My Letter To Phil Murphy

Today was Chris Christie's last day in office, a true cause for celebration. I was going to write an angry, schadenfreude-laden epitaph for that bastard, but I think I will leave that for later this week. Instead, I decided to keep it positive, and to write a letter to the new governor, Phil Murphy. Here's what I sent him:

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Dear Governor Murphy:

Just writing the phrase “Governor Murphy” after the last eight years brings me a tremendous amount of happiness. I am a daily commuter to New York City, and my wife is a public school teacher. Needless to say, my family has not fared well under the leadership of the last eight years.

I was glad to vote for you in the election, and your sign was the first one I ever put on my lawn for a state-level race. You have promised a great deal, and I now ask that you do everything possible to come through on those promises. I especially want to see my wife’s pension protected, improved mass transit, less test-driven education for my children, and access to reasonably priced state university tuition when they graduate high school. I’d like those things for all children in New Jersey, which has some amazing public schools but also horrific levels of racial and economic segregation. I hope you can address that, too.

My parents’ stories are very much like your own. They were both the first people in their families to go to college, and they came of age at a time when our society offered working people a hand up instead of cutting them down at the knees. I look at my two daughters and fear that they are entering a world where opportunities are more and more scarce. I often wonder if my own family’s journey into the middle class will be a temporary blip in a longer history of emiseration. You have the power to do so much to keep opportunities open, I ask you please to follow up on these promises.

Like you, I made the choice to live in New Jersey. I grew up in Nebraska, and bounced around the country, from Chicago to Texas and points in-between. Lucky for me, I fell in love with a Jersey girl and have finally put down my roots in the Garden State. For that reason it is a very important place to me, because I am here to stay.  I am well aware from my years here of the difficulties of New Jersey’s politics.

For that reason, I ask you to be bold. It is obvious to me at least that if we want to provide high quality public services while not adding too much to the tax burden that New Jersey needs consolidation. Our state’s patchwork of tiny clusters of towns is the result of a bad policy from the 1890s. Consolidating school systems, fire departments, police, and other public services has the potential to ease the tax burden without punishing the poor or the rank and file public workers. We should also, as you have proposed, increase taxation on the wealthy.

You will also need to do your best to fight the machine. Little has disheartened me more than seeing bosses like Norcross and DiVincenzo put their support behind Christie in a corrupt bargain. Their graft has been bad for the state and only helped their cronies. Instead of making deals with them I would like to be part of a movement to get them voted out and their power broken so that our state works for the people and not for the machine. Make deals with them if you must in the short term, but in the long term please do not accept the status quo.

I also ask you to be bold in promoting New Jersey. The ridiculous rent prices in New York City ought to be a boon to our state. Yet, as you know, our transit infrastructure hampers our ability to exploit the desire by so many in New York to find a better place to live. New Jersey has so much to offer, and instead of having an inferiority complex (as so many in this state sadly do) you should project what is great about this state. We have high performing schools, wonderful diversity, amazing food resulting from that diversity, mountains and the glittering sea shore. I truly feel that this state is one of America’s best-kept secrets, and we ought to be proud of what we have here.  You can be this state’s ambassador and cheerleader, and hopefully project a far more positive image than the last occupant of the governor’s mansion.

Of course, I am well aware of how the recent tax legislation in Washington will make it hard to fulfill the promises you have made. At the same time, if we are to defeat the president and his Republican minions, we have to show the people a better alternative. The best way to do that is to make positive changes in people’s lives, and the only way to do that is to be bold. As you have said, I think that we need to get down to work on that right here in New Jersey. If you do your part, I pledge to do mine.

Sincerely,

Dr. Werner Herzog's Bear

A Letter To Governor Christie

I am writing this letter from a hotel room in Kansas City. I am currently on a family vacation with my wife and two daughters, on our way to visit my family in Nebraska. This is just as well, since if I was in New Jersey for the holiday I would be unable to enjoy many of the great places in the Garden State that my fellow New Jerseyans love to visit this time of year. Of course, that has not stopped you from enjoying a beach that you have effectively banned the rest of the state from due to your obnoxious stubbornness over the state budget, specifically trying to shake Horizon down for money.

My spouse is a public school teacher in New Jersey, which means we will see yet another health insurance premium burden caused directly by one of your decisions. For some reason you have vilified teachers throughout your time as governor. This obsession with attacking people who are building the future while being paid far less than the value of what they are worth has been sickening me for the last eight years. It has been personally painful to watch the woman I love work twelve-hour days trying to teach her students the best she can only to have her treated like dirt by the governor of the state she works for.

