NJ: Corzine May Lose Job Over Highest Property Taxes In US

The average homeowner in NJ pays $7,000 a year in property taxes. As a former resident, tell me about it. In Northern Jersey that isn't even much of a house, not that it's a castle in the South. It depends. This AP item via Breitbart is not kind to Corzine at all. If Daggett ends up allowing Corzine to keep his job, I doubt he'll have many friends left in the state, assuming he cares.

PARAMUS, N.J. (AP)- It sounds like another New Jersey joke. Except it's not funny if you actually live here. For the privilege of living in perhaps the nation's most-maligned state, New Jerseyans pay the highest property taxes in America.
 
That overriding issue—not President Barack Obama, health care or the economy—could cost Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine his job on Election Day.

The former Wall Street whiz, who has failed to solve the Garden State's tax woes amid a deep economic decline, is locked in a tight race with Republican Chris Christie, a corruption-busting former federal prosecutor whose main appeal appears to be that he isn't Corzine.

Nice campaign slogan, good luck with that. The state's already broke and he'll still have to work against two machines without much influence within either one of them. It'll never happen, folks. Christie may be able to help reform the GOP in NJ, but no outsider can take on both thema nd the Dems and get anything done.

A moderate independent in the race, Chris Daggett, a former state and federal environmental official, has surprised the political establishment by becoming a factor—and maybe a spoiler—partly because of his plan to reduce property taxes by 25 percent.

Comments

[Neo]

I'm sure this won't help Corzine either ...

EAST RUTHERFORD -- A Paramus man claiming to work for Gov. Jon Corzine’s reelection campaign was arrested Friday night on drug charges after police found Ecstasy tablets in his car, authorities said.

A Corzine spokeswoman said the man does not work for either the governor’s campaign or the Democratic State Committee.

Jason Shih, 25, was pulled over on Route 17 by East Rutherford police at about 11:30 p.m. last night for talking on his cell phone. Police found 19 Ecstasy tablets and hundreds of small glassine bags used for distributing drugs, police spokesman Capt. William Schanel said.

Schanel said Shih told police he was an official in Corzine’s campaign, and several tickets to tomorrow’s rally with President Obama at Newark’s Prudential Center were found in his car.

[Brett_McS]

Just to throw one in there: In Australia we have "Optional Preferential Voting" whereby you can mark a second choice on the ballot (if you want to) so if your main guy doesn't win your vote goes to your second choice in a new round of counting. I'm sure there's plenty of pros and cons, but it does tend to stop 'spoiler' candidates. Vote for the 'spoiler' but second choice the main party guy - and it sends a message to the winner if he gets there only by dint of preferences (it's called a Protest Vote in that case).

[Jersey Jim]

Way up here in the northeast corner on the Garden state (the "Northern valley / Pascack Valley") taxes are almost always five figures to the lest of the decimal...

[Jersey Jim]

Sorry, to the LEFT of the decimal point!

[Art Deco]

You could replace property taxes with a simple income levy and also distribute to counties and municipalities around the state an unrestricted subsidy calculated for each according to a formula which would take into account population and per capita income. Poorer municipalities would be able to afford a baseline of municipal services without inducing an exodus from excessive taxation and some of the unfortunate byproducts of property taxes (abuse of discretion in assessments, encouragement of abandonment of urban property, inducing a bias toward deforestation, &c.) would be obviated.

The trouble you have in New Jersey and nearly everywhere is that public employee unions are a ready-made lobby for padding the payroll, for excessive and actuarially unsound pensions and benefit plans, for public provision of services that could be contracted out or turned over to private enterprise entirely, and for rendering public employees as entrenched in their position as any ancien regime office holder who purchased his position from the king's agents. Casino banker Corzine pledges only to make this situation worse.