Steve Sweeney puts the brakes on Chris Christie's backroom gas tax / sales tax deal

Enjoy your Fourth of July weekend New Jersey. The impending 23 cent gas tax hike, scheduled to go into effect at midnight, is (temporarily) dead.

It's not for lack of trying. And it's not because State Senate Democrats have suddenly seen the light in our already overtaxed state.

Nope. It's because Steve Sweeney wants the tax hit to be bigger. Christie's fake sales tax cut has gotta go! To be replaced with, well, the Democrats are still working that out.

So the fund that was running on fumes suddenly has an extra month of life. It's a miracle!

"We're going to go talk to the Assembly because we don't feel there's enough support in the Senate to do the Assembly bill. So we have to go to the Assembly with what we feel is a bill that could pass," Sweeney, D-Gloucester, told reporters. "It's a negotiation, and we're going to try to negotiate with the Assembly when we leave here. But we're not going to take any action on either bill today."

The only part the 2 sides agree on is the immediate 23 cent hike in the gas tax.

Christie and the Assembly say they'll offset that with a one percent sales tax cut sometime after 2018.

Senate Democrats had cobbled together a hodge-podge of estate tax phaseouts, retirement income tax exclusions, and charitable contribution deductions for some "middle class" tax filers to maybe appease enough fence-sitters into backing the gas tax increase. Christie called that plan "unfair," which is how he came to be siding with the Assembly's proposal.

Meanwhile the Transportation Trust Fund is $30 billion in debt and every dime currently dedicated toward it now goes to interest payments, leaving nothing to pay for actual transportaton projects. Hence the zeal to more than double the gas tax.

And of course all of this plays out against the backdrop of Sweeney's 2017 gubernatorial ambitions. Which of course might get detoured if he's seen as the mastermind of a whopping gas tax hike.

Happy, uh, Independence Day.

Posted at 16:50 by Chris Wysocki   [/nj_politics]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Chris Christie's midnight sellout: Gas tax hike now, sales tax cut maybe later

Hanging around with Donald Trump seems to have given Chris Christie the idea that he's capable of cutting yuge deals. Except his idea of a deal is actually a complete sellout to the Democrats.

Raise the gas tax now. Maybe cut the sales tax later. No estate tax cut. No income tax cut. Nothing upfront except Tax and Spend. It's such a great deal they had to sneak it through in the dark of night.

Fourteen minutes! That's gotta be some kind of World Record for deliberative scrutiny. Obviously no one actually read the bill, or bothered to care what the public might have to say about it. Too late peasants! It's a done deal, so bend over and take it like a man.

The whole thing is a sham. By 2018 Christie will be a memory in Trenton. And dollars to donuts whatever Democrat succeeds him will find enough budget "emergencies" to ensure this sales tax cut never sees the light of day.

But that didn't stop Governor Sellout from doing his Happy Dance.

Screwing the public is bipartisan fun!

Prieto and his unionista buddies are salivating at getting their mitts on that projected $2 billion annual boost to the Transportation Slush Fund.

They say it'll be used to fix our crumbling roads and bridges. And at an average cost of $2 million per mile there'll be plenty of opportunity for sticky fingers to latch onto some loose cash. Especially when some projects top out at a whopping $27.3 million per mile. Go ahead, tell me that one wasn't padded by the usual assortment of shady characters.

Then again, a lot of it will probably be earmarked for utopian socialist boondoggles like light rail, bike lanes, and the urban planners' perennial favorite — Transit Villages, which they'll sell on the idea of, wait for it, cars being too expensive to operate.

And then like I said, any hope of a future sales tax cut will fade into oblivion when the Democrats decide to use that money to bail out the public employee pension fund.

For a guy who entered office on the promise of shaking up the Trenton establishment, Chris Christie has now cemented his stature as the epitome of Business As Usual. Thanks governor. Thanks a lot.

Posted at 12:18 by Chris Wysocki   [/nj_politics]   Comments | Perm Link |
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The EU wants robots to pay taxes, so can the robots revolt for representation?

No taxation without representation. It's the essence of modern liberty. It's the foundation of America's government. And it's about to be put to the test by the European Union, where a draft proposal would force robots to pay taxes.

Isaac Asimov, please call your office.

If robots pay taxes, shouldn't they be allowed to vote? Hold office? Can an "electronic person" own property or exercise civil rights?

