There's just an underlying sense of trust that the East Coast doesn't have

North Dakota reels in a New Jersey native

While in North Dakota, Lasky acquired a motorcycle and began exploring the state. He fell in love with the Badlands, and he has a ready answer for friends in New Jersey who ask about the cold and question what there is to do. His parents came to share his appreciation for North Dakota after paying a visit.

"The people are just amazing in Minot and North Dakota in general," Lasky said. "When I moved here, Mac told me the people here are different. That's why people stay. It's just true. It seems like there's just an underlying sense of trust that the East Coast doesn't have."

Lasky also found compassion, through such examples as the city's eight soup kitchens, all run by churches.

"They care," he said. "You can just clearly see that in the way they talk and the way they act. That encouraged me to give it my best."

New Documentary Exposes Mass Corruption in New Jersey Public School System

From Reason:

Over the weekend, I spoke at a conference in Philadelphia hosted by Students for Liberty, an impressive, rapidly growing national affiliation of libertarian-minded college students. One of the other speakers was Bob Bowdon, the occasional "reporter" for the Onion News Network (where he goes by the character name Brian Scott) and host of a forthcoming talk show on PBS.

Bowdon was speaking to promote The Cartel, a serious documentary he produced exposing some jaw-dropping corruption in the New Jersey public school system. New Jersey spends more education dollars per pupil than any other state, which Bowdon says made the state ideal for a documentary showing how much of that money goes to waste—and how little it buys in terms of actual education.

NJ: 400,000 people flee since 2000

Christie inherits a state that's in arguably the worst financial condition in its 233- year history. Last year's $7 billion shortfall, closed with stimulus dollars and tax hikes, has resurfaced at an even larger $8 billion for 2010. Residents face crippling property taxes (an average of $7,000 per capita), high income and sales taxes, $45 billion in debt and the net loss of 400,000 people since 2000.

From the NY Post

New Jersey home prices down in Q3

From the National Association of Realtors:

Metropolitan Area Existing-Home Prices and State Existing-Home Sales 

Metropolitan Area / Q3 Year over Year Price Decline

Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ / Down 6.1%
Atlantic City, NJ / Down 10.4%
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA / Down 14.1%
New York-Wayne-White Plains, NY-NJ / Down 13.9%
NY: Edison, NJ -/ Down 8.9%
NY: Nassau-Suffolk, NY / Down 9.2%
NY: Newark-Union, NJ-PA / Down 14.8%
Trenton-Ewing, NJ / Down 15.0%

Please visit the excellent New Jersey Real Estate Report for comprehensive coverage of the housing market in NJ. 

NJ #2 in U.S. for solar energy

PSE&G cleared for additional NJ solar projects

NEWARK, N.J. - New Jersey's largest utility has received permission from state regulators to finance another 51 megawatts of solar power , enough energy for more than 45,000 homes.

The Garden State is second only to California, with 100 megawatts of installed solar generating capacity.

Tuesday's decision means Public Service Electric and Gas Company can lend another $143 million to its customers to finance solar energy systems on homes, businesses and municipal government buildings.

The solar loan program has received applications for projects worth $105 million since it began in April 2008. Those earlier projects will be capable of generating 30 megawatts of solar power when they're all completed.

New Jersey anti-sprawl program proving ineffective

From WHYY, audio link available

Sprawling commercial developments across New Jersey have raised concern from legislators that towns are losing their green space, and traffic is becoming congested. Nearly five years ago, New Jersey passed a law allowing townships to adopt a program to help them mitigate sprawl, but only one town has taken advantage of it.

Transcript:
Under the program Transfer of Development Rights, developers have to pay property owners for their development rights, which they receive in the form of credits.  Those developers can then apply those credits in specially designated high density areas.

Carlos Rodriguez is New Jersey Director of Regional Plan Association.  He worked at the New Jersey Office of Smart Growth, which administers the program, for ten years.  He says Transfer of Development Rights is a costly and complicated proposition for towns.

Rodriguez: "What would help is if the legislature were to reevaluate the requirements that are contained in the statute in order to make it less onerous."

While New Jersey's program can cost up to $400,000, towns in Pennsylvania can do it for just $35,000, bypassing the state and county.

Talk To The Hand

Witty article written by Amy Alkon about how she confronted rudeness in our society.

The stereotype that New Jerseyans are a rude bunch does contain at least a grain, or two or three, of truth. There are some good pointers here on how to deal with and help neutralize rudeness.

I See Rude People

The fortysomething woman came within inches of crashing her Volvo station wagon into my car while simultaneously trying to park with one hand and yammer into the cell phone she was holding in the other.

When I beeped to keep her from swerving into me, she vigorously and repeatedly flipped me the bird (I guess to punish me for existing, and directly behind her to boot). For her grand finale, she exited her car in workout gear, toting a yoga mat, and snarled back at me, "Just off to find a little inner peace, you redheaded bitch!"

Uh, have a nice day!

