Since the “chopper gate” story hit the fan last week, The Record’s Charles Stile has been gleefully making the case that the media and partisan noise about Governor Christie’s use of the State Police helicopter has been so ferocious because of “smash mouth” style. Stile, and other NJ media elites, have cited two recent polls, both taken before the chopper hullabaloo, that showed Christie’s approval ratings slipping as evidence that his style is wearing thin on New Jersey voters.
Stile has noted correctly that the chopper noise has been so harsh, despite the facts that Christie’s use of helicopter has been far more frugal than that of his predecessors and that his use of the chopper didn’t cost taxpayers anymore money than if he had traveled by SUV, because of Christie’s “in your face” plain spoken style. Christie’s political opponents and their media lapdogs have been laying in wait for an opportunity bash him back.
Stile has joined The Star Ledger’s Tom Moran in arguing that Christie should be nicer and more polite while turning Trenton upside down. Stile and Moran would have Christie’s compromising more and reforming less.
The irony here, from my point of view, is that over the last few months Christie has been nicer and more compromising. He’s toned it down. His opponents have subsequently stepped it up.
Maybe Christie’s poll numbers have slipped because he’s toned it down. Last spring he was railing against the NJEA and urging voters to defeat school budgets where unions wouldn’t compromise. Voters responded by defeating budgets in record numbers. Christie’s polls were strong. This spring Christie was silent on the school budgets.
Is there no more waste in our public schools? Has the the problem of excessive compensation, pensions and benefits been solved?
Since the GOP lost the legislative redistricting battle, Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney announced a compromise over Supreme Court nominee Anne Patterson’s nomination that had been held up for a year. Part of the compromise included a promise by Sweeney that a hearing to fill the Court seat of former Justice John Wallace, which has been vacant for a year because Sweeney didn’t like that Christie did not reappoint Wallace, would take place next March. By making that agreement Christie acknowledged that Sweeney would still be Senate President in March, meaning Republicans are not going to win control of the State Senate in the coming election.
That the Democrats will retain control of the Legislature after the November election is probably realistic calculus on Christie’s part. He probably made a strategic decision that he can get more of his agenda accomplished by compromising than by fighting. That might be the best decision, but it also means that New Jersey will only have incremental improvement to our dysfunctional governments, rather than real reform…turning Trenton upside down reform…for the rest of Christie’s term.
I’d rather have the confrontational governor we elected. Even if it means stalemates and the shutting down of government, I’d rather Christie ridicule and embarrass the Trenton cesspool than compromise with it. Christie has only been in office less than 18 months. The cesspool has spent decades putting us into the mess we’re in.
As a matter of style, the chopper hullabaloo demonstrates that the media/establishment cesspool is not going to respond to a kinder, gentler Christie in kind. As a matter of substance, today’s news that the Democrats are going to attempt to increase education spending more than the Supreme Court has ordered and increase income taxes, demonstrates that the cesspool will always try to maintain and protect the status quo that makes them fat at the taxpayers’ expense.
Christie came into office promising to govern as if he only had one term to get the job done and without consideration for whether or not he’d be re-elected. Since then he has admittedly fallen in love with the job and become enamoured with national attention and presidential wooing his in your face style has brought to him.
Christie’s “in your face” style works. His adjustments should be by adding humor and charm to his ridicule, like Reagan did, not by compromising and being more polite.
If Christie has concluded that he has accomplished all he can in New Jersey with confrontation, he should get ready quickly and run for President. New Jersey and the United States both face horrendously serious problems. Compromise and tinkering around the edges of a broken system will not do.
We need Chris Chirstie’s unabashed leadership in New Jersey and in America. As Christie advised the new Republican leadership in Washington, we need to put up or shut up.
The Chris Christie for President buzz just won’t go away, no matter how strongly the governor declares he’s not running. Pretty soon the state police will consider putting Christie on a suicide watch.
Ann Coulter’s comment at CPAC…that the GOP either run Chris Christie or Mitt Romney will be the nominee and lose…has reignited the smoldering Christie for President banter.
