Any (relatively) unbiased sources that explain how NJ got into this predicament? Just current leadership being out of touch with the wants/needs of NJ citizens?
Possibly due to attitudes like describing an average citizen beating a career politician as “a predicament”
Real talk, I think there is a certain level of education we should desire for politicians, since generally speaking, it denotes a certain dedication to understanding many facets of society. That said, career politicians are completely bogus all the way through.
But having an outsider as a legislative member is generally a good thing.
In California we have term limits, so no member of the legislature (or any other position) can have the time to develop expertise. This gives lobbyists a lot more power.
Having lived in countries both with and without generally well meaning and competent government, in my experience the former is vastly better despite its manifold faults.
I think the problem is not that average citizen managed to beat the career politician, that is (possibly?) the good part.
In my view the problem is that this average citizen now has to deal with other career politicians and if he doesn't have the experience in these dealings, his constituents will probably end up worse off.
What is the solution?
I don't know, I am an average citizen so I would prefer someone who has more knowledge about these things to work on it and then present options to us average citizens in a clear and unbiased manner.
And the numbers of these people is much much larger than you're aware of, likely for reasons of media bias hiding this information from you and geographic diversity of political views and values.
And the chilling effect of socially shaming people as "plague rats" for resisting lockdowns and mandates.
I believe the platform for the right has consolidated to - ending mask/lockdown/mandate - letting parents have a voice in their children's school agendas - making fun of runaway inflation
This is going to be difficult to run against, in many states besides "Mississippi".
You do the math. These people aren't loved. They just know how to work the system to keep the outsiders out. The article says in a district of 150k, the NJ Senate President never received more than 30k votes. 20% of the population was dictating policy. Its no surprise that, when given the choice, people will vote their preference.
It is ironic that turnout for national elections, where their vote is moot is much higher. But for school boards, county positions, and city positions that actually have an effect on day to day life and expenses, people do not care as much.
But now in WA, my wife and I typically make our morning coffee, sit out on the patio, read through the voter guide to understand what the arguments for and against a particular ballot initiative are and the statements given by individuals. We vote together, sign our ballot, seal it up, then we drive three blocks to a local drop site (only because I prefer doing that versus putting it in my mailbox).
It's super easy to participate in the system here, and in my jaded perspective, that's exactly why certain people and organizations hate it so much.
https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/wa_vbm.pdf
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/11/politics/barr-secret-vote-fac...
There's no way that any form of remote ballot is going to be as secure as doing it in person. It's just not possible because you will never know the provenance. Like most things that involve the legal system, it's not the law abiding that we're worried about.
At least it is not a problem I know about where I live.
Picture this:
Have a canvasser or harvester pick up mail in ballots. They take it to a safe house and open the envelopes. If it’s a vote for the candidate they don’t like, put marks on it so it doesn’t get counted. Place it in a new return envelope.
You’ve just cancelled that person’s vote. If someone checked that their vote was counted they wouldn’t be able to see that it was spoilt.
You could potentially just throw away the ballot too, I doubt most people check that they were actually received. But it does seem slightly more likely to raise eyebrows. I’m sure you could chalk it up to just getting lost at the post office.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by adding marks invalidating the ballot. If you fill out a ballot incorrectly, the poll workers will notify you that there are issues with your ballot.
The vote doesn't have to be convenient, but it absolutely has to be safe. Voter intimidation is impossible with in-person voting.
Are the votes not secret or are the votes not verified as authentic?
I don't think Mr. Durr's achievement is replicable. In my opinion, significant election reform is necessary.
> You do the math.
I did and, well...
squints at those numbers
> Krupa needed 473 valid signatures of ward residents to get on the ballot. He filed 1,729 signatures with the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. He earlier said he filed 1,703 but missed a page of signatures.
> A crew of mysterious political workers — perhaps they were Buddhist monks, or the gentle sun people known as the Eloi, or maybe Madigan precinct captains — filed 2,796 petitions of revocation of signature. That means 2,796 ward residents filed legal affidavits that they wanted their signatures taken off Krupa’s petitions.
> The Madigan men filed 187 affidavits of revocation matching Krupa signatures. But Dorf, a progressive who’d done election work for the late Mayor Harold Washington and former President Barack Obama, put in a Freedom of Information Act request asking the board to give him all the revocations affidavits that were filed.
