Your Failed Media, Part 20,568

Has the Star-Ledger finally put blame where it belongs?

This feud has gotten silly. The governor can’t improve our schools by poking teachers in the eye. He needs their help. And if he would climb down from his pedestal, he might even learn something by listening to the people who work with our children every day.

The latest snub came Tuesday when Rochelle Hendricks, the acting commissioner of education, rejected an invitation to speak at the union convention in Atlantic City, where several thousand teachers are gathered.

What better opportunity to make the case for reform? The governor often claims that his beef is with the union leadership, not the teachers. So why turn down the single best opportunity to speak with the rank and file?

Maybe the governor is genuinely outraged that the union dares to defy him, and this was an emotional reaction. But it is more likely a calculated attempt to score political points.

Wow - a real change in tone?

As if:

Thank the overpaid union leadership for that. They refused to accept a one-year pay freeze when taxpayers needed help. And they have done all they can to protect incompetent teachers by opposing needed reforms. This gang of entitled misfits makes a perfect target for Christie.

Dear lord, that's stupid. First of all, plenty of districts took a freeze, Second, the average pay raise in new contracts is down to 1.6%. Third, you can't just open up contracts illegally. Fourth, why should teachers take a freeze when millionaires got a $600 million tax gift?

But, finally - sing it with me, won't you? - the pay freeze would have offset less than 1/4 of Christie's state aid cuts!

As to "opposing needed reforms": did or did not the NJEA strike a deal with Bret Schundler to make those reforms?

I guess they did, because THIS VERY SAME EDITORIAL continues:

Legislature the governor wants this conflict with the teachers union to continue for political reasons.

Recall that Schundler had hammered out an agreement with the teachers union before he was fired, and that the union made grudging concessions on merit pay and the use of test scores in teacher evaluations. But Christie rejected that deal and later fired Schundler. In his testimony, Schundler said the governor found it “intolerable” to be perceived as compromising with the union.

So, the NJEA made "concessions," but they "oppose needed reforms"?!?!

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?!? CAN'T YOU EVEN READ WHAT YOU WROTE THREE BLOODY PARAGRAPHS AGO?!?!

I need a drink...

Chris Christie and The Death of Hope in Newark

Diane Ravitch has a fascinating post up for those who follow both education "reform" and New Jersey politics. The post is by Pedro Noguera, a professor at New York University and noted expert on urban education. What's most interesting about Noguera's piece, to me, is how it confirms many suspicions I've had about how education has become politicized under the administration of Governor Chris Christie.

Noguera documents the demise of a three-year program to reduce the dropout rate in Newark: the Global Village Zone. As NJ Spotlight recently reported, GVZ was an attempt to address education reform on a more comprehensive scale:

The idea was to focus intensely on the needs of students and families at the city’s Central High School and its six feeder elementary/middle schools. There would be longer school days, summer classes, health clinics, and access to healthy food for the zone’s 3,500 students, in addition to extensive professional development for teachers and principals to improve academics.

“We’re going to give them every opportunity to succeed,” then-Superintendent Clifford Janey told The Times. “We’re going to get out of the way when necessary and enable leadership to grow and flourish.” [emphasis mine]

Unfortunately, the program really never stood a chance: GVZ was the victim of anemic support when former Newark superintendent Clifford Janey was "drummed out" of office in 2010 to make room for the current superintendent, Cami Anderson.

Understand that GVZ was conceived in fall of 2009, just before Jon Corzine lost the governorship to Christie. While Corzine was certainly the one who opened the door for the concept, the real work didn't start until the spring of 2010 - after Christie had been sworn in. Noguera picks up the story - note a key detail I highlight below:

For the next three years, we worked assiduously at building the GVZ infrastructure and improve the schools. It wasn’t easy. We were under staffed and were working with seven schools that had a long record of under-performance. We took on several of the functions normally carried out by district officials such as providing professional development for teachers and administrators, and conducting workshops for parents. Nonetheless, with a small staff headed by Dr. Lauren Wells, we accomplished a great deal. We signed an agreement with the Newark Teachers Union to allow for a longer school day, we implemented a free book drive to insure that children had access to reading material over the summer, we held summer institutes for staff on instructional leadership, and gradually began to create the zone we had envisioned. Despite our limitations, we had an enormous amount of buy-in and support from the leadership and staff of the seven schools, the parents and the broader community. Our greatest progress was achieved at Central High School, which in the spring of 2010 had been designated chronically under-performing by the State of New Jersey and received a School Improvement Grant to support turnaround efforts (SIG). After its first year, student test scores in language arts increased 32.5% and 25% in math. State officials told us that the progress being achieved at the school under the leadership of Ras Baraka the principal, was unmatched by any other turn around school in the state (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/06/newarks_central_high_school_se.html). [emphasis mine]

So there was a broad consensus of agreement among all stakeholders - including the teachers union. Why is this important?

