Time to start icing the champagne, and ease into a new day, new year, and new decade, and here's a wish that all find happiness, health, and prosperity in 2011.
BTW....I'm much more comfortable saying "twenty-eleven" rather than the stiff and too formal sounding "two thousand eleven".
I wrote a lot about politics in the the final months of 2010.....perhaps too much. But in this morning's Star-Ledger I saw a column by Steve Politi that was of special note. And I wanted to close 2010 by mentioning it, and urging you to read it.
Politi is a sports columnist for the newspaper, and today he published a list of the top 10 sports stories (in his opinion) for the New York- New Jersey metropolitan area.
Number 1 wasn't about Rex Ryan and his bluster, or the resurgent Knicks, the collapse of the Devils, or the quicksand Tom Coughlin is standing in as I type this.
And even the passing of George Steinbrenner was #2 on the list.
Steve Politi chose the story of Rutgers University football player Eric LeGrand, his tragic on field injury that left him paralyzed, and the outreach of tens of thousands of friends and fans who gave their support to Eric and his family in the aftermath of his injury as the most important sports story of 2010.
We can choose to accept life in a cold, cruel world and live self serving lives. Or we can try to do the small, right things that make it a better place, and give of ourselves to the best of our ability. Eric's story touched many, not just in the Rutgers community, but throughout the nation and world.
The story of Eric LeGrand and the thousands who reached out in the days since his injury show what mankind should and could be. I think this column by Steve Politi is a final holiday gift to Eric and those who became part of the story, those who stepped up to the plate and cared.
To borrow a a line from Ricky Ricardo....."Chris Christie, you've got some 'splainin' to do."
Much has been said and written about Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's decision to go ahead on a vacation the day a blizzard hit the state, leaving third in command Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, to handle the emergency. Sweeney was sworn in as acting governor because Lt Governor Kim Guadagno was also out of state. On Monday morning Sweeney appeared on News 12 New Jersey and declared a state of emergency. When asked why he was serving as acting governor, Sweeney replied Christie was vacationing in Florida, and he didn't know where Guadagno was.
Some in the Christie administration have countered the criticism of Christie by calling it partisan sniping. But when voices like that of Republican stalwart Pat Buchanan tell MSNBC that Christie should have been on the first plane back to New Jersey after 30 plus inches of snow fell in Monmouth and Union Counties, and similar amounts in the rest of the state, well...that's trouble. The STAR-LEDGER's resident conservative columnist Paul Mulshine has called Christie's absence during a statewide emergency "inexcusable".
I've read dozens of blogs, editorials, and stories related to Christie's no-show and abdication of leadership during this event, but none so pointed and as on target as Tom Scocca's entry in Slate. Click the link below to read....he won't be on Christie's Christmas card list in 2011.
The editorial board of The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest daily newspaper, tells of how the killing of the ARC project by Governor Chris Christie will impact the New Jersey-New York area not only for years, but for generations to come.
On Friday morning New Jersey Governor Chris Christie fired Education Commissioner Bret Schundler in the wake of the controversy regarding the denial of $400 million in RACE TO THE TOP money for Garden State schools because of a clerical error. The HOME NEWS TRIBUNE's editorial board contended that Schundler lied to Christie. My Letter To The Editor below says there is no smoking gun saying that Schundler lied, to the best of anyone's knowledge.
"Education Commissioner Bret Schundler got caught in an apparent lie- worth $400 million- and got canned by Gov. Chris Christie as a result".
This is how your editorial regarding Christie's firing of Bret Schundler in the Saturday (Aug 28) edition of the Home News Tribune began. I have a real problem with the wording of that statement.....it should read "Bret Schundler was fired partly because Governor Christie says Schundler was caught in an apparent lie".
After New Jersey lost out on the RACE TO THE TOP millions, Christie decided to blame Washington bureaucrats and the President of the United States for New Jersey finishing out of the money. When the tape surfaced that showed the New Jersey's representatives in the application process were at fault, Christie said that Schundler gave him bad information of what happened during the process.
Now, according to other media sources- broadcast, online, and in print- Schundler denies that he gave the governor bad information. According to those sources Schundler told Christie not to make the claims against Washington and President Obama....but Christie did so anyway. Schundler has emails that support his claims, but other than that it's a "he said- he said" scenario.
Schundler had to go; with this $400 million clerical error somebody had to take the fall, and the ball was in Schundler's court. But your newspaper has no impirical evidence whatsoever that Schundler lied to the Governor. Christie made the situation worse with his over the top and foolish fixing of blame on the Obama administration when the fault was with his own team. The Governor once again played tough talking prosecutor and made sure the other guy- Bret Schundler- was painted in the worst possible light.
The bottomline- a very embarrassing performance by all involved. And maybe with some investigating- and with time- the truth about what really happened will surface.
