I caught this little nugget while I was surfing around the intertubes (emphasis mine):
New Jersey will remain in a state of emergency throughout rush hour Monday as crews try to clean up still-treacherous roads, acting Gov. Stephen Sweeney said.
“We really want people to stay off the roads and give us a chance to clean them up,” he said from Gloucester County, in a part of southern New Jersey which wasn’t hit as hard as the northern side of the state. “We were hammered … This was a very difficult storm to deal with.”
Sweeney, a Democrat and president of the state Senate, declared a state of emergency Sunday evening and activated the National Guard. While Gov. Chris Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno are out of state, Sweeney is filling in as the state’s chief executive.
In case you missed it, Sweeney was filling in as New Jersey’s chief executive because both the Governor and Lt. Governor had left the state, but the reason why they weren’t in the state is what’s really interesting. According to a report by Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly, despite being told a day ahead of time that New Jersey was going to get slammed by a big blizzard, Gov. Chris Christie left New Jersey to head to Disney World in Florida for a much-needed vacation. I guess Chris Christie is a “take charge, hands-on” Governor, except when being governor interferes with his vacation plans.
Was he hanging with fellow GOP guv and convicted Medicare cheat Rick Scott, who’s over at DisneyWorld on the dimes (and millions of dollars) of his donors.
And these are the types of guys Scott Walker wants to emulate. Tells a lot on how seriously they take the idea of “serving the public”, don’t it?
I am in awe that rick scott won….
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing that voters decided a guy who was the CEO of a company that admitted to fourteen felonies and agreed to pay the federal government over $600 million was the best possible choice to serve as Florida’s governor.
I guess they don’t value integrity and honesty in Florida.
It’s a snowstorm. We have them here all the time. The leadership succession plan worked for a heavy snowfall. There should not be outrage over this. I am more outraged that the news media in NYC is agog. When it happens to Minneapolis, ho hum; when it happens to NYC then it’s a national media event.
I’m pretty annoyed too when it’s a national spectacle too when they get a snowstorm but I can understand why they’re flipping out on some level? Many homes there are not built for that kind of weather so there is a lot of roofs collapsing since they never expect a storm of that magnitude. They don’t get the sense to knock snow off of their roof and the taller buildings could actually cause snow to fall off and kill people from the sheer weight. Keep in mind, I’m not talking like Buffalo or anything, but more of Downstate New York. Plus, not to mention how terrible the northeastern states all drive, they’re so aggressive so it’s not too surprising that they all smash into each other during a storm.
I personally wish the southern states would actually get more coverage, because when storms hit there that’s when places hurt the most but you rarely if ever hear how they deal with say a huge freak snowstorm that goes down there and ruins their crops.
… Since I went a tad off topic, but Chris Christie even without this choice he did? Is a terrible governor.
“Since I went a tad off topic, but Chris Christie even without this choice he did? Is a terrible governor.”
What’s your criteria for a bad governor?
Chris Christie is a boor and a bully.
What rude manners does he have?
Lowering the quality of life for already struggling families, eliminating affordable housing quotas and kicking those people out on the street because they can’t frankly keep up with the growing cost of living while panting them as ‘leeches’ off of the government and demonizing them. Pushing the middle class further down to the rank of lower class while he mindlessly cut important subjects like education when as it is the top of the classes in New Jersey at at a 10th grader’s level. Students who are in school suddenly don’t get their grants that are given to them that they were expecting and had everything planned out for saying that was ‘needless’ and they should work harder. Or join the military where they may have to risk their lives for a war they may not personally agree with but do so out of necessity to survive and pay off what they have to continue in college. Even if I’m no longer in school due to now being in the work force at a pretty impressive pay? I would be pretty angry too considering how much money I had to pay in school to get where I am.
Not to mention cutting important services such as police, hospitals, fire departments. While he has done this for all the sake of getting businesses to New Jersey and to make the state more appealing to outsiders, I have to ask many conservatives this – what is the price of it? He’s overall pushing the same failed economics on New Jersey we’ve been suffering with for ever since we went into this deficit.
And how do you balance the budget without cutting expenses?
“The five states in the worst financial condition–Illinois, New York, Connecticut, California and New Jersey–are all among the bluest of blue states. The five most fiscally fit states are more of a mix. Three–Utah, Nebraska and Texas–boast Republican majorities and two–New Hampshire and Virginia–skew Democratic.”
