When will the real spending cuts in NJ come?

Another day, another demand from Trenton that spending at the local level be frozen or cut? When are we going to hear about salary cuts in Trenton? When are we going to hear about the elimination of patronage jobs? When are we going to hear about the Governor's plans to eliminate the silent tax burden corruption and duplication of administration services causes us?

Right now I am paying the same taxes, but will have reduced, and more expensive, NJ Transit service soon and will see my children's education suffer. And don't even get me started on roads on a morning I hear a bridge over the Garden State Parkway is closed because part of it fell on the road. I don't deny that there is wasteful spending, but right now it seems the burden is on the taxpayer with none being felt by those who actually caused the mess -- our political leaders and their connected friends.

When will the pain be shared with the bureaucrats who don't actually affect day to day living for most of us in the state? At the moment all the changes are leading to a shifting of costs to the average NJ citizen in the form of higher fares and higher property taxes. Soon I'm sure other services will be cut, perhaps to motor vehicles, the state highways or the court system. All cuts affecting the average person but not those who have jobs that could be cut will little affect on services to the common man. When will the real cuts to the state government come Governor?

Bread and circuses in NJ continues

The government, especially the Republicans, have done a wonderful job over the last decade of championing the uneducated and uninterested over the highly qualified. Questioning is bad, following what the conservatives want is good. Al Gore is a boring policy wonk who should not be President because he is too dull and knowledgeable. Sarah Palin is qualified as President because she knows the common person. What a bunch of horse hockey! I don't want my equal to run the country. The world is a dangerous place. I want someone better then me.

The other thing to congratulate NJ government on is the shifting of the public's ire from their own corrupt friends to people who actually do work. Granted the teachers' unions haven't helped themselves by rejecting 4% raises out of hand as too little when professionals, as equally qualified and educated in their own fields as teachers, are happy to get a 2.5% raise in this economy. Still, I want teachers to be adequately compensated. The world and the economy are more knowledge intensive. Our survival as a nation will depend on our children being able to compete and surpass our competitors.

So, going back to my previous point, congratulations to the government for changing the public's ire. Now those friends of friends at all levels can continue to hide their high school graduate children in $75,000 patronage jobs at town halls that would pay, maybe $25,000 on the open market. All those 6 figure patronage jobs in Trenton will also be safe. But woe be the one who actually does something useful and tries to do the same.

Yes NJ is in a bad financial situation as we reap the "rewards" of past choices. Yes change needs to be done. And I generally support the governor for tackling the state's long term financial problems. However, until I hear the governor announce he is cutting state patronage jobs by 20%, which should include getting local party bosses to reduce their patronage levels (which probably won't happen as that would reduce their influence), all I hear from him is that he is shifting tax burdens to the local levels, as towns scramble to cover lost aid, while doing nothing to get rid of the silent state corruption our taxes pay for.

So don't worry high school secretary whose father knows the right person to let you make more money then many more qualified persons in various fields, you're safe. But if you fill our potholes, check out our library books, process my lawsuit against the contractor who took my money and ran or, worst of all, teach our children to be productive citizens -- look out! You're in the crosshairs.

Massachusetts Senate race

So Mr. Brown won "Ted Kennedy's" Massachusetts Senate seat and the Republicans are crowing how much this means voters are tired of President Obama. I wonder, however, how much of this victory is people being pro-Republican and how much is it being anti-Coakley?

From what I read (and I didn't follow the campaign too closely), Ms. Coakley never really connected with the voters, taking victory for granted and mocking Mr. Brown for shaking voters' hands outside Fenway, much like Ted Kennedy, who never took winning for granted, would have done. She under-estimated the retail politicking Senator Kennedy succeeded at, appearing disengaged, and paid the price.

In my mind this is similar to what happened in NJ last fall. Governor Corzine wasn't voted out of office because the state suddenly turned conservative. He was voted out because the people didn't like him and wanted a change. Former Governor Corzine was not a good public speaker and never really connected with the voters. Mr. Corzine actually had smaller budgets the last year or two but nobody noticed. Instead of talking to the people, he talked to the union heads. If Governor Christie does what he did while he was federal prosecutor and weeds out corruption, he will be considered a success.

So before the Republicans make the same mistake and take voter anger at Democrats for granted, they really need to look at the individuals involved. All politics is local.

Wolff family tree

Many to do the work of a few

The last few days we've been hearing a lot about Gov.-elect Chrisite's plans to cut spending. The plan is to look for programs to cut and federal spending to tap. Yet I hear next to nothing about 1000 pound elephant in the room -- all the money we waste on administration. We have too much government. We have many doing the work that only a few are needed for.

New Jersey is so in love with "home rule" that any talk of consolidation is jeered down. I live within 10 miles of 6 towns municipal buildings (including donut towns). That is 6 mayors, 6 municipal clerks etc with their staffs. At least a few of the towns share schools (and we all belong to one regional high school district). That is a ton of duplicate jobs and a lot of extra salary and health benefits being paid out. Add in that more people means more people to potentially bribe (doesn't even have to be a big bribe -- perhaps the low level clerk who would have been weeded out in a bigger town accepts a gift from a contractor and unduly influences a contract) and it is easy to see where the money goes.

There is no reason all of these offices couldn't be combined into one huge office with one mayor, clerk, one school district etc. but for one -- home rule. Too many people use their offices as gifts for friends. Your high school drop out daughter can't find work? Well my friendly contributor, she can work in administration for $75k. Your Rutgers graduate can't find a job stranger? Sorry, the economy stinks for all.

The school districts would sooner cancel trips to museums then let one of their buddies go unemployed. The towns would sooner let potholes grow then let one of their buddies get laid off. The police departments would sooner stop cars for going 2 MPH over the speed limit, having snow on their plates or one of those dealer frames around the license plates than lay off an officer (happened in one of the donut towns near here).

We don't need to take money out of the classroom, we just need to get rid of our extra government overhead.

Whining

I'm tired of the GOP whining.

They keep crying how health care will be the end of America, yet they are the guys who screwed up the country. They are the ones who sunk us into the largest debt in history. They are the ones got us into two wars which they then botched. They didn’t stop al-Qaeda before 9/11 or nail bin Laden after. Millions of Americans were put out of work and hundreds of thousands of American homeowners out on the streetsthanks to their polices . They tortured prisoners of war and green lighted the torture of American POWs by the bad guys. They whined and moaned about abortion, gay marriage and morality while keeping their own mistresses, or boyfriends, on the side.

If it is a choice between a party trying to do something and a party that is trying to do nothing, and is somehow proud of that, I think I’ll take the guys who are at least trying to make things better, rather than sit around on their fat sex scandal ridden butts and whine that they lost the last election What the US really needs the Republicans to do now is get out of the way, sit down and shut up.

The government can't do anything right?

With all the fuss about the evils of government in the news lately, I thought this piece I found online was interesting:

This morning I was awoken by my radio alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy. I heard the news without interference from another source on a frequency regulated by the FCC.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation (for over 15 years I set out to work by walking on sidewalks built by local government to take a train or bus run by government to my office, or close to it, on a fairly timely basis), possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and wait with the kids for the bus to take them to the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.