In cable TV and radio interviews today, Coulter has said Christie is the only Republican who can defeat President Obama, and the governor would have her support even though she questions how conservative he is.
From the left, we have Star Ledger columnist Tom Moran, who helped make Christie a national figure with the famous, “You should see me when I’m really pissed” video. Moran wrote a piece for Sunday’s paper/website which was essentially a white flag of surrender from New Jersey’s Democratic establishment.
After comparing Christie to Oprah, detailing the powerful Democratic support Christie has won over in Hudson and Essex counties, and explaining how hopeless it has become for Trenton Democrats to oppose Christie’s reforms, Moran himself endorsed the Christie agenda:
He’s winning this argument because he’s right on the core issue — New Jersey has promised more than it can deliver. Governors all over the country, in both parties, are moving in the same direction out of necessity.
If Christie can win over Moran, maybe Coulter is right.
Perhaps the question should not be, “Is Chris Christie ready to be president?” as he repeatedly protests that he is not. Perhaps the question should be, “Is Kim Guadagno ready to be governor?”
In a column published on northjersey.com this morning, Bergen Record columnist Charlie Stile lays out the case against legislation that would allow local governments to post their legal notices on the web, rather than to place ads in newspapers at the expense of taxpayers and private businesses and individuals.
The case, according to the Star Ledger publisher Richard Vezza….giving politicians the option of spending money with newspapers or posting the notices on government websites would turn the press into “lapdogs you can control” rather than watchdogs.
The bill could very well put some newspapers out of business, according to Stile.
Charlie Stile just wrote that newspapers integrity is for sale and that legal notices are essentially a government bailout of the industry. I like Charlie, but I don’t see any other way to read his column.
The publishers who testified in Trenton against the legislation said it wouldn’t save that much money. Only $8 million for taxpayers “which isn’t that much when spread over 566 municipalities,” and $12 million for private businesses and individuals (who are also taxpayers, presumably). Proponents of the legislation say it would produce a $70 million savings.
I was killing some time with an associate yesterday while we were waiting to meet someone. A copy of the Asbury Park Press was in the waiting area. My friend picked up the paper and said, “I stopped buying this paper two years ago. I can believe how thin it is.” The classified section was only 5 or 6 pages. Three of those pages were legal notices. A 1/2 page was prostitution ads and Al Gore style “massage therapists” ads.
The question of legal ads should not be one of journalistic integrity….the publishers have already unwittingly admitted that their integrity is a fallacy and that they can be bought. Nor should the question be one of propping up a struggling industry, as desirable as that industry might be.
The question should be, What is the least expensive way to get the ads to the most people?
Clearly, the private sector has already voted. Ad dollars have left the newspaper industry and gone to the Internet where the message finds a larger audience for less money. Requiring taxpayers, private business and individuals to prop up a failing industry only prolongs the inevitable. Technology has made newspapers obsolete, just as technology made the horse and buggy and the 8-track player obsolete.
Sad, as the obsolescence of the horse and buggy was for those invested in that industry and who couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt was sad, but true.
Governor Chris Christie’s vacation during the Blizzard of 2010 did not suppress voters’ approval of the job he is doing.
In the first independent poll since the storm, the Fairleigh Dickinson Public Mind Poll says that 53% of voters approve of Christie’s performance while 36% disapprove. FDU polled 802 registered voters by phone, land line and cell, between January 3 and January 9.
Christie’s favorable/unfavorable rating of 47%-39% is better than every elected governor’s in the last two decades.
Contrasting the FDU poll released this morning to the Quinnipiac Poll of December 21, 2010, one might conclude that the administration’s performance during the Blizzard of 2010 boosted Christie’s ratings. The December Quinnipiac poll gave Christie a 46%-44% approval rating. Quinnipiac polled 1276 voters between December 14 and 19.
Today’s poll should serve as a wake up call to much of New Jersey’s media elite who attempted to turn Christie’s family vacation during the Christmas holiday into a controversy. The controversy existed only in their minds and editorial board conference rooms. The voters and the media elites’ diminishing readership didn’t care.
