{"id":908,"date":"2006-04-13T15:31:01","date_gmt":"2006-04-13T20:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/no-double-whammy-no-double-whammy\/"},"modified":"2006-04-13T15:31:45","modified_gmt":"2006-04-13T20:31:45","slug":"no-double-whammy-no-double-whammy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/no-double-whammy-no-double-whammy","title":{"rendered":"No double-whammy, no double-whammy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City Journal’s Steven Malanga explains why my home state sucks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But today New Jersey is a cautionary example of how to cripple a thriving state. Increasingly muscular public-sector unions have won billions in outlandish benefits and wages from compliant officeholders. A powerful public education cartel has driven school spending skyward, making Jersey among the nation\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s biggest education spenders, even as student achievement lags. Inept, often corrupt, politicians have squandered yet more billions wrung from suburban taxpayers, supposedly to uplift the poor in the state\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s troubled cities, which have nevertheless continued to crumble despite the record spending. To fund this extravagance, the state has relentlessly raised taxes on both residents and businesses, while localities have jacked up property taxes furiously. Jersey\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s cost advantage over its free-spending neighbors has vanished: it is now among the nation\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s most heavily taxed places. And despite the extra levies, new governor Jon Corzine faces a $4.5 billion deficit and a stagnant economy during a national boom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While over at the New York Times, we find out that my hometown is about to be put back on the EPA’s Superfund cleanup list<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Contractors hired by Ford dumped tons of paint sludge laced with toxic chemicals and other polluted debris in a remote area of Ringwood around two Revolutionary War-era iron mines. Some local residents, most of them members of the Ramapough Mountain Indian Tribe<\/a>, have serious illnesses, including certain cancers and skin diseases that have been linked to the toxins. They also have leukemia rates that are twice the statewide average, according to a lawsuit they filed against Ford in January.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The City Journal’s Steven Malanga explains why my home state sucks: But today New Jersey is a cautionary example of how to cripple a thriving state. Increasingly muscular public-sector unions have won billions in outlandish benefits and wages from compliant officeholders. A powerful public education cartel has driven school spending skyward, making Jersey among the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “No double-whammy, no double-whammy!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-suburbs","category-urban-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-eE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1922,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-official-newspaper-of-gil-roth","url_meta":{"origin":908,"position":0},"title":"The official newspaper of Gil Roth","author":"Gil","date":"February 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, we began receiving the New York Sun, I think as an add-on to our Wall Street Journal subscription. I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I do know that the owner of our company canceled our office subscription to the New York Times a few years ago because he, um,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1996,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mental-health-day-2","url_meta":{"origin":908,"position":1},"title":"Mental Health Day","author":"Gil","date":"April 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't really believe in the term, \"Mental Health Day,\" but this qualifies. It's a gorgeous day, so I decided to take a vacation day, run some errands, hang out with Rufus, and otherwise not do any job-related stuff. One of the errand-class activities was upgrading this site to Wordpress\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Design"","block_context":{"text":"Design","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/design"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1180,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/usa-tomorrow","url_meta":{"origin":908,"position":2},"title":"USA Tomorrow?","author":"Gil","date":"November 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the aspects of This Travelin' Life that I don't think I've ever mentioned is the complimentary copies of USA Today that hotels distribute. While it's not a paper I read under typical circumstances, it's kinda comforting to find the issue waiting outside my door when I head out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":461,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/rust-never-sleeps","url_meta":{"origin":908,"position":3},"title":"Rust Never Sleeps","author":"Gil","date":"January 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month, as I was walking through the parking lot to my office, I wondered, \"Whatever happened to Mathias Rust?\"There was no significant provocation for this. No one was running a \"history of punk-rock Cold War pranks\" or \"I Love the '80s\" special. It was just the idle maunderings of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4213,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/left-wing-nutjobbery","url_meta":{"origin":908,"position":4},"title":"Left-Wing Nutjobbery","author":"Gil","date":"July 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Another day, another pinko leftist newspaper railing about income inequality and how it demolishes the Social Security fund: Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data -- without counting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1096,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/stop-making-sense","url_meta":{"origin":908,"position":5},"title":"Stop Making Sense","author":"Gil","date":"September 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the end of the summer, so I'm taking a long weekend (off Thursday - Monday). I haven't written much lately, but I figure most of my 'regular' readers are traveling and only checking in intermittently. That's summertime for ya. I spent yesterday taking care of errands, including my belated\/extended\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (implicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (implicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-implicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}