GSI Poll: 44% of New Jersey residents planning to leave. Is NJ the new East Germany?
/Yesterday was a voting session in the New Jersey Legislature. Regina Egea of the Garden State Initiative (GSI), a think tank that closely monitors the various home-grown diseases that beset the state’s economy, sent around fresh data from a poll conducted for GSI by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s School of Public & Global Affairs. Ms. Egea had this to report:
According to the survey, 44% of New Jersey residents are planning to leave the state in the not so distant future with more than 1 in 4 (28%) planning to depart the Garden State within 5 years. Unsurprisingly, Property Taxes and the overall Cost of Living were cited as the main drivers. The results also debunk two issues frequently cited in anecdotal accounts of outmigration, weather and public transportation, as they ranked 8th and 10th respectively, out of 11 factors offered.
These results should alarm every elected official and policymaker in New Jersey. We have a crisis of confidence in the ability of our leaders to address property taxes and the cost of living whether at the start of their career, in prime earning years, or repositioning for retirement, New Jersey residents see greener pastures in other states. This crisis presents a profound challenge to our state as we are faced with a generation of young residents looking elsewhere to build their careers, establish families and make investments like homeownership.
This out-migration of people should come as no surprise to anyone who has kept track of how and where former New Jersey elected officials spend their retirement. After lifetimes spent raising people’s property taxes, voting for all manner of other taxes and spending – while building up pensions and other benefits for themselves – they move to states less liberal with money, with markedly lower taxes. They escape the taxes they are responsible for, the failing economy they are responsible for. There are actual colonies of former New Jersey elected and appointed officials popping up in states like Florida and North Carolina – all being mailed pension checks from New Jersey!
So how did the New Jersey Legislature spend the voting session on the day the poll was released that showed nearly half the inmates of the garden spot they’re running were planning their escape? In the words of Republican Assemblyman Hal Wirths, the Democrats who control the Legislature decided to make it “criminal appreciation day”.
Yep, the Democrats gave the vote to convicted criminals and also provided them with education funding – just months after they gave millions in education funding to illegal immigrants – while slashing education funding to the children of property tax payers across the state. Of course they did, that’s how they roll.
The Democrats in New Jersey have gone crazy. Everybody can see how this story is going to end. The only thing that can change that ending are Republicans. Elect a Republican as Governor, change the make-up of the Legislature by adding more and more Republicans – and you will give anxious movers-to-be the breathing space to reconsider and give the state a second (or third or fourth) chance.
Democrat Senate President Steve Sweeney has spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince New Jersey’s business community that he is for them. They even backed his guys in District 1 (and lost).
But Sweeney’s promises and plans are not really “bi-partisan” or “pro-business” or “pro-jobs” at all. He showed this when he specifically targeted Republican-voting school districts for his education funding cuts. And again, during the campaign, when he allowed top staffer Mark Magyar’s newspapers to trash even friendly Republicans. And after the campaign, with a $9 million pay-back to abortionist Planned Parenthood for supporting Democrat candidates. And again, when Sweeney proposed S-4204, which will crush working mothers and drive businesses out of the state.
Steve Sweeney always returns to what he is. He is reminiscent of those lines from one of Kipling’s poems:
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
These Democrats – all of them, in one way or another – are a form of slow motion disaster. Post-election, they have merely increased the speed. All the evidence suggests that with these Democrats, in the end, the only good Republican is one who no longer holds office (just as the only good business or good worker is one who pledges fealty to the corrupt machine). Those 44 percent of New Jerseyans who are so desperate for leadership they are willing to move to seek it elsewhere, will not be assuaged by “bi-partisan” cohabitation. More dramatic measures are in order – clear, unambiguous Republican measures.
