He has scored early, and easy, points by showing a combative style and an unwillingness to let things continue as they have been. Well enough.
Christie, who sends his own children to Catholic parochial schools and like any good Republican supports school vouchers, clearly has it in for public schools.
He has been combative with teachers, and has seized on the parochial (pun intended) view of civil servants as overpaid, underworked, undeserving louts.
The Christie view, again solidly Republican, is that public employees have accrued too many benefits and enjoy financial security superior to those in the private sector — the ones who pay their salaries! This ignores a key point: Public employees also pay taxes. It also ignores the fact that when the economy was booming and private-sector employees were getting raises, bonuses and perks well beyond what teachers and police and firemen were getting, these same put-upon taxpayers didn’t hesitate to look down their noses at the “losers” who opted for the stability of government employment.
Those who can, do; those who can't teach is a favourite refrain of the corporate crowd. Heard it many times.
It’s inevitable that some of the benefits negotiated over the years by public-service unions in New Jersey, California and other states will have to be rolled back, and governments and unions will have to negotiate in good faith to that end. But it should be equally certain that state-level deficit problems won’t be solved by spending cuts alone. Voters will not let public services be cut to the bone: Even the well-to-do cannot isolate themselves completely from inadequate fire and police protection, crumbling infrastructure and dysfunctional government services.
Instead of castigating and insulting, and, yes, lambasting public employees, he and his ilk might start a dialogue and stop with the attacks and lectures. But the combative style is a calculated political ploy.
The most reasonable solution would be for the federal government to provide loans to tide over state governments until the economy recovers and restores state revenues. But while it was all right for Washington to rescue Wall Street bonuses, it seems to be politically anathema to provide the same support for such minor goods as public safety and our children’s education. Republican king-maker Rush Limbaugh has anointed Christie as “gutsy,” and numerous Web sites celebrate the “Christie Revolution” as a harbinger of America’s future. But Christie, appointed U.S. attorney in New Jersey in 2001 on the basis of his successful fundraising for the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign despite a lack of experience in criminal law, appears to be nothing more than the blunt-speaking Jersey version of a party hack.
This article appeared in MarketWatch. To say that that surpirses me does not begin to express how much it indeed surprised me.
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