By Matt Rooney
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You probably didn’t hear about it, Save Jerseyans, but 22 Democrat congressman signed a letter to the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights complaining about the early-stage probe into four states’ COVID-19 nursing home deaths (including New Jersey).
Five New Jersey Dems were on the letter: Tom Malinowski (NJ-07), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Donald Norcross (NJ-01), Albio Sires (NJ-08), and Donald Payne, Jr. (NJ-10).
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Their argument?
It’s political retaliation, a recycled argument recently used to complain about the SALT cap. They want the DOJ to “to chart a different course of action and pursue a comprehensive independent investigation” rather than focus on Phil Murphy and Andrew Cuomo. In other words: they want the DOJ to back off. The plan is to discredit and in so doing derail a federal investigation into thousands of American deaths.
This particular excerpt will make your blood boil: “Public nursing homes make up fewer than three percent of LTCs in New Jersey, fewer than five percent in New York, fewer than four percent in Pennsylvania, and approximately seven percent in Michigan,” the congressmen wrote. “The vast majority of LTC residents in these states and elsewhere live in privately-owned facilities, which makes us question why the administration is targeting public nursing homes, let alone those public nursing homes in these four states.”
Can you believe that?
They’re actually arguing that we’re laying too much blame at Phil Murphy’s feet for the past several months of carnage! 7,100+ LTC deaths in this state alone.
We have the original March letter impacting public AND private facilities. It’s not up for debate. Murphy’s administration put nursing homes – public AND private – in a position where they had to accept COVID-19 positive admissions. Carnage was inevitable and easily predictable.
Public facilities is a logical place to begin an analysis of a larger problem especially since state-run veterans’ homes were among the hardest hit.
The political argument is also half-baked. Some of the other states cited by the Dems (like Kentucky, Utah, and Arizona) have a fraction of the LTC cases experienced by NY and NJ. The DOJ’s state goal in requesting information from New Jersey, PA, Michigan and NY is to “determine if the state orders requiring admission of COVID-19 patients to nursing homes is responsible for the deaths of nursing home residents.” So again, isn’t it logical to start with the biggest fish? Where the most people died? Those four states account for over one-quarter of all LTC resident deaths nationally!
I really, really hope Tom Kean Jr. (who is challenging Tom Malinowski in NJ-07 this year) makes Malinowski answer for this letter in the coming weeks.
It’s a damning indictment – ironically so, given the letter’s accusations – of how the current Democrat Party only cares about “saving lives” when doing so is politically expedient and, of course, doesn’t make a Democrat governor or governors look bad.
Tom Malinowski cares more about protecting Phil Murphy than the nursing home residents in his own district.
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