March 24, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • Page 23 is not what’s playing any more. The people who moved to upscale towns so their kids would not get mugged for lunch money are not able to support those fantasies of public prep schools. Similarly – brutal as it may sound – people who somehow expect that special education programs are somehow going to turn their kids into four-year college material also need to take a look at reality. These are good, lovable kids, but no taxpayer program on earth is going to turn them into competitors for the Ivy League or even for Rutgers or Montclair. Parents need to lose this fantasy instead of foisting it off on society. The tax burden on people who are earning too much money for the entitlement program and too little for tax shelters is backbreaking as it stands, and trying to make these people pay for programs that do not work because they just cannot work is cruel and unusual punishment. We need to look into ways to save money in every way we can. The police officers came through for everybody in this latest catastrophe, and we need to remember that. The fact that police officers need and deserve state-of-the-art medical and dental programs and a valid living wage is a no-brainer. They earn it. We need to take care of the people who talk care of us when things aren’t working out. We also need to make sure there are enough police officers for a full shift, day and night. On the other hand, I think we could save a fortune on buying police officers state-of-the-art guns. The last police officer I knew who had shot and killed somebody in the line of duty retired 20 years ago. We used to compare notes because he had also shot and killed people when he was in the service. I have probably slain as many evildoers as the entire police establishment of Northwest Bergen Count at this point – which is to say, none. I have done so without a taxpayer subsidy, except when I was in the dirty old Army, not an option for most officers today. Let’s make sure the brave men and women on our police forces don’t have to resort to part-time jobs to pay for their medical insurance, but if they want to upgrade their firepower, let them pay for it out of pocket. I don’t support arbitrary gun control. Neither do I support arbitrary gun proliferation. When I was a soldier many years ago, I was taught that it was better to make a garrote and strangle people anyway. You can’t make this stuff up; that is what they told us. Skip all these Glocks and use a .38 or a .45 like Wild Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp. That’s the American way. Two groups that do not require guns to be heroic are the volunteer fire departments, backed by the ambulance corps volunteers. Some of these people did without sleep for 48 hours or more during the power failures, the basement flooding, and the fallen trees. If ever the taxpayers got a bargain, it was when the members of these groups stood up for the towns they live in. They put their lives on the line along with the hundreds of hours they spend in training and on duty, and their contributions are the best-kept secret in Northwest Bergen as far as the taxpayers are concerned. If we had to pay people to perform these duties, everybody’s tax bill would jump up in a way that made people scream. They are the ultimate class act, and whatever we can do for them or their families is well worth doing. It is an ill wind that blows no good – and the wind that shut off our power for one, two, or three days was a very ill wind. But what it may have showed us was that we are tougher than we thought we were. We learned that we could cope without telephones or electricity for a couple of days with a little imagination. In just such a way, we can learn to cope with the new state budget that cuts back on state employees who can never be bothered to pick up their telephones anyway, cuts back on the number of people who don’t do their jobs anyway and – dare we hope – allows people who enjoy putting money into the bank to save for their own retirements instead of taking “escape” vacations to tropical places where people hate Americans and leave it to Uncle Sam to plan their eventual retirements. Read my lips: Uncle Sam doesn’t exist. He is a figment of somebody’s imagination. The average American is very much on his own as far as long-term economics. Not Bush, nor Obama, nor Uncle Sam cares what happens to you. Help the very poor as your conscience tells you to, and put the rest of it in the bank, under the mattress, or in the most conservative possible investments. We just saw what happens when the infrastructure breaks down for a couple of days. It wasn’t pretty. If it happens on a long-term, basis, you’re on your own. My wife and I grew up playing cowboys and Indians with real Indians. The real Indians depend on the federal government for everything. They sometimes live the way Northwest Bergen just did for a couple of days for months or years at a time. Extreme cold out West is known among whites as a Three Dog Night – whence the name of the rock group. If you don’t want to depend on canine insulation, squawk like a banshee at every tax bite and put that cash in the bank. The rest of it doesn’t work. The good news after the recent storm is that most of us once again have electrical power and telephone service again. (Mine still doesn’t work, but the phone company still hates me because I denounced them to the Board of Public Utilities and the Justice Department on a “slamming” charge.) The bad news is that we had better not depend on New Jersey, the United States, or anybody else as part of the entitlement program that comes with being born here, serving in the armed forces, and paying our taxes for umpteen years. The fantasy that Big Papa or Big Mama could protect us all from the real world collapsed over the weekend of March 13-12 and some of the top addresses in Northwest Bergen County were left without