In early September of 2004, upon the nauseating reality that it had been three long years of prying "stories" from the bowels of the N.J. political machine, this reporter culled a quote from a working "insider" that the Garden State had reached "an enviable level of corruption so fantastic it trumps the nightmare that is Florida." Appearing in a two-part expose running in the Aquarian Weekly under the headline "Notes From The Cesspool," it turned out to merely scratch the surfaces of what would later reveal itself in a spectacular bevy of statewide malfeasance.
Its publication sufficiently motivated a state legislator from Newark to conclude that "Politics here is akin to a social dizziness, a kind of all-encompassing paranoia, like Steven King's Jack Torrence wielding mallets at his family for a shot of beer."
So it came as no surprise that the political landscape of cities such as Hoboken, Passaic, Secaucus and Jersey City would burp up the type of bribe mentality that has crippled their already dilapidated urban infrastructure. This way of doing "business" in local government circles for decades has left a Chicago-style stank upon the halls of N.J. power and given rise to a new generation of gambling addicts, sex degenerates, and dime-store charlatans posing as public servants.
It is a given here that taxpayers are expected to be ripped off, that something sinister is being concocted by our elected officials and that there is nothing we can do about it; as if there is something anyone can do about smog, rampant venereal disease, or shake-down property taxes. This is why no one complains when knuckle-dragging brutes in Hoboken mine nearly every inch of real estate or that Jersey City has been overrun by gun-toting vermin.
Racketeering is less a crime than a way of life in New Jersey; like GSP tolls or shirtless jackasses puking on the boardwalk.