New Jersey Survival

Hi Brian,

Thank you to the more than 1,000 people who told the state Assembly to stand up to the developers’ dream bill that would extend building permits for up to seven years.

The environmental progress we have worked so hard to win is in danger. Positive steps protecting New Jersey’s open spaces and water over the last two years would be as if they never happened. New protections occurring over the next five years to ensure New Jersey keeps its status as the Garden State won’t apply.

No wonder developers have been intent on cozying up with Legislators on this bill as they aspire to protect their own interests above those of New Jersey’s environment. Just yesterday, an Assembly committee ignored public outcry and unanimously passed the developers’ dream bill.

Send an e-mail to your Senator to tell them to stop these environmental rollbacks and end the developers’ dreams.

It will roll back protections that Environment New Jersey and our members fought to win to protect our state’s waterways and allow developers to ignore environmental protections passed in the next five years. It would give new life to developments that have been defeated in the past, like Eagle Ridge in Passaic County, a 280+ home project above the largest reservoir in the state, the Wanaque.

The effort would give up to seven years to extend projects until the eve of 2013, regardless of what strong environmental protections occur in the next five years. The bill even negates past protections adopted after 2006, including some that Environment New Jersey fought hard to win, like no-development buffer zones around state waterways to reduce flooding.

Unfortunately, the bill is still gaining traction, with 15 Senators caving to the developers, and signing on.

Tell your Senator to oppose this legislation right now!

HELP US STOP THE DEVELOPERS’ DREAM BILL!

For more details on this breaking news, visit our Web site.

Sincerely,

Dena Mottola
Environment New Jersey Executive Director
DenaM@EnvironmentNewJersey.org
http://www.environmentnewjersey.org

P.S. Thanks again for your support. Please feel free to share this e-mail with your family and friends.

Let’s start with Webster’s definition:

Libertarian: A person who upholds the principles of individual liberty especially of thought and action.  Capitalized: a member of a political party advocating libertarian principles. 

Libertarians believe in, and pursue, personal freedom while maintaining personal responsibility.  The Libertarian Party itself serves a much larger pro-liberty community with the specific mission of electing Libertarians to public office.

Libertarians strongly oppose any government interfering in their personal, family and business decisions.   Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another.

In a nutshell, we are advocates for a smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

Are Libertarians liberal or conservative?

Libertarians are neither. Unlike liberals or conservatives, Libertarians advocate a high degree of both personal and economic liberty. For example, Libertarians advocate freedom in economic matters, so we’re in favor of lowering taxes, slashing bureaucratic regulation of business, and charitable — rather than government — welfare. But Libertarians are also socially tolerant.  We won’t demand laws or restrictions on other people who we may not agree because of personal actions or lifestyles.

Think of us as a group of people with a “live and let live” mentality and a balanced checkbook.

In a sense, Libertarians “borrow” from both sides to come up with a logical and consistent whole — but without the exceptions and broken promises of Republican and Democratic politicians. That’s why we call ourselves the Party of Principle.

How large is the Libertarian Party?

In terms of political activity (i.e. number of candidates, access to the ballot, and elected office holders), the Libertarian Party is the third-largest political party in America. We’re active in all 50 states and have more than 200,000 registered voters. 

What kind of offices do Libertarians run for and hold?

Around the nation there are Libertarian mayors, county executives, county council members and even a Libertarian sheriff! Libertarians also serve on school boards and in hundreds of local offices. In 2006 alone, over 13.4 million votes were cast for Libertarian candidates around the nation.

While we are most successful at the local level for now, we run candidates at all levels of government, even President of the United States.

Our elected Libertarians are hard at work saving you money and protecting your civil liberties. In fact, Libertarians saved Americans over $2.2 billion in 2004 alone. 

What kind of people join the Libertarian Party?

People like you. People who used to be Republicans, Democrats, and independents – from all walks of life. They joined us because they realize that we’re the only political party working for their best interests.

Those who join us realize that, unlike the two major parties, we place the interests of our nation ABOVE the interests of our political party.  While the Republican and Democratic parties exist to maintain their own power, we exist to grasp power for the benefit of you and millions of other Americans across our nation.

