I’m sure many of you have seen a list like this, usually labeled “Stages of a Project”

• Phase 1: Uncritical acceptance.
• Phase 2: Wild enthusiasm.
• Phase 3: Dejected disillusionment.
• Phase 4: Total confusion.
• Phase 5: Search for the guilty.
• Phase 6: Punishment of the innocent.
• Phase 7: Promotion of nonparticipants.

Well, when it comes to the New Jersey Legislature Big Property Tax Special Session, we’re already up to Phase 3.

After last Friday’s kick-off speech to the NJ legislature, today governor Jon Corzine let it be known what his expectations are for property tax relief. Basically, it’s forget about it. His most optimistic spin is that instead of property taxes doubling every ten years, they’ll double every 15 to 17 years. So much for bold leadership.

In today’s article from AP writer Tom Hester Corzine: Don’t expect tax savings soon, the governor tells all that he doesn’t expect this session to cut anyone’s property taxes. Instead, you’ll might get changes that may get cost saving years from now, but no guarantee of any savings. He actually said spending might have increase in the short term in order to get savings long term.

So that’s the best we can expect out of this special session. Lots of talk about savings, but not actually getting the savings, only a promise of savings some time in the future if towns consolidate services, if unions agree to concessions, if towns combine schools, blah, blah, blah.

Republicans should let it be known that if this is nothing but a charade, then they should seriously think about not even showing up. As it is, democrats are only giving them two of the six seats on each committee.

If this article is accurate, you can forget about any changes to the school funding system which is a big contributor to the property tax crisis. Committee to focus on school funding talks about all the reasons you can’t reform the school funding formula instead of ways to change it. Scrap the Abbott funding system?? “It would have to challenge the state Supreme Court to do so.” Gee, heaven forbid that we challenge the state Supreme Court, right?? Until the courts are removed from the battle, any fix to the school funding problem and the property tax crisis will be short lived.

So we’re already up to Phase 3. My guess in a short while we’ll be at phase 4 “Total confusion” and then jump right into Phase 5, “Search for the guilty”.

The lastest Fairleigh Dickinson University/Public Mind poll for the NJ Senate race still has it close, with democrat Bob Menendez leading republican Tom Kean Jr by 3% (43% to 40%). [link].

I still don’t think anyone is really paying attention to this race. The poll was of 675 randomly selected registered NJ voters. FDU asked them this question: “Later this year there will be an election for the US Senator representing New Jersey…. Do you happen to know the names of the two major party candidates?” Two thirds of these registered voters, 64% couldn’t name either candidate.

Haven’t the Star-Ledger, the Bergen Record and Asbury Park Press written at least one article about Kean and Menendez sometime this past year?? This also proves something I’ve said over the years, that the NJ voting public is perhaps the most apathetic ill-informed electorate in America.

This also highlights something many political observers have said since the rise of the internet blogger. Political bloggers do not represent the voting public. NJ political bloggers have been debating the Kean-Menendez race for months, yet this poll shows only 22% of democrats and 21% of republican voters in this poll can name both candidates. Very interesting.

1. Went down the shore.
2. Three swim meets in 8 days.
3. Following the Michael Strahan - Jean Strahan divorce saga.
4. Loaded a new anti-virus program on my PC which then made the computer come to a grinding halt.
5. Just got Digital IO Cable TV, so now I can watch “Die Hard” and “Armageddon” every night. (By the way, get ready for Die Hard 4 coming in 2007.)
6. Still trying to recover emotionally from the New Jersey state government shutdown.
7. Two power outages, one for almost an hour.
8. The wife asked me to find her Social Security card, and I spent two nights looking through boxes of papers/receipts/invoices/statements until I found it.
9. Sudoku addiction.

The Strategic Vision polling company has a bunch of poll results out from 800 likely New Jersey voters, taken over the July 7-9 weekend. See results here.