Update! According to The Auditor in Sunday's Star-Ledger, the United States Department of Education held a workshop last year regarding the second round application for RACE TO THE TOP funding. Tips were given on the correct way to submit the application, as well as reminders to proofread, and that no new information could be submitted after the June 1 deadline.
The workshop was held on April 21 in Minneapolis. In all, 37 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico sent representatives to the workshop.
New Jersey did not, and finished eleventh, out of the money
The ten states that finished ahead of New Jersey and received funds attended the workshop.
As a practicing Roman Catholic, I was taught that the Pope, in matters of faith, is considered to be infallible....that is, the judgment of the Pontiff is always correct regarding matters of theology.
And as a New Jersey resident, I should feel doubly blessed....for we hath One Among Us, also a Catholic, who in his own mind claims infalliblity as well. He can be found in Trenton, the city that "makes and the world takes"....I knew about pork roll, but I didn't know so much baloney came from Trenton as well.
Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that exclaimed The Buck Stops Here! It's something Republican Governor Chris Christie should have remembered before he started finger pointing, shifting blame, or looking for an underling to throw under the boss when a clerical error by his administration cost New Jersey public schools $400,000,000 in grant money. This is happening at a time when state aid to municipalities has been slashed, several thousands of teachers are being laid off, and classroom and sports programs are discontinued. The State of New Jersey and it's schoolchildren needed that money.
And the Christie Administration let them down.
You've probably heard the story already. The Christie Administration applied for funds under the Race To the Top initiative; New Jersey hoped to get $400 million to aid its ailing schools. On Tuesday the announcement was made that nine states and the District of Columbia would be awarded Race To The Top money. New Jersey came in eleventh, and lost out on the cash.
The application for the grant was specific; it required budgetary data from the years 2008 and 2009. The application delivered to Washington had data for 2010 and 2011. The error in the application cost points in the application, dropping New Jersey to the #11 spot. and no money.
And, in the words of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board, the administration of Christopher James Christie, called by some "the future of the Republican Party" did do the following.....
"It (the error) may have been the most expensive clerical error in the history of mankind."
The full editorial of the Star-Ledger can be found here. And I agree with their statement. The mistake belonged to New Jersey; nine states and the District of Columbia got it right.... and we, the state of New Jersey, did not.
Governor Christie then turned political, and needed to finger someone else. Forget about being a statesman and leader...a screwup like this tarnishes his political present and future.
So Christie needed to fix blame, and said the following.........
"When the president comes back to New Jersey, he's going to have to explain to the people of the state of New Jersey why he's depriving them of $400 million that this application earned because one of his bureaucrats in Washington couldn't pick up the phone and ask a question, couldn't go on the Internet and find information, or wouldn't accept the verbal representation" of the state's education commissioner during a follow-up interview,
What?
Christie's team messes up, and it's the President's fault?
Or let's try the rest of federal government. It seems to work for Boehner, Bachmann, Palin, Gingrich, and company. Here's more from Chris Christie.
""Does anybody in Washington, D.C. have a lick of common sense? Pick up the phone and ask us for the number."
Yes, it was a lot of paperwork, a ridiculous amount.... but the winners did it right. New Jersey didn't. And as the Star-Ledger mentioned in their editorial about Jim Furyk's disqualification from the Barclay's Golf Tournament because he arrived five minutes late.....those are the rules. If New Jersey got a mulligan for it's error, then every state that needed to do corrections to get millions of dollars would be doing so, and that would not only result in chaos, but it would be unfair.
So far Christie hasn't thrown anybody under the bus from his administration, but that could change. Here's an item from newjerseynewsroom.com.
"Gov. Chris Christie's Dog Days of August political nightmare continued Thursday as a new report surfaced that the $400 million federal education funding mistake apparently occurred when the governor nixed an agreement on support of aid application between his education commissioner and the NJEA, a statewide teachers' union."
That's right, they initially had the right figures, and had they submitted the original application, New Jersey could have gotten $400 million. Education Commissioner Bret Schundler worked out a deal with the NJEA and the state. But Governor Christie killed the deal. The application was redone, this time with the wrong information.....and it cost New Jersey $400 million.
There's more to come; the Democratic controlled New Jersey Assembly has said that an investigation is in order....and most New Jersey residents seem to agree.
Update!- Friday August 27 9:00am .....Last night news of a video from the US Department of Education broke. The video, in which representative from New Jersey led by NJ Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, presented the state's application for the Race To The Top grant. The video (from newjersey.com) clearly shows that New Jersey's delegation was asked by federal officials about the absence of the requested figures for 2008 and 2009, required on the application. The New Jersey representatives admitted that they did not have those figures available. The speaker from the US Department of Education asked if New Jersey could provide those figures....they were given a second chance.
