New Jersey races for the worst with institutional deception, fiscal irresponsibility, school vouchers
Special Correspondent
Jan. 30, 2011

New Jersey and Louisiana for a long time did compete for the position of the worst state in corruption within USA. Now New Jersey has decidedly taken the rank number one, far worse than any other state ever in United States for institutional deception, fiscal irresponsibility, and totally bizarre school vouchers targeted to take opportunity from the middle class to the rich. All these happened like a lightning speed under a new Governor who got elected as a symbolic Obama backlash. The new Governor in New Jersey is a former prosecutor with little experience in real Governance. All that he has done in a year is to go after teachers and other state employees polarizing the people of the state on the basis of race, class, and political affiliations.

The most recent attempt of institutionalized deception from the state of new jersey is the "The school voucher program" that cannot deliver on its promises, but can help subsidize private schools across the state for the rich, christian orthodox, and Republican neo conservatives.

Shamefully, thousands of teachers have been laid off in a state where students consistently achieve at the highest level in the country (except for Massachusetts). School boards are told there can be no relief for rapidly rising special education costs. The real reason for this is that the teacher's union put a up a tough opposition against the Republican Governor during the last election.

New Jersey leads the nation in slashing its support for public higher education. The result: New Jersey families pay the nation’s second-highest tuitions to send their kids to public colleges and universities.

Despite these inconvenient truths, a majority of the Senate budget committee decided this is the time to take a flyer on a massive pilot program for school vouchers -- one that will benefit private, mainly religious, schools.

In fact, the majority voted to amend the original bill to almost triple the cost to $1.1 billion. This at a time when the governor proclaims that he must contend with a $10 billion budget deficit.

Christie administration engaged into a grand deception that public schools are a huge failure. More importantly, real truth is the fact that the voucher program is a fiscal disaster.

The last Republican Governor was the root cause of New Jersey's fiscal hole. Christie Whitman, the failed Governor of New Jersey who caused havoc for the state for eight years did something very similar that is still mentioned in Business Schools across the world as the worst example of fiscal irresponsibility and failed Governance. Believe it or not, even George Bush did not like it, when he heard about it! Yes, we are talking about the the enactment of the pension bond issue in 1997, the single most reckless action in recent memory in the any part of the whole world. The parallels are striking: rush through a complex bill with little information and a drumbeat of deceptive advocacy to deflect attention away from the true objective.

The pension bond was Governor Whitman’s way to make up the revenues lost by slashing income tax rates by 30 percent for the rich and neo conservatives. Her administration floated a $2.8 billion high-interest, taxable bond to replace annual payments to pension funds. By revising the actuarial assumptions of the pension system and by assuming that the then-bull market would never end, the administration produced reassuring and false numbers about the security of pensions. The pension bond measure exploited the confusion and ignorance of legislators about actuarial principles and practices.

The current New Jersey legislature and the Governor are wrong in advocating the new school voucher program. They should not use minority and poor kids as the weapons of mass deception to take revenge on the political rivals - the teachers union.

People of wisdom are leaving New Jersey to live in other states. Soon the budget deficit will reach such proportion that there will be no chance of return from the big financial hole. The current governor eventually will leave office leaving New Jersey into the dark ages like Chrtie Whitman did.

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