the poor and homeowners protected their natural surroundings since our nation’s founding.

 

Because of their inherent generosity, few suspected that once worthy agencies had been coopted by the government’s own thirst for control and drive to limit private property.

 

To support the need for globally guided sustainable development, The Brundtland Report revived the decades’ old work of a Swedish scientist.  In 1896 Svante Arrhenius theorized that fossil fuel combustion causes global warming.

 

Never mind that after 30 years of dire predictions, none of the global warming proponents’ catastrophes has occurred.

 

The largest single attack on our property rights is HUD’s new rule, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.  Under the guise of helping protected classes out of poverty and expanding social justice, that agency enacts globalist programs stripped directly from the pages of Agenda 21.  Programs that will eventually socially engineer over 1200 U.S. communities.

 

HUD has bastardized the Fair Housing Act authorizing themselves to provide upward mobility, socioeconomic diversity and balanced living patterns for all people in communities that receive their most popular federal funds.

 

Sustainable development is an international buzzword chosen to numb Americans into compliance with global goals.  Its definitions are broad and imprecise. Its goals are grandiose and immeasurable. But its outcomes are always the same. Fewer choices, less property rights and greater federal control.

 

 

If you don’t think the fight is worth your while, Bloomingdalers, just take a ride north on the Hamburg Turnpike from Pompton Lakes and through Riverdale, and back home to Bloomingdale. Or drive up to Wal-Mart and look at the view from the parking lot.

 

They say the country has been divided for decades into the Haves and the Have Nots. It wasn’t when the quarry first started operations in the late 1940s.  But it is now.  If you’re a “Have” you won’t give a darn.  The view from where you’ll be sitting will be just fine.

 

If you’re part of the “Have Not” half of the population, no one will give a darn what you think about it and there’ll be nothing more you can do once Federal Hill is gone; it’s not like a strip mine, where you can refill the dirt.

 

You can’t replace the granite once the mountain has been blown up and you can’t get your freedom back once you have no more rights or property. You won’t have a leg to stand on nor the ground upon which to stand it.

 

Tomorrow will tell the tale of Bloomingdale’s future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Real Barack Hussein Obama

The other night we were watching Fox News after dinner. One of the commentators said that she thought Obama was merely “pollyannish” in regard to his Middle East foreign policy.

 

The next day, the news came out that this past winner, the State Department (under Obama) flew $400 MILLION in shrink-wrapped cash, in non-U.S. denominations in an unmarked, unchartered plain to Iran in exchange for four hostages Iran accused of being spies.

 

Is this the action of a naïve President or a criminal President? Paying ransom for hostages is against the law.  The Democrat Congress certainly ran Oliver North through the federal wringer for doing so and had hoped to impeach Pres. Ronald Reagan for the audacity of using money Iran paid us (for what turned out to be fake aircraft parts) to combat communist regimes in South America.  One of the supporters of those regimes was none other than current Secretary of State John Kerry.  Another was Edward Kennedy (were he and JFK actually related?).

 

Iran is a dangerous regime which has funded more Islamic terrorist groups than any other nation on earth. Nonetheless, Obama has also just signed an ordered allowing even more Syrian refugees to enter the United States, and they’re headed right here for New Jersey.

 

I may have defended the Muslim’s point of view about our dismal lack of morality, and how we need to shape up. But I only meant that we need to get back to our Christian/Judaic God, Jehovah, so that we’re on firmer ground to do battle with these people who are trying to rob us of our nation and our freedom.  No one ever won a battle from as weak ground as that upon which we now stand.

 

Some Trump supporters are beginning to have a case of the nervous jitters about their candidate after the Khizir Khan episode. Those of us who would have preferred Ted Cruz tried to tell you so.  You enjoyed Trump’s free-for-all bash-and-smash smear campaign of Cruz, and anyone else who opposed him.

 

But now, the Media bashes Trump in the one instance in which he really didn’t do or say anything wrong (and I am generally loath to defend him) and you’re ready to throw him under the bus. You said you wanted him to speak his mind and speak the truth.  The Media doesn’t; that’s why they attacked him so readily.

 

Instead, you’re claiming they baited him and that he was foolish to fall for it. He should have kept quiet.  He should have been more circumspect.  He should have been more politic.  About what?  Because he noted that a Muslim woman was behaving like – well – like a Muslim?  That’s an attack?!

