New Jersey's Conservative Renaissance

By Alan Caruba

It was quite a sight. The Republican Governor of New Jersey strode into the cavernous legislative chamber in the Trenton statehouse, filled mostly with Democrats, and proceeded to receive one round of applause after another.

Chris Christie is rotund in a way that suggests you wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark ally. Before becoming Governor in 2011, as the U.S. District Attorney he had amassed an impressive record of putting bribe-taking legislators in jail, along with a long list of other criminals.

Moreover, he arrived on the scene to put an end to former Governor Jon Corzine’s fiscal destruction of the State; a feat he accomplished with MF Global, the investment firm that made headlines when it collapsed with unaccounted billions in “lost” customer funds.

New Jerseyeans were sick of governors who made promises they did not keep. From 1994 to 2001, Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, had held the office until resigning to become President Bush’s director of the Environmental Protection Agency. She was quickly fired from the post.

She was followed by a series of interim governors until James E. McGreevey was elected in 2002. McGreevey, a Democrat, discovered he was a homosexual after his appointment of a boyfriend to a high paying state job was exposed. He resigned, was replaced by a congenial old “pol”, Richard Codey from 2004 to 2006, when Corzine was elected.

In the course of all this, New Jersey, thanks to massive mismanagement became a State famed for having the highest tax rates in the nation. People and businesses had began to flee, reducing its tax base. By fiscal year 2011, the State had a record deficit of $11 billion.

Gov. Christie literally taught a largely Democrat legislature conservative principles. He held town halls all over the State and became famous for his confrontational style. YouTube videos of his slap-downs were viewed by millions of people. They liked what they saw.

In his State of the State speech, delivered on Tuesday, January 17, you would think he was addressing a Republican legislature. He was interrupted with applause and got a standing ovation at the end of it.

“We had spent too much as a State. We had lived beyond our means. And, by trying to tax our way out of it, previous governors and legislators had left New Jersey in 50th place—dead last among the States—in the total tax burden it placed on our citizens. We had the highest tax rate in the nation, the highest unemployment rate in a quarter century, and the largest budget deficit per person of any State in the Union.”

How blunt is that? Little wonder he was talked of as a possible candidate for President in 2012. Gov. Christie decided to finish his first term and has since become a vocal supporter for Mitt Romney.

The real miracle was the way he worked with Democrats to turn the State’s fiscal problems around. “We cut 375 programs in that first fiscal year, saved two billion dollars for the taxpayers and brought Jon Corzine’s budget into balance.” Together, they cut spending in every department of State government.

Then, together, they put a cap on property taxes that had risen 70% in the decade that preceded his election. The legislature imposed a 2% cap on property tax increases. They did the same for arbitration awards. “We must never forget that the root cause of rising property taxes is always excessive government spending.”

His speech turned to a variety of changes he wants. He already has the results to justify them. “Since our administration came into office, New Jersey has added over 60,000 new private sector jobs. Remember, in 2009, the State had lost 117,000 jobs.”

Gov. Christie made national news when he proposed reducing the State income tax rates for every New Jerseyean. “In every tax bracket. By 10%, across the board.”

If the next two years are any indication of the last two, New Jersey’s lawmakers will institute education reforms to loosen the grip of its powerful teacher’s union while improving the quality of education and providing a financial option for parents who want to move their children to better performing or private schools.

He proposed mandatory treatment “for every non-violent offender with a drug problem in New Jersey, not just a select few.” This would empty out the jails and prisons. “We will require you to get treatment. Your life has value. Every one of God’s creations can be redeemed. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Gov. Christie knows what ails America. “Our economy suffocated under the wet blanket of over-taxation, over-spending, over-borrowing and over-regulation.”

To this writer, a lifelong resident, born and bred in New Jersey, it was very impressive to listen to the stark opposite of the policies advocated by previous governors and the President of the United States. It was pure conservatism, presented without apologies because none were needed. The results have already demonstrated that it works.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

It's Bear and Deer Hunt Season in New Jersey

By Alan Caruba

The last time there was an effort to suspend a bear hunt in New Jersey, Jon Corzine was Governor and Lisa Jackson, the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was the head of the State’s Department of Environmental Protection. They both opposed the hunt.

Corzine served from 2006 to 2010. It was a bad idea because the bear population had surged and became an even larger problem for folks in the northern counties. Gov. Chris Christie had promised to reinstate the bear hunt when he ran for office. Previously there had been bear hunts in 2003 and 2005. A legal challenge thwarted a hunt in 2007.

As a recent Wall Street Journal article noted, “New Jersey could be considered a bear’s paradise. It has mild winters and an abundance of acorns, berries, hickory nuts and other species favorites.” We might also mention bird feeders and easily accessed garbage cans. Those in bear country tend not to feed the birds and have garbage cans that can survive a WMD.

If you don’t think the sport of hunting is not popular in America, it’s worth noting that of the estimated 7,000 permits issued for this year’s hunt, some ten percent were snapped up by those from out-of-state and the first of some 200 bears killed on Monday, December 5, was taken by Robert Melber of Apache Junction, Arizona. He hadn’t been in the woods of the Delaware Water Gap for more than a half hour before he bagged one.

Need it be said that an environmental group, the Animal Protection League of New Jersey had filed and lost a court case to stop the hunt? Two dozen or so bear-huggers showed up to protest at a weighing station in Franklin on Monday.

To put this in perspective, the Wall Street Journal reported that “New Jersey’s bear population was 3,278 last year, up from 1,447 in 2003 according to DEP estimates.” It further noted that “Bears can live into their 20s and have an average of three cubs per litter, with a female able to give birth to 21 babies over her lifetime.” You do the math.

The deer hunting season coincides with the bear hunt and, in the county of Essex, hunters bagged 339 deer. To put this in perspective, Essex’s county seat is Newark and it is wall-to-wall suburban communities separated in some parts by two large reservation areas, a 2,049-acre South Mountain Reservation and a 408-acre Eagle Rock Reservation. I live within a two minute drive of the former.

There were so many deer in the South Mountain Reservation at one point they were literally killing the ecology. Rarely mentioned is the fact that deer are major vectors for Lyme disease, spread by infected deer ticks. When the ticks migrate they can infect humans enjoying the nature preserve. The county now has annual hunts and over the last four years the program has culled an estimated 1,089 deer.

Deer pose another problem as well. The NJ Department of Transportation says that more than 4,700 deer were killed by vehicles in the first week of November when the males are in rut and looking for love. Last year’s total was about 6,000.

It always strikes me as absurd that animal lovers probably think nothing of having steak or lamb for dinner or taking the family out to a local McDonald’s for a juicy hamburger. These are the same people who look forward to eating a big turkey on Thanksgiving. They no doubt eat a lot of chicken throughout the year. The vegans get a pass as they have to make do with tofu.

Suffice to say that the bear and deer hunters have probably saved more than a few lives and helped to keep the State’s wildlife population to a reasonable level. As is always the case, the animal rights crowd is utterly indifferent to the safety of the State’s human population because facts and logic have nothing to do with their wailing about how “inhumane” the hunts are in their view.