The race between democrat Bob Menendez and republican Tom Kean Jr. for the U.S. Senate seat is still close, with Menendez holding a 43% to 37% lead. This is in line with the last two polls which showed a 5-6% difference. Over 40% of the voters are undecided when asked whether they have a favorable or unfavorable view of either candidate. I don’t think people are really paying attention at this point.

The poll also had questions about the hot topic national issues. 63% of poll respondents favor a wall along the US-Mexico border. When asked whether they favor a withdrawl of US troops from Iraq with 6 months, a slight majority said no (46% to 44%). And 51% approve of George Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism.

And on the topic of New Jersey, bad news for governor Jon Corzine. While the mainstream media is still patting the governor on the back for his winning performance in the 2006 budget stalemate, the voters are not as enthused. Corzine has a approval percentage of 38% and a disapproval number of 44%. President Bush has an approval percentage of 35%, though his disapproval number is 57%. And on the question of whether the state is on the right track, the poll showed 21% think New Jersey is headed in the right direction, and 64% said wrong direction. The poll was taken last weekend, when the budget deal was being finalized.

Finally they asked republicans and democrats to pick their favorite for the 2008 presidential race. New Jersey democrats still love Hillary. She was picked by 34%. Al Gore was picked by 16% and John Edwards was selected by 14%. The republican favorite is still Rudy Giuliani (47%) and John McCain in second at 30%.

The wife and kids did a bit of shopping this afternoon, and they stopped at Staples and took advantage of the Back to School specials.

What’s that?? Back to school specials?? Didn’t they just get out of school, and wasn’t 4th of July just last week??

Yes, “Back to School” now gets an extended sales period. I guess if they can start Christmas sales two months before Christmas, it’s never too soon to start “Back to School” sales. I realize for office supply stores the “Back to School” time is probably when they make a huge percentage of their yearly sales, but starting the sale two weeks after school is out is really pushing it.

While New Jersey taxpayers are easily the biggest losers in the recently passed NJ state budget, a close second has to be the states colleges and universities. Many have noted that most of the “budget cuts” proposed by Jon Corzine are phony cuts. The spending in this budget is nearly 10% higher than last years budget. One area which did receive real cuts, as in less money this year than last, was our higher education institutions.

An article over at InsideHigherEd.com Restoration but Little Relief notes that Corzine’s original budget plan had almost $300 million in education cuts, and the final budget approved by the legislature restored about half of that amount. Well, the governor used his line item veto powers to eliminate millions of that spending. He left untouched over $200 million in “christmas tree” items, pork barrel spending and earmarks stuffed into the budget bill at the last minute. Business as usual come budget time in Trenton.

His original budget called for elimating the Outstanding Scholars Recruitment Program, a $4.3 million dollar program that uses scholarship money to keep high performing NJ high schoolers in the state. The legislature put the money back in, but Corzine elimated the whole thing. Candidate Corzine made a big deal during the campaign about ending the brain drain, the tendency of NJ high school students to go out of state. But that was only a campaign pledge. And I think he also made a big deal about “affordability”, but I guess that wasn’t a campaign promise. It was only a campaign pledge. Or a “goal”.

You could make a case that NJ colleges and universities need to cut costs, and that this budget forces them to look for savings. By then how do you explain UMDNJ?? Looking at the list of items that were stricken from the budget via the line item veto you’ll see that the scandal scarred University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey got to keep over $21 million in last minute earmarked money.

How come state college tuition in the rest of the country is so cheap compared to New Jersey colleges?? There may even be states were out of state tuition for New Jersey students is less than instate tuition for that same student at a Jersey college.

Italy wins the World Cup!! I guess the rest of the world is excited.

If the World Cup is such a big deal, how come the trophy is so lame?? I always see the winning team passing around this tiny trophy, kissing it and making a big show out of it. The World Cup trophy looks like it’s a foot and a half tall. It is perhaps the most unimpressive trophy in all of sports. Friday night bowling leagues have better looking trophies.

