Menendez economic plan - more of the same tripe

Robert Menendex has put his hat in the ring for amateur economist today. He has a three part plan to fix our economic problems. From the AP via amNewYork:

Menendez said three steps can help right away:

_ Help prevent foreclosures by enabling bankruptcy judges to modify loan terms so homeowners' primary residences are protected.

_ Create an emergency loan program to help jump-start small businesses having trouble finding credit.

_ Offer a second economic stimulus package to create jobs and prevent cuts in essential services by funding infrastructure projects and some form of unemployment insurance extension.

Let's analyse the Senator's plan. His first pillar is to extend foreclosures on bad loans. Does he not get the the toxic balance sheets caused by these loans is what is dragging down many firms? Did they not teach him any basics when he joined the Senate Banking Committee? Oh, that's right. He learned how to get money from the firms that caused this problem-Fannie and Freddie ($31,250). These bad loans need to be purged from the system. I am sorry that some people will be hurt and if he wants to help them, he should provide transition funding to find a rental place to live.

His emergency loan program makes a bit more sense if money is completely dried up for small business. I am not sure that is the case. I have seen no evidence that money was not available for sound business loans. But at least this is a good example of anticipatory planning and worthy.

His third example is to stimulate the economy through make-work jobs and government handouts. It reminds me of a recent road project near my house. The State of New Jersey and the Federal government teamed up to spend close to 21.5 million dollars to create a road that makes life slightly easiers for truckers at a rest stop near the turnpike and created a traffic jam by adding a jug handle. The project was frankly unneeded and unneccesary.

Obama's Supporters Think The Soprano State's Leaders Are Doing A Great Job

Want Yet Another Reason not to vote for an Obama-nation? How about the fact that his backers think New Jersey legislators are to be commended?

N.J. eco-group backs Obama, gives lawmakers high marks
2 senators, 8 congressmen get perfect scores

A state environmental advocacy group yesterday announced its endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president and gave New Jersey's two U.S. senators and eight of its 13 congressmen perfect scores for their environmental records.

Environment New Jersey based its report card on 10 votes between January 2007 and February 2008 that involved combating global warming, promoting clean energy, protecting air and water, and opposing offshore drilling, Executive Director Dena Mottola Jaborska said at a Statehouse news conference.

So if you're interested in the kinds of things that make Obama friends, it's business-unfriendly government. And half-measures aren't enough. You have to really hate business. For example:

Erica Elliott, Garrett's [Rep. Scott Garrett (R-5th Dist.)] spokeswoman, called the congressman's poor marks "an unfair representation," and issued a list of his environmentally-oriented advocacy. It includes his introduction of a bill to expand the National Wallkill Wildlife Refuge in Sussex, and his support of getting a toxic waste site in Ringwood re-listed on the Superfund National Priorities List.

Scott, of course, scored the lowest in the state, which may be good or bad, but I certainly can't tell from the negative picture painted by this environmentalist group. After all, look at who they like:

Voting environmentally friendly 100 percent of the time were U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, both Democrats, and Reps. Frank LoBiondo (R-2nd Dist.), Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.), Robert Andrews (D-1st Dist.), Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.), Bill Pascrell (D-8th Dist.), Steve Rothman (D-9th Dist.), Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.) and Albio Sires (D-13th Dist.).

80% or them are Democrats, of course, including some of our worst, and I have to suspect that LoBiondo and Smith are RINOs; especially when you consider who also scored low alongside Rep. Garrett: Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.), and Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-7th Dist.). You don't get a Democrat until you tie him with another Republican for a 69% score. Clearly "bipartisan":

"Being green in the Garden State is a bipartisan issue and we applaud our delegation's environmental heroes, especially the leadership from Sen. Menendez and Sen. Lautenberg," Mottola Jaborska said.

Sounds like a lot of Jaborska to me.

NJ Residents Support Offshore Drilling!

As Emporor's Menendez and Lautenberg continue to fiddle at the expense of New Jersey's taxpayers, a new poll sheds some light on what the people in our state think about their policies on energy.

