New Jersey is famous for saddling its homeowners with high tax bills. That prompted Paul Waters from Brigantine to ask, “Why are New Jersey property taxes some of the highest in the nation?”
There is not one answer.
Most obvious is that New Jersey has 565 municipalities, down from 567 — that’s 565 mayors, councils, town governments.
New Jersey also has more than 600 school districts, 586 of which are operational, each with its own superintendent and administrative structure.
Then there are the 21 county governments and their bureaucracies.
Public worker salaries and benefits are relatively high in New Jersey thanks to aggressive public sector unions.
Throw in the generally high cost of goods and services in the New York-Philadelphia region and you begin to see why our property taxes have been the highest in the nation for years.
Sen. Robert Menendez ongoing corruption case could upend the New Jersey Democrat’s reelection bid in 2018, with the longtime politician scheduled to go to court this fall.
The Supreme Court delivered another blow this week to the embattled senator when it refused to dismiss the case. The trial is scheduled to begin about a year before the midterm elections.
Federal prosecutors charged Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty, in April 2015 on 14 criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit bribery.
Menendez is expected to head to trial on Sept. 6,facing a potential criminal conviction even as he would normally be preparing a re-election bid.
“It makes it very difficult to campaign if you’re on trial,” said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University.
The Legislature is expediting a bill that would give state police and fire unions the power to reward themselves and their members at the expense of municipalities and taxpayers. Such fast-tracking of a law without public comment is an almost infallible sign state Senate and Assembly members know they’re serving their own interests and not those of their constituents.
The bill would remove management of the state Police and Firemen’s Retirement System from the Treasury Department’s Division of Investment and the State Investment Council, and give it to a new union-controlled board. That board would not only decide where to invest the system’s $26 billion in assets, it would be able to increase benefits to retirees. But if the return on investments was poor or the board handed out too much in benefits, the unions controlling it wouldn’t be responsible — the shortfalls would be made up by taxpayers and towns.
As the N.J. State League of Municipalities puts it, “The bill will allow public safety union members and retirees to enhance their own benefits, while forcing their public employers and New Jersey taxpayers to assume the risk.”
As Republicans in Congress continue to craft a legislative solution to the disastrous Unaffordable Care Act, the Democrats continue to mislead its defenders with more and more dishonest and deceptive rhetoric. The latest installment comes from Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), and is deserving of a complete deception diagnosis.
By the way, Booker is considered by Democrats to be a future Democrat presidential candidate, and he won the un-coveted “Liberal Lunacy of the Week” last week on the Herman Cain Radio Show with the following litany of false statements:
“The Republicans cannot just force this down our throats. It’s going to knock a lot of folks off, hurt long-term care, hurt good working class folks. I don’t understand this almost, I don’t understand their political strategy because this is bad politics. Deeper than that it is bad policy and bad process.”
Let’s break this down, shall we?
The Republicans cannot just force this down our throats.
Most of us will recall then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying that the Democrats had to pass the UCA and then tell us what was in it. They did just that in 2010 with no Republican votes in Congress, because it was that bad and they wanted no Republican input. They forced it down our throats.
In 2017, the Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA) is working its way through Congress and we know what’s in it, and sensible people like most of it. Some of the favorite features are no mandates, no penalties, repeal of taxes hidden in the UCA, and allowing the states to manage Medicaid. These features are the exact opposite of what’s in the UCA, which has failed miserably.
As night follows day, defenders of big government trotted out “Sesame Street’s” Big Bird as the poster child of President Trump’s terrible spending cuts.
The Daily Beast story on Trump’s budget proposal to cut taxpayer funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting features an ax-wielding man about to chop Big Bird’s head off. Politico has a story titled “Can Big Bird Survive Trump?” In a “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” segment mocking Trump’s budget, Donald Trump fires Big Bird.
These folks would do well to find a new mascot. Big Bird is big business, and doesn’t need taxpayer money to survive.
First, let’s take a look at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces “Sesame Street.”
Last year, Sesame Workshop had $121.6 million in revenues. Of that, $49.6 million came in distribution fees and royalties and $36.6 million in licensing of toys, games, clothing, food and such. In 2014, only 4% of its revenue came from government grants.
