Nikki Nullified

South Carolina Republicans have fallen out of love with their former governor, Nikki Haley.

She lost the state's Republican primary to Donald Trump by twenty percentage points.  She didn't lose by as much as the polls had predicted, and some pundits will find some way to spin it as being a revealing look at Trump's disadvantages and weaknesses in a general-election matchup with Joe Biden, but it's still a crushing loss.  The one-on-one knock-out, drag-down fight that people had been hoping for between Trump and an anti-Trump has finally happened, but it's Haley who is getting knocked out and dragged down.

This is a loss that Haley richly deserves.  Some pundits have actually applauded her for finding her voice and lashing out at Trump at long last, but the truth of the matter is that she's merely changing her message to appeal to the anti-Trump faction in the GOP after treating Trump with kid gloves didn't work out.  But then bashing Trump for his numerous deficiencies was something Chris Christie had done in his 2024 presidential campaign since day one, and he didn't get any credit for finding his voice. What he got was an early exit from the campaign when he tried to gain traction but ended up in traction.  Haley only bashes Trump with the knowledge that she has nothing left to lose, so why not go full tilt boogie in being the anti-Trump when no one gives a twit?

But I'll be happy to see her continue her campaign long enough to drive Trump crazy. 😉 

Haley vows to stay in the presidential campaign for as long as she has the money.  She could theoretically stay until the bitter end.  But Chris Christie knows better than to plan to vote for Haley in the last-in-the-nation New Jersey presidential primary in June, because Trump will have long before won all the delegates needed for the Republican presidential nomination.  

Chris and Chris

Current New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu will not run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, while former New Jersey governor Chris Christie will.  And the reasons why are the same - Donald J. Trump.  

Sununu (above) is afraid that, with nine Republicans already challenging Trump in a winner-take-all primary and caucus system, he would just be one more person splitting the anti-Trump vote into smaller pieces.  He thinks he can use his success as governor of New Hampshire and his traditional conservative political philosophy (lower taxes, small government, screw the poor) to steer other Republicans away from Trump and possibly have an effect on his state's first-in-the-nation (for the GOP, anyway) primary.  

Christie (above), on the other hand, is taking Trump head-on in an effort to damage his comeback hopes and also convince others that Trump is a fraud, as well as someone who uses people for his own gains and demands loyalty from others without bestowing loyalty in return.  Christie knows this firsthand; despite being a friend of Trump for years before Trump entered the White House, Trump's cavalier dismissals of his advise and counsel and his failure to show any empathy for Christie when he got COVID and almost died left the former New Jersey governor embittered and angry.  He also escaped Trump's mind-control cult, and he now preaches against Trumpism the way Leah Remini preaches against her former religion of Scientology.   

The truth is, I'm afraid, that Sununu and Christie are likely to be ineffective in stopping Trump.  And for the same reason - Republican primary and caucus voters are so enthralled with Trump and his extreme and extremely inconsistent positions that he somehow finds a way to keep them coming back for more.  Like a slutty pop diva with no apparent singing talent, Trump becomes more popular as he displays more shallowness and tastelessness. Whatever lofty ideals Sununu and Christie may believe in that give them faith that they can restore the Republican Party to what it used to be before Trump came along (which wasn't all that much better than it is now), it's really too late for any of that.

Trump's Chances

There were a lot of protests against NBC News for having a presidential campaign town hall event with Donald Trump in direct opposition to ABC News' town hall with Joe Biden and giving him a chance to play the media for his benefit, but town hall host Savannah Guthrie grilled Trump with tough questions on health care, the pandemic, and QAnon, and he fumbled all of the,  Furthermore, Biden was similarly grilled by George Stephanopoulos over the courts, the economy, and similar topics, and he was relaxed and upbeat in his responses.  He was . . . presidential. 

Also, the Biden town hall got higher ratings than the Trump one.  

That said, Trump, despite all of his bad poll numbers and numerous stumbles, still has a chance to win the 2020 presidential election.  An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that, while Biden leads Trump by eleven percentage points, more voters trust Republicans on the economy and that remains a greater issue of concern than the pandemic.  And as far as the pandemic is concerned, I would note that about 3 percent of Americans have been infected by COID-19 and 2.8 percent of those infected have died.  So, an overwhelming majority of Americans haven't caught the COVID bug and many of them may not see the same urgency in combatting the disease as the experts due.  So I would not count Trump out yet.  Especially when you have artificial-intelligence experts and even Biden's own campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon (no relation to Martin O'Malley) saying that the race is closer than the polls say it is.

But when Chris Christie - in the hospital with COVID for seven days - declared that he was stupid for not taking the proper precautions when visiting Trump to help him with his debate prepping and that he no longer trusts the White House to keep people safe - I sure am tempted to count Trump out.

(P.S.  Now, links on my blog posts open in separate windows.) 

November Surprise

The gubernatorial race in Virginia is so close, although Democrat Ralph Northam seems to have the edge, that no one can call it and Republican Ed Gillespie can still pull victory from the jaws of defeat.  In the New Jersey gubernatorial election,  Phil Murphy appears to be on course to win but Kim Guadagno is still pegging away and could gain enough last-minute momentum to pull an upset.  You scoff at that suggestion? Well, you remember what they said about the ant who tried to fell a rubber tree.     

