Carlstadt Blog

My question to Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey: Do you support Bob Brown’s plan to lower property taxes in NJ?

Simple question.  Bob Brown’s plan is the only plan that can lower property tax bills for the majority of homeowners in the state.  Does Chris Christie support this plan?

To refresh everyone’s memory, money collected via the state income tax does not go into the general fund.  It is slated only for reducing your property taxes.  That’s it.  It’s in the state constitution.  And it actually would reduce property taxes if the money were divided up and given equally to municipalities on a per student basis.  But it’s not done that way.  Urban areas, awash in democratic voters, get the lion’s share of the income tax fund.  That makes sense for Governor Corzine.  Those are the people who voted him in.  But it doesn’t make sense for Christie to support that position.  He’s a republican and his interest should be in protecting the middle class of this state who are being taxed to death.

Brown’s plan, in his own words:

I would take the state income that is dedicated to only school property tax relief and take that money and distribute it equally per child all over the state of New Jersey, which would reduce your school property taxes by 50 percent.

That’s the way it’s done in Michigan and it works fine there.  It would work fine here.  Brown is a democrat, but his plan should be the republican position on property taxes.  It still can be should Christie embrace it.  As of this writing, Christie had no plan to reduce property taxes in NJ.  This is a plan he can rally around.  And if he doesn’t?  My next question to him would be that as a republican “why should I vote for you?”.

Governor Corzine has added his weight to the fight to eliminate the last all-Republican Council in Bergen County.  He has unfairly linked Mayor Will Roseman to the corruption scandal that rocked NJ politics last month.  He has applied his executive order which suspends the approval of development applications in towns “where a mayor charged with a public corruption crime remains in public office”  to the borough.  The order, itself probably unconstitutional, was originally aimed at the mayor of Ridgefield, who has refused to resign in the light of the scandal.  The Gov’s decision to add Carlstadt to the mix is an example of pure dirty politics.

As one friend of the Carlstadt Blog puts it: “Punish the people of Ridgefield, as if they are supporting the mayor and don’t want him to quit and throw Carlstadt in purely for partisan spite.”

Let’s recap:

• 1999: After repeated attempts to engage the County prosecutor, the mayor takes it upon himself to expose a prostitution ring operating in Carlstadt.
• 2002: Skip ahead three years, after the  prosecutor’s office embarrassing role in the affair has died down, the prosecutor cenures Mayor Roseman for interfering in “police matters” for his actions in exposing the ring.
• 2001: The mayor gets divorced and the town clerk doesn’t change his wife’s marital status on insurance forms.  [If you've ever been in the clerk's office, you'd understand how this happened.]

The mayor makes no money from this error and because of HIPA privacy laws is in no position to know this is going on.  His ex-wife, btw, is a corporate executive, has her own health insurance, and has no reason to steal.

• His ex whose place of work has the same health insurance as the town’s doesn’t notice the error. (it only applies to filled prescriptions and the bills are paid under the same carrier as her work insurance).
• After seven years, the error is brought to Will’s attention and he immediately pays back all the money ($7000), money he never received, and notifies the town council.
• The only Democrat on the council, Dave Hollenbeck, runs to the county prosecutor’s office and asks them to start an investigation.
• 2009: The mayor is indicted on corruption charges.
• August: Governor Corzine, in a fit of political opportunism, imposes his executive order on the people of Carlstadt.

The Governor’s action is Unfair, unwarranted, and unacceptable .  The mayor and people of Carlstadt shouldn’t be pawns in his political games.

Will Roseman must not resign! The people of Carlstadt will stand with the mayor and stand up to the Governor and his cronies!

Yesterday, 44 people were arrested by the Feds in a wide-spread criminal investigation, including three New Jersey mayors, and two state assemblymen. In the past, the arrest of crooked NJ politicos would have brought a smile to my face.  Seeing those entrusted to serve the public, but who instead decided to serve themselves, get their comeuppance is generally a universal cause for joy.  However, this time I find myself just shrugging my shoulders.  It’s not that I don’t care that alleged crooks are caught, or I’m so cynical that I believe that NJ politicians can never be honest.