Despite being a taxpayer-supported nonprofit, Sesame Workshop pays its top executives fabulously well.
TRENTON — Democratic lawmakers in the Statehouse are considering major changes to New Jersey’s infrastructure spending program but are being met with resistance from their Republican colleagues.
The complex, 21-page bill (S3075) would enact broad amendments to the law passed last year authorizing the state’s Transportation Trust Fund to spend $2 billion per year on road, bridge and transit projects.
The new measure, sponsored by Senate President Stephen Sweeney, would strip a key transparency requirement, delay the creation of a panel to review the proposals and create a new system by which counties and towns could take over stalled projects. It would also allow the state to “bundle” several related projects, potentially speeding up environmental reviews and engineering work.
Introduced a week ago, the bill was quickly ushered through committee and was scheduled for a vote in the state Senate Monday, but never went on the board. Sweeney said he did not have enough support to call a vote without first sending the bill though a second reading. Such a predicament suggests fairly significant Republican opposition.
New Jersey senator tells SXSW that he is on front-lines in fight with fake news
BY: Brent Scher Follow @brentscher
March 11, 2017 5:00 am
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D.) described himself in a Friday interview at South By Southwest as a “determined purveyor of the truth,” but a Washington Free Beacon analysis finds that Booker has a long history of getting caught straying from reality.
Booker, who was introduced by his interviewer as “the incredible Cory Booker,” gave a speech to the crowd at the annual Austin tech conference, which will also hear from former Vice President Joe Biden over the weekend. His comment about being a “truth-teller,” however, came during an interview for Facebook Live, which can be viewed below.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, especially the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon — 266 blank pages about why Democrats deserve votes.
“Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide,” by Daily Wire managing editor Michael J. Knowles, published Feb. 8, features the image of a donkey covered by the Stars and Stripes.
“You can go cover-to-cover in about 15, 20 seconds,” the conservative journalist told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday about the ultimate in light reading.
“It took a very long time to research this book,” he said. “When I observed their record and reasons to vote for them — on reasons of economics or foreign policy or homeland security or civil rights and so on — I realized it was probably best to just leave all the pages blank.
“When I started researching the book and going through this exhaustive study process, at first I turned to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and it turned out they were deciding whether or not to include God in their party platform,” he said.
Ridgewood NJ, yesterday, President Donald Trump claimed on twitter that former President Obama had his phones tapped during the 2016 presidential election. This revelation released a firestorm of accusations including the claim that if the wire tapping is true this will be a bigger scandal than Watergate.
After months of Democrat run media attacks on the President claiming Russian involvement in the 2016 election, no hard evidence has as of yet come to light to prove the accusations.
But the Obama wire taps on Trump are a totally different matter and this is what we know so far :
1, The Intelligence Community -at the direction of President Obama- made a request to a FISA court for the NSA to spy on Donald Trump in June 2016. It was denied.
2, In October the Intelligence Community (NSA) -at the direction of President Obama- made a second request to the FISA court for the NSA to spy on Donald Trump. It was approved.
3. At around the same time (October), as the second request to FISA, (Def Sec) Ash Carter and (DNI) James Clapper tell President Obama to dump NSA Director Mike Rogers.
4. A week after the election, Mike Rogers makes a trip to Trump Tower without telling his superior, James Clapper; which brings about new calls (November media leaks to WaPo) for President Obama to dump Mike Rogers.
5, According to the Executive Order rule changes DNI James Clapper signed off on December 15th.
6. General Michael Flynn spoke to the Russian Ambassador on December 29th
Dec 29th 2016 – Obama announces sanctions on Russia
7, VERY IMPORTANT January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.
8. Jan 3rd 2017 – Loretta Lynch signs off on rule changes for phone taps.
9. Jan 12th 2017 – WaPo reports On Phone Calls Anonymous Intel Sources
10. Jan 15th 2017 – VP Pence appears on Face the nation.
11. Jan 20th 2017 – Inauguration
12. Jan 23rd 2017 – FBI reports nothing unlawful in content of Flynn call
13. Jan 26th 2017 – Sally Yates (acting DOJ) informs President Trump there might be a conflict between VP Pence’s stated TV version (was told by Flynn), and what Intel community communicate to Yates that Flynn actually expressed to Russia.
