They apologize for slavery but won't act on energy!

From the Associated Press:

The House on Tuesday issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws.

"Today represents a milestone in our nation's efforts to remedy the ills of our past," said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

But apparently, when it comes time to really help people in the United States, the House will not even vote on Energy legislation due to political reasons. From Reuters:

A partisan election-year battle over high gasoline prices and a Republican push to open more U.S. coastal waters and federal land to oil and gas drilling has brought work in the U.S. Senate to a halt.

God forbid they would do anything that would help everyday voters with gas prices. The House and Senate have stood idly by for too long while this country has no coherent energy policy. During the Clinton years, drilling in Anwar was passed. Clinton vetoed. And each year this country is more and more dependent on terrorist supporting nations for our oil. Losers every one.

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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.

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NJ Democrat's Newest Tax - Porn Tax

Another Democrat from the Assembly has been caught with their pants down doing the state's work according to today's Trentonian headline.

Legislative leaders sought to install filters to block inappropriate material from being viewed on state computers two days after a veteran assemblyman's computer was seized for containing child pornography.The leaders released a statement yesterday saying they want "the most aggressive Internet filtering software available on all computers in the Legislature."

The sad thing about this article is it doesn't really talk about the Democrat Assemblyman Neil Cohen. It talks about the fact that the state is now going to have to pay for and install new filters on internet traffic because an elected Democrat doesn't have the self control not to surf for porn on state computers.

This really cracks me up. It is another example how if a conservative does something even remotely questionable, the issue becomes a "culture of corruption". When it's Democrats and liberals that:

Have porn on state computers......

Are arrested and convicted of real corruption(dozens of Democrats the past three years)...

Lie about raising taxes after promising they won't....

Lie about lowering the property tax while enacting a budget which will force the exact opposite...

Governors who bed corrupt leaders of unions while negotiating with them through email and don't think the taxpayer has a right to know....

Continuously pad state workers benefits while shafting the taxpayer...

Continue to drive business out of New Jersey at an alarming rate...

No one holds them accountable. While Zimmer thinks that this state can be saved, I am not so sure.

Read the entire article here.

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Is this press corps prepared to ask hard questions?

See for yourself. I wonder if this group of people has any objectivity left. I doubt it.

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Zimmer hold Lautenberg Accountable

For far too long, Senator Frank Lautenberg has been happy to thoroughly trash his opponents whether they are Democrats or Republicans. His engine to spew slime is as well known as the corrupt tactics that put him in office the second time around after his corrupt predecessor was forced to withdraw he bid for re-election. But in a response to an editorial, Dick Zimmer took some serious shots at Lautenberg record in this article from the Dailyrecord.com:

Our incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., certainly has never agreed with your contention that the gap between what New Jersey sends to Washington and what we get back is a phony issue. Back in 1982, when he first ran for the Senate, he complained that we ranked 45th out of the 50 states in the percentage of our tax dollars we got back from Washington and promised that he would change it. He certainly did. As your editorial correctly notes, we now rank dead last among all 50 states, a position we have held for many years. We currently receive back only 61 cents for every dollar we send to Washington.

These are serious words from a congressman with a solid track record of fiscal responsibility. While he will likely be completely sullied throughout this process by the Lautenberg machine, we shouldn't ignore some of the facts that represent our current Senator's record. Lautenberg will try to make this about Zimmers record while refusing to talk about his own. But he has one.

Lautenberg has not only failed New Jerseyans on the money we get from Washington, but he has failed us on the taxes we send there as well. He opposed the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 on the grounds that they benefit the "rich." But, because New Jerseyans' incomes are relatively high, our state benefited from those tax cuts 33 percent more per capita than the nation as a whole. In fact, 3.4 million New Jersey tax payers saw savings because of the cuts. If Lautenberg had his way, and those tax cuts never went into effect, the return on each dollar we paid in taxes would not have been 61 cents; it would have been only 58 cents. Yet, Lautenberg wants to repeal most of those tax cuts.

This piece is a must read. Let's take Senator Lautenberg to task for once.

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Roche HQ Moving from NJ to California

The Newark Star-Ledger reports that one of our largest pharmaceutical companies is leaving New Jersey:

After eight decades in New Jersey, the drugmaker Hoffmann-La Roche is changing its name and moving its headquarters to California, the latest blow to the Garden State's reputation as "the nation's medicine chest."