Up to now, I've been worried about a surprise development that could cost Murphy the election.  At the height of hurricane season, I feared that a storm would strike New Jersey and Governor Chris Christie would put Guadagno in charge of emergency operations and allow her to prove herself as a leader . . . and overtake Murphy in the polls.  No.  Then I feared that Murphy's lieutenant-gubernatorial running mate Sheila Oliver's vote in the state Assembly against a bill meant to deny state contracts to companies that boycott Israel would cost him the extremely important Jewish vote.  Not quite.  Then came his promise to make New Jersey a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants, which could cost New Jersey in federal aid (you mean we actually get some??)   It's driven up anti-Murphy enthusiasm among Republican voters but not so much for pro-Murphy voters in the immigrant-heavy Democratic base in the state . . . but no, Murphy's poll numbers are still holding.  But anything could happen, given all of the garbage that Guadagno has dumped on him.  I've even been wondering if the October 31 terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan, given the fact that an Uzbek national living in New Jersey (albeit on a legal visa) perpetrated it, would play into Guadagno's naked immigrant-bashing as well as the line that Democrats are soft on terrorism.  

The most gratifying sight of Murphy advocating sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, apart from the fact that it's the right thing to do, is that Murphy could have talked his way out of his hardline stand with the mealy-mouthed language commonly associated with wimpy Democrats and backpedaled on it to avoid offending centrist independents, but instead he doubled down and stood on his principles.  If he wins, his courageous stand for immigrants will hopefully embolden Democrats in other states as the 2018 midterm elections approach.        

I'm still nervous, if only because the last Republican woman to face a Democrat in a New Jersey governor's election, Christine Todd Whitman, upset the conventional wisdom by winning, something Whitman herself has recently made a point of in advocating for Guadagno.  (Except that Whitman was seven points behind Democrat Jim Florio going into the 1993 election, not fourteen points behind like Guadagno is behind Murphy, and Florio was an unpopular incumbent governor - much like Guadagno's boss, Chris Christie.)  But Murphy, who says he has our backs, has Democrats who have his back.  Including this one.

Yes, that's Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland and 2016 presidential candidate, stumping for Phil Murphy on October 29 in Paterson, near where I live.  (I didn't learn about it until after the fact, of course.)  It was one of four stops O'Malley made in New Jersey on that rainy day.  He didn't attract the number of people that Hillary Clinton might (okay, would), but with each person he meets and interacts with while campaigning for Democratic candidates nationwide, he makes a presidential run in 2020 more doable . . . one voter at a time.

I recall that ant and the rubber tree again . .  .    

Murphy's Law of Justice

The Democrats hoped to gain one governorship this year by holding the governor's office in Virginia and taking the governor's office in New Jersey, where Republican lame duck Chris Christie is historically unpopular and where Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Murphy leads his GOP opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, by double digits in the polls.  But even if they do both, the party's net gain will be zero.  That's because West Virginia Governor James Justice, elected as a Democrat in 2016, just became a Republican.

Justice, the governor a of state dependent on coal mining and a coal magnate himself, said he could no longer serve his constituents as a Democrat when the Democratic Party seems hell-bent on destroying the coal industry (actually, market forces are destroying the coal industry, but let that pass).   His defection to the GOP comes after Donald Trump won West Virginia by two to one over Hillary Clinton.

To those who suggest that this could be a foolish move for Justice if Trump doesn't get West Virginia's economy moving again by 2020, when both men are up for re-election, and if Trump's popularity tanks in West Virginia as it already has nationally, you're the fools.  No Democratic presidential candidate has carried West Virginia since 1996.  Republicans have made serious inroads in state and local politics in the past twenty years.  Senator Joe Manchin, the only West Virginia politician of any relevance with a D after his name, could be in trouble when he runs for re-election next year; Shelley Moore Capito, the state's Republican U.S. Senator, faces no apparent difficulty when she, like Trump and Justice, is up for re-election in 2020.  Even if Trump loses his bid for re-election in a landslide, he'll still carry West Virginia.  Justice knows that.  

(Pointless historical aside I couldn't resist: It was a Republican administration - the first, Lincoln's administration - that brought West Virginia into the Union in the first place.  When Virginia, of which it was a part, seceded in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, the western counties nullified the secession ordinance and remained loyal to the Union.  The Union Army occupied the region almost immediately and helped the locals form the new state of West Virginia, admitted to the Union in 1863.)     

Now it is more crucial than ever for the Democrats to hold the governorship in neighboring Virginia and win back the governorship in New Jersey.  I don't know what's going on with the Virginia campaign, which is for an open gubernatorial seat due to a one-term limit, but in New Jersey, voters are so sour on state politics that they don't think much of either candidate, despite Phil Murphy's huge lead.  And his lead may not be as big as it appears; one of Kim Guadagno's internal polls shows her to be behind by only nine points, meaning that her emphasis on lower property taxes could be paying off.

If the Democrats can't win back the governor's office in New Jersey even after eight years of Christopher James Christie, than the party will likely go full Whig indeed. 

There's a Fat Man In the Beach Chair

Republican Chris Christie, overseeing his last state budget as governor of New Jersey, triggered a shutdown on July 1 when he failed to get the New Jersey State Assembly, the lower house of the legislature, to agree to an overhaul of the state's largest health insurer, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, that would have required the insurance company to let the state use its surplus for treatment of opioid addiction as a condition for approving a new $34.7 billion state budget.  The state Senate approved the budget but would not approve the Horizon overhaul until and unless the Assembly passed the overhaul as well.  The Assembly would not do so, and therefore would not approve the budget.  Both houses are controlled by the Democrats; their budget has $300 million of Democratic spending priorities that Christie promised not to excise from the budget in exchange for the Horizon reform.

