Chris Daggett: Corzine’s AMEX Card

In a six-poll average appearing on the Real Clear Politics web site as of Friday afternoon, Chris Christie and Jon Corzine are in a statistical dead heat. One of those six polls, Quinnipiac, shows Christie trailing Corzine by five points, while the Rasmussen poll has him ahead of Corzine by three. This could be a stunning turnaround for New Jersey’s incumbent governor.

Should it become a last-minute trend that holds through to Election Day, it won’t be due only to the personal purchasing power that previously helped Corzine gain a U.S. Senate seat and his first term as NJ governor.

If Jon Corzine wins a second term, there will be another even more compelling reason for victory: It will be the impact of Chris Daggett’s insertion into this race that could be the favorable tipping point for Corzine.

Chris Daggett never stood a chance at the golden ring from the beginning of his candidacy, but he has apparently struck a chord with enough voters so that he became a major distraction to Christie and a significant boost for Corzine, the only two contenders with any realistic chance of success.

Daggett’s promise to reduce property taxes by increasing the sales tax base is a 1977-style, Byrne-like, smoke-and-mirrors proposal presented to gullible voters: It is identical to the old thinking that establishing a New Jersey income tax would reduce property taxes.

If those protest voters don’t wake up, their fantasy will be replaced with the reality of another four years of the same.

When Jon Corzine left Goldman Sachs after a fabulously successful career, he took with him the enormous purchasing power of a seemingly unlimited AMEX card. But his second term, if he makes it, will have come not solely from his financial resources: It will have resulted in large measure from something that he could never buy: the dilutive effect of a third-person spoiler, Chris Daggett.

The Price of Democracy

I have to admit that I sometimes cannot understand why it is that Americans have to put up with the sort of extreme, stench-filled diatribes which bubble up from marginal groups such as those of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church.

A handful of people from this group are now touring New Jersey, spreading their own brand of hatred for gays, Jews, and Catholics. Having busied themselves with stirring up the pot of prejudice in New Brunswick, Rutgers and other locations, they have announced that they will demonstrate at the funeral of the Rev. Edward Hinds, a Catholic priest from Chatham who was recently stabbed to death multiple times.

Their vile views are also leveled at mainline Protestants such as Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Baptists – and it doesn’t stop there.

The source of this group’s self-proclaimed authority for these homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic rants is, of course, God. They claim to have what no one else has: The inside track on the thinking of the Divine Source – disgusting.

What do You See When You Look Out the Window?

One of my favorite reading spots in Forbes magazine is the last page entitled “Thoughts on the Business of Life.” It always struck a chord with me because, after a whole batch of serious, well-written articles on economics and business, Forbes’ editors always insert a few aphorisms that make a person stop and think in another dimension.

The very last comment in the lower right-hand corner of the “Thoughts” page is always reserved for a pericope from Scripture. I like that: Some big, bad, aggressive NYC editorial types that are not afraid to go on record by reserving the last word in the magazine to the Good Book.

In one of those quotes, Larry Summers, former President of Harvard University and currently Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, reflects that:

“When I look out the window at my backyard, I can’t think of anything interesting to ask. I mean, it’s green, it’s growing – but nothing occurs to me that any concentrated effort of thought could possibly enlighten.”

Mr. Summers concludes with, “Whereas in economic, statistical, or mathematical kind of things, I can ask lots of questions.”

Do you detect, as I do, a deep sense of imbalance and artificial bifurcation between those two statements? Here, presumably, is one of the brightest lights in the Obama string of luminaries telling the world that, when he looks out at nature, all he sees is a blank canvas – no matter how hard he tries. But put a few numbers and formulas in front of him, and the man’s mind starts to crank.

He says that he can’t come up with any relevant questions about the outdoors, questions that a mere child could pose such as, “Where does grass come from? Why is it green? Why is there earth underneath it? Why is the grass there?”

It reminds me that some of us, no matter how high our IQ might be are so internally oriented, that we fail to recognize the natural clues to something greater than ourselves, no matter how obvious the prompts. If an observation cannot be codified, bracketed within a formula, fed into a computer and the results analyzed, it holds no attraction.

No big deal, you might think. But Larry Summers is the man who, as Harvard President, addressed an audience of his peers, sincerely explaining why women don’t hold as many key posts as men "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions."

Summers explained that, among other factors, this has to do with "the different availability of aptitude at the high end.” By this not-so-cryptic phrase he meant that according to his research and analysis, more men than women have high IQ scores and that this, therefore, accounts for why fewer women hold high-level posts in science and engineering. A year after presenting his assumptions and conclusions, Summers resigned from Harvard.

This is the man who has the President’s ear on decisions that affect your economic future right here in Bridgewater, New Jersey. I wish that this expressive ivy-league-trained man would go out to the White House lawn one day soon, sit down under a warm sun, and try to conjure up a few meaningful questions about how his actions will have a personal impact on the lives of nearly 305 million Americans, actions that defy codification, statistical analysis, and definitive prognosis.

Note: You can find Mr. Summers’ statement in the November 2, 2009 edition of Forbes magazine, now on newsstands.

Empty ‘Till Spring

While out for a walk yesterday in one of the local parks, I came across two grey abandoned bird houses hanging forlornly back-to-back, anticipating the cold emptiness of winter, yet hoping for the far-away return of spring, when they will be populated again with inhabitants signaling the beginning of another cycle of life.
 
This week, we are enjoying three days of progressively balmy weather, as if Mother Nature is tossing a few freebies at us on its way to winter. These are good days to be out taking advantage of the sun and mild temperatures, at least to the extent that you can.
 
