Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - New Jersey Shuts Down-mini-rant

host · 07-04-2006, 02:49 PM

Here is a link to a post that I made about John Corzine in April, 2005:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...3&postcount=29

I think that the people of NJ are very fortunate to have elected the man as
their governor. How do you think that you could do better than Corzine?
He is not motivated by the possibility of gaining personal wealth. He has
spent huge sums of his own money to become your leader.

He is not motivated by special interests...he cannot be bought. He will promote
policies of taxing to pay current expenses...contrast that with Whitman's legacy.
Do you really favor saddling your children with huge debt to further the career
of a fiscally irresponsible and ambitious politician, only interested in showing
you tax cuts now, to build her image, leaving you with double the prior bonding debt?

IMO, you should support Corzine, because he is the best you will ever do, as far as
a governor. He wants to give something back, and he seems like the real deal. He paid
from his own pocket to share his financial, management, and leadership skills. His
successor at Goldman Sachs was just appointed secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Consider why
he bucks the trend of the vast majority of the welathiest to align with the GOP.

He is a democrat, even though, with his considerable personal wealth, it is not in his
best interest to be one. Be glad that he is willing to shut down the AC casinos until a
realistic budget that deals with a looming $4 billion state deficit is passed. Most governors
could not withstand the loss of future campaign contributions that would come in reaction
by that industry, to such a move.

Your anti union, anti NJEA comments seem misplaced.....it seems that the NCLB (No Child Left
Behind Act) is responsible for higher educational minimums for teaching assistants.

Does it seem practical, with $3 a gallon gas, for the high concentration of NJ residents who
live across from NYC to drive 2 hours to Delaware to avoid paying sales tax? I lived in Manhattan
several years ago, and I shopped in NJ. Even with the one percent proposed increase, NJ will still
attract NY shoppers because your tax will still be lower than in NY. What does it cost in pkwy or
turnpike tolls to drive to Delaware and back?

Quote:

STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS / WHITMAN'S LEGACY
Press of Atlantic City, The (NJ)
January 11, 2001
Author: The Press of Atlantic City (Unpublished)

.....THE MOST SOBERING ASSESSMENT OF THE OUTGOING GOVERNOR - ONE CRITICS BELIEVE WILL DOMINATE HER LEGACY - IS THAT SHE FINANCED HER TAX CUTS BY INCREASING STATE DEBT FROM $7.1 BILLION TO $15.7 BILLION. ADD IN THE $8.6 BILLION SCHOOL-CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM, WHICH IS TO BE FINANCED THROUGH BONDING, AND STATE DEBT WILL HAVE TRIPLED SINCE WHITMAN TOOK OFFICE.

AMONG THE FEW NEW PROPOSALS IN WHITMAN'S STATE OF THE STATE WAS A CALL TO OPEN THE 2001-02 BUDGET YEAR WITH A $1 BILLION SURPLUS. GIVEN THE SUDDENLY FRAGILE NATURE OF THE ECONOMY, LEGISLATORS SHOULD MOVE CAUTIOUSLY AS THEY EYE THAT SURPLUS AS A SOURCE OF ELECTION-YEAR SPENDING.

Quote:

The mystery of Christie
Star-Ledger, The (Newark, NJ)
January 10, 2001
Author: JOHN MCLAUGHLIN

Americans are likely to wind up a little confused about just what they're getting when Christie Whitman goes to Washington to take up her duties as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, no matter how thorough her confirmation hearings. After all, New Jerseyans haven't been able to get a clear fix on where she stands even after seven years as governor.

Is she a stand-up defender of clean air and water and open spaces? Or a regulation-cutting advocate for businesses and developers whose idea of "green" doesn't extend beyond the color of money? There are days when Whitman seems to relish this ambiguity, arguing she must be doing something right if both business and environmental groups are on her case......

....So will she be the Christie Whitman who left a legacy of a million acres of greenery, inaugurated a new auto inspection system and fought ocean dumping, New York garbage and the Midwest smokestacks that foul the air here?

