I Take No Joy in Raping and Pillaging
Chris Christie moves New Jersey into the 17th century:
Christie is cutting $475 million in aid to school districts, $62 million in aid to colleges and $12 million to hospital charity care. He is pulling all funding from the department of Public Advocate….He is cutting state subsidies for NJ Transit, a move Christie said could lead to higher fares or reduced services but would force the agency to become “more efficient and effective.”…
“I take no joy in having to make these decisions. I know these judgments will affect fellow New Jerseyans and will hurt,” Christie said. “This is not a happy moment. However, what choices do we have left?”…
Senate budget chairman Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen) said cutting funding for schools was not the same as cutting state spending, and would simply raise property taxes.
Chris Christie reprising the plan Christie Whitman used to “balance” the budget: the one created by Cokehead that has led to property taxes rising by 50% in the first seven years of this decade alone.
“However, what choices do we have left?”..
How about raising the taxes on the ones who benefit the most:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-11-562593137_x.htm
Sitting here in California, it all sounds toooo familiar. I was surprised to hear NJ is #1 for its percentage of millionaires. We have our fair share here, too. But you know, raising taxes would likely result in their moving away! (At least that’s what the governator says)
Too bad this won’t get a lot of air time out here. It’s a lesson our voters need to learn before they elect Meg Whitman as our next terminator-in-chief.
My sympathies.
“But you know, raising taxes would likely result in their moving away! (At least that’s what the governator says)”
That would probably be the best thing that could happen to California or NJ. The less than wealthiest Jersyites should be very pleased with having voted themselves a governor that is happy to take away their potentila for the future. NJ’s millionaires don’t make any use of the services that those cuts will reduce or eliminate. Only the rest of the population will suffer. NJ
voters, you really picked a concerned person to run your state. Maybe your kids can get jobs shining the shoes of some of those millionaires.
Just imagine how stupid NJ voters are. They had a choice between slash and burn Christie and the gazillionaire they had voted in last time around. The stupididty isn’t having made their choice, but that they ended up with such a lousey choice point to begin with. They’re as bad as the dummies in NYC who just re-elected Bloomberg for another four years of crumbling streets, over crowded schools and run down city hospitals. The only good job left in NYC is being on Bloomberg’s re-election team. He pays very well and gets you a nice patronage job after that.
I’m taking bets on how soon it will be that this “fiscal conservative” announces
tax cuts for his base in Central/South Jersey (“the haves and have mores”) equal
in size to the spending cuts announced.
I ride NJTransit, $4.75 each way for a trip that burns one and a half gallon of
auto gas for a round trip. I do it because I’ve gotten sick and tired of the
jokers on the roads. So twice a day I ride on trains that differ from the ones
I started riding in 1982 only in that the ashtrays have been removed from the
smoking cars. Same bumpy ride (at specific parts of the ride you better
hold on to something else you’ll find yourself thrown from your seat) and same
delays, except in this American 21st Century we have flat screens in the stations
that show the wrong time, and display trains that either never come (he speaker
announces the train will not stop at the station) or have already left the station
a couple of minutes in advance of the arrival claimed on these worthless screens.
Compared to, say, the R&R in Paris, NJTransit is a fourth world operation. And this
“fiscal conservative” wants to further grind public transport into the ground so that
we’re forced to use cars on state roads that are full of potholes, cracks, and (most
importantly) ever increasing toll costs.
A few yeats ago a colleague moved to London. It’s high time I consider becoming
an ex-pat too.
“Public schools in New York spent $15,981 per pupil in 2007, which was more than any other state or state equivalent, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. (See Table 11.) New Jersey ($15,691) and the District of Columbia ($14,324) had the next-highest spending.…On average, each state spent $9,666 per pupil in 2007.”
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/014091.html
“Per-pupil spending in New Jersey increased by 7.9 percent — or an average of $1,003 per student — in 2008-09.”
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/nj_school_report_card_shows_ne.html
Sammy, what’s your point? State wide school spending is a useless statistic. Try comparing localities within those states. Great Neck in NY spends over $20,000, as do several of the other high income localities. On top of that, the gross spending doesn’t provide a clue concerning amounts spent on direct educational efforts and indirect expenses. Numbers don’t lie Sammy. The guys who throw them out with little detailed analysis do.
The community invests $180K to educate a child for 1-12 grade. The same child will earn on the average 50K per year for 45yrs which is $8,100K. So the return on our investment is 45 times. The community does not spend the $180K and the child becomes a criminal. Thats $50K a year to keep him in jail.
Jack,
Sammy, what’s your point?
Obviously you are more than a bit obtuse. So here goes…..
Sammy, what’s your point?
That NJ schools aren’t exactly being “raped and pillaged” as Ken implies
State wide school spending is a useless statistic.
Ken references state wide school spending cuts, so I guess this is “useless” as well? This also makes my point.
Great Neck in NY spends over $20,000, as do several of the other high income localities.
Great Neck NY is not mentioned in the post. However, if they were, my conclusion would still be, like NJ, they recieve far above average funding.
On top of that, the gross spending doesn’t provide a clue concerning amounts spent on direct educational efforts and indirect expenses.
This criticism would best be directed to the Census Bureau, the NJ School Board Association, and oh, I don’t know, every other of hundreds of groups that purport to study and measure educational spending. Maybe you can come up with a “Jack Formula” that is superior.
Numbers don’t lie Sammy. The guys who throw them out with little detailed analysis do.
What did I say that was a “lie?” If I did, it was inadvertent, which precludes “lying” by definition So I guess you’ll just have to take it up with the Census Bureau and the Newark Star-Ledger to which I merely linked.
So, please back up this accusation with some substance, or I’ll just mark it down as just another one of your worthless ad homs that belies your lack of an argument.