From MyCentralJersey.com:

With the cost of gasoline hovering near $4 a gallon, a majority of New Jersey residents say they would support drilling for oil off the Jersey coast, according to a Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll released today.


Fifty-six percent said they would favor drilling for oil or natural gas off the Jersey Shore, while 36 percent opposed the idea.

So, slightly more that 1/3 oppose drilling offshore but Senator Menendez can send me a letter speaking down to me on energy policy that contained nothing of any substance that would help people. But, out politicians say, "let them eat cake!".

New Jersey's political leaders have traditionally fought against offshore oil drilling, and they said they would continue to do so, in spite of the poll results.

"New Jersey's coastline is the lifeblood of our economy and a fragile environmental treasure that helps shape our way of life, and the governor intends to fight any attempt to jeopardize it," said Sean Darcy, spokesman for Gov. Corzine.

As we continue to say at NJ Tax Revolution, until we threw this entire pack of bought-and-paid-for politicians and replace them with a representative government of, by and for the people of New Jersey, we will continue to feel the pain of their incompetence.

Read the entire article here.

Menendez doesn't believe in checking on illegals!

From the Corner on the National Review:

Making an Offer We Can't Refuse [Mark Krikorian]

New Jersey's junior Democratic wiseguy, Sen. Bob Menendez, has put a hold on legislation to re-authorize the E-Verify program, which enables employers to determine whether new hires are legal. He's holding this successful enforcement effort hostage to increased guestworker visas. Here's what a reader sent me this week about the value of the E-Verify program to his firm:
I work for a temporary staffing firm that uses E-verify on every candidate that comes through the door. It has helped out tremendously in screening out people who are not legal to work in the US. It is easy to use and instant in its results. Whenever we do have someone come through that E-Verify says needs to go to DHS or SSA those people 9 out of 10 times do not return because they know that they have been caught. We put up signs that state that we use E-Verify on every candidate and that has had a dramatic effect on our fail rate. When the illegal folks see it they just turn around and walk out the door. It has been a very good program for us.

I recently sent a correspondence to Senator Menendez office regarding energy policy. I received both email and snail mail correspondence telling me that while he respected my position he already had his own and would not be entertaining any more ideas that weren't his. I would bet that more than 70 percent of New Jersey voters would have agreed with me in regard to the energy issue and gas prices. And I GUARANTEE you that more that 80 percent of legal New Jersey voters would disagree with Senator Menendez opposition to the simple checking of illegals when they apply for jobs.

Lies and Taxes - Liberals lie and we pay!

This morning I read an excellent blog entry on Powerline that discussed "who pays the taxes". If you have never read Powerline, it is an excellent blog and the one most famous for taking down Dan Rather and his bogus hit job on President Bush during the last presidential election cycle. The net of theis post today is this:

1991
Top 1%
Reported 13% of the income
Paid 24.6% of the taxes
Top 5%
Reported 26.8% of the income
Paid 43.4% of the taxes
Bottom 50%
Reported 15.1% of the income
Paid 5.5% of the taxes

2007(from the Wall Street Journal)
Top 1%
Paid > 40% of the taxes
Top 50%
Paid 97% of the taxes
Bottom 50%
Paid 3% of the taxes

The first point here is that the media constantly talks about Bush giving tax breaks to his rich buddies. It seems to me that we have a far greater problem with Corzine and Obama giving people's hard earned money to individuals who are not holding up their end of society's joint burden. Liberals lie-We pay!

And for your information, the median taxpayer last year earned $31,000. So, it you make this number or above (this represents most of the working class of New Jersey) you are paying 97% of the taxes.

So the next time you hear John Corzine or Barack Obama tell you that you are not paying your fair share, remember these numbers. It's easy to blame the other guy and say he should pay. It is much harder to stand up and say "what's fair is fair for all of us".

Read the Powerline post here.

