A man walks into a bar...

I live in Clinton Township. Out here in Clinton we are assessed at 100% of full market value. This assessment occurs every year. Well, this year my assessed value went up 17%. Is that insane? Absolutely! I moved to town in 2000 and since then the amount of cash that I actually pay in property taxes has risen over 36%. That 36% translates to the equivalent to 20% of the increase of equity in my home. The local government has confiscated 20% of my investment and the State and the Feds will confiscate another 18% when I sell. My town provides no sewars, no garbage collection, no water, no fire department. Anyway...

Last week the new yearly property assessment came in the mail and on Saturday night, while sitting at the bar of a local establishment to eat and have some adult conversation the conversation touched on the insane property taxes that we in Hunterdon county pay. It's a nice quite place and is frequented by middle age people with some kids in the local schools and some kids in college. Most seem to be property owners. To a couple, there was not one there that was not plotting their exit from New Jersey. I was amazed at how many of us were calculating kids ages, work situations, personal situations and were actively researching new locations to live. Many were researching out of country retirements in Central and South America. It may be antidotal evidence, but that great sucking sound your hearing isn't NAFTA, like Ross Perot told us, it is disgust with the tax situation in America.

It's a State Right!

The Ledger is reporting today that a Federal Appeals Court has struck down a 1999 Department of Transportation regulation keeping large trucks off of secondary highways. This requlation was passed, because at the time there were a number of serious truck accidents on secondary roads around the state and local officials were complaining about the large truck traffic on local roads. It seems to me that if a State wants to direct where trucks and what size trucks can be on a road it is their right. Where in the constitution does it give congress the right to control interstate commerece. It must be right next to the mythical right to privacy.

Please sir, can I have more?

According to the AP :

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Three northern New Jersey lawmakers want voters to consider allowing the state to borrow $75 million to fix its financially neglected parks.

Sens. Bernard Kenny, D-Hudson, and Robert Littell, R-Sussex, and Assemblyman Jack McKeon, D-Essex, are sponsoring measures that would put such a referendum before voters in November

I like State Parks and use them often, but with today's budget issues Kenny, Littell and McKeon show us how no matter what the budget situation in New Jersey is we can always spend more.

Keep watching.....

Reported today:

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, smashing the windows of a guard post but failing to push through the gates. Several people were injured. link

Organized, planned chaos. That's what the Imans want and that's what their getting.

The War on Terror is Over!

At least that is what the administration believes. The administration has approved a deal for UAE owned Dubai Ports World to purchase P&O shipping. P&O is currently British owned and controls several east coast ports including New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a U.S. inter-agency panel that reviews security implications of foreign takeovers of strategic assets, already reviewed the transaction and did not object.

Despite that review, some Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress urged the Bush administration to conduct a more rigorous review. They expressed fears that the UAE was used as a conduit for parts used for nuclear proliferation and that the local banking system had been abused by financiers with possible links to terrorist organizations.

U.S. officials have said the UAE has been a solid and cooperative partner in the fight against terrorism, and have praised the UAE for steps to protect its booming financial sector against abuse by terrorism financiers.

Money for the September 11 attacks was wired through the UAE's banking system, according to U.S. officials. Two of the September 11 hijackers were UAE citizens.

According to Reuters , Democratic Senators were not notified of our outstanding victory and are pressing to stop the deal.

So, is the administration stupid? Do they want to see a major US city nuked or is there really not a terror threat? What's the truth? You decide.

Stop, Stop, Stop... Please

Reported in the Ledger

State taxpayers, who have already paid $6billion for a court-ordered overhaul of public schools in needy communities, would have to spend about $13billion more to finish the job, state officials say.

The Department of Education yesterday gave the Legislature its estimate of what it would cost to complete all 313 school construction and renovation projects awaiting work under a state Supreme Court mandate.

We must stand up to the State Supreme Court and the education community in this state before they bledd us any further. They had their chance with 6 billion, they blew it. Enough is enough.

