Isn't there a country that pays homemakers a wage? I thought it was Denmark, but maybe I'm making this all up.
Posting Czar for the State of NJ, Small Business Owner (you're welcome for my service), Homeowner (yw4ms), Parent (yw4ms). I write about local news: https://glassborogaffer.substack.com/
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Isn't there a country that pays homemakers a wage? I thought it was Denmark, but maybe I'm making this all up.
"social fascists" and all that
Soon he can retire to the Golan Heights like he said he always wanted.
I was about to blow all my money away gambling instead of paying for food, mortgage, my kids' college, but then I saw a commercial that said I could get addicted to gambling in a really fast voice at the end! That was a close one.
Actually, we should ban gambling ads just like we did for tobacco (ban booze ads while you're at it). Ppl already know the risks of gambling. It's not a secret that you could lose your money or get addicted. Milquetoast-ass task force #42069 www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/04/curb...
Chapo joked about the possibility of the "Trump supporter COVID scold" but they're real! I'm related to one! They like Op Warp Speed (if they know about it), get their annual shots, & any of Trump's antivaxx subordinates are either ignored or renegade advisors misrepresenting the benevolent king.
In my studied opinion, the NYT, CBS, MSNBC, & Joe Rogan are running circles around NPR & PBS in the race to the bottom.
I still think "NJ for All" bangs.
The real Paris is YIMBY af now while JC is going to get taken over by reactionaries.
The silver lining is that maybe states can now instead focus on utility-scale solar, which is better bang for buck than subsidizing rooftop solar. Yeah yeah "why not both" but I'm talking 2nd-best policy here.
No. I can criticize the particular journalists or execs running particular public media outlets, but I will continue to defend public media's existence & funding. Because, for all its faults, public media is nowhere near as "good" at normalizing fascism as private media.
Commentary: NJ gutted public broadcasting before it was cool newjerseymonitor.com/2025/09/03/n...
Every frigging year I have to deal with this crap. No pediatrician near me offers the COVID vax. Pharmacists can't do it. This year, my local health dept is no longer giving the COVID vax to kids under 3. They tell me the state won't give them any due to low demand last year.
False. CVS doesn't offer the COVID vaccine to all. Kids under 3 can't, by state law, get it from any pharmacist. But even I can't get it atm. I try scheduling online but they won't let me.
The next time a casino fails, state-alize it. Setup a state-owned gambling enterprise that can offer better odds bcs it doesn't need as high a profit margin. Borrow from the Singapore model: steep entry fees for NJ residents, don't lend to gamblers unless they pony up a lot of their own money.
Unless the person here lost everything on micro-betting, specifically, instead of just gambling in general, this is an argument for curbing all of online gambling. At this point you prob can't ban it, but casinos/bookies should be public enterprises. www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/09/new-...
Ya boi wrote a thing. newjerseymonitor.com/2025/09/03/n...
From the NJ Monitor newsletter today. Not entirely true. Before Jan 20, NY's Gov Hochul felt no qualms over sending the Nat Guard into the subways to combat crime despite falling rates.
NJ Transit has proven themselves more capable of operating buses than contractors, so this is good. Cut that waste, fraud, & abuse.
The FTA's National Transit Database led me to believe that the River Line was directly operated all this time, not purchased transit like Hudson-Bergen. Was that a wrong assumption?
Photo is from today's NJ Monitor newsletter.
Booker's done hiding his power level in 2028. This gives him enough time to acquire some children capable of standing for photos, speaking a little Spanish for Tik Tok. I'm betting on them adopting a heckin woofer, too. people.com/senator-cory...
Then again, the most famous kid who got groomed into Nazism ended up "undoing" America's biggest Nazi. So it's impossible to say if this is bad. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pa...
Yeah. Why is he banishing Mills to the Senate? Keep her available for a POTUS run in 2028!
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT newjerseymonitor.com/2025/09/02/r...
"Finns aren't continental." Crap. I'm bad at being old-timey racist.
Whoa whoa whoa. _All_ continental Europeans?! I'm concerned about allowing any Spaniard, Italian, or Finn to just walk right into our country.
Similarly, college textbooks expensive as hell vs. K-12 textbooks provided gratis by schools.
Ya boi wrote a thing. newjerseymonitor.com/2025/09/03/n...
I'm aware. This isn't a thread about what's realistic in the short term.
Then they should also expand paid parking & do smart pricing.
Why?
Pitch: walkable prison cells.
Any chance Philly's public parking revenue can go to SEPTA?
