Garden State Patriot

Here’s the storyline:

TRENTON — Three public employee unions, headed by the Communications Workers of America, filed papers today with a New Jersey appeals court seeking to block the emergency rule allowing state workers to be furloughed.

The state Civil Service Commission last Wednesday adopted an emergency rule that permits the furloughs, which Gov. Jon S. Corzine says are needed on a once-a-month basis starting in May to help balance the state budget.

The appeal seeking to block the staggered furloughs says the rule was illegally adopted. The Corzine administration is also seeking a separate rule, adopted along the regular timeline, to permit furloughs for the fiscal year that begins in July.

CWA state director Hetty Rosenstein said the average state worker making $50,000 would lose nearly 10 percent of their income under Corzine’s budget plan, while a New Jersey resident making $500,000 would pay $625 more in taxes.

“Not only did the Corzine administration adopt this plan illegally, without the public notice and input required by law, the administration is continuing to ask public employees to bear the burden of our state’s fiscal crisis — while requiring only token contributions from the state’s wealthiest individuals,” Rosenstein said.

Quite frankly, I am growing weary of the whining of unions and union workers. If these people lived in the real world like everyone else, then they would be losing jobs not having them protected by way of furloughs. Unfortunately for New Jersey taxpayers, the last thing Democrats like Corzine want is for a government job to disappear.

Yet, the CWA would try to have us believe that Corzine is trying to balance the budget on their backs? When NJ taxpayers bear the highest burden in the country, one of their leaders has the gall to complain that they aren’t going to pay even more?

Sorry, spare us the sob story.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude! and Red County.

16 was sweet, but 8 is GREAT!!!

With Democrats in Congress poised to ram nationalized health care down our throats, here are some very interesting facts regarding the U.S. system from the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Fact No. 1:  Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1]  Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom.  Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway.  The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

Fact No. 2:  Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2]  Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.

Fact No. 3:  Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3]  Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease.  By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them. 

 Fact No. 4:  Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4]  Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:

• Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
• Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
• More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
• Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).

Fact No. 5:  Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians.  Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent).  Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”[5]

Fact No. 6:  Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K.  Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long – sometimes more than a year – to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6]  All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7]  In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]

Fact No. 7:  People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed.   More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”[9]

Fact No. 8:  Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians.  When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]

Fact No. 9:  Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K.  Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11]  [See the table.]  The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain.  The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12] 

Fact No. 10:  Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13]  The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14]  Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15]  In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize.   Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16]  [See the table.]

Dovetailing with this, is this very interesting anecdote regarding actress Natasha Richardson, who died tragically after suffering a head injury while skiing in Canada. According to a story in the New York Post, Mrs. Richardson would have had a much greater chance of surviving if the accident had happened here in the U.S. (h/t Right Wing Nut!)

In sum, for those of you who are pushing for nationalized health care, essentially you are advocates for a system that will mean the chances of you and your loved ones dying are greater than they are now.

Our system might not be perfect, and certainly opportunity for reform exists, but socialized medicine would be a killer for America – in more ways than one.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

With our party trying to rebuild itself, the economy a mess and Obama socialism on the march, this is what Orrin Hatch is concerned about?

WASHINGTON (AP) – Everyone from President Barack Obama on down to fans has criticized how college football determines its top team. Now senators are getting off the sidelines to examine antitrust issues involving the Bowl Champion Series.
The current system “leaves nearly half of all the teams in college football at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to qualifying for the millions of dollars paid out every year,” the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights said in a statement Wednesday announcing the hearings.

Under the BCS, some conferences get automatic bids to participate in series, while others do not.

Obama and some members of Congress favor a playoff-type system to determine the national champion. The BCS features a championship game between the two top teams in the BCS standings, based on two polls and six computer ratings.

Behind the push for the hearings is the subcommittee’s top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. People there were furious that Utah was bypassed for the national championship despite going undefeated in the regular season.

The title game pitted No. 1 Florida (12-1) against No. 2 Oklahoma (12-1); Florida won 24-14 and claimed the title.

The subcommittee’s statement said Hatch would introduce legislation “to rectify this situation.” No details were offered and Hatch’s office declined to provide any.

Hatch said in a statement that the BCS system “has proven itself to be inadequate, not only for those of us who are fans of college football, but for anyone who believes that competition and fair play should have a role in collegiate sports.”

