'Bout sums it up....

The voters will now have to settle for 2nd best on the GOP side as there is no way that anyone could want a 2nd term for the Fool who presently occupies the White House. The issue is that SLICK MITT is NOT the best person for the job either - He is what we will be stuck with as the election in 2012 will come down to choosing the "lesser of two crappy choices" not electing the best person for the job.

And that is NOT how we should choose a President.

Governor Christie opts out of Presidential run

Color me disappointed. Governor Christie is the best man for the job among the sorry list of people who feel they are the "right" person for the job.

Now, we have to look over the GOP "leftovers" like Perry, Romney, Newt and the others.

In the end, I admire Governor Christie for his integrity and staying true to his word. In the end, we (the voters) will have to settle for 2nd best as the best man got out of the race today.

And so it goes. We need better leadership and those who have lined up to date just don't inspire the confidence that is required in a President. In the end, we will wind up getting the candidates who raise the most money, instead of the best person for the job. That is NOT how we should pick a President as " expert fund raiser " is not the quality we need in leadership.


Christie Won't Seek GOP Nomination
Despite Pressure to Run, New Jersey Governor Said 'Now Is Not My Time'
By NEIL KING JR. And LISA FLEISHER - Wall Street Journal 10/04/11

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ended weeks of speculation about his presidential ambitions by announcing he would not seek the Republican nomination. "Now is not my time,'' he said.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he will not seek the Republican presidential nomination, ending weeks of speculation about his presidential ambitions. "Now is not my time," he said. Jonathan Weisman has details on The News Hub.

Speaking to a packed room of reporters at the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton, the one-term governor said he had more work to do in New Jersey. "The deciding factor was that it did not feel right to me, in my gut, to leave now, when the job isn't finished," he said.

In an announcement broadcast live on national cable channels, Mr. Christie said he had always felt disinclined to run, but that he had revisited his plans due to the promptings of high-profile supporters and letters from the public sent to his home in recent weeks.

But in the end, he decided against a run. He said he had no plans to endorse any of the existing Republican candidates, at least not now.

His central concern, he said repeatedly, was his own state. "New Jersey, whether you like it or not, you're stuck with me," he said, to laughter in the room.

The governor's decision will dash the hopes of the many donors, operatives and leading figures in the Republican Party who have clamored for him to run—an effort, he said Tuesday, that was always a "long shot."

But it will help solidify a highly unsettled Republican field, likely giving a lift to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has proven to be a steady candidate and holds a small lead in recent public-opinion surveys.

Mr. Christie's decision eliminates one of the big unknowns still hanging over the Republican nomination. Only two potential contenders are still thought to be pondering a late run: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. But few in the party expect that either will enter the contest.

Despite never saying he was actively mulling a 2012 campaign, and often making the case that he wasn't even ready to be president, Mr. Christie's flirtation with a possible bid ignited a flurry of interest among a slice of party elites and wealthy donors.

The push for Mr. Christie, 49 years old, to enter the race underscored the misgivings that many Republican donors and activists continue to have about a GOP field where no front-runner has been able to hold a significant foothold in national polls all year. Mr. Romney, for example, has support from only about a quarter of the GOP electorate in recent surveys.

Mr. Christie's decision, which he expounded on for about 50 minutes, looks set to return the focus to the duel between Mr. Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who shot up in the polls after announcing in August but has since seen his support slump in national polls.

Which segment of the GOP electorate Mr. Christie would have seized remained unclear. The governor has garnered strong support from pockets of the party's financial elite, which could have whittled into Mr. Romney's base. But Mr. Christie's image as a tough-talking state budget hawk could also have overshadowed some of Mr. Perry's appeal among GOP voters.

Some of the people urging Mr. Christie to run are fund-raisers and donors who could now move to Mr. Romney.

Christie backers touted the former U.S. prosecutor as a refreshingly brusque politician, unafraid to challenge the teachers unions and other entrenched interests in his largely liberal state. The web also overflows with videos of Mr. Christie tussling with opponents or arguing for pet causes with a verve and saltiness rare in today's politics.

But Mr. Christie would have faced myriad challenges getting a campaign off the ground. With the first caucuses and primaries just over three months away, he would have had the shortest runway of any major candidate in decades

CHRISTIE/GIULIANI 2012 - The best team the GOP could hope for in the upcoming Presidential election

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has been busy assessing his chances for a national run for President and been assisted by operatives of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s 2008 campaign.

To the GOP, I would feel this represents the best team they could field...one that would wipe up the floor with Obama in a Presidential election.

CHRISTIE/GIULIANI 2012. The Straight Shooter from NJ and America's Mayor.

That would put the DEMS into an absolute fit. It would also relieve us of having to endure more of PERRY, SLICK MITT, BACHMANN, NEWT et al. The GOP would be wise to get behind the Man from NJ as the rest of their crowd of candidates are about as exciting to the electorate as watching paint dry. True, almost anyone would be better than Obama, but America needs the BEST Candidates for the job and as far as I can see, CHRISTIE/GIULIANI 2012 would be the ticket.


Christie Team Assessing How Fast a 2012 Campaign Could Be Mounted
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, DAVID M. HALBFINGER and JIM RUTENBERG
Published: October 1, 2011 - NY TIMES

WASHINGTON — Chris Christie’s political advisers are working to determine whether they could move fast enough to set up effective political operations in Iowa and New Hampshire in the wake of a relentless courtship aimed at persuading Mr. Christie, the governor of New Jersey, to plunge into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to operatives briefed on the preparations.

Mr. Christie has not yet decided whether to run and has not authorized the start of a full-fledged campaign operation. But with the governor now seriously considering getting in, his strategists — many of them veterans of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s 2008 campaign — are internally assessing the financial and logistical challenges of mounting a race with less than 100 days until voting is likely to begin.

Those challenges include not only raising money, but also spending it effectively in the crucial states with early primaries. That would mean meeting filing deadlines, hiring staff members, recruiting volunteers, putting together a travel schedule and devising a media campaign.

“They’re getting their arms around what’s going to be required,” said a political operative who has been briefed on the deliberations among Mr. Christie’s team. “What does an operation look like? What are the requirements in each of the states? What are the things that need to be done before we talk about people and résumés and office space?”

Mr. Christie’s advisers said on Saturday that no formal planning for a campaign would begin unless the governor made a decision to run. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, they said current efforts are nothing more than “due diligence” should Mr. Christie decide to make a bid. One senior adviser said no campaign is under way but expressed confidence that one could be started in 24 hours if needed.

The high-level advisers also said the flurry of political activity around Mr. Christie includes unsolicited strategic advice and offers of help from potential donors and consultants who are eager to see him run but are not part of the governor’s inner circle. Friends say that only Mr. Christie can decide what is right for him.

“This is a very smart guy who can figure this out for himself, and I think that’s all that needs to be said,” said William Palatucci, a close confidant of Mr. Christie. He played down any immediate campaign planning, saying that his own weekend plans included “going to pick up my daughter from her sleepover and going to get my cleaning from the cleaners.”

Those pushing Mr. Christie to run include the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, Nancy Reagan and the conservative columnist William Kristol.

If the odds of a campaign were very low just weeks ago, they are increasing.

A hastily put together campaign would upend what two of Mr. Christie’s advisers said was his original plan: to consider running for president in 2016. But with President Obama looking more vulnerable, and with dissatisfaction among some voters and influential party leaders with the current Republican field, Mr. Christie is said by those close to him to feel that his best opportunity to run might be now.

“They have to run a billion-dollar operation, which they weren’t prepared to do,” said a second political operative who was briefed on the deliberations among Mr. Christie’s team. “For the first time, they are actually considering it seriously.”

The pressure on Mr. Christie has come from just about every direction. It came at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California last week, where everyone from members of the audience to Mrs. Reagan urged him to reconsider his refusal to run.

It came when Mr. Christie stopped by a breakfast of conservative columnists at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington. Mr. Kristol said he told Mr. Christie that day that he was “a big man for a big job.”

At a fund-raising event in SoHo this year for New Jersey Republicans, with Mr. Christie as a host, Mr. Kissinger showed up. A person who was there quoted Mr. Kissinger as saying: “At my age, I have other things to do than to spend a Thursday night at a fund-raiser — but this guy is so important to the future of our country that I came here to tell you that you have to support him — and now I have to go.”

Mr. Kissinger was also among the guests at a meeting of dozens of top donors and other prominent Republicans convened by Ken Langone, the Home Depot founder. Mr. Kissinger surprised some of those there, according to a person briefed on the meeting, when he spoke up and urged Mr. Christie to run, saying that he would best represent United States interests abroad.