14, Jan 27th 2017 – White House counsel begins investigation to discrepancy.
15 January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties.
Occam’s Razor. NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers didn’t want to participate in the spying scheme (Clapper, Brennan, Etc.), which was the baseline for President Obama’s post presidency efforts to undermine Donald Trump and keep Trump from digging into the Obama labyrinth underlying his remaining loyalists. After the October spying operation went into effect, Rogers unknown loyalty was a risk to the Obama objective. 10 Days after the election Rogers travels to President-Elect Trump without notifying those who were involved in the intel scheme.
Did NSA Director Mike Rogers wait for a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) to be set up in Trump Tower, and then notify the President-elect he was being monitored by President Obama?
Here is my personal favorite, President Obama found his private moment of political candor caught by a live microphone on Monday as he told President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia that he would have “more flexibility” to negotiate on the delicate issue of missile defense after the November election. So what is really going on with the Democrats?
President Donald Trump branded Democrats “hypocrites” over calls for an investigation into his administration’s contacts with Russia, posting a photograph on the internet of one of the opposition party’s leaders sharing doughnuts and coffee with Vladimir Putin.
It came after half a dozen Trump officials and advisers were revealed to have met Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington, in the six months before the president took office.
Mr Trump responded by posting the picture on Twitter showing Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, smiling alongside Mr Putin during his trip to New York in 2003.
The president said: “We should start an immediate investigation into Senator Schumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!”
Ridgewood NJ, according to Rasmussen Reports most Americans favor screening out immigrants to this country who don’t share our values or a belief in our basic constitutional freedoms.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 61% of American Adults favor a proposal to keep out “those who do not support the U.S. Constitution or who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States would not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred for reasons of religion, race, gender or sexual orientation.” Just 19% oppose such a ban, while 21% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This is the wording President Trump used in his initial executive order temporarily freezing refugees into this country and visas for those from seven Middle Eastern and African countries until proper vetting procedures to screen out potential terrorists are in place. The question, however, did not identify Trump as the source of the proposal.
Last August when he first proposed it, 59% of voters supported candidate Trump’s temporary ban on immigration into the United States from “the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism” until the federal government improves its screening procedures. Thirty-two percent (32%) were opposed.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Americans believe that criminals should be prosecuted more severely if it can be proven that their crime was motived by the victim’s race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. A new high, this finding had previously been in the mid- to upper 40s in surveys since 2009. Twenty-eight percent (28%) still disagree, while 14% are undecided.
Sizable majorities in most demographic groups favor both the immigration litmus test and so-called hate crime prosecutions.
In an interesting side note Democrats, are less supportive of restricting immigrants with hateful ideologies than they are of prosecuting Americans for hate crimes. Republicans, on the other hand, view restrictions on newcomers to this country more favorably than prosecution of existing Americans.
Not surprising given the recent political rhetoric only 49% of Democrats favor keeping out of the country those who do not support the Constitution or who in engage in acts of bigotry or hatred for reasons of religion, race, gender or sexual orientation. But 65% of Democrats support prosecuting criminals more severely if it can be proven that their crime was motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion, nation origin or sexual orientation.
Conversely, 78% of Republicans favor the constitutional/hate crime litmus test for immigrants, but only 57% support prosecutions based on the same standards.
Just over half of Americans not affiliated with either major party favor both proposals. But 33% of unaffiliateds oppose hate crime prosecutions, compared to just 16% who are against the restrictions on new immigrants.
In the era of Trump, not much attention is being paid to the NJ Gubernatorial race right now, but for those who understand what happened last November with the Presidential election, where thousands of New Jersians who rarely voted and democrats who were tired of back-room deals and politics as usual, came out and voted for Donald Trump. This should give New Jersey residents some pause when considering options for the Democratic primary race. When Gov. Christie ran for his second term, he took NJ 60.3% to 38.2%. One of the arguments from the Democratic candidate was that the power boss/es did not come out for her for whatever reasons.