> All 2,796 of them.
> “And that’s where the fraud comes in, that’s where the felonies come in,” Dorf said. “Almost 2,800 affidavits were filed. But only 1,726 people signed petitions for Krupa. And of the 2,800 affidavits, the 13th Ward could only find 187 signatures that matched.
> Subtract 187 from 2,796 and you get 2,609 — that’s a lot of possible felonies, either perjury or voter intimidation.
Ref: https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/john-kass/ct-met-chic...
BUT, rest assured this is extremely rare and these same people wouldn’t dare tamper with any other kind of election. Nor would this happen anywhere else in the United States. Anyone who asserts an election was subject to fraud is attacking democracy itself. /s
I trust you are referring to problems with the 2020 election? I would appreciate learning what analogies you see between mob-like coercion and the election
As for the mob-like coercion, I don’t think there was this same kind of intimidation going on in 2020. I was using this concrete example of election fraud to refute the oft-touted assertion that voter fraud is vanishingly rare in the United States, and, it is never serious enough to affect an election.
In a naïve way I hope it opens the door to people being willing to accept the idea that if fraud can happen in big corrupt cities, it can happen elsewhere and we should tighten up our oversight laws.
I think increased interest in election integrity after a contested election are great to the extent that high integrity processes are the truth to which society should work towards. Disputes about specific irregularities post-election are less valuable and a generic response could be "well, you should have cheated better."
Ah who am I kidding.
Rossman is biased, but the facts do speak for themselves here. I couldn't believe this video
Durr said Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s coronavirus executive orders, vaccine and school mask, unemployment benefits snafus and a general distrust of the South Jersey Democratic machine that has dominated the region for years all contributed to his strong performance.
Sweeney, Durr said, “never challenged” Murphy during the pandemic.
“You have the debacle of unemployment. The masking of the kids in school.
You have Senator Sweeney trying to take away peoples’ medical freedom rights.
I think the perfect storm was that he stepped into
a pile of you-know-what and couldn’t get out of it because he didn’t
know which way to turn. I just tapped into the right focus.”
I think many people, if they aren't exposed to it or live around it, underestimate the massive anger and frustration that exists towards the Covid restrictions and policies, and vaccine mandates.
There's a global pandemic caused by an airborne pathogen, and people throw an absolute hissy fit over a minor inconvenience like masks. My kids wear them all day long in school, and while they don't love them, they are not constantly whining about them like some adults.
My grandparents, on the other hand, dealt with wartime rationing for years (and they were lucky, because they lived in a place where they could hunt) because our country was in a global battle with Nazis. And all that after the depression.
And mandating something which neither prevents catching, nor transmitting the virus is definitely not a "minor inconvenience".
EDIT: In my last sentence, I wasn't referring to masks. I was referring to vaccine mandates which the truck driver also ran on.
They have studied this though. Actual scientists, not people on Youtube or Facebook, and they have found that masks diminish the transmission of COVID-19. This is kind of what you'd expect with something airborne.
Other developed countries are not masking kids as young as we are doing. Countries like France are rescinding mask mandates now. For us, there is no end in sight, even in highly vaccinated areas.
"Is it worth it" is an ongoing question; at some point, it's probably not, but we're not there just yet. Our vaccination rates are still pretty low. And remember: the bellowing about masks started before we even had vaccines.
It is a political and value judgement to err on the side of minuscule improvement, if any at all, from wearing masks and mandating vaccines for cohorts that statistically don't need to worry about covid, while degrading the social development of children, and hurting the wider economic interests of people affected by endless restrictions. These are all political questions. There are no all encompassing "facts" that delineate who is harmed and who is helped and in what proportions. That is the realm of politics.
Not really, 221 Million have had it-least 1 shot in the US and another 73 Million are under 18 and are at almost no risk (558 total deaths).
At least 9 out of 10 children in the ICUs in North Carolina were obese.
https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...
The iron-fisted one-size-fits-all approach has never been used in medicine and health except COVID.
Along the same lines, ingoring this differentiator has allowed the gov the take a heavy handed on size fits all approach. If the risk is targeted, why is the loss of rights applied to everyone?
Finally, this approach is now being used to jab the kids.
That isn't justice. In fact - whether anyone agrees or disagree s - it smells like textbook authoritarianism. In that context, we are all discarded.