The pressure has also come during calls Mr. Christie has received or as he has bumped into influential Republican supporters, among them Mr. Murdoch, according to people close to both men who would discuss the subject only on the condition of anonymity.

In private conservations, several Republican governors have suggested that Mr. Christie consider running, as well.

One of them was Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, who has publicly praised Mr. Christie, saying in a recent Bloomberg View forum that “he has a certain magic about him.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said he believed that Mr. Christie would bring “intelligent straight talk” to the race but conceded that he was mixed about whether he should jump in.

“Do I think Christie should run? My heart says without a doubt — with that passion and because of his excitement,” Mr. Walker said. “My head looks at it, though, and thinks anyone who is in their first term as governor needs to run for re-election first. It’s tough to be ready to be a candidate and to be well versed, particularly in foreign policy, and to have an organization.”

As recently as three months ago, Mr. Christie’s advisers had few doubts that Mr. Obama would be re-elected.

That changed with polls showing steep declines in the public’s assessment of Mr. Obama’s leadership and with a Republican upset in a special election for a House seat in the Democratic bastion of Queens.

“Sometimes the man can’t choose the moment,” one of the political operatives said. “That discussion has been part of the last 10 days.”

Those last 10 days have largely been spent assessing the practical questions of conducting a campaign in what one operative described as a “very low-key, very hush-hush” way.

“It’s not a lot of time,” the operative said. “It’s a fair thing to say that they’re aware of that. But it’s not impossible. And there’s lots of people, financial and otherwise, who are still on the sidelines. There’s going to be personnel there if he decides to go.”

Born to RUN...New Jersey's GOV looks like the man for the job...

Never say never......Looking at the GOP line-up, it is no wonder that Americans are looking closely at NJ Governor Chris Christie.... Born to Run is not just a line for Bruce Springsteen...

Slick Mitt and Gov. Perry look like fumbling idjits next to the straight talker from New Jersey.

We need to knock out the Fool who presently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, (to quote Top Gear), " How hard can it be ??"

We need the BEST person, not the one who has raised the most $$$.



Christie: Face 'difficult truths'
MAGGIE HABERMAN / Politico.com

Here's Juana Summers' story on Chris Christie's Reagan Library speech, with a theme of "real American exceptionalism" that rapped political leaders adrift and singled out President Obama for criticism:

American exceptionalism, as Christie defined it, is a “vision followed by a set of principled actions that made us the envy of the world,” not a political punch-line.

“Not a re-election strategy, but an American revitalization strategy,” he called it.

During his remarks – interrupted numerous times by applause – Christie delivered several characteristically tough lines, including saying America must not become “a country that places comfortable lies ahead of difficult truths,” that showed the kind of swagger that’s defined his persona and won the hearts of the people who are desperate to see him come off the sidelines of the campaign.

Obama, Christie said comparing his approach now to the then-Illinois state Senator’s address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, is willing to divide the country to win re-election.

“This is not a leadership style, this is a reelection strategy,” Christie said of Obama’s actions in the Oval Office. “Telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others….That may turn out to be a good re-election strategy for President Obama, but is a demoralizing message for America. What happened to state Sen. Obama? When did he decide to become one of the ‘dividers’ he spoke of so eloquently in 2004?”

Christie decried a Washington that isn’t working, saying Congress is “at war with itself because they are unwilling to leave campaign-style politics at the Capitol’s door” and said the nation’s capitol drifts from “conflict to conflict with little resolution.”

And if domestic issues suffer, the world’s opinion of America is damaged, Christie said.

“Without strong leadership at home, without our domestic house in order, we are taking ourselves out of the equation,” he said. “Over and over, we are allowing the rest of the world to set the tone without American influence because of our failings.”

To some extent, it was a version his American Enterprise Institute speech from March writ global. But it was also not ideologically specific.

He seemed to laud Bowles-Simpson, for instance, in terms of fiscal issues. But in the portion of his speech that dealt with foreign policy, he moved away from the neocon hawkish position and sounded closer to the one espoused most loudly in the GOP field by Jon Huntsman, in terms of not fighting the world's fights.

It highlights why Christie appeals to conservative elites and some major donors. But it is also a reminder that he would face some of the same challenges as any other candidate in this hard-right moment in the Republican party in a national race.

At the same time, it underscores what those who want Christie to run find appealing - a straight message, and one that's not ideologically based.

ROGER THAT !

NJ Lawmakers adjust to reality - a word that the Public Unions have no idea about.....

re·al·i·ty / rēˈalətē / Noun 1. The world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them: "he refuses to face reality".

REALITY is something the Public Unions in this country refuse to recognize. Three cheers for Gov. Chris Christie and the NJ Lawmakers for recognizing reality.... They passed a sweeping rollback of benefits for 750,000 government workers and retirees.

" ...the state’s pension funds are among the most underfunded in the nation — estimated last year at $54 billion short of the amount needed to meet future obligations. Mr. Christie and others have warned that mounting pension and health care costs could eventually bankrupt the state and local governments."

That is REALITY...The Unions want to hold on to " Well I was promised this by some guy back when I started 30 years ago..." So were many others who worked just as hard and as diligently for the private companies...The difference is the private workers didn't have a rigged system to back them up like the public unions do.

Sorry Public Union workers, the game is O-V-E-R. You will still collect much more than 99% of the other citizens in benefits but that alone is not enough....they aren't happy to have a piece of the pie, they aren't going to be happy until they have the whole damn thing.

Looks like NJ has put a whole bunch of them on a diet.....about time.


New Jersey Lawmakers Approve Benefits Rollback for Work Force
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: June 23, 2011 - NY TIMES

TRENTON — New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday approved a broad rollback of benefits for 750,000 government workers and retirees, the deepest cut in state and local costs in memory, in a major victory for Gov. Chris Christie and a once-unthinkable setback for the state’s powerful public employee unions.

The Assembly passed the bill 46 to 32, as Republicans and a few Democrats defied raucous protests by thousands of people whose chants, vowing electoral revenge, shook the State House. Leaders in the State Senate said their chamber, which had already passed a slightly different version of the bill, would approve the Assembly version on Monday, and Mr. Christie, a Republican, was expected to quickly sign the measure into law.

The legislation will sharply increase what state and local workers must contribute for their health insurance and pensions, suspend cost-of-living increases to retirees’ pension checks, raise retirement ages and curb the unions’ contract bargaining rights. It will save local and state governments $132 billion over the next 30 years, by the administration’s estimate, and give the troubled benefit systems a sounder financial footing, mostly by shifting costs onto workers.

While states around the country have moved to pare labor costs and limit the power of unions, the move is all the more striking here, in a Democratic-leaning state where Democrats control both houses of the Legislature and union membership is among the highest in the country. Most Democratic legislators opposed the benefits reductions, but their leaders voted in favor of the changes, exposing deep, longstanding rifts in the party that lawmakers say could weaken it in coming elections.

The fight over benefits reflected both Mr. Christie’s ability to exploit the divisions among Democrats, through his alliances with more conservative Democratic party bosses and legislators, and his success at using the public-sector unions as a foil in his drive to shrink government spending. It has also allowed a nationally known but highly polarizing governor to claim the mantle of bipartisan conciliation, telling audiences that New Jersey is setting an example that other states and the federal government should follow.

“These accomplishments have been the result of compromise with the other party, and have been done with Democratic votes and Republican votes,” he said at a town-hall-style meeting on Wednesday in Fair Lawn.

On Thursday, thousands of people wearing union T-shirts and buttons filled the Assembly visitors’ gallery, the State House corridors and, in a high-decibel protest, the sidewalks, lawns and streets around the building. A procession down State Street included a hearse draped with a banner saying “The Soul of the Democratic Party,” and organizers with bullhorns led the crowd in chants of “We’ll remember in November!” and “Kill the bill!”

Unions have been broadcasting advertisements attacking Democrats who support the bill — particularly Stephen M. Sweeney, the Senate president — and this week union leaders have spoken of the difference between “real Democrats and Christie Democrats,” pointedly including in the latter group Mr. Sweeney, who also is an official of the ironworkers’ union.

“This bill is not about savings; it is about breaking the backs of the hard-working men and women of this state,” Assemblyman Patrick J. Diegnan Jr., a Democrat from Middlesex County, said Thursday evening after the session began. “I challenge everyone in this chamber today: how many have even read the full 124 pages of union-busting activities?”