This makes me truly appreciate the beauty and majesty of the best trophy in sports … the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup!! There is no more spectacular a scene in sports then when the captain of the winning team hoists the Stanley Cup over his head in a two handed maneuver and skates around the rink to a cheering wild crowd. That’s what sports is all about!!

The mainstream media is falling all over itself declaring NJ governor Jon Corzine a “winner” in the just ended budget stalemate. I must be missing something. If you define “winning” as making the state less affordable due to higher taxes and more spending, then he’s a winner. I was going to rant further, but Enlighten-NewJersey covered all my main points.

On making the state more affordable, this budget is a loser. All the other Corzine campaign promises, like universal health care, universal pre-school, universal college, universal stem cell research, affordability, etc were ignored by the victorious governor. And property tax relief?? First it was a 10% increase in rebates, then no increase and the final product is cuts in the Homestead program.

In my opinion, there are only three winners.

WINNERS

State workers unions - Union president Carla Katz must be wonder what she has done to earn all she has gotten in the past year. No union givebacks, no layoffs. Her former “boyfriend” now the governor. The union workers got paid for the time of the shutdown. Governor Corzine gave the unions a gift that will last years, a taped speech to protesting workers “We will fight for a fair contract!!” Next year is contract negotiation time, who the hell thinks the governor won’t just roll over and give them whatever they want.

Zulima Farber - The news about the state attorney general, using a state car and state tropper driver, rushing to the scene of her boyfriends road side incident with police and saving him from traffic tickets, having his car impounded and perhaps a license suspension, would normally be enough to sink a government official. Luckily for her, the news of the disgusting incident was released on June 30th, just as the stalemate hit the news and drowned out any coverage of Farber’s abuse of power. Corzine has appointed a special prosecutor to look into the case, but that will take months.

Senate president Richard Codey - All the trouble was in the Assembly. Codey never had to worry about losing too many democrat votes in the Senate, and he even had two republicans turncoats to give him enough votes to complete the mugging of taxpayers. His biggest problem was getting enough pork barrel spending, called “Christmas tree” grants in Trenton, into the budget. Mission Accomplished.

I could give a long list of losers, but the only one that matters is the beleagured NJ taxpayer. Sales tax increases, hundreds of millions in new taxes. Since nothing was done to reduce spending, expect the same fight next year, when the state is predicting another $2.5 billion in revenue shortfall. And nothing but promises of relief from the highest property taxes in the nation.

The upcoming special session on property taxes is now supposed to be the salvation for beseiged homeowners. If the same dynamic occurs then as now, expect the state workers unions to keep Corzine and Trenton democrats on a leash. No pension reforms or reductions in payroll costs. Fighting over who get the half percent of the sales tax hike. And kicking the can down the road by proposing a constitutional convention sometime later this decade. So the taxpayer gets to lose again.

NJ Governor Jon Corzine has signed an executive order this morning, basically allowing the state government to re-open after a weeklong shutdown. Everyone can relax now, the casinos are open.

Rather than lump the sales tax hike in with the budget, allowing legislators to vote for the entire budget, Assembly speaker Joe Roberts had separate votes for each tax increase. I’m not sure if that is what is required by rules, but it made it very difficult for the sales tax hike. It nearly failed. The first vote was 39-38, and the bill needed 41 votes to pass. Democrats Joe Vas and John Wisniewski were holding off voting but then at the last minute cast the votes to put it over the top.

One republican, Frank Blee who represents the taxpayers casinos voted for the tax hike. All other republicans voted against it. Details here.

Nine democrats voted against the sales tax hike. The biggest name is the darling of the New Jersey liberal/progressive bloggers Linda Stender. Stender is challenging incumbent Mike Ferguson for the US House of representatives in the 7th district. Does she know something the mainstream media and the liberal/progressives don’t know?? Maybe she realizes that the Corzine tax and spend budget and the sales tax hike are electoral killers??