The moves, part of parent company Roche's proposed $44 billion takeover of the California biotechnology firm Genentech, will result in the U.S. subsidiary assuming the Genentech brand name, and will mean big changes for the company's 3,240 workers in [its Nutley-Clifton campus in] New Jersey....

...the state will lose jobs with the closing of Roche's U.S. headquarters in Nutley, the shutdown of its New Jersey manufacturing facilities by 2010 and a consolidation of finance and information-technology operations.

The story says that NJ had 20% of US pharma jobs in 1990, and now has less than 14% -- a decline that occurred because NJ only held the line on pharma jobs while pharma and medical manufacturing jobs increased nationally from 207,200 to 296,000.

To be fair, the story says that it's not totally clear whether there will be a net job loss -- there will still be some R&D taking place at the Nutley-Clifton campus, and some of Genentech's jobs will move here -- but it's never a good thing to have a headquarters leave the state. It would be a lot less troubling if it weren't consistent with a bad trend for New Jersey. If we created a more positive business climate (by which I don't mean subsidies, like Corzine wants to do for stem-cell research), then it wouldn't be hard to choose us over tax-hungry California.

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The NY Times doesn't want you to read this.

The New York Times will publish an opinion piece from Barack Obama but will not allow the same from McCain. So in steps the New York post. Printed in its entirety from this opinion piece int he Post.


GETTING IRAQ RIGHT
HOW TO KEEP PROGRESS GOING
By JOHN McCAIN

EDITORS' NOTE: The New York Times wouldn't print this oped from the GOP candidate.

AS he took command in Iraq in January 2007, Gen. David Petraeus called the situation "hard" but not "hopeless." Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80 percent to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation is full of hope - but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent.

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there," he said on Jan. 10, 2007. "In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
Now Sen. Obama has been forced to acknowledge that "our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence." But he still denies that any political progress has resulted. Perhaps he's unaware that the US embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, "Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress."

Even more heartening has been progress that's not measured by the benchmarks:
* More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists.
* Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has found the will to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City - dispelling suspicions that he's merely a sectarian leader.

The surge's success hasn't changed Sen. Obama's determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale.

In a New York Times op-ed and a speech last week he offered his "plan for Iraq" (in advance of his first "fact-finding" trip to Iraq in more than three years): It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months.

In 2007, he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we'd taken his advice, the war would have been lost. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Maliki has endorsed his timetable - when the Iraqi prime minister has merely said that he'd like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of US troops at some unspecified future point.

Sen. Obama is also misleading on the readiness of the Iraqi military. Iraq's army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year - but that doesn't mean, as Sen. Obama suggests, that it'll then be ready to secure the country without a good deal of help.
The Iraqi air force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications and other complex functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent US presence, as Sen. Obama charges. We've already seen a partial withdrawal with the departure of five "surge" brigades, and more can take place as the security situation improves.

As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields (such as Afghanistan) without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I've said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I've also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground - not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Sen. Obama.

Sen. Obama has said that he'd consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his "plan for Iraq." Perhaps that's because he doesn't want to hear what they have to say.

During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I've heard many times from our troops what Major Gen. Jeffrey Hammond (commander of Coalition forces in Baghdad) recently said: Leaving based on a timetable would be "very dangerous."

The danger is that extremists supported by al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we've had too few troops in Iraq.
Sen. Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. Indeed, he's emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the "Mission Accomplished" banner prematurely.

I'm dismayed that he never talks about winning the war - only of ending it. But if we don't win the war, our enemies will - and a triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us.
As president, I won't let that happen. Instead, I'll continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

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Dear Barack: You're wrong about small towns

Originally written by Will Manly at thestironline.com which now appears to be defunct.

Dear Barack Obama:

I grew to like you over the last year.

I've always thought of you as dangerously naive at best. Eloquent, gifted, genuine, yes. But dangerously naive at best.I couldn't vote for you -- but not because of your funny name or your lunatic pastor.