It goes beyond that, however. I have lived in many states, but never have I lived in a place where the governor had so directly and negatively impacted my life. My family now pays thousands of dollars a year more in health care premiums because of you. I commute into New York City with New Jersey Transit to work, and every time I have been stuck in yet another delay I immediately think of how you killed a second and much needed train tunnel. I use the Morris-Essex Line to get to the city, and now this summer I will have to find alternate means of transportation, because of you.
This has meant many days getting home later than planned, exhausted from a hard day of work and maddening delays on top of it. Those delays mean even less time spent with my four year old daughters. Not all of us get to take a helicopter home from work.

I have held off on telling you what I think of you because for a long time I legitimately thought that you loved the state of New Jersey, despite your misguided policies. Your behavior over the past two years has disabused me of that naïve notion. Instead of leaving the governorship while you ran for president you stayed in office, neglecting your duties and letting the state’s many problems fester. You did this all for a ridiculously failed campaign that did not garner a single delegate, a truly pathetic performance. After the state of New Jersey had long figured it out, the rest of the country finally caught on to what a terrible leader you are.

Of course, you ended your campaign by pulling a hit on Marco Rubio in a presidential debate on behalf of your new buddy, Donald Trump. At a time when many other Republicans were repulsed by his open calls to violence and racism, you embraced them. You and him are really two peas in a pod after all: lawbreakers with an authoritarian streak who are wholly incompetent leaders, burdened by emotional immaturity on a truly frightening scale. I have to say I had a good laugh when fellow scoundrel Jared Kushner pushed you aside because of your prosecution of his corrupt father. Karma can be tough.

So now here you are, despised in your home state, sitting there at Island Beach State Park in a spectacle of absolute contempt for the people that you are supposed to serve. You have given the people of this state the middle finger one more time.  I sure hope it is the last. I cannot wait for the day when you finally leave office and the man who has been a scourge on my state and my family finally moves aside.

That said, I am sure you will find work on Fox News or as a well-paid consultant and lobbyist. You probably will not face any real consequences for your many misdeeds. This is why I am writing you. I want you to know that you will have a legacy, and that legacy is being hated by the state of New Jersey more than any other state politician has ever been hated. Any contempt you show for us we feel for you ten fold. Despite all of your bluster, your governorship has been a complete and utter failure. If history remembers you at all, it will be as a footnote or a punch-line. If there is any justice in the universe, your name will remain spoken as a curse on the lips of the people of New Jersey for decades to come.

However, I do believe in the capacity for people to change. I do hope that in the fullness of time that you change your ways, and apologize to the people of this state for how you have grievously wronged them.

What If? (Trump's America 2019)

BBC News) Today marks the third anniversary of an important day in the ascendancy of president Donald Trump.  In February of 2016 vice president Christie, while he was still governor of New Jersey, endorsed Trump, making him the first established Republican to do so.  This endorsement laid the groundwork for other prominent Republicans to be willing to throw their support behind Trump, and for the party machinery to assist him in his election victory.  This support was especially crucial after the 2016 election ended without Trump, Hilary Clinton, or third party candidate Michael Bloomberg getting a majority of the electoral vote.  Although Trump did not get a plurality, trailing Clinton, House Republicans threw the balance to his side.

It has been impossible for the BBC to talk to Trump or Christie to discuss this anniversary, since only journalists vetted by Secretary of Information Scarborough are allowed access to the president.  Other outlets, such as the New York Times, have not been so lucky.  A libel lawsuit conducted under new laws formulated by Trump has left that newspaper bankrupt and unable to operate.  Because the United Kingdom has not remained allied with the United States in Trump's recent military interventions, the BBC too has been threatened with lawsuits by the Trump government.

With American armed forces currently deployed in the oil fields of Iraq and on the Mexican side of the border with the United States, Trump has been restricting the media even more on the grounds of protecting the nation in a time of war.  Just last week he sent the American army over the Rio Grande, where maquiladoras (Mexican factories on the border) have been forcibly shut down after the Mexican government refused to pay for the wall Trump is currently building. Sources in the US military also say that the maquiladoras may be burned down, or failing that, turned into dumping grounds for the millions of undocumented immigrants that are currently being held in makeshift internment camps in the Nevada and Utah deserts.

