New Jersey's Tax-Mad Governor
By Gordon Bishop (05/30/07)
A few days ago, the Associated Press (AP) wire service announced that New Jersey has one of the lowest state taxes on gasoline (only two other states are lower).
Immediately, New Jersey’s liberal “tax-and-spend”Governor Jon Corzine decided that Garden State motorists shouldn’t be given a “break” on gasoline by 5 or 6 cents a gallon.
So what does “one-term”Corzine proclaim the day after the AP report on the price of gasoline?
“Gov: Gas tax hike possible down the road”
Another smack in the face by unbuckled Corzine to the weary and frustrated taxpayers in the highest taxed State in the nation.
Corzine’s rational for another boost in gas taxes? “Could be alternative to raising tolls” on New Jersey’s three toll roads: The New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway and the Atlantic City Expressway.
At the moment, Corzine is thinking that more taxes are needed to help pay for mass transit and highway needs.
Dear Jon, did you ever think of slashing the super-duper size of our State government’s bloated and wasteful bureaucracies?
When I started writing weekly columns in 1959 at the North Jersey Herald News (48 years ago) and later the Newark Star-Ledger, there were only 10 official departments or bureaucracies in the State of New Jersey.
Today, there are twice that number!
We, the taxpayers, don’t need more government, we need less government – half of what we already have will do.
In fact, the vast majority of taxpayers in New Jersey can no longer afford their gigantic bungling bureaucracies. They are leaving in droves to Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas and Georgia.
Same with small businesses. Thousands have fled to more “business friendly” States that don’t have income taxes, or sales taxes, or high State taxes on businesses.
New Jersey used to be a “Win-Win” State when I grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Today, it’s a “Lose-Lose” State in pursuit of self-destruction.
As the middle-class leave to more affordable States, they say, “Only fools live in New Jersey.”
I guess I’m one of those aging fools.
I feel sorry for my middle-age children raising their children along the Jersey Shore. They’re carrying $200,000- to $300,000 mortgages or equity loans and are struggling to “break-even” each month as property taxes and other hidden taxes continue to rise.
And this is only the beginning of the massive “sell out” their Governor has in mind.
In the gas-tax hike proposal, Corzine said he’s looking at selling the State’s toll roads to private firms who will surely raise tolls the moment they buy from the State of New Jersey.
For the record, the State’s taxpayers own these toll roads, not the government. We paid for them with our own money.
Corzine and his liberal cronies say they must raise taxes whenever they can to pay the mounting state debt.
Well, who created that mountainous debt? Our elected politicians.
Well, who elected them?
Not fiscal conservatives, but liberal socialists who always want more and bigger government. That surely is a prescription for bankruptcy, which is where this State is headed (and you can add several more socialist states in America).
The “tax-and-spend” politicians just don’t get it.
And the voters just don’t get it. They keep voting for and returning to office the same “tax-and-spend” politicians.
Until taxpayers and voters wake up to this fact and stop complaining about soaring taxation, they must first change their pattern of thinking.
Out with the Spenders! In with the Savers!
No State, Nation or ‘Dynasty’ can survive with the formula we live under today. It’s financially and physically impossible.
We must have more Savers than Spenders if our Constitutional Republic is to survive.
The Greeks, Romans and other European empires have come and gone over the past millennia because of excessive spending that leads to destructive inflation.
Let’s get rid of the Spenders and vote for the Savers….before it’s too late.
Gordon Bishop
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