Noi Joisey? No Dank You! Over Christmas I made a trip to my favorite third world country--New Jersey. Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm in no way making any kind of ethnic comment on the popula- tion of our neighbor to the east, although at times, I was hard pressed to find anyone who spoke English, which became a problem usually only when I went to buy gasoline. No, you see, what turns New Jersey into a third world slum is the very same thing that creates any slum-- Democrats. Take the aforementioned gas buying, for instance. Nowhere in the entire state is there a self-serve gas station. You see it's actually illegal for you to get out of your car and pump your own gas. There are several reasons for this. l) You, an untutored member of the general public, don't have the training that a highly instructed gas station attendant has, to pump your own gas; 2) Because, as a member of the genseral public, you're basically a scoff law, you might try to put gasoline into an unapproved container, and 3) This law helps New Jersey towards that Utopian dream of full employment, by forcing you to pay for something you neither want nor need, a highly trained gas pump opera- tor. Now, these may not be New Jersey's reasons, but they are the reasons that idealistic and Utopian members of the Pennsylvania legislature (otherwise known as Marxists) give for bringing the failure of New Jersey to Pennsy. New Jersey does have some newspapers. They spend their time trying to imitate the socialism of the Philadelphia Inquirer. As far as that goes, they're fairly successful, which makes you wonder why anyone would read them if they can find a copy of the Inquirer. Of course, the Philadelphia Inquirer is not to be confused with the supermarket's National Enquirer. The latter is not only more interesting, but more truthful as well. I was reading the December 28th edition of one ------------------------------------------------------- Jersey paper in particular, the Burlington County Times. At the top of page one was a story about a study done by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. It contained some information which most Jersey-ans found puzzling, viz., New jersey is losing business due to government policies considered unfriendly to business. And it said exactly that, "considered un- friendly," not actually unfriendly. So the problem is just that the ordinary businessman is basically un- educated with an unjustified impression of the Garden State. And, Heaven forbid, we don't want to be unenlightened enough to actually call any government policy "unfriendly to business" do we? As if the Fates had read my mind, I looked down the same page to read a headline that said as of the first of the year, home improvement contractors in New Jersey will need a license to operate. But one also has to read the fine print. The license is ninety bucks, but the liability insurance the con- tractor will have to carry is a a cool half mil. Oh, and not only that, the home owner will have the option to cancel the contract scott-free any time during the first three days of the deal. Renee Borstad of the Burlington County Office of Consumer Affairs said that this was to protect the contractor as well as the consumer. It reminded me of those signs on the Pennsy Turnpike that tell me that police radar is for "my protection." Just how radar protects me from anything--unless it's aliens allergic to the beams-- is a mystery to me. I'm sure the New Jersey con- tractor will get the same feeling of comfort that I do from the use of radar. The same newspaper told me how the Burlington County dump is losing money. In fact, it's been losing money since l997. You may well wonder with all the garbage we produce, how any place that collects gar- bage for a living can run at a loss. It's quite simple. It's run by the government. ------------------------------------------------------- For the last eight years, local trash haulers have found out of county collection sites to be considerably cheaper than the Burlington County site. So, what have they been doing? Well, they've been following good economic practice and going to the cheaper sites. Now, what's interesting is the response of the Burlington County Board of Freeholders to economic necessity. Neighboring counties are lowering their prices and taking business out of Burlington County. So, to stay in business, what should Burlington County do? That's right, raise their prices! In the face of mounting economic competion, the Freeholders have raised the fee about 3% a year for eight years. They were losing money to comp- etitors in '97, so to compensate they raise fees in '97. This caused them to lose business to competitors in '98, so to compensate they raised fees in '98. This caused them to lose business in '99, so to com- pensate they raised fees in '99. You get the picture. Just repeat the scenario for every year, n plus one to infinity. A rat running a maze will learn quicker. Too bad we won't be around to see the fee hike in 2100, that is, if anyone still uses the Burlington County dump. Like everything else, your home is the government's castle. New Jersey is no different, only more so. A few years ago, one of the state's eight and a half million inhabitants happened to suffocate himself on carbon monoxide from a faulty heater. That's one out of eight and a half million, so the chances of it happening to you are infintesimally small. But, not to shirk their duty to ensure that all New Jerseyans are safe from even the remotest possib ities of death, the legislature made it a necessity for all residents to have carbon monoxide detectors (and the ubiquitous smoke detectors) in every room of the house. During the same time period, some soccer mommie's little darling managed to pull a stove over on ------------------------------------------------------- himself--Darwinism at work. The result was another rush to make the world safe for nincompoops. In most New Jersey municipalities, your kitchen stove has to be bolted to the back wall. As other household goods come crashing down on junior, one can only wonder if any home will have any wall space left for family pictures. Driving with my sister, we came to an intersection in the burbs. A friendly sign reminded us that we could turn right on red ... xcept (and there's always an exception in NJ) ... when children are present. I suppose if anyone else is present you can throw caution to the wind. I reminded my sister that she couldn't make our turn. She looked at me quizzically, "And just why not?" "Well," I said, "There are chil- dren present!" "And just where is that?" she said. I pointed to my niece in the rear seat. Sometimes my sister doesn't have a sense of humor. A few days later I was driving west across the Delaware and back to America, back to a land where I didn't have to bolt my stove to the kitchen wall, where I could pump my own gas, and hiring someone to paint my livingroom didn't involve me in a legal nightmare. Oh, and I should also mention, to a land where I could safely and legally carry the comfort blanket of my choice--my Colt Cobra .38. As I came off the bridge, a friendly sign read, "Welcome to Pennsylvania." I breathed a long sigh of relief. To paraphrase former New Jersey governor, Thomas Keane: New Joisey with anyone else but me-- Poifect tugaythir. Johnstown, Penna. March 10th '06 -------------------------------------------------------