After what some insiders call a plastic surgery operation gone wrong, Trump has not appeared in public for the past four days.  Rumors about the leader's ill health, combined with unrest over the policies of mass deportation and invasion, have led some to think that a palace coup may be in the offing. The suspension of Congressional elections in 2018 after armed skirmishes broke out between federal agents carrying out deportation orders and undocumented workers in several immigrant neighborhoods was seen as a step too far by some powerful Republicans.  Others see a potential power grab by vice president Chris Christie, information minister Joe Scarborough, secretary of the interior Sarah Palin, or even chief justice Andrew Napolitano.  Fox News, now the de facto government organ, has been showing nothing but reruns of Trump campaign rallies from 2016 and reruns of The Apprentice, leading some to wonder if his death is imminent.  Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch have both refused to comment.

The Irresponsibility of "Fiscal Responsibility"

[Editor's Note: choice words and salty language ahead.]

The Republican pre-primary is in full swing, meaning that there are a whole bunch of desperate shysters wanting to get their hands on that sweet, sweet Koch brothers cash.  The winner of the fund raising war in the GOP primary stage is usually the winner of the nomination, so this is prime time for potential also-rans like Chris Christie to make themselves relevant again with a money transfusion.

So what has the Most High New Jersey Bridge Troll done?  He’s decided to talk about “responsible” and “honest” fiscal policy.  What this means specifically is proposing raising the retirement age to 69, and then making Social Security a much reduced provision that would not even paid out to a large number of retirees.  Christie, in typically mendacious fashion, has spun all this as “telling hard truths,” assuming that his listeners believe, like he does, that the money to sustain old age benefits does not exist.

Of course, we all know that it does.  We live in the richest nation on earth, one where plutocrats are amassing ever-increasing piles of lucre.  Just this week comes the news that during a “down” year the top 25 hedge fund managers were still able to pay themselves bonuses that altogether add up to more than twice all of the money made by all the kindergarten teachers in America last year.  James Simons made $2.1 billion in 2011, about the equivalent of the yearly wages of 140,000 minimum wage workers.  Imagine that, the “bonus” to a select group of bankers eclipses the sweat and muscle expended by literally hundreds of thousands of laborers.  They also paid a lower tax rate than I did as a teacher last year.

And yet we are told that we are to sacrifice even more, that the nation simply can’t afford to give them a secure retirement before we might give out from overwork. 

When I hear the fiscal hawks talk about “hard truths” I know they are really spinning some diarrhea-soft grade A horseshit.  What they really want is a system where the wealthy can amass even bigger fortunes than before, and perhaps to shovel money out of Social Security and let their criminal friends on Wall Street play with it.  Perhaps due to the pernicious persistence of a Puritan streak in this nation’s culture, the media elite eat up this “hard truth” crap and never, ever question the motive, always taking these con artists at face value.  Because young voters are so far away from retirement, they do not take to the streets about being bamboozled.

Make no mistake, Gen Xers and Millenials, they are out to bamboozle you.  I made my first FICA payment at the tender age of 13, and have been paying into the system almost continuously from that time.  All that money has gone to pay for people already in the system, and I was glad to do it, since I knew that the next generations would do the same for me.  Now that contract will be broken, and I will spend the rest of my working life paying for the same Baby Boomers who got cheap college education and plentiful jobs to have a much cushier retirement than I will ever have.  It will be the final insult in a degrading generational war that many in the younger generations have no clue is being waged against them.

To consign future generations to the dung heap in their old age so that the plutocrats, hedge fund managers, and bankers dare not make a greater sacrifice is the height of fiscal irresponsibility.  To break apart the social contract that so many have benefited from is a horrible thing to do, not something deserving of the canting hosannas of “truth telling” so often heard in the more fatuous corners of our mediascape.  Please, for fuck’s sake, stop pretending that the attempt to end Social Security as we know it is anything more than a heinous crime of enormous proportions.

Chris Christie's New Jersey Hustle Continues

I've avoided writing about Chris Christie, even though I'm a resident of New Jersey, because he appears to have achieved peak media saturation.  Looking at the various articles, especially the ones about his sweaty embrace of Jerry Jones at a Cowboys game, I've decided it's time to examine the man a little more deeply, since no one else seems willing or able to do so.  Christie is a gregarious chap, the kind the media loves for being good for a quote.  It's in their interest to keep the Christie Show going, so their criticisms will always be muted by the hope that they don't sink his political career.  The thing is, Christie is not a straight shooter, as the press would have you believe, he's a hustler.