I couldn't vote for you because you say we should raise taxes (even on the rich, who I'm convinced already pay too much), and because you say we should abandon Iraq (which I'm convinced would be surrendering a war we must win), and because you don't respect the Second Amendment (which I'm convinced should disqualify any politician from any office).

Still, I've liked your message of unity and your ability to inspire. And, since your rise I've hunted, quite frantically, for young conservative leaders with your talent. (To my relief, I found Bobby Jindal.)

And I've long said if you beat Hillary Clinton, you will have done your country a tremendous service. But anymore I'm having a harder and harder time rooting for you.

First came your wife's comment about being proud of America for the first time -- conveniently, right after you started winning primaries. Then came your own words about your grandmother, who is just a "typical white person" -- a racist, or at least someone with racist tendencies. (I'm a "typical white person," I suppose, and I'm no racist. In fact, little makes me angrier than when it's insinuated I am.)

Sometimes people say things they don't really mean. But this is a pattern.

Last week we heard your comments about small-town America. Someone at a San Francisco fundraiser asked you why it's so hard for Democrats to win in rural areas. You said:"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them ... So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them ... "

Is that a minority? HEY CLETUS, GET THE GUN! (If only we had a job to go to, some time in the last 25 years ... )

Here's a thought: Maybe gun rights voters know gun control laws kill people and steal freedom.

Here's a thought: Maybe some of us have moral objections to an immigration system that forces rule-followers to wait decades for legal status, and rewards border-violators with amnesty.

Here's a thought: Maybe some Americans cling to their church because their pastor is a nice person, because they find love there, because there they have something they can believe in.

Here's a thought: Maybe, just maybe, us simpletons in small towns find it harder to be bigoted than all o' y'all cityfolk. Maybe, in small towns, where everybody knows your name -- and how hard you work, if you pay your taxes, how well you treat your neighbors, how often you volunteer in the community, and whether or not you're a good parent -- people see the content of your character, so they don't give a hoot about the color of your skin. (But I grew up in a small town where about a third of the population is of a different race than me. What do I know?)

And here's my favorite thought of all: Maybe small-town folks are -- really -- capable of thinking. All on our own.

You're wrong about why small-town Americans don't vote for Democrats.

We don't vote for Democrats because we're self-reliant so we don't like the government trying to "solve" everything for us. And because you tell your rich friends in San Francisco that we're dumb. And because, each election, whichever one of you is running for president traipses all over the country telling us you have all the answers, that you're the one on our side, that you respect our way of life.

But each time, a little bit here and there slips out -- and by the end of the campaign, we can tell what you think about us. And we manage to learn who you really are.

And we see you're just a horse's ass.

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Free Cars and Gas for State Workers

Each morning as I make my way to work, I typically spot between one and four state owned vehicles heading toward the cluster of state offices in Trenton. Now, we all know that there are certain jobs in the state where it is more cost effective to provide a state vehicle than to reimburse employees for mileage. But what doesn't make sense to me is why the Ford Focus flying by me at 65 miles per hour on route 206 clearly driven by a commuter to work should be paid for by my tax dollars. The auto, from the State Department of Environmental Protection was one of many that department seems to dole out to its workers like candy.

Here's an idea for you Mr. Corzine. Make your state workers come to work in their own cars. Make them pay their own gas. And then, if they need to do the public's business, provide a pool car that they can use and then return back to the NJ government premises. Outside of law enforcement who are on duty 24 hours a day, no state worker should have a state owned vehicle with state paid gas parked at their home AT ANY TIME.

If legislature of this state is so interested in fighting global warming(the irony of the outrageous number of State DEP vehicles on our streets is raw) -cut the fleet. State owned autos should not be a perk for state workers.

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CAGW - Tell your representative you want energy independence!

From the Citizens Against Government Waster comes a great utility. Follow this link and tell your Senators and Congressman that you want action on oil and gas policy!

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Obama can dish it out but can't take it.

Yesterday the New Yorker published an astonishingly stupid cover depicting Obama as Osama and his wife as a jihadi with an afro topped off with a flag burning in the fireplace. The New Yorker claimed that it is was really trying to support Obama by lampooning the stereotypes that many hold in regard to the Democrat nominee-in-waiting. Their apology is that their visual hit job on Obama was really a hit job on anyone against Obama (read McCain supporters even though most of these canards were planted by Democrats from Hillary's campaign). As is often the case when ultra-liberals attempt to be funny, they overreach.



