New Jersey Budget might appeal to Saddam, but not to voters
July 1, 2003: New Jersey politicians have finally reached an agreement on the budget impasse that many feared would be unsolvable, and lead to a “government shutdown”. To the surprise of no one except perhaps the media apologists, their solution was that universally appealing to politicians: Tax and tax some more.
It is no coincidence that an agreement was reached just in time, because much of the past week’s events have been flagrant posturing. To their disgrace, so-called GOP opposition to the Governor’s multi-million dollar tax hikes evaporated like a fart in the wind with nary an explanation. The Governor was quoted in one newspaper as being pleased with this, as no doubt he should be. This is the Democrat’s version of “compromise”: the opposition caving in to every one of their demands for higher taxes.
The taxes that would have cost the most and been paid most frequently by taxpayers were barely opposed from the outset; towards the end, the only thing that Republican “opposition” leaders opposed was a 90 cent tax on your monthly phone bill and a tax on real estate sales that, though large, would rarely be paid; who sells their home on a regular basis?
Meanwhile, the other tax and fee hikes, including a massive tobacco tax which increases the price of smokes by over $2.00, shot through the process with nary a word of objection. Why was the 90 cents a month a big deal, but these taxes, which could cost up to dozens if not hundreds of dollars a week, no problem? Essentially, the GOP “opposition” appears to be in league with Gov. McGrevious and his tax and spend plunder-mad crew: their opposition to taxes is in direct inverted proportion to those taxes impact on New Jersey citizens.
So the NJ budget is approved – even though it actually contains an increase in overall spending, as well as an increase in taxes. Some things never change. Maybe in a few decades citizens will have had enough of this to demand a regime change in Trenton and take up their pitch forks. Meanwhile, one can only sit back and watch as the state economy – and one’s own wallets – head for the proverbial train wreck of increased plunder by the government.
As President Bush talks of bringing democratic values and representative government to a now Saddam-free Iraq, it is this writer’s most fervent hope he does not employ the example of “democracy” that has so long run amok in New Jersey. Perhaps Saddam Hussein might take to the Guv’s vision of an expanding government that robs people to solve its own spendthrift woes, but the Iraqis would undoubtedly wonder what, if any, change had taken place since Hussein left Baghdad.
