Chris Christie

29Oct/101

Making Promises for Someone Else

...and trying to make them stick.

Doesn't work too well in one's personal life, and it's not working too well in public life now.

Two examples from the Fat Man of New Jersey - first, via Ace of Spades, we have Chris Christie talking about how Corzine tried to suck out all the cash as he was going out the door; and the most recent decision from Christie to kill a rail tunnel for which Jersey would have been on the hook for cost overruns.

The whines go up from the crowd ... "OH BUT WE WERE PROMISED!" Yes, and who was promising? Do you see those people in the governorship of NJ? Christie isn't putting up with that crap.

All sorts of groups are learning the value of a government promise -- when they can't even pay basic bills to outside vendors, do you think you're going to be safe, public employees? You can pour as much money as you want into the election, but that didn't help ex-governor Corzine, now did it?

The governed class are now in revolt against the governing class, and trying to make them pay for the promises they have made and want to make. The money is running out fast in some pension plans; John Bury (now in new blog digs) has projected the NJ pension money will be gone in 5 years.

Of course, it's not just public employees -- people are trying to hold onto the "entitlements" that demographics are not going to let us keep unchanged... but while people don't want them cut, they do realize that they will be cut.

But this is the real bottom line - even if the public unions did manage to buy/steal the election via various shenanigans, there's not much they're going to be able to do to keep the cash train running. The money is running out, no matter who is in charge. And the way this demographic Ponzi stops working, it's not that people can cash out and get their dough before it collapses. They need a steady flow of money.... and at some point that will stop if expectations and benefits aren't moderated starting now.

And you bet your sweet bippy that a "correction" of these expectations is going on right now, and will be imposed on the Boomers. I may love my Ma, but it's not like I feel any obligation to her collective generation. Others who waited too late or had no kids...nobody is going to feel obligated to you.

And we certainly don't feel obligated to fulfill the promises you made to yourselves, hoping to impose them on younger generations.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

Tagged as: Bribery with the public's money, Chris Christie, new jersey, public debt, public unions, retirement 1 Comment

5Oct/103

Today’s helping of Chris Christie awesomeness

Comes from a gathering of conservative activists in Iowa where the Governor spoke yesterday.

Now, this is some red-meat, inside baseball kind of stuff, but I thought it needed to be out there for a couple of reasons. The first is to combat disturbing naysaying of the Governor's conservative bona-fides that arose during the internecine squabbling following the conclusion of the Republican primaries. During that purity inquisition, when so many long-time, loyal, members of the conservative coalition were declared to be RINO ESTABLISHMENT RETHUG! STOOGES/SHILLS!11!1!, many times by folks that hadn't bothered to get up off the couch and get involved since, oh, say, EVAR!, one of those suddenly called into question was Christie; because he had the audacity to, you know, endorse Mike Castle in the Delaware primary race-QUELLE HORREUR !

But I reject that knee jerk reaction from the johnny come latelies. To wit:

Christie said Republicans must deliver on their conservative promises if they gain power during the November elections. If they don't follow through, he said voters will send the GOP "to the wilderness, and they are going to send us there for a long, long time."

"As a party, it is put up or shut up time," he said.

"We lost our way a number of years ago, and we became tax and spend light," he said. "Less spending, smaller government, less regulation, smaller government — we're going to be all about that again. We have to step up and stand for those principles again."

He described former President Ronald Reagan as the last truly successful Republican political leader, because he stuck to those basic core principles "and that's what we need to be about today."

Christie is among those who argue that Republicans can succeed when they focus on fiscal conservatism, often at the expense of focusing on key social issues, whereas former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee energize the party's religious and socially conservative base.
[emphasis-ed.]

I mean, I expect the true conservatives to come out any moment and explain to me why statements like these verify that Christie's a candy-assed, establishment tool, RINO. Or, in fairness, maybe all those heretofore uninvolved true conservatives are waiting for Glenn Beck to voice affirmation for Christie, so that he may be removed from the list of equivalently bad establishment politicians from the equivalently corrupt political parties. But my axe-grinding over Beck's(who I generally agree with in principle) sloppy logic is taking me too far off topic; I'll reserve that one for another post.

My point here is that despite his endorsement of Castle, or what he may have said about compromise and comity when campaigning for Meg Whitman, it sounds to me like Christie's conservative cred is pretty authentic. In my humble opinion, no one needs to worry about his staunchness .

And my other point concerns the speculation the he's pullin' an Obama, and just marking time until he can run for the next highest office. He addressed that in Iowa:

After his speech, Christie insisted he wasn't planning to run for president in 2012 — even though Iowa, home to the nation's first presidential caucus, is a key destination for those with big political aspirations.

"I'm governor of New Jersey, I'm not going to run for national office," Christie told reporters. "You have to want it more than anything else in the world, and I don't. ... You have to be ready for it, and I'm not."

Me? I believe him. He has been a man of his word so far, and my intuition is that he won't be changing his stripes anytime soon.

Where do you come down on this. I Chris Christie the real thing, or should he be booked as the keynote speaker at the next RINO-con? As always, we here at POWIP are interested in the considered opinions of our kind readers.