But the real joke here is the complete lack of any sense of humor by Obama. Everything seems to offend him and his supporters. Late night comics are not allowed to make jokes about him or else their audiences gasp in fear of offending any Obamacolyte (devoted Obama worhsipper) attending the show. So while Obama comments that McCain is confused(read OLD), George Bush lied about the war(read WAR CRIMINAL), General Petreous as misguided and wrong(read GEORGE BUSH TOADY WHO LIES TOO BECAUSE THE SURGE REALLY FAILED) and conservatives are clinging to their God and guns(I really don't know what his point was there), apparently it is not fair game to fight back.



Obama constantly rails about any attack directed at him as 'just that old kind of politics as usual' or 'I am for change, change from these kinds of political attacks'. Candidate Obama continues to cloak himself in linguistic teflon with the ready and willing media and Hollywood crowd covering his back. But sooner or later, he is going to be exposed for the what he really is deep down. And here's hoping that he isn't the stiff we have seen so far.



I once said that I thought he passed the beer test. From the way he has been acting, I was wrong. Lighten up Senator.

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Daily Record Letter - Little hope for this corrupt state

Every so often you see something that speaks completely for itself. The following is a letter to the editor of the Daily Record that really sums up the state of things in New Jersey. It is printed in its entirety.

To the editor:

Wednesday's Daily Record contained what was practically an inventory list of what's going wrong in New Jersey. In a single day, the following items appeared:

• The state, already up to its eyeballs in debt, borrows more money for school construction after previously running through billions for the same purpose without achieving the stated goals of that funding. Much of that money disappeared, unaccounted for.

• With great fanfare, Gov. Jon Corzine signs legislation to expand state level government-funded health insurance coverage. The fact that Jersey is broke seems of no consideration.

• Corzine expresses his desire to further expand government-funded health insurance to achieve universal health insurance. Again, the fact that Jersey is deeply in debt seems of no consequence to him or his party.

• Several hundred jobs left New Jersey from the pharmaceutical industry, supposedly a crucial employment sector for the state.

Days like that leave little hope for a turnaround in this mismanaged, corrupt state.

John Rice

Morristown

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Even When It's Private, It's Public

When a Republican says that private investors should invest in a particular technology, they mean that (a) the legislature has been investing with our tax dollars, which should stop, or (b) outside investors should be encouraged to invest through tax breaks and other incentives.

When a Democrat says that private investors should invest in a particular technology, they mean that they want to create a new layer of bureacracy.

Great idea. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

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A Society of Whiners!

Former Senator Phil Gramm sparked a major controversy this past week by saying that we have become a nation of whiners. Now, of course from a political standpoint, this was a completely stupid thing to say. McCain did the expected two-step backwards and threw Gramm under the bus. Obama responded with his typical snide and condescending "we don't need another Dr Phil" comment that sounded less funny every time it has been played. But the real question is whether or not Gramm is right.

The Media

The media outlets in this country live to whine. The New York Times front page is less often filled with real news than it is with whiny pseudo-news opinion pieces. For example, with all of the constant drumbeat over warrant less wiretapping for terrorism, no one has yet to find a single person to come forward to declare that they were unfairly targeted. It's like listening to my children complain because one or the other is "looking at me". In addition, the television media has created so many cable shows that propagate constant bleating like a sheep on steroids. Need proof? Watch Keith Olbermann just once.

The Political Class

All whiners. There are no statesmen left in politics. What remains is a pack of political hacks bought and paid for by union and industry money. The only ones who go against the grain are the outright kooks (see Kucinich and Paul) who are so marginalized that they will never advance politically. Too many of the elected class serve to feed the media whining about the topic of the day. Chuck Schumer of New York has made a career of the Sunday Morning Whine. You see, it is much easier to get in front of a camera and blame someone else that it is to do something about it. Need proof? Every knows that the oil situation is a problem. Democrats refuse to act as they refused to act 10 years ago. So now, they will go home for the summer having done nothing. But you will find them in front of the camera every day moaning about gas prices.