In the back yard, I expect to be doing some more tidying up by trimming away some of the unkempt raspberry briar patch that’s become overgrown, as well as some tall unruly weeds that began their encroachment this summer – just getting ready for another spring, like the inhabitants-to-be in those two bird houses.

Bridgewater Public Works – Still at Work

A few days ago, during what now seems to be a period of interminable rain, wind, solid cloud overhang, and bone-chilling temps, this photo shows a Bridgewater Township Public Works crew that was out in that weather, picking up yard brush, as part of its service for Township seniors. The fall pickup ended October 15.

I’ve written about this before, because it is a great benefit for those of us who have no easy means to dispose of accumulated brush and branches and for whom time has made the chore harder each year. I’m lucky enough still to be able to get out myself and to clean up the yard periodically, and this twice-yearly service is the one thing that helps me to dispose of branches.

The material is carted off to Bridgewater’s recycling facility, and there is no waste. Mulch from this operation is available to anyone for a nominal fee, according to Bridgewater’s new policy. Next step: leaf cleanup. The Township provides bags for leaves and will pick them up curbside from any Bridgewater resident’s property. Just call the Public Works Department to get on the list.

Photo by Dick Bergeron

Jack Ciattarelli, a Man for Our Time

Politics can be a brutally tough game. In order to get anything done, an elected official has to work with a team of peers. It’s even tougher when, in his or her heart of hearts, a politician veers away from the group on a particular topic and acts upon insights that some colleagues may not possess or do not have the will to act upon.

That is why I think that it would have been easy for Jack Ciattarelli, one of five people on the Somerset County Board of Chosen Freeholders, to have voted with the rest of the freeholders in maintaining 15 paid holidays for county employees in 2010.

Instead, he was the sole dissenter claiming, as reported by Martin C. Bricketto in the Courier News on Monday, that, “…our holiday schedule is excessive,” two more than even State of New Jersey gets.

The Last Butterfly of Summer

With all of the nonsense going on in Washington D.C. and New Jersey politics these days, I wasn’t mentally up to filling this space with more of the same – will save commentary on that for some other day.

Instead, I thought I’d share with you one of dozens of snapshots that I was lucky enough to have taken in mid-August of this year.

When we came back from our New Hampshire lakeside vacation, we encountered the damage inflicted on our neighborhood in Bridgewater after it was struck by a microburst of wind that brought down literally tons of trees. The big oak in our front yard was lucky to have survived, but it needed some major trimming to bring it back from the brink.

When the tree experts arrived and began their work, I decided to take my digital camera out to the front yard to record the event. As an unexpected bonus, I noticed the butterflies that were being attracted to our garden by the wayside.

That’s when I changed priorities and concentrated my camera on capturing images of these delightfully friendly creatures of the summer. If you’re careful, quiet, and move slowly, you can get your camera very close to a butterfly – easily two feet, even closer.

One of the startlingly revealing facts about nature is its insistence on reminding us that we are merely a part of it, despite the human tendency to think that we are its ultimate product. This is not to degrade the exponential progression of mankind or the value of the human soul, just a cautionary signal that our future is short and our task, heavy.

Businesses Support Large Chunk of Bridgewater’s Property Base

Like most other local real estate property taxes in New Jersey, those in Bridgewater are very high, but they do not reflect what the impact could really be on the typical Bridgewater homeowner.

Were it not for the massive influx of large corporations such as the Bridgewater Commons Mall, Met Life, Sanofi Aventis, Merrill Lynch etc., etc.; as well as hundreds – if not thousands – of small to medium size businesses and professional buildings popping up on the Bridgewater landscape, the tax levy on this township’s residents would be even more intolerable.

Most of your residential property tax bill is taken up by school taxes. Yet, in the midst of a severe recession, the salaries contained in school levies have been increasing annually at a rate above that of inflation. In fact, from March through August of 2009, inflation has been in negative territory. In July and August, for example, those rates were minus 2.10% and minus 1.48%, respectively.

Association contracts for school employees are negotiated on an individual school district level. Contract talks are held behind closed doors with no interim reports to the tax-paying public. And, they are based on wage increases relative to those awarded to other school districts in the state of New Jersey, not on economic factors.

The contract with the Bridgewater-Raritan school district, effective July 1, 2008, provides for a three-year increase of 12.8%.

NJ Taxes and You: Perfect Together

I could have skipped the Somerset County Business Partnership forum at Raritan Valley Community College Friday morning, because I was under the weather and felt more like remaining snuggly covered under the blankets.

But the topic was “Making New Jersey More Affordable for Businesses and Residents: a Public Policy Forum,” and I was determined to get a first hand impression of what the panelists and gubernatorial candidates had to say. Gubernatorial challengers Daggett and Christie were present and offered their views on NJ’s tax mess.

Incumbent Governor John Corzine decided to take a pass and to ignore the people of northern Somerset County.

Well, it was enough to make me even sicker, because it confirmed what I already knew, but about which I obtained a lot more detailed confirmation. Forum speakers and audience questioners emphasized the fact that the negative impact of New Jersey’s tax structure at all levels of government is totally unsustainable:

The crushing debt burden from ill-advised government borrowing; increased deficit spending; and unfunded liabilities for public sector pensions and benefits (said to be from $100 billion to $130 billion) has resulted in a stifling level of taxation, especially for property taxes.

I could go down a list of all the winners and losers in this NJ public spending drama, but it would be wasting your reading time. You know most of them but, if you are serious about learning even more, check out the home page at http://www.mycentraljersey.com/, and click on the “Tax Series Tab” in the carousel. You’ll be amazed at the first-rate job that Courier News journalists did in covering Friday morning’s forum.