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Financial Genius: Gov. Corzine Shuts down New Jersey

SteveGrenard

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S
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Oct 6, 2002
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http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/07/01/ap2854057.html


About 45,000 state employees were immediately furloughed. The order allows Corzine to keep 36,000 state employees working without pay. Services such as state police, prisons, mental hospitals and child welfare were to keep operating. Casinos could be forced to close because they require state monitoring, but the casino industry was challenging that in court.
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Oh yeah, and the Lotto machines will go dark as will two race tracks. Is this Corzine's leverage or is he a financial idiot?

And all this in the middle of a flood disaster as well. The hell with these people. I am glad it gives him "no joy."
 
How can people be made to work without pay? Will they be arrested if they a) quit, b) call in sick, c) simply don't show up, d) move immediately to another, less stupid state?
 
This is the first commnique of the Atlantis non sinking committee, Atlantis is not sinking and we are still trying to find out just who is spreading the rumour that Atlanis is sinking and that Atlantis does not even exist
 
Matybe, instead of blaming Corzine, try blaming a bunch of a**holes who can't agree on when to have lunch, never mind a budget! It's about time bills got paid. $4.5 billion is a lot of deficit for a state.
 
Humm deja' vu.

There was a similar situation in Arizona a few years ago, it was the federal government that was shut down under Clinton for similar reasons.
Closed all the national parks and had a huge impact on local tourist businesses.

The situation came very close to violence. We had armed national guard troops landing at the local airport and moving through town toward the Grand Canyon in trucks.

Be interesting to see if they could force a shutdown of the casinos.
 
PS I love the Forbes website link... My obligatory pop-up ad shows a happy family ready to head on a family picnic in their Learjet. Yeah.
 
4.5Bill is not a big deficit if it is being used productively. The obsession with deficits is something modern, and one that is not entirely rational. If deficits were so important, the USA would not have fought WWII.
 
Well, California had a deficit almost twice as big. Of course, it also has a population about 3.5 as big. This deficit works out to about $535 per person, which I guess isn't HUGE, but is still rather large.

a_unique_person said:
4.5Bill is not a big deficit if it is being used productively.
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That's a rather large "if".
 
Kopji said:
Humm deja' vu.

There was a similar situation in Arizona a few years ago, it was the federal government that was shut down under Clinton for similar reasons.
Closed all the national parks and had a huge impact on local tourist businesses.

The situation came very close to violence. We had armed national guard troops landing at the local airport and moving through town toward the Grand Canyon in trucks.

Be interesting to see if they could force a shutdown of the casinos.
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It's not a problem.

The armed militia will step in. That will be the end of those Gubmint oppressors!
 
Garden Staters can't even negotiate a right turn on red, find their turn signals, keep up w/ traffic or use their lanes properly. And you're surprised they can't write a budget?!

;)
 
TragicMonkey said:
How can people be made to work without pay? Will they be arrested if they a) quit, b) call in sick, c) simply don't show up, d) move immediately to another, less stupid state?
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We had a few crises like this when I was in the military and the federal budget was being wrassled over. It provides tremendous leverage to get a budget approved.

Sounds like the governor is putting it all on the line for a sales tax increase.

The state employees will get paid. Maybe late, but they'll get paid sooner later. But just try telling the electric company that. A person shouldn't have to use a credit card to buy milk.

Always a good idea to have some money in the savings account for a rainy day.
 
<RANT>
This really hits home for me.
My wife works for the New Jersey family court system and a number of friends and relatives work in Atlantic City casinos.
While my wife may eventually get paid, what about the casino workers who don't get their paycheck from the state?
Or the convenience store owners that depend on the sale of lottery tickets?
Who's going to pay the guy who shovels the crap at the racetracks?
Corzine said he believes he's doing the right thing, so why is it the working stiff who gets punished, and not him?
Start hitting the politicians in the wallet and the budget would get passed in a heartbeat.
As a lifelong resident of this wonderfully corrupt state, I'm ready to call it quits.
</RANT>
 
About that 4.5 billion dollar deficit: NJ is required by law to have a balanced budget. So this year's budget must make up for that entire shortfall. I've read that the reason that this is much harder this year than in the past is that Corzine has rejected the use of accounting tricks and temporary measures such as have been practiced by previous administrations of both parties. The legislators who are up for re-election don't want to be in trouble at the next election, and so they prefer accounting tricks.
 
EBU said:
About that 4.5 billion dollar deficit: NJ is required by law to have a balanced budget. So this year's budget must make up for that entire shortfall. I've read that the reason that this is much harder this year than in the past is that Corzine has rejected the use of accounting tricks and temporary measures such as have been practiced by previous administrations of both parties. The legislators who are up for re-election don't want to be in trouble at the next election, and so they prefer accounting tricks.
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How about shutting the only businesses and services that make a ton of money for the state such as the casinos, lotto and race tracks,losing millions and millions of dollars per day. Worse trying to shut down casinos and race tracks which are not owned, just supervised by the state and which these businesses pay through the nose to have themselves supervised. This is such an obvious tactic Corzine is using to assure whatever tax increases were needed before he did this would definitely be needed afterwards. I think Corzine has just lost any possible hope of either re-election as well as any other elected office as well as his marbles. He is obviously too dumb to realize he should have closed down non-essential and non-money making services and kept the profitable income producing ones open. Or maybe not. Maybe this is his strategy. I can't believe this guy made all that money on Wall Street.

Maybe this is a prelude to his gearing up to try and sell the NJTP and Garden State to a private corporation.
 
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That quote from the guy's ex is great.

There are creative ways to levy sales taxes. Something we have at a city level is a 'BBB tax' (bed, board, and booze). This cushions the tax impact to the poor, and tends to stick it to tourists and residents who eat out, who are presumably better off.

They sure painted themselves into a corner with the balanced budget law. That probably looked good during last election. Not looking like such a keen idea now.

I don't know why politicians (of any party) could think this kind of threat/action is a good idea. Maybe they are all so rich that they have a blindness about what their political games can do to normal working people. Don't they get it that after a few days of this their citizens will be calling for their heads? (rhetorical question)

My point on the casinos closing down was not that they might raise an army, but that they have some court proceedings in the works to stay open. Money talks.

Be funny if they offered to privately employ the sheriff's while the state was shut down.
 
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