I hope one of the hunters sends a nice bear steak to Gov. Christie. And no, it does not take like chicken. It tastes more like pork.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Gov. Christie Should Not Get in the GOP Race

By Alan Caruba

Does anybody recall the frenzy surrounding the question of whether Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and Fox News host of his own show, would toss his hat in the ring and seek the GOP nomination?

That same frenzy is occurring now regarding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and, as a lifelong citizen of the Garden State, I would bet a bushel basket of its excellent tomatoes that he will not.

Why? Because he says he will not and I believe him.

There are, however, a lot of other very good reasons why he won’t plunge into the political maelstrom that is our system of selecting a presidential candidate.

If Gov. Christie were to announce as a candidate for the GOP nomination his brief record while Governor would come under intense examination and it would reveal that he is not the conservative savior that many perceive.

Putting aside his great rhetorical gifts, his no-nonsense approach to answering questions in town hall meetings and interviews, his saving sense of humor, and other attributes that have generated the appeals from some party insiders and members of the public, Christie is conservative-light.

Candidate Herman Cain, speaking on Fox News Sunday, has done his homework. According to an October 3 article in the Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest circulation daily newspaper, Cain noted that “Christie is far too liberal on gun control, climate change, same-sex unions, and immigration to satisfy Republican voters.”

Nor has his record as Governor gone unnoticed on the left. “Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland blasted Christie’s stewardship of New Jersey’s economy. He cited the state’s unemployment rate, among the highest in the country at 9.4 percent, and a series of downgrades to New Jersey’s bond ratings this year from the top credit rating agencies.”

None of these economic factors, unfairly attributed to Gov. Christie or not, bodes well for a run for the presidential candidate nomination. When one adds in the lateness of such an effort and the difficulties of raising huge sums of money for the campaign it suggests that such a move would not turn out well for him.

There is no question that Gov. Christie, a former U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey, has earned the gratitude of the state’s citizens for taking on the civil service unions that have bled it dry with cushy contracts featuring handsome pension and healthcare plans. Beyond that, however, many Garden State conservatives have winced to see his decisions in other areas of concern.

Many applauded his decision to withdraw the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that would have required that a percentage of energy serving New Jerseyeans come from “renewable” sources, wind and solar power. However, in August Gov. Christie signed an act that would facilitate offshore wind power for use in the state. Had he signed an act to permit offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, the state and the nation would have been far better served. Wind power would only increase the cost of electricity.

Moreover, Gov. Christie is on record saying that climate change is “impacting our state.” This is a position that is 180 degrees from a town hall meeting the previous year when he declared himself skeptical that climate change is the result of human activity. He was right then, but has been getting very bad advice from his science advisors since then.

As a former U.S. District Attorney, it should come as no surprise that he supports a ban on assault weapons. Despite opposing a law that limits the purchase of hand guns to one per month, his newly appointed state Attorney General took an aggressive legal position to defend the former governor’s law. Gov. Christie favors gun control, a position that will not find favor among lawful gun owners and sportsmen.

Gov. Christie is squishy on the issue of illegal immigration, hewing to the liberal line that those who enter the nation illegally are simply “undocumented.” He regards state-by-state laws regarding illegal immigrants to be “a federal problem” that needs a “federal fix…I am not really comfortable with state enforcement having a big role.” Suffice to say that New Jersey, like other states, has a big illegal immigrant population.

If the Governor were to hit the campaign trail with a record like this, the other candidates would have a field day and many conservative voters would have second thoughts.

In sum, he needs to review and reinforce his conservative credentials and the 2012 race is far too soon to do that. Selfishly, I want him to remain the Governor and to serve a second term. Realistically, I think he would be torn to shreds if he got in now.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Editor's Note: On Oct 4, Gov. Christie announced he will not get in the race.

As Easy as ABC, Anybody But Corzine

By Alan Caruba

As a lifetime resident of New Jersey, the rumor circulating that President Obama may appoint Jon Corzine, its former Governor, to replace Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, is frightening beyond description.

Corzine was a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs with Hank Paulson. Paulson later served as President Bush’s last Secretary of the Treasury. At this point in our nation’s history, it’s worth noting that a succession of Goldman Sachs alumni in that office has helped to drive the nation into a financial ditch.

When Geithner was under consideration for his present position, there was criticism that he was too closely allied with Wall Street in general and Goldman Sachs in particular, a major beneficiary of the AIG bailout in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Geithner has presided over the first credit rating downgrade in the nation’s history and should most certainly resign or be fired, but the appointment of Corzine would just continue the disaster that passes for the nation’s financial policies.

Corzine was pushed out of Goldman Sachs in a 1999 palace coup said to have been led by Paulson. He left with millions and began to spend some of them to get himself elected a U.S. Senator from New Jersey. While there, he sponsored 127 bills of which 120 never made it out of committee and only one of which was successfully enacted.

Apparently bored with the pace of life in the Senate, he ran for Governor of New Jersey in 2005, again using his millions to essentially buy the office. His former wife, Joanne Doughtery, his high school sweetheart, famously said that Corzine “let his family down and he’ll probably let New Jersey down, too.”

In a Democrat, blue State, Corzine was defeated by Republican Chris Christie after voters grew tired of him for a variety of reasons, not all of which were political..

A romantic relationship with Carla Katz, president of the Communications Workers of America contributed to the voter’s loss of confidence. They had lived together from 2002 to 2004 and the breakup included a $6 million settlement for Katz. They stayed close enough to raise concerns about Corzine’s political decisions. In March 2009 ethical charges against Katz resulted in her being expelled from her job for having allegedly spent $138,000 of union funds on personal and political expenses.

Corzine also was damaged tangentially by a major corruption probe that led, in July 2009, to the arrests of 44 New Jersey officials, of which 43 were Democrats. His handling of the event began to erode his approval ratings.

While serving as Governor, New Jersey was ranked as the worst business climate of any state by the Tax Foundation. New Jersey had the highest tax burden in the nation. Given President Obama’s and the Congressional Democrat’s demand for higher taxes, appointing Corzine to be the next Secretary of the Treasury would simply be more of the same.

As Governor, Corzine proposed eliminating New Jersey’s property tax rebates that provided some relief for homeowners and, in June 2008, he cut $382.5 million from the program. Earlier, in 2006, he ran into resistance from Democrats in the State Assembly when he wanted to raise the State’s sales tax. He shut down the State for ten days until a compromise was worked out that led to the increase, but allocated half the revenue to provide direct property tax relief.

How likely is it that Corzine could be nominated for Secretary of Treasury? On August 5th, longtime observer of politics in the Garden State, Bob Ingle, a reporter for the Asbury Park Press, noted that Corzine, despite his earlier support for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, has hosted a fund-raiser for Obama.

“It was no secret Corzine wanted to be Obama’s Treasury Secretary even when he was Governor,” said Ingle, who deemed it “sweet revenge” for the earlier appointment of Paulson.

Pollster Patrick Murray, a professor of political science at Monmouth (NJ) University, “thinks ego and pride are at work” wrote Ingle who quoted Murray saying, “This guy goes not want to end his political career being tagged as a failure.”

That’s not a reason to replace Geithner with Corzine. The nation has already suffered greatly from Obama’s ego and pride.