Say what you want about the man, like most hustlers he's not stupid.  People tend to forget that by the time of Hurricane Sandy his popularity was slipping, and Mitt Romney looked weak.  Christie saw his opportunity: he distanced himself with Romney and cozied up to president Obama, all while talking big on TV in the storm's aftermath.  He managed to get generous aid for the state (which he then used to reward his friends and punish his enemies), and also not to be tainted by Romney's failure, which certainly would have been the case had he been the GOP VP nominee.  While this angered the Republican base, we all know it's the moneymen who hold the strings in that party, and they can appreciate Christie's ruthlessness when it comes to shredding the social safety net.  (It's not for nothing that I refer to him as Fat Reagan.)  He has managed to survive serious scandals and still be a viable presidential candidate.  This is not a man to trifle with.

Christie owes much of the success of his hustle by fabricating some truly impressive narratives that happen to be completely untrue.  He ran for governor as a "good government" man, someone who had a reputation for putting corrupt politicians behind bars as a US attorney.  He came into office with guns blazing at teachers and other public workers, and turned this obvious assault on working people into a kind of populist anti-tax crusade.  Despite the fact that he puffs himself up as an enemy of corruption, he has been running the state like an old school political boss.

The evidence keeps piling up.  In regards to the hug of Jones, it appears that Christie lobbied to get a contract for a company part-owned by the Cowboys to run concessions at the new One World Trade skyscraper, which is managed by the Port Authority.  This is the same Port Authority that acts without any oversight, especially now that Christie and his equally dirty counterpart Andrew Cuomo have vetoed legislation that passed the NJ statehouse unanimously that would have brought transparency.  This is the same Port Authority that shut down lanes on the George Washington Bridge to punish Fort Lee.  This is the same Port Authority that Christie has stuffed to the gills with patronage hires in a practice that resembles more Tammany Hall than anything else.

After spending money to get sinecures for Christie pals, the Port Authority is now jacking up tolls, and cutting back on nighttime train service.  Beyond the Port Authority, Christie has taken campaign money from a financial services company that is paid to manage state pensions.  Christie handed over management of the state's halfway houses to an outside company owned by a friend.  He has profitted while inmates have been abused or allowed to go free.  This is some Lincoln Steffens-level misgovernment, but our journalists today would rather kiss ass to get "access" than rake the muck.

You might wonder how Boss Christie manages to do all of this in a state where most people are Democrats.  The answer is that he has become the boss of all bosses and owes his position in large part to state Democratic bosses like Joseph DiVincenzo and George Norcross, both of whom continue to support him.  They refused to support their own candidate for governor to keep Christie in power, since he was going to keep the flow of patronage going their way, and shield them from prosecution.  This is a mutually advantageous system where the grafters of both parties benefit and the rest of the state has to live with the higher tolls, inadequate mass transit, and slashed school budgets.

Of course, the average person, especially those outside of the tri-state area, are unaware of this.  They think Christie is a brash, earthy straight-shooter fighting for lower taxes and better government.  That narrative is a bald faced lie that shields a reincarnated machine boss and his authoritarian graft operation.  I am not sure how Christie thinks that he can act like an old school boss and also be president, but until more people with bigger voices than mine expose the real Chris Christie, his hustle will still keep paying off.

Christie's Scandals Expose NJ Democrats' Weakness

With each passing day come new revelation in L'Affaire Christie.  I must admit, they make me positively giddy, because I deeply dislike a man who has attacked my family's livelihood (in the form of his attacks on teachers) and has gutted state aid to Newark, my old town and a place still close to my heart.  However, each new revelation also makes me equally mad at the Democratic party.

Now that the governor is in hot water, all kinds of Democrats are popping up their heads to call him a bully, but these same people did the bare minimum, if anything, support Barbara Buono in her attempt to unseat Christie last year.  Some of the most prominent state Democrats, like Cory Booker, wanted to keep cozy with Christie by staying out of it, while others actually went so far to endorse him, the representative of another part.  They did this despite the fact that the Christie administration has taken a giant dump on Democratic constituencies like teachers, urbanites (who are mostly people of color), and union members.  When the state legislature approved a gay marriage bill, he rejected it.

