OPINION
While we in the Sussex Republican committee raise the voter turnout, message our platform, canvass and call bank, and support our elected officials, we are annoyed by borderline malefactors who have let down all that ever trusted them in life, personally and politically. Claiming free speech, they use the freedom to harm others out of spite.
When Peter Zenger was tried for Libel in 1733, a jury acquitted him because his words spoke “truth” and that was considered the staple of a “free press.” This case became a landmark case for freedom of the press not just in America, but the entire western world. What Zenger published were disagreements with the personnel decisions made by the colonial governor of New York, and accusing him, through a pseudonym (fake name), of manipulating appointed positions to maintain political control. Zenger was arrested, jailed for 8 months, and then acquitted by a New York Jury.
Currently, we are experiencing a dynamic where very cowardly and dishonest people use fake names to spread slander, veiled under the mask of blogging, and using gossip as if it was fact, under a political agenda, against the interests of the Republican party, and the people, as they spread misinformation and get away with it.
What Zenger did not do is slander personal accusations, attack the family of the Royal Governor, and attempt to mislead or mischaracterize information to achieve his own personal political agenda. Zenger wrote with integrity, as an actual journalist, with no political stake.
Here in New Jersey, there is a little gang called “Rubashov” who operates the “Sussex watchdog” and the “Jersey conservative” (Nothing “conservative” about it) and our very own disgraced county commissioner, Bill Hayden, all who plague the public with a tabloid like collection of social media, a website and a distribution list manned by disreputable wannabe politicians who have done the following:
-one claimed to be a Navy Seal when never having served in the military
-one having been indicted for tax fraud pretending to be military to receive a military exemption
-one posed as a Republican when in fact was a democrat, to infiltrate the Republican party and run a disastrous and comically incompetent campaign for county commissioner
-one volunteered to be a party leader, then used the GOP to get law clients for himself, and approached the line between extortion, intimidation and solicitation
-one pretended to be a political “consultant” but in turns out, was never a member of any professional organizations or had qualifications but instead
-the “consultant” conned two generations of Sussex County leadership using threats of slander under a fake name and is on revenge tour for being fired by the previous Senator
-all parties colluded to invent a fake scandal about the Sussex food pantry and personally threatened myself and others with “FBI” arrest if they didn’t go along with it. It was all made up
-one uses his own wife as spy at GOP events, under the guise of being a photographer (beware any Strauss media at your events)
-one told me personally that my military service “didn’t mean shit” because I “chose to be sucker”
-the utter failure and disgrace of a county commissioner, Hayden, is on the infamous tape-recording telling democrats that his is aligned with them and is against the GOP, and was undermining them on purpose, then made up actual crimes he told the democrat handler that GOP leaders and elected officials did
-one pretends to condemn past marital issues, when his own wife is a serial adulteress
-The fake “consultant” (Rubashov) invents scandals and lies, and spends all his time attacking his previous Republican clients who fired him for good cause
-one is a financial disaster who was borderline homeless, who attacked the party from within, slandering donors and then fell on her face with a fake coup that humiliated her
-the other is a democrat blogger, who was visited by the secret service, who is vulgar and dishonest and attacks our office holders’ personal lives and spews the worst kind of left-wing vitriol, and who seems to be in league with these other “Republicans.”
What do they have in common? Three things, an unholy trinity of cowardice (underhanded betrayals of confidence and fake names), dishonesty and selfish service. The other thing they have in common: No credible person will have anything to do with them. Barbara Holstein asked for many self-serving things when she was Vice Chairwoman, and she acted out against the interests of the party. When she couldn’t get her way, she tried to take the party over and failed, she was seen through.
This is the last public message to respond to their shenanigans. I hope that good people are not deterred by this, and do not take this as a reason to avoid politics. The Republican Party has a chance to take back New Jersey, and these people are doing all they can to undermine it, first from within, and I’m proud to say that I’ve made them adversaries from the outside. Their attempt to harm my family is demonstrative of our success, and it will continue.
Joe Labarbera was a U.S. Marine officer in Kosovo and a U.,S. Army officer in Afghanistan. He is the Sussex County GOP Chairman.