Democrats Don't Really Believe in Conservation

Suppose you have a limited resource. More is available, but you'd have to take measures that have have a risk (though only a risk) of ill effects to get it. It would take some time for the good effects to occur -- the world doesn't react instantaneously to a policy change -- but everyone in your state depends on it, and currently available alternatives are minimal and have not shown signs of increasing radically.

If you're a New Jersey Democrat and the resource is oil, you don't care: the stuff is staying where it is.

Drilling also would yield little oil, take at least a decade to bear fruit and do nothing to bring down gasoline prices, said U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

"It makes little or no sense to most of us to be drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf anywhere, but particularly in the Atlantic and the mid-Atlantic. ... in specific," Gov. Jon S. Corzine said. "I think it's a nonstarter strategy."

"What we need to do is be moving to alternative energies and most importantly, conservation," he said.

But oil isn't the only precious resource that could be extracted from New Jersey. Remember, the second speaker here is the same Governor Corzine who wanted to spend a dozen years octupling our tolls. (A gallon of gas would cost $32 if we increased its prices proportionally.) That would have taken a decade to extract the money from us, it would have damaging effects on our economic climate, and it would have done nothing to bring down the price of government.

Yet "conservation" of this precious and limited resource, our money, is the last thing on their minds.

And consider: speculation helps drive the price of gasoline. Drilling now could shift markets. The speculation that comes from drilling would help New Jersey. But speculation about tax increases would hurt New Jersey by driving business and people away. You only have to look one state over to see proof, where a pro-business governor is helping a neighboring state drain our people and our jobs.

So yes, Democrats and Republicans alike, on the demand side, let's conserve both oil and money. Drive less (especially in gas guzzlers if you don't need them) and spend less (especially in cases where there's no immediate social benefit). And on the supply side, let's make more of each, oil and money, available for the public to use.

Why New Jersey is Ridiculous

My wife sent me this, so consider her our guest blogger for the day.

I signed an online petition and sent an email to my senator telling him I wanted him to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by (what a thought!) using our own oil. Turns out that senator is Robert Menendez, and somehow in this electronic transaction I was put on a mailing list to get his e-newsletter. It contained a speech he gave on the floor of the Senate that was all about why increased oil drilling is wrong, so I read it, knowing my email petition would probably fall on deaf ears.

Of course, since I've been reading The Soprano State I kind of know that those ears don't actually listen to me, the voter, even if I, the voter, were a Democrat, because all our NJ politicians, it seems, are the products of political machines. The only machine I run with any efficiency is the washing machine, so obviously what I think hardly matters--forget that I pay high property taxes, and forget that I pay NJ to pay "farmers" like Christie Whitman not to not-farm the land they're not-farming while not paying much in property taxes, forget that my husband's income goes to help pay all those pensions that government folks are racking up at two or three a piece, or the no-show jobs in--well, everywhere in NJ, and....

Truly, one should not read The Soprano State if you wish to live in this state and not go insane with fury.

So anyway, I read his little speech, and it sounded like a fairly well-polished presentation for a seventh grader whose parent wanted to make sure little Robbie got the environmental message across--it spat out all the typical unthinking anti-oil, poor environment talking points with all the melodrama of an overconfident twelve-yr-old who doesn't know how little he knows. In short, he exhorted whoever he was supposedly talking to NOT to drill because:

1. Drilling would not increase the oil supply for at least ten years, so there's no point

2. Drilling is evil because it will--not could, but will--ruin our Jersey beaches, as well as the beaches of east Florida, Virginia, North Carolina--he actually left out a lot of states between Jersey and Florida, so I'm wondering how strong geography is in NJ schools--by oil spills.

3. Oil companies have leases and aren't using them, so why give them more area to explore?

4. Alternative fuels and increased fuel efficiency is the way to go.

Really, the guy's strategy seems to be that drilling is bad because it will ruin our beaches, if we do it it won't help prices now anyway, and hey, even if more drilling was the answer those big bad oil companies should just drill where we want there to be oil and find it there. But since they won't, because oil companies must be as stupid as people who pay NJ taxes, then obviously the answer is alternative fuels and efficiency.

