We'll Have a Gay Old Time! Not If Christie Can Help It!

  In June, 2011, the New York State Legislature passed a landmark bill legalizing Gay Marriage, becoming the sixth state to do so, and easily the state with the largest population.
  Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, the issue remains fodder for debate, despite earlier discussions of the issues during Christie's 2010 gubernatorial campaign.  With little explanation of his position, in a debate with his opponent, Jon Corzine, Christie stated that if elected, he would not sign the bill.  Following his election and that of other Republicans to the General Assembly, no such legislation ever came forward.

  But this hasn't kept Christie from speaking out on the issue.  The day after New York's passage of its gay marriage bill, he was on "Meet the Press" where he said:

 "I believe marriage should be between one man and one woman. I am not a fan of same-sex marriage. That's my view and that'll be the view of our state, because I wouldn't sign a bill like the one that was in New York."  June 26, 2011

  Once again, this is in stark contrast to an earlier statement made by his supposed hero, Bruce Springsteen, who posted the following on his official website endorsing gay marriage:
 The message was put up as New Jersey lawmakers were voting on a proposed amendment to legalize gay marriages in the state. Springsteen's statement read in part:

"I've long believed in and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples and fully agree with Governor Corzine when he writes that 'The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is -- a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law."

   For more on New Jersey's current legal position on Same Sex Unions.

Chopper Gate: Christie's "Mission Accomplished" Moment

    Few can forget the image of then president George W. Bush, dressed in full fighter pilot regalia, landing on an aircraft carrier conveying troops back from Iraq.  High atop the vessel was a large banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished."


   Never mind that the mission in Iraq was far from over.  Or that there was absolutely no need for Bush to arrive by jet, since his flight actually delayed the homecoming of the fighting men and women.
   As the war dragged, and his hubris became more evident to the American public, his role playing and bragging sign (which the White House originally said was created by the Navy, yet another statement that proved false) became a symbol for all that was wrong with his administration.

  


   Fast forward to May 31, 2011, and we find that Gov. Christie, who has NO public events on his calendar that day, utilizes a fifty-five foot State Police helicopter to carry him from Trenton to Montvale, NJ, so he can watch his son play baseball.  Landing on an adjacent football field, he is then met by a fleet of state cars and his security detail, who drive him the final 100 yards to the grandstand.


   After five innings, the game is halted so he can make his exit, once again boarding the chopper en route to Princeton, NJ, where he has an important meeting.  With a group of Republican donors-- from the state of Iowa-- who urge him to enter the presidential race.


  N.B.  There has been virtually mention of the fact that at each end of the journey, Christie was met by his usual entourage of private car and a state security detail, who obviously had to drive the distance in order to carry their passenger between the landing pad and the grandstand in Montvale and his meeting with donors from Iowa in Princeton.

     The trip between Trenton and Montvale, where the game was held, would have been about 80 miles on the road. It would have been an additional 70 miles back to Princeton.


      The state Sierra Club said that a single turbine helicopter gets about 2.35 miles per gallon of gasoline, compared to a large SUV, like a Chevy Suburban, which gets 15 miles per gallon on the highway.

      According to Philly.com, "Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, flew in a brand-new $12.5 million state police helicopter Tuesday afternoon from Trenton to North Jersey to see their son play in a high school baseball playoff game. They took off after the fifth inning and flew on to the governor's mansion in Princeton, where Christie dined with presidential campaign fund-raisers from Iowa.

The images of the Christies landing on a field adjacent to the baseball diamond - and reportedly riding in a black car with tinted windows the final 300 feet to the bleachers - fit the caricature that political opponents have drawn of a budget-cutter with no sense of shared sacrifice in tough economic times.

Christie has built a national profile from an overarching message of fiscal conservatism by slashing funding for education, eliminating money for family-planning clinics, and, just last month, vetoing spending on two $800 dinners by officials of the quasi-public South Jersey Port Corp. in Camden."

   The national press got wind of this debacle and dubbed it Chopper Gate.  Initially on the day the story broke, Christie's spokesman Michael Drewniak said, "The use of air travel has been extremely limited and appropriate." 

   But as public criticism-- and ridicule-- continued to grow, a day later the Commander of the State Police was forced to issue a statement that said the expense did not cost the tax payers anything, since the pilots needed to log in a set number of hours.  Accordingly, both Drewniak and Christie still loudly proclaimed that no reimbursement would be forthcoming.


   Then, two days after the initial flight, the New York Times ran an editorial criticizing the "High Flying Governor" for "Taking New Jersey for a Ride."


    Later that same day, it was reported that the state Republican party would pay $1232.29 for the flight, with Christie also ponying up $1232.30.  In addition, after it became evident that Christie had similarly attended another game a few days earlier, so Christie also said he would pay $919.20 for that flight.


   In all, it was reported that Christie made use of the chopper on 33 occasions during his first year of office, many obvious state business, but a few certainly looking more suspect.


