Blue State - No Jobs

For some unknown reason New Jersey is looking for companies to come there and actually employ people.....

With Wall Street in a meltdown, the Corzine administration is working feverishly to find ways to generate jobs in Jersey.

How to create jobs? Simple. Just compile a list of everything the Democrats have been doing. Then do the exact opposite.

In 2001, Jim McGreevey was elected promising, "I will not raise our income taxes. I will not raise our sales taxes."

So instead he raised corporate taxes. And then he raised income taxes. And then Jon Corzine took over to complete the trifecta by raising the sales tax. Meanwhile, property taxes continued to rise. And the Democrats also cut off development in what could be the wealthiest part of the state with the Highlands Act.

And now the Democrats want new jobs. Good for them, but jobs require job sites. Where will those new workers work?

The other evening I participated in a panel discussion on that topic hosted by the New Jersey chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties. These guys are the big developers, the crude capitalists who were scorned until recently as the despoilers of the planet and the spreaders of sprawl.

All of a sudden, they're the good guys again. The governor is meeting with them and other business leaders to figure out how to generate jobs to make up for those lost when Wall Street giants like Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

One developer in the audience was Joe Morris, who specializes in cleaning up brownfields sites in places like Perth Amboy and replacing the pollution with commercial properties.

"The business climate in this state is just toxic," Morris told me. "We have no idea how to retain tenants in this state."

This begins with the attitude of state regulators - "They could be nice and respectful, but they're just arrogant" - but it goes way beyond that.

Perhaps the low point occurred in July. It was already obvious by then that we were in an economic downturn. But instead of creating incentives for new business, the Democrats passed a new tax on development that was unprecedented in American history.

More....