The reason I’m so blasé about this particular case of political malfeasance is that the men who are running this state into bankruptcy are not going to be arrested.  They’re doing it legally. The Governor and his followers aren’t raiding the treasury or taking bribes to line their own pockets. They’re taxing away our savings to pay for grandiose social programs they sincerely believe in.  Someone once said: the greatest harm is done by men with the best intentions.  The more virtuous are our state leaders, the faster we are headed toward financial ruin.  We cannot continue to afford their well intentioned social programs.  Maybe men who thought more about their own financial well-being might be more inclined to understand mine.  At least the shady politician would be somewhat reined in by the thought of arrest.  And if he went to far, there’s the hope that he would someday find himself being led away in handcuffs.  There is no such check on the current administration.  They’re too honest! I’m not saying that it’s better to elect sinners than saints.  Only that it’s easier for me to understand getting my pockets picked at tax time by a crook.

Governor Corzine’s School Funding Reform Act has gone into effect.  The bill is supposed to save money by more efficiently consolidating the funds available to the state for education.  Its real purpose is to find more revenue streams to fund even more urban social programs under the guise of education.

There aren’t many revenue streams left in New Jersey that aren’t already over-tapped,  but the Governor, who isn’t above class warfare, has decided that the upper-middle class is fair game. However, since even the term “upper-middle class” carries some sympathy among those who work for a living, he has labelled those who live in upscale communities “elitists”.  Once tagged with this label, it is easy for Corzine and his cronies to target such communities for exorbitant tax hikes.  Rocky Hill is one such community.  A town of only 300 homes, each homeowner will see a property tax hike of $10,000 per year because of this Act.

The joke is that the money garnered unfairly from Rocky Hill and the dozens of other such communities will not go to lower the burden on everyone else as Corzine has promised, but will instead go towards new programs with more employees and more supervisors and more union votes for Corzine.

However, perhaps Corzine and the rest of the Democrats who have perpetrated this cynical attack on the upper-middle class (and can the rest of the middle class be safe in the near future?) should take a trip over the route 4 bridge into Paterson.  At one time this section of Paterson had its own upper-middle class with beautiful homes who lived very happily in the city.  But the people in charge saw these folks not as fellow residents but as a cash cow to be exploited.  They labelled these people as wealthy parasites and  vowed to make them pay for all the ills of the poor.  So property taxes were hiked and money was raised and that money was spent.  The residents in this part of town didn’t like it but they didn’t represent that many votes and they weren’t really rich enough to buy the political power necessary to fight the new taxes.  So they just paid  … for awhile.  You see, now when you drive over that bridge you’re greeted with all these empty homes.  Where people once lived and shared in the success that was Paterson, there is only decay and  blight.  Taxes are no longer being paid; the homeowners have all moved on.

Long ago Paterson tried to squeeze every drop of gold out of the proverbial golden goose of property owners and now finds itself much poorer with a smaller tax base.  Corzine has gone to Paterson and said he will find the places that those tax payers have  moved to, root them out, and again make them pay for all of the ills of Paterson and every other urban center in the state.  However, when he and the Dems are done and any owner of upscale property in the state has moved on to Delaware or Pennsylvania or New York what will New Jersey look like in the future? I think that if you take a drive over the rt. 4 bridge you might find out.

If there was one issue that put the kibosh on Steve Lonegan’s race for Governor, it was his Flat Tax plan.  Christie hammered Lonegan daily on the plan saying that, in effect, it would have raised taxes for most New Jerseyans. While a flat tax is the most just plan out there, even I had my misgivings about putting the plan into effect in NJ.  I just couldn’t put my finger on why during the campaign.

