My home state, New Jersey, is apparently closed for business. Literally. I mean the government is, to all intents and purposes, completely shut down.
Not because of, as you might imagine, the terrible flooding of the past week that is going to take millions if not billions of dollars of federal and state funding for clean-up and to help homes and businesses rebuild.
Oh, no. We're closed because our government leaders cannot get their heads out of their derrières long enough to have balanced the state budget before the constitutional deadline passed. So Governer Corzine signed an executive order at 9:30 this morning, shutting down the State.
Here's what this REALLY means:
- No road construction projects can continue; that means the potholes stay where they are, and what about all those road wash-outs from the flooding? Can't get 'em fixed.
- Motor vehicles offices are closed until further notice. If you lost your driver's license, you're S.O.L.*
- 45,000 state employees are "furloughed" (meaning no work -- and no pay).
- Courts are closed except for "emergencies". (Seems to me what we need is a court order for the damn government to re-open!)
- State-run beaches will close on Wednesday (guess they want to let people have their July 4th holiday fun -- how kind).
- Even the Atlantic City casinos may have to close. A disaster if you were planning a day-trip with a bucket-load of quarters.
- Essential services (and their employees) like prisons, state police, etc. will continue to operate, but will the workers be paid? And when?
This whole thing is happening because our governor wants to RAISE our state sales tax (No! No! No!) from 6% to 7% to close a budget deficit. Corzine, a Democrat, is actually getting push-back from his own political party on this one, so the stalemate is basically the Governor against most of the State Legislature.
Who will "win"? No one. Because the battle is already a loss if these people can't do their jobs well enough to have avoided a complete shut-down of state government. And the real losers are the state employees who can't work or who are forced to work without pay, and the rest of us taxpayers who now have to do without state services until these people in Trenton can get their act together.
I grow more and more convinced that in order to get elected to public office, you have to first have had a lobotomy or an I.Q. of below 75. Because there can be no other explanation for the stupidity that occurs among politicians.
*S.O.L. = Shit Out of Luck. It's a Jersey thing.