Katrina aid misused. No way!

The headline screams "Millions in Katrina aid goes misused". Fraud and waste, no oversight money from those #2000 debit cards spent on Adult entertainment, massages, tattoos, an engagement ring sex paraphanalia. I think after a stressful event like Katrina and being locked up in that superdome a massage is just what the doctor ordered and who would want to miss out on the "I survived Katrina tattoo?

Everyone knew when the cards were given out it would be like this.

When did Turin becom a bad Ford

When did the Italian city of Turin, as in the Shroud of Turin, become Torino? Even on maps it's called Turin. What made the U.S. media start calling it Torino? I guess its's for the same reason that they actually report on Women's ice hockey. So politically correct.

Winter Returns

After living this winter in the warm glow of global warming it appears that cold and snow will be returning with a vengence. It's good that it is as I bought a plow for my truck this year, I have a long drivway, and my wife hasn't stopped telling me how much money I wasted. Sigh!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Another backtrack on the SCC

Wasn't it just yesterday that we were told that one of the goals that Corzine set for the SCC board he had just appointed was "....to determine whether the troubled agency in charge of the venture should be disbanded." link. Now today the Ledger has a report and this is what a board member says on the first day one the job:

We need to focus the SCC on being a highly effective and efficient construction management company," said Barry Zubrow, a former Goldman Sachs & Co. executive installed by Gov. Jon Corzine as SCC chairman Tuesday. "We need state-of-the-art financial controls and accountability systems."

Effective and efficient? State of the art financial systems? There is no intention of dismantling this agency. There is no intention of standing up to the State Supreme Court. The is only the intention to spend more and more taxpayer money on losing libral ideas that will never have the desired effect.

But we're nice and tolerant

The Danes are confused .

A lot of Danes have problems understanding what is going on and why people in those countries reacted this way," said Morton Rixen, a philosophy student, looking out his window at a city awhirl in angst and snow. "We're used to seeing American flags and pictures of George Bush being burned, but we've always seen ourselves as a more tolerant nation. We're in shock to now be in the center of this."

When will the politically correct, liberal left learn that there are people in the world that really don't see the world in their terms. Do they think that a shia law is tolerant of drinking, adultery, abortion and an array of other western "sins"? Do they think that if their tolerant enough and can just understand a little more about a culture that it will all be better?

Danes suspect that the furor over the cartoons has been co-opted by the wider anti-Western agenda of Middle East extremism. Yet they believe the media images of fury over the drawings have cracked the veneer of their nation and exacerbated a debate about immigration, freedom of expression, religious tolerance and a vaunted perception of racial harmony often disputed by immigrants.

The West is in the midst of a cultural war and the politically correct speech crowd has so limited the words one can use in a debate that no one say the king has no clothes.

CNN won't post "The Cartoons"...

CNN has refused to post "The Cartoons", however, it has no pangs of remorse telling the whole world that there are 5 Senators in the basement garage of the Russell office building during a threat of a terror attack. I guess we see where their priorities are.

The other farcical tidbit about the Russell Office Building Nerve Agent Scare is how MSNBC and FOX reported right away that it was a false alarm and CNN made Paula Zahn stay on the story like something big was going on and she was a real newsperson.

OOPS... MSNBC now reports 12 Senators in the garage. Who needs tactical communications?

Media Censorship From a Christian Perspective

I thought this was a solid post on the MSN reluctance to post the "offensive cartoons" link .

Corzine signals his intention for the SCC

Corzine signals that he won't fight the State Supreme Court and will continue to spend your tax dollars in an ill fated attempt to improve test scores in Abbot school districts by spending money on school construction.