New Jersey's leaders

I used a small 'l' because I really don't consider there to be a single leading figure in the state's political classes. There is far too many political positions in the state and the bureaucracy is downright silly. The entire state is completely unhappy and the leaders don't care. Why? Because between state workers unions and paying off inner city poor, they remain in power. They whine about worker benefits, rebates for people who don't pay taxes, free health care, national politics, global warming and drilling offshore. But they never whine about the leadership in Trenton that is driving families and business out of the state at a rate unheard of anywhere but Michigan.

Bloggers

Of course bloggers whine. We exist because we feel that we have little of no influence on the political process as taxpayers and voters. If you are of the working class in this society, you have no say. Why? There is no lobbyist organization advocating for you. So we blog. It is the one opportunity to have your voice heard beyond your circle of friend (where you really don't want to advocate anyway). Thank God we are in this country where blogging is robust and our freedom of speech is protected. Been to any good Chinese blogs lately?

Me

Hellooooo? This post is one big WHINE!

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Bar Stool Economics

After reading Dennis's post (based on this Powerline post), I saw this great post on Living Jersey about bar-stool economics.

The rich guy must have gone to Pennsylvania.

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Senator Robert Singer, RINO?

I don't know Senator Singer, but this article from my favorite radio station, Jazz 88, bothers me:

But Senator Robert Singer, who has worked to fund stem cell research through legislation, says New Jersey will not be a leader in it because as companies cut jobs here, they add more to the ranks in other states like California. Singer says New Jersey used to be a welcoming place for big pharmaceutical companies, but not anymore.

This guy is a Republican? How about making New Jersey a welcoming place for pharmaceutical companies -- and every other kind as well -- by cutting spending, rather than by providing corporate welfare?

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Meet the Bills: A10 (Reducing School Administrative Costs)

On a local (West Orange) email list, I am looking at bills that our representatives are voting on. It seems to me that we would want, for the most part, to ignore non-controversial bills and focus on bills that are subject to substantial debate. To that end, I'm going to look at places where my Assemblypeople, Assemblyman McKeon and Assemblywoman Jasey, differ from Assemblyman Vincent Polistina (Republican from District 2), since I know he was focused very much on spending reductions.

I've discovered that the legislature's Web site (http://www.njleg.state.nj.us) is a morass of JavaScript and link-unfriendly programming techniques, so I'll post links (at the end of this post) to the PDF documents as I've downloaded them and put them here. You'll need Acrobat Reader (it's free) to read the bills.

I'll start with bill A10: "Requires certain school districts to reduce per pupil administrative expenditures by 10% over three-year period, certain reporting by executive county superintendents of schools, and schedule for appointment of such superintendents."

McKeon and Jasey voted against it, Polistina voted in favor.

My questions about the bill are these:

• Our representatives were outvoted 4 to 1: The bill passed 62-15, with 3 abstentions. What were McKeon's and Jasey's reasons for voting "no" to this bill?
• Is West Orange one of the districts affected by the financial aspects of this bill?
• Is it reasonable to think that these districts can cut administrative costs by 10% without unreasonable degradation of school services?

Here is the Assembly Education Committee's statement to the Assembly about the bill, which I thought was easier to understand and more compact than trying to parse out the changes to the law that the bill entailed. I'll try to summarize each paragraph as we go along -- anyone who knows what it's saying better than I do, please correct me.

The Assembly Education Committee favorably reports Assembly Bill No. 10.

The Assembly Education Committe favorably reported on this bill, so McKeon and Jasey went against the recommendation of the Education Committee. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, but it's worth noting.

This bill provides for a 10% reduction in the per pupil administrative costs of certain school districts below those of the 2008-2009 school year. The reduction will be phased in over a three-year period.

The wording "provides for" really means something more like "requires", as you see in the bill's title. So this bill cuts administrative costs by an average of 10% per pupil over a three-year period in some districts.

Under current law, a school district’s per pupil administrative costs may equal the lower of the district’s prior year per pupil administrative costs or the prior year per pupil administrative cost limits for the district’s region inflated by the cost of living or 2.5 percent, whichever is greater.

Follow that? Right now, before this bill is enacted, a district's administrative costs will be one of the following:

1. The same as last year.
2. The same as the last year's regional cost limits plus the cost of living.
3. The same as the last year's regional cost limits plus 2.5 percent.

