New Jersey’s new governor, Chris Christie, raised quite a few eyebrows with his brutally blunt discussion of his state’s budget woes. He’s continuing to do so, and his communications team has finally started putting these remarks on YouTube.

We’ve just gone through the roof on those taxes. Think about this: When Governor Byrne instituted the income tax in 1977, the top income-tax rate was 2.5 percent. When Governor Corzine was leaving office, it was nearly 11 percent. We now have a sales tax that is 7 percent, among the highest in the country. We have a corporate business tax that is in the top ten in the country. And when you combine that with our property taxes and our other taxes, we are now the champion – and this is one you don’t want to win the championship in, but we have — of being the most overtaxed people in America. This has all been, in large measure, to feed the growth of government both in Trenton but even more so, the growth of government at the local school board, municipal level, and since most of our money goes out the door in that way . . .
. . . I will tell you now, having been in Trenton for a couple of months, you do not want to get anywhere near those bridges going over the Delaware River around four-thirty or five o’clock, because people are steaming from working in New Jersey over to Pennsylvania, to pay that lower tax rate, to pay the lower property taxes.

He hates taxes, is fed up with the usual excuses, isn’t going to sugar-coat hard truths, and looks like he eats too much. Do I support Chris Christie? Heck, I am Chris Christie.