In perhaps related news,Gannett announced they are laying off half of their remaining reporters at three of its Central Jersey newspapers. Maybe business would be better if the newspapers/news sites listened and reported rather than tried to advance their agenda upon a readership that views them as irrelevant.
Today is 1/11/11. Christie will delivery his first State of the State address this afternoon. New Jersey will be hit with another snow storm this afternoon.
Sorry loyal readers, I’ve been on New Jersey’s cleared roads most of today on business and haven’t had a chance to post. However I did receive several emails requesting the video of Governor Christie’s comments about New Jersey’s Mayors’ response to the storm. Several media outlets have reported that Christie deflected blame away from himself over the conditions of New Jersey’s roads a week ago. That’s not what he said.
Here without any filter except the bald guy who keeps getting in the way, here is what the Governor said:
Not Even Close. The Mainstream Media damages its credibility and demeans the victims of Katrina with the comparison.
By Art Gallagher
This photo was taken in New Orleans on September 5, 2005, seven days after Hurricane Katrina hit the city:
Source: popmatters.com
This photo was taken this afternoon in Monmouth County, NJ, seven days after the Blizzard of 2010 hit:
FEMA will be in New Jersey tomorrow to start to access the damage caused by the blizzard. The damage will be a great deal less than the $81 billion that Katrina caused. The loss of live and human suffering caused by the blizzard was negligible. Not so Katrina.
Last week Capitol Quickies and InTheLobby got caught up in the hysteria of the storm and Governor Christie’s absence from the state during the storm. By now they should be over it.
Today, the Star Ledger used the Katrina reference in critiquing the public relations of Christie not being here during the storm.
The Sledger even quoted the PR hack who advised former Louisiana Goveror Kathleen Blanco during Katrina. Talk about epic failure. The hack, Bob Mann did a heck of a job for Blanco in 2005. Now he teaches political communications at Lousiana State Univeristy. Yikes! That’s like Jim McGreevey teaching ethics at a New Jersey state college.
Here’s a video of Chrisite answering the Sledger reporter’s PR questions during his press conference on Friday at the Monmouth County Hall of Records:
I guess the reporter didn’t like the Governor’s answer.
As we enter the New Year, I wanted to pause for a moment to thank you, my readers both loyal and casual for making MMM’s Fair and Biased News and Commentary part of your routine.
Thank you to the 193,443 unique visitors who made 270, 653 page views to MoreMonmouthMusings in 2010. That’s up from 113,121 visitors and 156,463 page views in 2009. What amazes me is that 69% of you come here directly without being referred by another site. 8% come from search engines. 5% come from my links on facebook. The rest come from CNN, InTheLobby and other sites with links. All of this traffic is “organic.” No SEO, no advertising, no bots, pings or trackbacks, whatever bots pings and trackbacks are.
However you got here and for whatever reason, thank you for coming and thank you for coming back.
For those who keep telling me that one can’t be both fair and biased, read these three seperate accounts of Governor Christie’s snow storm press conference; NorthJersey.com , NJ.com and APP.com. From my point of view having been there, NorthJersey.com’s account is the least biased/most accurate. Could be that the reporter’s bias is closer to mine than the others. If you take the time to read all three accounts, you might wonder if all three reporters were in the same place. They were. My point is one can’t be fair if they aren’t upfront about their bias. Most of the media isn’t upfront about their biases.
If you want an unfiltered version of what Christie said, watch the videos at MMM. My summary of each video is biased. The videos themselves are not.
For 2011 I resolve to provide fair and biased content that is informative, funny and provocative. If I don’t evoke laughter I will evoke anger, either at what I’m saying, how I’m saying it or regarding the subject matter. I resolve to recruit more writers to cover more of our county, state and country. Politics and government will likely continue to dominate MMM, yet I hope we grow to cover more of the Arts and Entertainment, Business and Community concerns. I resolve to sell more advertising and to improve the look and flow of the site.