The legislation applies to all state employees and to a much larger number of county, town and school district workers, because most local governments participate in the state-run pension and health care systems. When it is fully phased in, after four years, the average government worker will pay several thousand dollars more into the benefit funds.

But union leaders say the bigger issue is what they call a stealth assault on collective bargaining. With just a week remaining in the contracts for the major state employee unions, the unions are now trying to negotiate new agreements with the state.

Most public employees in the state, other than teachers, police officers and firefighters, have had no guarantee of collective bargaining on any issue except for health benefits.

The legislation will supersede that right, allowing the state to impose health care terms unilaterally. For many workers, this means that if contract talks reach an impasse, the government will be able, at least in theory, to dictate all terms, like wages, time off and work rules.

“This bill cuts away the one issue, health care, that the unions could use to trade off against other things,” said Jeffrey H. Keefe, associate professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University.

Hetty Rosenstein, state director of the Communications Workers of America, said, “This bill is nothing less than Chris Christie’s frontal assault on organized labor.”

Union leaders said they were exploring the possibility that some provisions of the bill, like the suspension of cost-of-living increases for retirees, could be challenged in court.

Assemblyman Angel Fuentes, a Democrat from Camden, said, “These reforms are unquestionably bitter pills for us to swallow, but they are reasonable and they are necessary.” He added: “We now have towns across this state that are struggling to afford health benefits for their employees. This has resulted in cities laying off workers.”

In his campaign to rein in the unions and shrink government, Mr. Christie has often been helped by New Jersey’s unique political culture, where local political machines still dominate some areas, and many state legislators also hold local government jobs. That gives striking influence in Trenton to mayors, county executives and local party bosses who struggle with rising labor costs and have repeatedly sided with the governor’s push to cut benefits and wages.

Until recently, the public employee unions were among the most feared forces in state politics. They were a major source of votes, campaign cash and foot soldiers for Democrats, but officials in both parties were eager to please them. For years, governors and legislators from both parties sweetened their pension benefits but did not put any money into the system to pay for them.

As a result, the state’s pension funds are among the most underfunded in the nation — estimated last year at $54 billion short of the amount needed to meet future obligations. Mr. Christie and others have warned that mounting pension and health care costs could eventually bankrupt the state and local governments.

The pendulum has swung back over the last four years, first under Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, and then under Mr. Christie, as the state took steps like increasing what workers paid for benefits, raising retirement ages and limiting contract arbitration awards. But the bill now awaiting the Senate’s approval and Mr. Christie’s signature is easily the most far-reaching one yet

NJ Public Sector Union members pay 1.5 % of their health care - Gov. Christie wants to implement a 70-30% split - Guess who is unhappy???

I want you to imagine you are going into see your Boss today because the company you work for is looking at the increasing cost of benefits. They have to figure out a way to deal with the rising costs and need to make sure they can afford the cost of employing you and your coworkers.

Is this the way the conversation would go?

Employee: Hey Boss, I don't want to have to pay any more for my benefits.

Boss: Well the Finance group has reviewed the situation and it looks like the employees will have to pay for 30% of the premium. The company will still pay the larger 70% share. I know that is not the best news but we'll still be footing the majority of the cost.

Employee: Hey, you have to negotiate that with me....I get to have a say in how much I have to pay.

Boss: No, you don't really. We are running a business here and we have to have the ability to make some decisions based on what we feel is best. A 70-30 ratio is still very generous as some companies are pushing for a 60-40 or even a 50-50 split. After all, you work for me, remember?

Employee: Well I don't like it and I am going to protest....I'll get the other employees to protest too.

Boss: Not on work time. You need to work as directed or we can find someone who will. After all, the company needs to have all employees working to their fullest ability or we could lose business to our competition and then there will be no jobs for any of us.

Employee: This is unfair. You have to let me have a say in the way things are run here.

Boss: No. You work for me. I will listen to your ideas and suggestions but as the Boss, I have the final say.

This is the basic scenario you would see in most companies. You would not be happy to see increased costs but the 70-30 ratio is still generous...They would need you to work as directed.


This is the way it would go unless of course you work in a Public Sector Union.....like in NJ where the public sector employees only pay 1.5% of their benefit costs and the taxpayers pick up the rest. Or in Wisconsin where the public sector employees skipped work for weeks and still got to have their jobs when the protests were done.

How would that go over at your job ??? How long could you skip work or act defiant before you would be shown the door?

Gov. Chris Christie is going to change the share the NJ Public Sector employees pay to a 70-30% split and the unions want to negotiate about that. Like many other Chief Executives (especially for the company you likely work for), he has stated that this is not negotiable.

But because we are talking about a public sector union, they are NOT HAPPY with having to bite the bullet like the rest of us.....they are special....they need to be coddled. Especially since they want someone else to pay for what they are getting.

Riiiiiiiiigggghhht.

Look, I would like to say that all of us could have more say in the conditions we are offered and be able to negotiate for better benefits BUT in this day and age, the economy is driving many businesses out-of-business. Massachusetts has been losing business as the cost of doing business here is too high and they cannot make a profit, thereby enabling them to stay in business.

The Public Sector Unions don't care if the states lose money or if the cost of benefits goes up because they want the cost to come out of YOUR POCKET, not theirs.

They like to say they are asking to negotiate but they have been taking the free ride on the back of the taxpayers for too long. While the majority of us have been looking at increases in the cost of our benefits for decades, they have been enjoying only paying 1.5% of their own benefits....so the extra $$$ for your benefits is something you have had to deal with and they want you to pay for them too....Does this make sense to anyone BUT the Unions who are looking for a FREE RIDE?

I support Gov. Chris Christie in his fight against the Unions and hope that we can reign in the outrageous costs borne by the taxpayers so that the days of the Public Sector Employees enjoying a free ride on the backs of the taxpayers will become history.

Christie refuses to negotiate health care cost increase with N.J. public unions

Ed Murray/The Star-Ledger
Tuesday, March 15, 2011

TRENTON — Representatives for Gov. Chris Christie have told the state’s largest union that the administration’s plan to sharply increase health care costs for public employees was not negotiable, union leaders said today.

The governor’s office first took the issue of health care costs off the table last Friday when negotiations over a new contract got underway. But union officials said they were determined to have a voice in changes to their benefits.

"It represents a pretty fundamental attack on a long-established right to bargain over health care which goes back as long as there has been unions in New Jersey," said Bob Masters, political director for the Communication Workers of America, which represents that state’s public employees. "We are going to insist that our legal right to bargain over health care be honored by this governor as it has been by every governor."

Instead, a spokesman for Christie said the governor planned to stick to his plan to have state employees to pay 30 percent of their health care premiums by requiring it through having the legislature enact a law. Union members currently pay 1.5 percent of their salary for health care coverage.

"We and the Senate president are pursuing that area in the same way through legislation," the spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said.

Christie contends that he does not have to negotiate over increasing health care costs because in the past the unions, at least in some instances, appealed directly to the Legislature.

The last time employees saw an increase in their contributions was in 2007, when Gov. Jon Corzine reached an agreement with the union requiring members to pay 1.5 percent of their salary for benefits.

Masters said the governor’s office could not provide an example of the union skipping collective bargaining.

A spokesman for the Assembly Majority, Tom Hester said it was the responsibility of Christie’s office to engage ion collective bargaining with the union.

"This governor spends a lot of time bragging about his ability to shake up government," Hester said, "so it’s time for him to back his talk and prove his worth at the bargaining table, where health insurance matters have traditionally been decided."

“When I run out of fights to have, I’ll stop fighting,” - NJ Gov. Chris Christie

A pretty good write up about what makes Chris Christie the rising star that he is in poltics....surprising it comes from the NY Times....

How Chris Christie Did His Homework
By MATT BAI / NY TIMES
Published: February 24, 2011

Like a stand-up comedian working out-of-the-way clubs, Chris Christie travels the townships and boroughs of New Jersey­, places like Hackettstown and Raritan and Scotch Plains, sharpening his riffs about the state’s public employees, whom he largely blames for plunging New Jersey into a fiscal death spiral. In one well-worn routine, for instance, the governor reminds his audiences that, until he passed a recent law that changed the system, most teachers in the state didn’t pay a dime for their health care coverage, the cost of which was borne by taxpayers.

And so, Christie goes on, forced to cut more than $1 billion in local aid in order to balance the budget, he asked the teachers not only to accept a pay freeze for a year but also to begin contributing 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care. The dominant teachers’ union in the state responded by spending millions of dollars in television and radio ads to attack him.

