Garden State Patriot

One of the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks has been captured. In this story from My Way News, one Indian official says:

These guys could do it next week again in Mumbai and our responses would be exactly the same.

The terrorist himself, one Azam Amir Kasab, apparently has said the attacks were intended to kill 5,000 people.

Over at Fausta’s Blog, Fausta wonders if this was merely a ‘probing attack’ in advance of a much worse, larger-scale operation.

So, my question to my liberal friends is this: if this happened in an American city like New York wouldn’t you want our government to do anything possible to stop another attack? Even if – heaven forbid – it meant dunking the poor terrorist’s head upside down under water?

According to Charles Stile’s of the Bergen Record, Bergen County Democrats met recently to discuss plan plot the party’s future in the wake of BCDO Chairman Joe Ferriero’s federal indictment on corruption charges. With Ferriero’s situation hanging like a black cloud over them, Bergen Dems didn’t fare as well as in past elections and BCDO brass are now quite spooked about what this may mean for next year when the Governorship and state legislature are on the slate.

Despite Ferriero’s organizational skill and fund-raising prowess, many, including some of those who owe him their political careers, fear he will become a political albatross in next year’s crucial gubernatorial and legislative races. Ferriero’s trial date is set for September, which could mean the airing of dirty BCDO laundry during the height of the fall campaign.

And some also suspect that Ferriero was a drag on the party this fall. The party’s victory margins in Bergen were unimpressive, despite the historic headwind from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The Democratic freeholder slate captured 20 percent fewer voters than Obama, an ominous turnaround from 2004 presidential contest, when freeholders captured only 6 percent fewer votes than presidential candidate John Kerry. Even more alarming is this analysis: Take away the strong and predictable Obama vote margins in the Democratic strongholds of Hackensack, Englewood, Cliffside Park, Fort Lee and Teaneck, and Obama carried the rest of Bergen’s 59 municipalities by only 10,000 votes.

All I can say to my fellow Bergenites is: when is enough enough? It’s time to vote these people out.

Next year’s New Jersey gubernatorial election will be a critical one for Republicans and conservatives. Coming off the disastrous 2008 election, the New Jersey Governor’s race will be in the spotlight. It represents a real opportunity to right the Republican ship and demonstrate to voters, once again, that we are the party of fiscal restraint.

However, as I canvass the media and the blogosphere, you would think U.S. Attorney Chris Christie were already the party’s nominee. Certainly, Christie has a solid record of fighting corruption in this state. But, as of now, there’s not much else we know about Christie. The fact that he seems to be the choice of the party establishment causes concern for this voter. The last thing we need is another Democrat-lite candidate who won’t be committed to making the real changes New Jersey needs.

Moreover, we are told by the ‘elites’ in New Jersey that a conservative can’t win in this deeply blue state. That may be so, but that is not an excuse for not giving the voters a real choice and nominating a serious candidate. Those in the media and the blogosphere who are propping up Christie are doing New Jersey and Republican voters a disservice in my opinion.

While I will be open to listening to Chris Christie or any other candidate who decides to run, at this time I will be supporting Steve Lonegan for Governor and would also urge you to support his candidacy (please see link on my sidebar). I have met Steve a few times now and I have read his book Putting Taxpayers First. His knowledge of the state is unmatched and he will be totally committed to putting us back on a sane course.

Steve will be formally announcing his run for Governor on Monday. He will need all the grassroots support he can at these early stages of the campaign. So, please check out his site and do what you can to support his candidacy.

The Governor thinks we need a council in place for 3 years to study ways to reduce homelessness in New Jersey. Umm…why? Just what is there that we don’t know about homelessness after efforts to address the problem have been going on for at least 40 years or more? What haven’t we already tried only to see the problem persist?

I have an idea, Governor. It’s called…hold your hats now…GOOGLE! I googled ‘homelessness’ and I found a gazillion hits on the issue. The Internet really is an amazing resource, Governor. It could even save New Jersey taxpayers some money and a lot of people a lot of time rather than propping up some silly council for 3 years only to find out what we already know.