These aren't silly questions.

And no, I don't have the answers. I'm pretty sure the Euroweenies don't have the answers either. They're just trolling for revenue to prop up their bloated social welfare state and robots are this week's easy target.

But someone ought to put some thought into this Real Soon Now or the EU just might find themselves on the receiving end of a robot revolution.

Posted at 11:00 by Chris Wysocki   [/tech]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Chris Christie's proposed school aid plan would put a huge dent in my property tax bill

Yesterday Chris Christie proposed a statewide school aid plan that's so sensible, so fair, and so simple, it probably has zero chance of passing our rabidly partisan Democrat-controlled legislature.

The plan calls for equalizing state aid per pupil across the board. Every kid in every district gets the same amount. The current court-imposed formula sanctifies 30 "Abbott" districts, giving them the lion's share of state aid while leaving crumbs for the other 534. How this could be considered "fair" is beyond me, but then I'm not a liberal socialist. So expect the Democrats and their NJEA unionista buddies to oppose this plan tooth and nail.

But man-oh-man, if it did pass, I'd see my school tax bill shrink, by a lot.

Because according to this Star-Ledger analysis, Caldwell's state aid would rise from a measly $400.20 to $6,599 per pupil, an increase of 1524%!

Given that the CWCBOE spends about $14,000 per kid, and pretty much all of that comes out of property taxes, I could potentially see my school tax bill go down by about $4,000 a year.

That's almost better than winning the lottery!

Of course I'm only dreaming. Not because the Democrats won't pass Christie's plan. But because even if they did, the spendthrifts on Caldwell's board of education would never surrender that property tax revenue. These guys have a wishlist a mile long and an extra 6 grand per kid in state aid would get vacuumed up into lavish pie-in-the-sky ostensibly "educational" spending projects in a New York minute. The gold-plated water fountains in their Performing Arts Center or the state-of-the-art locker room facilities they're currently building in Met Life Stadium Junior (formerly known as Bonnell Field) would pale in comparison to the stuff they'd throw money at given the chance.

Christie's plan is only half of the solution. The other half is spending control, something that's even more lacking in these parts than state aid. Between the teachers union and the BOE the taxpayers don't have a prayer. And until that situation changes it doesn't matter what Chris Christie or any future governor does, because in the end we're still gonna get hosed.

Posted at 10:42 by Chris Wysocki   [/caldwell]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Your tax dollars at work: NJ will subsidize building electric car charging stations

Government waste, econut edition:

Hey, remember back in the early 1900s when the state passed out grants to "encourage" the building of more gas stations?

Yeah, me neither.

According to the state Board of Public Utilities, there are currently 398 charging outlets at 181 locations in New Jersey, based on data kept by the federal Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center. BPU President Richard Mroz said the grant program will encourage greater use of electric vehicles as well as plug-in hybrids, by expanding the infrastructure network needed to keep alternative-fueled vehicles on the road in New Jersey.

398 charging stations doesn't sound like a lot. Except there probably aren't 398 electric cars in all of New Jersey.

Remember when the people who needed and wanted a service paid for that service? Ah, but then we couldn't have socialism, and use Other People's Money to buy votes and preen for favorable press.

Proving once again just how impractical electric cars really are. Plug in for an hour while twiddling your thumbs, and presto! you're good for another 2, maybe 5 miles. Lather, rinse, repeat!

Wait 8 hours (maybe take a nap?) and go a whopping 40 miles! Just don't turn on the air conditioning…

Or you could, oh I don't know, spend 8 minutes at the corner gas station and go upwards of 400 miles on a single tank. That is if you're smart enough to buy a Real Car instead of a glorified golf cart.

But then how would smug virtue-signaling liberals be able to feel good about themselves at our expense?

Posted at 11:31 by Chris Wysocki   [/agw]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Senate Democrats filibuster to end Due Process for gun owners, but not for Muslims

Oh, that pesky Constitution!

That whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing? Yeah, it's so 17th century.

Liberty, it's so outdated dontcha know. And guns are scary!

So yesterday, to the applause of pretty much every liberal on my Facebook friends list, Senate Democrats waged a 15 hour filibuster to force a vote on suspending the Constitution for gun owners.