“The argument you heard most vociferously from the teachers’ union,” Christie says, “was that this was the greatest assault on public education in the history of New Jersey.” Here the fleshy governor lumbers a few steps toward the audience and lowers his voice for effect. “Now, do you really think that your child is now stressed out and unable to learn because they know that their poor teacher has to pay 1½ percent of their salary for their health care benefits? Have any of your children come home — any of them — and said, ‘Mom.’ ” Pause. “ ‘Dad.’ ” Another pause. “ ‘Please. Stop the madness.’ ”

By this point the audience is starting to titter, but Christie remains steadfastly somber in his role as the beseeching student. “ ‘Just pay for my teacher’s health benefits,’ ” he pleads, “ ‘and I’ll get A’s, I swear. But I just cannot take the stress that’s being presented by a 1½ percent contribution to health benefits.’ ” As the crowd breaks into appreciative guffaws, Christie waits a theatrical moment, then slams his point home. “Now, you’re all laughing, right?” he says. “But this is the crap I have to hear.”

Acid monologues like this have made Christie, only a little more than a year into his governorship, one of the most intriguing political figures in America. Hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers linger on scenes from Christie’s town-hall meetings, like the one in which he takes apart a teacher for her histrionics. (“If what you want to do is put on a show and giggle every time I talk, then I have no interest in answering your question.”) Newly elected governors — not just Republicans, Christie says, but also Democrats — call to seek his counsel on how to confront their own staggering budget deficits and intractable unions. At a recent gathering of Republican governors, Christie attracted a throng of supporters and journalists as he strode through the halls of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel like Bono at Davos.

While Christie has flatly ruled out a presidential run in 2012, there is enough conjecture about the possibility that I felt moved to ask him a few weeks ago if he found it exhausting to have to constantly answer the same question. “Listen, if you’re going to say you’re exhausted by that, you’re really taking yourself too seriously,” Christie told me, then broke into his imitation of a politician who is taking himself too seriously. “ ‘Oh, Matt, please, stop asking me about whether I should be president of the United States! The leader of the free world! Please stop! I’m exhausted by the question!’ I mean, come on. If I get to that point, just slap me around, because that’s really presumptuous. What it is to me is astonishing, not exhausting.”

There is, in fact, something astonishing about the ascent of Chris Christie, who is about as slick as sandpaper and who now admits that even he didn’t think he would beat Jon Corzine, the Democrat he unseated in 2009. Some critics have posited that Christie’s success in office represents merely the triumph of self-certainty over complexity, the yearning among voters for leaders who talk bluntly and with conviction. Yet it’s hard to see Christie getting so much traction if he were out there castigating, say, immigrants or Wall Street bankers. What makes Christie compelling to so many people isn’t simply plain talk or swagger, but also the fact that he has found the ideal adversary for this moment of economic vertigo. Ronald Reagan had his “welfare queens,” Rudy Giuliani had his criminals and “squeegee men,” and now Chris Christie has his sprawling and powerful public-sector unions — teachers, cops and firefighters who Christie says are driving up local taxes beyond what the citizenry can afford, while also demanding the kind of lifetime security that most private-sector workers have already lost.

It may just be that Christie has stumbled onto the public-policy issue of our time, which is how to bring the exploding costs of the public workforce in line with reality. (According to a report issued last year by the Pew Center on the States, as of 2008 there was a $1 trillion gap, conservatively speaking, between what the states have promised in pensions and benefits for their retirees and what they have on hand to pay for them.) Then again, he may simply be the latest in a long line of politicians to give an uneasy public the scapegoat it demands. Depending on your vantage point, Chris Christie is a truth-teller or a demagogue, or maybe even a little of both.

To say that New Jersey has a budget problem wouldn’t really be accurate. The state has at least three major budget problems related to the costs of the public workforce, all of which contribute to a shortfall that the state’s legislative accounting office projects to be almost $11 billion this year — an amount that’s more than a third of the state’s total budget. And in order to understand what’s happening in statehouses all over the country, and what Christie is trying to do about it in New Jersey, it helps to have some sense of how these problems tie together.

First, there’s the local aid. New Jersey sends 40 percent of its annual budget to an overlapping tangle of 566 municipalities and 600-plus school districts, in order to help them slow the mutantlike growth of local property taxes, which are among the highest in the country. Each of these little hamlets and districts negotiates its own labor contract with the police and firefighters, sanitation workers and, most consequentially, teachers, which means the contracts established by the most affluent communities end up setting a statewide standard — a process that drives up everyone else’s costs to a level that the local governments simply can’t sustain by themselves.

Second, in the long term, New Jersey doesn’t have nearly enough money on hand to cover its pension obligations to teachers and other state workers. At no time in the last 17 years has New Jersey fully met its annual obligation to the pension fund, and in many of those years, the state paid nothing at all. (That didn’t stop one governor, Donald DiFrancesco, a Republican, from increasing payouts by 9 percent and lowering the retirement age before he left office, which would be kind of like Bernie Madoff writing you a $1 million check before heading off to jail.) Even had the state been contributing faithfully to the fund as it was supposed to, however, there would still be trouble ahead. That’s because New Jerseyans, who are glass-half-full kind of people, have assumed an improbably healthy return of 8.25 percent annually on the state pension fund. The actual return over the last 10 years averaged only 2.6 percent.

Finally, the state will pay close to $3 billion this year in health care premiums for public employees (including retired teachers), and that number is rising fast. New Jersey has set aside exactly zero dollars to cover it. All told, in pensions and health care benefits, New Jersey’s “unfunded liability” — that is, the amount the actuaries say it would need to find in order to meet its obligations for the next 30 years — has now passed the $100 billion mark.

There was little in Christie’s uninspiring campaign to make anyone think he would address these issues with more tenacity than the governors who preceded him. A U.S. attorney whose only overtly political experience entailed serving on the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders (seriously, they still call it that), Christie had only a fraction of Corzine’s public exposure or personal fortune. About the only thing he had going for him was that Corzine was pervasively unpopular. And so rather than come up with a lot of actual ideas, which Corzine would then be free to oversimplify and distort in a barrage of television ads, Christie simply offered up a bunch of conservative platitudes and tried to make the campaign a referendum on the Democratic governor. (When we talked during the campaign, Christie could articulate little by way of an agenda, except to say that he would “get in there and make it work.”) Even a lot of Republicans thought Christie was underwhelming as a campaigner.

In the end, Christie won by about four points on Election Night in 2009, with little notion of what he was going to do next. When I asked him if there was any one moment of clarity that put him on the path from cautious candidate to union-bashing conservative hero, Christie pointed to a meeting about a month into the transition, when his aides came to him brandishing an analysis of the state’s cash flow produced by Goldman Sachs. They advised the governor-elect that, without some serious action, the state could fail to meet payroll by the end of March. After scrutinizing the budget, Christie told me, his team came to the conclusion that the only way to get control of local taxes and state spending was to go after the pension and health care benefits that the public-sector unions held sacrosanct. From that point on, it seems, Christie has conducted his governorship as if he were still a grandstanding prosecutor, taking powerful unions on perp walks with evident enthusiasm.

The centerpiece of Christie’s frenzied agenda, which passed the Democratic-­controlled Legislature last July, is a strict cap on local property taxes, which will be allowed to rise no more than 2 percent every year. When combined with a reduction in state aid, what this means, practically speaking, is that New Jersey’s townships and cities will have to hold the line when negotiating municipal labor contracts if they want to remain solvent, because they can’t rely on either their residents or the state for more money.

To help them do that, Christie has put forward 33 measures that are part of what he calls his “toolkit” for reform. These include, for instance, a proposal that would allow localities to opt out of the civil-service system altogether, giving them more control over hiring and firing local officials, and another that would limit the cash payouts that retiring workers can take for their unused sick days. On the pension front, if Christie has his way with the Legislature, most union members would contribute more to their plans than they have up to now, and all of them would retire later and receive lower benefit payments.

The crux of Christie’s argument is that public-sector contracts have to reflect what has happened in the private sector, where guaranteed pensions and free health care are becoming relics. It’s not surprising that this stand has ingratiated Christie to conservatives in Washington; advocacy groups and activists on the right have carried out a long campaign to discredit the ever-shrinking labor movement in the private sector, and what Christie has done, essentially, is to blast his way into the final frontier, taking on the public-sector unions that have come to wield enormous political power. More surprising is how the governor’s proposals are finding sympathy from less-partisan budget experts, if only because they don’t see obvious alternatives. “I’ve tried to look at this objectively, and I just don’t know of any other option,” says Richard Keevey, who served as budget director for a Democratic governor, Jim Florio, and a Republican governor, Tom Kean. “You couldn’t tax your way out of this.”