So, one has to wonder what the point REALLY is of this effort? Does the Governor think this just scores him brownie points with New Jersey voters?

Moreover, I find it a bit offensive that the Governor thinks we are all just helpless waifs who won’t get back on our feet if we lose a job.

Sorry, I just don’t get it. But I can say I know one good way to help homelessness in New Jersey: Elect a Governor who actually knows how to make New Jersey prosperous again.

Of course, I guess that might mean Corzine will be homeless.

A triumph of capitalism over socialism. Enjoy and have a great Thanksgiving!

RUSH: Time now, ladies and gentlemen, for The Real Story of Thanksgiving, as written by I — by me — in my second book, See, I Told You So. It’s page 70 in the hardcover version. “On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.”

Now, you know the usual story of Thanksgiving: They landed. They had no clue where they were, no idea how to feed themselves. The Indians came out, showed ‘em how to pop popcorn, fed ‘em turkey, saved ‘em basically — and then white European settlers after that basically wiped out the Indian population. It’s a horrible example. Not only is that not true, here is the part that’s been omitted from what is still today taught as the traditional Thanksgiving story in many schools. “The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store,’ when they got here, ‘and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

“They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. … [William] Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. … Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism,’ and it had failed” miserably because when every put things in the common store, some people didn’t have to put things in for there to be, people that didn’t produce anything were taking things out, and it caused resentment just as it does today. So Bradford had to change it.

“What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering,” that happens today and will happen “in the future. ‘The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,’ Bradford wrote.

“‘For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without [being paid] that was thought injustice.’ … The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?”

Here’s what Bradford wrote, the governor of the Massachusetts colony. “‘This had very good success,’ wrote Bradford, ‘for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.’ Bradford doesn’t sound like much of a Clintonite, does he?” or an Obamaite, if I can update it. “Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? … Anyway, the pilgrims found “In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. … So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the ‘Great Puritan Migration.’”

Very few people have heard this story or have had it taught to them — and the “thanks” was to God for showing them the way. In later parts of the chapter, I quote John Adams and George Washington on their reminisces and their thoughts on the first Thanksgiving and the notion it was thanks to God. It was an entirely different story than is being taught in the schools. It’s been muddied down, watered down all these years — and now it’s been hijacked by the multicultural community — to the point that the story of Thanksgiving is the Pilgrims were a bunch of incompetents and were saved only by the goodness of the Indians, who then were wiped out. And that’s what kids are being taught today — ’cause, of course, you can’t mention the Bible in school, and that’s fundamental to the real story of Thanksgiving.

As I’ve been reporting on this blog, COAH regulations are eating at the quality of life in New Jersey. Fiscally, the program is already costing taxpayers greatly with the burden only forecast to increase to some $2 Billion a year per town. And in numerous cases, the housing is not going those it was intended for, but to former criminals and sex offenders.

But it’s even more than this. COAH is a regulatory nightmare that is undermining the authority of municipalities across the state and hampering their ability to run themselves and meet their obligations.

Perhaps nowhere else in the state is this more of an issue than in Hunterdon County (via NJ.com):

Hunterdon municipal officials whose towns lie in part or entirely within the environmentally sensitive Highlands region learned a few weeks ago they could get a one-year extension to the Dec. 31 deadline to develop their affordable housing plans if they agreed to follow the more stringent rules governing preservation areas in their town’s planning areas.

Now Highlands towns have been told they cannot approve any new residential development application unless it sets aside at least one-fifth of the homes for middle- and low-income families.

The “scarce resource restraint order” issued Nov. 12 by the state Council on Affordable Housing affects 15 Hunterdon municipalities and takes effect immediately.

For that reason, Ms. Karrow called the order “unconscionable.”