In this year’s Democratic primary, we have several candidates but some corrupt party bosses are crowning their favorite, even before a single “public” vote has been cast. If the residents of New Jersey do not stand up and fight for their right to select the candidate they want to represent them, then the only vote that counts and that has already been cast, is that of the Democratic Chairman for Passaic County. To better understand how control is maintained, we must understand that this chairman controls all the County agencies including the Board of Elections and Freeholders, Passaic County Technical Institute, Sheriff’s Department and Passaic County Community College just off the top of my head. Now to be fair, the departments are run by different staff and professionals but the key elected positions and in some cases executive jobs are mostly the result of political deals made by the Democratic chair. This was not done overnight. It took years for such a process to work, but now that all county and state elected officials are controlled by the Passaic County Democratic Chair, with the exception of Congressman Bill Pascrell who is focused influencing Trenton, have selected a candidate with no governing experience at all but with deep pockets to fund other candidates the chairman has in mind.
There is a growing evolution in Cory’s position on Israel which is becoming more aligned with the left wing of the Democratic party.
The hearing for American ambassador-designate to Israel David Friedman at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week was intense. The Democratic senators came after him hard, quoting every controversial thing he’s ever said. Mind you, they couldn’t seem to find one controversial thing he’s ever done. Because no one disputes that David is an upstanding, decent man who has had caused little to no controversy. But they called him out on harsh statements he made about those he felt were not sympathetic to Israel.
But of particular note was how harshly he was treated by my friend, Senator Cory Booker, who told David over and over again that although these were just words, words matter.
Kean Urges NJ Senate Democrats to Spend Less Time Criticizing Washington & More Time Working to Fix New Jersey
February 19,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean called on New Jersey Senate Democrats to spend less time criticizing Washington and more time working to fix problems here in New Jersey:
Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean called on Senate Democrats to stop working for headlines and start working for New Jersey. (SenateNJ.com)
“With Senate Democrats so focused on federal affairs in Washington, they’ve ignored work on reforms they have the power to advance in Trenton that could have a real impact on the lives of every New Jerseyan.
“They’ve planned votes to express opposition, but they haven’t planned any votes on cutting property taxes, nor have they planned votes on creating opportunities for students and job seekers, or on ethics reforms that would help to rebuild trust in our government institutions.
“Rather than work for headlines, Senate Democrats should start working for New Jersey.”
Senate Democrats blocked efforts by Senate Republicans to bring the following three bills up for a vote that would address New Jersey’s crisis of affordability and help to rebuild residents’ trust in government.
S-1557 (Beck) – Provides full forfeiture of pension of elected or appointed official convicted of any crime touching office. S-1888 (Doherty) – Establishes State Transportation Cost Analysis Task Force. S-2554 (Kyrillos) – Sets level for health care benefits; requires employee contributions; prohibits reimbursement of Medicare Part B; adds member to SHBP/SEHBP plan design committees; requires retirees to purchase health care through exchanges.
Pharma lobbyist Evan Morris helped Jersey Dems but also helped himself
The must-read story for the political class this week is “The Rise and Fall of a K Street Renegade” from the Wall Street Journal. In brutal, delicious detail—the $2,000 bottles of wine (buy one and the second is free!), the $300,000 mahogany speedboat called Mulligan (a golf term to go with the eight private golf club memberships)—Brody Mullins details the spectacular rise and tragic fall of pharma lobbyist Evan Morris. Morris lived a life that would make Jack Abramoff blush and the article suggests that consultants who participated in the kickback scheme could face “fraud or other charges,” with federal prosecutors already showing evidence to a grand jury.
The lobbyist himself, however, won’t be facing any charges. Morris, just 38 and with a bottle of Petrus by his side, shot himself in July 2015, just as Roche lawyers finally noticed massive amounts of money being paid to consultants who seemed to be lining Morris’ pockets in return.
Naturally, for a political story this juicy, there’s a Jersey angle. The story includes a passage in which Morris helps the Washington trade group Biotechnology Innovation Organization hire former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for its 2014 convention. She received $335,000 for her appearance and he arranged additional six-figure donations to the Clinton Foundation. But that largesse was simply a continuation of earlier Clinton-reflected glory, which brings us to Hudson County.
