Will Andy Kim’s legacy of hypocrisy, lies & betrayal keep him out of the Senate?

Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur was instrumental in negotiating a key amendment to the Republican health care bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), a bill proposed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), widely known as Obamacare.

The MacArthur amendment would have allowed states to opt out of certain provisions of the ACA, such as the requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, but although it never became law it was part of the reason the GOP congressman lost his job to a former White House national security official.

The controversy over health care law provided some texture to the hotly contested campaign in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, which stretches from the Delaware River in the west across the pine barrens to the Atlantic Ocean in the east, but lies dominated the campaign.

MacArthur was President Donald Trump’s biggest ally in the New Jersey congressional delegation but, echoing a line repeatedly used by other GOP candidates, he said, “I work with the president when I can, and when I disagree with him, I say so.” MacArthur never disagreed with Trump.

Democrat Andy Kim, whose candidacy was boosted by the wave of anti-Trump anger that swept across the state’s suburbs, pledged to support Medicare for All, the universal health insurance plan popularized in Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

He broke that promise almost immediately after taking office.

His victory marked the first time in over 20 years that a Korean American was elected to Congress, but it is not at all uncommon for voters to be hoodwinked by a lying liar who lies like Andy Kim.

The United States has one of the highest healthcare costs in the world, with spending reaching $4.5 trillion in 2022, or $13,493 per person. The quantity of care we receive does not justify that spending. National health expenditures are projected to grow 5.4 percent, on average, through 2031, when they will account for roughly 20 percent of the economy.

Kim explicitly opposed Medicare for All, the single-payer system that would be cheaper than the total US expenditure on health care while covering everyone, including the 100 million victims of the current business model, which is essentially: ‘your money or your life.’

Today, Kim says that he believes the country needs universal health care, despite his six years of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good: “I’m open to single-payer. I’m open to multi-payer. I think it’s important we don’t close the door on those different options.”

It is worth noting that anyone who understands the health care debate would recognize these remarks as pure nonsense. America has a multi-payer insurance system and 40,000 citizens die each year because about 100 million of us are uninsured or underinsured.

Kim’s national security record in the Obama administration was a failure and his claims he also worked for Bush were ruled to have been embellished by the Washington Post.

Kim supports the continued slaughter of children in Gaza, who are innocent victims of the unrelenting barbaric collective punishment unleashed by the ultra-right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While nobody seriously disputes Israel’s right to self-defense, the whole world recognizes that killing children is more than a byproduct of Netanyahu’s ruthless savagery. The death toll in Gaza reached 10,000 after a month of Israel’s brutal air and ground attacks.

So far, the number of dead children exceeds 15,000 but there is no end in sight to Israel’s scorched-earth campaign in Gaza and the U.S. government’s horrifying complicity. Over the past 75 years, in several Israeli sieges of Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine we’ve witnessed the killing of civilians, but nothing compares with the industrial scale on which children are being slaughtered right now.

Not only is Israel repeatedly bombing hospitals, universities, and refugee camps, but roughly half of the reported deaths in Gaza have been children. Andy Kim echoes the rhetoric coming out of the Biden White House and he supports the administration continuing to ship arms to Israel without doing anything to prevent these American weapons from being used to kill children.

Kim said Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments were “completely unacceptable” after she posted on social media about the Israel lobby’s financial and political clout in Congress,” and he joined critics against after the Muslim Congresswoman said: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”

“Israel knows that these are crowded civilian-populated areas, and they are engaging in, at times, carpet bombing, dropping 2,000-pound bombs on crowded refugee camps,” said investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill. “Many prominent international law experts have said these are war crimes, and that potentially charges of genocide could be leveled against Israel, because of the statements of Israeli officials openly saying that civilians, essentially, are fair game.”

Since the beginning of the war against Hamas in the wake of the terror group’s onslaught, the Biden administration has fast-tracked the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of munitions to Israel, bypassing congressional review.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends in two weeks. It also demands that Hamas free all captives seized on Oct. 7 when it led attacks on Israel.

It is the first time the council has called for a cease-fire since the war began after the US decided not to veto the measure, which has meant a change in its previous position. Although the White House said that its abstention does not represent a shift in policy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called it a departure from prior US stance.

Andy Kim’s position has been to sit back and allow American weapons to be used to kill children but his approach—ostensibly in his area of professional expertise— only exacerbated the rise of terrorism.

“Under Andy Kim’s watch, the United States failed to grasp the threat ISIS presented to the world and failed to formulate a strategy to stop them,” said NRCC spokesperson Chris Martin, describing his work at the National Security Council. “If that’s what Kim considers a record of success, what does failure even look like?”