If 1 is less than 2 or 3, stick with 1.
Otherwise, pick the bigger of 2 or 3.

I don't know which method West Orange used. If anyone does, please tell us in the comments.

Okay, that's background. Now what about this bill?

The bill provides that in the case of a school district with a 2008-2009 school year per pupil administrative cost limit calculated in accordance with the regional limits, the district must make an annual reduction in its per pupil administrative costs in such amount as to ensure that by the 2011-2012 school year the district’s per pupil administrative costs will be no more than 90% of the 2008-2009 per pupil administrative cost limits for the district’s region.

If your district went with 2 or 3 above, the district needs to cut costs by 10% by 2011.

For the 2012-2013 school year and each school year thereafter, a school district’s per pupil administrative costs may not exceed its prior year per pupil administrative costs. The bill does, however, maintain the authority of the commissioner to permit a school district to exceed its prior year per pupil administrative costs due to certain specified circumstances, such as an increase in nondiscretionary fixed costs.

After that, you can't increase your administrative costs unless the commissioner says you can because of "certain specified circumstances". If you go to the bill itself, you can see those specifics:

## increases in enrollment, administrative positions
## necessary as a result of mandated programs,
## administrative vacancies, nondiscretionary fixed costs,
## and such other items as defined in accordance with
## regulations adopted pursuant to section 43 7 of P.L.2004,
## c.73.

I don't have a copy of P.L. 2004, c.73, but hopefully you get the idea. If you look at the bill, you can see that the commissioner can only authorize increases similar to those that are allowed now -- but can't authorize any increases until the 2012-2013 school year.

The bill also directs each executive county superintendent of schools to file an annual report on the results of efforts to implement the new authorities delegated to him under the CORE legislation which became effective in April of 2007. The report would focus on issues associated with the promotion of administrative and operational efficiencies, the consolidation of school districts through the establishment or enlargement of regional districts, the coordination and regionalization of pupil transportation services, the promotion of in-district and shared services and programs for special education students, and other efforts to improve the operations and efficiencies of school districts within the county.

This appears to be an attempt to hold the county superintendent accountable for efficiencies, consolidation of services, and so on, by requiring an annual report specifically on those items.

Finally, the bill provides that an executive county superintendent of schools must be appointed in any county in which the position is currently vacant. The appointment must be made within 30 days of the bill’s effective date. The bill also stipulates that subsequent vacancies in the position of executive county superintendent must be filled within 120 days of the vacancy.

This apparently is a legal mandate for people to fill vacant positions. I didn't know this was a problem, but I guess it must be if they're adding it to the text of the bill.

Links to the bills are included below.

Here is the Committee's text and the full text of the bill. (Note that most of it is a quoted law, with edits embedded in the quote.)

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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.

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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.

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Paul Mulshine on "Unaffordable, Unfathomable Housing Plan"

"Each town's COAH committee has a dozen or so members, so when you multiply that by the 566 towns in New Jersey, you get ... lemme get out my calculator. Oh yeah, you get an incalculable waste of time and money."

No doubt. You really do need to read the whole thing.

And when you're done, thinking to yourself that it can't possibly be as bad as all that, go pull your copy of The Soprano State off of your bookshelf and read the section on the Mount Laurel Doctrine, which deals with affordable housing. In just a few pages, it shows how much worse it is than you think. Here, for instance:

The court gave developers the "builders' remedy," which says a builder can bring suit if it thinks zoning allows too few units on a parcel of land. If zoning only allows four houses per acre, for instance, the builder can bring suit for, say, twenty units per acre -- allegedly so that it can build affordable housing. This usually involves condos and apartments since builders wouldn't want affordable housing among their high-priced McMansions. Usually the threat of a suit is all it takes for a town to modify its zoning. If the issue never makes it to court, there is no order forcing the builder to provide any affordable housing although he does get the more dense zoning, which can be used solely for market-rate housing.

Follow that? The threat of a lawsuit gives builders the ability to quintuple the number of units on a parcel of land without actually providing the affordable housing that the denser zoning is supposed to enable. And the town residents' desires be damned.

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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.

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McCain and Obama-'nuff said!

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