I confess that I usually don’t, but I did when the mailing arrived the other day. Each candidate is allotted 500 words, which are duly printed on the back of your sample ballot. Christie’s is there and Buono’s isn’t; not sure why. There are six others. Four are Green Party, Independent, or Libertarian candidates. Another statement is from a candidate named Diane Sare, who is running on the Glass-Steagall Now ticket, which advocates a strict division between commercial banks and those involved with speculative trading.

From Sare’s statement:

Part of the problem in finding young skilled workers today is that our nation has undergone a degeneration of culture. As a classically trained musician, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of young people learning to develop their creativity through Classical music, art, and drama…For this reason I strongly oppose the so-called “Common Core Curriculum” which is designed to destroy the creative powers of our youth and turn them into slave-labor, or worse, and which test scores will be used to fire our most experienced and skilled teachers to replace them with test administrators.

Slave-labor or worse! It’s a conspiracy! Delightfully (or not), Sare’s statement is followed by Jeffrey Boss of the “NSA Did 911” ticket. He helpfully explains in his statement that the National Security Agency had terrorist Ramsi Yousef “moved to Virginia to help the NSA arrange the 911 attacks.” Boss is a “whistleblower” and “the NSA is so scared of my story, and the truth being told that tens of thousands I have campaigned to have been threated with death is they vote for me, donate money or tell anyone my story after they got my campaign literature.” He adds at the end of his statement, “I support the Unions.”

Your tax dollars at work.