Because the spring of 2010 was when Christie decide to go to war with teachers and their unions. I know this well, because I started this blog as a direct result of the outrageous behavior and incendiary statements against unions I saw coming from Chris Christie at exactly this time.

In 2010, Christie was running around the state demanding that local unions reopen their contracts and freeze teacher pay. He claimed he could solve the budget crisis and avoid cuts in state aid if the greedy teachers would just relent, even though the Office of Legislative Services later revealed that was a blatant lie (really, it was ridiculous on its face: you can't make up for a cut in revenues with a freeze on spending).

He claimed union leaders were publicly calling for teachers to "pray for my death" - again, another lie, and a particularly brazen one. He lobbed insults at union officials and teachers that were unprecedented in their nasty and personal tone. Famously, he got into a public tiff with Marie Corfield, an art teacher who dared to stand up to him (and was subsequently targeted by reformy lobbyists B4K for her uppity ways when she ran for Assembly).

So Christie was staking out an anti-teacher, anti-union position in 2010. But that wasn't the biggest education story in New Jersey that year: that summer, the state lost out on $400 million in federal funding when a faulty application was submitted for the Race To The Top grants.

The reason why the application was faulty remains one of the great underreported stories of the Christie era:

This past spring, the teachers union negotiated, in good faith, an agreement with Education Commissioner Bret Schundler that produced an RTTT application that both sides could agree on. But radio personality Jim Gearhart of NJ 101.5 - a consistent critic of the NJEA ("New Jersey Extortion Association" is his idea of wit) - objected to the deal and blasted Christie publicly. This prompted Christie to immediately denounce the deal, embarrass Schundler, and order a hasty rewrite of the application without the consent of the NJEA.

There's little doubt that Gearhart's rant was the impetus for Christie's reneging on the deal; he went on Gearhart's show immediately afterward and apologized for making the original deal with the union. Nor is there any doubt Christie himself insisted on rewriting the application: he publicly embarrassed Schundler and thoroughly distanced himself from the original application.

The NJEA has released the original application, and it's clear the error was created during the hurried rewrite by Christie's staff over the Memorial Day weekend. But it's wrong to describe the error as "clerical": this wasn't the case of putting an answer in the wrong place on the form.

As dennismcgrath at Blue Jersey has shown, the error is unquestionably deliberate. The original text from the application agreed to by the NJEA and Schundler is nowhere to be found in the final version, and the incorrect answer from the new text is nowhere to be found in the NJEA draft. This was not a cut-and-paste mistake.

That's right: Christie tanked the Race To The Top application because he didn't want to be seen working productively with the teachers unions. See the pattern? Christie put the RTTT application in jeopardy because he was afraid of looking like he was collaborating with the unions. And now we see that GVZ was doomed because it was, in part, a collaboration with the unions. In other words, Chris Christie made sure to tank any policy that might have had teachers union support.

By 2011, Bret Schundler, who had tried to work with the teachers unions, was out as the Education Commissioner, a scapegoat for Christie's ideologically fueled incompetence in the RTTT application. It was Schundler who confirmed that Christie spiked the application because he didn't want to work with the unions:

"We have an opportunity to win here, with union support, which is a rare thing," Schundler said he told Christie. "He said he didn’t care about the money … He said he hadn’t gone through hell with (the NJEA) so he could then cave in to them now."

Replacing Schundler was Chris Cerf, a failed education privatizer and charter school cheerleader. And since Newark's schools remained under state control, Cerf replaced Janey and appointed his former colleague in New York City, Cami Anderson, as the superintendent.

With all the new players in place, the fix to destroy GVZ was in:

In January of 2011 we learned that Clifford Janey’s contract would not be renewed and a search for a new superintendent was launched soon thereafter. Cami Anderson, an educator whom I knew and supported based on her work with some of the most disadvantaged schools in New York City, was named the new superintendent in May of 2011. Though she and I had spoken on the telephone prior to her appointment about Newark’s schools, after her appointment our contact was minimal, and we only met in person on only one occasion. It’s not clear that she ever fully understood what the Global Village Zone was or what we were trying to accomplish. In the spring of 2012 she announced a major overhaul of the school district that would result in the closure of several under-enrolled, low performing schools, three of which were located in the central ward. She did this before approximately 1,000 parents in a large auditorium at Rutgers University, and after making her announcement, exited out the back door without taking any questions from those assembled.