 

What’s more, he made the comment in quite an understated way, especially for Donald J. Trump. Still, stick to the issues.  Address the problems and the solutions.  Excuse me, but one of the “problems” is a huge influx of Muslim immigrants, fleeing a war Obama exacerbated and even helped support, brought here by the likes of none other than Khizir Khan himself, who specialized in securing special visas for wealthy Muslims. Khan started this whole thing, at the behest of the Democrat Party, of which he is a Hillary minion.  Not Trump.

 

So now, at the urging of the feckless Republican Party, Trump has been forced to back down on his policy regarding Muslim immigrants, one of the few issues on which he could be trusted to be sincere. Good going, RNC.  But we expected no less of a party whose one, former leader was backed by George Soros, and the other leader who was married to the daughter of the head of the Chinese Communist Party.

 

Trump supporters talked tough, but at the first bellow from the multi-horned Media Megaphone, they head for the cracks in the wall. Now you believe it, when it’s almost too late to do anything about it – the election is less than 90 days away and Hillary is now 10 points in the lead.

 

Hillary, a lying, scheming criminal whose senior thesis was on Saul Alinsky, a guy who dedicated his book, Rules for Radicals, to Lucifer.  To paraphrase a National Review wag, “The only way she can get out of going to federal prison is by becoming president.”  An incompetent Secretary of State responsible for the deaths of a United States ambassador and three of his security guards (not to mention those who were injured).  A woman – a mother, for gosh shakes -– who approves of aborting viable fetuses right up to the ninth month of pregnancy.

 

She’ll gladly carry on Obama’s destruction of the suburbs, our educational system, our economic system, and our sovereignty as a nation. As First Lady, she went on a tour of Middle Eastern countries, donning a scarf in deference to their customs.  Customs such as granting custody to a husband in case of divorce, honor killings, denying education to women and girls, and not even allowing them to drive a car.

 

Has it really taken eight years to wake up to Obama’s real, Marxist agenda for the United States of America? Apparently, we’re still asleep – or drugged out of our minds to consider Hillary Rodham Clinton as his successor, who will carry on this agenda.

 

Obama isn’t pollyannish. But we are, God help us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Khizir Khan Con

Shortly after Khizir Khan took the podium at the Democrat National Convention in Philadelphia to scold Donald Trump for declaring that he would prohibit all Muslim immigration until a method could be found to separate the wheat from the chaff, Khan, an immigration lawyer, took down his website.

 

“Khan has a vested interest in a pay-to-play business in which wealthy Muslims can buy their way to a green card with an investment. It’s the old EB 5 play and it’s legal. So why scrub your website? Sounds like a legal con,” says a prominent local Tea Party organizer in New Jersey.

 

This news comes to us from Breitbart.com

 

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/02/khizr-khan-deletes-law-firm-website-proving-financially-benefits-pay-play-muslim-migration/

 

Here is some of what they have uncovered:

 

Khizir Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that Democrats and their allies media wide have been using to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, has deleted his law firm’s website from the Internet.

 

This development is significant, as his website proved—as Breitbart News and others have reported—that he financially benefits from unfettered pay-to-play Muslim migration into America.

 

A snapshot of his now deleted website, as captured by the Wayback Machine, which takes snapshots archiving various websites on the Internet, shows that as a lawyer he engages in procurement of EB5 immigration visas and other “Related Immigration Services.”

 

The website is completely removed from the Internet, and instead directs visitors to the URL at which it once was to a page parking the URL run by GoDaddy.

 

The EB5 program, which helps wealthy foreigners usually from the Middle East essentially buy their way into America, is fraught with corruption. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has detailed such corruption over the past several months, and in February issued a blistering statement about it.

 

“Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill—on this island surrounded by reality—that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts,” Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. “The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws.”

 

Grassley’s statement even noted that the program Khan celebrated on his website has posed national security risks.

“There are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story,” Grassley said in the early February 2016 statement.

 

“The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States [Ed.: we learned today that the Obama administration sent a planeload of cash to Iran in exchange for the release of some Iranian-American citizens being held captive by Iran]. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.”

 

Khan spoke alongside his wife Ghazala Khan at the Democratic National Convention last week in Philadelphia, and they were honoring their son U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan—a hero who lost his life to a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. On behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, Khizir Khan ripped into Donald Trump’s policies on immigration—specifically bashing his plan to bar Muslim migration from regions afflicted with rampant terrorism into America temporarily until the United States can figure out what’s going on.

 

Khan even brought out a pocket Constitution, claiming inaccurately that Trump’s plans were unconstitutional. That’s not true, as Congress has already granted such power to the president under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952—allowing the president to bar migration of any alien or class of aliens the president sees as a threat to the United States for any reason at any time. Such a class of aliens could be Muslims, or it could be people from a specific region of the world, or any other class—such as someone’s race, weight, height, age, national origin, religion, or anything else.

