WolfeNotes.com

Facebook Censors Trump’s Night At The Garden

Facebook took down my post of a PBS documentary film clip of the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, titled “A Night At The Garden”.

The post was 100% factual and accurate and from a highly credible and reliable source.

I posted it as a history lesson for today, given the many Trump parallels to Nazi culture, politics, and rhetoric, including the fact that he was holding a rally at MSG largely for the same reasons the Nazi Bund did in 1939.

Sinclair Lewis wrote a book in 1935 titled “It Can’t Happen Here”, warning about the potential consolidation of fascist power in the US. It almost happened here in the 1930’s: a corporate backed fascist group called The Liberty League planned a failed coup on FDR.

I had exactly the same historical and political intentions as Lewis: it not only CAN happen here, it IS happening here – right now.

Trump is openly calling for concentration camps for migrants, homeless people, leftists, ANTIFA, BLM protesters, drug dealers, et al. He is openly calling for using the US military, National Guard, and local police to round up and deport millions of people. He is calling migrants (black and brown people) “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the US. He is threatening to use the US justice system to jail his political opponents and the military so shoot protesters. Trump has called the media “the enemy of the people” and his political critics “the enemy from within”. He is holding huge rallies and whipping up his supporters and encouraging violence. There are many more examples.

This racist, eugenicist, and White Christian Nationalist rhetoric – coupled with explicit violent political threats – are straight up fascist techniques, fascist culture, and fascist politics.

Facebook is engaged in straight up censorship based on the content of my speech.

Shame on them and all who censor.

Zero News Coverage Of Huge Landmines Buried In DEP Water Supply Plan

No Linkage Between Drought And DEP’s Role In Managing Water Supply

Drought Raises The Same Risks Of Drinking Water Catastrophe As In Flint, Michigan

I’ve written many times to criticize the complete failure of media and environmental groups to connect reality to the DEP’s policies and regulatory responsibilities.

The news media seems incapable of writing a policy or regulatory story and the environmental groups no longer even try to engage the DEP policy, planning and regulatory issues.

As a result, DEP escapes accountability and the economic interests that DEP regulates evade regulatory oversight, while public health risks go unaddressed.

A perfect example of these failures is the current drought – which ironically is occurring just weeks after the DEP adopted the Statewide Water Supply Plan on September 23, 2024..

Thus far, the news coverage has been limited to reporting on heightened risks of wildfire and impacts on farmers and cranberry growers in the Pinelands. Surprisingly, the role of the climate emergency has been mentioned, but not emphasized.

(The Murphy DEP loves to play the wildfire card. It is a great way to divert attention away from issues DEP does not want to discuss and make DEP appear to be aggressive.)

Incredibly, the fact that DEP just adopted a Statewide Water Supply Plan just one month ago has not even been mentioned by the media or environmental groups.

That Plan governs the State’s drinking water supply – including drought management (see Chapter 7).

The Plan is loaded with important information, including multiple admissions of regulatory failures and mismanagement by DEP that have put people and ecosystems at risk (more on these issues forthcoming).

The last thing that DEP Commissioner LaTourette wants is for people to read that plan and ask informed critical questions about how DEP is managing the water resources of the State (more on these issues forthcoming).

At the time the 2024 Water Supply Plan was adopted by DEP, I wrote one post about just one water quality issue, not related to the drought. I exposed how, despite the rhetoric, that the Murphy DEP was not serious and was avoiding grappling with huge economic and regulatory issues, see:

• In An Astonishing Move, The Murphy DEP Claims That They Have No Legal Authority To Direct Drinking Water Systems To Sample Source Waters For Chemical Contaminants

For just one example today:

The DEP Water Supply Plan raises red flags over exactly the same issues that led to the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, where in 2014 “the city switched its drinking water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in a cost-saving move.”

In just now reading Chapter 7 on drought management, I came across this gem.

Does anyone realize that the people of NJ faced – and still face – exactly the same risks that caused the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan? And that DEP ORDERED the changes that created these risks, even AFTER the Flint crisis emerged?