An aggressive lack of consideration for others is spreading across this country like a case of crabs through a sleepaway camp, and there isn't a lot standing in the way. Although people are quick to blame rampant rudeness on advances in technology, the unfortunate truth is, rudeness is the human condition. We modern humans are a bunch of grabby, self-involved jerks, the same as generations of humans before us. It's just that there are fewer constraints on our grabby, self-involved jerkhood than ever before. We're guided by quaint Stone Age brains, suited to manage social interactions within a small tribe—yet we're living in endlessly sprawling areas that would more accurately be called "stranger-hoods" than neighborhoods.

People understand how they're supposed to act because of social norms. But every time brutes engage in some form of social thuggery, they make it that much more acceptable for somebody else to do it. Others begin to imitate their behavior unthinkingly, or feel stupid or silly for feeling some compunction about following their lead.

For most of my life, I didn't pay much attention to rudeness. And then, one day, I just couldn't take it anymore. Overnight, I was like that "I see dead people" kid, except it was "I see rude people." They were everywhere: pushing, shoving, shouting into cell phones; leaving snotted-up Kleenex in the airplane seat pocket for the next passenger. Like Peter Parker, bitten by a radioactive spider and turned into Spiderman, I was transformed.

Intervention I: The Mobile Savage

A woman in the Hollywood Hills Starbucks decided to treat all the other customers there to a command performance of her impromptu spoken-word masterwork, "The Birthday Party Invitation." She made five very loud calls—each the same as the last—giving her name (Carol), detailed directions to a kid's birthday party at her house, plus the time, plus her home phone number. I left this message on her voice mail when I got home:

Carol, Carol, Carol...the microphone on a cell phone is actually quite sensitive. There's no need to yell. You look like a nice woman. You probably didn't realize that your repeated shouting into your cell phone drove a number of people out of the coffee bar today. Beyond that, you might consider that I'm just one of about 20 people who know that you live at "555 Ferngrove Street," and that you're having a bunch of six-year-olds over at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Now, I'm just a newspaper columnist, not a pedophile, but it's kind of an unnecessary security risk you're taking, huh? Bye!

Intervention II: It's Only Free for Telemarketers to Call You Because You Have Yet to Invoice Them

Even casual acquaintances know better than to dial my number on Monday or Tuesday, when I'm on deadline for my advice column, so the shrill ring of my phone late one Monday afternoon came as a surprise.

"Hello...? Hello...? HELLO?"

Was anybody even there? Not exactly. It took a couple of seconds for the recording to start: "Hello, this is Tim Snee, vice president of Smart & Final..."

Oh, is it? Great. Because if you're phoning me at home in the middle of my deadline, there's an appropriate next line to your call, and it goes something like "...and someone's died and left you a townhouse in the center of Paris."

But that wasn't Mr. Snee's message at all. Snee, I learned, was having some difficulty keeping shelves stocked at the warehouse store Smart & Final. He wanted to let his customers know they were working to solve the problem—lest anybody defect to Costco for their 100-packs of Charmin.

Yoohoo...Mr. Snee? You autodialed the wrong girl.

Now, I know most people just sigh and hang up when they get a call like Snee's—which is why we all get calls like Snee's. My time and energy are valuable, and he'd just helped himself to both. I drafted a letter spelling out my disgust for Snee's business practices and invoicing him for $63.20, and I e-mailed it to him:

Tim, 

How dare you call me at home with a recorded message? I am on the Do Not Call list, and I value my privacy. You woke me up in the middle of my nap during my deadline. Consider this an invoice for disturbing me: $63.20, which is my hourly rate for writing, since I'll probably lose at least an hour thanks to your interruption. I'll now try to go back to sleep so I can get my writing done.
I'm considering reporting you to the California Attorney General. Have a bad day.
—Amy Alkon

A few days later, I got this e-mail from Randall Oliver, Smart & Final's "director of corporate communications":

Ms. Alkon:
I am very sorry that we disturbed you close to your writing deadline. Our message was meant to provide a helpful update to our customers, not to irritate them. Nearly all of the responses we have received have been very positive.

Really? Did other customers call you up and say, "I'm so lonely, nothing makes my day like getting a recorded message smack in the middle of my afternoon nap!"?

And finally, Oliver wrote:

We value you as a customer and hope to continue to do business with you. We'd be happy to send you a check for $63.20 as requested or alternatively would be even happier to provide you a $100 Smart Card for use at Smart & Final. Please let me know which option you would prefer. 

I took the $100.

As wacky as my pranks may sound to some, behind every one is the message that it isn't crazy to expect people to have manners and consideration; it's crazy when we're seen as crazy for expecting it. If we're increasingly finding ourselves residents of Meanland, it's only because we aren't doing anything to change that. We get the society we create; or rather, the society we let happen to us. I'm hoping my book, I See Rude People, will galvanize at least a few people into performing their own interventions on the rude. But if we all just make an effort to treat strangers like they matter, maybe they'll be inspired to treat us like we matter, and maybe, just maybe, life won't feel quite so much like one long wrestling smackdown.

Excerpted from I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle to Beat Some Manners into Impolite Society by Amy Alkon (Nov. 27, 2009, McGraw-Hill)