On that second chance, New Jersey's delegation again was unable to provide the required data.
See the video below.
Excerpt of N.J.'s Race to the Top interview shows officials with no budget answer
As I type this at least two New York television stations, FOX 5 and PIX 11, have tried to contact Governor Christie for a comment on the video, which proves his claim that federal bureaucrats prevented New Jersey the chance to make corrections was totally false.
Christie's claim that the reviewers refused to accept corrections after the June 1 deadline was also not correct. New Jersey's delegation was given two chances to fix the problem, and was not able to do so.
Christie did respond to a question from a New Jersey radio station last night about the video and it's implications. He said he hadn't seen the video yet.
Update! Friday August 27 11:41AM NJ..... Education Commissioner Bret Schundler was fired this morning by Governor Chris Christie after Schundler refused to submit his resignation. Full story at nj.com.
The breakdown at 8:00am on Wednesday, November 4th, the morning after Chris Christie was elected the 55th governor of New Jersey (with 99% of the vote counted);
Chris Christie (R) received 1,140,134 votes (49%) Jon Corzine (D)received 1,040,404 votes (45%) Chris Daggett(I) received 132,919 votes (6%)
Going into election day most polls had Christie slightly ahead by 2 percent or less. In some polls Chris Daggett was in double digits, while Jon Corzine remained static. Every indication was that the next governor of New Jersey would be elected with less than 45% of the vote.
Daggett's support was softer than most polls indicated. At last moment it appears that many voters shifted their votes to Christie to give him a larger margin of victory than anticipated.
Christie's win, with less than 50% of the vote, indicates less an endorsement of him than a repudiation of Jon Corzine. This election showed an electorate that was less than enthusiastic about the candidates.
The one major issue that won this election for Chris Christie was property taxes, followed closely the economy, then corruption, then health care (according to exit polls compiled for the print edition of the Star-Ledger).
WHAT THIS WAS NOT ABOUT (using the same exit polls from the Star-Ledger)- this WAS NOT a referendum about Barack Obama.
When asked Was one reason for your vote for governor today:to express support for Barack Obama 19% responded in the affirmative.
When asked Was one reason for your vote for governor today to express opposition to Barack Obama 19% said yes.
A whopping 60% said that Barack Obama was not a factor.
(Source- Star-Ledger print edition, page 15, left hand column, 11/4/09).
One thing President Obama's appearances did do in New Jersey was to galvanize the hard core conservative base, as admitted last night on News 12 New Jersey by ultra conservative former candidate for governor Steve Lonegan.The bottom line was they were backing Christie anyway so "The Obama Factor" was awash in New Jersey.
The usual suspects on the right will make this about Obama, but it wasn't. It was about a sagging economy that has yet to recover substantially, high property taxes, and a governor who was not very popular with his electorate, or to some degree within his own Democratic Party.
Consider this; New Jersey is a bell weather state- and the bell weather of that bell weather is Middlesex County, the crossroads of the state. The northern half, above the Raritan River, is semi-urban- on clear crisp days you can practically reach out and touch the skyline of Manhattan. The Southern half of the county gives way to farms and open spaces. It is traditionally blue- mainly working class Democrats descended from the immigrants from the early 20th century, mixed in with African Americans who came North from the rural South in the Industrial Age, and more recent arrivals from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.
Middlesex is a Democratic stronghold; and incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine lost to Chris Christie by about 5,000 votes. But there's more; when you factor in the 12,000 votes Chris Daggett received in Middlesex County, 183,000 votes cast in total, Jon Corzine only got 48.6% of the vote. An election result like that happens in Middlesex maybe once every 20 years.
If anything, this was a bad year to be an incumbent or a member of an incumbent party. Corzine found that out, as was in the case in Virginia. Even more telling about the fragility of the incumbency is what happened across the Hudson in New York. Incumbent Mayor Mike Bloomberg (I) was supposed to clobber Democratic challenger Bill Thompson by double digits- few outside of New York even had a clue who Bloomberg was running against. Yet when the dust settled Bloomberg won by only 5%, 51 to 46%. If there had been a Republican incumbent running in New Jersey or in Virginia, there might have been the same result; the challenger wins. People are scared- and its still about the economy, stupid....and not about anything else.
So let the spinners spin away....that's what they get paid to do. Even if most of them don't have a clue about what really won or lost in New Jersey.
In closing- As stated before, I'm not going to root for Governor elect Christie to fail. I don't suck my thumb, I don't stamp my feet, and I left the third grade a whole lot of years ago.
And by the way- I don't even really like to drink tea...putting ground up leaves in little bags is so silly. Wearing them as a fashion accessory is even sillier.
The stakes in New Jersey are too high. We need a successful four years from our next governor.