Time for congestion pricing in Philly. Idk. NJ bridge tolls can go to PATCO/GCL (DVRPA). PA-side tolls can go to SEPTA. I don't think CP is a dependable long-term funding source, but South NJ / SE PA are in no danger of going woke for TOD anytime soon.
Hey @jcpolicycircle.bsky.social, did JC council pass your automated traffic camera resolution? drive.google.com/file/d/1xGDD...
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT nj1015.com/spadea-novem...
Letter to the Editor: A Swedesboro resident writes in to oppose a restaurant coming to downtown Glassboro. glassborogaffer.substack.com/p/letter-no-...
Another development, another bout of grumbling & talk of showing up at the Planning Board meeting to oppose it. One NIMBY's humble proposed alternative:
Another development, another bout of grumbling & talk of showing up at the Planning Board meeting to oppose it. One NIMBY's humble proposed alternative:
I have no idea how the election will shake out, but it's pretty funny that Sherill was at a photo op with a business in my area while Ciattarelli was doing gender in Jersey City.
That might be it. My plans for my LLC didn't pan out. Now I want out! Pls make it cheaper to dissolve this shit, Moophy!
Yes, I am a reactionary Business Plot proponent but exclusively & specifically to lower actually unnecessary administrative fees for automated processes with near-zero marginal cost. Gov. Murphy: if you want in on this so you can become a martyr for lovers of democracy forever, PM me.
Princeton's density of civic groups & small businesses that aren't just sub shops or car dealerships is insane.
Why does the State of NJ charge a $75 for me to file my annual LLC report? I thought it was bcs it requires labor hours of an actual human to review my filing. Nope. The system instantly generated my report upon payment. Also, wanna close your business? $125 fee.
le goufe
We're nowhere near the 10% unemployment we had in 2010, but above the 3-3.2% troughs in 2019 & 2022. I believe 5% is the Fed's target u-rate for the country as a whole, so NJ is about there. Idk if it's a full employment rate for a single state.
Since the pandemic, NJ's u-rate troughed at 3% in August 2022, & slowly rose ever since. We're now at the exact u-rate we had in January 2016: again, 4.9%.
NJ has a higher unemployment rate than its neighbors: CT, DE, NY, PA. fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tabl...
NJ's unemployment rate rose slightly from 4.6% to 4.9% since January. NJ Monitor says NJ lost the most total jobs according to a payroll survey that isn't the official jobs report, but the u-rate stayed the same from June to July. newjerseymonitor.com/2025/08/28/n...
The less humane option is refusing to insure properties that repeatedly flood. If your house flooded twice in your lifetime, it's time to leave or you're on your own.
"driven by a small share of extremely high-risk properties that repeatedly flood." The humane option is forced buyouts of a greatly expanded pool of properties that repeatedly flood, taxes on impermeable surface, & fines on towns that develop flood-prone areas (or bans).
By "small local groups" you prob mean the Ocean City type NIMBYs, I know.
Trump cancelling offshore wind permits doesn't help. But which interests & groups? I'd like to see if they donate to my local state legislators.
A local coffee roaster here in South Jersey is raising prices & naming the culprit. (Well, not the guy.)
Data centers are certainly hogs & we may want to consider sliding scale rates. & we def want a carbon tax. But fundamentally it's an artificial supply crunch. Dems need to really wail on not just PJM but the GOP for opposing new supply. [QTing to spare that thread more notifications]
NJ not among them. Why do we suck?
Ctrl + F "primary" 0 results Idc until there's a primary challenger.
A breath of fresh air when Republicans have to deal with dumb, unofficial, but sacred norms blocking their agenda. Like "senatorial courtesy" in NJ's legislature.
May I reprint this in my newsletter?
Community meetings have gotten a lot of attention in Jersey City after a presentation on proposed bus lanes turned rowdy. There is a long history of meetings being used to stop plans for everything from affordable housing to the restoration of habitats in Liberty State Park.
"On Route 55, drivers either speed or drive the speed limit. There's no in-between." IIRC the limit 55 on some stretches like near the Deptford exit. Also, Rt 55 has a huge median. Also also, "just 2 lanes" seems to imply that they want it widened. I have bad news for them.
Congestion pricing solves all 25 of these. www.nj.com/entertainmen...
. apnews.com/article/offs...
It's impossible to change the payment method for your NJ PBS subscription. Come on, guys. I'm going to bat for you online. At least make the user experience easy.
I'm just going by the most common definition of socialized medicine: the gov't pays for & provides medicine. Even if the Swiss gov't subsidizes some people, it doesn't provide most healthcare or employ most healthcare professionals.
