"If you run an ice cream store in town and there's a law that says you can be the only one that runs the ice cream store, you are going to be against someone else who wants to come in and run another ice cream store."

Chris Cerf, Acting NJ Commissioner of Education

If I want to open up an ice cream store in Bloomfield, I need to pass a health inspection. I need to secure a loan. I need to lease a space. I need to hire some teenagers willing to work for minimum wage. I need to develop some presence in the community.

What I don't need (and won't get) is a grant from the town council to open my ice cream store. We pay to support our roads, our firefighters, our police officers, our teachers, and our sanitation guys, but we don't pay folks to open up ice cream stores.

We already have a few fantastic ice cream stores here, and all of them pay taxes to the town, not the other way around. That's how it works.

Mr. Cerf, if you want to open up an ice cream store here, feel free--we welcomes new business. If you want to run a school here, though, you're going to have to get used to democracy, pimples and all.

Local budgets support towns--I pay, my neighbors pay, to keep schools public, to keep them local, to keep them relevant to the needs of a democratic society.


I know you know the difference. Don't you feel even a little shame?

I love Jonathan Richman!
Mr. Cerf is too smart to believe this is a rational argument--you should be, too.
Hey, I got linked in Tuttle SVC twice in two days! Life's good....