Or the Christie Whitman who cut the budget of her own Department of Environmental Protection by 25 percent, who slashed the DEP payroll by more than 700 employees, abolished the office of environmental prosecutor, weakened the Pinelands preservation effort and cut fines levied against polluters?

Will she come on like the governor who vowed to use the state master plan to control development or the one who gave her blessing and millions of dollars to bring 3.5 million square feet of Merrill Lynch office buildings to rural Hopewell Township?

Will she make the tough calls or make it easier for polluters?

Will she do the job or try to prove her dedication through hiking and canoeing photo-ops?.......

Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...AF0894DE404482

Corzine's Test: Will Tax Plan Win the Day?
New York Times, The (NY)
June 26, 2006
Author: DAVID W. CHEN

After spending more than $100 million of his own money to make the transition from Wall Street to the United States Senate, and then to the governor's office in New Jersey, Gov. Jon S. Corzine is bracing for the biggest test of his brief political career.

New Jersey is legally obligated to produce a balanced budget for the next fiscal year by this weekend, and with a $4 billion shortfall, Mr. Corzine is strenuously trying to persuade tax-allergic legislators that his proposal to increase the sales tax to 7 percent from 6 percent is the most responsible plan, not just for this year, but for the future. He is zeroing in on his fellow Democrats, who control both chambers of the Legislature.
Whether Mr. Corzine is able to bring around the more recalcitrant members of his party could well determine how successful he is over the next four years, and perhaps beyond.

"If he doesn't stand fast on the budget we might as well re-elect McGreevey or Whitman," said Michael M. Horn, a former state treasurer in the Kean administration, criticizing the fiscal policies of former Govs. James E. McGreevey, a Democrat, and Christie Whitman, a Republican. "But I expect the governor to do the right thing."

To close the deal, Mr. Corzine -- a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs -- has summoned all the personal skills that made him such a popular, yet idiosyncratic, leader there. He has held unusual one-on-one meetings with legislators as well as organized breakfasts with small groups of them, not to twist their arms, they say, but to amplify his budget arguments.

Publicly, he has displayed a rare fiery side, pumping his fists at a rally of about 6,000 union supporters in Trenton last week and vowing to veto a budget that did not provide sufficient money to ensure that the pension plan for state employees remains adequately financed.

When Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. said that the $31 billion budget was doomed in the Assembly as long as it included the sales tax increase, Mr. Corzine returned the volley by warning of a government shutdown if the Legislature failed to come to terms by the Saturday deadline.

And having spent his career at one of the premier investment houses, Mr. Corzine has taken a very hands-on approach with the fine print. He even reverts to his business roots -- sometimes a bit too closely -- as he did at a news conference last Thursday, when he dismissed a suggestion by some legislators to cut technology spending by $50 million.

"We need to expand our technological base if we're actually going to save money in the long-run management of the compa----" he said, stopping in mid-word. "Of the government."

Should Mr. Corzine prevail, he will enhance his credibility as an outsider who promised to apply his bottom-line and big-picture business mentality to a political system with a reputation of being petty and corrupt. And should he help turn the state's finances around, Mr. Corzine's name could well be on many Democrats' short list for president in 2012.

But if he fails, Mr. Corzine will probably find it all but impossible to pursue other goals that might also be considered politically risky, like property tax reform and bolstering public school finances.

"He, more than most governors in the past, has stated this year's budget not only in terms of how do you fill a hole, but how do you turn a ship around," said Jon Shure, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal research organization.

If the budget represents Mr. Corzine's political Rubicon, then it is reminiscent of what two other prominent businessmen-turned-politicians faced in their first years in office.

In Virginia, former Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat who is contemplating a 2008 presidential bid, failed to get a sales tax passed in an attempt to improve the state's finances, but shepherded a successful bipartisan attempt two years later.

And in New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg -- a Republican whom Mr. Corzine often praises -- pushed through an 18 percent increase in property taxes in his first year in office and took a beating in opinion polls before bouncing back and winning re-election convincingly last year.

