New Jersey's Got The Blues

Conventional wisdom has it that New Jersey is a “blue state” – both U.S. senate seats, majority of representatives in Congress, Governor and both houses of the state legislature – all controlled by the Democrats. The state even went for Kerry in the last presidential election.

Now we wonder, are the people of New Jersey happy with how the state is being run and how well they are represented at the federal level? Are Democrats doing an effective job for all New Jersey citizens? We would answer no, the state is not being represented or managed well.

New Jersey has a $4 billion budget deficit; highest property taxes in the country; far too many failing schools, even with the highest per student spending in the nation and receives 57¢ for every federal tax dollar sent to Washington – ranking dead last in the entire U.S.A.

How can we spend so much and have such meager returns? How is it possible for the people of New Jersey to return the same people or party's candidates to office, over and over again? It just doesn’t make sense.

Perhaps there are other measurements people might use to determine the effectiveness of New Jerseys' Democrat leaders – we’d like to hear them. There has got to be some reason for New Jersey’s “blue state” status.

Maybe the majority of the folks in New Jersey just “feel” the Democrat Party better reflects their positions, values and beliefs. It’s hard to believe and sad to think the majority of our fellow Jerseyans “feel” aligned with a party represented by Howard Dean. Here are just a few quotes from the new Chairman of the Democrat Party from the last several weeks. Does this man represent the beliefs of the majority of voters in New Jersey?

Dean told a crowd of party faithful in New York, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for….”

Dean told a group at a Hiebert [Kansas] fund-raiser that, “moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant.

They don't think tolerance is a virtue," Dean said, adding: "I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant." And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: "This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."

Is Dr. Dean a model of Democrat Party tolerance? Does he represent the thinking of Senators Corzine and Lautenberg, Governor Codey and all the other Democrats in the state? You read that last sentence about the struggle of good and evil – and we’re the good, you’d think he was referring to our country’s terrorist enemies. He’s not, Dean’s talking about those that don’t agree with him, non-Democrats. He’s talking about us.

It’s one thing to disagree about issues, policies, problems and solutions but, isn’t this going a bit too far? What the heck have we (non Democrats) done to drive the Chairman of the Democrat Party to consider us evil and to hate us? This level of hostility from a fellow American and we’re intolerant?

At some point don’t the Democrats need a little more to their play book than hurling insults, trying to “stop things”, a desire to spend more and raise taxes? Just sticking with the facts, can someone please explain how this agenda helps the majority of people?

Let's all pray New Jersey is able to get rid of the "blues, assuming that it is still allowed.