With so much change underway and with a growing recognition that the BBA work with the Global Village Zone needed to be aligned with the district’s goals, we applied to become an Education Management Organization (EMO) in the hope that this would provide us with the funding and district level support we needed to carry out our work. Following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s donation of 100 million dollrs to support school reform in Newark, there was considerably more private money available for school improvement. We hoped that with district support we might gain access to some of these resources in the central ward. However, our proposal was rejected twice based on concerns that we lacked the capacity to carry out the work we proposed to do. At this point our funders were becoming increasingly concerned that the GVZ could not be viable if the district did not support its goals. With great reluctance, we decided to suspend our work with the GVZ schools because we lacked the resources to continue and because it was clear that the district did not support our efforts.

Well, of course GVZ lacked the capacity: they had dared to work with the unions. Cerf and Anderson, using money from both Mark Zuckerberg and California billionaire Eli Broad, began a program of charter expansion. They had no need for a collaborative, broad-based approach to reform that attempted to save public schools by seeking had buy-in from both the community and the teachers; they were looking to replace the entire system with charters.

Now, some may say that the last year of the Christie administration contradicts my tale. After all, Christie did work together with the unions to pass TEACHNJ, a new teacher evaluation law. And the  Newark teachers union worked with Anderson, Cerf, and Christie to negotiate a new contract. Don't these events prove Christie is willing to overcome his political instincts to work with teachers unions when necessary?

Absolutely not; in fact, quite the opposite.

Christie held the TEACHNJ bill for months after it passed the legislature, refusing to sign it into law. Why? He was waiting to hear whether he was Mitt Romney's choice to run for vice-president. If Romney had given him the nod, he would have followed his marching orders, whatever those were. But when he realized he had been passed by, he made the decision to tack to the center to set himself up for another term as governor. Christie held up the TEACHNJ bill as a political calculation.

The Newark contract was part of that calculation as well, but it wound up being even better for Christie: he finally got a merit pay deal, mostly because he dealt with the AFT, and not the NJEA. NJEA is the larger union in New Jersey and has always been Christie's preferred enemy. AFT has shown itself to be more willing to give in to reformy ideology. The Newark contract may be bad public policy, but it gave Christie needed "centrist" credibility when he needed it the most.

In both cases - as in the GVZ and RTTT episodes - the outcomes make one thing abundantly clear:

Chris Christie consistently uses education "reform" as a political weapon. He never makes a decision on education policy on the basis of what is best for public schools and their students; he makes decisions based solely on their political outcomes.

Remember, this is Christie's totally awesome education plan:

Q. And is tenure reform the most important part of that?

A. I see tenure, merit pay and OSA as a bundle. I’d like to see them all go together. By repairing the tenure system, we’ll be able to get rid of some ineffective teachers, but then we’ve got to get effective ones in there and it’s going to be years and years. So that’s why I think OSA is such an important part, and increasing charter schools in urban areas, so that those kids don’t get lost while the fixes of tenure and merit pay are fixing the system in a 10-year horizon.

This is an education plan that is not pro-student; it is, first and foremost, anti-union. It is an education "agenda" that is not based in research; it is grounded in politics.

Over and over, Chris Christie has shown he cares more about making savvy political maneuvers than he does about helping students. Pedro Noguera gives us yet another example, but it's all simply part of a pattern. No one should doubt what the real Christie agenda is: he has already killed hope in Newark once before to meet his own ends, and he will, if necessary, do it again.

Christie says: "I learned at the feet of the master!"

It's NOT a freeze - it's a cut!

Go back to what Bret Schundler, the Ed Commish, told the APP:

Schundler said the savings was calculated by factoring in the average teacher contract settlement of 4.3 percent for all school employees, with a total statewide payroll of $13.2 billion. That back-of-the-envelope savings calculation amounts to about $567.6 million. The school employee contributions to health care would bring the amount to about $765 million.

Translation: we can't get to that $800 million in savings we keep jawing about if EVERYONE who works in a school takes a pay freeze: we can only get about $570 million. The rest comes from deferring computer purchases (no, really, he did say that), and from getting teachers to pay 1.5% of their salaries to their health insurance.

Stop and think (something I always tell my students): If you freeze a teacher's wages, and then you charge her an extra 1.5% for her benefits, will she bring home the same amount of money, or less money?