A Democratic senator who mourned the loss of 20 children in his home state of Connecticut waged a roughly 15-hour filibuster into the early hours Thursday, asserting as he yielded the floor that Republican leaders had committed to hold votes on expanded gun background checks and a ban on gun sales to suspected terrorists.

Who is a "suspected terrorist?"

Anyone on the government's secret terrorism watch list or the airlines' no-fly list. Lists that you can't find out if you're on, and can't get off of if you are.

Sounds legit, right? Because remember, guns are scary!

Meanwhile, the New York Times wants the government to go even further, by convening a secret Star Chamber to suspend the Second Amendment.

Hey remember the Good Old Days when Democrats opposed the FISA courts?

Oh, right, that was back when that evil Booosch guy was using them to spy on library records and other important stuff. This is like totally different! Because guns are scary!

But, OK, let's suppose a bunch of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats really do have everyone's best interests at heart. They're paragons of integrity and they'll never put their political enemies on a "no-buy" list out of spite, unlike say, their buddies at the IRS. Honest!

So then riddle me this Batman. Because I'm confused about something. See, a day earlier Newt Gingrich floated the idea of resurrecting the House Un-American Activities Committee. Which of course would meet in the open, in front of TV cameras.

And liberals flipped out.

When it comes to Muslims, Due Process is the only thing that matters. And their Constitutional rights are sacrosanct. And, McCarthyism!

I'm reveling in the irony. "Blacklist." "No-buy" list. Po-tay-to. Po-tah-to.

Here's an idea. Let's call the whole thing off.

Because even with all their lists, the Democrats still wouldn't have stopped the Orlando shooter. He deliberately wasn't put on any watch lists.

If you're asking yourself "why not?," that's easy.

The answer is, because under this Administration, accusations of "Islamophobia" are career-ending, whereas letting people be killed by the dozens is just an unfortunate bit of government work.

It's almost as if they're just using this shooting as pretext for advancing their totalitarian ideology. Never let a crisis go to waste. And disarming the population is Step One toward controlling the population.

Molon Labe!

Posted at 11:39 by Chris Wysocki   [/democrats]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Chris Christie agrees in principle with NJ Democrats planned 23 cent gas tax hike

And, Chris Christie sells us out once again. Or folds like cheap suit. Take your pick.

NJ Democrats want to raise our state's gas tax by a whopping 23 cents a gallon to pay for more transportation boondoggles like Camden's light rail to nowhere and a new rail tunnel for people who work in Manhattan. Er, "to fix our crumbling roads and bridges," at the low, low price of $27.3 million dollars per mile. Or, so I'm told.

In exchange, they're going to "phase out" the Estate Tax. In theory, anyway.

And today Chris Christie signaled he's OK with that plan, if the tax-and-spend party pinky-swears they'll phase out the estate tax "faster."

"Tax fairness!" Because tacking 23 cents a gallon onto the price of gas is "fair!"

Oh, but, we're going to get rid of one of our dueling death taxes. Maybe.

Both plans propose raising $2 billion a year for the Transportation Trust Fund over the next 10 years. A critical component to achieve tax fairness, Christie said, is the elimination of the estate tax, one of the two so-called "death taxes" that many critics say make New Jersey uncompetitive with other states and unpopular for retirees. But the legislative proposals would phase out the estate tax over four years. Christie wants it eliminated by the time he leaves office in two years because, he said, "I don't trust them."

Yeah, well, we don't trust you either Chief.

And we certainly don't trust your bureaucratic brain trust to wisely spend that new $2 billion in annual revenue you're squeezing out of us. Because their track record stinks. Where else but New Jersey could you find a 3½ mile roadway reconstruction project costing north of one billion dollars? I must be the only guy in the state whose palm isn't getting greased on that one…

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times. We don't have a revenue problem, we have spending problem. And Chris Christie's "solution" is to look the other way.

Thanks governor. Thanks a lot.

Posted at 14:45 by Chris Wysocki   [/nj_politics]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Well, I did it. I voted for Trump in the NJ primary. Because, #NeverHillary

I'm coming out of the closet.

Donald Trump wasn't my first choice for the GOP presidential nomination. That distinction goes to Scott Walker.

He wasn't my second choice either. Or my third.

Hell, he wasn't my 17th choice, OK? Happy now?

