When you were, say, 25 years old, what was the tax rate on wealthier families? What percent of workers were unionized? How well was income distributed?
And you think the problem is Democratic Socialism? That’s the symptom of more and more Americans feeling an economic squeeze and desperately trying to find politicians who genuinely care.
Trump does not care and his anti-Woke and anti-immigrant and anti-women policies aren’t part of any solution.
Many of you discount the 70+ million Americans who voted for DJT — their very existence is a fantasy uber liberals just hope will go away.
As a result, recognizing the void, the DNC is quickly being taken over by the National Democratic Socialist Party.
Don’t say I didn’t warn the working class who live in the suburbs and travel into NYC every day who will be underwriting all the free stuff Nyc’s mayor has promised to provide — for just their vote for national socialist Democrat party.
Never in our lives would anyone have believed that 9/11 could have happened! A handful of zealots could turn the WTC into rubble!
Today’s triumphant Social Democrats believe that if they could use enough ridicule against Trump — a giggle really — and, along with their anti-Trump focus, the Socialist Democrat movement stepped easily into the breach provided.
It surely doesn’t bode well for the tax-paying working class who will underwrite the socialist takeover.
when you have reached retirement age, after paying into the system for decades, and are then on the “receiving” end, will you ask yourself that question?
fyi, I am on the receiving end of Medicare. I'm not retired because unlike yourself, I missed the cutoff for full retirement at 65 and I need to wait to collect SS. Another screwing that people born after the midpoint of the Baby Boom have been subjected to.
Here's the thing, I don't look resentfully like you do at other Americans getting "free stuff" from public funding. At various points in my life I got "free stuff" like public school, college grants and loans. I received free tuition for grad school at Rutgers, paid for by the taxpayers in NJ. Let's not even get into every other "free benefit" we get, from highways, to parks, to assurances of clean water and safe food.
But after I was gainfully employed, my family and I paid taxes to NJ, Maplewood, NYC, NYS as well as the federal government. A lot of taxes in fact.
but that's how it's supposed to work. The healthy, employed people work and pay taxes. The young, the old, the sick, the disabled get "free stuff" to help them get a start in life, or a more comfortable end, or a dignified present.
Your disparagement of people who rely on what you contemptuously call "free stuff" is really small-minded and mean.
I'm convinced @mtierney that your disdain for Democrats is abstract. I doubt you would dislike most of us, if we were all out under the stars on July 4th singing the beautiful patriotic songs most of us enjoy.
I'm going to be filled with hope, inspired by President Obama's recent speech at the opening of his Presidential Center.
I'll be thankful for the freedom that I enjoy being born exactly at the right time in the right place, (NYC)
I'll renew a promise to be politically active, exercising my right, to work on the causes that I care deeply about.
I hope the same music fills your July 4th with love for your fellow Americans.
Love reading about alternative solutions, FJC, such as Zelle, but getting to my bank’s branch office to get started is daunting for this 94 year old who sold her car a few months ago.
Love the idea of putting responsibility for solutions on the companies that bill us!
If your banking is online at all and offers Zelle, you should not need to go to the bank to start using Zelle. Anyhow, that's how it worked with our accounts. Very easy and convenient to send money to other individuals. I haven't tried it with businesses.
California Governor Gavin Newsom TALIA SPRAGUE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke the news last week that he and his wife are under federal investigation. He says President Trump is targeting him for political reasons, but the news has also brought some public attention to a shadier side of California politics.
Mr. Newsom sought to get ahead of news about the mooted Justice Department probe with a video on social media. He averred that Mr. Trump’s campaign to jail his enemies “has reached my own home to get me. He’s coming after my wife, Jen. A public servant. A woman who has dedicated her life to supporting women and girls.”
There’s no doubt that Mr. Trump has gone after his enemies, and we’ve criticized him often for it. But that may not be the case here. Press reports say investigations into Mr. Newsom and his wife originated roughly a year ago in a local U.S. Attorney’s office based on a whistleblower complaint.
The public details are few, but one rich vein for inquiry is Mr. Newsom’s pay-to-play politics. For years the Governor has leveraged his power to get businesses to cough up cash for progressive causes. Two beneficiaries are nonprofits founded by his wife, Jennifer Siebel: the Representation Project and the California Partners Project. She has collected more than $1.9 million in compensation from the former.
The Representation Project produces leftwing films such as the 2019 documentary, “The Great American Lie.” The film purports to show how socioeconomic inequality is a result of “the cultural pendulum swinging too far towards revering things we consider ‘masculine,’ like individualism, power, and money,” according to the nonprofit’s website.
Ms. Siebel’s outfit licenses its films to schools. Such films have been funded in part by Sacramento’s business hostages. Contributions to the Representation Project surged 30% in 2015, the year Mr. Newsom announced plans to run for Governor. Coincidence?
The Representation Project last decade raised more than $800,000 from companies, including investor-owned utility PG&E, AT&T, Comcast and Kaiser Permanente. California American Water, a private water and sewer company, gave $10,000 to the Representation Project in 2019, as it sought state permits to build a desalination plant. It later received those permits.
PG&E was identified as an associate producer in the credits for two of Ms. Siebel’s films, which were released while the utility was under investigation by the state for a natural gas pipeline explosion. Former PG&E government affairs executive Brandon Hernandez previously sat on the Representation Project’s board. As did two of Mr. Newsom’s staffers.