Putting aside his success at Goldman Sachs until he was pushed out, Corzine should be the last person to be put in charge of the nation’s Treasury Department at this critical time. He is too allied with labor, likes tax increases, and is liberal to the core.

Addendum, August 7
POLITICO Breaking News

-------------------------------------------------
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will stay at his post through the fall and the reelection campaign, a source close to the matter told POLITICO.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Chris Christie's Jersey Attitude

By Alan Caruba

It’s the curse of having sat through too many local town council meetings and too many speeches by politicians; it’s taking notes as they speak because you want to keep what’s said fresh in mind. Regular folks don’t do this, but anyone who has spent any time as a reporter will tell you it is a hard habit to break.

So, on Tuesday, January 11, I found myself taking notes as New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, gave his first constitutionally required State of the State speech. He will be back in February with a speech about his budget. It was delivered to the members of the New Jersey Senate and Assembly, mostly Democrats; all of whom had learned in the previous year that the Governor was a jolly, fat buzz-saw who just loves a good fight.

Gov. Christie was preceded by two of the worst Governors in current times, Jim McGreevey who discovered he was gay after he put his boyfriend on the payroll and the whispers in the statehouse became a raging storm. He was followed by Jon Corzine, a limousine liberal. Together they increased taxes and fees 115 times in eight years! In a single term in office, Corzine raised taxes $9 billion!

I am New Jersey born and bred. I have traveled to nearly every other State in the Union with the exception of Alaska, Maine and Vermont. Do you really think I would ever leave a state that was the fictional home of Tony Soprano and the actual birthplace of Frank Sinatra? You gotta be kidding me! Forgetaboutit!

Two days after Gov. Christie took office, the state treasurer informed him that Corzine had left him and everyone else in New Jersey with a $2.2 billion deficit! Did he immediately raise taxes to cover it? No. Instead, he and the treasurer scoured the budget and found $2.2 billion in projected spending. What he did next stunned a state legislature almost as profligate as California’s. He impounded the $2.2 billion by executive order.

Goodbye old world order in New Jersey. Hello Chris Christie new world order in the Garden State. As Gov. Christie put it, to create real change, “you’ve got to show a little attitude.” If there is one thing New Jerseyans have and love, it is attitude!

So it should come as no surprise that, when Gov. Christie turned 18 and was eligible to vote, he voted for Ronald Reagan. In a talk in November at a Goldwater Institute event, he recalled how “then-Governor Reagan spoke to me. He talked about smaller, less intrusive government that was going to open up our country to exploit the entrepreneurial spirit that has always built and made it a unique place.”

“He talked about less spending, so that less money would come to Washington and more money would stay with the people who knew how to spend it best. He talked about a government that didn’t regulate every little bit and piece of your life.”

“And he talked about lowering taxes so that people could feel the economic freedom that comes from not having a government in your pocket every 15 minutes.”

Christie’s State of the State speech reflected the values that Ronald Reagan espoused and, in this centennial year of his birth, I think he would have loved every word of it. “I believe in a culture of truth,” said Gov. Christie. The voters liked what they heard and happily replaced Corzine with a man who had gained recognition by putting corrupt New Jersey politicians in jail.

On Tuesday Gov. Christie told the assembled legislators, “We cannot spend money we don’t have.” Do I dare hope that Chris Christie will someday run for President?

The latter part of his State of the State speech was a dissection of how retrograde the state teacher’s union is and why the state’s pension and benefits system had to be changed because it was hideously under-funded by billions and because he wanted to ensure that policemen, firemen, and other civil service employees would actually have a pension when they retired.

Last year he spoke to an initially hostile meeting of firefighters. By the time he got through they all crowded around him, eager to shake his hand and get their picture taken with him. Christie is no ordinary politician. “This isn’t about politics,” he said, “This is about their lives.”

He is passionate about reforming the school system in New Jersey and would, one suspects, take delight in crushing a teacher’s union that exists for nothing other than political power. Last year, when he urged New Jersey voters to demand 4% to 5% pay cuts, 59% of the school budgets were defeated.

Ronald Reagan stood six foot, two inches tall. He had literally been a movie star! Chris Christie is short. He is fat. And he is completely comfortable with that. He is a good public speaker and when he speaks, you know he really means what he says.

He’s not some cookie-cutter version of Ronald Reagan, his inspiration. He is Gov. Chris Christie and New Jersey is loving every minute of it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

NJ Gov. Christie for President!

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An Ill Wind (Power) in New Jersey

By Alan Caruba

Since his election, New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie has been remarkably successful in dealing with the Democrat controlled state legislature and has rocketed to national fame for simply being the real deal when it comes to conservative politics and policies.

That is, until he signed a bill on August 19 that one columnist described as touting “the idea of raising your electric rates to place windmills in the ocean off New Jersey.” In this case the windmill would be 75 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty! None of the residents of Union Beach want a windmill no matter how far out in the Atlantic it’s built.

So-called alternative or renewable energy is always far more expensive than the kind generated by nuclear or coal-fired plants.

It is always more unreliable insofar as the wind does not blow all the time, thus requiring a traditional plant to be online to back up those ugly insults to the natural beauty of land and sea when they fail to feed the grid.

Few people know that, even without wind, the windmills must be kept turning, using electricity to avoid mechanical failures.

Gov. Christie signed a bill that would put the windmill so far out at sea it could not be seen from the land, but that ignores the fact that it will cost taxpayers $7 million to construct it, half of which will be paid by a federal grant, and the result will be an increase in consumer rates. Why would any sensible person want to spend that kind of money on a single windmill?

Part of the answer is something called the Renewable Electricity Standards (RES) that the U.S. Senate is contemplating. As Dr. S. Fred Singer noted in an August American Thinker.com commentary, “It would force electric utilities to generate a large and increasing percentage of their power from wind and solar—rising to 15% by 2021.” In other words, the U.S. Senate is about to select winners and losers in the energy marketplace by requiring utilities to use expensive and inefficient wind and solar power.

If wind and solar were so wonderful, why can’t either of these energy producers even exist without a federal mandate?

Even worse, these two bogus forms of energy exist on the basis of a complete lie; that they reduce carbon dioxide emissions and thus will save the planet from global warming. Only there never was a threat of global warming and the planet has been in a natural cooling cycle for a decade!

The whole wind and solar business is a gigantic rip-off and will inevitably cause consumer rates to rise for all the reasons cited above. Just as Obamacare is already causing insurance rates to skyrocket, so will the implementation of Renewable Electricity Standards.

In France, Germany and Italy they are already in the process of backing away from subsidizing this idiotic form of energy production.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), only 700 MW (megawatts) were added to the nation’s electricity grid in the second quarter of 2010 and wind power installation to date this year has dropped by 57% and 71% from 2008 and 2009 levels.

Little wonder AWEA is “calling on Congress with an urgent appeal to put in place a strong national renewable electricity standard to spur demand for renewable energy...”

Spur demand? That’s not going to happen without the coercion of federal intervention.

