BIGGER GOVERNMENT AND MORE TAXES FOR NEW JERSEY

New Jersey’s governors just don’t get it.

New Jersey taxpayers can no longer afford bigger and bigger government every year and more and more taxes every year!

Senior citizens are abandoning New Jersey. The “Baby Boomers” are heading south, and they and many businesses are leaving for where they can afford the property taxes, auto insurance and the price of food, shelter and transportation.

How bad is it?

‘Bankruptcy bad’ when you can no longer pay your bills on time.

When Jim Florio became Governor in 1991, the first thing he did was to raise taxes $3 billion. New Jersey lost more than 400,000 jobs. Florio was a one-term Governor.

When Governor Jim McGreevey entered office in 2002, the budget was $23.22 billion. He raised taxes by 18 percent. McGreevey left office before his first term expired when he admitted he was having an affair with one of his male cabinet aides.

McGreevey’s reckless tax hikes drove a record 56,989 people out of New Jersey.

Enter Governor Jon Corzine this past January. He introduced the biggest State budget in the history of New Jersey – almost $31 billion.

Already, there are rumblings from taxpayers and businesses that “enough is enough” and “I’m outa here!”

The new Governor is raising taxes and fees on just about everything in the marketplace, including a surcharge on tap water. (Next it will be the air we breathe).

New Jersey’s unemployment is getting worse, while State government continues on an uncontrollable spending spree.

Will Jon Corzine join the liberal tax-and-spend Governors who preceded him?

I’m not a gambler, but even I would put money on that one.

Governor Corzine, meanwhile, wants to create more government: An Office of Economic Growth (already too late). An Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness. And yet another bureaucracy – the Department of Children and Families.

Just what New Jersey does not need nor want: More government control over children and families. Hmmmmm…Isn’t that what Senator Hillary Clinton wants for the children and families? Isn’t her book titled “It Takes A Village” nothing more than an admission that families can no longer be trusted to take care of their children – that it takes Big Government to take over the lives of children and families? The Village has become “Big Brother.”

Yes, folks, New Jersey and other liberal States have finally surrendered to Marxism and Communism: Only a dictatorial government knows how to handle children, families, education, the economy, the environment and all other human activities.

God Bless the children, the parents, the schools, and the entrepreneurs trying to create jobs and revenues for a sound and safe society.

Why taxpaying voters continue to vote for liberal socialists year after year, decade after decade is beyond comprehension. Are these voters ignorant of what’s happening to America, to their children, their families, their beliefs and values?

Or have they simply given up after years and years of frustration and feeling helpless in controlling their own lives and their own destinies.

Is this not the real reason only half of the eligible voters in America no longer bother to vote? Because it’s the “same-old, same-old, same-old” indifference in an ever alienated government?

I personally know many of my neighbors, friends and family who have stopped voting because they complain that “nothing ever changes,” no matter what they say or do.

America’s voters have been brainwashed into impassive robots, representing only numbers that no longer mean anything.

Government has been taken over by rich lobbyists and selfish, special interests who are calling the shots for our elected public officials.

What America truly needs is a Second American Revolution. Our founders had the guts and the wisdom to launch a successful Tax Revolt in 1776.

We now need the same kind of educated leaders and rebels to return America to what it was in the 18 th and 19 th Centuries before it became a worthless Welfare State in the 20 th Century.

(Gordon Bishop is a national award-winning author, historian and syndicated columnist.)