What Use Is New Jersey?
Bit of a (helluva) tenuous link here but if America were Africa, which country would New Jersey be?
50 US States, 54 African countries – well, except that the north African coastline doesn’t count. Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Libya aren’t African. Not really. So that takes it down to about an even count between the two.
I reckon NJ would be Guinea – they’re both mostly useless territories on the coast and nobody’s quite sure how they manage to survive.
Corruption is also a specialty of both places. Guinea ranks alongside such luminaries as Burma, Sudan, Chad, Bangladesh and Belarus in the world rankings of least transparent governments, with New Jersey doing its best to catch up.
Since 2001, 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or been convicted of corruption in the Garden State.
And, in a Herculean effort to shatter its previous personal best, 44 people were arrested yesterday in NJ for various corruption offenses. Woot!
Those arrested included (deep breath) the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City’s deputy mayor, two state assemblymen, five rabbis (!), building and fire inspectors, city planning officials and utilities officials.
Good to know that the corruption didn’t quite span the entire breadth of the NJ state apparatus – I saw no mention of a janitor being arrested.
Just so’s you know, all but one of the nicked officeholders are Democrats.
But, whatever you do, NJ voters, be good little serfs and vote the Democrats back in office at the next possible opportunity.
IL and MI, please welcome NJ to the club.
The photo above, by the way, is of Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini being taken downtown. Seeing hundreds (at least) more politicians/staffers/clingers-on meeting the same fate would be a wonderful first step in restoring a small measure of public confidence in politics.
July 24th, 2009 at 23:16
The main stream media is leaving out that they’re all demoidiots.