Last week, 20/20 did a show about children in Camden, NJ. They called Camden the poorest city in the nation and followed several children over a number of months. The level of abject poverty was shocking and alarming. They couldn't have picked better children to follow either. They were bright, positive, hardworking, and articulate kids with basic dreams that we take for granted but they find utterly unreachable.

Having just watched that program, it is all the more shocking to read this news about how fiscally irresponsible and mismanaged Camden school district is. Two points:

• Camden school district has paid a dead employee $130,000 a year for 30 years. What the hell was his job 30 years ago that he was pulling down $130,000? Shouldn't be anything less than superintendant of schools and if he was top dog, how do you miss him dying? I'd really like to know if someone's been cashing those checks
• Camden school district paied $954,000 on a $55,000 purchase order for copier equipment. That's not mismanagement. That is theft and fraud or at best, criminal negligence. Someone should see the inside of a prison for something like that. I'm sure it will be swept under the rug.

Where the hell is the state on this? With the level of taxation and spending in this state, surely they have money to look into the conditions of Camden and its culture of corruption. As far as I can tell, the state's not doing a damn thing to help these people and the attorney general is more concerned about late fees from Blockbuster than corruption of public officials. Alleviating the poverty in Camden would do far, far more to reduce the violence then FIDs, smart guns, closing "bullet loopholes", etc.

If you didn't see it, go watch the 20/20 special on Camden. Segments of the video is on the web. There were a number of segments listed under 1/26 and 1/29. Watch them all. Have your anti-gun NJ friends watch them. After watching it, see if they still think the cause of violence is because of more liberal gun laws in Pennsylvania. See if they would rather throw money at controlling the legal and moral pursuits of law-abiding citizens or use that same money to alleviate poverty and give hope to children who have none. Would they rather use money to put a man in jail because the tubular magazine of his .22 holds too many rounds or would they rather use that money to put milk into a baby's bottle. The liberals like to say you can judge a government's moral fiber by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Well, New Jersey fails that test miserably. All those taxes they collect? They go to fund corruption. They fund the pensions of double and triple dipping politicians. They fund expensive pay to play projects. They fund gun buybacks. They fund smart-gun research. They fund an abusive FID system. They give themselves tax breaks. They fund anti-gun initiatives among minorities. They do far more to limit and remove the tools sometimes used to commit violence from those who haven't been involved in violence than they do to attack the root causes of violence.

Maybe this state really doesn't want to alleviate the suffering in Camden. Maybe they find it to their advantage to perpetuate a system that gives birth to gangs, drugs, and violence. Maybe they like having some dangerous "other" in our midst so they can both pound their chest and say "we'll keep you safe" at the same time they justify their disarmament agenda in this state. I know, it that sounds paranoid and even crazy but the only other theory that can be deduced by the empirical evidence and pass Occam's Razor with a higher degree of simplicity is that the government in this state has it's head up it's collective ass.