  This is not the first time Christie has received criticism for his apparent spendthrift ways when it comes to some aspects of the public funding, where he apparently has a sense of entitlement.  As a US Attorney, he consistently violated departmental guidelines for hotel expenses, at times staying in a $500 a night room when more inexpensive options were required.


   This also from a man who says the best part of his job as governor is that he gets to have the Lincoln Tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan closed to all other traffic whenever he is driven beneath the Hudson River.   Never mind that his little thrill also inconveniences thousands of regular commuters whose daily trek is already lengthy and difficult.  But perhaps these commuters would be happy to know that on a few occasions, instead of closing the Tunnel, Christie has elected to chopper into the City That Never Sleeps. 


   The Editorial Pages from all points in New Jersey were uniformly critical.    


   Even those who would be expected to support the governor, such as Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, called out Christie on Wednesday.

She blogged: "Of course the car and even the helicopter are not huge costs compared to the billions the nation and states spend - but it is an example. Examples matter. Is it the example politicians want to be giving?"

   This may well be Christie's "Mission Accomplished" moment.   Even if he has now repaid the state.  But not apologized to the taxpayers or admitted that he may have been wrong.


   Uh oh, Big Guy.

   
   

Oops, Chrissie Did It Again

     Just before Memorial Day Weekend, Governor Christie announced that "because it is not working" he was pulling New Jersey out of a ten state agreement on cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions.

     This move was largely lost in the normal holiday frivolities, but not before the New York Times and other environmentally concerned groups recognized the move for what it really was, pandering to 

conservative interests.

      In a Memorial Day editorial entitled Gov. Christie Abandons a Good Idea the New York Times said

    Running for governor in 2009, Chris Christie vowed to become “New Jersey’s No. 1 clean-energy advocate.” That was a hollow promise. As governor, Mr. Christie proceeded to cut all the money for the Office of Climate and Energy. He raided $158 million from the clean energy fund, meant for alternative energy investments, and spent it on general programs. He withdrew the state from an important lawsuit against electric utilities to reduce emissions.

    On Thursday, he took the worst step of all: He abandoned the 10-state initiative in the Northeast that uses a cap-and-trade system to lower carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. 

  The program has been remarkably successful, a model of vision and fortitude. Lacking that, Mr. Christie has given in to the corporate and Tea Party interests that revile all forms of cap and trade, letting down the other nine states trying to fight climate change...

    Mr. Christie has already demonstrated his disdain for the program’s goals by spending $65 million of the state’s $100 million share from the allowances to pay down New Jersey’s deficit. 

   He claimed this week that the program was not working, a notion that was quickly refuted by five other governors. “Governor Christie is simply wrong when he claims that these efforts are a failure,” said Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland. He said they had an equivalent effect of taking 3,500 cars off the road in his state.

New York Times, Editorial, May 30, 2011

    An environmental writer quickly reacted as well.

   To further add insult to injury, there are those who now call for NJ Governor to Repay $65 Million to Carbon Fund.

   

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

  As we have previously reported, Gov. Christie is not known for his capacity to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

 Well, to borrow a phrase from that much revered Republican, Ronald Reagan: Chris, "there you go again."

  

  As part of his drive to achieve gravitas, in the space of less than two months Christie has delivered widely reported addresses to such august bodies as the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard School of Education,  and on May 21 a speech at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School (when the students had departed for the summer).


  But after the hurried press coverage has already been printed in the daily papers, and when the full transcript has become public, closer analysis seems to indicate that many of Christie's quotable "facts" are actually devoid of substance.


  Consider this from MyCentralJersey.com regarding some of Christie's liberties with the truth during his speech at Princeton:

   Then Christie added in a section about the state’s job picture, he got tripped up at multiple turns on the details — misstating the number of months in a row the state has added private sector jobs, overstating that growth, ignoring that government jobs have nudged up in recent months and dramatically understating the overall size of the public sector payroll.

     Most noticeably, Christie said New Jersey has the most public workers per capita in the country, when two-thirds of states actually have more.

    Exactly who does Christie think he is?  Does he think that if he tells Big Lies enough times, people will ignore the facts and accept his outright manipulations of information? [I won't call them lies...but some would]

    For a good chronology and analysis of Christie's gubernatorial career-- and presidential protestations-- take a look at the New York Times.

  

As Ronald Reagan said, "There You Go Again."

  Oh, Chrissie, what have you done this time? 


    On the last Friday in April,  2011, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) received a very expensive letter from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

    The letter said that the Department of Transportation would order the governor to repay the $271 million already provided to New Jersey for that project to build a new commuter tunnel under the Hudson River. After abruptly withdrawing from the project, Gov. Christie had appealed an earlier order to return the funds.   But as this letter clearly indicated, the DOT did not accept his rationale for bailing on the ARC Tunnel project.

   

"The law is clear on this matter," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg today explaining the decision. The state received federal funds on the expectation that it would see the ARC tunnel through to its completion, he wrote.



   "In this case, after the initial contract was entered into and later expanded at Governor Christie's request, the state of New Jersey broke the terms of the contract," LaHood wrote. "The Governor's unfortunate decision will affect the commuters in New Jersey and the entire Northeast region for generations."


