Contrarian: Let’s Join Jersey!

We should want to be in New Jersey, and not just because gasoline is cheaper, you don’t have to pump it yourself, and you can buy wine and booze without the burden of ­Prohibition-inspired liquor control laws. We belong in New Jersey because we share the political culture of coastal Blue State America, where affairs of state are intimate, practical, and transaction-oriented. They’re also corrupt, but at least they’re untainted by the retarded set of beliefs that currently passes for right-wing ideology.

Red State politics, by contrast, is a murky stew of myth, fear, and second-hand prejudice. In this last presidential election, voters for George Bush (who carried Pennsylvania outside our five-county region) felt more threatened than the Kerry voters by same-sex marriage and terrorism. And yet these people live in areas with hardly any gay people  and nothing of any value that anyone would want to blow up. All they know about the world is what they see on Fox Cable News.

This is why it’s hopeless trying to get transit fully funded in Harrisburg. New Jersey Transit is far from perfect, but at least in New Jersey there’s a consensus that drivers should subsidize transit — if only as a way to reduce rush-hour traffic. In Red State Pennsylvania, where traffic jams are all but unknown, they think trains are for cattle and coal. The Philadelphia region has the state’s largest and strongest economy, but most legislators are too blinkered and small-minded to understand how mass transit keeps it humming along. All they can see is a lot of liberals, gays, minorities and immigrants getting free rides.

The next big battle with these rubes is likely to be over embryonic stem-cell research. California and New Jersey — states with strong Blue State pro-choice majorities in government — are gearing up to provide huge subsidies to attract what could be a multi-­billion-dollar industry. Governor Rendell, loathe to lose out to New Jersey, is going to try and match the effort, but he’s bound to run headlong into lawmakers who believe each frozen embryo is a human being (not that you’ll see any of them rush out to defrost and raise one of these little specks of goo).

So our only hope is that all these Elmer Fudds who play hooky from Harrisburg would be glad to get rid of us. To them, Pennsylvania would be paradise without Greater Philadelphia. It would certainly be more like Indiana.

It would also be poorer. Our five-county region generates almost 37 percent of Pennsylvania’s income taxes — with just 31 percent of the state’s population. That’s the dirty secret of Red State America. All these self-righteous haters of high taxes and “big government” live in counties and states that consume more tax revenue than they produce. Since this is something Red Staters don’t like to admit to, maybe they won’t notice until it’s too late.

Of course, if we did get to move to New Jersey, we’d all need Jersey addresses. I don’t really see a way around that. And that smell near Newark would become our smell. We’d get the mosquito as our state bird. We’d also get the Turnpike jokes. The Jimmy Hoffa jokes. The Sopranos jokes. The McGreevey jokes. And don’t forget this. There’s an outside chance we’ll get our own celebrity governor: Joe Piscopo.

So look, let’s not tell New Jersey about this just yet. Not until we check to see if there’s any interest at all from Delaware.