You see, our sales tax is a flat tax and no one seems to mind.  No one calls it an unfair burden on the poor (although lately it’s become a burden on all of us).  No one calls for a graduated sales tax.  Why is that?  Well, until recently, the sales tax has always been a low percentage tax.  A few cents on the dollar and, at least in this state, necessities aren’t even taxed.  People don’t mind sharing the burden if the burden isn’t too great.  Now think what would happen if the sales tax was raised to 25 or even 50% and extended to all purchases, even food items.  It really would be an unfair burden on the poor and a graduated sales tax would probably be called for.  It’s a ridiculous scenario and one that would never be allowed to happen to the sales tax.

But, this in effect is what has already happened to the state income tax.  The state spends so much money and taxes so heavily that the ridiculous scenario is operating in full swing.  A flat tax is a sensible plan that doesn’t work in the senseless economics of NJ.  Before the flat tax can work, NJ’s whole gone-nuts spending mentality has to change.

Think what would happen if New Jersey were instituting an income tax for the first time and based it on a flat rate.  The tax implemented would have to be very low to keep it from hurting the poor.  And it would always remain low for the same reason.  The tax could never become an engine for runaway spending because any spending would lead to an increase in the tax rate which would hit everyone equally.  On the other hand, a graduated income tax drives spending increases because the increases can always be passed onto those paying in the higher brackets ––at least for a little while, as were seeing now in Jersey.   The whole idea that you can fund your state government by passing the financial burden onto people making more money than you is fundamentally flawed, besides being basically unfair.  In a free country, people with money can just move somewhere else.  And this is just what we’re seeing in Jersey as businesses are leaving the state at a record rate.  Who does that leave to pay for our expensive government?  The very people the graduated income tax is supposed to protect.

Anyone who knows Will Roseman personally or through his deeds, knows that he is one of the most kind hearted public servants in NJ politics. Now he finds himself maligned in the media and the press. We need to support him and show that we believe in him as a friend and trust in him to continue as our mayor. All the good deeds Will has performed over the years has certainly earned him a lot of good karma.

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Monday evening, May 25th, the Carlstadt Council passed a resolution asking the governor not to eliminate funding for training volunteer ambulance and rescue squad workers, commonly know as EMT’s.  

What prompted the resolution was a decision by the governor’s office to cut all funding for training EMTs.  On the surface, it seems like a simple cost cutting move on the state’s part as cutting training will save 4 million a year in spending.  However, in the NJ legislature, nothing is ever done for motives as simple as these.  Let’s examine the issue.

The training fund was established in 1995 to cover mandatory training for emergency services personnel.  This includes initial training and continuing education (also mandatory).  The money comes from a 50 cent surcharge on all traffic tickets.  Without the training, a volunteer cannot join a rescue or ambulance squad.  In effect, by eliminating free training you will be eliminating the volunteer EMT system (unless the volunteers pay out of their own pockets or local municipalities raise property taxes, not likely).  

This is the point of the governor’s decision.  It is not to save money.  The legislature typically wastes more than 4 million dollars before lunch each day.  The purpose of the decision is to hand the lucrative emergency services business over to hospitals.  There is a lot of money to be made in emergency services, especially ambulance calls.  Right now, volunteers are doing that work for free. By eliminating the volunteer EMT system, only hospitals will be able to provide this service and it won’t be for free.  Today, if you need an ambulance in Carlstadt due to an emergency, you don’t get a bill.  When the hospitals takes over EMT services, all the emergency calls which are now free will be billed.  You will be charged for every ambulance call, every emergency visit.  It’s a big cash cow the hospitals want in on.  The governor needs to keep the hospitals happy so as  to continue all the free social programs run through hospitals in the cities.  Eliminating the volunteer EMT system is his quid pro quo.

BTW, where are most of your volunteer squads?  In suburban towns, the heart of the middle class.  So in the end, you can see that it is not about saving 4 million a year.  It’s about putting another costly burden on the backs of the middle class in suburbia to continue funding the governor’s and the democrat’s pet projects in urban areas.