(Wait time (teacher lingo)...)

LESS money is correct! And that's a cut, right?

So stop calling it a "freeze," Guv - and let's the rest of us stop that as well.

It's a cut. No weasel words change that.

More Whine Than a French Bistro

So about this video of Christie verbally smacking down a teacher who just happens to be a woman...



What we have here is a nice little compilation of Christie's greatest whines: all of the petty little excuses he loves to wallow in to justify his jihad against the education profession. A little deconstruction is in order:

Still Running Against Corzine (1:55): Christie regularly moans that he inherited a $1 billion hole from Jon Corzine because Corzine spent stimulus money in one year instead of two. There are many responses to this:

• There was nothing that stipulated that the funds were to be spent in two years.
• It was a stimulus - we were supposed to spend it quickly.
• If it was a billion in aid over two years, and Corzine spent it all in one, you'd only be out half-a-billion, right?
• During the campaign, you said you wouldn't take stimulus money like this anyway (whether you really could have rejected it is another point).

But I think the best response is this:

You reject Corzine's stimulus spending as a one-shot gimmick. What do you call withholding property tax rebates for a year? Or not paying into the pension system? I guess those were "permanent" solutions...

"I had declining state revenues"(2:17): Yes you did, and a big part of that was refusing to keep the millionaire's tax for another year, which cost you at least $600 million. That was your choice - not Corzine's.

"I only cut $820 million" (2:25): Did you or did you not force districts to spend down their surpluses?  You did - the cuts are $1.3 billion.

"My lambasting is only directed at the leaders of the NJEA" (2:50): What a crock. He said teachers used kids like drug dealers use their mules. 'Nuff said. 

"Teachers were getting huge raises before I became Governor" (3:35): Over the last 20 years, teacher pay has grown more slowly than the average worker in NJ - not the college-educated worker, the AVERAGE worker. And now teacher pay raises are down to 2% - the lowest in 30 years. So slow growing teacher pay is growing even more slowly.

"New York pays less of the health benefits for employees than NJ" (4:24): Yeah, and the State of NY pays their teachers MORE in salaries. Kind of helps to make up the difference, huh?

"Teachers pay nothing for full family medical, dental, and vision" (4:50): Another crock. Dental is expensive to teachers; vision often means an annual eye exam - that's it. We have co-pays, out-of-network, prescription co-pays... AND we are extremely limited in our choices. I've said it before: our benefits are no better than a white-collar worker at a Fortune 500 company. In any case, benefits are part of collective bargaining and total compensation packages. If you cut them, you are cutting teacher pay, pure and simple.

"Maybe those promises were appropriate decades ago" (5:00): They weren't "promises" - they were negotiated wages. The government told employees this is what they would get paid - you are now reneging on the deal because you want to keep a system of regressive taxation to protect the wealthy of this state.

"I only asked teachers for $750 a year" (5:20): When you are a multi-millionaire like Chris Christie, $750 is chump change. If you're making $55K, it's the difference between fixing the car or getting your kid braces.

"If the teachers took a pay freeze and gave 1.5% for benefits, that would have saved most of the cuts this year" (5:35): Wrong. The OLS analyzed the numbers and found a freeze and 1.5% wouldn't have covered 1/4 of the cuts. You got your original calculations from Bret Schundler, a man you fired because you said he lied to you. Why trust him over the OLS?

"There would not have been anywhere near the layoffs if a pay freeze was taken" (6:15): Weasel words. Christie has a history of claiming he will save more jobs with his schemes than he really could. Here's what he said when he first proposed the idea:

Governor Christie has promised districts struggling with massive budget cuts that he'll return the difference in payroll taxes if they agree to a one-year pay freeze. 

"We've laid out there how this can be done and it would avoid teacher layoffs and it would avoid program cuts and they just don't want to hear it," Christie said.

So we've gone from "avoid teacher layoffs" to "not have been anywhere near the layoffs." Again, weasel words.

"The head of the teachers union in Bergen County sent out an email encouraging his members to pray for the death of the governor" (7:45): Let's lay this stupidity to rest once and for all. Here's the "prayer" that was sent out:

"Dear Lord this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor."

You would have to be the biggest moron in the world to believe this is a "prayer," and you'd have to be the biggest tool in the world to argue that this was "praying for your death." It's a stupid, tasteless, unprofessional joke that should not have been sent, but it's no more than that.

The head of the Bergen union, Joe Coppola, and NJEA President Barbara Keskishian both apologized to Christie, as well they should. But Christie has held on to this stupid little slur as an excuse to slam teachers with impunity.

