Trump-haters need to understand something…

By Joe Schilp

Trump-haters need to understand something… Growing up in New Jersey, I remember what New York City was like in the 70s and 80s. Rudy Giuliani went in there and cleaned it up and made it safe for everyone. Rudy was a brilliant politician, though I think when he was mayor he was on his third wife. But I didn’t support Giuliani for my father, I supported him for mayor because he got the job done.

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Christianity, The Crusades, and the President

By Joe Schilp

Crosses lining the American Cemetery at Normandy

This past week, during the National Prayer Breakfast, Barack Obama made absolutely offensive remarks that seemed to justify the barbaric acts of the Islamic Jihadist terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who have beheaded and burned alive prisoners from all over the world, by comparing ISIS’s form of Jihad to Christian behavior during the Crusades.  The remarks to which I am referring:

“lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

While I’ve read extensively about our nation’s history, slavery, and the Reconstruction, I can’t recall where anyone justified slavery in the name of Christ.  In fact, American slavery is rooted in African slavery, which had been practiced in Africa for centuries before Europeans were even aware of it.  And European involvement in slavery began when Islamic Jihadists invaded Europe and enslaved Christians just prior to the Crusades.  Further, slavery is still practiced today in Africa and much of slavery’s history in eastern Africa is centered around Islam, but this president speaks solely to divide America, facts be damned.

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More Regulations for NJ Businesses

By Joe Schilp

Joe Schilp

This past week, the New Jersey state Senate and Assembly both passed the “Opportunity to Compete Act,” which prohibits businesses with more than 14 employees from asking applicants to check a box to indicate whether they have been convicted of a crime.  Additionally, businesses would be prohibited from asking first-time interviewees if they’ve been convicted of a crime.

It has been reported that NJ Governor Chris Christie’s office worked with the legislators on the language of the bill; thus, Christie is expected to sign the bill into law.

New Jersey is already one of the least business-friendly states in the United States.  According to the Tax Foundation’s 2014 State Business Tax Climate Index, NJ was the 2^nd least business-friendly state – based on over 100 criteria – and ranked at the bottom in income taxes, corporate taxes, sales tax and property tax.  And this ranking does not account for the Democrat-controlled legislature’s zeal to increase the “millionaire’s tax” that affects far more people making less than a million dollars a year than people making more than that.

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Tolerance takes a beating at Rutgers

By Joe Schilp

Joe Schilp

As a Part-Time Lecturer for 5 years at Rutgers University, I was looking forward to attending my first Commencement Ceremony later this month, particularly to hear guest honoree, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  But today, Secretary Rice withdrew from Commencement following a protest at Rutgers featuring 50 students.  On a campus that has over 55,000 students, 50 students represents just 0.001% of the student population, and those students were between the ages of 8 and 12 during the Iraq War, about which they were protesting because Rice was a National Security Advisor during the run-up to and beginning of the war.

Clearly, these students have been coached.  And clearly, they are misguided.  Aside from the fact that Secretary Rice did not “lie” about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the internet is littered with quotes from Democrat Party leaders droning on about the presence of WMD’s that were made both before and after Bush was elected president; were they lying, too?), the war resolution passed in Congress listed over a dozen reasons for authorizing war.

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Two Familes

By Joe Schilp

This is a sordid story of where America is headed. This true story involves a retired couple that we will call Couple A, and a woman and her boyfriend we will call Couple LZ (you’ll see why in a moment). Couple A lives in New Jersey.  They have worked hard their whole lives and done well for themselves; so well that they bought a second home as an investment property also in New Jersey with the intention of eventually retiring to that home. In the meantime, they rented the home to Couple LZ, though it’s not that simple.

You see, when Couple A put the home up for rent, the female partner in Couple LZ responded to the ad and rented the home solely under her name. The woman in Couple LZ is a divorcée with two kids from her dissolved marriage (the oldest is an adult living in Atlanta, GA, with his father) and a third teenaged kid from her boyfriend, with whom she had been with for years to form Couple LZ. Why did she rent the home on her own? Because she had been receiving rent assistance checks from the county government because she is a “single parent” who makes only about $30,000 a year in salary. What she never told the county, or Couple A, was that her boyfriend was living with her and that they refused to marry because their combined salary would’ve made them ineligible for the over $1,000 a month county rent subsidy as he makes about $60,000 a year. Furthermore, the woman had told the county that her oldest son was living with her so she could increase her subsidy (again, he lives in Georgia and is a legal adult).

So she rents the home for 3 years, collecting tens of thousands of dollars of tax-funded dollars in rent subsidy.

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