Just caught a bit of the New Jersey budget news on NJN. The big topic is how are they going to make up the $550 million dollars that was supposed to go to Jon Corzine’s tax and spend budget. Instead that money, half of one percent of the sales tax increase is supposed to go towards property tax relief.

The democrats aren’t calling them tax increases. Instead, the tax increases are being labeled “revenue raisers”. I haven’t heard too much about the spending increases. Of course, liberal/progressives don’t call them spending increases, they call them “investments”.

The biggest revenue raising/tax increases are with the sales tax. In addition to the increase from 6% to 7%, they are expanding the sales tax to include magazines, periodicals, tanning salons, tattoo parlors, landscaping services, carpet cleaning, etc. Surtaxes on HMO premiums. Cigarette tax increases. Plus there’s a 4% surcharge on businesses, surcharges on furs and luxury cars, a 1% tax on commercial real estate transfers, rental car tax hikes. I couldn’t write them down, they were just too many coming too fast. It was like that speed talking guy from the old Federal Express commercials.

And the spending cuts?? What do you expect, they’re cutting the homestead property tax rebates. Senior citizens were supposed to get a 10% increase, but that may be cancelled. And for any family with income over $70,000 the homestead rebate would be cut $100. Yes, to a democrat anyone making over $70,000 is rich.

Oh, and earlier today I mentioned gimmicks like assuming more revenue from better collection practices. They’re counting on finding $60 million that way.

I think these are proposals only, the assembly budget committee is still meeting as we speak. Not sure who is going to win the debates on the revenue raisers, but I know who will lose. The taxpayers.

A headline from the Daily Record:

Bush declares NJ a disaster area

My first thought was it was due to the budget stalemate and the subsequent government shutdown. But, no, it has to do with all the flooding along the Delaware River during the last week in June. The ruling applies to Hunterdon, Mercer, Sussex, and Warren counties.

Still not a lot of information out of Trenton on what the final budget compromise looks like. Lots of celebrating and backslapping. If you read the papers, the biggest crisis in the state over the past week was the casino shutdown. I guess that’s the #1 purpose of NJ state government, to regulate gambling.

The Bergen Record has the latest info in Sales tax rising to 7%; state government to reopen.

New taxes being discussed are a tax on summer and other short term rentals, a luxury tax on furs, a business surtax, income tax surcharge, etc. I’m guessing we’ll see at least a couple of gimmicks just to get a budget out of committee. Like assuming $50 million by better tax enforcement, stuff like that.

And as far as that promise of half the sales tax hike going towards property tax relief, Republican leader Leonard Lance has the proper, skeptical attitude: “Sales and income taxes have been raised in the past with the promise of property tax relief. History demonstrates that those promises can never be fulfilled. Instead taxpayers have been stuck with higher income, sales and property taxes …”

As I mentioned yesterday, there is supposed to be a 24 hour gap between when a bill comes out of committee and when the whole legislature can vote on it, so technically if they don’t have a budget until noon, then it won’t be until Saturday that the state will be back in business. The article says they may waive that requirement. I’d rather they actually read the damn thing before they vote on it. This is the kind of situation when elected officials insert pork barrel spending and earmarks, and it looks like that will be jammed through at the last minute. I’m sure Sharpe James, Albio Sires and Wayne Bryant are spending this morning getting a few extra million in garbage trucks, basketball courts and bike paths for their districts.

The Star-Ledger is already picking winners and losers. I think just about everyone came out a loser, including the governor. I’ll come up with my own list later this weekend.

APP reports in BREAKING NEWS: New Jersey reaches budget deal after six-day shutdown that the budget compromise includes the sales tax hike from 6% to 7%.

That tax increase will raise an estimated $1.1 billion. According to NJ assembly speaker Joe Roberts, the deal dedicates “… half of the $1.1 billion from the tax increase to property tax relief in the current budget and puts the other half into an escrow fund for possible property tax use after a ballot question to voters this fall.”