The fact is, the state Democratic party is completely useless.  Booker is a glamour boy who used Newark to advance his political career, period.  He's more interested in hanging out with his friends on Wall Street that fighting a man who has slashed social spending to the state's poorest residents.  Others, like bosses Joe DiVincenzo in north Jersey and George Norcross in south Jersey are worse, since they do not give a shit about people in this state, only maintaining power.  They were the first to sign a deal with Christie, since it meant being at the table when the patronage pie was divided.  These two men are machine bosses of the old school, and "represent" disadvantaged communities in the state who have suffered the most under Christie.  That fact has not deterred them from cutting deals with him for their benefit, or from defending him from scandal.

Now that I have lived in New Jersey for a few years, I've been amazed at how the state's politics are basically run by a group of self-appointed players, and Christie has succeeded as a Republican in a blue state because he has the business players in his pocket, and the Democratic bosses happy with giveaways.  He ran for governor, however, as a tough-minded prosecutor who would be incorruptible.  Now it looks like he used his former position as US Attorney to eliminate his future competition, proving his ruthless political street smarts.  Christie's paranoia may well prove to be his undoing, but Democrats in the state have done little to nothing to bring about his downfall.

If Christie were to leave office, I honestly doubt that things would be that much better.  The same power brokers who don't really care about the people who vote for them will still hold the fulcrum of power.  Perhaps that's why grassroots Democrats from around the country don't seem all that motivated in this key midterm election.

My Own Photographic Evidence of Chris Christie's Corruption

New Jersey is having its election for governor on Tuesday, and right now it looks like incumbent Chris Christie is going to win in a landslide.  This despite the fact that the state's economy has remained in the doldrums, that Christie has slashed money to schools, has let political cronies run halfway houses that abuse inmates and let them escape, canceled needed public works projects while giving state funding for a giant shopping mall, cut money for police in cities that need cops on the streets, and generally behaved like a bullying jackass.

Of all of Christie's many corrupt dealings and lies, none may be more egregious than his exploitation of Hurricane Sandy.  This summer, when the state needed to run ads to promote tourism to the Jersey Shore after Sandy's devastation, it chose a company whose ads prominently featured Christie and his family (not ordinary New Jerseyans) with the slogan "stronger than the storm."  Coming in an election year, it seemed awful fishy to me, and I was right.  According to the Asbury Park Press, the "Stronger Than the Storm" ad agency charged $2 million more than a competing firm whose ads were not going to feature Christie.  That's right, the state used taxpayer dollars to give the Christie campaign some free propaganda. The head of the selection committee and a Christie appointee had also once received a $49,000 loan from the governor.  I tell you, it stinks worse than a two-day old fish wrapped in a three day old newspaper.

And yet the man seems to be made of teflon.  Like the popular bully at school, people feel like they have to support him for their own standing, or are afraid of what could happen to them if they oppose him.  Considering that, I am not sure if the little revelation I have to offer here will matter much.

The weather was beautiful when I got home from work today, and so I decided to take the dog on an extra-long walk down to Independence Park.  On my way home, I noticed some Christie stickers on the light poles.  I looked closer, and saw that the slogan "Stronger Than The Storm" appeared below his name.  The governor had always said that the ads this summer were there to promote New Jersey, and not him, but evidently his campaign is now explicitly tying the governor to the summer ad campaign.  Not only is this ridiculous in light of Christie's failures to enact proper storm recovery, it pretty much exposes those ads for what they were the whole time: state-sponsored and tax-payer funded propaganda for the governor.  I am not sure if it's illegal, but it stinks.

Footnote: I have also just been told that the sticker reads "Stronger Than The Strom," which is a helluva typo.  I guess Christie would be stronger than the corpse of Strom Thurmond.

Chris Christie's New Jersey Hustle

Back when I lived in Texas and my wife was up here in New Jersey, I often asked myself which governor I disliked more, Rick Perry or Chris Christie.  Although Perry's political actions might be more destructive, it's been made plainly obvious that he is, to use the technical term, a goddamned moron.  Christie, however, is a smart guy, and while the American public outside of Texas (even in the Republican Party) thinks Perry is a dope, Christie has taken on superstar status.  When I last visited my Nebraska homeland my relatives, apropos nothing, had lots of good words to say for him.  I had to remind them that my wife is a public high school teacher, and that we didn't really care for a man who has harmed our livelihood and turned teachers into scapegoats.

