The Most Powerful Economic Growth Tool on the Planet

Senator Raymond Lesniak favored his colleagues with the text of a speech he delivered, entitled "Economic Recovery on its Way" at the New Jersey Business and Industry's Economic Development Forum on Tuesday, June 30th. You can comment on his speech by visiting his blog, http://blog.nj.com/njv_raymond_lesniak/2009/06/economic_recovery_on_its_way.html

"I've been calling my economic stimulus legislation, which now awaits Governor Corzine's signature, "The most powerful economic growth tool on the planet." Some have asked, "On the planet?." If its impact on the City of Elizabeth is typical, I might have to change my assessment from "On the Planet" to "In the Universe". Let's take a look at what it brings to Elizabeth:

"The amendments to the Urban Transit Hub legislation, which reduce the investment threshold and allow sale of its tax credits, will insure the development of a proposed 200,000 s/f office building across from Elizabeth's midtown train station. This project will bring 1,500 new jobs into downtown Elizabeth with a serious multiplier effect for the adjoining central business district. These employees will shop, work and play in midtown which will result in new restaurants, retail stores and expansion of existing ones. In anticipation of this development, the city and county are fast tracking the construction of the first of two parking decks: 1,100 spaces each. The City is working with NJDOT and NJ Transit to upgrade the train station to encourage further commercial development in its HUB area which includes three other city blocks, two of which have proposed development plans for high rise mixed use development.

"The 20% residential Transit Hub tax credit will spur a mixed use project on a city own parcel one and a half blocks from the midtown train station. It's been proposed that the project be built in four phases of 50-70 units each. With this credit, the entire 250 units + retail can be developed in a single phase thus putting both construction and permanent workers to work much sooner. Elizabeth also expects to use this credit program to attract a new hotel to its midtown area.

"The ERGG (Economic Recovery Growth Grants) gap financing, will raise from the ashes redevelopment of the former Burry Biscuit site on Newark Avenue that stalled due to an inability to finance its parking deck. Other projects that stalled because they could not get fully financed, that can now go forward with ERGG gap financing, include a major retail development on Routes 1 & 9, neighborhood commercial developments in the Elizabeth-Port, Bayway and Elmora sections of the City, a Holiday Inn, an additional 100,000 s/f of retail near The Jersey Gardens Mall and a window and door manufacturer currently negotiating the purchase of a Brownfield site.

"Businesses that cannot overcome the tough economic outlook and tightened credit markets to close financing gaps will now be able to invest and move forward utilizing the economic recovery growth grants. Together these projects will result in another quarter of a billion dollars in investment and 2,000 new jobs in Elizabeth alone.

"The car rental tax increase will create a recurring revenue stream that will be used to spur millions of dollars annually for port development. Just the Allied Signal site alone in Elizabeth will generate over $100 million in construction investment and create over 1,300 permanent jobs. It will also enable Elizabeth to insure development of other smaller port related Brownfield projects on South Front Street and Relocated Bayway that collectively will create several hundred additional jobs. This tax will be paid almost entirely by visitors to New York and New Jersey that fly into Newark Liberty International Airport.

"In anticipation of my economic stimulus legislation, Elizabeth has earmarked hundreds of thousands of UEZ dollars to market its UEZ Zone, transit hub and the use of ERGG opportunities. No one needs to look any further than the Invest NJ program that now has a waiting list to see that bold incentives make sense. Elizabeth is also working on further expanding services at its skills center to prepared its currently unemployed residents for the assembly and manufacturing, retail, service and hospitality jobs that will be coming.

"The sluggish economy has caused these projects to be put on hold. The omnibus economic stimulus bill provides a range of incentives that collectively can be used to get shovels in the ground and put people to work now in construction jobs and in the future in permanent jobs. With passage of this historic piece of legislation we will be able to update the message on the base of the Statue of Liberty to read GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR HUNGRY, YOUR YEARNING TO GO BACK TO WORK, because this legislation will take yearning people off the unemployment rolls in Elizabeth and in communities throughout New Jersey in every sector of our economy.