Union leaders, on the other hand, are howling. The heads of the police and firefighters’ unions say that Christie’s cuts to local aid have already cost the state several hundred firemen and police officers, and they warn that his 2 percent cap on property taxes will have dire effects on public safety, as more towns and cities try to shave their payrolls to conform with the cap. “I don’t think they’re going to get it until the body bags pile up,” Anthony Wieners, president of the police union, warns darkly.

Leaders of the teachers’ union, meanwhile, are apoplectic about Christie’s proposed changes to their pension plan, which they say will penalize educators for the irresponsibility of politicians. After all, they point out, it wasn’t the unions who chose not to fund the pension year in and year out, and yet it’s their members who will have to recalibrate their retirements if the benefits are cut.

When I made this same point to Christie, he simply shook his head. What’s done is done, he told me, and it’s time for someone to tell these workers the truth, which is that the state is simply never going to have the money to make good on its commitments. “Listen, if they want to travel in the Michael J. Fox time machine and change time, I guess we could try that,” he said. “We could get the DeLorean out and try to go back there. But I think realistically that that was just a movie and make-believe. So we’ve got to live with what we’ve got.”

Chris Christie is fat. You can use nicer words if you want — rotund, portly, big-boned — but it is what it is, and the governor will be the first to tell you so. And because he’s fat, a lot of people, consciously or not, tend to assume certain things about Christie — that he’s undisciplined and impulsive, graceless and bullying. (Corzine’s most brutal campaign ad accused Christie of “throwing his weight around.”) At times, Christie seems to exploit this persona. He likes to present himself as the proverbial bull in the china shop, the ungainly, somewhat boorish guy who lacks the artifice to keep from saying whatever obvious truth pops into his head. “I don’t think you elected me because of my charm and good looks,” Christie likes to say, just to show he’s in on the joke.

And yet, to portray Christie in this cartoonish way, as so many critics do, is to vastly underestimate his skill as a politician. The most sophisticated communicators of the modern era hammer at a consistent argument about their moment and the response it demands, and they choose carefully constructed metaphors to make the choices ahead seem obvious — think of Ronald Reagan’s morning in America, or Bill Clinton’s bridge to the 21st century. And Christie’s communications strategy is about as sophisticated as any you will find in American politics right now.

Take Christie’s choice of a somewhat mundane image, the “toolkit,” as a unifying frame for his proposals. As a metaphor, the toolkit works on two levels, depending on the audience. You can visualize it either in the sense of screwdrivers and hammers or, if you work in an office all day, you might envision it more as a software suite. Either way, the toolkit symbolizes flexibility and local control. It’s a way of saying that Christie isn’t putting unwieldy restrictions on towns and cities, as the cops and firefighters charge — he’s just empowering those towns and cities with a variety of implements and gadgets with which to attack their budget problems themselves.

In sustaining his assault on the public-employee unions, Christie knows he has to make his subject comprehensible. One reason that leaders in a state like New Jersey haven’t been able to get a handle on pension and benefit costs, despite years of dire warnings from good-government advocates, is that the subject is agonizingly dull and all but impossible to explain. There are myriad plans for all the different public-employee unions, various contribution formulas for each one and actuarial projections that require an advanced degree to unravel.

Christie, it turns out, has a preternatural gift for making the complex seem deceptively simple. Last month I saw him hold forth at a town-hall meeting in Chesilhurst, a South Jersey borough of about 1,600. Chesilhurst is about half African-American, and I sensed more curiosity than enthusiasm among the racially mixed crowd as it flowed into the little community-center gymnasium. An unusually large number of folding chairs were empty. About 20 minutes after the program was supposed to start, there came over the loudspeakers the kind of melodramatic instrumental that might introduce a local newscast, or maybe an Atlantic City magic show, and in came Christie, taking his position in the center of the crowd. The theme of the week was pension-and-benefits reform, and in his introductory remarks, Christie explained the inefficiency in the state’s health care costs not by wielding a stack of damning statistics, as some politicians might, but by relating a story.

When he was a federal prosecutor, Christie told the audience, he got to choose from about 100 health-insurance plans, ranging from cheap to quite expensive. But as soon as he became governor, the “benefits lady” told him he had only three state plans from which to choose, Goldilocks-style; one was great, one was modestly generous and one was rather miserly. And any of the three would cost him exactly 1.5 percent of his salary.

“ ‘You’re telling me,’ ” Christie said he told the woman, feigning befuddlement, “ ‘that no matter which one I pick, the good one or the O.K. one or the bad one, I’m going to pay 1½ percent of my salary?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’

“And I said, ‘Then everyone picks the really good one, right?’ And she said, ‘Ninety-six percent of state employees pick the really good one.’

“Which led me to have two reactions,” Christie told the crowd. “First, bring those other 4 percent to me! Because when I have to start laying people off, they’re the first ones!” His audience burst into near hysterics. “And the second reaction was, of course I would choose the best plan,” Christie said, “and so would you.

“Now listen, I don’t think this is groundbreaking stuff,” Christie added. “I don’t think this means that instead of being governor, you know, I should be at NASA, working on the space shuttle. I’m no genius. Just seems to me that if you give people an option to get something for nothing, they’ll take it.” Scanning the nodding faces around me, it seemed there wasn’t a person in the gymnasium, at that point, who wouldn’t have voted to make state workers and teachers pay more for the better plan.

Another thing Christie understands about political messaging, especially when your adversaries are out there portraying you as callous, is that it has to be grounded in the personal. “If you’re asking people to do some really difficult things, which I am asking them to do,” Christie told me, “then I think they feel more comfortable doing those things if they know you.”

And so the 48-year-old Christie makes a point of sharing intimate details of his life and times — that he uses an asthma inhaler, that he has struggled with dieting and exercise since his days as a high-school catcher came to an end, that his mother told him on her deathbed that he should go back to work because nothing between them had been left unsaid. That last one, which elicited audible gasps of sympathy from the audience in Chesilhurst, is his way of saying that he wants to leave nothing unsaid between him and the voters, either, even if they both occasionally get hurt.

“My mother said to me all the time, ‘Christopher, you’re going to have choices in your life between being loved and being respected,’ ” Christie told his rapt audience, strains of emotion creeping into his voice. “ ‘And you should choose respected. Because if you’re respected, love can come.’ She said, ‘But seeking love without also being respected — well that love doesn’t last.’ ” It was as if some weird brain-switching experiment had taken place, and somewhere, at that very moment, Oprah was giving a talk about state budgets and tax policy.

There’s one more piece of political narrative that Christie seems to grasp, which is that every story has both a protagonist and an antagonist, someone who stands for change and someone who plays the foil. Christie never had to look far to cast his ideal antagonists. They sit just across the street and one block down from the State House, in the building occupied by New Jersey’s major teachers’ union.

WITH 200,000 MEMBERS and more than $100 million in dues, the New Jersey Education Association is easily the most powerful union in New Jersey and one of the more powerful local unions in the country. In Trenton, the union’s organizing might — and its willingness to use that might to intimidate candidates and lawmakers — has sunk a small shipyard of promising careers. So it’s not hard to see why the twilight struggle between Chris Christie and “the bully of State Street,” as he likes to refer to the teachers’ union, has transfixed New Jersey’s political observers for the last year. It’s as mesmerizing as an episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” only harder to watch, mostly because Christie can be so unrelentingly brutal.

“We have similar personalities,” Stephen Sweeney, the Democratic president of the state Senate, told me recently, when ruminating on Christie’s style. “The difference between he and I is, I have an off switch and he doesn’t. You know, if I knock you down, I’ll pick you up, brush the dirt off your back, try to build a relationship and go forward. He knocks you down, like with the teachers, and he’ll stomp on you, kick on you until he can kill you.”

The war between Christie and the union has two fronts, so closely interrelated that it’s hard to separate them. First there’s the fight over budgeting issues like pensions and benefits. And then there’s the “year of education reform,” as Christie has proclaimed 2011, in which he intends to push his case for merit pay, charter schools and the abolition of teacher tenure — all of which are, of course, anathema to the union.

At times in this epic clash, it can be hard to know where personal animus leaves off and political gamesmanship kicks in. All that’s clear is that Christie seems to be winning at every turn. Last April, for instance, Christie claimed to be infuriated by a joke memo circulated by the president of the Bergen County chapter of the union. “Dear Lord,” it read in part, “this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.”