No one except the manufacturers and owners of the windmills like windmills. This includes environmentalists! In June environmental and watchdog groups filed a lawsuit in Boston to stop a windmill farm off Cape Cod charging that it would violate federal law by endangering protected migratory birds. The suit says that “science was manipulated and suppressed for political reasons.”

The entire alternative, renewable, and green energy scam is based on “science” that is utterly false, beginning with the claim that CO2 has any effect on the climate and that emissions must be reduced.

I do not know how long it will take to ultimately return this nation to the sanity of producing electricity with cheap, abundant coal, with natural gas or, best of all, with nuclear plants, but unless we do that the nation can look forward to rolling brownouts and blackouts because the population keeps growing and the need for more electricity increases with them.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Up to Our Elbows in Bears

By Alan Caruba

You know there’s a problem when The Wall Street Journal devotes an article to the fact that there are too many bears in New Jersey. That’s what it did over the July 4th weekend, noting that there have been “1,250 sightings” thus far this year.

Some of those sightings were up close and personal with one of the estimated 5,000 bears in the Garden State. In a scene from “The Sopranos”, Tony is in the backyard of his home when he spots a black bear ambling by. Fortunately for Tony, he had an arsenal in the house to deal with the intruder.

People in the northwestern part of the State, near the Pennsylvania and New York borders are accustomed to seeing bears, but this year they have been spotted in all twenty-one counties, right on down the Delaware border. That only means one thing; the competition for food among the increased bear population is forcing them to wander far and wide.

In Kinnelon a couple discovered a mother and two cubs living under their porch this past April and, in May, police tried shooing away a bear that had entered a house for food. When it returned a few minutes later, they shot it. In Hopewell Township a bear was seen walking along, appropriately, Bear Tavern Road.

Typically, in New Jersey where everything is considered worthy of regulation, when it comes to wildlife, there’s a Fish and Game Council and there’s also the Department of Environmental Protection. The Fish and Game folks understandably think that a bear hunt every so often is a good idea.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In 2006 a bear hunt had been scheduled to address the growing bear population and the rise in reported sightings and incidents. It was cancelled by the then-DEP commissioner, Lisa Jackson. If the name sounds familiar, it is because she has since been tapped by Barack Obama to be the present administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A bear hunt in 2005 had bagged just short of three hundred bears. It was—are you ready for this—only the second hunt in 35 years! Two years later in 2007, 328 bears had been killed by hunters after there had been 1,407 sightings. In 2005, biologists had estimated there were about 3,200 bears. Five years later, that estimate had increased by two thousand!

In 2009, the number of sightings had jumped 41.5% from 2005 with time-out in 2006-10 to breed a whole lot more bears courtesy of Lisa Jackson.

The 2003 and 2005 hunts were accompanied with protests by people who likely have never seen a bear unless it was in a zoo or on television.

The Jersey bears even have their own advocacy group, the Bear Education and Resource Group. “They’re trying to dupe the public into believing that the bears are dangerous and at fault,” said Janet Piszar, its director.

The head of the state Sierra Club chapter, Jiff Tittel, blamed the bear problem, not on bear fecundity but on trash. “Hunt or no hunt, we will never resolve bear programs until we deal with trash.”

Tell that to the folks who spotted three bears wandering in Wayne in May not far from the campus of William Patterson University and St. Joseph’s Wayne Hospital.

By 2010, the bears have not only increased their population and spread to every county in the State, but the Fish and Game Council was gearing up to initiate a six-day hunt in December.

One reason New Jersey has a new Governor is that the previous one, Jon Corzine, was insistent that non-lethal methods be used to deal with the bears, i.e., no hunts. By contrast, Gov. Chris Christie, has vowed to end Corzine’s ban on bear hunts.

The lesson one can draw from this is that, left to the environmentalists like Lisa Jackson, Jon Corzine, Jeff Tittel, and the loonies that don’t see any real threat to the human, taxpaying residents of New Jersey, there would be no bear hunts.

Whenever and wherever Greens and the “animal rights” groups get involved, humans and their expectation to be protected from bears anywhere and everywhere in New Jersey comes in a poor second to the bear population.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

New Jersey Rocks!

By Alan Caruba

Years ago when I was planning to sell my home in Maplewood, New Jersey, my older brother invited me down to Boynton Beach, Florida. In the latter part of the 1950s I had spent four years in Florida attending and graduating from the University of Miami.

Florida’s a nice State, but when I walked out of the Palm Beach Airport, I was hit by a wall of heat and for three brutal days big brother shlepped me around to various places until I could at last escape back to my beloved Garden State.

I moved one town over to a fancy new apartment complex that has a concierge, a business center, a fitness and health club, a big outdoor pool, and I can walk three minutes to the railroad station for a thirty-minute ride into downtown New York. That was six years ago.

I cite all this to say that I have roots in New Jersey. My parents were born here. The seasons come and go without any signs of a hurricane, a tornado, mud slides or giant forest fires. We have, in some spots, the occasional flood, but they are rare. Blizzards are of little concern because the snow in cleared from the highways and streets within twenty minutes because we know how to do blizzards here.

New Jersey is attracting a lot of attention lately thanks to our new Governor, Chris Christie, a Republican and a conservative. He has become an instant media star for telling people the truth. He has flummoxed one of the worst, Democrat-controlled legislatures to be found anywhere other than California. He’s a tax-cutter and loves to fight with the teacher’s union. Best of all, Christie’s fat and he doesn’t count calories.

This testimonial for New Jersey is occasioned by all the buzz about the television show, “The Shore”, featuring some of the dumbest youngsters to be found anywhere. Before that, there was “The Sopranos” with its ode to the Mafia.

Years ago, when I used to actually get paid to write, Public Service Electric and Gas hired me to write a promotional booklet about New Jersey. Though I had been a journalist, having been the editor of two weeklies, a reporter and columnist for a daily, I was astonished at the information I gathered to sing New Jersey’s praises.

Let me share a few facts. New Jersey was settled by the Dutch in 1618. By 1702 it was a British colony. Perhaps as an insight to the combativeness that is indigenous to New Jersey, more than a hundred Revolutionary War battles were fought here! It was the third State to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States was born in Caldwell, New Jersey. Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University before becoming a U.S. President.

New Jersey is home to one of the busiest seaports in the nation and tons of goods are transported by truck to every other State from here. It is a major State for the pharmaceuticals industry and for chemical production. It is home to the largest petroleum containment area outside of the Middle East. The incandescent light bulb, phonograph, and motion picture industry were invented in New Jersey by Thomas Edison.

There are more than fifty resort cities and towns here. Florida is currently advertising to remind tourists of its long coastline and beaches, but New Jersey has more than fifty resort towns. Atlantic City has the longest boardwalk in the world.

Talent? New Jersey was home to Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Bon Jovi, Queen Latiffa, Jason Alexander, and a lot of other folks who grew up here.

We also have some of the highest taxes in the nation. And we’re broke. Big deal. So are most of the other States, plus the federal government. But we have suburbs to kill for with beautiful tree-lined streets with homes that are picture-postcard perfect.

