Thursday, November 5, 2009

Bad Omen

You know the Democrats are in trouble when self-described liberal journalists are voting Republican. That's what Jonathan Berr did Tuesday and he explains the desperate state of affairs that has brought him to this traumatic pass here. In short, Berr, who knocked on doors for Obama in 2008, is just fed up with high taxes, corruption, inefficient big government, and nasty campaigning, but if that's so, one wonders, why is he a Democrat? Anyway, if liberals are so disaffected that they're voting Republican in deep blue states like New Jersey, the mid-term elections a year from now will be to Democrats something like what the Highway of Death was to the Iraqi army in 1991.

Here's Berr:

The last thing this liberal member of the media elite -- as perceived by many of our readers -- ever expected to do was vote for a Republican like Chris Christie for governor and reject incumbent Jon Corzine. But in my home state of New Jersey, the Democrats are more often part of the problem rather than the solution. My disgust with the party of my registration is a long time coming.

Why should Republicans be the only ones to dislike high taxes, corruption and fiscal mismanagement? Taxes in New Jersey are unbelievable: My monthly tax bill is equivalent to half my mortgage payment. New Jersey's state/local tax burden of 11.8% of income is the highest in the country, well above the national average of 9.7%, according to the Tax Foundation, which says the state's business-tax climate ranks 50th, that is, dead last in the nation. The Star Ledger of Newark reports that the average property tax bill is now $7,045, which eats up about 10 percent of the annual income in the average New Jersey household. The state budget is projected to be $8 billion short for the next fiscal year.

Corruption is horrendous. Dozens of people were recently arrested in one of the biggest scandals in years. In July, former State Sen. Wayne Bryant, once one of the most powerful people in Trenton, was sentenced to four years in federal prison for trading his clout as budget chairman for a job at a state medical school that required little work to boost his taxpayer-funded pension.

Read the rest at the link. It's no wonder Christie won big.

RLC