Christie and ARC: A Different Perspective

Mark of New Jersey

Mark is a Founding Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the predecessor of Ordinary Times.

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14 Responses

  1. Trumwill says:

    I have lived in three low tax states and one high tax state. In any of the former three, I would look at the bailing of a worthy project like this with anger and I would vote against its sponsors unless they had some better idea with which to use the money. The high-tax state, it would depend but I would probably still object. However, even the high-tax state was nowhere close to the level of taxation in New Jersey.

    If this project needs to be saved, what are you going to cut? If you’re going to raise taxes, how high do you want them to go precisely? At what point do you say “we’ve gone the tax route and we simply can’t pay for all we want (which, judging from the bonds, they they can’t) so we will have to readjust our expectations?

    I’m not a New Jerseyan, so it’s not my decision to make. They made their decision, though, when they elected Christie. If they make the alternative decision for higher taxes so that they can afford their services, well that’s their choice.

    ARC sounds like a really, really good investment. But only if you have the money.Report

    • Mark Thompson in reply to Trumwill says:

      @Trumwill, Right – just because we now have a Republican governor doesn’t mean that the economic calculus is the same it would be if we had the tax burden and deficit of, say, Virginia or Indiana.

      Almost everyone seems to agree that there’s ultimately a need for an ARC Tunnel, and no one disputes that this will require a huge investment. But that’s a different proposition from the question of whether this ARC Tunnel, at this price, at this time, and under these fiscal circumstances is a good idea. It may well be, but it’s at least a close issue.Report

  2. Sounds to me like just another Big Dig, with all the attendant and almost definite cost-overruns, only maybe even worse. After all, this IS New Jersey. Its good that in this case it bit the dust before it got too far along to stop.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Has anyone thought about the children?Report

  4. sam says:

    I’ve read the the guv’s willingness to explore other options was prompted by LaHood telling him that NJ wasn’t gonna get the fed $3 billion for anything else but the tunnel.Report

  5. Koz says:

    “….it’s hard to offer a fair evaluation of what Christie has done here without reference to this state’s truly dire fiscal situation, which exists in spite of one of the highest overall tax burdens in the country.”

    Yeah, no shit Sherlock.

    I’m sure there are going to be a hundred more twists in this tale before it’s finished and at least that many for the bigger fiscal picture as well. But let’s just take it where it is for the moment.

    Somehow none of these liberals have considered the possibility that when you spend money on all sorts of lame-o midnight basketball bullshit that there’s no money left over when you really need it for something.

    Without crunching the exact numbers, it’s fair to say that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut have been fairly reliable Demo votes and the Presidential and Congressional level. If the people living there wanted to do something with their lives other than pissing it away at a train station waiting for a train that never comes, they should have voted Republican.Report