But he's gonna be the nominee. And not for nothing, anyone is better than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The nation can probably survive 4, or even 8 years of President Trump.

America as we know it won't last six months after the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua is inaugurated.

Why? Because she'll finish what Obama started, erasing the Bill of Rights, trampling the Constitution, coddling our enemies, ruining the economy, and opening our borders to the Mohammedan hordes and Mexican drug lords. Oh, not to mention the enshrinement of Pay-to-Play as the only way to get anything done in her White House.

Her daughter spilled the beans, say goodbye to the Second Amendment. Hillary will confiscate our guns.

Donald Trump won't.

Hillary will appoint at least 2, and probably 3 radical left-wing justices to the Supreme Court. Justices who'll make Sonya "Wise Latina" Sotomayor look like Oliver Wendall Holmes by comparison. Justices who won't think twice about rewriting the Constitution to suit their social justice whims.

Donald Trump won't.

Hillary will irrevocably send our nation down the rathole of green energy, bankrupting the coal, oil, and gas companies as she pours trillions of tax dollars into pie-in-the-sky renewable generation fantasies.

Donald Trump won't.

Hillary will enhance and prop-up Obamacare, or barring that, replace it with Cuban / Venezuelan style single-payer health care.

Donald Trump won't.

Hillary will bury all the misdeeds of the Obama administration like Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Benghazi, Lois Lerner's weaponized IRS, EPA overreach, State Department stonewalling, the disastrous Iran "deal," and the stench at the VA. And of course if she's president we'll never know the extent of the corruption at the Clinton Foundation or where all the money they supposedly raised for Haiti actually ended up.

Donald Trump will pour some much needed disinfectant on all that's rotten in the Democratic Party. Can you imagine how much fun Attorney General Chris Christie is going to have prosecuting everyone who ever worked for BHO and HRC? And Valerie Jarrett will probably defect to Iran the day after Trump is elected.

And of course, speaking of misdeeds, Hillary Clinton is under investigation by the FBI for serious breaches of national security.

Donald Trump isn't.

The presidency must be denied to Hillary Clinton. Of that there can be no doubt. Donald Trump is the last person standing in her way. Ergo, it's time to man up and endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States.

Posted at 12:04 by Chris Wysocki   [/election]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Brainwashing, complete: Majority of teens say not recycling is more immoral than porn

When I decry the indoctrination occuring in the government schools I'm often chastised by my liberal friends for over-reacting. Well, it turns out that ideas do have consequences, and one such consequence is the elevation of Gaia worship over traditional morality.

Because "over-eating, energy consumption, and not recycling" are three issues the progressive left insists on emphasizing, over and over, brainwashing our children with apocalyptic visions of rising sea levels washing away a population of overweight sloths. Absent a sense of perspective, of course.

And naturally too, downplaying the detrimental effects of viewing porn is another deliberate decision. Porn desensitizes children to the spiratuality of sexual relations. Porn shows them that it's "normal" to engage in immoral activities. And the generation that came of age on "free love" is now teaching our kids that sexually, anything goes.

This is what comes of moral relativism, the belief that there are no absolutes, only shades of gray. It's a belief that "good" and "evil" are merely 2 sides of the same coin, and one is not inherently better than the other. Absolute morality, of the kind espoused by the likes of organized religion, has become verboten, replacing relativity with relativism.

Which is why our educators do not provide perspective when expounding on the perils of Climate Change, or racism, or homophobia, or Islamophobia, or in fact any of their radical pronouncements. When all ideas are "equal," nothing has value. Or rather, everything has the same value, and that value is defined by the person espousing it.

Alas, men need something or someone to worship. It's human nature. If God is taken out of the equation, then another deity, the State or the planet or the self, rushes in to fill the void. So we begat a generation of kids whose morality is skewed. A generation that will rearrange bathrooms across America to accommodate a single transgender individual and doesn't blink an eye at depictions of group sex on television. And of course a generation which delights in persecuting Christians and Jews who stand up in objection to the skewering of absolute truth.

In such an environment, how could recyclling not be more important than resisting temptation?

Posted at 12:52 by Chris Wysocki   [/education]   Comments | Perm Link |
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Elizabeth Warren launched a blatantly anti-Semitic tirade against Donald Trump today

When was the last time a political candidate was called a "moneygrubber?"

Let's ask Elizabeth Warren, who lobbed that label against Donald Trump today.