How can I become a Libertarian?

For the reasonable fee of $25 per year, you can become a Sustaining Member of the Libertarian Party and a real, card-carrying Libertarian.  After you join, you will receive our monthly publication, LP News, along with regular updates on our national activities.

More importantly, if you join our political party and become a Libertarian, you will stand with thousands of other Americans who are proudly committed to bringing about true freedom within our nation.

Sen. Raymond Lesniak needs to take his foot off the toll hike accelerator.

The Union County Democrat, who has championed numerous plans over the past two years to use higher tolls to bail out state government, is so bent on speeding ahead that he wants the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to hold public hearings on a toll hike “right away.”

But public hearings on what? Everyone agrees the Turnpike Authority needs more money, but even commissioners don’t know how much. The amount depends on whether the money is used only for the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway or whether higher tolls will also go to work on other state roads and for mass transit.

Gov. Jon Corzine and lawmakers, not the toll road authority commissioners, have to make that policy decision. And it probably won’t come for months. Although Corzine would like the issue settled by summer, history shows it is much more likely to get hammered out in the fall.

There is no escaping a toll hike of some kind — even after the apparent demise of Corzine’s earlier, overly ambitious toll plan to raise money to slash state debt, purchase open space and pay for road and mass transit improvements across the state.

The immediate problem is that the stalling economy has cut traffic and revenue on the toll roads. A minimum hike, perhaps as much as 20 percent, will be needed next year just so the authority can pay its expenses and maintain a mandated bond reserve.

Trenton isn’t going to settle for the minimum, nor should drivers, painful though it will be to pay more.

The Parkway and the Turnpike have congested sections that are overdue for widening, and aging bridges that need repair and renovation. Undertaking those projects could require a hike of about 45 percent or more (high but easier to swallow than Cor zine’s suggested 800 percent over 14 years). But better to raise the money and do the work now than wait and have the price rise while taking a chance on bridge safety.

Whether to raise tolls still more to help pay for statewide road, bridge and mass transit work is a thornier question.

For years, the Parkway and Turnpike have paid a small amount of toll money, about $22 million a year, toward the state’s general transportation fund. But the chief source for this work has always been the gasoline tax.

Clearly, motorists are less likely to object to some of their toll money going to other road and transit projects than to suffering gigantic hikes to lower general state debt.

But until a firm plan is in place, calling for Turnpike Authority hearings is as premature as having a Senate hearing on a bill that hasn’t been written, much less introduced.

Taken from Star Ledgereditorial - 5/13/08

At the Times >>>>> http://www.nj.com/news/times/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1209960311324240.xml&coll=5&thispage=1

It’s like watching a car wreck in slow motion.

What the Democrats are doing to the state’s economy, I mean. Pieces are flying off in all directions. In terms of taxes and regulation, New Jersey was once a relative haven, a cheap place to do business. But for most of this century, we’ve been slowly losing high-income residents and high-income jobs. James Hughes and Joe Seneca of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers have been documenting this in a series of depressing reports about the state’s economy.

“When business decisions for expansion are made, they’re just not being made in New Jersey,” said Seneca when I spoke to him yesterday.

The primary source of job growth in recent years has been in government, not private industry. And that represents a death spiral. Public employment creates higher taxes, which in turn discourage private employers from locating or expanding in New Jersey.

Don’t worry, though. The Corzine administration’s doing something about the business climate: It’s making it worse. That Family Leave Act the governor signed recently will raise payroll taxes and will also force employers to grant leave to workers for up to six weeks at a time.

And then the other day the Department of Community Affairs adopted new affordable-housing guidelines that put a burden on businesses not seen in any other state. If you want to construct a store or office complex in New Jersey, you can be required to construct or finance housing nearby. Democrats are even pushing for a statewide 2.5 percent tax on all commercial construction to fund that home building scheme.

This anti-business environment began with the first major action Jim McGreevey took in 2002. He raised the corporate income tax. The small increase in revenue doesn’t make up for the jobs that will go to lower-tax states.