In my soon-to-be mailed response to the lovely letter I was sent by my senator (I'm sorry, but I looked at the nice paper and pretty letterhead and thought, "Dude, you had my email address, that's so much cheaper than what mailing this pretty letter cost!") expressing regret that we disagreed on oil drilling, I indicated that I felt that the reason we disagreed was that much of his thinking on the matter is mistaken. It's OK, Senator, in NJ we don't expect much perfection in our elected officials anyway, so I'm willing to educate you with what little a NJ housewife and mother knows....

Take #1--the "psychological impact" as everyone's calling it, of increasing US oil production, will mean the price will go down even if it takes time for the supply to increase. Certainly it will be better than relying on #4, which is just wishful thinking via legislation.

#2 So, despite the fact that some pretty huge hurricanes of recent memory hit the Gulf of Mexico and yet west Florida seems to not be awash in oil from the rigs in the Gulf, we're to assume that we'll all be wiping ducks with paper towels once drilling starts off the East Coast.

#3 Yeah, obviously if they have leases, there must be oil in them, and no, say, lawsuits or regulations make it tough economically to explore and find the oil that might or might not be there in a timely fashion. There have been enough articles on this topic recently that if you need me to debunk the "empty oil field" myth, you aren't reading enough as it is and probably won't finish what I write, so I leave you to Google or not.

#4: alternative fuels and fuel efficiency, neither of which currently exist or help to any meaningful extent, somehow is better than that drilling that won't help for ten years, even though there's absolutely no reason to think it will make a difference in ten years, either, or at all. "Investing in clean, renewable energy" he says--Wow, cool, we have that? Then why have we been mucking around with all this messy oil and gas? Bring it on! What, oh, we need to spend government money to come up with some clean, renewable energy....Hmmm, sounds an awful lot like those wonderful cures stem-cell research was supposed to yield--didn't we Jersians give the governor a clear message about the wisdom of "investing" state money in that one? And weren't we right?

Yes, his plug on how Japan's cars are all required to have mileage of 35 or 350 or some high number of miles per gallon sounds great.

Only, have you noticed how many SUVs are out there on our roads? Why is that? I drive a 15 passenger van our of necessity because I have seven kids, and yet I look around and see SUVs as wide and often as long as my van. What do they have going for them, aside from the manly-factor? Safety and room. Safety and room declines as mileage increases. High mileage, after all, means small and light, small and light means easily smushed...We who live with Jersey drivers don't like "easily smushed" carrying our kids. We like "five star crash test rating" and "Stow N Go seating."

Has the senator been to a baby shower in Jersey recently? Well, even in this day and age these are mostly women's affairs, so perhaps he should be forgiven for his ignorance. In the lovely suburbs, these are soup to nuts affairs, in which the new mother has the SUV on the registry right between the high chair, car seat, and "travel system" (AKA stroller)--in fact, these days you can even get the fabric of the former to match the latter three items, along with the play-n-go and bedding and wall decals. After all, what's even safer than a cute little Volvo? Something ten times heavier than a Volvo that can drive right over and crush it without waking the baby, and that would be the biggest darn SUV that one can put gas into five times a day. Does the senator really think that the same women that will buy special sleepers because the latest SIDS superstition is not using blankets, have video monitors to watch the baby 25/7, buy organic baby food to avoid toxins, heed all warnings to use sunscreen or special SPF fabrics to protect Baby from the sun, and get high chairs with five-point harnesses and five-star crash-test ratings, will entrust their precious cargo to a light tin can that gets 35 miles to the gallon? Maybe a minivan, fine, those are fairly safe and have the bonus of not having to climb up eight feet with Baby in your arms to get to the car seat, but the best minivan mileage out there does no better than 26 mpg and that one is so compact as to barely fit the matching play-n-go. We have a Turnpike to drive, we have a whole continent to ride around on, and he wants us to be like Japan? What kind of driving do they have to do? Do they even have room for our toll booths?