 

The media, along with Hillary Clinton and her supporters throughout the Democratic Party establishment, has pushed the line of attack against Trump for days. Now on Tuesday, President Barack Obama has said that Trump is “unfit” to serve as President over the matter. Even a group of anti-Trump congressional Republicans has gone after Trump on the matter.

 

But as Breitbart News and other new media have exposed Khan’s various deep political and legal connections to the Clintons—and to Muslim migration—the attack line has crumbled. Now, with Khan deleting his website in an apparent effort to hide his biographical information, the attack is falling apart even more.

 

What’s perhaps interesting is that also on this website that he has now deleted, Khan revealed that he spent nearly a decade working for the mega-D.C. law firm Hogan & Hartson—now Hogan Lovells LLP—which connects him directly with the government of Saudi Arabia and the Clintons themselves. Saudi Arabia, which has retained the firm that Khan worked at for years, has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation.

 

Hillary Clinton, despite the repeated urging of Trump, has refused to return the Clinton Cash money to the Saudis. What’s more, Hogan Lovells also did Hillary Clinton’s taxes—and helped acquire the patents for parts of the technology she used in crafting her illicit home-brew email server that the FBI director called “extremely careless” in handling classified information.

 

What’s more, the entire mainstream has proven negligence with regard to this matter as none of them even thought to look into this Khan guy’s law practice before bandying him about as some kind of magic elixir that cures the country of Trump.

 

Thank goodness for alternative, Conservative media.

 

Now we must ask, though no great fan of Donald J. Trump, what exactly did he say that was so wrong that earned him the label of “Gold Star Mother attacker”? Trump noted the obvious, that Mrs. Khan stood silently beside her husband as he denounced Trump.  Mr. Khan cited the 2004 (that’s 16 years ago) death of Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.  This, he declared, was reason enough not to brush all Muslims with the same brush.

 

That is not what Trump intends in his immigration plan. What’s more, his “attack” on the Gold Star mother consisted of noting that the wife stood complacently silent while her husband did all the shouting.  It was difficult not to notice.  This behavior is consistent with the role Muslim wives play in the Muslim family – seen but not heard.  The husband can beat his wife black and blue if she criticizes or argues with him.

 

Obama declared that Trump is unfit to be President of the United States. That may or may not be.  However, that’s hardly a judgment for Obama to make, who has bowed to every dictator and potentate on the planet, re-established relations with Cuba, decimated our military so that we would not be able withstand an attack by either China and/or Russia, gave birth to ISIS, and made us one of the most economically “unfit” Western nations in the world.

 

Unfit? And let us not get started on Hillary Clinton’s unfitness for the presidency.  We’ll save that for another day.

 

Muslim activists do not want us to paint all Muslims with the same brush. Well, let us turn that request around.  How about the Muslims not paint all Americans with the same brush?  Not all American women sport about with everything hanging out, especially in the summer (although I’m sorry to report that many, even those over 50, do).  Not all American women paint their faces thick with make-up.

 

Not all Americans are lushes, boozing it up at every turn, although you couldn’t tell by the rate at which closed supermarkets are becoming liquormarkets. That’s not a good sign when more Americans are buying alcohol than food.  I was in one the other day, for a grand opening.  The store provided aisle after aisle of wine, beer, and a host of harder alcoholic beverages.  Plus, they had a “Munchies Aisle” and a classroom for wine-tasting education.

 

Whatever pays the taxes, I guess.

 

Not all Americans love the profane, pornographic movies Hollywood is pumping out. The latest feature film is “Imperium,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as an undercover FBI agent (?) out to expose a right-wing extremist group.  But many of them do.

 

Last night, I covered a Night Out Against Crime event. I saw a few white people, a token number of blacks, and an abundance of Muslims, as well as a bench filled with young men of dubious ancestry on the far side of the park who looked like they were engaged in a drug deal.  Notwithstanding the crimes which the Islamic extremists commit against Americans and whom the so-called “peaceful” Muslims mask with their numbers, they’re pretty much in favor of law and order.  In fact, more law and order than would be legal under our Constitution.

 

Nevertheless, if they’re really for law and order, and improved morals, they’re standing with the wrong political party. Khan shook the U.S. Constitution in his hands, challenging Trump to read it.  Given Trump’s age, he was probably required to read it sometime in later elementary school or high school.  Obama, on the other hand, also studied with designs of destroying it.

