The Smoldering Wreckage That Is New Jersey

Jon Corzine, staring down the barrell of New Jersey's long-time-coming fiscal meltdown, sees a way he can fix it. On the back of the middle class. By taxing the living sh*t out of them:

The Corzine $1.5 billion tax hike plan:

-Raise property taxes $500 million by eliminating rebates for anyone who earns over $75,000 a year.
-Raise property taxes ANOTHER $400 million by eliminating the property tax deduction from NJ Income Taxes (by the way, Obama wants to eliminate the deduction from your federal tax too!)
-Raise income taxes $380 million
-$80 million in increased business taxes
-$48 million tax hike on cigarettes, alcohol and wine
-$30 million in increased motor vehicle fees

How about cutting spending? Ah, no, actually, he expanded it:

..he eliminated no program.

He did not make the workforce smaller. He left state government, and its bureaucracy, largely intact.
In essence, the governor chose the bureaucracy over the taxpayer. Particularly, the property taxpayer who earns more than $75,000 a year

And not only did he not cut programs – he decided to go ahead and expand preschool education, even though he can only do so because he got money to do so from the federal government. And what happens next year if the feds don’t pony up another $2 billion or so to bail out his budget?

Exactly. It’s the property taxpayer who’ll once again take it in the bulls-eye.

And what politician does this remind you of?

Sometimes, our governor’s arrogance – for there really is no other word for it – floors us.
He stood up there today, lecturing us on how he preserved his progressive values in this budget, without seeing the irony of how he shifted the cost of his bureaucracy onto the property taxpayer.

Possible November opponent Chris Christie ties ex-Wall Street god Corzine to both the meltdown in New York and New Jersey:

The Wall Street philosophy of spend now, borrow now and pay later has driven New Jersey to be unaffordable for its people.

Corzine hopes they still have enough money to gamble:

Adding Powerball to the list of lottery games in which New Jersey participates, generating about $10 million. New Jersey would become the first state to participate in two multistate lottery games.

Classy. Milk the lower classes with yet another get-rich-quick scam. That's progressive politics for you, Jersey-style...