Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

By

Why have a lieutenant governor?

Monday morning Mr. Bingley and I were deploring that both the governor and the lieutenant governor were out of NJ at the same time.

Look, a governor should go on vacation. I have no problem with that.

What I object to is having a lieutenant governor in the public payroll who also goes on vacation at the same time as the governor. Yes, the lieutenant governor is also the secretary of state for NJ. The first person who has the position of lieutenant governor, however, should have enough political acumen to have scheduled her vacation so it didn’t overlap the governor’s.

Christie’s doing a good job otherwise. He can not control the weather, he does not man the plows, and he’s handled prior blizzards capably in the past, but, only but, he ought to consider that the person who’s supposed to be on watch while he’s away, should be here.

24509
Share

By

Christie: “The credit card’s maxed out!” VIDEO

Governor Christie injects a dose of reality during his 60 Minutes interview,

We spent too much on everything. We spent too much. We spent money we didn’t have. We borrowed money just crazily. The credit card’s maxed-out. And it’s over. It’s over. We have to now get to the business of climbing out of the hole. We’ve been digging it for a decade or more. We’ve got to climb now. And a climb is harder. We got to do it.

Did the CBS interviewer wonder if that’s why Christie wants the teachers’ unions to pay for some of their benefits?

24399
Share

By

If Chris Christie was thinner, his b*lls would clang when he walks VIDEO

Before you read this post, bear in mind that the median household income in Parsippany at the time of the last survey was $68,133.

—————–

New Jersey finally has a governor who talks the talk and walks the walk, and you could hear his b*lls clang, because he sure has the fortitude to confront the school administrators head-on:

“Let me tell you about the new poster boy for all that’s wrong with the public school system that is being dictated by greed,” Christie said. “This contract is the definition of greed and arrogance.”

“I suspect that the executive county superintendent is going to look very poorly upon someone who is trying to game the system and take from the taxpayers of Parsippany, and by extension, the taxpayers of New Jersey,” the governor added. “If Lee Seitz wants to try to put his greed and his arrogance ahead of the taxpayers of New Jersey, you elected me to stand up to people like Lee Seitz and others across the state, and I will.”

Ed Morrissey notices that,

But there’s another reason for Christie to make an example out of Seitz. Had this gone unnoticed, every school board in the state would have tried gaming the system in exactly the same manner, hoping to outmaneuver Christie and the legislature. Christie makes it clear that he will fight back hard against the establishment if they attempt to work around his reforms, and that lesson will not be lost on those who prefer anonymity in that regard.

Cubachi explains,

Back in July, I wrote about Governor Chris Christie’s proposal to place a cap in pay for public school superintendents and administrators that have salaries of $175,000.

Christie’s proposal is to limit the pay of these administrators, cut the pay for those exceeding the max, and introduce merit-based bonuses. 366 superintendents will be affected at the end of their contracts, and according to Christie’s estimates, it will save school districts $9.8 million. The cap will not take effect until February, however the Governor is quick to lash out at districts and take names of those trying to circumvent the date and screw tax payers.

In Parisppany, to the chagrin of the tax payers and the governor, the Parsippany Board of Education voted 6-2 tonight to renew the contract for district schools Superintendent LeRoy Seitz, extending his contract another five years, and paying him an average annual salary of $225,064.

Ace is worried that Christie may be perceived as a bully; however,

Someone will have to explain to me why every plan to improve the education of our kids involves one primary element: Paying teachers and administrators more money to do the jobs they weren’t doing all that well to begin with.

Are they holding back on us? Do they have some sick teaching skillz that they’re refusing to utilize until they make $200,000 per year?

The administrators – already being paid 3 times the median household income a family the area earns – are getting salary increases that outpace those of private industry, while being paid by taxpayers who may be unemployed or about to be laid off. The taxpayers will be stuck with having to pay for this administrator’s pension and benefits after he retires. The state employees themselves will not get a raise this year. If governor Christie names those who are gaming the system while the rest of us have to pay for it, good for him.

23786
Share

By

Back in New Jersey: Christie explains why not the tunnel

Since I’m back in New Jersey, here’s an appropriate post with which to celebrate:
Chris Christie explains to David Gregory why he decided against the tunnel; the bottom line is the bottom line

“I’m not going to sign blank checks”

Of course David Gregory considers the factual statement “the State of New Jersey is broke” a matter of ideology, as if the taxpayer is an open checkbook and anything else is in your mind.

More Christie on Meet the Press:

What they [Republicans] have to do is what they say they want, and we’re doing it in New Jersey: smaller government, less spending, less regulation, lower taxes.

TigerHawk calls Christie Governor Awesome.

23732
Share

By

Say it isn’t so: N.J. Gov. Chris Christie agrees to reconsider Hudson River tunnel project? VIDEO

Under pressure from the Obama administration, Republican Gov. Chris Christie agreed Friday to rethink his decision to cancel construction of a $9 billion rail tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York City.

N.J. Gov. Chris Christie agrees to reconsider Hudson River tunnel project

day after Gov. Chris Christie axed the $8.7 billion Hudson River rail tunnel project over its soaring costs, a reprieve of sorts was granted.

Following a meeting in Trenton this afternoon with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the governor agreed to take a second look at the project.

LaHood, in a statement, said, “Governor Christie and I had a good discussion this afternoon, during which I presented a number of options for continuing the ARC tunnel project. We agreed to put together a small working group from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the office of NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein that will review these options and provide a report to Governor Christie within two weeks.”

