Cooling Off Corzine

By Alan Caruba

New Orleans and Louisiana had Hurricane Katrina that wrought much devastation, but New Jersey has Jon Corzine, a governor who has managed to do what some thought was impossible, increase the indebtedness of a State that was broke when he took office.

Corzine is a multi-millionaire who grew bored counting his cash at Goldman Sachs and decided to buy the job of New Jersey’s Senator. Then he grew bored with that job and decided to buy the job of Governor. He has the support of the State’s civil service unions and presumably his ex-girlfriend who until recently was the president of one of those unions. That’s a whole other story worthy of the National Enquirer.

Like all good, brain-dead Democrats, Corzine is hot for global warming. New Jersey could be under six feet of snow and Corzine would be on television lamenting the awful effects of global warming.

He pushed through a bill called the Global Warming Response Act. Signed last year, the intent of this bill is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. The bill assumes (a) there is global warming and (b) there is some way that, all by itself, New Jersey can stop it.

Let me stipulate at this point that (a) there is no global warming. The Earth has been in a cooling cycle for a decade and all scientific indicators suggest it is going to get a lot colder, not warmer. (b) The Governor’s mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) is idiotic because CO2 plays virtually no role whatever in warming and is known to increase several hundred years after any significant climate change. It constitutes 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere.

This is not only bad science, but it is a surefire way to drive even more business out of the Garden State, if that is possible. With the highest property taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes among a handful of States that apparently hate the notion of any commerce within their borders, New Jersey would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a mass exodus of business and industry. It already has the distinction of having more people moving out of the State than moving in.

So kudos to New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Doherty who on August 14 called on Gov. Corzine to hold off proposing any new regulations associated with the Global Warming Response Act and urged the legislature to repeal the act when it resumes business after Labor Day.

You can read the whole story about Assemblyman Doherty’s efforts at:
http://www.politickernj.com/bguhl/22291/doherty-new-scientific-data-justifies-repealing-global-warming-response-act

It should be noted that the Maryland General Assembly not long ago rejected proposals for its own Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008. The bill had the support of its Democrat Governor Martin O’Malley and of course received wide support from the state’s environmental lunatics.

What people fail to grasp about these and other efforts alleged to reduce global warming is that they will find themselves trapped by a spiraling series of regulations that would punish them for running any kind of business involving “greenhouse gas emissions”; which is to say every business other than the individual whittling of wooden candlestick holders. It is a form of hidden taxation. It is a killer of business enterprises of any scale, small to large.

The nation’s governors, with a few exceptions, are all competing to be the next Al Gore. Those who propose global warming legislation should be run out of their state on a rail. In New Jersey, we’ll settle for returning Corzine to the private sector where he can only waste his own money, not ours.

Editor’s Note: Caruba is a lifelong resident of New Jersey who loves the State.