What he won't accept is that HE is the governor. HE sets the tone. HE could have been the bigger man, accepted the apology, and moved on. What he chose to do instead is cling tightly to this little tiff and use it as an excuse to slam teachers and humiliate women in public. And he has no problem lying about the content or the context of this "prayer" to use it to his own ends.

This video really is a tour-de-force of pettiness and whininess. I read the commenters and bloggers swooning over this, and I wonder how our brains could be wired so differently: Christie comes across, to me, as a a blustering fool who blames his inability to actually solve anything on everyone else. It's the whining of a bully, and it's pathetic.

Christie's Report Card

The Star-Ledger devotes most of the op-ed section today to a "report card" on Christie's first year. Kinda silly, but instructive as to how the punditocracy views his reign.

Christie gets a "D" for transit, ethics, and personal behavior. That's too high in my opinion, given he wants his administration to look like Jerry Springer's show, but whatever. A "C" for education is ridiculous, as his "strong reform vision" is nothing more than promoting VAM and charter schools. Again, whatever: shallow understanding of educational issues is par for the course in our media. He gets a "B" for energy: I'm not conversant enough in his actions to say whether that's reasonable or not, although the global-warming skepticism should be enough to automatically push him down to at least a "C."

But it's these other grades that kill me:

An "A" for courage? Where? What courage has he shown on anything? He never takes personal responsibility: it's always Schundler's or Sweeney's or Oliver's or Obama's or the NJEA's fault. He's still running against Corzine after a year. He beats up on school superintendents and bullies teachers in town halls.

It is not courageous to complain about pensions and then refuse to fund them. It's not courageous to give a $600 million tax break to millionaires and then hide behind the ruse that it was the Legislature that cut the taxes, not him. It's not courageous to preside over yet another huge increase in health care premiums and do nothing to call insurance companies to account while demanding more money from public employees to fund those increases.

A "B" for budget? He "cut state spending by $3 billion"? What he did was push the hardest decisions, the service cuts, and the tax increases on to the cities and towns. He didn't have to make the call about gutting Newark's police force; he didn't have to decide which half of Camden's employees will get pink slips; he didn't have to tell kids their sports and extracurriculars and electives are cut while their class sizes soar.

Moran acknowledges this:

Christie’s central claim to fame — that he “fixed” the state budget — is farcical.
Here’s what he told Don Imus and his national radio and TV audience: “It was an $11 billion budget deficit on a $29 billion budget my buddy Jon Corzine left me, and we fixed it.”

He didn’t cut $11 billion in this year’s budget — it was less than $3 billion. For comparison, his buddy Jon Corzine cut nearly $2 billion the year before.
To balance the budget, as all governors must by law, Christie relied heavily on familiar one-shots like skipping pension payments and cutting property tax rebates. Next year’s budget gap is expected to be as bad as this year’s.

And let’s put to rest the notion that he didn’t raise taxes. He squeezed an extra $45 million in income taxes out of the meager paychecks of working-poor families when he cut back the earned income tax credit. It was the surtax on millionaires that he vetoed with such flair.

That's a "B"?

He also gets a "B" on pensions. Even though he skipped payments, which is what caused this mess in the first place.

So this "report card" is not a very good assessment of Christie's first year. But Moran's piece, along with this accompanying exchange between Brendan Byrne and Tom Kean, Sr., is very good at telling us what really bothers the elite.

Here's Moran:

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver was shocked when she learned that the governor had accused her of lying.

“That has irreparably affected my ability to work with this governor,” she says. “For him to cast aspersions on my integrity and say I would lie? That did it. That showed me I really cannot have a trusting relationship with this governor. Because he will distort the truth. He will stand up and lie.

“It was a game changer for me, a total game changer.”

And that brings us to the dark side of Chris Christie — the arrogant streak that poisons the conversation and creates blood feuds for no good reason. He treats politics as if it were professional wrestling, pounding his chest after every knee-drop.

It turns out that Christie was flat-out wrong about Oliver. The dispute was a petty one. Oliver had said she tried to arrange a meeting with the governor to discuss salary caps, and Christie claimed she was lying. He must not have known she had written proof — text messages seeking a meeting.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Christie also accused Bret Schundler, his first education commissioner, of lying. And Schundler, too, produced written evidence to support his story.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg felt this sting as well. After he criticized the governor for killing the Hudson River tunnel project, the governor lashed out.