Video, where Lautenberg, who threw pork so that NJ would have a train station with his name on it, wants the project:

Hudson rail tunnel is not dead yet, federal officials say

Let’s hope Christie is not playing the Dems’ game. This project is simply unaffordable.

23473
Share

By

Hooray!! Christie kills the Hudson train tunnel

Why did he?

Because New Jersey is broke

Christie Kills Hudson Train Tunnel

The largest public transit project in the nation, a commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey to Manhattan, was halted on Thursday by Gov. Chris Christie because, he said, the state could not afford its share of the project’s rising cost.

I was going to write more on this, but instead must refer you to Ace, who is awesome:

Wait — 8.7 million with a 1 billion overrun??!!

No, they mean 8.7 billion. Yeah, I looked it up for once. Yay, me.

I left the error in to prove other people do it too, you know.

Oh, and that $1 billion in overruns seems on the low side.

According to the governor, cost overruns are estimated to be in a range from more than $2 billion to over $5 billion.

A bit more: the project was rushed to give Corzine an election year photo-op.

Tunnel opponents maintained the project was rushed together so then-Gov. Jon Corzine could get a re-election campaign photo opportunity at a ceremonial groundbreaking in summer 2009.

Click on the link to JWF to read Paul Krugman hyperventilating about how awful this is.

Krugman does have something of a point: Since the feds were kicking in $3 billion and the Port Authority $3 billion, with the state supposed to pick up the remaining $2.7 billion and all additional overruns, canceling the project loses the state money. I mean, I suppose if you could just pay that $2.7 billion and get an additional $6 billion tossed into the deal, that might be a good deal.

But look, it’s not going to be $2.7 billion. It won’t be $3.7 billion. It probably won’t be $4.7 billion and it might not even be just $7.7 billion.

We saw what happened with the Big Dig.

And: The state doesn’t have the money, whatever it is.

And what Krugman’s really steamed about is that Christie won’t just break his campaign pledge to raise gas taxes.

That’s what his problem really is; liberals have in mind an ever-expanding state, and for that they need ever-expanding tax revenues. Until now they have had relatively little pushback: they get slowdowns in the rate of expansion of taxation, but usually no sustained rollback.

Look, I take the trains regularly and certainly would love faster trains and that sort of thing. According to the article,

In scrapping the project, Mr. Christie is forfeiting the $3 billion from the federal government and jeopardizing as much from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The state may also have to repay the federal government for its share of the $600 million that has already been spent on the tunnel.

However,

the project would cost at least $2.5 billion more than its original price of $8.7 billion

And that’s before the work even starts.

Having lived in NJ for decades and seen how the taxpayer is treated as a bottomless source of funds, I applaud Governor Christie for doing this.

Was about time!

23452
Share

By

You’d think the Christie hecklers would have learned by now VIDEO

Gov. Christie confronts heckler at California GOP candidate’s political rally

“What are you hiding?” shouted Ed Buck, in jeans and a light shirt in the front row of the 400-person event. “You’re looking like Arnold in a dress,” he said in a reference to outgoing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Before Whitman could respond, Christie stepped down from the stage and got in Buck’s face.

“Hey, listen. You know what. You want to yell, yell at me,” Christie said, shutting down Buck as Christie’s bodyguards calmly but quickly approached the two men. “It’s people who raise their voices and yell and scream like you who are dividing this country. We’re here to bring this country together.”

I like it.

Roissy likes it so much he’s named Christie Alpha Male of the Month.

(video via Hot Air)

23144
Share

By

The unions’ downslide

Steve Malanga at the Wall Street Journal,
Union Power and the Christie Effect
After decades of expanding political clout, organized labor is finding voters increasingly unreceptive to its high-tax message.

The backlash against public unions has gone beyond heavily unionized states like California and New Jersey. One illustration is the finding of a July 7 national Rasmussen poll: Only 19% of Americans said that they would be willing to pay higher taxes to keep government workers from being laid off. Even in public safety, where Americans are sometimes reluctant to see cutbacks, the poll found only 34% endorsed higher taxes to preserve police and fire jobs.

The electorate may also be turning away from public unions because of their relentless campaigning for higher taxes. Mr. Christie has estimated that New Jersey’s public unions spent some $4 million throughout the spring on ads advocating higher taxes and railing against his budget. In California, the teachers union has kicked in $500,000 as part of a campaign to rescind business tax breaks to keep jobs in the state. Last year in Michigan, a coalition of unions engineered a campaign called “A Better Michigan Future” that advocated hundreds of millions in new taxes, which the state legislature rejected.

Then there are the schools. As you may recall, teacher union members have confronted Governor Christie, and lost the argument,

Malanga:

Unions are also on the defensive in the culture wars. Later this month the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” about the failings of our public schools, will debut in theaters nationwide. The film is directed by Davis Guggenheim, who earned impeccable liberal credentials as the director of the Oscar-winning “An Inconvenient Truth.” His new documentary, say reviewers who’ve seen it, places a chunk of the blame for the woes of our schools on teachers unions and in particular paints Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, as an opponent of meaningful reform.

Mr. Guggenheim’s film is likely to exacerbate growing discontent with teachers unions. In a May Rasmussen poll, only 38% of Americans said it was good that teachers belong to unions, while 62% either thought teacher unionization a bad thing or were undecided.

Unions have other obstacles, which Malanga explains. Go read the rest of the article, but also check out the website for Waiting for Superman. Here’s the official trailer,

hat tip: Net Right Daily

Please note there is no podcast today due to technical problems

23008
Share