Senate President Steve Sweeney was willing to go along with Christie's overhaul bill but Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto would not, resulting in a grudge match between Christie and Prieto that produced a government shutdown.  The shutdown closed New Jersey motor vehicle offices and other state services, and it also closed state parks - just in time for the Independence Day holiday period.  As this was the first time Independence Day fell on a Tuesday since 2006 (which is precisely when the state government was last shut down), many New Jerseyans made plans in anticipation of a four-day weekend climaxing with the Fourth that involved going to state beaches.  State beaches, bear in mind, are cheaper than going to municipal beaches and more relaxing.  I can attest to this; I've been to Ocean City, New Jersey in Cape May County, which is situated on a barrier island, and Corson's Inlet State Park in Ocean City, at the southern tip of the island, is far more serene and less hectic than the municipal beaches along the boardwalk and the amusement piers in the northern end of town.

And the state beaches are less costly than the municipal-beach permits.

Be that as it may, New Jerseyans planing to go to the state beaches had their plans upended for much of the holiday weekend.  Christie held firm, but on Monday, July 3, Christie and the legislature reached a compromise that has Horizon return budget surpluses above a capped amount to policyholders in the form of discounts, not spend it on opioid addiction treatment.  Both the budget and the Horizon overhaul bill were quickly passed, re-opening the government.  

So what caused Christie to give in?

Maybe it was this picture of him from Sunday, July 2 at Island Beach State Park with his family and some friends during the shutdown.  

Island Beach State Park, which is on a peninsula despite its name, is the location of the official retreat for the governor - sort of like New Jersey's Camp David.  Christie took advantage of his perks as governor and used the beach at a time when the public was not allowed to.  He flouted his power and his privilege in the faces of the powerless masses who'd been denied their right to use public space.

The optics must have spurred him to cut a deal.  But while the budget crisis is over, the ridicule Christie has had to endure, thankfully, is not.  It's become manna from heaven for Christie's detractors - and there are many, honey! - who know how to use Photoshop.

And here are some of the images these mischievous Photoshoppers have produced.

It was only supposed to be a three-hour shutdown. A three-hour shutdown.

You finally blew it up, eh, Christie?

We seem to be made to suffer.  It's our lot in life.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water . . . the legend continues.

You certainly chose a lovely spot for our meeting.

 Whale on the beach!  He's in the beach chair!

Just hanging out with the crew!

And of course . . .

Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.

Christie's arrogance should send his poll numbers down, though it's hard for him to go any lower than his current 15 percent approval rating.  His final term as governor ends in six months.  He's done the impossible; he's actually made me look forward to January!

Christie is set to become the first New Jersey governor to serve two full terms since Tom Kean left office in 1990.  But a lot of New Jerseyans would prefer he leave sooner.

State of the States

New Jersey and North Carolina have gone totally ga-ga.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie attempted to get passed in the legislature a bill that would have ended the print newspapers' monopoly on legal notices, their last reliable source of revenue, in an act of revenge against all of the nasty things new Jersey newspapers have said about him.  Through controlled by the Democrats, the legislature was ready to go along with the governor, thanks to some deals he made with the Democratic leadership (the details and contents of which were never revealed.  The Democratic rank and file in both the Assembly and the Senate rebelled, though, and the bill was tabled. Defeated outright was a bill that would have allowed Christie to profit from a book deal while still in office.

Did I happen to mention that has-been comedian Joe Piscopo may run for governor of New Jersey next year?    

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the Republican legislature stripped incoming Democratic governor Roy Cooper of his powers, such as reducing the number of appointments he can make by two-thirds, moving some authority to the incoming Republican state schools superintendent, stopping him from appointing trustees to the state university system.  The legislature pretty much made Cooper even weaker than North Carolina governors, including outgoing Republican governor Pat McCrory, already are. Cooper may sue.

And if that weren't enough, the legislature has been attempting to repeal the law forcing transgender people to use the public bathrooms of their birth sex rather than the won hey identify with, provided the city of Charlotte repeal its ordinance affirming the right of transgender people to use public bathrooms of the sex they identify with.  Charlotte stuck to its part of the deal, and so the legislators would have to stick to theirs especially if they wanted to end the economic boycotts against the state.

The statewide repeal failed.

The year is stumbling to an embarrassing close politically in the United States, but the politics will carry on into 2017. 

New Jersey Politics In a Nutshell

Where do I begin?  I've spent so much time on national politics these past few months that I completely overlooked the political landscape of my home state.  Well, let me try to sum up the state of the state of New Jersey in one mind-numbing post . . .  

Governor Chris Christie let the Transportation Trust Fund, which funds our road and rail projects, expire in July, idling several road construction projects across the state.  I assumed it would be fixed by the governor and the legislature in a couple of weeks.  Nothing could have prepared me for how long it took, a period of several months.  But Christie and the Democratic legislature finally got a bill passed, and everything was taken care of.  We simply have to pay 23 cents a gallon extra for gas now. 

Meanwhile, Democrat and former Ambassador to Germany Phil Murphy, a former Wall Street executive, announced his candidacy for governor in 2017.  It looked for awhile that Murphy, a relative unknown, might end up becoming the Martin O'Malley of New Jersey politics . . . a nice Irish guy overshadowed by two big political stars, in this case two guys named Steve - State Senate President Steve Sweeney and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, both of whom had wanted to run for the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2017.  But Sweeney and Fulop, noting the size of Murphy's wallet - he's a millionaire who can finance his own campaign - both took themselves out of the running, pretty much clearing the way for Murphy's nomination.  He's so progressive on the issues, you'd never know he used to work for Goldman Sachs.  He'd prefer that you not bring that up, of course . . . :-D  But I still plan to vote for him.              

