Courage by another name would be called...Cowardice

In the Record's Northjersey.com NJ Politics section, an article written by John Reitmeyer entitled Corzine's toll plan draws more public outrage details some of the serious opposition to Governor Corzine's toll plan. While everyone is acknowledging that the Governor's plan is crashing and burning, it points to a rather irritating trend that keeps repeating itself. The vision is of a Democrat legislator proposing some new tax in an attempt to throw one more piece of excrement on the public wall to see if it will stick.

This kind of logic uses the old paradigm that if the lesser of two evils makes a good thing. The problem is that New Jersey citizens are reaching Florio-like frustration with the entire process and it's lack of concern for them. The Quinnipiac poll the other day for example saw a trully biased question that only could be posed in the Northeast:

If New Jersey voters must choose a way to raise state revenues, choices are:
31 percent say raise sales taxes;
23 percent say raise tolls;
13 percent say raise gas taxes;
13 percent say raise income taxes.

This is a canard question. If you asked the same respondent "Would you be willing to have a 150% increase in the sales tax to balance the budget shortfall, would you choose that?". Of course the answer would be something distinctly New Jersey and quite colorful. My favorite part of this article was written near the end:

"It's a mark of political courage that he is not resorting to the type of quick fixes of the past that bought time, but made the problems worse in the long run," said state Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, chairman of the state Democratic Party. "The fact that alternative ideas don't 'poll well' shows there are no easy answers."

So now, punting on the budget and soaking the taxpayer through an Enron financial scam is courage? And a massive increase to the gas tax is better? I love courage when defined by irresponsible people - if often looks a lot more like cowardice to me.

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