 

The Republican National Convention paid tribute to fallen law enforcement officers. The Democratic National Convention paid tribute to fallen criminals, criminals who had resisted arrest by law enforcement and lost.  Khazir was standing at the wrong podium and on the wrong soap-box.

 

Are the Muslims right that Americans need to clean up their moral act? Without a doubt.  But they’re not going to achieve that goal with an AK-47 or a mass immigration of Muslims who will overturn our demographics and bind us into the Ummah.  Maybe porno movies are a problem (and who brought this scourge upon us but Democrat-backing, Marxist Hollywood), but they would ban all movies, altogether – just to be on the safe side.

 

We’re already being overwhelmed with a regulatory bureaucracy that imposes its law on everything from bicycle helmets to shower heads to barbecues, lawn mowers, and air conditioners. We have the Democrats and RINO Republicans to thank for the current size of our government, going all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt.

 

We don’t need a Sharia-law government to dictate what’s left of our personal lives. Americans may need to clean up their act, but even if they are boozing, drug-addled, porn-goggling, boob-bobbling, foul-mouthed, ignorant idiots, they still love their freedom.  The fact that Donald J. Trump is their champion is rather dismaying, if not exactly surprising.

 

However, since most of the rest of the Republican Party owe their allegiance to George Soros foundations, hold delusional notions of winning minority votes, and would sell their mothers to get elected or re-elected, what choice do average Americans have?

 

Donald Trump told it like it was regarding the Khan’s appearance at the DNC Convention. What exactly is he supposed to be apologizing for?  The GOP, it seems, will do anything to negate the will of the people.

 

Obviously, they don’t like the U.S. Constitution any better than their Democrat rivals.

 

The Sandernistas and Swedish Socialist Envy

Why can’t we be more like Sweden? That’s what Bernie Sanders’ Millennial voters (according to the National Review, he won more than 70 percent of the under-30 vote in the first 25 primaries where polling data was available) want to know.

 

I must beg forgiveness from my faithful readers. I was AWOL for the end of May and just about the entire month of June due to a bacterial infection in my innards.  That I actually did any photography was a miracle of God and extremely tight timing.  I had to use one business’ restroom three times and was unable to stay until the customers arrived for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony.  The business and the mayor kindly accommodated me by performing the ribbon-cutting ahead of time.

 

Beyond those photo assignments (my only source of income at the moment), I mostly spent my time lying on the couch (almost asleep), in bed (never asleep), and in the bathroom the remainder of the time. I had no energy to even read my issues of National Review, which contained some erudite and interesting articles on the fantastical nature of this presidential election.

 

Emily Ekins, director of polling at the Cato Institute, wrote a succinct and insightful piece on the Sanders’ youth’s definition of Socialism. In short, they really don’t know what it actually means.  They only know, according to Ekins, that we are not like Scandinavia, or more specifically Sweden.

 

“In part, because they did not live through the Cold War,” Ekins writes, “Millennials find the ‘socialism’ label less alarming. ‘Socialism,’ to the Millennial mind doesn’t mean the Soviet Union; it means Scandinavia, a place far gentler.

 

‘Scandinavia, however, isn’t socialist so much as ‘socialistic,’ in that its governments provide generous social services, impose value-added taxes (or VATS), and collect high income taxes. What Millennials like is the large social-welfare state that provides for people’s needs.’

 

In other words, it makes the “Fiercely Frail Millennials” (the title of a NR article preceding Ekins’) feel good.

 

“Young Americans,” Elkins continues, “support this Scandinavian version of “socialism” for several reasons. First, Scandinavia shows them that large, social-welfare states need not be politically repressive [with smaller populations, they need not be], Second, the Great Recession, not the Cold War, has defined their youth.  Financial insecurity may incline them to see value in activist government.”

 

“Sanders’ use of the label [“Democratic Socialism”] has helped legitimize socialism and the Scandinavian model specifically. Political scientists have found that, rather than choose a candidate whose views match their own, voters often change their views to align with the candidates they’ve chosen.”

 

Voters change their views after the primaries, where party politics tend to choose their candidates for them. The RNC’s “choices” are not coincidentally more aligned with the Left; RINO Republicans like John Boehner were strongly supported by Democratic-aligned staffers and donor organizations, including George Soros’ think thanks such as the Center for American Progress.