What does the good senator think will happen when we "invest" lots of (taxpayer) money into alternative fuel options and require all cars to get 35 miles to the gallon, and then the cost of oil stays high, our "invested" money is gone, and those light little cars lead to an increase in accident fatalities? Even a $500 Britax car seat can't work a miracle when the car it's in is efficient but "easily smushed."

I think, perhaps, we Garden State moms will be pretty pissed the first time one of us weeps, "If I only I had been driving our Windstar..."

I think, perhaps, our Senator should get a clue. Oh, and some more oil. Drill, open the Strategic Oil Reserve and dump some out on the market, whatever, but don't tell us what cars to put our children in just so you can stand on anti-US-oil principle for, as we've seen, no good reason.

Roberts at it again! Suburbs beware!!!!!

I just read one of the best descriptions of the property tax mess summarized in one article. In the article "A Property Tax Disaster", Michael Patrick Carroll (on Politicker.com)discussed the looming danger non-city taxpayers face:

Every legislator claims to favor property tax relief, but by their actions shall you know them. The present majority gave us the fraudulent "millionaires’ tax", rebates with borrowed money, etc. But none of these rookie efforts compares with the threat posed by A-500.

Therein, Speaker Roberts and a cadre of urban legislators draw a bead on suburban taxpayers. Should this proposal pass – and be coupled with even more coercive COAH regulations – it could mean property tax increases in the hundreds of millions, of billions, of dollars.

Lest we feel that this article is overstating the case, it clearly lays out the rationale for believing that we may be close to an acceleration of the disaster already propagated upon taxpayers in the past 6 years. The setup is COAH dictating to a local district that they need more low income housing to the tune of 1,000 units (which would be paired with 4,000 market rate units).

5,000 units; let’s assume 1 kid per unit = 5,000 new students. That’s, what, 10 new schools? Not being an Abbott district, the entire cost of that construction would fall on the shoulders of the existing taxpayers. Let’s be generous and assume that each unit pays $7,000 in annual property taxes. Bridgewater presently spends (roughly) $12,200 per kid, which means that present taxpayers will see their taxes increase by $26 million (5000 new kids at $5,200 deficit each), not including the costs of school construction.

But wait, there’s more. If the Abbott folks are correct – students from poor families need spending of roughly $25,000 per year to compensate for their poverty – that makes the deficit for 1000 of those kids roughly $18000 per annum. Oh, and the state contributes a princely 8% of the costs of educating a child in Bridgewater.

This development, then, would be an unmitigated property tax disaster for the local residents.

This entire situation as some level starts to make you sad. As the gas situation gets worse, my commuting cost continue to skyrocket and even food costs are going out of site, the luxury of living in the State of New Jersey is becoming less and less affordable. And the fact that the urban districts in this state will continue to look at people like me and those that read this blog as a pack of rubes ripe for the fleecing. Speaker Roberts is frankly just chief grafter in this pack. Carroll has some ideas in this regard:

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can address the housing problem by addressing the school funding problem: give each child an equal, state funded voucher.

If each kid came with a voucher, municipal opposition to housing construction would abate, because they’d be assets, not liabilities. A fair number of them would attend private schools, making their parents’ property tax payments pure municipal profit. And those who attend public schools would, now, pay their own way. The need for tens of billions of new construction spending on Abbott district schools would vanish. The incentive – and the ability – for Newark or Keansburg to lavish excessive salaries or reward employees with sweetheart deals would evaporate.

In short, kids, their parents, and the property taxpayers would benefit massively. Only those with a financial stake in the present, hugely expensive and horribly unfair system would suffer.

The funny thing here is that once the regular citizens of this state realize what is going on, it will be far too late. "Leaders" like Lautenberg, Menendez, Roberts and Kean Jr are all vested in a system that doesn't serve the state . And only after New Jersey starts to resemble Michigan will they get it. The productive people in this state are leaving in the 10's of thousands every year. One day, the teachers union may wake up and realize that not only isn't there a golden egg, the goose left long ago.

Read this excellent article here.