So all the bushiness owners and fancy lad writers, managers, programmers, and other white collars are better positioned to withstand the pandemic with virtually every advantage in both isolation and physical health. All those guys that eat shit because they don't have money or time and burn themselves out physically working hard get to die.
In a slightly different category of person, it's morbidly fascinating watching unvaccinated people on twitter note their buddy just died and say they had comorbidities with a profile pic that shows them to be obese.
In this case, we have to judge whether the petty authoritarianism of those that spread illness and death vs the government pushing everyone to help stop that with, at this point, a fairly convincingly safe vaccine.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.long
Why does everyone promote cloth masks, instead of proper N95 masks?
The covid risk for children is a rounding error. This is not prudent risk management; mind-boggling for someone from the tech industry who should be able to do a cursory look at statistics and dismiss this practice out of hand.
> Blocking the faces of children in the prime of their
> life, where they need to develop social skills through
> interaction and facial expression, is madness.
> The covid risk for children is a rounding error.
Assuming what you meant is "children are less likely to develop severe symptoms," and also that that's true: they can still spread the virus to the adults they live with in their homes, or the many adults that share the school building they're in. (Did you think we just shove kids in an adult-less environment, or that teachers are somehow immune?)
[1]: https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboa...
You are looking for the wrong thing. Look for what the benefits of things like smiling and seeing smiling faces has on people's emotional health.
> A happy face signals positive emotions, as well as attachment availability, care, support, and credibility [7,8,9]. Recently, Tamir and Hughes [10] argued that positive social signals such as smiling faces not only serve ultimate goals (e.g., forming strong bonds) but they are also rewarding in and off themselves.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356968/
https://www.healthline.com/health/baby/when-will-my-baby-smi...
Hiding the main part of your face - the smile is not healthy for people, and especially not for kids whose entire social skills development heavily relies on these things.
I disagree that it's worth harming kids development to attempt to avoid spreading a coronavirus that is becoming endemic, will always be around, and whose spread can't be stopped. Not worth it.
Ohio total covid deaths: 24,763
Ohio total 18 and under covid deaths: 12
Ohio total 18 and under population (2019): 2,578,019
If this isn't a rounding error, what is?
Being proud to be "obedient" is not always a good thing. Also this cannot be generalized. Plus it doesn't make something being mandatory right, especially when looking at people's smiles is crucial for kids development.
What I'm observing is that peculiar mix of self consciousness, smugness, and pride you sometimes see in young children, when they believe they are acting morally.
I'm not using quite the right words here - the emotions I'm listing are more mature. But the same emotions exist in children, just not fully matured.
Since the parents were maskless, I think the kids wanted to wear theirs because they've been taught at school that it's the right thing to do. The ones I observed appeared to be around eight years old.
People rightfully consider this to be a hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy can effectively dampen voter turnout of your supporters if they are idealistic enough. But it's an absolute non-factor if you can sufficiently demonize your opponent(s) and their positions, just look at Trump and how he has wrapped Evangelical America around his little finger.
Most orders after that where just polling their voters to see what they could do and look like "they are doing something" but angering the least people possible. That's bullshit, and even the governor of San Francisco and the governor of California where found bending their policy or breaking the rules multiple times.
The choice is yours: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.
- The White House, May 14, 2021
https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/videos/its-vaxxed-or-mas...
It looked like things were improving, and the more contagious Delta variant (or, as the airline likes to write, B.1.617.2) turned up.
Where I live in Oregon, our hospital was overflowing with people towards the end of summer, to the point where people have died because they couldn't get 'elective' surgery. In that kind of situation, you use a 'defense in depth' strategy, which includes both vaccines and masks.
It's really not that big of a problem to wear one.
That's not the problem. The problem is that those who were saying the "now correct" thing prior to the "experts" changing their minds were first called misinformation. The "experts" make definitive statements without any nuance and when they get proven wrong, they don't apologize.
For example the Press Secretary said "this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated" a week ago and then couple days later, she tested positive.
Here's another example:
> “We don't talk enough to you about this, I don't think. One last thing that's really important is, we're not in the position where we think that any virus, including the Delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more deadly in terms of unvaccinated people, the -- the various shots that people are getting now cover that. You're OK. You're not going to -- you're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” - Biden said on Jul 22.
