| I promised myself that I would refrain from writing Christie-bashing posts, and was able to write a number of posts that were more constructive than destructive. But once again, Christie's pigheadedness and arrogance shone through at the expense of women's rights. Just like in the campaign, when "mammography-gate" exposed him for the callous arrogant prick that he is.
And once again, Christie has thrown women under the bus in order to keep his super rich friends happy: A group of female legislators continues to push to have 7 and a half million dollars added to the state budget for family planning - but Governor Christie insists it won't happen.
During an appearance on Millennium Radio's Ask the Governor program, Christie said "I just don't believe it's an appropriate expenditure of money, in the context of all the other difficult decisions that we need to make...I believe that women have the opportunity to access healthcare all across New Jersey, through a number of different programs. This is merely one of them, and no woman is not going to get healthcare because of this."
When pressed on why he feels so strongly about the issue, the Governor replied " I don't believe that this is a priority in a budget where you have to cut 11 billion dollars...that's my opinion - and it's the opinion obviously of the majority of the people who deliberated on this, or it would have changed."
No woman is not going to get healthcare because of this? Maybe not, but certainly it will be a lot more costly and difficult to get proper healthcare because of this. I'd be willing to bet that he'd be just A-ok with coverage for "Viagra on demand", but I digress.
Fact is, not just is this arrogant and shows a lack of basic empathy for women (not to mention an understanding of what happens when a woman gets pregnant from a rape or from being molested by a family member), but he falsely moves the bar in his claim of this being a popular decision. "The opinion obviously of the majority of the people who deliberated on this" is, quite frankly, irrelevant and a false choice. For starters, this budget is far from something that will be passed - there is very little Democratic support for this budget, and Christie is strongarming Republicans to vote for his tax increases. Additionally, this has been an issue for months now - even going back to the campaign, so this was on Christie's chopping block for a while now.
Adding in NJ being a pretty progressive state, a popular progressive issue like women's rights and a Governor elected with less than 50% of the vote, this is far from something that the majority agrees with Christie on. Compounding the heaping pile of crap is this narrowing of the "population that matters" to those who were conferees on a budget compromise that will be unpopular to Democrats and conservatives alike.
But nobody would have thought that Christie would actually Govern like an arrogant asshole - after all, it isn't like he ever acted this way as US Attorney or during the campaign. And now the Democratic majority in the Legislature has put most New Jerseyans, state Democrats and themselves in a horrible position - them politically and the rest of us in countless other ways.
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