One of the first things that DEP does in managing a drought is to Order the redirection (or transfer) of water from one drinking water system with a surplus to another with a deficit, though a series of interconnections in the distribution system. However, as exposed by the Flint crisis, this creates huge public health risks due to changes in water chemistry of the source water.

Here’s how DEP tries to obfuscate that set of problems and cover up the fact that they created a Flint like crisis in NJ, but without any mention of Flint: (at page 204 – 205 of Chapter 7):

as part of the 2016 Drought Warning, water transfers were ordered between several systems in order to preserve storage for those systems at highest risk. As a result, an estimated 1.8 billion gallons of water was preserved in critical reservoirs as a result of water transfers ordered between 2016 and 2017.

However, one finding from the 2016-2017 drought was reluctance from many water suppliers to make the complete transfers as ordered due to concerns around water chemistry. Following the 2015 re-emphasis within DWSG on the implementation of the Lead and Copper Rule, many water suppliers became more aware of the potential for chemical interactions between different treated waters and how that could impact corrosion of lead in domestic plumbing or lead service lines. Since then, water suppliers, particularly in the Northeast region have improved their understanding of the chemical interactions of their waters. However, the concern of water quality impacts as a consequence of transferring water in ways beyond typical flows remains. Reversing flows at interconnections or distribution and transmission mains can disturb biofilms and mineral deposits within distribution infrastructure and can create poor water quality conditions for customers. While in acute emergency conditions transient water quality issues like this may be overlooked by some customers, it may still have overall damaging effects on public trust in the quality of their tap water. Regular maintenance and proactive efforts to enhance distribution water quality remain essential to minimize these disturbances when they do occur.

In that short passage, DEP buried the Flint crisis. The DEP also makes NO MENTION of similar risks to NJ drinking water.

DEP then went on to create the misleading appearance that their efforts to refocus on lead exposure issues (i.e. the “lead copper rule”)- not the Flint disaster – is what led to “improved understanding”. So they not only suppress Flint risks, they take credit for leadership, when they unknowingly created exactly the same problems as we saw in Flint.

Incredibly, despite these water quality and public health risks – which DEP created by Ordering the transfer of water in 2016 – DEP mischaracterizes the issue as merely “damaging effects on public trust in the quality of their tap water.” Say what? It’s only appearance and trust, and not unsafe levels of lead and other pollutants in drinking water?

Finally, despite these known risks of transfers of water from one source to another through interconnections, DEP continues to rely on this strategy and even recommended expansion of interconnections:

Additional ongoing work by the DEP which is referenced in the Plan, also identifies the need to expand the existing interconnection network to ensure that drinking water remains available even during major emergencies.

Does anyone think we should be creating MORE Flint like drinking water risks? The Murphy DEP does.

If people and environmental groups were to read the DEP’s Water Supply Plan and start to ask critical questions, we might begin the process of developing public awareness and demands for reforms.

As journalist Bill Greider wrote, “Who will tell the people?”.

Trump’s Dog Whistle To 1939 Nazis Is No Accident

A Night At The Garden

Real Reporting Would Open Pandora’s Box

Highlands Council’s Unprecedented Vote Raises A Trifecta Of Political Taboos

State Land Use Planning & Regulation; Effective Activism; Political Corruption

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

I’m asking myself those kinds of questions in the wake of non-existent or deeply flawed news coverage of last week’s unprecedented vote by the NJ Highlands Council to kill a proposed warehouse on rural farmland.

The Vote was a major win for local activists and it was the first test of the Highlands Council’s new warehouse policy.

The proposed warehouse – on farmland – also involved a long abused provision of NJ’s municipal land use law regarding designation of “areas in need of redevelopment”. That designation has been used across the State to promote poorly planned and inappropriate development that bypassed municipal Master Plans and zoning ordinances:

The redevelopment plan shall supersede applicable provisions of the development regulations of the municipality or constitute an overlay zoning district within the redevelopment area.

But despite this long-standing and widespread abuse of the 1992 redevelopment law, no environmental group has issued a Report or mounted a campaign for legislative reform.

