You Better Watch Out, You’re Going to Cry, Corzine Claws in Going to Town

While you a busy celebrating and preparing to celebrate what I hope is a joyous holiday, Governor Corzine and the state legislature are pushing through a corrupt socialist agenda that will have a profound impact on your life. Things are so bad in Trenton that I’m beginning to sound like Gordon Bishop.

Most troubling is the proposed new school funding formula. School funding in New Jersey is at the heart the fiscal disaster that New Jersey has become and should be reformed. Currently, 31 urban school districts receive over half of the state’s funding for education, while the other 600 districts are left to fend for themselves. Your state income taxes go to fund the schools in those 31 districts, while your sky rocketing property taxes pay for the schools in your town. The 31 urban districts spend over $22, 000 per year per child in the name of education while the rest of the state spends about $11,000.00 per child.

Rather than reform a broken system with accountability and equity, Corzine is proposing to expand what is not working, and he’s attempting to rush it through the lame duck session of the legislature with little discussion. Corzine won’t even tell the legislature what their voting on until the last minute, but what he’s told New Jersey so far is that no school district will receive less state funding than they do now, that he will spend about $500 million more on education than he did last year and that school districts will be mandated to provide pre-kindergarten classes. In nutshell, he’s proposing a massive expansion of the school system with no improvement to the inequities of the system and no explanation of how we’ll be paying for it.

Before you send your children off to that mandatory pre-school or to day care, you’ll have to get that bundle of joy a flu shot. Babies as young as 6 months old must get a flu shot or no day care for them. This mandate by the Public Health Council, with the consent of the state Health Commissioner. I don’t remember voting for a Public Health Council or a Health Commissioner. I didn’t even know we had them. Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk, a Republican from Bergen County has proposed legislation that would allow parents to opt out of the mandatory vaccines by submitting a form to the local health department. Her bill is going no where in the lame duck legislature.

Also on the lame duck agenda: The death penalty is gone. Many might think that is a good thing. Perhaps it is. I have mixed thoughts and emotions about it. It would have been good to have a public debate about it and to have it be an issue in the election. That might have increased voter turnout. Our government won’t tell us what they really have planned during an election. That would make serious issues “political footballs” and might increase participation. No, our government would prefer to keep you comatose with their horse poo rhetoric during elections and then sneak their agenda through when you’re not looking. It doesn’t seem to matter much that the death penalty was authorized in the state constitution by a vote of the people.

Paid family leave is also on the agenda. You remember that debate in the election, don’t you? Nope. No one talked about it because it wasn’t on the table. It was locked in a desk waiting for the polls to close. 10 weeks off per year, with government pay, to take care of a sick family member. One legislator said this program will one day be as important in our society as Social Security. Great, just what we need. Another underfunded entitlement program for the masses to get addicted to so the future legislatures can raid the trust fund to fill a bloated budget. Fortunately, the business community has created enough pressure to slow this one down, but it could still happen.

All of this and more from a legislature that couldn’t do much besides debate how many license plates we should have on our cars since they closed down the government and raised the sales tax 14%. What a difference an election makes. January 8 can’t get here fast enough. Then we can deal with Corzine Claws’s massive borrowing plan, toll road monetization, and a 150% increase in tolls.

Happy Holidays.

Also published in The Courier and The Bayonne Evening Star-Telegram