I Almost Vomited This Morning

by: brendanod

Thu Sep 23, 2010 at 11:43:27 PM EDT

The Times of Trenton and The Star Ledger were loaded today with three Governor Christie "puff" stories.  He is not even in the state and his bullshit still flies off the shelves.

Story #1 is Christie the bully, bullying a bully in California.  Christie yelling at a guy (who is not an NJEA member) who aggressively asked a difficult question towards a GOP canidate at a fixed "town hall" event,  where tough guy Christie sticks out his fat finger and yells at the guy is a front page story?  Newspapers aren't supposed to be part of fan clubs.

Story #2 is the Facebook guy, Oprah, Booker, and Christie collaberating to fix Newark schools.  Somehow Christie got a headline out of this.  Newark is in trouble and I think it is awesome a private benefactor has taken interest in assisting a broken machine.  Christie really has very little to do with this. Yes he has to sign off on state control of the school system and let Booker have control, but what choice does he have.  Christie views urban areas as a drain on society and would support bulldozing them into the nearest river if he thought he could get away with it.  He is the low man on this totem pole.  Christie should of been a asterisk in the story, instead he headlined.  Newspapers aren't supposed to be part of fan clubs.

Story #3 is how Christie is going to lay off 1300 state employees. Conveniently a study comes out on how NJ should really lay off 20000 employees.  This story is sickening because all it is an anti-labor tactic to gain the upper hand in contract negotiations.  Talk to any state employee and you will find that they already are operating at skeleton crew status.  Corzine's hiring freeze has been extremely effective at reducing the ranks through attrition.  20000 is an absurd number.  Christie should have had the study print a more realistic, absurd number like 5 or 10 thousand.  It would have been enough to threaten, harass, and bully the organized labor he is targeting.  Newspapers aren't supposed to be part of fan clubs.

I know the shock and awe analogy has been used already, but it is really true.  If Christie wanted to start a bullshit war the bombs would have started dropping in preparation for the land assault and occupation, all under the watchful eye of NJ newspapers.  Maybe they do deserve to go out of business.