New Jersey

Oh, how many times I've wanted to do this .

The flooding from the recent heavy rains caused Bound Brook to flood out again. It was reminiscent of Hurricane Floyd in '99 with buildings burning while the town was flooded.

We moved to South Bound Brook in '91. Shortly after that there was a major storm that left parts of Bound Brook flooded out. We bought the house in North Brunswick and moved just before it happened again in '99 with Floyd. This makes the third storm in about 15 years that has flooded out downtown Bound Brook.

I was looking for news about the storm and found this post on the Courier News Online web site. I think this sums up my feelings pretty well.

And, once again, people will rebuild! Floyd SHOULD have been the lesson - but no. Everyone in Bound Brook rallied around the thought that Floyd was a "Hundred-years Storm" and they wouldn't see devastation again for a long time. WRONG! While I admire the spirit of human resiliency, when the hell are people gonna learn that the river is going to flood and, to move back to the same place time after time that it does, they're only inviting problems. I say "get the hell outta Dodge". How many times does the Government have to come in and save (both physically and financially) the asses of people who are under the absurd delusion that it won't happen again?! They should have bulldozed the whole mess after Floyd and made it into the park that they were discussing. Instead they "revitalized" the Main Street area and put in a "rotary" (which defies all sense but that's another topic) and let everyone move back in and get the place all prettied-up for the next flood (which, of course, wasn't going to happen for 100 years - right?). THIS time, do the right thing! The only thing I'll really miss is Chitch's anyway.

Illinois may be #1 but New Jersey's in the top 3! I asked former Gov. Jim Thompson what he thought about Sabato's Top Three. "Illinois can't hold a candle to New Jersey and Louisiana," he said indignantly. "We're poor country cousins compared to those states."

The official list puts us at #11 but I'm sure we're moving up.

I was listening to WDHA this morning on the way to work. After reading a news item about a Quinnipiac poll, the DJs decided to run their own phone poll. The Quinnipiac poll stated that a poll of New Jersey residents showed there was more support for Rudy Giulliani than for Hillary Clinton. The DJs asked people to call in and express their preferences. After a short while, they stated that results were running greatly in favor of Giulliani.

I'm not surprised. I've seen many other polls referenced through blogs that indicate Hillary hasn't got the support you might expect. Personally, I'd be very afraid if she got elected. I think the last Clinton presidency was a disaster on several fronts. Just think what Clinton II would be like if she's learned anything from the mistakes of Clinton I.

I think I finally figured it out.

During the summer when schools are closed, the drive up the Garden State Parkway is a breeze. After Labor Day when schools open, traffic starts getting worse. By the end of that week, the morning commute is reduced to a crawl.

Then comes Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish holiday. New Jersey has a large Jewish population so many of the public schools are closed. That one day, traffic moves again only to return to the crawl the following day. This repeats itself for Yom Kippur (another Jewish holiday).

This week the schools are closed for the teacher's convention in Atlantic City. This morning, I left home 20 minutes late and still got to work earlier than I did on Thursday when I left at my regular time. I expect traffic will be light the rest of the week.

In past seasons, traffic has been light whenever public schools are closed and has been attrocious when they are open. This has led me to my latest epiphany.

It seems like 10 years is a magic number for politicians. I recall Jim McGreevey promising to remove the tolls from the Garden State Parkway over a 10 year period. Now, a state assemblyman has introduced a plan to cut the number of state jobs by 10% over 10 years.

Let's see, the state workforce has been growing at about 5%/year and this guy wants to cut 1% of state jobs each year for the next 10 years. That should slow the growth to 4%/year.

Even if the plan means to stop growth and actually reduce payroll by 1% per year, that's not so ambitious, is it? 740 heads per year? I truly think the bigger part of the problem is controlling the growth especially after gubernatorial elections. A new governor always seems to have some pet projects that he'll need new staffing for. He'll also have a lot of "friends" to thank with new jobs for helping out his campaign. And of course, all of these friends will require staff, and ....

Me? Cynical?