"How sweet it is."

Yes. How sweet it is. If you happen to live or pay taxes in Elizabeth, which will, thanks to its Senator, now receive a generous helping of "stimulus" in the form of taxpayer money from the other 565 municipalities in the state, few, if any, of which will benefit from the good Senator’s proposals.

Ronald Reagan often noted that, as respects a liberal’s idea of the appropriate role of government, "if it moves, tax it. If it keeps on moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

The good Senator and his Democratic colleagues taxed and regulated the economy into reverse. Now, they proudly point to subsidies for selected industries and sites as evidence of "the most powerful economic growth tool on the planet." Sounds, at best, like a Japanese-style industrial policy, at worst like a Soviet five-year plan, in which the wise folks who run government pick winners and losers. Given the results everywhere this silliness has been tried, the prospects for success are grim indeed.

"The most powerful economic growth tool on the planet"? Poppycock.

"The most powerful economic growth tool on the planet" can be summarized in one word: freedom.

Put simply, taxing the daylights out of businesses and their successful owners, as the good Senator and his Democratic colleagues have consistently done these last eight years, is a recipe for disaster. Under the good Senator’s watch, corporate taxes in NJ more than doubled, and taxes upon businesses and successful individuals skyrocketed. On the Democrats' watch, not one – that’s ZERO – private sector jobs have been created this century. Not coincidentally, the market for tax collectors and regulators exploded, with some 56,000 new governmental jobs created during that same time period.

The UEZ’s trumpeted by the good Senator enjoy one significant advantage over their less politically-connected neighbors: lower taxes. The other programs amount to nothing more than tax subsidies to selected industries in selected areas. Interestingly, those tax subsidies and lower tax rates – surprise!! – result in (limited) economic growth. But only the selected industries – those large enough and savvy enough to work the system for grants and subsidies – and those located in favored areas receive the benefit.

Instead of taking away the obvious lesson – if industries respond favorably to a tax cut in a UEZ, why not make the entire state a UEZ? – the good Senator limits the benefits of lower taxes to his constituents. Is this beggar thy neighbor philosophy really the essence of good government? Taxes for thee, tax subsidies for me.

So, here’s a prediction: the results, statewide, will bear absolutely no relationship to those in Elizabeth. Quite the contrary; statewide, we’re moving in precisely the opposite direction, increasing taxes and imposing new regulations. (The Governor, just today, proudly reported on new regulations to massively increase the cost of doing business in NJ under the guise of doing something about global warming). Elizabeth might, conceivably, benefit, but only at the expense of imposing massive suffering on the rest of the state.

If the good Senator really wanted to stimulate the economy – or if he cared about anyone residing outside of the boundaries of bucolic Elizabeth – he would sponsor legislation to repeal each and every one of the more than 100 tax increases with which he and his Democratic colleagues saddled the productive economy. He would sponsor legislation repealing the burdensome, expensive, and scientifically unsound global warming regulations. He would support a repeal of the Highlands law, which has brought economic development in most of northwestern NJ to a screeching halt.

"The most powerful economic growth tool on the planet"? Pshaw. Cut taxes on business and the successful, and pare back stifling Big Government, and we’ll demonstrate how a free people prospers.

Happy Days are Here Again

Happy Day!! The recession must be over!!

We have this on no less an authority than Hizzonor, Governor Jon Corzine. Last Fall, he commenced a video statement with the simple observation:

"If there’s any economic lesson of history, it’s raising taxes during a recession is a poor idea."

The Governor’s budget proposes more than $1 billion in tax increases. The inescapable conclusion: THE RECESSION MUST BE OVER!!

Spread the word. Good times have returned!! For Jon Corzine said it, and Jon Corzine is an honorable man.