 

Boehner’s Chief of Staff, Barry S. Jackson, is connected to the American Action Network (board member), the National Endowment for Democracy (director), and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (trustee). Some of the AAN’s board members have some questionable associations:  Norm Coleman (Minn. Co-chmn, 1996 Bill Clinton Presidential Campaign); Frederic V. Malek (Aspen Institute and founder of the AAN); John Vincent Weber (Aspen Institute; Seed Institute; dir., NPR).

 

Past directors such as Melquiades Martinez (Center for the Study of the Presidency; Habitat for Humanity) have hidden funding ties to George Soros’ foundations. Jackson is also tied to the National Endowment for Democracy.  A search into the NED leads to a whole garden of progress and Soros-sponsored think tanks including the Center for American Progress, the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, Human Rights Watch.  Among NED’s directors are Karen Bass (Congressional Progressive Caucus); William J. Burns, ambassador to Russia; Martin Frost, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Martin Frost; and Moises Naim (Open Society Foundations global board committee member).

 

Nice company for the former Republican House Speaker’s chief of staff to be keeping.

 

What about his buddy in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. Who was his campaign manager Jesse Benton buttering up to?  His fundraiser hosts, John K. Castle and Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.?

 

Benton was mainly concerned with the Pauls, Ron and Rand. Castle seemed to be more interested in Catholic charities and his alma maters.  Wilbur L. Ross was a contributor to Restore Our Future.   But this group ran ads against Newt Gingrich and for Mitt Romney (who ultimately lost).  The notorious Black Rock Group was ROF’s consulting firm.  But ROF was also supported by Americans for Prosperity.  So the evidence doesn’t weigh as heavily against McConnell as against Boehner.  At least not initially.  But his name isn’t “Mitch” McConnell; it’s Addison Mitchell McConnell.

 

Addison’s Chief of Staff is Sharon Soderstrom. More interesting is his marriage to Elaine Chao.  Her father, James, was former Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s college roommate.  Wait.  What?!

 

Anyway, his one-time chief of staff, Gordon Hunter Bates, is affiliated with the Center for Competitive Politics. The CCP has plenty of what you would consider Conservative groups (Americans for Prosperity) and few Liberal funders.  Mitch McConnell would seem to be the proverbial runaway horse who, despite his many funders, is running headlong towards the Progressives.

 

The current Speaker of the House has more going for him; Paul Ryan’s associates are much better, though he still leans toward Moderate, at least he’s still right of the center.

 

However, Sanders’ Millennials probably have no idea who Addison McConnell is or what he does, nor do they care.

 

“Many young people are disposed to find [Sander’s] message compelling because of certain conventions in the culture they were raised in. Take sports. Reason-Rupe finds college-age Millennials to be the only cohort with a majority (51 percent) supporting participation trophies, with most older Americans saying that trophies should be reserved for those who win their events.”

 

And competition in those events for those who actually want to compete in them.

 

Ekins writes that most Americans hope that the Millennials will come around and reject Socialism once they get jobs. Well, when is that going to happen?  I know of a young college graduate, a good student and fellow, who at least four years later, is still looking for a job (although he has had to cope with caring for an ailing parent).

 

“The time has come,” Ekins says, “to start explaining to the next generation how socialistic economic planning hurts people.”

 

Without using Scandinavia as an example. Norway, Sweden and Denmark have social-welfare states, but they outrank the United States in other economic freedom indices such as less business regulation, lower corporate taxes, and more tax freedom.  Companies are more than happy to do business there.  These same countries which are liberal with their businesses, heavily regulate the social services which they exercise over their population.

The question is:  do these businesses actually employ a significant number of people?  Or do their corporate taxes simply go to supporting a majority of people who do not work at all, but simply depend upon the socialist taxes?

 

The key to explaining “socialism” to Millennials, Ekins writes, “is to highlight that government control often leads to inefficient supply, rationing, and reductions in innovation and in quality of services.”

 

Millennials are at the beginning of their adult lives and are little concerned with how, say, the Veterans Administration treats its medical patients. In their blindness, the Millennials figure trade school is for the “dummies,” not them.  Degree inflation has made the bachelor’s degree as worthless as the high school diploma once was.  So the students take out loans, or their parents take out second mortgages, to finance ever higher, or multiple, graduate degrees in order to compete.  That is, if they can get into one of the major schools, where Progressive professors await them with Marxist glee.

 

Ekins is confident that if Socialism is explained to them properly, Millennials can eventually be steered in the right direction to support free markets and limited government. First, though, you have to get them to pay attention – and to do that, you have to yank the I-pads out of their hands, douse them with cold water after so many sessions smoking pot, and send them into therapy to decultify them from their Marxist education.