Also, Christie aides Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly were found guilty in their apparent conspiracy to close traffic lanes on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge in order tie up traffic in the town of Fort Lee, where the bridge links Interstate 95 and U.S. Routes 1 and 9 (that's right, the George Washington Bridge is part of three highways) between New Jersey and Manhattan.  The lane closures were meant as payback against Fort Lee's Democratic mayor because he refused to endorse Christie's re-election bid in 2013.  Both defendants are appealing.

Christie hasn't been charged with anything, but he is reported to have known about the lane closures at a time when he insisted he knew nothing.  He's damaged goods, and Donald Trump knows that he's irrevocably damaged, which is why Christie will likely not be heading for Washington to become the new President's Attorney General or become anything else.  Oh, he's not damaged in Trump's eyes because of the bridge scandal.  It's because Christie prosecuted Ivanka Trump's father-in-law, developer and bank mogul Charles Kushner, for tax evasion and got him sent to the slammer for a year, something Kushner's son Jared - Ivanka's husband - wasn't too happy about, believing his father to be innocent.  Trump used Christie to win, then dropped him like a hot potato.  Christie, who once thought he'd be succeeding Barack Obama in the White House, is likely going back to New Jersey, and with less heat that he had a couple of years ago . . . and even a couple of days ago.          

Know Your (Lack of) Rights

In staging a U.S. House hearing on the need to preserve religious freedom by giving employers the right to deny contraception and birth control coverage, and having an all-male panel of witnesses, the Republicans appear to have shot themselves in the feet. They appear to be wrecking their changes of electoral success in November, right?

Not so fast. The GOP may be driving moderates and most female voters away with their assault on women's rights, but they're energizing more Christian conservatives into showing up at the polls this fall and possibly making the difference in close congressional elections, as well as in the presidential election . . . where a few thousand or even a few hundred popular votes can swing a state's electoral college votes toward the Republicans. The strategy already seems to be working in the U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts, which has a large working-class Catholic population; woman of the people Elizabeth Warren seems to be in trouble in her bid to unseat incumbent Cosmo boy Scott Brown.

Oh yeah, the singling out of this particular aspect of the Affordable Care Act could attract independent and establishment Republican voters who don't care about contraceptive coverage but detest the health care law to come out and vote, because the law includes a government mandate for everyone to buy medical insurance. Such voters may see the contraceptive coverage requirement as a reminder of the idea of government intrusion into health care, not necessarily as a way to keep women down. They may vote Republican simply to get the law repealed.

Meanwhile, the Fat Man In the State House, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, vetoed a bill allowing gay marriage in the Garden State after both houses of the New Jersey legislature approved it with solid majorities. They just don't have enough votes to override it. This will help Christie shore up his bona fides with the national right-wing movement - look for lots of out-of-state money to pour into his campaign for re-election next year - and position him for a presidential run in 2016 or 2020.

Despite ample evidence that the majority of voters always reject by popular vote the extension of rights to others - in New Jersey itself, the all-male electorate voted down a referendum to grant women the vote in the state in 1915 - Christie prefers to have the gay marriage issue voted on by referendum. How many states have placed a referendum on gay marriage before the voters? 31. How many of these referenda have passed? Zero. Christie says he respects the intelligence and integrity of the voters to make the right decision on the issue. Why would they - they voted for him, didn't they?

The only people who should vote on civil rights are legislators. The Democrats in New Jersey have made it clear that they won't stand for a referendum on this issue, which would likely fail. They also plan to garner enough votes to override Christie's veto before the current legislative session ends in January 2014. Personally, I think gay marriage has a better chance of passing by referendum. :-(

Christie's Gambits

Chris Christie is suddenly looking very foolish. Faced with resurgent Democratic majorities in the New Jersey state legislature, the state's supersized governor is proposing a popular referendum on gay marriage to skirt the issue and keep it off his plate. See, if the New Jersey legislature passes a bill legalizing gay marriage, Christie will feel compelled to veto it to burnish his social conservative credentials for a possible future presidential run, and his veto could be overridden. So he's proposing that it be put to a popular vote, insisting that voters should have the final say on an issue that he says is better left to the people than to the politicians.

Since when did voters - who usually cast ballots out of self-interest, which is why politicians appeal to their self-interest in the first place - ever vote to expand the civil rights of others? New Jersey actually had the extension of suffrage to women on the ballot in 1915, and the all-male electorate soundly defeated it - a result invalidated by the Nineteenth Amendment five years later.

Speaking of self-interest, Christie only wants something put to a popular vote if he thinks it will benefit him. It's all about strategy. Certainly a public referendum on gay marriage will spare him the responsibility of taking a stand on the issue. But having an early Republican presidential primary in the state and opening up the possibility of his candidate, Mitt Romney, faring poorly - nope, can't have any of that. So Christie had the New Jersey presidential primary moved back to the first Tuesday following June 1, in tandem with the primary elections for state and local offices. Genius! Romney was expected to have clinched the Republican presidential nomination by April. So, by moving the presidential primary back to June, Christie could endorse Romney and ensure that he would win New Jersey . . . because by June, Romney was expected to have token or even non-existent opposition for the nomination. Also, Christie could enjoy the same position of a neutral politician when the primary occurred, because Romney would already be the last man standing and Christie would never worry about having to deliver the state to his candidate. He wouldn't have to do any heavy lifting in his own state . . . and Christie, from the looks of things, obviously hates lifting heavy things. It seemed so clever . . . until Newt Gingrich surged in South Carolina and turned Romney's lead in the polls leading up to the Florida primary to a dead heat, turning the whole race upside down.