I posted in July on HN that Israel's data shows this statement is literally not true. But I was called misinformation.
Supposedly a lot of kids have needed to demask to get a good pulse ox. As a parent this terrifies me.
https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-a...
They don't "whine" because they know it's pointless and the school/you will punish them if they do. Adults have more options.
This theory is inconsistent with the evidence: mask mandates have no effect on case numbers and nor did lockdowns. Whether you like this or not is irrelevant - the data is final. Therefore the droplet theory is wrong, and by extension theories based on it are also wrong.
There is an alternative theory of how SARS-CoV-2 spreads through the air: that the viruses can exist in fine aerosols that can be suspended in the air for relatively long periods. This theory is consistent with the evidence actually available:
1. It's consistent with islands that closed their borders early being able to keep the virus out, but nowhere else.
2. It's consistent with mask wearing having no effect, because masks aren't airtight. You still need to breathe in the surrounding air and the holes in masks are much too large to stop a very fine suspended aerosol. Additionally it wouldn't matter even if they are airtight and very good filters because there's evidence the virus can enter via the eyeballs too.
3. It's consistent with lockdowns having no effect. Even in "lockdown" lots of people still need to be in areas recently vacated by other people, like shops, factories, anything to do with the supply chain.
4. It's consistent with the apparent lack of infections outside. Where the wind blows, aerosols emitted by an infected person are rapidly dispersed in the air.
5. It's consistent with the failure of measures like handwashing to keep the virus out of care homes.
It's also consistent with SARS-CoV-1, in which an outbreak was investigated and the conclusion was it circulated through an apartment block via air in drainpipes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/04/18/i...
That isn't possible with the droplet theory, but is perfectly possible with aerosol theory.
The fact that "actual scientists" doing "real research" show that masks work is actually evidence that their research is garbage and they aren't "actual scientists", at least not if we define scientists as people who successfully apply the scientific method to understand reality. If they worked then you'd be able to consistently see the impact in case numbers, but that's simply impossible.
If you read any of their studies you'll soon be struck by how universally poor the quality of COVID research actually is. The scientific method as normally meant has more or less gone AWOL and what's left behind is a bunch of people who very much have an agenda desperately trying to justify why their previous advice wasn't wrong. I really couldn't care less what "actual scientists" think at this point. If they want to be taken seriously they need to provide evidence that's strongly convincing on its own merits, because their institutional credibility has long since turned to dust.
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/FSOS-Bookle...
I do not see anyway out of repaying these debts from previous decades with higher taxes compared to other states.
Because we have progressive taxation and a lot of rich people live in New Jersey, so they pay more in taxes. A state doesn't need to be in financial trouble because it is poor, it is in financial trouble if it makes more promises than it can afford to pay given its tax base. The constant raiding of employee pension funds and various financial ponzi schemes is why NJ is in trouble.
Median household income in 2019
NJ[1] = 85K
US[2] = 69K
[2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...
However, and no offense to NJ, I think living in NH has a ton of appeal. You're so close to amazing backpacking, skiing, lakes, etc. It's a really beautiful state. People staying in full time WFH are going to have an amazing balance of occasional office trips in MA and access to adventure.
I would bet on school closings and the trend of higher taxes/less government services, but the latter is unavoidable due to the outlier amounts of debt NJ has.
https://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/2021/05/17/salt-de...
NJ has very high property tax rates and high home values
NJ income tax is ~4%, and average property taxes are not that high:
https://www.nj.com/politics/2020/03/njs-average-property-tax...
It would be nice to find statistics by percentile, but I would find it hard to believe that many single households are living in houses paying $8k+ property tax, and married households are paying $16k in property tax.
I use $8k and $16k because that would mean the remaining $4k and $8k would be for income tax for a person earning $100k/year (78th percentile) or a couple earning $200k per year (83rd percentile).
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-state-calculator/
Edit: the best way to figure out if the SALT caps hurt or not is to see if the amount of people itemizing on federal returns increased or not. I cannot find any NJ specific statistics, but IRS says only 11% of tax filers itemized in 2019.
Or are you so completely partisan that having an R next to his name makes him obviously the wrong choice, even though he was liberal enough to be palatable to New Jersey voters (not exactly a paragon of conservatism)?