Both Perry and Christie prosper because they appeal to the worst tendencies of their state's cultures.  Perry embodies the thick-headed, religiously fanatical, violence prone, anti-modern hateful undercurrents in Texas culture, whereas Christie, who's "tough talk" amounts to douchebaggery, represents the Garden State's relative tolerance and celebration of (white) men who act like complete assholes.  Just as Perry could never get elected outside of Texas, a guy like Christie wouldn't last in my home state of Nebraska, where people expect politicians to act with civility and a lack of negativity.  However, conservatives there are more than happy to see their id being unleashed in another state.

If you look at Christie's behavior in public, it is amazing that it is being celebrated rather than excoriated.  Case in point: yesterday he was visiting storm-damaged sites in southern New Jersey, and told reporters that he only wanted to hear questions on the storm relief, not on other issues, such as the budget.  When a reporter dared to ask him a question about whether he was going to call an emergency legislative session, Christie asked the reporter "are you stupid?" called him "an idiot" and then stormed away from the news conference.  This fits in with a tendency on his part to call names and humiliate those who oppose him.  Last week he called the Democrat who heads the Senate Budget Committee an "arrogant SOB."  He also likes to have town hall meetings where he calls those who oppose him "idiots" and have them booted out, even if they are former Navy SEALs.

You can contrast this with president Obama, who was actually interrupted in the middle of a statement by a reporter who acted in an unprecedentedly rude fashion, but managed to finish the event and upbraid the reporter without resorting to name-calling or temper tantrums.  Of course, as a black man, the president would have been crucified, rather than being called "tough."  Christie is a schoolyard bully let loose in the political arena, and the news media love it so much they are like the toadies egging the bully on as he beats on other kids.  As is usually the case in bullying and mobbing situations, those who want to say something are cowed into silence lest they get targeted by the bully and his mob.  

In my case, this is personal.  When he targets my wife and her hard-working colleagues, I get positively steaming mad.  I could cite any number of instances where he has attacked teachers and insulted them, but I will refer to one of the more outlandish.  Two years ago, in the midst of local school elections, Christie accused teachers of indoctrinating students and using them as "drug mules" to pass information on to their parents to tell them how to vote.  I have been bullied a few times in my life, both as a child and as an adult, and I will be damned if I will allow it to happen again to me or another member of my family.  I have never canvassed for a political campaign in my life, but I will volunteer for whoever runs against Christie.

Christie isn't just a bully, he's a hustler.  He came into office claiming to reduce corruption, close the budget deficit, and grow the economy, but contrary to what you may have heard on Fox News, Christie has been a tremendous failure in fulfilling these promises.  Here are a few examples:

• He touts a "New Jersey comeback" since he has come to office, but in fact, New Jersey has the fifth highest unemployment rate of any state in the country.  Because of his cuts to the state employment rolls, he is personally responsible for much of this.
• He claimed to sweep out corruption, but he has given sweetheart contracts to run privatized halfway houses to a company who used to lobby for, and which evidently has let criminals escape and commit mayhem, and to terrorize fellow inmates.
• Christie has also engaged in heinous lies.  He effectively killed a project to build a new train tunnel to New York City, which is absolutely necessary because the current century-old tunnel can no longer handle the volume of traffic.  (I can attest from personal experience that there are delays each and every day because of this.)  Christie destroyed the tunnel project, claiming it would be too expensive, but he intentionally mis-stated the amount of money New Jersey had to pay, and was really cannibalizing the project to get money for highways instead of raising the gasoline tax.
• While he wrecked a project that many of his constituents need to get to work every day claiming "tough economic times," he has let state money flow freely the Xanadu shopping mall to be built at the Meadowlands.  That's right, he would rather give money to private developers to build a mall than to build a public tunnel.  I am sensing a trend here...
• Although he rails against wasteful spending, last summer Christie used a state police helicopter to fly him to his son's baseball game, and then had a car drive him all of 100 yards from the landing site to the baseball field.  
• Although Christie claims to want to cut taxes, he recently rejected property tax relief and earned income tax credits and has tried to end urban enterprise zones which lower sales taxes in certain areas.  Of course, these forms of tax relief benefit the less well-off, a group of people Christie appears to regard in contempt.
• Last but not least, Christie has always talked about "tough choices" to reduce the deficit, but his budget contains significant shortfalls masked by a fraudulent state income projection.  Oh yeah, he also called the non-partisan budget analyst who discovered the shortfall "Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers."

So please, American news media, stop fluffing Chris Christie, and start asking some hard questions.