I could go on, but I hope that the next time you see or hear something unkind about New Jersey you will also be reminded that it’s a very nice place in which to grow up and grow old.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Journalism 101 (Jersey Style)

By Alan Caruba

Many years ago I sat in the office of the managing editor of The Star-Ledger, then and now New Jersey’s largest circulation daily newspaper. I had been working at the Morris County Daily Record. By way of proving my worth, the editor asked me to do a series on pets.

I wrote a four-part series that exposed a fair amount of chicanery involving the New Jersey Humane Society and the American Society for the Protection Against Cruelty to Animals. “You don’t understand,” said the editor. “I wanted something along the lines of Jane and her pet duck.” I didn’t get hired and shortly thereafter I became a public relations flack.

My years as a journalist on weekly and daily newspapers taught me a lot about the way being a reporter inevitably creates a sense of hubris regarding what the reader should be told. There’s a real feeling of power in writing an article or, better still, a column that says, in effect, this is the truth.

This is particularly true of journalists who cover the state house or, at the highest level, the White House. Either way, reporters who also write columns soon conclude they know how to run the state or the nation better than the person elected to do the job. They like being close to power without being responsible for the tough decisions.

The former Governor, Jon Corzine, a multi-millionaire and former Goldman Sachs executive bought a seat in the U.S. Senate by outspending his opponent, grew bored there, and then repeated the process to become Governor of New Jersey. He was so allied with the civil service unions and so liberal that the Garden State, along with California, became the poster child for poverty. The Star-Ledger was his cheerleader much of the time.

To the horror of the newspaper and astonishment of the nation, the deeply blue State elected a Republican, Chris Christie. And not just a Republican, but a genuine conservative who looked at the State’s economic mess and determined to reverse it.
Christie had amassed an impressive record as a U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, putting a large number of its corrupt politicians in jail.

At a recent Trenton press conference, a political reporter for the Star Ledger, Tom Moran, asked Gov. Christie if he was being too “confrontational” with the Democrat majority in the legislature and the Governor let him have it. The YouTube video went viral to the point that Fox News commentator, Sean Hannity, shared it with his audience.

It was a gem; a real politician explaining that he had been elected precisely to put an end to the way the wealthy, corporations and lots of regular folks were fleeing New Jersey, a State with the nation’s highest property taxes, sales taxes, and every other tax imaginable. At one point the Star Ledger restricted YouTube from showing the video even though it was still available on its own website.

In the Sunday, May 16 edition, Moran fired back with a column titled, “Gov. Chris Christie’s ‘confrontational tone’ may cause him to lose needed partners among N.J. Democrats.” Christie would not be Governor if a lot of Democrats had not voted for him.

Some previous Moran columns were titled, “Gov. Christie may have picked a fight he’s ‘almost certain to lose’ with N.J. Supreme Court nominee.” “Picking fights, forcing change: Gov. Chris Christie’s first 100 days” And “Gov. Christie and Democrats are on a ‘collision course over this year’s budget.”

Like daily newspapers all over the nation, the Star Ledger is losing circulation, in part due to the availability of real facts and informed commentary available on the Internet. The other part of that equation is that people began to realize just how biased their local daily was.

The die-off of newspapers is gaining momentum, along with formerly respected weekly news magazines like Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report, all of whom are appallingly liberal in content and which continue to tell lies about “global warming”, et cetera. Newsweek is up for sale.

Moran has a right to his opinions, but they clearly inform his reporting as well. He should do one or the other, but not both. Ironically, Moran left the Star-Ledger for a job on the public relations side of the desk, but soon returned to his job as a political reporter.

No doubt he will be churning out both “news” stories and columns for Christie’s term in office and, no doubt, more readers will decide to drop their subscription.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

NJ Gov Christie Replies to a Reporter -- Priceless!

Herein Gov. Chris Christie shreds a reporter from the Star-Ledger, the largest daily and one that is dependably liberal.

Editor's Note: This video was restricted on Saturday by the Star-Ledger, but found its way back onto YouTube. There is something noxious about a newspaper censoring a video of the Governor responding to a question by its own reporter.

The video, however, remains available as of early Saturday on the Star-Ledger's own website. Go figure?

Putting the Garden State on a Diet

By Alan Caruba

The Greens and the teachers in New Jersey are in a state (no pun intended) of panic. Under a succession of liberal Democrat governors, they have been able to get away with all manner of greed and foolishness, but Republican Governor Chris Christie, a former U.S. prosecutor, has as little patience with them as he did with corrupt politicians who he sent to jail with regularity.

I dare say, if every governor followed his example, the States would benefit from trimmed budgets, reductions in their regulatory mess, and confiscatory public service unions brought to heel.

The latest news from the Garden State is Gov. Christie’s move to take $65 million, the entire allocation, from the state’s global warming fund and apply it to reducing the state’s $10 billion deficit. He also took $5.9 million from the toxic waste site cleanup program.

Since there is no global warming why throw $65 million at something that does not exist? As for toxic waste site cleanups, they are another Environmental Protection Agency boondoggle that is often based on finding little of anything toxic while at the same time rendering countless sites too costly for any new development and thus new jobs or housing.

It just keeps getting better. The State’s Department of Environmental Protection has a proposed $380.6 million budget and Gov. Christie is likely thinking of trimming some of its 1,300 state employees. To save another $1.4 million, their workweek would be reduced from 40 hours to 35 hours. It is doubtful that many New Jerseyeans will be in the streets protesting.

New Jersey has been very Green for a long time. Between 1995 and 2009, the legislature and former governors approved 450 bills to increase the powers of the DEP. Ironically, the number of its employees decreased from 3,700 to 2,995. Its staff is assigned to 57 commissions, 42 “extraneous” bodies, and 30 federal external or national non-profit boards! All contribute in one way or another to increased public funding; often of dubious programs.

The New Jersey Audubon Society, the State’s leading conservation organization, just joined forces with the National Wildlife Federation to get more power with which to demand that every species roaming the state be protected. It’s not like the State isn’t already overrun by huge flocks of federally protected Canada geese, marauding herds of white-tailed deer, black bears that wander into populated areas, coyotes, wild turkeys, and a host of other critters constantly in need of culling.

The other group currently quaking in its boots is the State’s teachers and school administrators. Not far behind are the rest of the civil service union members. These civil servants and their unions have managed to run up huge pension and healthcare benefits that make the private sector look puny by comparison.

The State’s schools, despite chronic budget problems, have been on a hiring spree. As a recent New York Post article reported, “Since 2001, just as budget problems began in earnest, public school enrollment in Jersey has risen by less than 3 percent, or slightly more than 36,000 students. But total school hiring has jumped by 14 percent, or nearly 28,000 employees, according to federal Census statistics.” Do the math; that’s nearly as many new teachers as students!

Working for the schools, state, county, or local entities in New Jersey had benefited employees to the extent that just one example is sufficient to illustrate the fiscal insanity involved.

Writing for American Thinker.com, Claude Sandroff noted in March that in New Jersey “A retired teacher paid $62,000 toward her pension and nothing—yes, nothing—for full family medical, dental, and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime.” That pattern is repeated over and over again to the tune of millions per retired public service employee.

