Media Not Covering These Crucial Issues: Essex County Republicans

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Runaway spending. A nonstop bombardment of taxes. And a narrative of “victimhood” that undermines an “aura of hope.” These are some of the most important issues that aren’t being discussed in the mainstream news media, according to some Republicans in Essex County.

Patch recently reached out to several GOP lawmakers and political organizations in Essex County with a simple question: “What is the most important conversation the mainstream media currently isn't having?”

Their replies follow below.

Looking for stories on other bandwidths of the political spectrum? Check out links to additional coverage in Essex County and New Jersey at the bottom of this article

ASSEMBLYWOMAN BETTYLOU DECROCE

Assemblywoman DeCroce, who represents parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties in New Jersey’s 26th Legislative District, provided Patch with the following reply to our question:

“We need to look at ways to rein in runaway spending and cut property taxes. The residents of Morris, Passaic and Essex counties are burdened by incredibly high property taxes. School costs are by far the biggest driver of property taxes, especially outside urban areas. State homeowners pay the highest property taxes in the nation and New Jersey spends the third highest amount of any state on education in the nation. I have continuously asked Gov. Murphy to authorize an audit of education funding in New Jersey as a way to root out waste and provide tax relief for homeowners and renters. The key to property tax relief is finding out where our education tax money is going and how much can be saved by eliminating waste and improving efficiency. I hear from teachers who do not have the right supplies, aides being taken away, and I hear about families buying supplies for the classroom. Where is all the money going? I’m sponsoring a bill that would authorize the state auditor to conduct a cost-benefit analysis every five years of every agency or authority that is appropriated more than $1 million – enabling spending cuts and consequentially lowering taxes with more efficient government.”

ASSEMBLYMAN KEVIN ROONEY

Assemblyman Rooney, who represents parts of Bergen, Essex, Morris and Passaic counties in the 40th Legislative District, provided Patch with the following reply:

“From taxing parking to taxing the rain, Trenton Democrats keep hurting the middle class. The very people they claim to want to help by raising the minimum wage; they end up hurting by raising taxes that increase the cost of living and the cost of doing business. The residents of New Jersey have had their taxes raised by more than $2.25 billion since Governor Murphy took office. While Senate President Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin promised that they would not increase taxes, they passed an additional eight tax increases. Now, we’re taxing mother nature. The new rain tax is soaking residents and driving them out of the state. I’ve spoken to mayors within our district and they see it as a new tax. New Jerseyans cannot afford any new taxes. I invite my Democratic colleagues to join me in helping the hardworking families in our state. Last year, I proposed a measure that would increase the age of a college dependent from 22 years to 25 years so parents can deduct $1,000 on their state income taxes returns. It takes many students more than four years to finish college. Yet, the Democrats in the legislature refuse to take action on this bill. The Trenton Democrats might talk a good talk, but their actions speak otherwise.”

STEVEN ROGERS

Rogers, a Nutley township commissioner and America Winning Coalition president, said that there are two important conversations the mainstream media isn’t having.

The first is “a truthful conversation about the negative impact illegal immigration is having on taxpayers and law enforcement.”

The second?

“The media fails to report the truth that bail reform has done nothing but cause police resources to stretch to a point that proactive policing in some cities is non-existent, and reactive policing is hindered,” Rogers told Patch. “These are important conversations they choose not to have.”

• See related article: Trump Is Fixing 'Obama Effect' On Cops, Rogers Says

MONTCLAIR REPUBLICAN CLUB

John Van Wagner, president of the Montclair Republican Club, offered Patch the following reply to our question:

“The good news keeps coming. Year over year jobs growth, particularly for women and minorities, continues to defy all the soothsaying economists and pundits. The recently enacted criminal justice reform bill has brought hope to thousands of present and former inmates eager to change their lives. Even this population, so burdened with hopelessness and stigma, on whom so many had given up, is benefiting from the unprecedented demand for labor across industries. Wage growth continues apace, while inflation remains subdued. GDP expansion barrels forward.

“Yet in Essex County a different narrative dominates, one predicated on victimhood. The aura of hope that prevails in the nation at large goes unremarked here either by the media or by the government in Newark, which has introduced a ‘universal basic income’ to combat poverty, as if all the new possibilities for hope and jobs don't matter, and that the underprivileged can only expect to remain mired in dependency.

“The same political cabal trumpets the falsehood that police brutality is the main driver in the tragic and senseless deaths of thousands of young black and Hispanic men nationwide (one in Newark each week), while the true culprit--gang violence--is essentially ignored. Never do we see protests or demonstrations for any of these victims, most of them black and Hispanic youth murdered just as their lives are beginning. It’s as if, to the media and the political establishment, those particular black lives don’t matter. And the pitiful state of public education, so intricately linked to the pathologies of the inner city, as well as the resistance to the charter school movement, is also greeted with notable silence by the media at large.

“All of this goes to the extreme dysfunction underway in Trenton, the foundation of the state’s woes. Here again journalistic indifference ensures that the fiscal condition of NJ is consigned to the back pages. More attention is paid to the loss of the state and local tax deduction under the new tax reform law by far than to the underlying budgetary decay which made that deduction so compelling. And rarely does the local media explore the obvious linkage between all of these failures to the untenable pension and benefits contracts demanded by public sector unions.

“There's no reason why we in NJ, and in Essex County in particular, shouldn't know about the revolution occurring outside of our progressive walls, and share in all these national victories. And no reason the truth about our political overseers, and what they do to impede prosperity, and fail to do to protect life, shouldn't be laid bare.”

• See related article: Christie Was 'Beacon Of Hope' To Gun Owners, Montclair Republicans Say

ADAM KRAEMER

Kraemer, a candidate for the Essex County Board of Chosen Freeholders, said the mainstream media is ignoring how bad local taxation is in places like Essex County and how it harms the people who live there.

“Essex County has an average household income of about $55,000,” Kraemer said. “We have average property tax bills of about $12,000.”

Kraemer continued:

“It is economic insanity, for households devote such a large part of their budgets to property tax, in addition to taxes on other things: Social Security tax, Medicare tax, federal income tax, state income tax, state sales tax, gasoline tax and other taxes.

“The state and local governments are making it economically, very difficult, on the middle class home owners, and makes it so rent is high, as landlords devote a large part of the rent roll just to pay property taxes, and that is hidden regressive tax on those with limited income. It is difficult for property owners to see value appreciate with such high taxation. It as if the government is engaged in property theft, but is all legal. In most of Essex County, with the exception of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, every elected official (federal, state, county, municipal, and board of education (BOE is non-partisan but the board member are registered Democrats) that represent you has a ‘D’ next to his or her name, so it is hard to blame the Republican for this. In fairness, when the Republican had some power in the state and local government, they did little to nothing to fix this destructive economic process.

“State and local tax policy is economically killing off the middle class and small business, and the media is not seeing this, nor really reporting on this.”

ADDITONAL COVERAGE

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