While the U.S. has sometimes won military victories, almost all of the terrorist movements targeted since 9/11 have survived or mutated into similar organizations with different names. Worse, none of the fundamental causes that keep extremist and terrorist movements alive – and generate new jihadist threats – have been reduced.

A few months before being killed in a U.S. Special Forces raid, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released a final video message that symbolically passed the torch to far-flung followers in distant lands. His self-declared caliphate had been defeated, he acknowledged, and it was now up to the terrorist group’s regional chapters to carry out “revenge operations” around the world.

The Islamic State, which once controlled a lot of territory in Iraq and Syria, was considered defeated in 2019. Still, there is obviously a continuing threat and a presence in various African countries — in Nigeria, in DR Congo, in Mozambique, in the Sahel — as well as in Russia, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The March 22 bloodbath at a suburban Moscow concert hall, in which 143 died, is only the latest reminder of how effectively Baghdadi’s brutal vision is being carried out. While his self-proclaimed Middle East “caliphate” is in ruins, a constellation of regional affiliates is gaining strength in many parts of the globe, fueled by a mix of traditional grievances as well as new ones, including the war in Gaza.

Kim served as Obama’s designated expert on the Islamic State terrorist group. According to his 2018 campaign résumé, he was writing a book about the “U.S. government’s war against ISIS and how governments can improve efforts to counter global terrorist threats,” but the volume never materialized.

His office confirmed that Kim had not published a book, but it has already been established that padding his résumé if one of his traits, and that’s not nearly as bad as lying about where he stands on health insurance, killing children, or opposing relief from student loan debt.

During his initial bid for public office, Kim wrote on his Crowdpac page, “Our country is led by billionaires and millionaires like Tom MacArthur who are out of touch with the struggles that Americans face to pay their bills and provide for their families.”

There is plenty to suggest that this Rhodes scholar, White House staffer, and Congressman is about as out of touch as any wealthy corporate oligarch.

In recent weeks, New Jersey’s corrupt system of rigging the ballot has become a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and conservative and liberal groups. While Kim was leading the calls for change, he accepted unfair placement on the ‘party line’ in at least 17 of the 19 counties that use them to cheat unendorsed candidates.

“As Democrats, we cannot accept a ballot system that is inconsistent with our values and directly contradicts our fight to protect and promote democracy and voting rights,” said Kim. However, he wrote that before he became the beneficiary of that corrupt system.

“It does not have to be this way. Our County Clerks and our County Democratic Party Chairs have it in their power to call for and provide an office block ballot for the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate,” said Kim, who also had the chance to show the people of New Jersey that we’re better than the corruption we’ve seen from Senator Menendez; but instead of rejecting this ballot system, he is taking advantage of it.

As attorney Mark Natale, who represents the Burlington County Clerk, noted in his latest submission to Judge Zahid Quraishi: “The lead plaintiff now occupies the ballot position this entire lawsuit was initiated to eliminate.”

The system that produced Bob Menendez, also produced Jon Corzine, Phil Murphy, and Andy Kim, whose willingness to accept preferred ballot positions in most counties is showing that he wants unfair advantages for himself more than he wants to eliminate them, and that is the kind of hypocrisy that defined his entire career.

The Congressman also claims that he is working hard ‘to lower everyday costs for New Jersey families,’ but inflation during his tenure has spiked hire than any time since 1981, reaching 9.1% in June 2022, to set a 41-year record.

A fundraiser featuring Barack Obama and Bill Clinton is raising a whopping $25 million for President Joe Biden, setting a record for the biggest haul for a political event at a time of persistently low Democratic poll numbers.

More money gets donors more intimate time with the presidents. A photo with all three is $100,000. A donation of $250,000 earns donors access to one reception, and $500,000 gets them into an even more exclusive gathering.

Meanwhile, the average cost of a dozen eggs in the U.S. that cost $2.09 in 2023 is currently $5.05 in New Jersey

Running for Congress can be very expensive. In 2022, the average spending for a candidate to win the House of Representatives was $2.79 million, while the average for the Senate was $3.87 million.

In November 2022, the median amount raised by a member of the House of Representatives who stood for reelection was $2.1 million, or about $2,800 per day. The median amount raised by a freshman member of the 117th Congress was $2.9 million, or about $3,900 per day.

While some families are unable to buy a dozen eggs, the Congressman who is working hard ‘to lower everyday costs for New Jersey families,’ has outspent every competitor in every campaign he has ever been in.

The culmination of these controversies has led many to question whether Andy Kim’s legacy of inconsistencies, questionable actions, broken promises, and treachery will ultimately hinder his ambitions for higher office, particularly in his Senate bid. However, the influence of big money in politics and a flawed political system may still pave the way for Kim’s ascent, highlighting broader systemic issues that continue to plague American politics.