From The Sidelines: The March of The Christiecrats And Job Killing Legislation

The most commented stories on Patch are the ones that deal with taking up to $6,000 in pension payments and health insurance premiums from public employees. Those are teachers, police, fire, EMT responders and assorted people who do the work of the society we live in.  How this bill came to be passed is fair to discuss.

NJ has a swamp of Democratic politics in south Jersey run by a fellow named George Norcross. He is the boss of south Jersey, a friend of Donald Trump (Atlantic City interests) and more importantly a healthcare insurance executive. He reached out to get involved in Essex County politics and supported the current county executive and guess who works for him? Assembly Democrat Sheila Oliver, who along with fellow Christiecrat Senate majority leader Sweeny who are both responsible for the Democrats that voted for this bill. Oliver, by the way, is an Essex County employee making $83,000.00 a year and her Senate pay along with all the health benefits and pensions that go with that.

The comments here fall roughly into two categories, those who think that this will have some difference in their taxes and seem to be resentful of union contracts because they have given up those rights from private employers. The other category is those who will either be effected or think that these are fair compensations and understand that this will effect every middleclass family in the state. You can't take up to $6,000 from 550,000 middleclass families and not have it have a negative effect on every consumer or service oriented business in the state. The federal government gave $600 to families to help stimulate the economy a few years ago; now New Jersey is taking away up to $6,000 from 550,000 families. It may appease the resentful, but it isn't going to help anything.  

We decide on a local level what kind of education our communities will provide. We decide what kind of services we will provide in our communities and until the Whitman tax cuts and pension holidays, we were not doing a bad job. Enter the state with election policy instead of good policy. Add to that unfunded state mandates, cuts in state funds for education and finally the failure to fund pensions by the state and we have chaos.

As a Democrat, my largest disapproval is for the state Democratic organization, who have been a tremendous contributor to the corrupt state and have failed to protect the working people of this state, but it is also for the Republicans who have spent years demonizing teachers and other public workers while they to use government for their own ends.