The National Education Association, a union, is protesting the pink slips that will be going out to teachers around the nation as towns and cities trim back from the excesses in education spending that have many states in de facto bankruptcy. They want $23 billion from the stimulus bill to be handed over to people who, year after year, produce students who cannot academically compete with their counterparts in nations that spend far less.

The bill has come due for the billions in wasted dollars on cockeyed environmental programs and underperforming schools nationwide.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Great Green Land Grab

By Alan Caruba

All across America, various environmental organizations have been engaged in schemes to deter development such as housing, new energy plants, or the horror of a manufacturing facility that might actually employ people. In some states, the attack has been on farms and ranches, finding ways to punish their owners for improving their land in any fashion such as digging a drainage ditch.

Property rights were deemed so essential, so important to the economic future of America that the Founding Fathers wrote an Amendment to the Constitution to protect those rights, ensuring that private property could not be taken for public use “without just compensation.”

As far as environmentalists are concerned, private property rights are an impediment to the “protection” of what they always describe as “pristine” forests, deserts, or some horrid wilderness such as the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. ANWR is unfit for human habitation, but it does have countless thousands of caribou and several billion barrels of untapped oil beneath a “pristine” surface.

In a small State like New Jersey, land and its proper use has been a major concern from its earliest years. The State got its moniker, “the Garden State”, from the many farms in its southern half, although there are some in the north. One can drive up Route 78 through the northern portion and see horse farms and even cattle being raised.

Beyond its urban centers, there are large, verdant areas in which one can find small, picturesque suburbs and one of those areas is known as the Highlands. It is a 1,400- square-mile region, some 860,000 acres, extending from the northern border with New York and including land in Sussex, Warren, Passaic, Morris, and Hunterdon Counties.

The Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act was enacted in 2004 and signed into law by former Governor James McGreevey whose lamentable and mercifully abbreviated term in office was cut short when, in the wake of a scandal concerning a young man whom he had put on the state payroll, he announced he was a homosexual and resigned.

Put into motion in 2006, the State’s largest daily newspaper, The Star-Ledger, editorialized that “Development controls are so sweeping that perhaps less than 20 percent of land in the region is left available for construction, even in the half of the region lawmakers had targeted for future growth. That small amount of buildable acreage could be cut further when additional rules, such as new regulations for septic systems, are completed.”

The area in question is a watershed and the environmental claim was that any further construction or use of it posed a threat to water quality and that the area, home to abundant wildlife, needed to be subject to all manner of regulation and restrictions to protect it against the humans who had been living there since before the Revolution.

There never was a need for the Highlands Act. Existing environmental laws were and are sufficient, but the objective was to render the huge tract of land beyond any development, to reduce the value of its homes and other structures, and generally put it off limits. This kind of green gangsterism is part of the reason why, along with high taxation, and senseless spending, more people leave New Jersey than move here.

In 2007, northern New Jersey farmers and landowners affected by the Highlands Act made plans to contest it in court to protect their loss of equity and private property rights. Consider if you owned a home in this vast region and wanted to sell it. Who would buy it knowing that you could not add a porch, a swimming pool, or even some swings for kids to play on? If you were a farmer almost any normal act of tillage or harvest could be ruled a danger to the environment.

As a Star-Ledger columnist, Paul Mulshine, pointed out in July 2007, “The purpose of the plan was not to redistribute development, but to stop it entirely. And the way the law was written is positively Machiavellian. The Highlands law amounts to an ingenious effort by the state to grab as much land as possible without leaving the state open to a court challenge under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

I was reminded of this appalling piece of environmental chicanery when a story appeared in The Star-Ledger in late January. “A report by Gov. Chris Christie’s transition team calls the Highlands Council ‘a disaster on multiple levels’ and recommends cutting the water-protection agency’s powers over local zoning or eliminating it.”

It has taken six years of suffering by the many landowners of the affected area and frustration among the many local officials in towns affected by this hideous land grab to finally reach a point where something might begin to be done to repeal the act and return the legislatively stolen property rights.

All around America, similar actions have been occurring, spurred on by various environmental groups, and all intended to drive out farmers and ranchers, to kill any development of any kind, and to abrogate the Constitutional protection of private property in every way possible.

It is part of a vast matrix of efforts to destroy the nation’s economic growth and it is too often successful. Given their antipathy to all human activity, if the Greens had their way, they would put up signs everywhere that would say, “Keep Out!”

New Jersey, We're Number One (Again)

By Alan Caruba

Having been born in New Jersey and lived here most of my life with time out for college and the U.S. army, I must confess I was a bit out of sorts over all the attention that Illinois and former Governor Rod Blagojevitch was receiving or the constant references in the press to that state’s record of corrupt political officials.

I was upset, too, when South Carolina’s governor grabbed all the headlines because he had a paramour in Argentina and, upon discovery, concluded it was just one of those teaching moments in one’s life to learn from while continuing to be governor.

So, naturally, I was delighted to see that New Jersey has once again reclaimed its title as the most corrupt State in the Union. This is a distinction that our elected and appointed officials do not take lightly.

I am pretty sure that, upon election to any office in the state, the FBI immediately opens up a file and then waits for the first informant to walk in the door, usually in response to having been cheated of his bribe money.

According to news reports, various federal officials participated in the arrest of forty people in early morning raids across New Jersey on Thursday, July 23. What caught my eye, however, was that it took ten years to achieve this coup and all of the cases were held together like a string of pearls by a single “cooperating witness”, a failed real estate developer named Solomon Dwek.

Using taxpayer money, Dwek trawled for politicians as well as some rabbis from Brooklyn, offering bribes for fictitious real estate and money laundering deals, netting the mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield, among others charged with alleged criminal behavior.

A longtime columnist for the state’s largest daily newspaper, Bob Braun, opined that “if what the prosecutors are charging holds up in court, this case will go down in the crowded annals of New Jersey prosecutions as the moment when our politicians—and others—were proven, not just to be corrupt, but breathtakingly stupid.”

This raises the question of whether being stupid hasn’t become a de rigueur part of the resume of anyone running for office in New Jersey or anywhere else in the nation these days?

Corruption, greed, I can understand, but let it be said that the Mafia functioned quite well in its earliest days (and probably still) by spotting the kind of talent that avoided calling attention to themselves while reaping fortunes in ill-gotten gains. It wasn’t until flashy characters decided that the money wasn’t enough that they began to attract unwanted attention. This begot mobsters like “the dapper don”, John Gotti, who died in jail as the result of too much publicity and a pal who ratted on him. That’s what happens when you hang out with people of poor character.

The equation is reversed for politicians who thrive on publicity and then use their office to line their pockets.

Braun may have been a bit hasty in pronouncing the guilt of stupidity because, as we all know, people are presumed innocent until sent directly to jail without passing “Go” and picking up $200. That said, he's probably right.

A headline of one sidebar article on the arrests declared New Jersey “The Most Politically Corrupt Place on Earth.” That is pure hyperbole. There are nations in Africa, not to mention, Russia, and much of Asia and South America, that are far more corrupt than the Garden State.