The Times Supports Vote Fraud

Conservatives approach the sanctity of the ballot differently than do liberals. Conservatives see fraud as significantly more threatening than disenfranchisement; liberals the reciprocal. Conservatives willingly subject those purporting to be lawful voters to the inconvenience of actually having to minimally establish that fact rather than tolerate any fraud; liberals happily tolerate considerable fraud rather than risk discouraging a single lawful vote too lazy to prove his identity.

From a crassly partisan perspective, this results, presumably, from the opinion of both sides that those committing fraud are more likely to vote for liberals than for conservatives.

Consider the editorial in today’s Times praising the Obama Justice Department for its invalidation, under the Voting Rights Act, of a two innocuous voter ID schemes in Georgia. As the Gray Lady describes these horrific proposals:

"One, known as "no match, no vote," flagged new registrants whose basic information — name, date of birth, driver’s license number and last four digits of the Social Security number — did not match government databases. The other checked citizenship status through a similar matching process."

The difficulty, as The Times presents it, is human error:

"When the Justice Department investigated the "no match, no vote" results, it found that thousands of eligible Georgia voters were wrongly flagged, often because of small glitches, like transposed digits in a driver’s license number. In the case of the citizenship check, over half of the roughly 7,000 people flagged as potential noncitizens actually were citizens."

So, Smith shows up at the polls, but is on "the list" because someone at DMV transposed a driver’s license number. Process: said voter casts a provisional ballot and can then provide the necessary proof. No big deal, right?

But consider the last sentence of that paragraph. Approximately half of the people flagged as non citizens WERE NOT CITIZENS AND WERE ON THE ROLLS!! This, apparently, concerns The Times not in the least.

Al Franken – God help us all – will likely soon take a seat in the United States Senate. He "won" that seat by a margin of a few hundred votes. If even 2,500 non-citizens voted (again, presumably the Left believes that those folks support Democrats or they would not be trying so hard to keep them on the voting rolls) such has a huge national impact.

Apparently, most of the folks flagged as potentially non-citizens were minorities. Imagine that. When looking for non-citizens, a disproportionate number of Hispanics and Asians get flagged. That, The Times suggests, is "discriminatory". Presumably, no such process will be tolerable until it flags an equal number of European immigrants fraudulently registered to vote.

The minor inconvenience attendant to dealing with governmental bureaucracy does not constitute a huge violation of civil rights, let alone represent a nefarious effort to repress minority voters. It represents the inescapable consequences of the salutary attempt to ensure that many thousands of ineligible registrants do not vote. By The Times' own backhanded admission, thousands of ineligible voters were caught by the Georgia program.

But what’s a little vote fraud among friends?

Professorial Malpractice

In his opinion piece in today’s Ledger, Rutgers Professor Frank Askin demonstrates why so many lawyers make horrible judges: they’re trained – in constitutional law, no less – by people without the slightest hint of the appropriate judicial role. He then proves this point by misciting Oliver Wendell Holmes, creating an impression wholly at odds with that august jurist’s actual views.

Justice Holmes did, indeed, write that "the life of the law has not been logic, but experience", but that quote relates to, and appears in an essay called, "The Common Law". It has nothing whatsoever to do with the judicial role in constitutional adjudication. Indeed, Holmes was famous, as one source puts it, for "his support of the doctrine of ‘judicial restraint’ which urged judges to avoid letting their personal opinions affect their decisions."

Common law courts make policy, but the Supreme Court is not a common law court; it sits not to adjudicate garden variety cases dealing with property, contracts, or torts. Virtually its entire caseload involves interpreting either statutes of the Constitution. In both cases, either the Legislature (state or federal) or the people have already made policy. The Court simply determines what that policy is, and whether that of the Legislature squares with that established by the people.