“It condemns Highlands municipalities to tax hell,” she said. “How are my municipalities expected to pay for new growth or annual increases in utilities, insurance and pension obligations without the ability to grow ratables?”

It does not prevent municipalities from granting permits for single-family or duplex units on existing lots. It also does not explicitly exclude commercial developments from the 20% rule.

The order prevents municipalities from granting development approvals, water and wastewater allocations until and unless they can demonstrate to COAH that those resources “have been dedicated on a priority basis for the production of affordable housing,” Ms. Vandenberg wrote, but gave no details.

According to Ms. Karrow, it means, “You can’t even build a Wawa or a gas station until you prove you meet your COAH requirement.”

Clinton Township Mayor Nick Corcodilos said by requiring towns in the Highlands to allocate the use of scarce resources for COAH housing before anything else, “It locks down and takes over all your land-use rules.” He said attorney John Drill advised the township Planning Board to explain to applicants that their approvals are subject to COAH’s rules, even if they change.

In truth, the order will have little impact on municipalities like Clinton Township, where developable land, sewer capacity and water availability are already in short supply, Mayor Corcodilos said Monday. “We’re already imposing a restriction on ourselves,” allocating what is left of these resources to COAH housing, “because we have to.”

Two pending township plans would yield 100 units, he said, practically tapping out township sewer and water opportunities. “Anyone who comes to Clinton Township and wants to build something must go to a private entity to get sewer capacity.”

This is what you get when you put in place socialistic policies in the name of the public good. In essence, we have tyranny of the state government over local branches of government. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And until we repeal COAH, New Jersey will be feeling hotter and hotter.

Also, check out this related COAH story from the pressofatlanticcity.com. In particular, we agree with this quote from Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson:

“Is it a good idea to have affordable housing?… Of course. But I’m going to give you a better deal. How about an affordable state to live in? If you have an affordable state, you have affordable housing.”

Conservatives With Attitude’s! Stan Gendlin has a terrific post up today regarding this very question. His post started an interesting discussion among Stan, myself and other readers (albeit a contentious one for some!). But I really do think this is important for people to understand and to spread the word around. The media and some politicians would like us believe it was greed on Wall Street that caused this problem, but in reality it was corruption and ill-conceived government policies on East Capitol Street that started this runaway train down the tracks.

Additionally, you might want to check out this great video on the subject.

I came across this very educational slide show over at the Publius Forum. As the presentation explains, if the American Dream is dying it is being caused because the government is spending too much of our money. And considering all the money the government is spending on bailouts now, as well as the coming retirement of the Baby Boomers, the prospects for sustainable economic growth don’t look great.

This from a post over at The Cranbury Conservative.

It is being reported that an owner of a new small laundry business in Bridgeton will have to pay between $4,000 & $5,000 in affordable housing fees in order to get his certificate of occupancy.

This is all because of Assembly Speaker Roberts affordable housing legislation which was signed into law by Governor Jon Corzine in July of this year.

The affordable housing law call for a fee of 2.5% to be assessed for a property’s estimated assessed value before a new business can open its doors.

Again, it’s no wonder his state is not creating jobs and people are moving out. The liberals in Trenton are killing us with their social engineering.

Read the rest of the post here and the original story here.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) recently administered a 33 question civics exam to 2500 Americans, including a large number of elected officials. The results? “US elected officials scored abysmally…with an average grade of just 44 percent.” And “ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct.”

This kind of information makes one wonder if citizens ought to pass civics examinations before running for office or voting!

So, of course, I had to take the quiz myself. Most of the questions were very relevant to our history and government. A few seemed a bit more specific to things like economics, so I couldn’t fault people for getting some wrong. Nonetheless, here are my results. I’m shocked myself as to how well I did!!

You answered 31 out of 33 correctly — 93.94 %

Now, I want to see how my readers do! Take the quiz here and post your result in the comments section. No cheating, though!!

Here’s the story link – again, look at this when you’re done with the quiz because it reveals some of the answers.