More recently, Romney has bounced back, and now he's likely to win the Sunshine State's winner-take-all primary. But other battles - including the Nevada caucuses on February 4 - await Romney, and Gingrich doesn't look like he's going to quit the campaign even if he loses Florida. This race could go all the way to May . . . or even June.

Genius!

Corridor Concerns

With the governors of Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida - three governors who, incidentally, could all be fighting for their political lives will before they're up for re-election in 2014 - having canceled high-speed rail projects in their states, Congress is likely to do the same for the nation at large. President Obama's attempt to make high-speed passenger rail accessible to 80 percent of all Americans by 2035 could be a casualty of the budget-cutting attempts on Capitol Hill. But - and this is an important "but" - that doesn't mean high-speed rail in America is about to be abandoned completely. And I'm not talking about Illinois's "high-speed" Chicago-St. Louis corridor, which will feature six train sets that travel at 110 miles an hour (you call that fast?) or California's bullet train project, with a projected cost off $100 billion that could be hard to sustain economically and politically.

I'm actually talking about the Northeast Corridor. (Yes, we in the Northeast have the Acela, but at 150 mph it hardly compares to the even faster trains enjoyed in France and Germany.) As a Florida Republican, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman John Mica hardly sounds like an ally of high-speed rail, given the fact that both his governor and his party have said no to it. But Mica not only supports high-speed rail, he thinks that the only way to ensure its success nationwide - even in increasingly crowded California - is to first build it where it's going to get the most use and be most appreciated. For Mica, that means the line between Boston and Washington by way of New York.

"While I want to give California every chance and opportunity to be successful," Mica told a conference of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association in New York on November 8, "I think we have to redirect our efforts to having at least one success in high-speed rail in the nation. And that high-speed rail success needs to be here in the Northeast Corridor."

Mica also reversed himself on privatizing Amtrak. Some Republicans have suggested that privatizing the national passenger railroad and making it susceptible to market forces would encourage high-speed rail to be developed faster. However, Mica, who once agreed with the idea, now rejects the idea, believing that Amtrak is now willing to work with Congress to make something happen.

Meanwhile, Congress is also ready to allocate $15 million as a down payment for engineering work on the proposed Gateway tunnel to connect Secaucus, New Jersey with Penn Station (someday to be named Moynihan Station, after the late U.S. Senator from New York) in Midtown Manhattan. The project looks to be less expensive than the proposed Access to the Region's Core tunnel that New Jersey governor Chris Christie canceled for being too costly, and it will allow thirteen extra New Jersey Transit trains and eight extra Amtrak trains into New York when it is completed in 2020 or 2021. Christie is more receptive to this plan.

As a passenger rail advocate, you take your victories where you can find them . . ..

Ending With A Whimper

Pundits overwhelmingly predicted that Chris Christie would not run for President, and they were right; the New Jersey governor said so on Tuesday.  Christie cited his responsibilities as governor as a reason not to run, but many commentators noted the lack of a campaign apparatus on the ground and the lack of time available in getting one up and running.  My mother, not a professional pundit, probably had the best analysis: "He's too lazy to run!"

Christie also expressed his commitment to serving a full term as governor of New Jersey and focusing on the state's issues. Many saw this comment as a dig at Texas governor Rick Perry for not even paying attention to his most meager responsibilities of his office (and the Texas governorship's most important duties are meager from the start)  and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for not even finishing her term and resigning to make a lot of money as a professional celebrity, as if to keep himself in possible contention for 2016 by burnishing his governing credentials.

Oh yeah, Palin (speak of the devil - some would say I'm being literal) finally announced that she would not run for President, and no one noticed.  Not because Christie got all the attention, because people finally got sick and tired of Palin's teases on her decision.  I've said that Palin is to politics what Madonna and Lady Gaga are to popular music.  By that, I mean that Palin isn't gifted or talented in her field - in fact, what she produces in her profession is pretty awful - and such a person normally doesn't last.  But Palin, like the two pop singers I just mentioned, has lasted because she's able to get people to keep paying attention to her.  But she forgot to keep doing the one thing that allowed Madge and Gaga to turn gimmicky novelty acts into careers.  Palin forgot to keep leaving people wanting more.

Christie's absence theoretically helps President Obama by denying the Republicans a candidate that can pick up some reliably Democratic states, while helping Mitt Romney having more of the dwindling Republican center in the primaries.  Palin's absence helps Perry shore up his Tea Party credentials.  But just because the GOP's biggest bully and its biggest dunce aren't running doesn't mean Americans have dodged a bullet; Obama hasn't won re-election yet, and Romney and Perry have enough fatal flaws of their own as would-be Presidents.

Goodbye To the New Jersey Network

It's over.

New Jersey Network, the New Jersey state public television station, an institution that survived its puny UHF signals, a lack of local programming, News 12 New Jersey, and former Governor Christine Todd Whitman, signs off tomorrow. The state Senate failed to stop the takeover by New York City's main public television station, which is supported by Governor Chris Christie and shepherded by broadcaster Steve Adubato, ending a 40-year run.

