Usually, I enjoy reading The Mullica Hill Sun each week. However, I have some serious concerns about the inclusion of political themes in the “Mayor’s Message” section. If Mayor Louis Manzo wants to use The Mullica Hill Sun to express his one-sided political opinions, he should be encouraged to take out a paid advertisement. Thestate’s “Path to Progress” is part of Sen. Steve Sweeney’s and Rep. Donald Norcross’s (D-NJ1) plans to spread misinformation about New Jersey’s budget “crisis.”
The top 1 percent in New Jersey make family incomes of over $900,000 a year, and they pay less in taxes than people who have incomes in the middle – people like teachers and the vast majority of public employees. Is anyone seriously suggesting the state’s wealthiest folks can’t put in some more to help New Jersey out of this mess, especially since public workers have been putting in more and more for years?
And what has been done to rein in the excessive fees collected by Wall Street to manage the pension funds under former Gov. Chris Christie? What has been done to bring the cost of public employee health care down? Where are the tough negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies and big health insurers?
New Jersey’s teachers and public employees have already made significant sacrifices to help the state out of its fiscal crunch. It can’t always fall to us to be the ones to fix the mess that Sen. Sweeney and his cronies in Trenton created. We can’t be the only ones who are expected to ask our families once again to make even more sacrifices while plenty of others in the state enjoy tax giveaways.
New Jersey’s budget crisis was created in a day and cannot be solved by politicians getting their personal political revenge against teachers for not supporting fraudulent schemes like “Path to Progress.”
Joseph Sullivan
