New Jersey's Economy Expected to Recover...in 2017

...and that, my friends, is an admittedly optimistic scenario as put forth by a team of Rutgers economists:

A sobering report from two Rutgers economists. Jim Hughes and Joseph Seneca say it could take 2017 before employment returns to pre-recession levels. “We’re not trying to be overly dramatic here — we might even be considered optimistic,” Hughes, who is dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, told the Star-Ledger. “It’s not going to be an easy slog from here.”

New Jersey must add at least 25,000 jobs a year — higher than the average in the past. With the business climate in New Jersey considered among the worst in the nation, the likelihood of adding 25,000 jobs a year is not realistic.

Jon Corzine reacts at last night's gubernatorial debate:

When the panelists asked him about high unemployment, he responded weakly with a verbal shrug, noting that unemployment was also high in other states...He also concocted some strange tale involving jobs coming into New Jersey over the George Washington Bridge...

Garden State Patriot has more on Corzine's strange disconnect from reality last night:

Governor Corzine’s chutzpah knows no bounds. If you listened to the Governor tonight it was like being in a bizarro world: Up is down, right is left, black is white. In the past decade public sector jobs have risen while private sector jobs have been lost, yet he touts a record of reducing government workers? He claims to have cut property taxes and protected rebates when property taxes have gone up and scores of hard-working New Jerseyans (some now out of work I might add) learned this summer that their Homestead rebates were being stripped away from them. He had the gall to say, in reference to Chris Daggett’s plan, that it would be wrong to raise taxes in a recession – when he just raised taxes in a recession by a BILLION dollars!

Well, with enough money and enough bald-face lying, maybe he can still win. What a classic elitist, though - Corzine seems to believe he can continue to hold office without even appearing to give a whit about the concerns of the average middle-class resident...almost as if it is our duty to elect him, as he is so obviously our moral and intellectual better.

And why should such a man be bothered with such trifles as the middle-class, anyway? They are there to serve him, after all, and supply capital for his own little redistribution of wealth within the state of New Jersey...