I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

NY Daily News: "Lie To Your Wife? Shame! Lie To Cops & Teachers? Meh..."

NY Daily News, July 24, 2013:
Anthony Weiner led all New Yorkers to believe that he stopped recklessly, immaturely and compulsively sexting after his resignation from Congress in abject humiliation. Lie.

Weiner reinforced the message that he had achieved maturity and self-control by citing wisdom gained with the birth of his son in December 2011, six months after he stepped down. Lie.

As he laid the groundwork for for a reentry into politics, Weiner sat beside his wife Huma Abedin as she told People magazine last July: “Anthony has spent every day since (resigning) trying to be the best dad and husband he can be.” Lie.

Weiner’s dishonest, impulse-driven psyche is once more stripped as naked as the images of his texted private parts.

He is not fit to lead America’s premier city. Lacking the dignity and discipline that New York deserves in a mayor, Weiner must recognize that his demons have no place in City Hall.
I actually agree: Weiner is a snake and does not deserve election. No one who lies this brazenly should hold high office, right?

NY Daily News, October 5, 2011:
Chris Christie, the blunt-as-a-sledgehammer governor of New Jersey, said it multiple times. Last September: "I'm not ready" to be President. In April: "I'm not running for President." In August: "I said this answer isn't changing, and I don't see any reason why it would."

[...]

And those players would do well to channel a little Christie if they want to win over the many Americans disenchanted with President Obama.

Christie's appeal is threefold.

One is how he speaks. He's got a no-nonsense style - the guy eats talking points for breakfast. Where some see hostility, many more see a directness that's rare in a consultant-dominated, partisan climate. Christie explains, connects and, where necessary, argues.

Two is what he says. He has dispensed with wedge issues. When a Muslim judicial nominee was attacked, he lashed out against the "Sharia law" panic, which he called "crazy" and "crap."

Instead, he has focused on what, for Republicans, matters most: runaway spending and the often crippling taxes that go hand in hand with it.

Three is Christie's flair for action. Last year, he declared a fiscal emergency and used his line-item veto to eliminate nearly $1 billion from the proposed state budget. He closed more than $13 billion in deficits without a tax increase, capped property taxes and reined in pension and health benefits for public-sector workers. [emphasis mine]
Go look at the very top of this blog. See the quote that lives up there permanently? I'll repeat it here:
"I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor." - Chris Christie
And yet, as soon as he could, Christie slashed pension benefits for current and future retirees, breaking his explicit promise to teachers and other public workers. In a spasm of excuses that would even embarrass Weiner, Christie claimed he had "no idea the pension system was about to go bankrupt," even though pension solvency was one of the biggest issues in his campaign against Jon Corzine.

So let's get the NY Daily News's position on this clear:

  • Lying to your wife about your sexual exploits: you don't deserve to be in office.
  • Lying to teachers and cops about their pensions: you're a role model for the nation.
This is where our national punditocracy is at right now, ladies and gentlemen. 

I'd wear a mask too, Mort, if my newspaper published crap like this.

2 comments:

giuseppe said...

"... and reined in pension and health benefits for public-sector workers." What a vile and biased statement, as if pensions are THE problem, you know, as in those greedy teachers and their too rich pensions. If you are an oligarch and anti-union billionaire like Mort Zuckerman, I guess pensions are a nuisance and pestilence to be stamped out and eliminated. The pensions are not the problem, it's the failure to properly fund them (so legislators could give tax breaks to the rich and the big corporations) that is the problem. The teachers paid billions into the pension fund over the past 20 years, that's their money.

giuseppe said...

From a Ruth Coniff article,The Rightwing Attack on Public Employee Pensions, at commondreams.org: "Working people everywhere should be very leery of a rightwing propaganda push that paints teachers, union members, local officials, and other public servants as greedy dependents who are sucking up taxpayer money and putting economic stress on cities and states across the land." and "Watch out for the insidious argument that public employee pensions--even those that employees have contributed to for years and kept solvent--are a form of theft from taxpayers.

Like the rest of the anti-worker, anti-public-sector argument, this divide-and-conquer argument will only lead to pain and destruction."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/24-7