In a 15-minute meeting, the union’s president, Barbara Keshishian, apologized to Christie for the memo, but she refused to fire the Bergen County president, which further infuriated the governor. If his chief of staff had sent out such an e-mail, Christie told her, he would have been fired immediately. “That conversation embodies the elitism and the double standard that the teachers’ union thinks applies to them,” Christie told me last month, recounting the confrontation. We were sitting in the restaurant of the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, where state troopers and aides with cellphones buzzed around the empty dining room. Christie was in town to headline a dinner for the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. “And you know what? I can’t entirely blame them for it, because politicians have treated them differently than everybody else, because they’ve been scared of them. And so part of the blame goes on the political culture of New Jersey that has helped to enable this elitist, double-standard attitude.”

The death-wish incident instantly became lore in Trenton and proved politically advantageous to the governor. It gave him a pretense to break off all communication with the union; he has refused to meet personally with Keshishian or her deputies since. And he has repeatedly used the ill-advised memo to portray himself as the courageous victim of unhinged union activists. At least once a week, it seems, he reminds some audience that the union once “wished for my death,” as if he were Robert Kennedy staring down the Teamsters.

Perhaps the most consequential episode between Christie and the union, at least as far as public perception was concerned, had to do with the pay freeze. Almost as soon as the scope of the budget problem became clear, the governor called on teachers, who received scheduled raises during the recession, to accept a one-year freeze. He reminded the teachers that a lot of private-sector workers felt lucky if they could keep their current salaries, and he said a voluntary freeze would enable the union to avoid widespread teacher layoffs in cash-poor school districts. Most local chapters of the union ignored him. Ultimately some 10,000 union members — teachers and support staff — saw their jobs eliminated. Christie hasn’t stopped talking about it since.

The union maintains that Christie’s plea was mere gimmickry, because the layoffs would have happened even if its local chapters acceded to the demand for a freeze. But even if this is true, it would seem to reflect a staggering lack of political calculation. Had the teachers agreed to take the short-term hit by acquiescing to a temporary freeze, it would have been worlds harder for Christie to then run around the state demanding longer-term concessions on pensions and benefits. And when the layoffs did materialize, the governor would most likely have shouldered most of the blame. Instead, the whole affair seemed to prove Christie’s point about the union’s self-involvement, and it enabled him to blame the teachers themselves for the layoffs.

During our conversation at the Hay-Adams, I suggested to Christie that the teachers had given him a valuable political gift by refusing to compromise. “I don’t look at it as a gift to me,” he replied. “I look at it as a huge mistake by them, and also a window into who they are.

“Let’s assume that they’re smart, because I think they are,” he went on. “So then, why don’t you do it? Because they believe they are entitled to it. They believe they are special and different and that they shouldn’t have to share the sacrifice. And that’s, I think, what’s ultimately driving public opinion against them.”

One afternoon last month, at the modern, airy headquarters of the N.J.E.A., I sat with Barbara Keshishian, the union’s president, and Vincent Giordano, its executive director, and listened as they tried to puzzle out why it was that Christie seemed so determined to humiliate them.

“Frankly, I for one don’t say we’re always 100 percent right on every single issue, and certainly neither is the administration across the street,” said Giordano, a bald and goateed organizer who has been at the union for 40 years. “The difference is the tone and the mean-­spiritedness of the way he talks about us. He has made us basically the whipping boy for anything that goes wrong in New Jersey and the country and in Bangladesh if there’s an earthquake. It seems that we’re just the cause of all the problems in our society today.

“I don’t know what he’s got buried down there inside of him that causes him to be this totally driven,” Giordano said. “I don’t think he’s really supportive of a public-education system. If he was, he might send his kids to public school, which he doesn’t.” (Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, a bond trader, have four children, ages 7 to 17, and all attend Catholic schools.) “I think he’s not very enamored with public services in general. Public employees, public education, public pension systems — somehow he’s allergic to the word ‘public.’ Somebody ought to get him some kind of medication that gets him off of that allergy he has to anything that’s public.”

The two union leaders made several points in defense of their stances against pension reform and the pay freeze. They pointed out that despite all Christie’s talk of shared sacrifice, he refused to renew a tax on millionaires in New Jersey that would have raised about $800 million this year — not enough to solve the state’s fiscal problems, certainly, but enough to restore most of the school aid that was slashed from the budget. They noted that they already made concessions on teachers’ pensions in 2007 and 2008, when they agreed to increase contributions by 10 percent and to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. They mentioned that the average salary of a New Jersey teacher is about $67,000, and the average pension is between $35,000 and $40,000. “Try living on that in the state of New Jersey,” Giordano said. “I don’t see why we’ve suddenly been identified as fat cats.”

In the union’s view, Christie is simply trying to exploit the downward spiral of the American labor movement. First, greedy companies, claiming pressures from the new global market, began rolling back the pensions and benefits that private-sector unions negotiated over a period of decades. And now, instead of trying to find a way to restore those hard-earned benefits for all workers, politicians like Christie are using corporate America’s bad behavior as an excuse to take benefits away from the last set of union members who managed to cling to them — those in the public sector. Christie is pitting one set of middle-class workers against the other, perhaps in the hope that private-sector unions will ultimately turn on their brethren in the public workforce, or that the public unions will turn on one another. And the end result will be that everyone loses.

All of this seems to add up to a reasonable counterargument to Christie’s main indictments against the teachers’ union, and so I asked Keshishian and Giordano why they thought they were having such a problem making their case to the public. After all, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted this month, most voters in New Jersey still admire teachers themselves, but only 27 percent have a favorable view of the union, while 44 percent say their view is unfavorable. By contrast, Christie’s job approval has been consistently hovering above the 50 percent mark.

“He is the governor!” Keshishian said, her voice rising. “People listen to him! You know, he could be in a crowd of people, and they’re going to interview the governor! And people, I guess, believe that what the governor says is the truth.” Keshishian taught high-school math for 29 years, but her grasp on civics sounded a bit shaky. It doesn’t seem especially likely that Christie is breaking through because he is a politician and therefore people take to heart his every word.

What the union’s leadership seems not to have considered is that public sentiment around budgets and public employees has shifted in a fundamental way. For decades, as Keshishian and Giordano were rising up through the union, it probably made sense to adopt a strategy of “no surrender,” to dig in and outlast the occasional politician who might dare to threaten the union’s hard-earned gains. But over the last 10 years or so, most American workers have come to expect less by way of benefits and security from their employers. And with political consensus building toward some kind of public-school reform, teachers’ unions in particular have lost credibility with the public. Forty-­six percent of voters in a poll conducted by Stanford and the Associated Press last September said teachers’ unions deserved either “a great deal” or “a lot” of blame for the problems of public schools.

And so, when the union draws a hard line against changes to its pay and benefit structure, you can see why it might strike some sizable segment of voters as being a little anachronistic, like mimeographing homework assignments or sharpening a pencil by hand. In a Pew Research Center poll this month, 47 percent of respondents said their states should cut pension plans for government employees, which made it the most popular option on the table.

Some unions are more attuned than others to this gradual changing of the climate. The American Federation of Teachers, for example, which is by far the smaller of the two major teachers’ unions nationally, has consciously tried to position itself as a more pragmatic union and has proposed a lot of its own classroom reforms in a campaign to get out in front of public opinion. In Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, A.F.T. organizers have signaled that they will work with Christie on changes to the pension and health care system, in addition to negotiating on issues like merit pay. “Better to be seated at the table than to be on the menu” is how Joseph Del Grosso, the union’s leader in Newark, explained the strategy to me.

But the larger and mightier N.J.E.A. has made the decision to hunker down and fight all comers. And because of that, its leaders run the risk of confirming the public’s darkest suspicions about them, whether they have salient points to make or not. “They may have dug themselves a hole that will be very difficult to dig themselves out of,” Del Grosso says of his competitor. “They are on the menu.”

And so this is why Christie has gone out of his way to anoint the teachers’ union as the most sinister force in the galaxy — not because he has some long-buried torment with a teacher to work through, but because the union does a very capable job of representing for him everything about the public sector that voters don’t like. He knows there is a risk in using this strategy: he has to make sure his war on the union doesn’t ultimately come to seem like a war on individual teachers, which is why he tries constantly to draw a distinction between the union and its members. (“I love teachers — I just can’t stand your union,” is one of Christie’s signature lines.) For now, though, even some of labor’s strongest advocates will tell you that Christie has the teachers and other public-sector unions backed up against a hard wall of political reality.