Click HERE
What can be done to resolve the financial problems of NJ without impacting the citizens’ pocket book, jobs, benefits, and quality of life? Nothing, it all will hurt them a little now or a lot later on.
You have to fix the problem of out of control spending and out of control obligations. There are no other solutions unless you just want to kick the can down the road to the next guy. Gov Christie is saying that he is the next guy and he will tackle this problem.
Look, NJ, like Illinois, is a corrupt state. Billions from Democrat governors went to construction companies with union labor. Billions went to the mob. I am sorry that grandmothers and other citizens will pay for that corruption and misapplication of the State Treasury but the time has come to save the goose or all will suffer more greatly.Everyone will lose some skin in the coming game (Wisconsin, too) but getting budgets under control and restoring financial sovereignty to the States is imperative.
Our role as concerned citizens is to ensure a fair application of cutbacks and to maintain a social safety net. Our role is not to preserve the status quo. To do that is folly.
I love how you tie corruption in Illinois to Democrats. Remind me again….which party did former Illinois governor George Ryan belong to?
I was loose with my wording and I was trying to connect NJ and the mob and I swept Illinois into the same generalization. Sorry.
Having admitted that, I will also say that Ryan gave contracts to his friends instead of Mayor Daley’s friends. That was the problem. The Daley family has run the City for decades and the Dem machine is well oiled with funds from the state and the city.
(I guess we don’t need to mention Blagojevich’s problems do we?)
The Daley family has done a fine job in running Chicago but it is not scandal free and every tradesperson knows how work gets done there.
I believe both parties reward their bases; if it were not so, the election battle would not be so vitriolic. I do not hold that Dems are more corrupt than Repubs in Illinois. They use the same coins but give them to different people.
How would I? Not cut education, not cut the police, not cut the hospital, not cut firefighters. But instead, a bold idea would to cut the payment of the legislators. Furlough days. I’d jokingly say legalize marijuana and tax the shit out of it. But mostly the legislators. They should not be allowed to raise their own pay checks or anything of the sort. They do too little work for too much pay, as someone said on this blog. (Locke I believe?)
And Wisconsin was red from January 5, 1987 to January 6, 2003 which put us into our $3.2 billion deficit. We’re at $2.2 billion now that I checked.
Furthermore, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, California and Connecticut also have one thing in common. They have the richest portions of the country within them. This is one important thing to consider, but when you see the massive spending it’s usually in areas like Nassau County where a lot of us things go crazy and are beginning to have problems now. And yes, they’ve done the whole ‘cut taxes’ deal and cut ‘financing deal’ as well which is shown not to work if the money is not flowing. And if the cost of living continues to rise, people will get more fiscally conservative to the point they won’t want to spend it on anything because they fear that they won’t have enough to pay for rent or groceries next time around.
I won’t even go into the whole issue that California also had one of the worst governors ever as well – Arnold Schwarzenegger. Part of the Republican Party. He used non-profit and campaign funds for personal benefit, built cozy relationships with special interests, created conflicts of interest by accepting a consulting position and doing state business with a company staffed by his former campaign aides, provided state jobs to friends with dubious qualifications, allegedly pressured government employees to change outcomes, did not provide adequate leadership to the state, and vetoed bills to improve transparency in hospitals at the behest of powerful special interests.
Illinois a clusterfuck of it’s own, two sides of the same coin – the Daley Machine with the Democratic Party and the Suburban Machine for the Republican Party that claim to be better but are really not at all the case.
Sounds like me. 🙂
I’m a fan of switching to part-time legislators on principle. But you do realize that cutting legislators pay is not exactly a serious answer to this question, right. It is literally a drop in an ocean. They get just under $50k per year. Assembly gets $12k every two years for office expenses, while the Senate gets $66k. Cut it in half and you save about $5 million bucks. On a multi-billon dollar deficit with long-term obligations looming that dwarf the biennium shortfall – in part the cost of kicking the rock down the road, but also future pension & retirement plan commitments that are compounding.
To actually fix our budget disaster, it’s gonna hurt. The only question is how many & how much. Back when the last budget was being worked out, I looked over Doyle’s recommendations & callously carved out some chunks that I think would be least harmful. I don’t remember where I posted it or if I saved it, but a very quickly & off the cuff…
Something like $4 million for the arts board. Not a lot of money. Arts are nice, make people well rounded, etc. Kill it.