"It really enabled Bloomberg to be able to use political capital on other initiatives, as opposed to having to fight the same budget fight every single year," said Eric Shuffler, who was a top aide to the previous governors, Richard J. Codey and James E. McGreevey, and is now a public policy consultant based in Manhattan. "So Governor Corzine is rightly trying to close a long-term structural deficit with recurring revenues, because those recurring revenues will pay dividends for him in terms of the rest of his agenda."

Mr. Corzine's task is complicated by the fact that New Jersey legislators have a long memory when it comes to the effect tax increases have at election time. Hardly a day goes by now without someone mentioning former Gov. James Florio, who raised the sales tax in 1990 to 7 percent from 6 percent.

In the next election, Democratic legislators lost control of both chambers and Republicans later rolled back the tax. Governor Florio was defeated in a bid for a second term by Mrs. Whitman.

In 2007, all 120 legislators face election, and recent polls have indicated that most residents oppose Mr. Corzine's proposal to increase the sales tax.

Yet in the public arena, at least, Mr. Corzine -- having learned from Mr. Florio's demise -- has done far more to soften the public and pitch his plan, which originally featured about $2 billion in spending cuts and $2 billion in tax increases, with the sales tax increase accounting for $1.1 billion.

He has attended about a dozen town hall budget meetings and appeared twice on a popular morning talk show on WKXW-FM, 101.5, which more than a decade ago helped galvanize opposition to Mr. Florio and his tax increase.

And more recently, Mr. Corzine has tried to sway lawmakers -- something that many Democrats had complained the administration had not done enough of during the previous three months. He has focused on the Assembly, where Democrats make up the largest number of outspoken opponents of the sales tax increase.

Last Thursday he had breakfast with Hudson County legislators, and the next day he was met with their colleagues from Essex County.

Nor was that all. On Thursday, the revolving door at the State House seemed as if it had been moved from the main entrance on State Street to the governor's inner sanctum. In addition to Mr. Codey and Mr. Roberts, he met with Assembly Democrats like Valerie Vainieri Huttle of Bergen County; Linda R. Greenstein, who represents Mercer and Middlesex Counties; and Herb Conaway and Jack Conners, who represent Burlington and Camden Counties.

In the end, many leading Democratic and Republican legislators say privately that they expect Mr. Corzine to get most of what he wants. He has already dropped a proposed tax on hospital beds that he had hoped would raise $430 million. And most important, he still has the support of Mr. Codey, and because -- armed with a line-item veto -- he arguably occupies the most powerful governorship in the country.

One freshman Democratic legislator who had a private audience with Mr. Corzine, Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer of Passaic County, said he was impressed that Mr. Corzine "affirmed his vision of fiscal integrity."

Perhaps just as important, Mr. Schaer, himself a stockbroker in Manhattan, said that Mr. Corzine appeared to be calm and confident.

As he put it, "The governor is a former trader, and traders thrive on this."

Quote:

http://www.njsba.org/members_only/pu...r/content.html
January/February 2004 Issue

http://www.njsba.org/members_only/pu...ofessional.htm
Leaving No Paraprofessional Behind

....Under President Bush’s sweeping $47.6 billion package known as the No Child Left Behind Act, these paraprofessionals are being pressured to meet certain standards or face termination.

When the president signed this legislation in his first month in the Oval Office, it was of only passing interest to Sharon Tapia of Jersey City. At the time, the mother of four was recently employed as a paraprofessional in the Jersey City Public Schools. There was no way for her to have imagined that Bush’s initiative would land her back in a classroom, taking copious notes and praying for lenient homework assignments.

But now, under the strict guidelines of the federal act, Tapia is a student at Hudson County Community College, taking courses as part of the school district’s preparation program, to keep her $17,500 job. “When I first found out that I had to go back to college, I thought there was no way that I could keep my job,” Tapia said. “Why would I go through the expense and bother of going to college, while trying to care for my children, for a job that pays so little?”..