New Jersey Politics in a nutshell:

Republicans haven't won a statewide race in New Jersey since the election of Governor Christie Whitman back in the mid-1990s, in part because the Democratic machine reserves the imperial right to replace elected candidates on the general election ballot. Nowhere in the country do party leaders so cavalierly disenfranchise their primary voters when they fear their nominee is going to lose. For the New Jersey GOP, it's like trying to win at poker when your opponent can call for a redeal every time he doesn't like his cards. [emphasis mine]

They did it last time when their candidate started to tank. I'm waiting for them to pull it again as Menendez' popularity sinks in the polls.

Glenn Reynolds comments "You'd think that the Jersey Democrats might try nominating people who aren't crooks." Why bother? They'd much rather have the crook in office if they can get away with it. If they get called on it, they know they'll get a free pass from the liberal New Jersey courts. There's no disincentive to nominating the crook.  Besides, finding a New Jersey Democrat that isn't a crook looks like it's becoming impossible.

I'm just hoping the exodus from the state doesn't cause home values to crash too much before I get a chance to get out.

And they wonder why we're the highest taxed state in the nation.

But Beaver did immediately provide a few statistics. About 213 people hold more than one teaching position, he said. Another 4,731 people hold more than one state or local government job, Beaver said, with the number of jobs ranging from two to 11.

Gormley laughed out loud when he heard this.

“I gotta meet 11,” Gormley said. “Gotta meet 11. He works 27 hours a day.”

230 years ago, a revolution was started in part because a group of people thought they deserved to be better represented in government for the taxes they paid. I believe it's time for another tea party.

In the recent budget battle in New Jersey, Jim Corzine, the elected governor, stood with leaders of the state employees union and said he would work for the best possible deal he could get for them. Wasn't he elected to represent all of the people of New Jersey and not just those of the state employees union? Don't we deserve to be represented and have someone working for a good deal for us?

Politicians all across this state are looking out for the needs of small groups of people within their jurisdictions. Who represents the rest of us? Don't we deserve to be represented in the halls of Trenton?

New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the country. The sales tax has just been increased to 7%. Only California is higher. The state income tax is also high. All the politicians just promise relief while playing shell games - taking money collected from one tax to offer a rebate on another. The state is deep in debt but can only push it further down the road as no one has the guts to take on the underlying problem.

I'm really sick of New Jersey - too crowded, too liberal, too overtaxed. I'm starting to look into other places to live and I might make a move after my last daughter finishes High School. Enough is enough already.

New Jersey politics as usual - FUBAR.

Yet Corzine is demanding that all of these pensionless people pay more taxes so that public workers can retire at much younger ages than the people who pay their salaries. This is again a new sort of blunder. Until Corzine came along, politicians generally proclaimed that the purpose of new taxes was to do things for the public. Corzine wants to raise taxes not to help the public but the public employees....

But if the governor's fighting for the unions, then who's fighting for the taxpayers?

The Democrat governor vs. the Democrat controlled legislature in a battle over the budget - a fight over how best to screw the New Jersey taxpayers.

It's stuff like this that makes me ashamed to live in New Jersey. Politicians here think their job is to legislate civility. What makes this idiot think he can legislate the internet from Somerset County?

Those remarks violate Biondi’s sense of political propriety. “What it’s turned into is people just bashing each other, name-calling, personal issues, that kind of thing,” Biondi’s chief of staff, Scott Ross, told me on Friday. “It’s all anonymous. Nobody knows who’s calling who what.”

The intent of the legislation is “to try to bring back a little civility back into that kind of thing,” Ross said. “It’s degenerating into name-calling. It’s a local problem we’re having, in several cities.”

That is not your job, sir. Your job is to act as a responsible steward of our government and our resources.

Read the whole thing including the comments. Someone posts a letter they wrote to Biondi and the response they received. If Biondi didn't look stupid enough already after proposing this excuse for a piece of legislation, he actually tries to stand behind it in his response.

More followup here.

If New Jersey really wants to soothe frustrated drivers, I have a few suggestions for them.