I’m still a bit confused. Jon Corzine’s tax and spend $31 billion budget used the entire $1.1 billion from the sales tax hike. So where is the additional money coming from?? This report from Reuters notes that Corzine said “… more reductions were agreed that he did not detail.” Ah, yes, the devil is in the details. I doubt if they actually cut over a billion dollars worth of spending from the budget. Watch your wallets on this one.

NJ.com and the APP both reporting that NJ governor Jon Corzine, senate president Richard Codey and assembly speaker Joe Roberts have agreed to a budget compromise that may have enough votes to pass. The state of New Jersey has been without a budget for 6 days causing a partial shutdown of state government.

The supposed deal clincher was an agreement that the sales tax would increase from 6% to 7%, but half of the increase would be constitutionally dedicated to property tax relief. Of course, the voters still need to approve any change to the constitution, so until then the money goes to the state treasury to spend as they please. And this “compromise” could be null and void after the special session on property taxes scheduled for later this summer. This is a phoney compromise, barely worth the napkin it was written on, but it gives both sides cover.

My understanding is once a budget comes out of committee, they have to wait 24 hours for a vote by the full body. That gives them a day to actually read the bill before they vote on it.

Roberts had been proposing a bunch of other tax increases in place of the sales tax hike. Assembly democrats were talking about a 1% income tax surcharge and increasing a state disability tax, amongst other taxes. Not sure where that plan is now, there is no mention in the current media reports.

If you take half the sales tax hike off the table, that would mean the Corzine would have to cut about $550 million in spending from his 30 billion dollar tax and spend budget. I haven’t read anything about Corzine agreeing to additional cuts.

My guess is this is a compromise only democrats could love. Corzine wanted a sales tax hike. Roberts wanted income tax hikes and other tax increases. The compromise?? Corzine and Roberts get their way. We’ll get the sales tax hikes and the Roberts package of tax increases.

So New Jersey governor Jon Corzine has ordered a special session of the legislature to meet on the fourth of July, and then meet every day afterwards until a budget is passed (Corzine calls full session of Legislature). The state has been in a partial shutdown since Saturday due to the lack of a budget. Wednesday is when the stuff will hit the fan, when the casinos will go dark.

The newspapers are reporting that Corzine is hoping that a “compromise” offered by Senate president Richard Codey will be the silver bullet to end the stalemate. Corzine wants the sales tax to go up, and use the extra billion dollars to feed the ever growing government monster. Codey’s “compromise” is to give Corzine the sales tax hike from 6 percent to 7 percent but to promise that half of the billion dollars will go towards future property tax relief. Codey must have been laughing pretty hard when he first came up with that idea. He remembers the last time we had a tax increase that was dedicated to property tax relief. That was 2004 when then NJ governor Jim McGreevey passed the “millionaire’s tax”, over a billion dollars via an income tax hike for everyone making over $500,000. “Every dollar of this tax increase will be dedicated to property tax relief” said the now disgraced former governor. Of course, that lasted only a year, until then acting governor Richard Codey took the extra billion bucks and spent it while giving property tax payers the shaft. Codey is trying the same fast one. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on us.

Assembly speaker Joe Roberts is refusing to budge on his plan, which is to balance the budget via other tax hikes and some additional cuts. The other rumor in the news is that Corzine is trying to engineer a coup d’etat, whereby via a majority vote of the eighty members of the assembly Joe Roberts is replaced as assembly speaker by a democrat more to Corzine’s liking. It would most likely take some republican votes to get a majority. I will lose all respect for the NJ GOP if they help Corzine on this one.