When we last visited Paul Mulshine he was preparing to blame Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno if his cat pooped on his rug. Mulshine’s cat must have peed in Paul’s Cheerios and drank his last beer. The dipsomaniac expositer has been on a bender since.
First Mulshine said Guadagno should stay in Mexico because the roads were bad in Ocean and Monmouth Counties as he successfully made his way to the Edison studios of News12. He said the roads were bad in the Republican counties because Guadagno and Governor Christie left the Governor’s office in the hands of Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney.
After Mulshine found out why Guadagno is in Mexico, she and her brothers are spending probably their last Christmas holiday with their father who is suffering from advanced cancer, that was OK with him. Then it wasn’t OK with him. Kim’s clan should have spent the holiday in Iowa, where they are from, instead of going to Mexico. Mulshine better hope he keeps his Star Ledger gig, he won’t qualify for America’s next emerging profession, end of life counseling.
In his latest rant, Mulshine demonstrated that he doesn’t qualify as a storm cleanup expert either. He writes as if he’s an expert. His seven hours of shoveling and failure to get to the store to get kitty litter are his qualifications. Paul said:
The effort in the coastal counties was nothing short of pathetic. Though this snow was deep, it was very light – as I can affirm after seven or so hours of shoveling it.
Just a few good passes with a plow would have cleared key state highways at the Shore.
Instead, many of those highways still had just one lane open the day after the storm.
Worse was the lack of coordination. State, county, and municipal roads were all plowed by separate crews. One road would be just fine, till you turned onto another that was barely touched.
Paul is right. The snow was deep, and fortunately light. The reason the snow was so deep is that we got too much of it too fast. Just a few good passes did clear it, on Sunday, and then it snowed some more covering up the area that had just been plowed. I know, while Paul was shoveling and cleaning up cat poo, I was plowing. Then my plow broke, as did many many others that I witnessed at the repair shop today. This storm was historic. 30 inches and wind-blown drifts in less than 24 hours. New Jersey is not equipped to clean up this type of a storm quickly. Nor should we be because they are so rare. Syracuse and Buffalo are equipped for these types of storms which occur in those cities every year.
One would expect a guy who covers New Jersey government and purports to be an expert to know why there are different jurisdictions clearing different roads in the same communities. Coordination is a great idea and might even work in the private sector if unions weren’t involved. But in New Jersey government their would be fights over which entity would pay the overtime and which union would get the overtime.
Mulshine related his personal snowstorm. Just like hundreds of others did in the comments on the app and nj.com websites and who called into News12 while Paul was in the studio that he managed to get to in the horrendous conditions. One would expect better from a professional journalist and opinion maker.
And better we got from the Star Ledger’s Mike Frasinelli. Reading Mike’s article I learned that despite Mayor Cory Booker’s ability to simultaneously handle a snow shovel and an IPhone Newark is more messed up over the storm than Monmouth and Ocean. The reporter witnessed two men threaten each other with gunfire over a parking spot and then start shoveling together. There’s the making of a reality TV show that I would watch.
In addition to getting into the streets, Frasinelli talked to men who worked overnight clearing the snow. He spoke to James Simpson, the State Transportation Commissioner who explained the Route 18 and other State Highway problems. Rather than neglect as Mulshine would have you believe, Route 18 was impassable because plow trucks were breaking down. 9 or 10 trucks broke down clearing the highway.
I guess I knew that Neptune has five state highways running through it. I just never thought about it until I read Frasinelli’s fine article. 175 abandoned vehicles would certainly complicate a clean up. Those vehicles wouldn’t have been abandoned if it hadn’t snowed so hard so fast.
Or just take it from me. What happened was we got too much snow too fast. Christie and Guadagno being here would not have resulted in a faster clean up. Even if they were here, their political opponents in the media and a few idiot legislators would have tried to rile you up and score political points.
There are few pundits in the mainstream media and the blogosphere who should take the rest of the year off. Forget the blizzard. Some of these guys should pray for a power outage to stop themselves from killing their credibility on the Internet.