Getting mail sucks. The Onion is my one ray of hope.
It's consumer-based universal healthcare (a bunch of competing private insurers + an individual mandate + subsidies), but not socialized medicine. Right.
CH doesn't have socialized medicine, but the trains indeed rule.
lol
tfw the superintendent of your school district subscribes to your newsletter
Find me a newer analysis. It includes public edu spending.
It's an indirect wealth tax (indirect bcs it doesn't tax equity directly, which is the actual wealth part of one's prop value) where the rate doesn't increase with wealth. Wealth is correlated w/ income but not perfectly. Poor owners still pay the same rate as billionaires.
This analysis was done w/ 2015-16 data, so yeah, NJ prob got more progressive than TX since then. We've also rolled out more universal pre-K & ANCHOR, which includes renters. I'd bet we're still not as progressive as Alaska, Minnesota, or California.
Reference-based pricing sounds like a good idea & should be pursued by a competent state legislature, bcs it looks like providers currently aren't required to accept payments tied to Medicare's compensation level.
NYC has been in a housing emergency for 80 or so years, to be more precise. buildingtheskyline.org/nyc-housing-...
I don't want Sherill to freeze rent, but by this logic wouldn't a rent freeze be more urgent? NYC, for instance, considers it a "housing emergency" when vacancy rates dip below 5%, where it's been for years now. newjerseymonitor.com/2025/08/20/n...
Progressive states (as of 2015-16): Alaska, MN, CA, NY, NM. Regressive states: IL, NV, NH, TX, FL, PA, NJ, various southern states. www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2025...
A federal court ruled that ANTHROPIC illegally copied MILLIONS of books to train its AI. All authors and publishers whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from pirate websites are subject to receiving compensation. This could involve your work. For more info: authorsguild.org/news/anthrop...
Similarly, in South NJ & perhaps elsewhere it's common to see guys w/ big pickup trucks flying 1 or more big American flags. (I actually saw this less or not at all in actual southern states.) If you have a truck, do that, but with at least 2 Mexican flags.
The Trump admin cites the fake news bad politicized jobs report that just came out to justify their mass deportations. But that's a misuse of that data. When you look at the official unemployment rates for native & foreign-born workers, both are up.
I'm just giving you fodder against the MSN aunts sharing this with you.
Property taxes apply a single rate to all w/in a property class, regardless of income or ability to pay. In that sense, they're regressive. They also get passed on in part to renters, who skew lower income.
Unfortunately, after considering taxes, transfers, & gov't spending, NJ is just about as regressive as Texas. The 1 big edge NJ has over TX, however, is free, public, universal-ish (almost) pre-K.
The difference b/w the avg low-tax state & Oregon, the highest-tax state in that analysis, is $8,160 or $680 per month. Not insignificant. But how much of that gets eaten up by other taxes in those regressive states?
It only looks at state income taxes. States that rely less on income taxes tend to have higher sales or property taxes. It ignores transfers & gov't spending. I care more about my income after receiving benefits from the gov't. bsky.app/profile/glas...
So far The Argument argues strongly for multiracial social democracy.
The Trump admin cites the fake news bad politicized jobs report that just came out to justify their mass deportations. But that's a misuse of that data. When you look at the official unemployment rates for native & foreign-born workers, both are up.
This is a good piece by Jordan Weissmann. www.theargumentmag.com/p/actually-w...
So getting people used to talking about the Amtrak-adjusted metric instead of the "raw" metric is good. Same reason NJT commuter rail isn't actually the "worst in the nation" like NJ dot com reported for years. They used a bad metric to determine that.
I care about making comparisons fairer like this bcs, let's say in the future NJT gets its shit together, but still delays/cancels more often than MN & LIRR. It would be very easy for an austerity ghoul to declare NJT hopeless. "Look! We gave NJT all the support & they still FAIL! Gut 'em!"
Right. I'm not saying Amtrak causes most of NJT's NEC delays/cancels. I'm saying their response about the real-time feed is correct. We should compare it's Amtrak-adjusted delays/cancels to Metro-North & LIRR. & again, I don't like their mealy-mouthed non-response about data reporting.
And yes, I'm talking about the NEC, specifically here.
It depends on the reason for the delay. If it's a mechanical failure in the vehicle itself, that's on NJT. If it's due to Amtrak's infra, though, then that's not NJT's fault. So I'm fine w/ an adjustment that actually filters out the delays caused by Amtrak. Report both, of course.
Why do we suck so much?
