>With only a few days left Voters of New Jersey must decide whether continue down the current disastrous path of failure or make a stand and look for some kind of a change . The current Governor Jon Corzine has failed in virtually every aspect of governance. Jon Corzines record or lack there of puts him and the State of New jersey at the very bottom of every reasonable measurement of health, environment, economic prosperity and happiness that exist.
While New Jersey ranks last in the nation with the worst business climate and has one of the largest state budget deficits . Voters are left holding the bag with the highest taxes of all kinds in the nation. With no place to go ,the state has seen a massive flight of tax payers leaving for lower tax less regulatory burden jurisdictions.
The slow decline of Wall Street as a financial center and the crisis driven collapse of the financial service sector has hit Northern New Jersey particularly hard, rocketing unemployment and depleting the already stretched thin tax base. While New Jersey and Wall Street have been in decline for some time whats remarkable is how the Corzine administration has managed to make things significantly worse so quickly .
Weather its building COAH housing in the middle of a collapsing real estate market or coercing more money from tax payers to fund the failed Abbott School district plan or failing to stand up to big labor Jon Corzine has simply not taken any of the big decisions necessary to manage the state.
While it took the New Jersey Media establishment until two weeks before the election to start talking about New Jersey’s shattered economy and get off the stupid coverage of bad driving records ,uncles in the “mafia” and enjoying over priced hotel rooms the fact of the matter is that above all else under the Corzine administration New Jersey has created almost NO private sector jobs. While there has been a huge increase of public sector jobs through political patronage ,when these employees retire they are the first to leave the state due to the states high level of taxation on pensions , another example of exporting capital out of the state.
Whats even more ridiculous is Corzine’s embracing of “Obamacare” which will levy huge health insurance taxes on the very union workers including Teachers “Cadillac” health plans that most support him. While Corzine simultaneously attacks his opponent Chris Christie for questioning all the onerous health insurance mandates that once again leave New Jersey with some of the highest costs and least choice in health insurance in the country.
We don’t buy the argument things cant get any worse after they have , but the first step to turing things around is to start by changing many of our elected officials and if they in turn fail then we can kick them out next time.
With all this in mind the Ridgewood blog endorses Chris Christie, yes the fat guy for Governor .
the Ridgewood Blog Staff