Two sites I like so much I give them live feeds here on MMM, Gannett’s Capitol Quickiesand InTheLobbyare suggesting that Governor Christie’s absence from New Jersey during the blizzard of 2010 will do to his administration what Hurricane Katrina did to George W. Bush’s presidency.
John and John, you guys should have followed Christie’s lead and taken the week off.
Christie will be back in New Jersey tomorrow. The weather will be in the 50’s and raining on Saturday. The snow will melt and Christie will launch the year with his 2011 agenda. By this time next week, no one will be talking about the blizzard except mayors who will be choking on the overtime bills.
It snowed too much too fast. That’s what went wrong in New Jersey this week. New York too.
It wasn’t a personal snowstorm, yet naturally many, if not most, people relate to the aftermath of a storm out of their personal concerns. The numb minded media, especially the Asbury Park Press editorial board, who is once again is living up to their Neptune Nudniks moniker, granted a full page in the print edition to selfish rants, 12 pages on their website, contributing to an online frenzy of wind-bagging.
The Nudniks are contributing to directly to the frenzy with yet another editorial premised on inaccurate information and assumptions. They say the storm was predicted days in advance. Hogwash. Forecasts as late as Saturday night were predicting snow falls in Central Jersey in the 12-18 inch range. It wasn’t until just a few hours before the storm hit that any forecaster was talking about accumulations of 25-30 inches with 55 mph winds. Folks in Buffalo or Syracuse might be expected to be prepared for the type of storm we got, but the truth of the matter is that New Jersey’s various governments don’t have the equipment or the personnell to handle the this type of weather quickly. That is why the clean up is continuing now, 48 hours after the snow stopped falling.
The Nudniks started their editorial rant accusing road crews of “surrendering” to the storm.
I was out Sunday night to plow my properties. The DOT crews were out. The visablity was terrible. It was dangerous to be plowing. It was snowing too hard too fast.
If they were not still out there cleaning up, I would suggest those crews dump truck loads of snow that they surrendered to at APP headquarters in Neptune. Cancelled subscriptions should suffice for cooler heads.
It snowed too much to fast. That is what happened. There have been lots of rumors and comments that there have been job actions and sick outs in some towns and maybe the state. Given how well Monmouth County’s crews performed vis-a-vis many towns and the DOT, you have to wonder. Investigations should take place and corrective action taken where appropriate. However the APP should be tracking down the validity of those rumors rather than wind-bagging that road crews “seem to have” quit on the storm.
The media driven brouhaha over Governor Christie and Lt. Governor Guadagno being out of state at the same time is as absurd and insulting as the Nudniks’ assumption that road crews quit.
As published elsewhere and confirmed by MMM, Guadagno and her brothers are spending what is most likely their last Christmas holiday with their father who is suffering from Stage 4 prostate cancer. The trip was planned and booked months ago with Christie’s approval. Shame on the pundits and politicians who have been trying to score points over Guadagno’s absence.
Once the news about why Guadagno is “on vacation” at the same time as the Governor gets around, watch he feeding frenzy on Christie step up. I’m looking forward to his first press conference back. I hope he shames the mindless numbskulls of the press.
There’s little going on in Trenton this week. That’s why it was a good week for the Governor to take his family to Disney World. Guadango’s situation made the decision to take a vacation delicate. Senate President Steve Sweeney’s good character made the vacation doable. But various pundits and political hacks won’t care. Let the Christie kids give up one more thing because their Dad is tough to lay a political glove on.
Does anyone really doubt that Christie would have returned to New Jersey given the “state of emergency” if it was possible? The airports were closed. They are just opening today.
Christie’s presence would not have made a difference in how the snow was cleaned up, or not cleaned up. His leadership from the bully pulpit would have made a difference though. He would have told the media the truth. It snowed too much too fast. We’re doing the very best that we can and we’re working about the clock, he would have said. He would have done a much better job than New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg did when he told NY that everything is OK and that they should go shopping. Christie would have told people to remain calm and safe; to look out for the elderly and disabled. And the media would have had something responsible to write about, rather than create a frenzy over the fact that it snowed too much too fast.
Fortunately, The Star Ledger also has 