A similar “redevelopment” designation authority was built into the NJ Highlands Act, but only to promote “appropriate” redevelopment that meets the goals and objectives of the Act, importantly, as determined by the Highlands Council (not so called “home rule” local government).

The NJ Highlands are a special environmentally sensitive region protected by State law and a regional management plan – and the Highlands Act just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Hundreds of millions of square feet of warehouse developments have exploded across the State in recent years. The huge public resistance to new warehouse development has gotten significant NJ media attention over those same last few years.

Yet virtually all of that news coverage has focused almost exclusively on local issues and so called “municipal home rule”, while DEP and environmental groups have been invisible.

Few are aware that the NJ DEP has rubber stamped water quality management plan approvals and land use permits for millions of square feet of new warehouse development. The DEP’s role in promoting the explosion of warehouse growth has been completely ignored by media and environmental groups.

After ignoring the issue for years, recently NJ environmental groups have engaged, but have framed the warehouse issue along “environmental justice” lines: (Clean Water Action)

On June 18, 2024, I had the opportunity to co-host a virtual press conference with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) where Clean Water Action co-released a NJ Warehouses Proximity Report.  We showcased a series of regional maps illustrating high concentrations of warehouses throughout New Jersey and the corresponding impact these facilities pose.

The CWA and EDF Report and warehouse campaign are misfocused and misguided, in both their analysis and recommended reforms.

So, given all these obviously high priority public policy and newsworthy issues, why has this particular warehouse project and the Highlands Council’s unprecedented vote to kill it gotten short shrift by media and environmental groups?

My theory involves a complex inter-related set of deeply problematic dynamics.

First, over the last decade, the issues of sprawl and State land use planning and regulation have been abandoned by the Foundations, environmental groups, and media. Those groups have narrowed and shifted their work almost exclusively to climate and/or environmental justice (as if paving over forests and farms for millions of square feet of fossil powered buildings and trucks were not a climate issue!).

Second, the role of State government in land use planning and regulation has been intentionally suppressed. Planning and regulatory issues are complex and it takes real work by environmental groups to do effective advocacy and for the media to write those stories. Advocacy of regulatory power, particularly with respect to land use, puts billions of dollars of corporate profit at risk and challenges corporate power. Real advocacy and accountability journalism on Gov. Murphy and his DEP’s horrible regulatory and land use record would require the environmental groups and media to become critical and adversarial, which would contradict their current roles as cheerleaders and stenographers.

Third, the Highlands vote reflected a win for local environmental activists in rural Warren County. The media is loath to report victories by activists, as it weakens corporate power and offends their corporate owners and funders. The environmental groups have no interest in rural local groups working on land use, other than to use them as props for Foundation grants and press releases.

Fourth, the Highlands Council’s staff Report and the Council’s actions and deliberations on the proposed warehouse plan were so twisted and wrongheaded that it strongly suggested corruption.

Public testimony to the Council highlighted the fact, as recently reported by Politico,that Warren County Republican State Senator Doug Steinhardt is under FBI investigation for profiting for flipping land for warehouse development in South Jersey.

Federal authorities are investigating a real estate deal involving two New Jersey state senators who bought public land and then flipped it for seven times the original price.

Investigators recently subpoenaed records of the real estate transaction in Vineland, in South Jersey. A federal grand jury subpoena sent to the Vineland Industrial Commission and obtained by POLITICO seeks documents and communications related to the sale of the lot at 1615 W. Garden Road, which is now an almost-completed cold storage warehouse, according to a Vineland official.

Local residents allege that Steinhardt and his law firm have involvement with the proposed warehouse development before the Council.

So, taken as a whole, real reporting on the Council’s vote would open up a Pandora’s Box of political taboo topics: from political corruption, to ineffective Foundation grants to incompetent and misdirected environmental groups, to media stenography, to the power of informed activism, to a lax Murphy DEP, and to a failed State Land Use plan.

And nobody wants to go near any of that. They’re worse than cowards: they’re corrupt careerists.

Winter On The Farm (1961)

Dale Nichols (1904 – 1995)