Gov. Jon Corzine yesterday launched an overhaul of New Jersey's $8.6 billion public school construction program, appointing six new directors and a special panel to determine whether the troubled agency in charge of the venture should be disbanded. link

Corzine is expecting

Specific recommendations are to be developed addressing the reorganization of the Schools Construction Corporation, considering such options as creating a new educational facilities authority in the Department of Education or the Department of Treasury, or by enhancing the capabilities of the New Jersey Building Authority,"

I'm willing to bet that after the state pays the $20 billion more that the SCC says it needs to complete it's construction projects that the schools constructed or refurbished have little to no improvement on test scores. Any takers?

I've written about this before and sooner or later it will sink in

Last November I wrote a post about the riots that were then raging throughout France. At the time I wrote about Europe's Muslim issues

...the riots in France are going to become an instructive event. Virtually every country in Western Europe is in the midst a native population decline. In order to stem this decline and to keep up economic activity, they have allowed virtually unfettered, immigration of Muslims, mostly from their North African ex-colonies. Many of these people are uneducated and perform menial labor.

I ended the post with a warning and it is more appropriate today than when I wrote it.

It wouldn't surprise me to see an upcoming wave of terrorism in France. And, no amount of outlawing criticism of any ethnic group as hate speech is going to stop what is coming. It would be wise for the Brits and the Dutch to pay close attention.

The fear in capitals all through Europe is palatable as the ruling parties see the outrageous behavior of Muslims world wide to the perceived slight caused by the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. Today in Denmark the Prime Minister felt compelled to issue a statement about the riots and to ward off the possibility that France's November would be Denmark's February.

Denmark's Prime Minister on Tuesday called protests over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad a global crisis and appealed for calm.

"We are now facing a growing global crisis," Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. "It now is something else than the drawings in Jyllands-Posten."

Appeasement is never going to help in this situation and everyone is doing it. Look at this position of prostation in front of the Muslim hordes from the bstions of freedom in the west.

The U.S. and British governments criticized publication of the caricatures as offensive to Muslims, raising questions about whether the line between free speech and incitement had been crossed.

The Danish government tried to contain the damage. Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller called Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and said the Danish government "cannot accept an assault against Islam," according to Abbas' office.

On Monday, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said his government could not apologize on behalf of a newspaper, but that he personally "never would have depicted Muhammad, Jesus or any other religious character in a way that could offend other people." link

Should the Brits be worried? Not at all. The new Neville Chamberlin, Jack Straw, had this to say

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw criticized European media for reprinting the caricatures. While free speech should be respected, Straw said "there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory."

The sooner people admit that there is a serious cultural divide between Muslims and the Western, Judeo-Christian world the better off the West will be. It's time to call the rioting what it is, organized rioting provoked by Imans in order to exert influence.

You just can't make this stuff up

Iran to publish Holocaust cartoons

IRAN'S largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

"It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," said Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper - which is published by Teheran's conservative municipality.
He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

Perhaps someone should inform these people that we in the west really don't care about what they think.

I couldn't help but notice the contrast

I read today, at EnlightenNJ, an interesting post on the Massachusetts flat income tax and Rhode Island's effort to get rid of their progressive income tax and employ a flat tax. Enlighten's post contains substantial information complete with references to his data and presents a solid supply siders point of view on taxation. Today I also read John Farmer's column in the Star Ledger which is the antithesis of Enlightens post. I urge all of you to contrast enlighten's post with John Farmers column in today's Star Ledger.

Take supply-side economics. It holds that if you slash federal taxes deeply enough, the surge in economic activity will more than make up the revenue lost from the tax cuts. It's a belief devoutly offered by conservatives as a kind of panacea for the ills of society. Any criticism of supply-side theory brings conservatives rushing to the barricades, as I discovered last week after suggesting that it really doesn't work as advertised.

Actually, I described it as bunk -- concocted to provide intellectual cover for the Republican Party's payoffs to its wealthy individual and corporate backers. Supply-side economics, I implied, bears as much relevance to true economics as intelligent design does to true science.

