New Jersey has a Problem

New Jersey has a big problem.

'Big Government is why New Jersey created only 6,800 private sector jobs from 2000 to 2007—while public sector jobs grew by more than 55,800. Big Government is the reason New Jersey ranks as the worst of 50 states on the Small Business Survival Index. And Big Government is a leading reason New Jersey has a “corruption problem” that an FBI agent at Friday’s press conference characterized as “one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation.”

Sandy McClure, co-author of the book “The Soprano State: New Jersey’s Culture of Corruption,” agrees that big government is a big reason behind the state’s corruption problem. “You have all these little authorities that everyone has to go to for permission,” she says. “Too much government means too many opportunities for officials looking to cash in. And there’s no way that the press can keep track of it all.”'

In its first reporting of the corruption scandal, the Los Angeles Times demonstrated extraordinary delicacy.  A reading of the Times accounting of it would lead you to think this was a non-partisan affair.  Neither of the words "Democrat" nor "Republican" appear anywhere in an article about the arrests of 44 public officials -- a collection of mayors, state assemblymen, and city councilmen.

A slightly different picture emerges from yesterday's reporting by Examiner.com.

'The mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield, the Jersey City deputy mayor and council president, two state assemblymen, numerous other public officials and political figures and five rabbis from New York and New Jersey were among 44 individuals charged Thursday in a two-track federal investigation of public corruption and a high-volume, international money laundering conspiracy, according to Michael Drewniak, public affairs officer for the US Attorney's Office in Newark, NJ.

All but one of the suspects, are part of the Jersey Democrat Party Machine.'

New jersey is said to be running neck and neck with Illinois, Barack Obama's home state, for the title "Most Corrupt State in the Union."