Donald Trump is an "insecure moneygrubber," Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the assembled Democrats of Massachusetts at the state's party convention Saturday.

Good grief. Did she break out a caricature of him with a hooked nose too?

Because in the fever swamps of the Left, "moneygrubber" == "Jew".

And according to Warren, Donald Trump, like stereotypical Jews, is "all about money."

From there, Warren launched into a laundry list of Trump's policies, highlighting where the GOP nominee's views differed from that of her own and her party's. She said he is "all about money."

The casual anti-Semitism inherent in that comments is astounding.

"These are the values we fight for," Warren said.

Donald Trump's daughter converted to Judaism.

And Elizabeth Warren's "values," the values she will "fight for," denigrate Ivanka Trump's religion.

Did you know Warren is on Hillary's short list for VP? Imagine a raging anti-Semite, a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Welcome to today's Democratic Party.

UPDATE 05 Jun 2016 13:28:
Adding insult to injury, Bernie Sanders and the DNC platform committee go full-on anti-Semite.

Sanders got to appoint two people to the Democratic Party's platform committee. Here's who he chose:

Like I said above, the farther left you go, the more virulant is the Jew-hatred.

Posted at 21:35 by Chris Wysocki   [/election]   Comments | Perm Link |
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When Mitch McConnell is the Voice Of Reason we've definitely entered Bizarro World

Reince Priebus couldn't do it. Paul Ryan won't do it. Mitt Romney doesn't want anyone to do it. Bill Kristol is urgently trying to prevent it. And John McCain forgot what "it" is.

But somebody has to step up and unite the GOP, and from somewhere beyond left field we get ... Mitch McConnell?

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, widely acknowledged as one of the GOP Establishment's leading voices — who himself has little positive to say about Trump — is also deeply disconcerted by Kristol's apparent desire to see the GOP lose just because its presumptive nominee isn't a Weekly Standard-reading neoconservative who wishes to gallivant across the globe building democracies.

He's talking about Kristol's cockamamie idea of drafting NRO's David French to run as a third party candidate. Which, unless he also enlists Indiana State Representative Randy Frye as his running mate, is doomed to failure.

Oh, sure. "French - Frye 2016" is also doomed to fail, but it'll at least be good for a few laughs on late night TV.

In other words, keep your eye on the prize guys. Hillary Clinton and whatever radical progressive nutjob she cajoles into being her running mate are the real problem. They must be defeated. And like it or not, the only guy who can defeat them is Donald Trump.

Not Gary Johnson. Not David French. Not Mitt Romney The Sequel.

Donald Trump.

Which isn't to say that Trump is perfect. Far from it. So I was pleased to see that McConnell isn't letting Trump off the hook either.

Now of course some of McConnell's sudden penchant for unity comes from a sense of self-preservation. Trump The Destroyer could very well send him back to obscurity as the GOP moves in a whole new direction. And I for one wouldn't lose too much sleep if McConnell and his cronies were deposed.

But McConnell's been around for a long time and he knows how to cut a deal. Trump likes deals. And a deal that keeps the House and Senate in GOP hands while crushing Hillary Clinton sounds like the best deal we can get at this point.

Of course part of Trump's appeal is he says things that are outrageous. He lambastes the establishment. He doesn't do nuance. He can't, and shouldn't turn that off. But he's also got to realize that he needs the GOP more than they need him. These establishment guys, their sinecure is set, even if Hillary gets elected. Bob Dole lost in 1996 and he's still hanging around collecting a paycheck.

So McConnell's olive branch is a good sign. Trump should take it, and together they should figure out a way to make peace with the #NeverTrumpers before it's too late.

That list of potential SCOTUS nominees was a good first step by the way. The NRA endorsement, especially given how Hillary is ratcheting up the anti-gun rhetoric, is also a positive development. (Yes, I know he's been all over the map on guns prior to his presidential run. But Constitutional Carry was one of his first big position statements, and he's repeatedly come out for gun permit reciprocity in a manner equivalent to how states recognize drivers licenses. So let's say he's "evolved," or something.)

If Mitch McConnell wants to bring both sides together I'll do what I can to help. Bizarro World here we come. Because, #NeverHillary.

Posted at 15:17 by Chris Wysocki   [/gop]   Comments | Perm Link |
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