This is probably the top political story in the nation, and it’s getting a lot of play in newspapers and national TV. That’s good, because it shines a light on how perhaps one of the richest states in the nation is now a financial basket case. A Wall Street Journal editorial notes that thanks to the Bush economic boom, nearly every other state is enjoying budget surpluses. The exceptions are the states whalloped by Katrina (Louisiana and Mississippi) California and New Jersey. And while democrat apologists like to rationalize tax increases by saying the wealthy will pay it, the statistics show that many are not. Instead, they are fleeing the state. The figure being thrown about is that 60,000 more residents left New Jersey than have come in since 2004 (see story here}. Many of the migrants are retirees, cashing in their inflated home equities and moving to North Carolina where the property taxes are low. Others are families looking for cheaper places to live. Even with the shrinking population, state and local government continues to grow. And the state budget is spiralling out of control.

I still think this will be over with in a week. Afterwards comes the hard part, the special session on property tax relief. If the net result of this shutdown is the sales tax goes up, my guess is the population will be ticked off, and if the session on property tax relief does nothing but propose a constitutional convention, then someone is going to bear the brunt of the voter anger. Hopefully it will be Bob Menendez.

This story about New Jersey state attorney general Zulima Farber interfering in a local police matter to get motor vehicle tickets voided for her “boy friend” really gets my blood boiling.

Jon Corzine’s people must have known the story looked really bad, especially after three+ years of Jim McGreevey and after he made a big deal about how his administration would be the most ethical to ever set foot in Trenton. This story was released on a Friday, the day most politicians release stories they want to go away. And it was a Friday before a holiday weekend and during the big news on the budget fight.

To put it bluntly, Zulima Farber is a serial traffic law violator. She has had her driving license suspended three time in the past 25 years and compiled over a dozen moving violations. A bench warrant was issued for her arrest for unpaid tickets. She has paid surcharges and twice attended those classes to have points taken off your license. Read more here. When republicans during her confirmation hearing brought up her lousy driving record she made a joke about it.

Seems like this past Memorial Day, police in Fairview had a road block up to check for seat belt violations. They stopped a gentleman and found he had an unregistered vehicle and his license was suspended. The gentleman, Mr. Goore, told the cops his girlfriend was attorney general Zulima Farber, and he then called Ms. Farber who showed up minutes later in her official state car with NJ State trooper as chauffer. Oh, and the mayor of Fairview was there too. Normally the police would impound the car and have it towed. Instead, magically, Mr. Goore’s tickets were voided and the police allowed him to drive the car home.

Zulima played dumb, saying she didn’t have anything to do with her boyfriend getting special treatment. Driving while on the revoked list and having an unregistered vehicle are serious offenses in Jersey, but I guess those laws don’t apply to the politically connected.

An investigation is underway. The Fairview cop who was at the scene and ultimately tore up the tickets has a lawyer and his statement was: “Some things are said without words being spoken, and it was pretty clear to the officer what was directed to him.” The Bergen County prosecutor is running the preliminary investigation of the incident, but he has a slight conflict of interest since he reports to Ms. Farber. Corzine has asked his chief counsel to handle the investigation.

Republicans in Trenton, lead by Senators Cardinale and Kyrillos are demanding Farber resign from office if it is found she used her influence to make the tickets go away (Some want Farber to quit after going to boyfriend’s traffic stop). This is the first test of Jon Corzine’s promise that his administration would be of the highest ethical standards. The ball is in his court.

We got back home Saturday after 6 days and 5 nights in beautiful sunny Wildwood. We did the usual activities. Beach, boardwalk, miniature golf, pool, bikes, the tram car, dining and ice cream. The weather was actually pretty good. A bit of rain for two days but otherwise very nice. Thursday and Friday were hot, with Friday being the most spectacular day, temperatures of 85 degrees and clear skies.

This year I took Daniel and Allison to one of the waterparks for the first time. Wildwood has three, and Raging Waters is the best one. Went to a new restaurant, Russo’s, and ordered mussels and linguini and they must have given me about 60 or 70 mussels. Mmmm … And we caught the fireworks show for the first time. Every Friday at 10:30PM during the summer they shoot off fireworks on the beach. Very nice show.