Can we seriously get an entirely new contingent of Republicans in the Senate because it’s clear that many Republicans there like Hatch definitely need to be blitzed and sacked.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

A little education for my readers. Here is a video explaining our true form of government. Should be required viewing for every American citizen. (h/t Justified Right blog)

While I’m on this subject, I should give a mention regarding Mark Levin’s new book, Liberty and Tyranny – A Conservative Manifesto. Just released this week, the book is selling like crazy (#1 already on Amazon.com) and is surely a must-read.

At a time when so many of our fellow citizens seemingly ignorant of the foundations of our democracy, and so willing to surrender their freedoms to an authoritarian central government, Mark’s book couldn’t come at a more appropriate time.

Here’s an excerpt of American Thinker’s review of Mark’s book.

Mark Levin’s new book, published today, is essential reading. It is a remarkable work on several different levels. It takes no degree of clairvoyance to predict that it will become an enormous best seller and very soon begin to influence the national political debate.

Liberty and Tyranny artfully presents a harmonious marriage of the timeless with the timely. On the one hand, the book is a thorough yet compact briefing on the major political issues of this era. On the other hand, the author brings to bear the principles of the American Founders and Framers of the Constitution (and the great thinkers who guided them), illustrating, dissecting, and explaining our current political arguments, while enlightening the reader with the genuine wisdom bequeathed to all of us — the sacred trust of the Founders, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and Federalist Papers, all of which are quoted and applied with insight and precision.

All in all, this is essential reading for every American.

On Tuesday I posted that the, ahem, maverick Senator “Benedict” Arlen Specter planned to vote against union card check. According, to Michelle Malkin’s blog, though, there was a big “but” at the end of Specter’s decision:

2:31pm Eastern. Specter just announced his decision on Senate floor and denied that he cut some sort of deal. Says he would be willing to reconsider Card Check when economy improves and his requests to amend the National Labor Relations Act are approved.

***

4:20pm Eastern. Pat Toomey picks up on the fine print…

Statement from Pat Toomey on Specter’s Conditional Reversal“When Senator Specter does a flip flop, it’s worth checking the fine print. On the senate floor today he said: “I would be willing to reconsider Employees’ Free Choice legislation when the economy returns to normalcy.” In other words, if he thinks his political fortunes have improved, he will deny workers a secret ballot after all.” – Former Congressman Pat Toomey

Memo to Senator Specter: Did you really think we wouldn’t notice this?

While the RINO Senator continues his tightrope act, he might want to look below because the netting is about to be taken away. The Senator is in big trouble in Pennsylvania, where challenger Pat Toomey is leading him by double digits according to a Quinnipiac poll.

Two separate polls released yesterday show the political hit that Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) has taken in his party’s base for giving crucial support to the Democrat-drafted $787 billion economic stimulus.

A Quinnipiac University survey found that 53 percent of Republican respondents said that Specter did not deserve reelection. The Franklin & Marshall College Poll, meanwhile, reported that 51 percent of Republican voters think it’s time for a change.

Specter, 79, is seeking a sixth term in next year’s GOP primary, and he already faces fire from the right.

Former Rep. Pat Toomey, a conservative leader from the Lehigh Valley, leads Specter 41 percent to 27 percent, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

Though Toomey came within 17,000 votes of beating Specter in the 2004 GOP primary, the poll found that 73 percent of Republican voters did not know enough about the likely challenger to form an opinion of him.

“Pennsylvania Republicans are so unhappy with Sen. Specter’s vote for President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and so-called pork-barrel spending that they are voting for a former congressman they hardly know,” said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Suffice it to say, we will remain on top of Senator Specter’s every move as we look to oust this dead wood from our party.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

When I came across this today, I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading. At a time when the country is in a deep recession, and on the heels of our incompetent Governor having proposed $1.5B in tax increases, the elimination of property tax rebates and the property tax deduction, Bergen Executive Dennis McNerney is looking to increase property taxes as his budget goes UP 4%.

Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney is proposing property tax hikes and the elimination of county jobs to cover a 4 percent budget increase totaling $18.9 million.

Under his plan, the average Bergen County household would pay $30 more in property taxes during the 2009-2010 tax cycle.