When I read this I just had to go back to John's previous column to see the facts and figures he used to justify calling supply side economics "bunk". I scoured Farmers column looking high and low for his foundation arguments and this is what I found:

It's the great idea advanced by the loonies on the right, the supply- siders who number among their true believers the gnomes laboring away in cubicles at Forbes magazine and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. It's faith-based economics, just the kind you'd expect George W. Bush to embrace. And it's bunk -- as the $350 billion (and growing) annual budget deficit makes clear.

So it appears that the entire basis for Mr. Farmer's argument is "loonies", "gnomes" and a $350 billion deficit. Mr. Farmer is being disingenuous and is trying to mask the true success of supply side economics. Simply put supply side economics is the theory that if you cut taxes the money not sent into government will generate economic activity that will increase revenues to the government. It has nothing to do with deficits. Deficits, as anyone living in New Jersey can tell you, come from unrestricted spending. Yes, there is nothing like a well thought out and reasoned argument. I just wish that a Ledger columnist besides Mulshine would make one.

A view into your neighbor's thoughts on taxes

I don't normally pay attention to Fran Wood, Op-Ed columnist for the Star Ledger, because she rarely writes a thought provoking column. However, yesterday she penned a column that I thought was instructive on how most of our neighbors view of state spending and tax increases.

Fran starts with Steve Lonegsan's idea that we ignore court mandated funding:

In last year's Republican gubernatorial primary, Mayor Steve Lonegan of Bogota got some attention by suggesting the state should consider simply not funding some of those mandates, like the Abbott school districts -- ignoring the state Supreme Court's order on funding education in poor districts.

Right. Like that's going to happen

Idea dismissed without a thought.

Again she takes a solid idea, a Citizens' Convention, and trashes it with nary a second thought:

We've also been teased with the notion that lower property taxes are just one little constitutional convention away, which is more nonsense. In case you haven't figured it out, a constitutional convention is a copout. It would put into citizens' hands the business our legislators are elected to do but won't because they won't risk their jobs. Moreover, it would cost a heap of money that the state doesn't have, and the only likely result -- a cap on property taxes -- would simply force us to find some other way to fund the things property taxes pay for, mostly meaning our schools.

A great idea dismissed because it would cost a "heap" of money. That figure came from where? Do we really need we ask?

My favorite part of the above quote, however, is how Fran misses the only good point she made:

a cap on property taxes -- would simply force us to find some other way to fund the things property taxes pay for, mostly meaning our schools.

Exactly! We would have to find other ways to fund schools. Yes! Perhaps deep cuts in other state programs or cuts in how many districts we have or laying off state workers or cutting their pension benefits or cutting legislators salaries, or using the money that was ear marked for schools like the income tax and lottery funds, or, or, or. The list is endless.

And finally, Fran comes to her sad but inevitable conclusion:

Laying off some state employees and trimming some government expenses are like chipping paint off the Queen Mary. Yes, we must do it, but it's far from a total solution. I don't want to see clothing taxed, but we probably need to do it. With a nearly bankrupt transportation trust fund, raising gasoline taxes is unavoidable.

Chipping at the Queen Mary? We need to take dynamite to the good ship New Jersey. Massive layoffs are required not chipping. As for tax increases, according to Fran "we probably need to do it." Probably? What thought has been given to this concession to have your money confiscated by the State? None.

And for her finish... a sad missive on corporate America cutting pension benefits for workers.

Corporate America is addressing its own pension crisis by replacing company-funded pensions with employee-funded 401(k)s. Disheartening as that trend is, the state probably needs to do it as well.

Fran, in case you don't read the business section, Ford recently announced that it was laying off 30,000 workers. See, corporate America knows that when it is spending more than is coming in you need to cut expenses.

unfortunately for anyone that wants to see real changes in the way the State does business needs to look no further than Fran to see why voters voted for Corzine and won't raise a voice when taxes are increased and the current spend culture is left in place.

The press is all over Bush

The press this morning is all over Bush for not making enough mention of New Orleans. They are all complaining that he only gave it 6 lines at the end of his speech. What do they expect after the people in NO called him every name in the book. If I were him I'd let the place rot.