The facts speak for themselves once you get past the hysteria.
Do your homework: Each Wal-Mart superstore can employee several hundred (or more) employees, Save Jerseyans, depending upon its size. These stores provide employment opportunities and affordable goods particularly in areas where the population is struggling and/or lacks sufficient levels of education or skilled training. It’s a win-win for the local community and the overall economy.
Toms River isn’t winning thanks to litigious environmentalists who care more about snakes than people.
On Friday, Wal-Mart announced that it’s NOT moving forward with plans to construct a brand new superstore in the sprawling Ocean County suburban community. That’s because an expensive years-long fight over the fate of the endangered Northern Pine Snake convinced the higher-ups at Wal-Mart that it simply wasn’t worth pushing forward.
Rather than work with this fabulous company which already employees thousands of New Jerseyans? Our state’s confiscatory establishment continues to move the bar until executives threw their hands up in the air and, this week, said ‘enough already.’
Wal-Mart is planning to hire 10,000 more people and open 59 new locations this year. Ocean County’s “working class” flavor and high level of seasonal employment consistently makes it one of New Jersey’s relatively highest unemployment counties. Bottom line: Toms River could’ve used those jobs.
Environmentalists and bureaucrats had other ideas.
This isn’t about the snake, by the way.
It’s about priorities (see: the recent Pedals the Bipedal Bear controversy), a discussion very much worth having as President Trump moves to reform the EPA.
This is about what kind of state New Jersey is going to be.
One where you can work hard and prosper? Or one where businesses continue to decide it simply isn’t worth the effort. Said another way, a state where serpents matter more than human beings.
You can’t have it both ways.
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