Averting the bloodbath

Nicholas D. Kristof, with whom I don’t always agree, offers the most concise and pointed response in his New York Times column today to the pro-surge crowd’s contention that leaving with result in a bloodbath.

His argument can be boiled down to this:

1. The Iraqis don’t support the surge and want us to leave.

2. Our presence maybe impeding a political settlement, meaning that the bloodbath maybe more likely to happen with us there.

3. We can minimize the potential for a bloodbath by reminding the Iraqi government that, should large-scale massacres occur, government officials will be prosecuted for war crimes.

4. We can create stability by bringing the regional powers — including Iran and Syria — to the table.

So at the end of the day, genocide is possible in Iraq, but there’s no crystal ball to tell anyone what will happen if we stay or go. Keeping troops in Iraq has steadily increased the risk of a bloodbath. The best way to reduce that risk is, I think, to announce a timetable for withdrawal and to begin a different kind of surge: of diplomacy.

A majority of Iraqis may well be right in thinking that we are part of the problem rather than the solution — and maybe a phased withdrawal will nudge Iraqis back from the brink and make a cataclysm less likely.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Taxing questions in Monroe

A group of homeowners is suing Monroe because it believes the township’s assessment ratio — the number used to translate today’s housing prices into assessments based on decade-old values — is out of whatck.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of their complaint, which includes questions about how the ratio was calculated and some accusations of improprieties. But the assessment problem does point out a more general problem with the way we pay for government in New Jersey.

New Jersey property owners, as everyone knows by now, pay the highest property taxes in the nation and use the property tax to cover nearly three quarters of the cost of government.

Towns, schools and counties set tax rates based on the value of property within their borders, the values being based on market prices. They are set infrequently — generally because a full revaluation of property involves inspecting every house, store and warehouse and is quite costly — meaning that most assessments are out of date. To address this issue when new residential and commercial properties are built, towns attempt to go back in time through an assessment ratio.

In the case of Monroe, new residents in several communities are saying that they are being assessed too high when compared to older homes, which leaves them paying more than their share of the cost of local government.

A full revaluation would fix this — though not fix what maybe a historical problem. And it won’t prevent this problem from popping up in the future.

The best way to address this is to lessen the property tax burden across the board — by shifting the cost of New Jersey government (meaning local, school and county) off property taxes and onto income taxes, which are calculated annually.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

The failure of energy deregulation

Read this lead sentence from Tom Johnson’s piece in today’s Star-Ledger and tell me that New Jersey’s energy deregulation program is operating as advertised:

For the second consecutive year, New Jersey consumers will see double-digit increases in their electricity bills come June.

The numbers look like this:

Jersey Central Power & Light customers will see their bills jump by 14 percent, or $13.30 a month, pushing the average monthly bill to $106.72. Customers of Public Service Electric & Gas, the state’s largest utility, will be hit with an 11.7 percent increase, or $10.86 more a month, increasing the average monthly tab to $103.65.

The Asbury Park Press reports that the increase will fall under the microscope of state Public Advocate Ronald Chen:

State Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen said his office is commited to examining
the state’s system for buying electricity.

The “announcement by the Board of Public Utilities that there is yet another substantial increase in the cost of electricity in New Jersey is going to hit families and business hard,” Chen said in a statement.

The issue, at base, is whether the deregulation plan crafted several years ago is the boon to consumers that its sponsors claimed at the time.

That was the question I raised nearly four years ago in a Dispatches column, and it remains the questions today. My utility bills have jumped by about 50 percent over the last half dozen years, driven partly by the steep increase in natural gas, but also by the end of electricty rate caps.

New Jersey’s approach has been a disaster for the collective pocketbook of consumers. The debate needs to be reopened and reregulation placed back on the table. A deregulated marketplace might be the best approach — though I doubt it — but the system we are working with now certainly is not.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.