“My politics are union politics,” Sweeney, the Senate president, assured me when I visited him in his State House office. He reminded me that he is not only the state’s top elected Democrat, but also a union ironworker. And yet, he said, “what I think that public-sector employees have to do is look at what’s going on around them, look at all the pain around them, and understand that no one hates them, but they want them to sacrifice like everyone else. It’s that simple.”

THE POLITICAL DYNAMIC in New Jersey tells you a lot about what’s driving similar conversations all over the country. Last year alone, 18 states either raised the pension-contribution levels for public employees or reduced benefits for their retirees, according to Susan Urahn, the managing director of the Pew Center for the States. Three states — South Dakota, Colorado and Minnesota — decided to eliminate cost-of-living raises for state workers who have already retired. (As a result, all three states are now ensnared in court challenges over whether they can alter benefits for current retirees — cases that could have a huge impact on state budgets, depending on how far states are ultimately allowed to go in rolling back already-promised benefits.) Illinois raised its retirement age to 67, and Vermont, Michigan and Utah introduced “hybrid” retirement plans that are a step away from the defined-benefit pension plans that were the standard for much of the 20th century.

Now a new class of governors from both parties is promising to revisit union contracts in order to put their states on firmer fiscal ground. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker, an aggressive new Republican governor, just proposed legislation that would limit the rights of public workers to collectively bargain. “You can’t have one group who are the haves,” Walker told me recently, meaning government workers, “and one group, the private-sector workers, who are the have-nots.” Walker’s move led to protests in Madison, drawing President Obama into the debate and raising the prospect of French-style labor uprisings among public workers across America.

In part, the viral movement against public-sector unions is a result of political necessity. In states all over the country, balancing the budget has become an annual exercise in Copperfield-like illusion. Over the past decade, governors have exhausted all the easy options for eradicating, or at least hiding, deficits — building casinos and adding new fees, issuing bonds and securitizing tobacco revenue. Now, facing a painfully slow recovery and the end of stimulus spending from Washington, governors from both parties are finding that there are simply no more gimmicks left to exploit. They have to deal with what has long been an unspoken reality — that state governments have made a mountain of promises they can’t keep.

It’s also true, though, that what used to be unspeakable, politically, simply isn’t anymore. It’s not as if the problem of public pensions suddenly got so much worse than it was before (the shortfalls have been building steadily for years, after all), nor is this new crop of governors somehow genetically bolder than their predecessors. If politicians of both parties are suddenly willing to go after the pensions and health care plans of teachers and cops and firefighters, it’s probably not only because they’re out of budgeting options, but also because suddenly they see it as politically advantageous. In other words, not only are public employees’ contracts no longer untouchable for any politician who wants to stay in office, but it turns out that the opposite is true; taking the fight to the unions is a good way to bolster your credentials as a gutsy reformer with voters who have been losing faith for years in public schools and government bureaucracies.

This, more than anything else, is the lesson that Chris Christie has impressed on his contemporaries. The question now, and what a lot of these other governors are watching to see, is whether Christie can convert his anti-union riffs into a revised social contract for public servants. While he has enacted several pivotal pieces of his agenda, Christie has yet to pass more than a handful of the measures in his toolkit. This year will mark a major test of his staying power. The question a lot of political observers are asking, in New Jersey and nationally, is whether Christie’s argument will begin to lose its resonance as voters inevitably grow weary of the hostility and the rhetorical smack downs. Sooner or later, most people tend to tire of the boorish guy at the party, even if he’s entertaining, and even if he has a point.

Christie waves away such concerns. “When I run out of fights to have, I’ll stop fighting,” he told me. Until then, you will find him out on the town-hall circuit, play-acting, berating and emoting his way toward some kind of public reckoning, leaving nothing unsaid.

Matt Bai, a staff writer, covers national politics for the magazine.

NJ Governor - "Sick leave is for when you're sick- It's not supposed to be a second taxpayer-funded retirement payment."

Our man in New Jersey strikes again at the rigged systems that reward the feckless hacks that are on the state employment rolls - Limiting how they can rig the system in their favor and cutting the WASTE that has been allowed for far too long....

NOW, if we can only get someone like him into the Massachusetts State House....we tried but POTUS' Buddy SPEND-IT-ALL Deval Patrick got reelected by the DEMS and Unions....The economic crisis might force Deval's hand but he is a "tool" for the unions so we will keep paying idiot hacks in Massachusetts, even when they don't deserve the extra pay they will help themselves to.....Greedy Bastards.


NJ gov. signs law capping pay through arbitration
By David Porter
Associated Press / December 21, 2010

WAYNE, N.J.—Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill Tuesday that caps increases to police and firefighter pay awarded through arbitration, a measure he called the most important of the proposals in his so-called toolkit to help towns control costs.

Tweet Be the first to Tweet this!Yahoo! Buzz ShareThis With Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney looking on, Christie hailed the passage of the bill as a testament to bipartisan cooperation.

"We've proven over the last year that Republicans and Democrats can get things done together," he said. "Mayors have been yelling and screaming for these kinds of reforms for years."

The bill caps salary awards, including longevity pay and automatic step increases, for police and firefighters at 2 percent when their unions engage arbitrators to settle contracts.

It also fast-tracks the arbitration process by giving arbitrators a 45-day window to rule on disputes and limiting the appeal process to 30 days. In addition, arbitrators' pay will be capped at $1,000 per day or $7,500 per case, whichever sum is lower.

Christie said Tuesday that some cases in arbitration have dragged on for years, and that fear of excessive arbitration awards has hampered some towns' ability to conduct effective contract negotiations.

"Arbitration works when it's balanced," said Sweeney, who is an organizer for the International Association of Ironworkers. "But the system has gotten out of whack over the last 20 years."

Pension and health care costs are not included in the cap. Christie said the cap will lapse in April 2014, at which time lawmakers will review its effects and consider modifications.

"This is the most significant individual bill in the toolkit," Christie said.

Municipalities have been clamoring for tools to help them control costs since the Legislature approved -- and Christie signed -- a 2 percent cap on annual property tax increases that goes into effect Jan. 1.

Christie said residents could see a difference in their tax bills by August, but that the effect likely won't be seen until the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012.

"It's one of the major issues we're dealing with," Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said after the signing. "This gives us the tools going forward to make sure it's fair for the residents of the city of Hoboken and of New Jersey."

The governor said another primary target is sick leave policies for public employees, some of whom routinely get tens of thousands of dollars in unused sick time when they retire. Christie noted a case in Parsippany in which four police officers reportedly were due a total of $900,000 upon retirement.

Christie signed a bill this year that limits state employees to receiving $15,000, and he said Tuesday a similar measure in the Legislature for school, government and public safety workers needs to be toughened.

"Sick leave is for when you're sick," he said. "It's not supposed to be a second taxpayer-funded retirement payment."

The “New Tammany Hall,” - Jury Rigged Public Pensions and the incestuous alliance between public officials and labor...

New Jersey has become famous for more than a bunch of 20-something MTV idiots in a beach house and the home of Bruce Springsteen. New Jersey has become the "battleground" for the fight regarding public employee pension costs and how much they are crippling the budgets of our states & towns. Governor Chris Christie is a central figure in this fight....I wrote a bit about this subject earlier -- see enclosed link

http://usnavyjeep.blogspot.com/2010/11/our-man-in-nj-keeps-up-efforts-to-bring.html

New Jersey may be the frontlines of this fight presently but my home state of Massachusetts is not far behind.

The anger is due to the fact that private sector employees saw pensions evaporate more than a decade ago, but public employees have an incestuous relationship with politicians which has insulated them from the same experience of seeing pensions disappear or be capped.

I agree that we have an obligation to those, public & private employees who paid into a pension. They took money from their checks and that should be theirs. I highly disagree with those who act like a promise of "money & benefits for life" with no investment of their own are owed what someone promised them 20-30 years ago as that promise was made on "projections" and like a New England weather forecast, those projections have proven to be wrong. Even more unacceptable are those who double dipped and jury rigged the system because of loopholes...These criminals should be held accountable as they are "stealing" by any reasonable person's definition of the word ":theft" and have no remorse about doing so or who it hurts.

" In California, pension costs now crowd out spending for parks, public schools and state universities; in Illinois, spiraling pension costs threaten the state with insolvency. " - When the needs of a minority of connected insiders is placed ahead of the needs of ALL OTHER CITIZENS, you can expect some serious anger.