What Christie is doing is shifting control of NJN - now to be called NJTV - to WNET in New York City, which also took over Long Island public television WLIW and phased out its own local public affairs programming, citing costs. But then, at least Long Island is a part of New York State. This move by the governor transfers a state property out of its borders, with only Adubato having any clue to what goes on in the Garden State. And WNET has no clue of local news coverage. They have no equivalent newscast covering New York State, or even the the city and its Westchester and Long Island suburbs, or news in Albany. NJN News covers all of New Jersey - especially what goes on in Trenton.

The state is to pay $4.7 million a year, including a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, toward the deal, even though Montclair State University offered to take over NJN for less money and pointed to its state-of-the-art television studios and an offer to maintain NJN's antennas (not a part of the WNET deal). WNET's Neal Shapiro promised New Jersey programming at less cost, but New Jersey state taxpayers would still foot the same tax bill. Shapiro wants to save his station's money, not ours; his programming would use the barest facilities and resources.

State Senator Loretta Weinberg, a Bergen County Democrat, wasn't having any of this. "New Jersey’s taxpayers will be on the hook for millions of dollars annually to support the continued operation," Weinberg said. "So while we hand this network off to a New York operator, we are not saving that much money."

To be fair, a good deal of NJN's programming was the standard PBS fare of "Great Performances" and "Nature" and imported series from Britain. But NJN did have its distinguished newscast and its community affairs shows, as well as locally produced series devoted to the arts and the like. NJTV's fare promises to be more New York City-based programming with a New Jersey bent, and the nightly news report under consideration, as noted in my earlier post, would involve more analysis and less actual reporting. That's where Shapiro's savings come in. And less reporting means less actual news.

"What’s in it for the viewer?" asks the Star-Ledger's Paul Mulshine. "Nothing I can think of. As to what’s in it for the WNET bureaucracy, well, there’s money. And there’s also elimination of competition. Thanks to federal 'must-carry' provisions, if Montclair State got the station, the signal would compete with WNET on New York cable."

Montclair State University (from which one of NJN's UHF outlets broadcast) is going ahead with plans to compete with NJTV, but its broadcasting will be Internet-based. Not exactly the same thing.

As those of you who found this post via Facebook know, I've done some freelance reporting in northern New Jersey (and I won't say any more about that here, because this is a commentary blog, not a blog for news, and I like to keep the roles of reporting and commenting as separate as possible), so I have the utmost respect for NJN's reporters. I've even had the privilege of meeting a few of them, and I don't think I could ever do or say enough to convey my respect and admiration for them.

I met three. Many years ago, I met NJN reporter Belinda Morton - then one of the very few black female TV news reporters in the New York City area - and I acted like I'd met a Hollywood starlet, I was such a fan of her work. (Ms. Morton is long gone, as are so many other NJN reporters from the early nineties; many of them, I've been led to understand, are in public relations now.) More recently, I met current NJN reporter Desirée Taylor at an event I attended and I expressed regret over the NJN deal Christie inked; she thanked me for my concern. But the biggest NJN personality I ever met was Michael Aron, the station's long-time senior political correspondent, whose book on the 1993 New Jersey gubernatorial election I had read. Meeting him was like meeting Walter Cronkite or Eric Sevareid. Telling him how much I liked that book, I, having met him in May of this year (2011), admitted that many of the key players he covered in his book - Whitman, incumbent governor James Florio, et al. - were irrelevant now. "Well," he said with a smile, "I'm still around!"

What a difference a month makes. :-( Although Mr. Aron is a skilled moderator as well as a reporter, it remains to be seen if he will be on the new NJTV network. Doubtful, though. And would he want any job that keeps him in a studio in Manhattan or Trenton without doing any actual reporting? Because reporting in any of NJTV's proposed shows doesn't look like a realistic venture.

This is the kind of talent the state is divorcing itself from. More glaringly, Christie is saying good riddance to a devoted bunch of broadcasters who have always tried to put the state's best interests forward.

Unlike Chris Christie.

American Nightmare

The state of New Jersey took a huge step in resolving the shopping mall-entertainment center boondoggle started a decade earlier at its Meadowlands sports complex just west of New York City. Unfortunately, it does not involve blowing it up.

Xanadu, a name commonly associated with Charles Foster Kane's uncompleted Florida castle and a bad Hollywood musical, was also the name of a huge shopping and entertainment complex begun in the early two thousand zeroes in the shadow of where the Giants and Jets football teams play. The project languished, though, through a series of delays, culminating with a total halt to construction in May 2009 in the wake of the financial meltdown. While developers struggled to keep the Xanadu project afloat, the winter of 2010-11 caused considerable damage to the complex, at part of its outer wall collapsing under the weight of ice and snow.

Finally, the New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority and the Canadian Mall developer Triple Five Group cut a deal for Triple Five to complete the mall, which is being renamed American Dream Meadowlands, by late 2013. Oh yeah, and Governor Chris Christie is promising $200 million in state aid.

What? This mall was a bad idea when it was pitched, it was a bad idea when it was started, it's a bad idea now, and it will be a bad idea when it opens. American Dream Meadowlands is to include, among other things, an indoor amusement park, a water park, a skydiving simulator, a live-show theater, and I guess, stores. It will be designed to provide New Jerseyans with all sorts of wondrous novelty amusements and, I assume, amuse themselves to death.

Oh, and there's also an indoor ski slope.

What is this, Dubai?

