For NJ, It’s Always the Same Answer from Our State Government: Raise Taxes
Posted On07/29/2020 byNJ Chamber of Commerce President Tom Bracken spoke out against a proposed new tax on health insurance (in ROI-NJ here). The new tax supposedly is to replace the federal tax that was repealed and shore up NJ’s insurance exchanges, but Bracken does an excellent job of refuting this. The bottom line is that when facing…Read More
New Study: NJ’s Roads Among the Worst. But We Have No Money to Fix Them.
Posted On07/28/2020 byThis won’t come as news to many NJ drivers, but NJ101.5 reported that a study by Copilot determined that 42.4 of NJ’s roads are in poor condition. Only RI and CA were worse. The national average was 26%. As detailed in SPCNJ’s report “Beware the Downward Spiral: The Economic Consequences of New Jersey’s Special-Interest-Dominated Status…Read More
New BEA Analysis Confirms NJ Public Pensions as Worst-Funded in Nation
Posted On07/24/2020 byAnd this was before COVID19 hit. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis did a laudable analysis of defined benefit pension plans across the country. BEA used a constant set of methods and assumptions so that in looking at the various plans, BEA was comparing apples to apples. Importantly, BEA used a 4% discount rate for…Read More
NJLeftBehind on SPCNJ’s Response to Jersey Jazzman’s Flawed Defense of His Flawed Research
Posted On07/23/2020 byThanks to NJLeftBehind for blogging and Tweeting SPCNJ’s response to Jersey Jazzman’s flawed defense of his flawed research. As usual, NJLeftBehind adds its own take and helpfully includes @stateaidguy in the thread. To reiterate: Jersey Jazzman’s two research reports for New Jersey Policy Perspective are deeply flawed. Despite Jazzman’s Ph.D., he seems not to understand…Read More
Worrisome Sign: Pension Assets Drop to $75 Billion, Funded Ratio to 35 Percent
Posted On07/23/2020 byNJ’s Division of Investment provided an update on pension assets. As of April 30, the assets had dropped to $75 billion from $81 billion, or -8.1%, due to the decrease in the market value of the investments. With the system’s liabilities at $212 billion, this means that the funded ratio dropped from 38.4 % to…Read More
Jersey Jazzman’s Defense of His Shoddy Research Is Just as Shoddy
Posted On07/21/2020 bySunlight (not “Sunshine,” Jazzman) Policy Center of New Jersey (SPCNJ) will give credit where credit is due: at least The Jazzman (a.k.a., Mark Weber, Ph.D.) took the time to defend his research. Presumably, no self-respecting Ph.D. would allow SPCNJ’s critique “More Shoddy Research from Jersey Jazzman and New Jersey Policy Perspective” to go unchallenged. However,…Read More
WalletHub Sees NJ Unemployment and Recovery as Second-Worst in Nation
Posted On07/20/2020 byInsiderNJ wrote an article on WalletHub’s recent ranking of the unemployment rates in all 50 states. NJ currently has the second-highest unemployment rate at 16.4%, which is up 407% since June 2019, the second-worst recovery. We all hope that NJ’s unemployment numbers will come down, but if the past is prologue, we have cause…Read More
NDNJ Poll Gives Murphy High Marks – But Remember that the NJEA Paid for It
Posted On07/15/2020 byToday the New Jersey Globe published an article on a new poll paid for by New Direction New Jersey (NDNJ) that showed Governor Murphy getting extremely high marks for his handling of COVID and just about everything else. The Globe correctly notes that NDNJ is run by Murphy allies and that it advocates for Murphy’s…Read More
NJLeftBehind Digs into Jazzman/NJ Policy Perspective’s Flawed Research
Posted On07/14/2020 byKudos and thanks to NJLeftBehind for a masterful critique of Mark Weber, Ph.D. (a.k.a., Jersey Jazzman) and New Jersey Policy Perspective’s (NJPP) latest piece of shoddy research. NJLeftBehind calls it like it sees it, and it sees Weber and NJPP as essentially paid lobbyists for the NJEA. After the two shoddy pieces of research Weber…Read More
NJ Education Aid Finds Gaps in Weber/NJPP Report on a Teacher Shortage
Posted On07/13/2020 byThe excellent New Jersey Education Aid provides facts and data (here)that expose gaps in Mark Weber, Ph.D.’s (a.k.a., Jersey Jazzman) latest report for New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP) (here) on a shortage of teacher candidates in NJ. In other words, NJ Education Aid does what Weber does not do: provides sound, evidence-based research that supports…Read More