A Site for Shore Eyes

Certain climatologists declared the winter of 2006-2007 the warmest on record. They made this declaration before winter even began, and reaffirmed it a couple of days ago. Here in New Jersey, on St. Patrick’s day, a snow plow just went by the house, and the outside temperature is a blistering 27 degrees Fahrenheit. Rest assured that global warming will make most of the snow disappear before spring officially rolls in.

According to the Regional Climate Office at Rutgers University, http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim while January was indeed unseasonably warm, February 2007 was the 15^th coldest since 1895, and the coldest February since 1979.

Raise your hand if you believe the global warming hype is not agenda-driven. I’m having trouble seeing the hands of the people in upstate New York, who got 12 feet of snow a few weeks back.

A meeting in Washington, DC concerning global warming was cancelled a couple of weeks back due to an ice storm. In other action, two women who planned on walking across the North Pole to demonstrate the melting of the Arctic ice, turned back due to the cold. One of them got frostbite in three toes.

Meantime, if not back at the ranch, at least in Northampton, Massachusetts, a group of religious leaders started walking across the state to bring attention to global warming. They warmed up on lentil and minestrone soup after walking eight miles in deep snow. They plan on completing their journey, but I doubt that they’ll succeed in making a believer out of me.

Proponents of human-caused global warming during the twentieth century seem to have no explanation for the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. nor for the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0310.html I can only suspect that the world industrial community began cutting back on automobile emissions and burning of industrial fossil fuels beginning in 1301 or thereabouts.

How does one obtain a consensus on a supposedly scientific study? Apparently you simply send a copy of the study to hundreds of leading scientists, even if they don’t agree with its findings, and if they don’t respond, you attach their names to it. That’s what happened recently, and some are threatening to sue if their names aren’t removed.

Whether or not human-induced global warming is real (the predictions of a coming ice age during the 1970s apparently weren’t, but stay tuned), the shrill screams of the advocates make me wary of their motives. The snow on the ground in the middle of March also seems a bit suspicious. So much for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Well, I moved back to New Jersey a couple of years ago, and we just bought a home at the Jersey Shore. This action represents even a stronger commitment to my native state, which causes me to reflect on the many things I love about New Jersey.

I always felt strongly that those people in Trenton always acted in our best interests, even if we thought otherwise. My first inkling of this thought came when our duly elected representatives finally figured out that putting the income tax idea to a referendum vote wasn’t such a good idea, being that the people kept voting against it. An unnamed assemblyman took the floor and gave this impassioned speech: “We’re idiots!” he said, pounding his fist on the podium. “We’re the law dudes, which is why we’re here! We don’t need the approval of incompetent fools to have a state income tax! Oh, wait. . . yes we do – “ it’s the voters’ approval we don’t need. Okay, so let’s have an income tax!”

The citizens obviously lacked the insight of the collective minds in Trenton, who had already figured out that the sales tax implemented in ‘66 just wasn’t pulling its own weight with respect to dumping money in the pockets – oops, I meant coffers. And that Lotto, the one that was supposed to alleviate school taxes, was somehow increasing school taxes! Go figure. So we obviously needed an income tax, otherwise how could we get those darned property taxes down to manageable levels?

Well, the income tax wasn’t getting it done, either, so Trenton shouted a collective, “Wait! Casino gambling in Atlantic City will solve our money problems, and by implementing urban removal, we can drop the crime rate to almost zero!”

So in came the bulldozers and dynamite, followed by the casinos, with stern warnings issued to organized crime to not mess with AC! This instilled great fear in the Gambino and Genovese families, who were engaged in daily coin flipping to determine which one would run America’s Playground. In the end, it was the New Jersey State Police, at least for awhile, until some of the corruption could be better organized.

Brendan Byrne, governor when the first casino opened, made good on his pledge to not tolerate organized crime by declaring a state of financial emergency in the casinos, and implemented a ban on early surrender in blackjack. Early surrender meant that a player could surrender the hand before the dealer checked to see if he had a blackjack, and the player would lose only half of the wager. This was causing the one casino open at the time to lose enormous amounts of money. Casinos do not operate for the purpose of a player losing only half of his or her money – “ he or she is supposed to lose all of it, otherwise it’s considered improper gamesmanship, or something like that.

Anyway, with the sales tax edging up from three percent to seven percent, the increase in the Lotto to the Megamillions game, implementation of the income tax, revenue from casino gambling, and the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, it’s easy to see why we New Jerseyans enjoy the lowest property taxes in the country. Okay, strike that last sentence. What I meant, is that the legislators are trying to get property taxes down, although they voted against it. There.

Another way our elected representatives protect our welfare is by recognizing that only New Jersey and one other state do not have enough citizens smart enough to pump their own gas. In reality, this tactic is a clever pollution reduction scheme. Other states may seem to have smarter people, but not so fast! These evil geniuses spend about four minutes in a gas station, then they’re back on the road! No one gets anywhere, due to large traffic jams! New Jersey has declared itself traffic gridlock free, because most of the drivers are sitting in gas stations while one attendant flits about trying to fill the tanks of eight vehicles at a time! They waste even more time fooling around with credit cards, because most stations find no need for credit card readers on the pumps. I once went and got a haircut while my tank was being filled. Fortunately, only two were ahead of me, and one of them was already in the chair.

New Jersey also protects its merchants. Anyone can drive into the state for free, but it’s virtually impossible to leave without paying. Delaware thinks the no sales tax ploy is some great idea, but it costs a few dollars to get there from NJ. No matter what state a driver heads for, New Jersey ensures that a toll will be collected. This has caused a minor population explosion in the state, because people come here, then spend most of their money on sales taxes and tolls. Lacking the funds to leave the state, they buy a house, no money down, wait for the value to double in a few weeks, and pull out the excess equity. Unfortunately, most of that money goes for property taxes, and they eventually try to implement early surrender on the property, only to discover it was outlawed back in the ’70s. That’s how they got me back here.