The $200 million in state aid is the final insult, ticking off many observers who feel that Christie should be subsidizing infrastructure projects instead of private retail enterprises. Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute - a conservative think tank - is one of the plan's biggest critics. Writing in the Star-Ledger recently, Gelinas opined that Christie was right to question the cost overruns concerning the passenger rail tunnel he pulled the plug on, but she also says he should still be pursuing infrastructure projects designed to accommodate northern New Jersey's increasingly dense population and move people around efficiently. The only person who would consider a mall as public infrastructure, she says, is a teenage girl.

And how many of them will be able to drive to this mall?

As New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel says, New Jersey needs a mall like it needs another chemical waste cleanup site. But Christie is counting on the complex formerly known as Xanadu to pay off, as it should open just before Super Bowl XLVIII at the New Meadowlands Stadium in 2014.

He'd have to believe it will be magic.

Snowblind

Noted reckless driver Chris Christie, who recently replaced Joe Piscopo as the official state embarrassment, is finally on the receiving end of mainstream media criticism from people not named Ed Schultz. As you all know by now, Christie was on vacation in Disney World in Florida when the Christmas weekend blizzard hit New Jersey, and he didn't see fit to return home as quickly as possible to fulfill his constitutional role as governor and take charge of a major emergency. Rumor has it that he couldn't leave because he had trouble wedging himself out of his seat in the teacup ride.

On December 22, when the forecast for the coming weekend suggested light snow showers, Christie - unaware that forecasts are subject to change - informed New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney that he and Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno would be out of the state for the holiday and that he, Sweeney, would thus serve as acting governor. Neither Christie nor Sweeney likely expected anything to happen, but with the possibility of a blizzard very much in the air, so to speak - forecasters couldn't rule it out - it didn't look good for both the governor and the lieutenant governor to make tracks for warmer climates. (While Christie was at Disney World, Guadagno went to Mexico.) Ironically, the recent creation of the office of lieutenant governor was meant to lessen the the need for the Senate president to be acting governor.

Sweeney performed admirably during the emergency - more so than New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who seemed to be tone deaf to cries about unplowed streets in the city's outer boroughs - and garnered a lot of good press for his efforts. When Christie returned to New Jersey, he was lambasted, and rightly so, for putting personal interest over state concerns. Kim Guadagno had to go to see Mexico to be with her ailing father, who most likely won't live much longer, so it only made sense for Christie to cancel his family's trip to Disney World rather than leave the state to deal with a major winter storm on its own. But Christie was adamant, insisting that he promised his kids a trip to Disney World and saying that his family comes first.

So why is he the governor of New Jersey?

Can you imagine the idea of President Christie? ("I promised my kids a trip to Australia, and with Vice President Fiorina also out of the country, I was certain Speaker Bachmann could handle the blackout riots in Phoenix. Sending a Blackwater contingent in to restore order was the right thing to do.")

At least Bloomberg was on the ground when the storm hit, and he was contrite about his failures. So while Newark mayor Cory Booker was going all over the city (also underplowed like New York) to help shovel snow and let everyone know about it via Twitter, getting good press like Sweeney, Christie had to face a different kind of storm - a media storm of questions about his sense of priority, his sense of responsibility, and his fitness to govern.

Where were all these reporters when Christie cut taxes on the wealthy? How come no one questioned his fitness for office when he cut spending on various social programs and raised fees and transit fares? How come Steve Kroft didn't point out any of this in his interview with the governor on "60 Minutes" for a story about state and local budget crises?

Christie faced questions about his ineffectiveness this time because the problem - the snowstorm - was so obvious. Most of his crimes against New Jersey have to be explained with statistics and charts - you know, boring stuff - and so the media have given him a pass. So if you think this is the start of a more serious look at the governor of New Jersey, think again.

Christie, for his part, deflected blame for the handling of the snow local governments. He also said the media made a big deal out of it because they had nothing else to talk about during a slow news week. If the media only saw what he gets away with in other weeks, they'd have far more damning news to report than this.

Derailed

New Jersey governor Chris Christie has demonstrated his knack for understanding the price of everything and the value of nothing. This past Thursday, after $600 million had been spent to begin a new passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson River to relieve congestion in the existing 100-year-old train tunnel to Manhattan, Christie announced he was cancelling the project because cost overruns had made the price tag on the project - which he supported during the 2009 gubernatorial campaign - from less than $9 billion to about $14 billion. Christie explained that New Jersey can't spend money it does not have.

Except that the rail tunnel would create six thousand construction jobs and 45,000 permanent jobs once completed by the 2018 target date. It would also get 22,000 cars off New Jersey highways and relieve congestion in the Lincoln Tunnel between New Jersey and New York City. Christie also was ready to throw away $3 billion in federal money for the project, which cannot be allocated to other projects. Democrats in the New Jersey legislature and the state's two Democratic U.S. Senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, tried unsucessfully to get Christie to reconsider. Appropriately enough, it took a Republican - Ray LaHood, the Secretary of Transportation - to get Christie to grant the project a two-week reprieve in an attempt to revive it. Some of have expressed speculation that Christie is trying to use the threat of stopping the project as a bargaining chip to renegotiate the costs.

The tunnel plan was not perfect. It does not connect commuters directly with the new Moynihan Station being built out of the old Pennsylvania Station in New York, and a planned connection to Grand Central Terminal was scuttled. But the benefits of the connection far outweighed the flaws, and Jeff Tittel, the director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, has suggested the reprieve be used to correct the plan's weaknesses.

