Maggie's Farm

Re the Massachusetts piece:

"Step 1: Vote for any and all candidates with a (D) after their names.

Step 2: Feeeeeeeel good for being so "progressive".

Step 6: Watch the cost of doing business in the private sector skyrocket, while the hacks feeding at the public trough keep on double-dipping into the taxpayer-subsidized pension system.

Step 8: Watch your cost of living go up, while your quality of life goes down.

Step 11: Blame ________ (insert Republican of your choice).

Step 12: Repeat, ad nauseum."

You can pretty much say the same about New Jersey. (And probably a number of other states, but I live in Jersey.)

Then there's this:

"Step 9: Pick up the Boston Globe and read yet another news story about the Commonwealth losing population."

And see, here's a key difference: The local newspapers are too cowed by our criminal government to print something like that. A few Jersey papers WILL do so, but here in Hudson County people generally read the Jersey Journal, Hudson Reporter, and the New York Times/Wall Street Journal. Papers like The Bergen Record that would run those stats rarely are picked up - you can tell just looking around the PATH commuter trains to see what people are reading.

Oh - we ARE losing population, though.

Then there's this:

"Step 5: Watch drug dealers peddling their wares in the open, while your Attorney General is busy issuing press releases vowing to prosecute small business owners who dare to sell cranberry sauce to their neighbors on Thanksgiving morning."

Again, it's a little different here. Between the government mob and the Sopranos types, drug dealers tend to be frowned upon. We have a problem, like anyone else, but it's not as bad as Mass (where I have also lived). We're more the human-trafficking types. It's just as true here, though, that we major in the minors. Big crimes not only go unpunished, they don't even get reported. In Hudson County, the County Prosecutor will not punish the politically connected. If the Feds (Chris Christie) don't prosecute, it goes by the boards. So, same principle. Billions of dollars were lost in a schools construction scandal a few years ago, almost no one went to jail. The Governor has sprung into action, though - he has launched a major marketing campaign to deal with Jersey's 'image' of corruption.