Mr. Newsom has also solicited donations to the California Partners Project and an array of leftwing causes. California Partners Project has taken in $4.3 million in behested payments. That includes $100,000 in 2021 from the California-chartered Silicon Valley Bank, which failed two years later.
These “behested payments,” as they’re called, are legal in California and arose in the 1990s as a way for businesses to curry favor with politicians. Such donations are required to be disclosed and are listed in a state database. Mr. Newsom has raised some $350 million in such payments since 2011, most of which have poured in since he became Governor in 2019. Some examples:
Nonprofit Blue Meridian Partners this year gave $1.6 million at Mr. Newsom’s behest to McKinsey & Company for consulting services to inform the state’s “strategy” to respond to the GOP’s tax bill last year. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife) donated $50,000 in 2024 for the state Truth & Healing Council, which Mr. Newsom established to “make recommendations to meaningfully address the historical trauma” by the state to Native Americans.
In 2020 the Governor’s office raised $42.5 million to promote Covid public awareness. He also solicited some $23 million for the political communications firm GMMB, co-founded by Democratic consultant Jim Margolis, for the same purpose.
Democrats rightly criticize Donald Trump for taking donations from businesses that seem to be buying some political goodwill at the very least. But the available public evidence about the Newsom “behested” network doesn’t look all that different.
Proving an illegal quid pro quo would require evidence that Mr. Newsom took an official government act in return for a personal benefit. That’s hard to prove. But sometimes the real scandal is what’s legal.
a few thoughts on this:
the article itself suggests Newsom hasn't done anything illegal, and even it it was, it would be hard to prove.
The DOJ under Trump has almost no credibility anyway, so this looks and smells like a weaponization of the justice system against a political opponent.
and finally, I really don't like to use a "whatabout" in response, but sometimes your comments just scream out for a "but whatabout." To my knowledge you haven't once pointed out any of the mountain of corruption from the current White House. And at the same time as you post this article about Newsom, the NYT had this headline:
Popular Comments
mrincredible
I’m making an executive decision. Happy Mel Brooks day! He is 100 years old today. 1900 more to go!
Like 4 Likesmarksierra
tjohn
Mtierney,
When you were, say, 25 years old, what was the tax rate on wealthier families? What percent of workers were unionized? How well was income distributed?
And you think the problem is Democratic Socialism? That’s the symptom of more and more Americans feeling an economic squeeze and desperately trying to find politicians who genuinely care.
Trump does not care and his anti-Woke and anti-immigrant and anti-women policies aren’t part of any solution.
Like 3 Likesridski
marksierra
!
ml1
fyi, I am on the receiving end of Medicare. I'm not retired because unlike yourself, I missed the cutoff for full retirement at 65 and I need to wait to collect SS. Another screwing that people born after the midpoint of the Baby Boom have been subjected to.
Here's the thing, I don't look resentfully like you do at other Americans getting "free stuff" from public funding. At various points in my life I got "free stuff" like public school, college grants and loans. I received free tuition for grad school at Rutgers, paid for by the taxpayers in NJ. Let's not even get into every other "free benefit" we get, from highways, to parks, to assurances of clean water and safe food.
But after I was gainfully employed, my family and I paid taxes to NJ, Maplewood, NYC, NYS as well as the federal government. A lot of taxes in fact.
but that's how it's supposed to work. The healthy, employed people work and pay taxes. The young, the old, the sick, the disabled get "free stuff" to help them get a start in life, or a more comfortable end, or a dignified present.
Your disparagement of people who rely on what you contemptuously call "free stuff" is really small-minded and mean.
Like 3 Likesyahooyahoo
This is not an animal control issue. It's a police issue.
The animal owner is breaking the law.
That being said, Maplewood PD refuses to enforce the leash law in Memorial Park.
Like 3 LikesMorganna
I'm convinced @mtierney that your disdain for Democrats is abstract. I doubt you would dislike most of us, if we were all out under the stars on July 4th singing the beautiful patriotic songs most of us enjoy.
I'm going to be filled with hope, inspired by President Obama's recent speech at the opening of his Presidential Center.
I'll be thankful for the freedom that I enjoy being born exactly at the right time in the right place, (NYC)
I'll renew a promise to be politically active, exercising my right, to work on the causes that I care deeply about.
I hope the same music fills your July 4th with love for your fellow Americans.
Like 3 Likesmjc
If your banking is online at all and offers Zelle, you should not need to go to the bank to start using Zelle. Anyhow, that's how it worked with our accounts. Very easy and convenient to send money to other individuals. I haven't tried it with businesses.
Like 2 Likesml1
a few thoughts on this:
the article itself suggests Newsom hasn't done anything illegal, and even it it was, it would be hard to prove.
The DOJ under Trump has almost no credibility anyway, so this looks and smells like a weaponization of the justice system against a political opponent.
and finally, I really don't like to use a "whatabout" in response, but sometimes your comments just scream out for a "but whatabout." To my knowledge you haven't once pointed out any of the mountain of corruption from the current White House. And at the same time as you post this article about Newsom, the NYT had this headline:
Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.
An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten
I mean, seriously, whatabout this blatant example of the Trump family's self-dealing?
Like 2 Likes