      Christie pulled the plug on the project last year citing the possibility of substantial cost overruns, which would have fallen to New Jersey taxpayers.  

   After reviewing the state's appeal,  LaHood wrote that Christie was well aware in August 2008 that costs could grow from the baseline estimate of $8.7 billion to as much as $12 billion.

   

"Any notion that the potential for cost growth constituted new and emergent information when the Governor made his decision is simply not accurate," LaHood wrote.

   
A spokesman for the governor declined to say if the governor knew about the higher cost projections in 2008. New Jersey Transit, which received the federal funds, also declined to comment. 

      

"This is an unfortunate situation," said Lautenberg and Sen. Robert Menendez in a statement. "We worked hard to get the parties to negotiate a fair resolution of this conflict. However the state's outside lawyers pursued an all or nothing approach, which brings substantial risk to New Jersey taxpayers. Given the high stakes involved in this matter, we sincerely hope the state's approach is successful."


     Interest will start to accrue on the $271 million starting today (4-29-2011) at an annual rate of 1 percent, according to federal law.  

   Meanwhile, the D.C. based law firm of Patton & Boggs continues to work on the state's appeal, having already billed New Jersey for $800,000 in legal expenses for December and January, with additional bills to come for the tax-payers.

Your Vocabulary Lesson for the Day

   

    Once again, Gov. Chris Christie appeared on national television to spread his idiosyncratic version of history.  Appearing in an interview on ABC with Diane Sawyer, he said, 

    "I believe the teachers in New Jersey in the main are wonderful public servants that care deeply. But their union, their union are a group of political thugs." 

     He said the New Jersey Education Association refused to negotiate on a salary freeze last year. 

"They should have taken the salary freeze. They didn't and now, you know, we had to lay teachers off."

"They chose to continue to get their salary increases rather than be part of the shared sacrifice," he said.

     Dismissing objections to his blunt talk, Christie said, 

"We're from New Jersey and when you're from New Jersey, what that means is you give as good as you get."

    Christie is also suggesting a dramatic change in the state's tenure program, forcing tenured teachers to undergo a yearly review and face removal from tenure if they're found to be ineffective.
    thug   [thuhg] –noun

1. a cruel or vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer

    But here is what the Newark Star Ledger has to say about Christie's remarks:

     When Christie told ABC TV’s Diane Sawyer, in an interview aired Wednesday night that New Jersey teachers “should have taken a salary freeze. They didn’t, and, you know, we had to lay teachers off,” it’s incorrect.

And he knows it.

     Even if all school districts had agreed to freeze pay and contribute 1.5 percent of salary toward health premiums, it would have covered only 22 percent of Christie’s proposed education cuts. 

    Christie still would have had to cover $849 million in cuts, according to a report by the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services.

    In other words, even if the unions had caved, thousands of teachers still would have lost their jobs — 

which is why the New Jersey Education Association advised local unions against accepting the freeze.

bul·ly-    [bool-ee]noun, plural -lies, verb, -lied, -ly·ing, adjective, interjection–noun

1. a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.

Double Standard for Double Dipping?

 Joe DiVincenzo, Jr, and Gov. Christie,
perhaps discussing other ways to say one thing and do another.
Laughing all the way to the bank, at the tax payers' expense.

    

 At the end of March, a story broke in New Jersey which reported that Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr., a Democrate, had quietly been collecting a monthly $5,738 pension since August, 2010 — on top of his $153,207 annual pay. Even as he worked with Gov. Christie to push for pension reform, claiming that the state was broke.

A look at Christie'ss first year in office shows that has cozied up to politicians who don’t always practice what he preaches. Although he attacks teachers, cops and bureaucrats for various abuses, he goes silent when his allies are caught in their own controversies — especially Democrats whose help he needs on New Jersey’s political battlefield.

   Christie has worked closely with DiVincenzo on rolling back pension benefits. Earlier this year, the county executive said, “The bank is broken, and the time has come to put everything on the table.”

  DiVincenzo’s nonretirement retirement let him tack a $68,862 annual pension to his $153,207 salary, and public employee unions called him a hypocrite.

   DiVincenzo said he did nothing wrong, adding he’s only trying to take care of his family. He said he’s following a law that lets public employees retire while still holding elected office as long as they previously held a different public job.

  As a candidate for governor, Chris Christie promised to stop public employees from double-dipping in the salary and pension punch bowl.

   Among the "88 Ways Chris Christie Will Fix New Jersey" on his campaign website were No. 23, 

      "I will fully eliminate dual officeholding by our state's elected officials by proposing immediate changes to state law," and 

   No. 24, "I will ban the practice of dual public employment, whereby one person holds a full-time government job while also holding a salaried, elected position."




Update:  On March 4, Gov. Christie was asked about DiVincenzo's situation and offered his criticism:

"I made this really clear. I think it's wrong," he said. "And it's not just for him. It's wrong for all the other people who are doing it."