As some of you may have read, there were massive arrests in New Jersey yesterday. This time it was a bunch of politicians getting caught up in a money laundering operation involving rabbis in New York and Deal, New Jersey. Plus one human organ peddler. Hollywood could not make up weirder stuff if it tried.
When I looked at the list of who they nabbed this time, I saw two types of folks. The first type made me say, what took them so long to catch that crook and the other type made my jaw drop in surprise.
They arrested the one-month in office mayor of Hoboken; they arrested two of the mayoral candidates from Jersey City’s last election, they also arrested two other city mayors, plus a slew of underlings. Rumor has it, they will be taking in another crop today too!
Why so much corruption in NJ you ask? I see three reasons:
1. Massive Government. As stated by Governor Corzine (I wonder if he will be getting a knock on the door) in his press conference on the matter, New Jersey’s government is too large. With so many elected officials, it is all too easy to find a weak link to corrupt.
2. Cronyism. So many of the people arrested today have been kicking around for years. They live like leeches off government. So many of them hold city, county and state jobs at the same time and trade off positions from one administration to the next. They never seem to be out of office. It is so bad that some of them even have their children working the system in the same way.
3. Property taxes. Because property taxes are so damn high here in New Jersey, the temptation to bribe someone to catch a break is all to great. If you are a developer it actually makes sense to bribe someone for a tax abatement or rate discount and all it takes is the stroke of a pen from the right politician.
So until New Jersey gets smaller government with term limits and lower taxes, it will continue to churn out little Blagos by the bucketful.
When I looked at the list of who they nabbed this time, I saw two types of folks. The first type made me say, what took them so long to catch that crook and the other type made my jaw drop in surprise.
They arrested the one-month in office mayor of Hoboken; they arrested two of the mayoral candidates from Jersey City’s last election, they also arrested two other city mayors, plus a slew of underlings. Rumor has it, they will be taking in another crop today too!
Why so much corruption in NJ you ask? I see three reasons:
1. Massive Government. As stated by Governor Corzine (I wonder if he will be getting a knock on the door) in his press conference on the matter, New Jersey’s government is too large. With so many elected officials, it is all too easy to find a weak link to corrupt.
2. Cronyism. So many of the people arrested today have been kicking around for years. They live like leeches off government. So many of them hold city, county and state jobs at the same time and trade off positions from one administration to the next. They never seem to be out of office. It is so bad that some of them even have their children working the system in the same way.
3. Property taxes. Because property taxes are so damn high here in New Jersey, the temptation to bribe someone to catch a break is all to great. If you are a developer it actually makes sense to bribe someone for a tax abatement or rate discount and all it takes is the stroke of a pen from the right politician.
So until New Jersey gets smaller government with term limits and lower taxes, it will continue to churn out little Blagos by the bucketful.
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