Obviously, Professor Askin’s position – that personal (presumably political) views, or a judge’s ethnic identity, sex, or experiences, should influence her constitutional interpretation – directly contradicts Holmes’ devotion to "judicial restraint". Indeed, Askin, like most of the Left, implies that adjudication represents nothing more than politics by another means. Holmes would be horrified.

A more appropriate Holmes tale involves his discussion with Learned Hand. As they parted company, Hand bid Holmes, "Goodbye, sir. Do justice!" Holmes responded tartly: "That is not my job. It is my job to apply the law."

Precisely.

Men like Askin, and women like Sotomayor, who fail to understand that simple definition of the judicial role, should neither teach constitutional law nor be entrusted to apply it.

New Jersey represents the baleful example of what happens when folks trained by the likes of Askin and his ilk actually get their way. Our State Supreme Court is a national laughing stock, widely regarded as the undisputed champion: worst state Supreme Court in the country. During 2000, Florida made a play for that distinction, when its state courts tried to hand the Presidency of the United States to Al Gore. Later, Nevada's Court presented a formidible challenge, declaring its own constitution unconstitutional, a truly cute trick. But the unparalleled record of judicial malpractice by the NJ Supreme Court puts it in a league all by itself.

Of course, the mother of all indefensible decisions is Abbott v. Burke and its predecessor, Robinson v. Cahill, in which the Court transformed an innocuous provision relating to a legislative obligation "... to provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years" into an obligation to fund certain, judicially favored school districts at obscene levels, to build them educational palaces, and to provide pre-school to three year-olds. Obviously, the constitutional language cannot support that tortured reading, and the Court made no pretense of supporting its "interpretation"of that language with evidence of the Framers’ – or the people’s – intentions. The decision represented nothing more than an exercise of raw judicial power, and, more than any other factor, created our present budgetary crisis.

Contributing mightily to that budget crisis, and to both the rape of the environment and the explosion of property taxes, are the judicial ukases included in the numerous Mount Laurel cases. (Mis)interpreting another innocent-looking constitutional provision entitling municipalities to zone, the Court read into that sentence an obligation to do so only consistently with the judicially-sanctioned "public good" which, the Court concluded, required that government go into the housing business. Again, there exists not a shred of evidence that the folks who wrote the constitution even remotely considered endowing the Court with that sort of power. Only lawyers trained in Askinesque classrooms would be arrogant enough to wield their power in such a fashion.

Our Court routinely ignores the text and history of statutes and of the constitution in order to arrive at what the "Justices" believe to be desirable policy results. They blessed a clearly unconstitutional redistricting scheme based upon their notion that it better served minorities. They permitted the infamous Torricelli switch, despite unequivocal statutory language prohibiting same, because they found the language inconvenient. They declared that the Boy Scouts lacked the power to choose their own Scout Masters, only to be slapped down by the SCOTUS. They invalidated a legislatively adopted parental notification law for abortions on minors on wholly spurious grounds. Indeed, NJ is one of the few states in which the taxpayers fund elective abortions, not because they want to, but because our black robed masters demanded it.

Of course, the Askin’s of the world are delighted by this state of affairs, because the folks imposing the policy agree with their political views. But imagine the outrage if conservatives did the same thing. Indeed, in any constitutional law class, the same professor who preaches the blessings of "substantive due process" as respects abortion reacts with horror at "substantive due process" respecting property rights and contracts. When courts, as exemplified by Lochner, invalidated legislation which restricted property rights, the left (properly) squealed. But they applaud when courts employ precisely the same rationale to invalidate abortion restrictions, or to impose gay marriage upon an unwilling populace.

Judges exist not, as Judge Sotomayor suggests, to "make policy", but to apply that already made by the Legislature or by the people. They exist not to "do justice", let alone as their own experiences define that term, but to apply the law.

We have a word for those who wish to make policy: "politician". An honorable term, but one wholly at odds with the judicial role.

We also have a term for people who quote Holmes’ aphorism as supportive of a non-interpretivist constitutional jurisprudence: dishonest.