Much has been written about the condo development craze in Wildwood and it appears to me there is overdevelopment. Lots of FOR SALE and FOR RENT signs and still hundreds more being built. Plus there are plans to break ground on several condominium towers of 10+ floors each. Good luck getting a half million bucks each for those.

Allison was playing one of those claw games on the Boardwalk where you try to pluck a prize by moving the claw and dropping it onto the loot. She was all excited when she won a pillow with a cute bunny on it. It was a Playboy bunny, which I told her was not appropriate for a 9 year old though she didn’t understand why. I told her to give it to my brother, Uncle Rich, when he comes down to our house in a few weeks.

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Liliana, Daniel and Allison lounging about on the beach.

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Liliana and Daniel showing off the buff beach bods. Well, sort of buff.

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Allison and Daniel taking a break during the morning bike trek.

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Liliana lounging around at the pool.

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Mom and the kids ready to begin the nightly boardwalk trek.

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Ice cream at Cool Scoops in North Wildwood.

It’s two days since the constitutional deadline for a New Jersey state budget, so we are almost 48 hours into a partial government shutdown. The Star-Ledger is reporting that NJ governor Jon Corzine met on Sunday with democrats from the senate and assembly but as of 9PM there was no agreement. With the holiday and the weekend, the real shutdown action won’t be starting until Wednesday. There will be about 44,000 state workers on furlough, and another 35,000 working without pay, though everyone assumes they will get paid if when governor Corzine and the state legislature agree on a spending plan.

The 44,000 state workers on furlough are considered “non-essential” workers. The Star-Ledger has a department by department breakdown of essential versus non-essential workers. The department of labor has 3700 employees, but only 200 are essential. My favorite department, the department of state, has 191 employees and 3 of them are essential. They must be Nina Wells and her two drivers.

I just checked over at Google News and there are over 750 news stories about the budget stalemate. They seem to be concentrating about the impact on the Big Three of state sponsored gambling: the lottery, the casinos and the horse racing tracks. All are shut down or will be in the next day or two without an approved budget. The state will lose over $2 million a day just from casino taxes, and the lack of lottery sales will hurt small mom and pop convenience stores. People who stop in to buy lottery tickets also buy milk, cigarettes and stuff.

As we all know, this fight is basically over the sales tax hike. Governor Corzine is committed to the never ending growth of the government as you can see by his refusal to budge on his budget and his “I’m fighting for you!!” speech to protesting state government workers.

The folks at Enlighten-NewJersey point out that the problem isn’t that the state isn’t getting enough revenue. In five years, property taxes are up 40%, income tax revenue up 71%, sales tax revenue up 25%. The problem is out of control spending.

Assembly and senate democrats are making life difficult for the rookie governor, but they are also aware that many democrats, particularly those in south Jersey, are in districts that could easily swing back to the republicans if there is a tax revolt. They have also correctly noted that hiking the sales tax now to feed the budget monster will make it harder to use sales tax revenue as part of the solution to the property tax crisis.

The Star-Ledger and the Bergen Record are taking sides, and they’re both sticking up for Corzine. Friday’s Star-Ledger editorial was Grow up and sign the budget says the newspaper that has never met a tax increase it didn’t like. The budget they want signed is the Corzine budget. The Record editorial The shutdown begins warns of a voter backlash about the shutdown, but seems to think there won’t be any backlash at all about the Corzine tax and spend budget.

Why is it that you have fun on your vaction, yet it always feels great when you pull into the driveway and walk into the front door of your house??

We just got back from Wildwood a few hours ago. Right now I’m trying to get everything unpacked. Dirty clothes into the laundry room, unused clothes back into the kids’ rooms. Beach chairs and boogie boards back into the garage once all the sand is shaken off.

I was staying on top of the New Jersey state news via newspapers and NJN. No budget?? Government shutdown?? I’m not upset. I think it’s great. New Jersey tax payers will now learn about “essential” and “non-essential” state employees, and they’ll find out that there are thousands of the later. The fight over the sales tax hike is a good fight, even if it passes.