Still, as states go, New Jersey has at last reclaimed its title as probably the most corrupt in the nation. The Republican candidate running for governor, Chris Christie, made his reputation as a district attorney who sent dozens of New Jersey politicians to jail. His opponent, Jon Corzine, the present governor is so rich he had no need to be corrupt although some observers think his former employer, Goldman Sachs, operates in a fashion that Don Corleone and Tony Soprano would admire.

Let me close by saying that New Jersey is home to millions of law-abiding citizens. It is, however, one of the great mysteries why they keep electing people of such poor character, judgment, and probity.

Goosed in the Garden State

By Alan Caruba

In December 2005, the headline in the Star-Ledger read “Jersey declares war on Canada Geese: Plan could slash flocks 60 percent.” New Jersey’s largest circulation newspaper reported on “a new federal proposal” intended to reduce the state’s Canada goose population by 57,000 birds over a decade.

“New Jersey has an extreme problem: more Canada geese per square kilometer than any state in the nation.” Back then “anti-geese actions required a difficult-to-obtain federal permit.”

The then-chief of the Bureau of Wildlife Management for the state Department of Environmental Protection worried that the proposals being made “lacked specifics” such as how the reporting was to be done and how the geese should be euthanized. He was concerned that the plan “appears to place administrative burdens on the state without providing the funding to accomplish those tasks.”

This is what happens when the federal government, via the Endangered Animals Act, one of the most idiotic laws ever passed, gets involved with the local problem of too many damned geese. Indeed, by protecting the Canada goose specie, the federal government guaranteed the problem would reach its present status. It guaranteed yet another level of government to address the problem slowly and poorly.

So, four years later, who can possibly be surprised that the Star-Ledger reported on June 16 that “Feds start ‘capture and removal’ of Canada geese in nine N.J. counties”?

“U.S. Department of agriculture spokeswoman, Carol Bannerman confirmed that the ‘capture and removal program’ is under way and will last about six weeks.”

Meanwhile since 2005 the Canada geese population in the Garden State has reportedly gone from an estimated 98,000 to 80,000. As a rule of thumb, one should always be suspicious of government statistics.

A similar program is under way in New York City. Yes, the City! It plans to “trap and gas as many as 2,000 Canada geese over the next few weeks in an attempt to avoid the type of collision that caused an airliner to ditch in the Hudson River in January.”

Ms. Bannerman noted that a single bird “excretes about a half-pound of feces daily.” That’s 40,000 pounds of goose crap every single day in the Garden State.

This is a governmental approach to wildlife that explains a great deal about New Jersey. In 2006, Lisa Jackson, the then-Commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection announced the addition of 8,000 acres to the state’s 121 separate wildlife management areas.

“As the nation’s most densely populated state and the fifth smallest, New Jersey now boasts more acreage for wildlife management areas than New York and even outpaces Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined,” Ms. Jackson proudly announced.

Lisa Jackson is now the Director of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

New Jersey has 80,000 Canada geese! In 2006, with Ms. Jackson at the helm, New Jersey was also home to an estimated 180,000 deer!

This is what happens when the federal and state government combine in an effort to “protect” wildlife instead of permitting towns and cities to take care of the problem on a local basis. By the time all the permits are issued, reporting rules, and codes regarding ways to kill critters are written and approved, the population continues to explode.

There will be no end to this problem so long as we have the Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Environmental Protection, and probably a dozen other jurisdictions involved in what is essentially a local problem of too many damned Canada geese.

The only creatures not being protected are the human ones trying to live in a State that’s literally overrun with geese, deer, bears, coyotes, wild turkeys and the usual thousands of squirrels, raccoons, and opossums. If someone with a huge mortgage and huge property taxes tries to address the problem on their own, they risk fines and jail.

This is the definition of insanity.

Wild Turkeys in the North Ward

By Alan Caruba

Every so often you will hear the usual weeping and wailing about how we terrible humans have displaced Mother Nature’s wild creatures by selfishly building houses and other structures in “their” habitat. For years it seemed the only thing the mainstream media could write about was “urban sprawl.”

The Sunday edition of my local daily carried a story about wild turkeys showing up in the North Ward which just happens to be part of Newark, New Jersey! It doesn’t get more “urban” than Newark.

Newark is not famous for its wild turkey population, but the fact is that sightings of wild turkeys have been quite common throughout northern New Jersey for many years. The television series, “The Sopranos”, made various locations around this part of the state famous and in one episode, Tony actually sighted a black bear in his suburban back yard.

I recall a personal encounter with a turkey in my back yard before I moved to the relative safety of an apartment complex one town over. They come equipped with a bad attitude which I suppose for New Jersey is not surprising especially if you’re trespassing. I swiftly concluded that, short of a shotgun, I was better off inside the house until it left.

As Pat Scheuer, director of the wildlife center Lorrimer Sanctuary in northern Bergen County noted, “It’s pretty normal.” Bouncing back from having been over-hunted about two decades or more ago, the turkeys are everywhere. And it’s not just New Jersey.

The turkeys have made a nuisance of themselves in Jackson, Michigan and Tilburn, California, to name just two places where they have been reported for destroying landscaping and scratching automobiles.

Another animal-related activity was also reported in the local daily. It was the culling of the state’s deer population by bow hunters. This culling process is now so commonplace that PETA and other animal rights folks have stopped showing up to protest. Given a choice of some demented PETA person in their yards or a bunch of deer, most residents would take the PETA nutcase because they won’t eat the expensive shrubbery.

So, let’s see, wild turkeys, deer, and black bears. When you add in the Canada geese that are everywhere despoiling public parks and other large stretches of greenery, New Jersey is a veritable zoo.

One hardly bothers to mention the vast population of raccoons that share our suburbs because of the multi-course dinners that are available in garbage cans. Opossum and battalions of squirrels complete the wildlife. The songbirds, of course, are welcome, but the rest of these critters keep an army of animal control officers on the move when not corralling stray dogs and cats.

The next time someone says we are depriving such creatures of their habitat, take them on a tour of beautiful New Jersey, the most densely populated (by humans) State in the Union. A drive up Route 78 with the dead deer lying by the roadside should convince them that there are likely too many deer in the vicinity.

If you happen to be in the North Ward of Newark, keep an eye out for those wild turkeys.

A hat tip to Sam Delgado who took the photo in the North Ward.

A Run on the Banks...by Robbers

By Alan Caruba

There’s been a run on the banks in New Jersey. By robbers!

Yes, while others may make fun of New Jersey, I am proud to say that we have some of the most industrious and hard-working robbers to be found anywhere. Just 53 days into the new year, there were 32 bank robberies, a significant improvement over the 23 recorded in the first two months of last year.

Law enforcement officials say it has nothing to do with the recession. Indeed, quite a few of the robbers actually had a job at the time. Then they quit and began to devote themselves to robbing; none of that 9-to-5 drudgery anymore. Bank robbing has the distinct advantage of being able to sleep late, select the bank of your choice, go to the Halloween store, get a mask, a wig or false beard, and then it’s off to make a permanent withdrawal.

In the 1930s when we had bank robbers with real personalities. Top of the bunch was John Herbert Dillinger, a Midwestern boy who saw opportunity and seized it with the one hand that wasn’t holding a gun. The man had style, unlike those country bumpkins, Bonnie and Clyde. Their deaths in a hail of bullets were, however, the proper way for such lowlifes to depart this world. In both cases, they were betrayed by informers, but that’s what happens when you hang out with people of low moral character. And, truly, crime does not pay.