I think UW system funding is something like $5 billion. 32,000+ employees (FTEs). Education is critical and I’m proud of our UW system. Tuition has skyrocketed since I finished school. But life’s tough. Right now, I’d rather see cuts to the UW system than the tech schools since they play such a critical role in getting people directly from being laid off (and collecting unemployment) to back to work. The UW system has lots of smart people, they’ll figure out how to make do with less – say a 10% cut.
Slash the department of tourism and their $15 million heavily. Out of state people coming here to spend money is great – I just don’t think the people who came up with “Life’s So Good” and paid an agency to come up with “Life Like You Mean It” have the chops to actually get it done. They didn’t think of the negative message Wisconsin Tourism Federation and their WTF logo. No soup for you.
$3 billion the DOT spends should be cut. We need to get around, but better prioritization should let us get by with less. Maybe 5-10% cuts. The state directed millions in stimulus dollars to our own bridges to nowhere that get less than 10 vehicles per day. One I spent time researching didn’t seem to have anything other than shacks and undeveloped land that it allowed access to.
That’s a start.
This was actually another suggestion I was going to go with but I failed to write down due to deciding ti visit my grandfather in the nursing home.
As much as I am a fan of the arts, I think that should come back later when we have the proper budget. The DOT is pretty terrible too, which I will concur. Education is one thing I’m constantly questionable about cutting just on the principle that it’s the future and we need all we can put into it.
Furthermore, I do sincerely agree that Wisconsin has to be more aggressive in keeping it’s smartest individuals here in the state instead of them drawn to bigger cities like Minneapolis or Chicago or the coasts. However, we need leadership that is not just pro-business, but pro-growth and pro-competition amongst other businesses. It’s no point if it’s simply monopolies and mega corporations here for instance where they can simply go somewhere else if they wanted to since that will also be there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jabbing at huge businesses but we need something here in particular that Wisconsin can be ‘big’ for and if we have big businesses that are here like in any other place? I think not. I think a good thing to go with is our nature, conservation, and perhaps the water works technology in Milwaukee could prove to be interesting. Wisconsin is a strange state in that respect that it doesn’t have just one focal point. It has three. Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay/Fox Cities.
That’s why we need a business friendly environment, not in a ‘special treatment’ sort of way, but something that can make businesses want to grow here and compete against each other to bring forth creativity and ideas.
It may not be “the end of the world” in Princeton, but up in Essex Cty they’re feeling the pain. When Cory Booker’s Twitter feed is lighting up a public service storm, the last nuggest Gov. Christie tweeted on Dec 23 was: “It’s not Christmas at the Gov. mansion until Mary Pat goes on an eggnog bender and straps on the leather boots. Oh wait…#chrischristie”
I agree that it’s not that bad in some places, and by a slim majority not that bad in most places, some places are slower to recover and the optics just plain old suck for the Governor.
I love you guys and this blog, but I fear for my country. When even on blogging blue we keep thinking of ways to race to the bottom. i understand it from the right but I guess we have been beaten down so badly that we have taken the right wing mean of destroying the middle class as the only way to save America.
So instead of cutting wages, laying off people who actually produce and help this country etc… why dont we fix the actual problems in the country?
there are two things that have us in this mess we are in right now.
1. our unsustainable trade deficit. Its very simple to stop giving tax breaks to companies who send american jobs overseas. We can also stop letting countries import goods free of charge while they charge us import fees for us to ship our goods over there. Another thing we can do is to stop heor worshiping the anti American ceos like jack welch and karly fiorina and start treating them like the vile America hating money grubbing low lifes they are.
2. we need to fix our broken health care system. As long as we are the ONLY country that has a “for profit” health care system then we will have a mess of a deficit. We spend more than twice as much on health care per person than any other country and still have 50 million americans without health insurance and 100 million americans without dental insurance.
O yea we could cut say 10% from the defense budget also.
Or we could keep cutting middle class wages and laying off teachers, police and firemen.
You know a lot of people are not going to think of cutting the defense budget because they’re under the belief that it helps the veterans and the people going to war. Nevermind that’s a whole different animal all together and the conservatives ignore them leaving the people who fought disfranchised. As much as right winged Fox News pretends to be ‘balanced news coverage’ they rarely put their side of the the story and only criticize the left but not vice versa.
Furthermore, major news corporations and sources don’t actually acknowledge certain things – heavens it’s bad when the 9/11 first responders bill actually only go to the public because of the Daily Show.
As long as there is misinformation going around, and fear mongering I doubt any of these are going to happen.