Despite the need for new transportation infrastructure in this country, Christie's bid to cancel this rail tunnel project is likely to enhance his standing in the national Republican party as a disciplinary cost-cutter. Republicans in other parts of the country, after all, don't have to worry about commuting to New York by train. But it could also help Christie in New Jersey. First, he wouldn't have to raise any transportation taxes - least of all the gasoline tax - to pay for it. Second, most New Jerseyans wouldn't be affected by the cancellation of the project. Most New Jerseyans commute by car to suburban office parks in places like Paramus, Parsippany, Piscataway, and other godawful sprawlscapes whose names begin with the letter P. Thirdly, many New Jerseyans were unaware of the rail tunnel anyway.

Christie does not have New Jersey's interests at heart. All he cares about is saving money for himself and his rich cronies. And to think his petty, miserly agenda - which he has pushed through like the arrogant bully he is - is winning plaudits nationwide.

Christie Clear

It should be obvious by now that the most dangerous place in America is anywhere between Chris Christie and a camera. Christie was recently in California campaigning for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (forcing me to use the names "Christie" and "Whitman" for the first time in nearly a decade) and he shouted down a participant at a town hall-style campaign appearance for daring to ask a question at an event where no questions were entertained. The question was why Whitman wasn't taking any questions. Christie dismissed the man - a wealthy businessman named Ed Buck - as someone who was trying to divide the country by yelling and screaming at people. The idea of Christie reprimanding someone for shouting angrily is like a demolition derby participant accusing reprimanding someone for driving recklessly.

Christie also went to Chicago to accept a $100 million gift from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to fix Newark's schools - on Oprah Winfrey's show. He's hoping that Zuckerberg's gift - which will likely replace the few remaining arts education programs in Newark schools with classes on social networking - will compensate for the failure to qualify for four times as much public money to improve all of Newark's schools. How Christie plans to keep Newark schools going after Zuckerberg's gift runs out has not been addressed.

Zuckerberg is seen as a boy wonder who can make anything work. Too bad Facebook had a major outage yesterday. :-O

Crossed Christie

Chris Christie's incompetence as governor of New Jersey has come to the fore with the recent failure of the state to qualify for federal funding under President Obama's "Race To the Top" program. He placed a fellow conservative, former Jersey City mayor Bret Schundler, in the office of state education commissioner and relied on him to provide Washington with the state school financial information from 2008 and 2009, only to have erroneously complied figures for 2010 and projected figures for 2011 turned in. Christie blasted Obama for not taking the correct figures Schundler supposedly filed in the middle of August and allowing the state to fall short of "Race To the Top" funding by 4.8 points, but it turned out that Schundler never made the correction.

The blame went from Obama to back and forth between Christie and Schundler, each one blaming the other for the mistake. Schundler was fired, and Christie's attempt to reform education in this state has been dealt a serious setback. This past Monday, Schundler was finally forced to admit that he screwed. Christie has been trying to portray himself as a reformer with results, but he hasn't shown much in the way of results or reform with his arrogant, lax approach to governing.

And Schundler has no job prospects and likely won't qualify for unemployment benefits.

Oliver's Story

Sheila Oliver, the Democratic speaker of the New Jersey State Assembly, is not a happy camper. Her party recently was forced to give concessions on the state budget to Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, who played hardball with the legislature on the issue.

Oliver, who is black, had some choice words for Christie and his advisers on the subject of race and class, and it caused a stir not unlike the comments Shirley Sherrod was depicted to have made. Except that, though Oliver did say what she was reported to have said, she was expressing frustration with the arrogance of others; she did not show any arrogance of her own.

Oliver said that the Christie administration is an inner circle of white men who fail to understand the effects bus fare hikes and canceled tax credits are having on struggling working families. "That's why it’s so easy for them to sit around a table, slash this, put a line through that," Oliver told Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger. "How many of the guys sitting around that table have ever even sat on a bus?"

Sure enough, Oliver was criticized in letters to the editor for her racially derogatory remarks. Of course. Because apart from slavery, colonialism, genocide, predatory capitalism, and British art rock, what have white men wrought to warrant such abuse? :-O

Other letter writers liked to point out that white men take the bus just like anyone else. Really? You mean a city bus, not those snazzy commuter buses with sarcophagus seats that connect New Jersey to New York City? That would be news to anyone who rides city buses. I rode on one just yesterday, because I had to go to nearby East Orange (Oliver's hometown, incidentally), where the parking availability is atrocious. I think I saw one or two other white males on the bus. I was surprised to find that many.

If Christie has ever been on a bus, it must have been a long time ago. And, given his horrible driving record, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to ride them before he got himself a chauffeur.

Governor Christie

The Jon Corzine era, as the two thousand zeroes are likely to be remembered in New Jersey, is over. After six years as a U.S. senator and four years as governor of New Jersey, Corzine has stepped aside and gotten off the stage. Now the state is in the hands of noted reckless driver Chris Christie, who has taken over a state that's in a sorrier situation than his driving record. The state is broke, property taxes are through the roof, and thousands of people are unemployed.

Christie has vowed to get to work right away, promising to get more aid to the state's unemployment insurance fund, give property tax rebates as a stepping stone to property tax reform, reform higher education, streamline state regulations, and, uh, give tax cuts to the rich. Well, he might not get very far on that last point, given a Democratic legislature. But as he's is my state's governor now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He seems to be ready to get right to work and play hardball for reforming the state's pension systems and saving the state's sports authority, which runs the Meadowlands complex. We have to give him a chance to sort things out and set new Jersey right. No pun intended.

Let's see what happens. It's going to be a short honeymoon, to be sure.