electrical power for multiple days. Life is hard, and a big income, present or previous, does not leave any of us bulletproof. My wife and I were watching PBS play the songs of our adolescence in a bid to raise money when the TV coverage tanked. We shrugged it off with a decision to hit the sack early that night. When you have lived with the people who were here first, as we both have, a power failure is no big deal. The people whose lives vectored around the computer may have decided the end of the world had arrived, but they have since been extricated from doom – at least temporarily. No sooner had most of Northwest Bergen gotten its electrical power back than we got the news from the governor: New Jersey’s budget had finally dropped back from the Twilight Zone and was finally back into the real world. I am going to miss those rebates, but I was at least convinced that the governor was trying to be an honest man. New Jersey has always been a sort of grisly farce where fiscal integrity is concerned, but one can at least hope that things get better. The new administration at least has a handle on what is happening in New Jersey. Too many people are working for the state at serious salaries, but really are not doing much of anything. Howls of outrage may erupt as state-level jobs are cut, but the reality is that government has been turned into an entitlement program so people who “know somebody” will never have to enter the awful reality of the private sector, where wages for productive labor are absurdly low. Money is funny stuff. The money some people used to make with a sudden hop on the stock market could be spent painlessly because it was made painlessly. The money earned through useful labor, or produced by a two percent interest rate, is a little different. Some of the people who saw the Ivy League as part of an entitlement program that came with their property taxes are now hard pressed to pay their property taxes. Some of the people who saw their property taxes as a reach for Rutgers and are satisfied with a couple of years of Spanish and math are still paying their bills. Both groups need to be considered, but the people who once saw the public schools as a discount alternative to Choate or Lawrenceville need to realize that this Ill wind in Northwest Bergen: A Harbinger or a fair warning Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: Can Governor Christie really get it done? Probably not if it’s true that “all politics is local.” The governor hit the ground running with the courage and conviction of the successful former prosecutor he is, but can he really be successful? New Jersey has the highest property tax burden in the country, but New Jersey didn’t make that happen; its 566 municipalities did. Their home rule created inefficiencies that were compounding during good economic times and have come home to roost today. If Christie’s measures were implemented by this crazy quilt of big and microscopic population centers, he might have a fighting chance. Spending cuts would be implemented without raising taxes. Some municipalities can claim reduced, or the same, spending over the prior year, and then go ahead and raise the amount we pay in our quarterly tax bill under the premise of protecting the surplus. Hard and enforceable spending caps would be implemented. Currently, significant line items are protected from the state-mandated spending cap of four percent. Items so classified can change from year to year, often resulting in a final tax levy increase much greater than the mandated cap. Calendar year budgets would be filed, effective and adhered to not later than the end of February of the current fiscal year. “Locals” who rely on the excuse that they have to await the state aid figures are rapidly becoming irrelevant as those contributions disappear even more rapidly. Needs for professional service contracts would always be advertised and competitively bid. Councils would operate with full transparency, free of conflicts of interest, and would exceed the standards for both. Can Christie get it done? Assessed property values would, as closely as possible, mirror their likely selling prices. A greatly-restricted state grant borough application process would be enacted. One hundred percent grants are just re-channeled tax dollars, but because they come from “the state,” they can be regarded as special gifts. Matching grants are particularly dicey for locals because they are asked to pony up an equal amount from their taxpayers; arguably incentivizing local spending. And, it’s not always the case that matching grant projects are well thought out because it’s often the money and the deadlines that drive them and not necessarily the strategy or the concept of the projects. And, the elephant in the room -- shared services and smart consolidation -- would progress from mostly elected official lip-service to the highest potential chance available to reduce the cost of local government. No, Governor Christie can’t do what he has set out to do. The responsibility for real fiscal control in super-taxed New Jersey lies with its local officials and the citizenry. Mayors and councils must husband their financial resources and unfailingly adhere to their fiduciary responsibilities, and citizens must engage. Remarkable political change is already underway in the country right now. Mr. Christie is our governor because of it. It actually takes little to effect positive political change, but it never happens without citizen involvement. It does, however, take courage and participation, much like Mr. Christie’s before the people selected him. Good government doesn’t just happen, but bad government does when no one is watching or participating. The worst possible legacy of the Christie Era would read something like this: Good guy, tough guy, but he never got it done because the people never helped him. Lee Flemming Ho-Ho-Kus Note: Mr. Flemming is a Ho-Ho-Kus Council member.