McNerney is expected to present his $480 million budget proposal to the freeholder board Wednesday afternoon. He is requesting that the freeholders approve a $22.5 million increase in the tax levy.

McNerney oversaw a $23 million hike in taxes last year as well.

As usual, New Jersey taxpayers, who simply can’t afford it anymore, are being asked to pony up more due to the incompetence of people like McNerney and unions who have lined their pockets by knowing how to play the system. But don’t worry, McNnerney thinks consolidating towns is the solution, not standing up to special interests that represent government workers.

Just disgraceful.

Cross-posted at Red County

How does one end the “Global War on Terror”, you might ask? Well, all you have to do is call it something else – like, I don’t know – the “Overseas Contingency Plan” maybe.

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase “global war on terror,” a signature rhetorical legacy of its predecessor.

In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense Department’s office of security review noted that “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’ “

The memo said the direction came from the Office of Management and Budget, the executive-branch agency that reviews the public testimony of administration officials before it is delivered.

I was thinking QWIT might be a more appropriate acronym – Quit the War on International Terrorism. But, hey, that’s just me.

Of course, this comes on the heels of the administration ending the use of the phrase “enemy combatants” to describe those otherwise nice people who just want to blow us all up and end America.

You see, if we just use the terms and inject a little political correctness, then everything will be just fine. No more worries. 9/11 never happened. Just carry on. Nothing to see here.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

Ever since Rick Santelli fired up the hoards on CNBC, tea party protests have erupted across the nation and the movement is now about to reach full steam. On April 15th, there will be numerous tea parties across the country with several to take place in New Jersey.

City: Morristown
When: April 15, 9:00 am – 12:00pm
Where: TBA
Contact: EMAIL
Other Info:
Facebook Group: CLICK HERE

————-
City: Newark
When: April 15, 12:00 pm
Where: Gateway Center One – 782 McCarter Highway, Newark Offices of Senator Lautenberg and Menendez conveniently located in the same building.
Contact: EMAIL
Other Info:Parking: 66 Edison Place, Newark
Google Map: Click Here
Facebook Group: CLICK HERE
————-

City: Trenton
When: April 15, 11:30am – 4:00pm
Where: New Jersey State House, 125 W State St
Contact: EMAIL
Other Info:
Facebook Group: CLICK HERE

Americans for Prosperity will also be holding their own tea party in Piscataway.

AFP-NJ Announces Taxpayer Tea Party to Protest Gov. Corzines’s Tax Hikes, April 15

New Jersey citizens urge Corzine to reduce spending, reject stimulus money

Join AFP-NJ along with grassroots activists across the country on April 15th at 5PM for a Taxpayer Tea Party to protest Governor Corzine’s proposed tax hikes.

NJ has the worst tax climate in the nation, and yet Governor Corzine continues to rely on tax revenues to support the state’s overgrown budget. This tradition has left us poorly positioned to deal with the economic recession.

Even with the so-called stimulus funds that are coming to New Jersey– totaling $2 billion– Governor Corzine has introduced a FY 2010 state budget with a $7 billion deficit, and massive tax hikes to go along with it.

Governor Corzine continues to increase taxes—it is the same mistake over and over again. Taxpayers have carried the burden of these mistakes long enough– It’s critical to fight back against this proposed budget and its tax hikes!

Urge Governor Corzine and state legislators to take the first step in mending this $7 billion deficit by cutting the size of the state budget and planning for New Jersey’s financial future.

What: Taxpayer Tea Party
Who: Americans for Prosperity
When: Wednesday, April 15, 5:00pm
Where: Johnson Park ( River Road, Piscataway Township)

For more information or to register, click here or call 201-487-8844.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has been largely ignoring these protests, but it will be hard to ignore on April 15th when thousands of us will be marching in cities all over the country at the same time. So, get out there and join the movement!

According to Americans for Tax Reform, the wayward Pennsylvania Senator (aka RINO) is actually going to oppose card check.

Senator Specter has confirmed to ATR that he will vote against both cloture and passage on the Employee Free Choice Act (also known as “card check” or the employee NO choice act). His vote is critical and this a major victory for freedom, as well as a stunning defeat for the other side.

As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day (or something like that)! (h/t Red State)