“All we’re looking for here is a billion more,” said Assemblyman Joe Cryan at that time. Cryan has since risen to state Democratic chairman thanks to the attitude embodied in that quote.

To get that billion, McGreevey had to tax corporations through an “alternative minimum assessment” even in years when they had no profits.

By 2004, a CFO Magazine survey of corporate tax officials showed New Jersey to have “the least fair and predictable” tax system in America. But McGreevey was just getting started. He proposed a so-called “millionaire’s tax.” The Democrats got it through the Legislature with the false claim that it would cost the typical taxpayer in the over-$500,000 bracket a mere $846 annually. The actual average cost was $29,000 a year.

Rich people can do math even if Democrats can’t, and that tax chased some high-income retirees to Florida and wealthy Wall Streeters to Connecticut.

Just in case any of those rich guys had any thought of moving to the beautiful northwestern section of New Jersey, McGreevey also pushed through the Highlands Act. Theoretically, the bill was supposed to protect the unspoiled wilderness. But shortly after it was adopted, I visited a guy who owns a strip of land fronting on the highway in a commercial district of Mount Olive. He wanted to build an office park there but was prohibited by the new law. Other states dream of attracting such businesses because of their clean, high-paying jobs and their role in reducing property taxes for homeowners. Not Jersey.

When Wall Street whiz Jon Corzine took office in 2006, he had a chance to change the anti-business climate created by his predecessor. And he had a promising start, by which I mean he kept promising to do so.

As for keeping those promises, no dice. His pledge to “call a special legislative session to deal with property taxes” led to a systematic process of rejecting any ideas that would cut the cost of government. A low point in that effort came when Corzine appeared at a rally of public employees outside the Statehouse and pledged to protect the workers against seniority and pension reforms that might be part of any property tax reform proposal.

To his credit, Corzine did eliminate McGreevey’s alternative minimum tax. Other than that, his administration has been as anti-business as McGreevey’s, though he at least has toned down the rhetoric.

As for his latest moves in the area of family leave and affordable housing, that stuff might sound nice, but it makes New Jersey even less competitive, says Hughes.

“Pennsylvania will make the argument that New Jersey is not business-friendly,” Hughes told me. “It’s a business climate effect other states will use against us.”

And it’s a business climate that never would have developed if not for a deliberate policy of the past two Democratic administrations.

As I said, this has been like watching a car wreck. But there’s one difference: This is no accident.

Paul Mulshine may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com. To comment on his column, go to NJVoices.com.

New Jersey needs a clean sweep…let us start at the top!

A special legislative committee on local government consolidation in 2006 suggested that New Jersey towns would require a “big stick” approach, as opposed to incentives (aka a “carrot”).Gov. Corzine’s proposed cuts in state aid were presented as such an approach. However, after running the town-by-town numbers yesterday, my impression is that the cuts will hit like a hammer in a small handful of towns, but sting like a gnat almost everywhere else. The end result — the governor will achieve a budgetary savings, but compel few if any towns to merge.

In fact, I realized yesterday that the math on the face of it pointed to only a mild incentive: There are about 2. 5 million homeowners in New Jersey, and Corzine’s proposal amounted to a reduction of about $168 million in formula aid.

That’s only $67 per homeowner. And then when you consider that homeowners in New Jersey pay 70 percent of the property taxes — the rest of the tab gets picked up by owners of commercial and other types of property — the potential tax impact gets reduced to $47.

True, after running the numbers, there were 124 towns where the potential impact topped $100 per homeowner. But that’s $100 spread across four quarterly tax payments, and obfuscated by the regularly scheduled municipal tax hike, along with whatever happens to school and county taxes.

To wit, even if municipal officials pass the cost of the aid cuts onto their constituents, very few New Jersey homeowners are going to feel enough pain to go down to town hall and demand a push for shared services.

Which means, of course, that most municipal officials will simply pass the costs onto their constituents, and life will go on as usual in this land of many municipalities.

Here’s the town-by-town impact chart that ran in today’s paper:

SEE DETAILS AT:

http://blog.nj.com/statattack/2008/03/will_corzine_aid_cuts_really_e.html

in article by Rob Gebeloff at http://www.nj.com/news/