Last year, New Jersey had 193 bank robberies or an average of about 16 per month. Thus far this year, there were 17 during the first three weeks of February. All but two occurred on work days, two were on weekends and one of those weekends was a holiday when banks were closed. Why wait in line, right?

Then, too, robbing banks is an equal opportunity kind of occupation, nor does it require any special training.

People who know about such things say that one of the reasons for the rise in bank robberies in New Jersey is because there are more banks to rob. There are, for example, 504 more branches in New Jersey now than there were in 1997. Naturally, the real boom in bank robbing has been in the suburbs where the number of robberies has doubled since 2006.

To my knowledge and recollection, there have been no fatalities in any of the bank robberies. Perhaps because tellers are taught to comply and perhaps because the robbers, surely knowing they are on several video surveillance cameras do not want to draw any more attention to themselves than necessary though the tapes will, of course, put them in jail for a very long time.

One recent serial New Jersey robber became known as the “Hat Bandit” because he always wore a different hat each time. He eventually pled guilty to six robberies over a ten month period. I guess that robbing banks is like eating potato chips; you can’t just rob just one once you get started.

The “Hat Bandit” lived in my former hometown where I resided for six decades until a few years ago. James G. Madison never used a gun and told the judge he remained a “college-educated man who still envisions the American Dream—raising a family in my own home in the suburbs.” That’s what we need; a better class of bank robber. He got ten years and, with good behavior, will be out in three.

I, myself, would never rob a bank. No guts.

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.

A New Definition of Agriculture

By Alan Caruba

When is a car not a car? When you decide to call it a bicycle. When is a horse not a horse? When you decide to call it a cow. Just because you call something a name that does not properly describe it does not change its reality, but I live in New Jersey where reality is subject to the whim of the morons we elect to represent us.

Thus, I give you a piece of legislation sponsored by State Senator Bob Smith that would redefine wind turbines and solar panels as “agriculture.” And all this time you thought agriculture was about growing crops and raising livestock.

An Associated Press article in the July 1 edition of The New Jersey Farmer, one of my favorite publications, the headline read, “N.J. weighs bill encouraging alternative farm energy.” It would define solar and wind energy generation as an “agricultural activity.”

Now, I grant you some savvy farmers have installed solar panels to generate electricity to run their farms, but to suggest that covering acre after acre of preserved farmland with solar panels and wind turbines is a truly bad idea. In fact, it’s so bad that the bill offers those who would do this protection “from nuisance complaints from neighbors, similar to protections farmers have from complaints about the smell of manure, for instance.”

If you don’t like the smell of manure, it’s probably not a good idea to build your home near a farm, something that people who think food magically appears on the shelves of supermarkets, were unaware of when they decided to retire to the bucolic areas of the state.

“Despite New Jersey being the most densely populated state, it is a leader in farm preservation, with more than 18 percent of its farmland preserved.” This was one of the few good ideas the legislature enacted. It has cost the state $680 million and another $358 million from local government and charities to ensure that our little paradise is not entirely paved over or turned into wall-to-wall strip malls and housing developments.

I am not alone in thinking it is a bad idea. Alison Mitchell, a policy director with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation points out that “farm preservation is meant to save agriculture and farmland—not spur new construction on preserved land.” You think?

The bill has cleared a N.J. Senate committee and is awaiting a vote by the full Senate. It has yet to have received assembly consideration. New Jersey is a state in which its entire Congressional delegation and Governor remains unalterably opposed to offshore exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas, but apparently covering farmland with solar panels and wind turbines is a good thing.

Imagine the joy of going to the shore and enjoying one of our many beaches and then driving home past miles and miles of wind turbines or solar panels, some of which are actually producing a small measure of power if the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. The rest of the time they would just be a giant eyesore.

And then imagine that they are “agriculture” and not some demented politician’s idea of what farming and ranching really should be.

Here's what everyone should worry about. Laws like this get picked up and enacted by other States.

My New Driver's License

By Alan Caruba

I can’t remember the last time I visited a motor vehicle agency to renew my driver’s license. Here in New Jersey, whenever it came due, I would get a notice, mail them a check, and a new license would come in the mail a few days later.

On Friday, however, I had to report in person and bring several documents to demonstrate I am who I say I am and live where I say I live. I can thank Osama bin Laden for this because the State now requires that you have your photo taken to appear on the license. It is a reminder that we are locked into a battle, some would say a clash of civilizations, with the Islamists who want to declare a new caliphate.

The last caliphate was the Ottoman Empire and it bit the dust in 1918 when the allies, America, England, and France won World War One. The Ottoman Empire had bet on the loser, Germany. Having learned nothing from the experience, Germany lost again in 1945 after having laid waste to most of Europe and much of Russia. They made it two-for-two in the 20th century. When you consistently lose wars, it’s probably a good idea to avoid going to war.

These days, a Boy Scout troop could probably invade Germany or France and take over either country. This also explains why the United States has had troops in England and Europe since the end of World War Two where it knows how to fight, but does not explain why it kept sending troops to places like Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq where it does not.

The result of World War One was that two of the winners divvied up the Middle East between them. This so pissed off the Arabs who were not consulted that they are waging terrorism to lay claim to the region. After the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Woodrow Wilson came home with a plan for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. The U.S. Senate wisely rejected joining this bunch of losers in the interest of retaining and protecting our national sovereignty.

Less than a generation later, the United States failed to exercise such good sense following WWII, not merely joining the United Nations, but having created it from scratch. This explains why the winners of WWII are still the big dogs on the Security Council. This does not explain why wars have continued unceasingly with most of the important ones being led and fought by, you guess it, the United States.

What does this have to do with getting a driver’s license renewed? You may recall everything was going along merrily here up to 9/11/2001. Then, on one day, al Qaeda caused us to lose the Twin Towers and an estimated trillion dollars got sucked out of the economy.

The result, seven years later, is that I had to get a photo-ID driver’s license. Let me be honest. Based solely on the photo on the license, I would not let that man anywhere near my home, my children, or my pets. The man in that photo is either a dangerous psychopath or the sad shell of a reformed alcoholic. Okay, so I don’t photograph well.

I can, however, go to any airport in America and show both my New Jersey auto license and my passport and theoretically get on a plane to Disneyland or La-La Land. Yes, you need two photo ID documents. Feel safer now?

I had to drive over to East Orange to get my license. In the 1970s I was the city editor of the East Orange Record, the weekly newspaper. An old Irish politician was the mayor and ran a good, tight ship.

A lot of white people took pride in living there, just as they had from the early part of the century. My Mother had grown up there as a young girl in a big house with her parents, three sisters and a brother. Today, East Orange has a shop-worn look from the spillover of former Newark residents, the city it borders. Seeking to escape the drug scene and other urban failures, blacks moved to East Orange and, to no one’s surprise, brought those problems with them. The Whites fled.

It’s surprising how the many crossroads of one’s own and the nation’s history can come together in the crowded office of a motor vehicle agency.