I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Chris Christie Must Go

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am so very, very tired of this crap:
[NJ Governor Chris] Christie said parents must stand up to organizations who he said care more about pensions, wage increases, generous benefits packages and summers off than about extending quality education to all students.
And yet this pompous fool has done more to decimate New Jersey's excellent public schools than any man ever, and his carnage has hit the poor particularly hard. He has refused to follow the law and provide the proper amount of state funds to districts as determined by the School Funding Reform Act. The dramatic retreat from funding equity in New Jersey has led to an increase in the funding gap under his administration.

How has he used these funds, which should be going to schools?
New Jersey has provided more corporate tax breaks in the past three years than in the entire previous decade, yet the state's economy continues to lag, according to a report released on Monday.
Since the start of 2010, when Republican Governor Chris Christie took office, the state has awarded $2.1 billion in subsidies, compared to $1.25 billion for the previous 10 years, New Jersey Policy Perspective, the liberal think-tank, said in its report.
Even so, New Jersey's economy remains sluggish. Though its unemployment rate has fallen slightly, it is the sixth highest in the United States at 9.3 percent in February, well above the national jobless rate of 7.7 percent.
New Jersey had the second-highest foreclosure rate in January at 7.2 percent, behind only Florida, according to CoreLogic. [emphasis mine]
We teachers have taken a hit on pensions, on wages, and on benefits over the last four years. Chris Christie lied to us when he told us he wouldn't touch our pensions - see the quote at the top of this blog. Meanwhile, the price of health care continues to skyrocket, even as we teachers pay more and more into the system. Has Christie done anything to hold down the cost of premiums?

Please - that would threaten the profit margins of the insurers. Can't have that...

And the "summers off" idea is beyond stupid. Do you want us to work those two months for free, Chris? Is that what you're saying? If not, where will you get the money to pay us? And how will you pay to retrofit every classroom with air conditioning?

Chris Christie is an empty fleece: a blustering, bullying toad of a man who hurls insults at teachers from the safety of behind his podium, never daring to meet his critics face-to-face on equal ground and justify his fealty to the rich and cruelty to New Jersey's students.

Chris Christie must go.

New Jersey's problems aren't my fault! Nothing's my fault! It's all you greedy teachers!

1 comment:

giuseppe said...

There is absolutely no doubt that Christie wants teachers to work for free during the summer. He seems to feel that teachers get paid too much as it is and have too rich and too generous benefits. It would appear that Christie's agenda is to not only strip teachers of collective bargaining rights, to gut their unions but to also slash their wages and benefits. Most clueless New Jerseyans are cheering this on. Christie has stoked "class warfare" between teachers and other working class New Jerseyans but hands off the millionaires, billionaires and giant corporations. NJ teachers are being portrayed as economic elites, you know, with their yachts, Rolls Royces and summer homes in Monte Carlo. It's hideous and insane but very real. Meanwhile, the actual corporate elites who caused the great recession of 2008, are laughing their heads off on their way to the banks in the Cayman Islands.