In New Jersey a teacher makes $32,000 less that the median household income for that state.
In New Jersey a teacher makes $32,000 (as an average teacher salary) less that the median household income for that state.
http://www.teachersalaryinfo.com/teacher-salary-data.html
(Utah, which spends about $6000 per pupil, has experienced a steady decline in rankings of test scores. )
…………………………………….
http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/lpa/census/acs/EI-IncPovHI05.pdf
Median household income in NJ is about 70,000, the wealthier towns coming in at over 100,000. (2009) Camden, NJ has one of the lowest median household income in the US.
______________________________
http://njmonthly.com/articles/towns_and_schools/the_land_of_the_plenty.html
The stats make it seem as if all
Jerseyans live on Easy Street. In 2005, Garden State households together posted the country’s highest median income, $61,672. That’s 33 percent higher than the national median of $46,242. But the figure is misleading. In reality, there’s a huge and still widening gap between rich and poor. Incomes of people in the bottom 20 percent grow at a much slower rate than incomes of people in the top 5 percent. But everyone, including those in the middle, feel squeezed.
“The strange thing about income distribution in New Jersey,” says Jon Shure, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, “is that no one who makes $150,000 feels rich. But they’re making more than 90 percent of the households in New Jersey.”
The culprits, of course, are high taxes and high cost of living. According to the most recent statistics, for 2005, median mortgage payments are 50 percent higher for New Jersey homeowners than for the nation as a whole.
My mother, for example, looked in a part of the state where monthly mortgage payments exceed the national average by 174 percent. To maintain the standard of living she enjoyed outside Rochester, where housing costs are about 10 percent lower than the national average, she would have needed a raise of $40,000.
Renters don’t fare much better. On average, they fork over more per month than tenants anywhere except Hawaii and California.
So lets see…
Public transportation cut….
College aid cut…
Hospital charity cut…
School aid cut…what is the formula? If it is like MA, cuts affect some towns more than others.
Property taxes rise significantly….now that is a story that is playing out all over the US. Some towns have made significant cuts in police and firemen, commons like town maintenance of town land, school maintenance and ‘extra’ staff…..yes, choices to live by.
Sammy:
Lowering education expenditures unilaterally because a governor can not figure out how to remove surplus from a few schools appears to be a meat cleaver approach to scalpel surgery. Lack of education does have a cost economically.
The range for housing prisoners, of which an ~80% lack a high school diploma, ranges from ~$11,000/year to ~$41,000/year with an average of ~$31,000. I would say there is one hell of a range in which to spend more money on education K-12 and especially in New Jersey which is a high cost state in which to live. The unfortunate part of this dilemma is whether the GED education received while in prison will help or not as too many of the prisoners have rotted their brains away from drug usage, probably an educational issue also. It is not a pretty picture in US prisons today and education plays deeply into the “why,” the why so much of the population has been imprisoned.
Some would argue there is no correlation between a lack of education and being in prison; but, I would suggest the numbers of prisoners lacking an education and imprisoned appears to point to a correlation. Furthermore, the numbers of jobs requiring a minimum of a high school education has diminished since the seventies and will continue to do so for years to come . . . unless of course one wishes to be a bond investor or banker. I would predict the rise in the prison population will continue as a result as people can find jobs and government programs are cut.
I believe your proposal is to cut spending on education, pick up the savings, and spend it on prisons and GED educations. Prisons are a growing business with the ratio of adults imprisoned going from 1 in 77 to 1 in 31 in 25 years. Imprisoning people is a growing business and can have a big impact in a rural community economically. At the same time, prisons are one of the bigger reasons states are running deficits. It may make more sense to keep spending on education and expand it to pre-schools and 2 years of college and reap the longer-term savings as opposed to the much smaller short term savings of cutting it today. The alternative appears to be more prisons.
Ken,
Great title – in the running for best of the year. Laughed my head off.
“I Take No Joy in Raping and Pillaging“
NJ is just reaping what they have sowed…and I have little sympathey.
Islam will change
“That NJ schools aren’t exactly being “raped and pillaged” as Ken implies”
Ken is using what one might refer to as literary license, a kind of reversed euphemism, to emphasize the potential long term harm done by cutting the state’s budget for educational services, hospital care and legal services for the poor. What your gross data also fails to indicate, which was clearly stated on the source you took the figures from, is that the states don’t foot the entire bill for education. From your link:
“The percentage of public school system revenues from the state government was highest in Hawaii (89.8 percent), where elementary and secondary education is run by the state government, and lowest in Nebraska (31.7 percent).”
And that most educational funding comes from the local municipalities via property tax. That means that the wealthiest communities are least hurt by state budget cuts, but that all localities end up with higher taxes when the states cut back their support.
“Nearly two-thirds of revenue from local sources for public elementary and secondary school systems come from property taxes. (See Table 4.)”
So all in all I’d say that your fiscal conservatism as applied to educational funding is a bit myopic.
Dan:
Former President Bush allowed a higher level of poverty ~350% of the poverty level (New Jersey) to be considered as the boundary for allowing those with childen to be insured by the CHP/SCHPs programs thereby recognizing that New Jersey, as well as other states, was a high cost of living state. This level was $72,275 for a family of 4 in 2007 and the median income for the state was $94,441 (2006 census). Although not as high, 10 other states have “similar” levels . . . including Massachusetts.
It is interesting to see some poster(s) blame the state for its problems when much of it appears to be caused by the same issues that have struck all of the other states in the US, Global, a skewing of taxes to the 1% of the taxpayers, two wars, job creation, etc. This website by NJPP – Glickman s was particularly helpful. http://www.njpp.org/rpt_econcrisis.html
Sammy also ignores the fact that states with a high cost of living will pretty much inevitably need higher amounts of funding for their schools. For one thing, the salary needed by all employees is higher.