Reform of a jury-rigged system that rewards insiders and greedy union officials is as much of a threat to the security of our state and local governments as any made by the bastards on Wall Street.....The only difference is that one set of greedy bastards works in Finance and the other group were supposed to be working for the citizens....both groups are greedy and don't care who else must be neglected as long as they get what they want.

Well I feel hopeful because both sides are facing the reality that the majority (the rest of us) will make sure that the best interest of the citizens is the focus of changes that will be made in these jury rigged systems in the very near future. Here's hoping that I am right as if I am, things can only get better. If I am wrong, then things will only get worse. And that is not something we can tolerate.


Public Workers Face Outrage as Budget Crises Grow
By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: January 1, 2011

FLEMINGTON, N.J. — Ever since Marie Corfield’s confrontation with Gov. Chris Christie this fall over the state’s education cuts became a YouTube classic, she has received a stream of vituperative e-mails and Facebook postings.

Marie Corfield, a teacher in Flemington, N.J., challenged Gov. Chris Christie over state education cuts at a town hall meeting in September. Their tense exchange was posted on YouTube.

“People I don’t even know are calling me horrible names,” said Ms. Corfield, an art teacher who had pleaded the case of struggling teachers. “The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.”

Across the nation, a rising irritation with public employee unions is palpable, as a wounded economy has blown gaping holes in state, city and town budgets, and revealed that some public pension funds dangle perilously close to bankruptcy. In California, New York, Michigan and New Jersey, states where public unions wield much power and the culture historically tends to be pro-labor, even longtime liberal political leaders have demanded concessions — wage freezes, benefit cuts and tougher work rules.

It is an angry conversation. Union chiefs, who sometimes persuaded members to take pension sweeteners in lieu of raises, are loath to surrender ground. Taxpayers are split between those who want cuts and those who hope that rising tax receipts might bring easier choices.

And a growing cadre of political leaders and municipal finance experts argue that much of the edifice of municipal and state finance is jury-rigged and, without new revenue, perhaps unsustainable. Too many political leaders, they argue, acted too irresponsibly, failing to either raise taxes or cut spending.

A brutal reckoning awaits, they say.

These battles play out in many corners, but few are more passionate than in New Jersey, where politics tend toward the moderately liberal and nearly 20 percent of the work force is unionized (compared with less than 14 percent nationally). From tony horse-country towns to middle-class suburbs to hard-edged cities, property tax and unemployment rates are high, and budgets are pools of red ink.

A new regime in state politics is venting frustration less at Goldman Sachs executives (Governor Christie vetoed a proposed “millionaire’s tax” this year) than at unions. Newark recently laid off police officers after they refused to accept cuts, and Camden has threatened to lay off half of its officers in January.

Fred Siegel, a historian at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, has written of the “New Tammany Hall,” which he describes as the incestuous alliance between public officials and labor.

“Public unions have had no natural adversary; they give politicians political support and get good contracts back,” Mr. Siegel said. “It’s uniquely dysfunctional.”

Even if that is so, this battle comes woven with complications. Across the nation in the last two years, public workers have experienced furloughs and pay cuts. Local governments shed 212,000 jobs last year.

A raft of recent studies found that public salaries, even with benefits included, are equivalent to or lag slightly behind those of private sector workers. The Manhattan Institute, which is not terribly sympathetic to unions, studied New Jersey and concluded that teachers earned wages roughly comparable to people in the private sector with a similar education.

Benefits tend to be the sorest point. From Illinois to New Jersey, politicians have refused to pay into pension funds, creating deeper and deeper shortfalls.

In California, pension costs now crowd out spending for parks, public schools and state universities; in Illinois, spiraling pension costs threaten the state with insolvency.

And taxpayer resentment simmers.

Trouble in New Jersey

To venture into Washington Township in southern New Jersey is to walk the frayed line between taxpayer and public employees, and to hear anger and ambivalence. So many Philadelphians have flocked here over the years that locals call it “South Philly with grass.”

These expatriates tend to be Democrats and union members, or sons and daughters of the same. But property taxes are rising fast, and voters favored Governor Christie, a Republican. Bill Rahl, a graying plug of a retiree, squints and holds his hand against his throat. “I’m up to here with taxes, I can’t breathe, O.K.?” he says. “I don’t know about asking anyone to give up a pension. Just don’t ask for no more.”

Governor Christie faced a vast deficit when he took office last January, and much of the federal stimulus aid for schools was exhausted by June. So he cut deeply into state aid for education; Washington Township lost $900,000. That forced the town to rely principally on property taxes. (Few states lean as heavily on property taxes to finance education; New Jersey ranks 45th in state aid to education.) The town turned its construction office over to a private contractor and shed a few employees.

Assemblyman Paul D. Moriarty, a liberal Democrat, served four years as mayor of Washington Township. As the bill for pension and health benefits for town employees soared, he struggled to explain this to constituents.

“We really should not receive benefits any better than the people we serve,” he says. “It leads to a lot of resentment against public employees.”

All of which sounds logical, except that, as Mr. Moriarty also acknowledges, such thinking also “leads to a race to the bottom.” That is, as businesses cut private sector benefits, pressure grows on government to cut pay and benefits for its employees.

Robert Master, political director for the Communication Workers of America District 1, which represents 40,000 state workers, speaks to that difficulty.

“The subtext of Christie’s message to a lot of people is that ‘you’re paying for benefits you’ll never have,’ ” he says. “Our challenge is how to defend middle-class health and retirement security, not just for our members but for all working families, when over the past 30 years retirement and health care in the private sector have been essentially demolished.”

This said, some union officials privately say that the teachers’ union, in its battle against cuts to salaries and benefits, misread Mr. Christie and the public temperament. Better to endorse a wage freeze, they say, than to argue that teachers should be held harmless against the economic storm.

In the past, union leaders, too, have proven adept at winning gains not just at the bargaining table. In 2000, union lobbyists persuaded legislators to cut five years off the retirement age for police and firefighters — a move criticized as a budget-buster by a state pension commission. The next year, the budget still was flush and union leaders persuaded the Republican dominated legislature to approve a 9 percent increase in pension benefits. (The legislators added a sweetener for their own pensions.)

Those labor leaders, however, proved less successful in persuading their legislative allies to pay for such benefits. For much of the last two decades, New Jersey has shortchanged its pension contribution.

Governor Christie talked about tough choices this past year — then skipped the state’s required $3.1 billion payment. Now New Jersey has a $53.9 billion unfunded pension liability.

A recent Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll found a narrow plurality of respondents in the state in favor of ditching the pensions for a 401(k)-type program. Public pensions, however, run the gamut, from modest (the average local government pensioner makes less than $20,000 a year while teachers draw about $46,000) to the gilded variety for police and firefighters, some of whom collect six figures. And then there’s the political class, which has made an art form of pension collection.

Some politicians draw multiple pensions as county legislators, called freeholders, and as prosecutors or union leaders. Back in Washington Township, people tend to talk of state government as a casino with fixed craps tables.

A white-haired retired undercover police officer, whose wrap-around shades match his black Harley-Davidson jacket, pauses outside the Washington Township municipal building to consider the many targets. He did not want to give his name.

“Christie has all the good intentions in the world but has he hit the right people?” he says. “I understand pulling in belts, but you talking about janitors and cops, or the free-loading freeholder?”

Good Jobs, at What Cost?

So how much is too much? On their face, New Jersey’s public salaries are not exorbitant. The state has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the country, and the average teacher makes $66,597, which even with benefits is on par with or slightly behind similarly educated private sector workers, according to Jeffrey H. Keefe, a Rutgers professor who studied the issue for the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

Mr. Keefe, however, uncovered some intriguing class splits. Blue-collar public workers make more money than their private sector counterparts. For such jobs, public unions have established a higher wage floor.

The sense that public workers enjoy certain advantages is not a mirage. Public employees pay into their pension funds, but health benefits often come at a fraction of the cost of most private sector packages.

Government employment also tends to be more secure. When the economy crashed, federal stimulus dollars safeguarded many public jobs. The alternative, many economists point out, was to force towns and cities into extensive layoffs, even as unemployment hovered around 10 percent and millions of Americans sought help from public agencies.

But it accentuated the perception that public workers, however tenuously, inhabited a protected class. That’s a tough sell in Washington Township.

Ask Michael Tini, 54, who works as a card dealer in Atlantic City, about teacher salaries and benefits and he taps his head, not unsympathetically.

“Look, I understand that teachers are the brains of the operation, O.K.? But my hours are cut, and my taxes are killing me.”

He taps his head again. “They have got to take it in the ear, too.”