“All he knows how to do is blow hot air,” Christie said. “So I don’t really care what Frank Lautenberg has to say about much of anything.”

This is the downside of the governor’s straight talk. He has to work with Oliver and Lautenberg, like it or not. And now they both seem to hate his guts.

“Look, I worked with Tom Kean and Christie Whitman, and had no problems,” Lautenberg says. “This is really unusual. There’s been hardly any communication from his office, and I’m on the Appropriations Committee. I put my heard and soul into this, and to have someone calling me names and trying to shame me? It’s incomprehensible.”

The governor raised eyebrows, too, when his acting education commissioner broke tradition by refusing to speak with thousands of teachers who had gathered in Atlantic City for the union convention.

His tiff with the union leadership, which started as a reasonable proposal for a temporary pay freeze, has gone psycho. Now, he is dissing regular classroom teachers.

Lots of ink about Christie dissing Oliver, Lautenberg, Schundler... and a little peep about dissing teachers.

Kean and Byrne:

Q. How about education?

BYRNE: Until he works out a modus operandi with the teachers union, I have to give him a B-minus or a C. Teachers aren’t bad people. He has to learn to work with them.

KEAN: I’d probably give him a B-plus. He wants more charter schools, evaluation of teachers — he’s really in sync with the Obama administration in terms of education reform. He’s gone to war with the union over some issues, but I think he understands the contribution so many great teachers are making. He has policy battles with the union, but that’s very different than not supporting great teachers. Hopefully, the union will find ways to work with this governor.

Q: Finally, how would you grade his personal style?

BYRNE: Christie has established his image as a guy you can’t compromise with or insult. But Frank Lautenberg was upset at being called a windbag by the governor. I would urge the governor to be more generous in his evaluations of people, where he doesn’t have to be unpleasant. I give him an F on his beef with Lautenberg, but a B overall.

KEAN: Christie’s a Jersey guy — brash, outspoken, controversial. From time to time, he’s gone too far, using strong language about Bret Schundler and Frank Lautenberg. But what you see is what you get. We like that in New Jersey. Overall, it’s like looking at a report that’s nearly all A’s, with a couple of D’s. On this subject, I’d give him a B. 

 So, there you have it: when you use harsh language with powerful people, you are crossing the line = you get a "D."

When you compare teachers to drug dealers and shout them down at town hall meetings... well I guess that part of having a "refreshing" style of "what you see is what you get." "A's" all around!

Also: Kean's comments about the teachers union are absurd. Christie is not "supporting great teachers" when he proposes huge increases in medical insurance and pension contributions. And the disgRace To The Top fiasco proved he doesn't care about working with the NJEA on policy (refusing to appoint an NJEA rep to the teacher quality task force confirms this).

The NJEA already proved it is willing to work with Christie: they had a deal with Schundler that gave in to most of Christie's policy goals. It's not up to them to "find ways to work with the governor" - they did, and he still rejected them.

And no one should be so naive as to believe he's going to give in. We are at an impasse for the next three years, and it's all on Christie.

April Fools Round Up

Before the holiday weekend, let's summarize exactly where we are with the budget, education, and the Guv's shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach to governing:

- It's pretty clear by now that neither Christie nor Ed Commish Schundler nor anyone in this administration took into account the loss of income tax revenues when putting together their FICA refund scheme.

- Schundler and Christie have stated repeatedly that teachers can make up the $820 million lost in state aid by taking a pay freeze and contributing 1.5% to their health care. Two problems:

1. It's not just teachers, it's everyone who works in a school, and there's no evidence they all got 4.3% raises.
2. Bill S3, the bill mandating the 1.5% contribution to health care, states that the contribution comes AFTER a current contract expires.

- If Christie wants teachers to VOLUNTARILY contribute 1.5% to their health care, why is his administration sending out memos that instruct districts that if they settle contracts before 5/22/10, the teachers won't have to contribute?

- Christie's plan to refund the FICA taxes saved if teachers take a pay freeze would, at most, save only 200 jobs in a workforce of 143,000 teachers and administrators.

What a mess. Either these guys don't know what they're doing, or they are deliberately throwing out plans they know won't work.

This is already a pattern with Christie: we know he told many districts to expect a 15% cut in state aid at worst, and then cut most or all of it. That was either lying or incompetence.

Maybe this is both.

He-Man Woman Haters Club

What "real man" doesn't love seeing some dumb broad get put in her place?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie does it again. I almost felt sorry (almost) for Marie Corfield, an elementary school  teacher who stood up at a question-and-answer session with the governor and demanded to know how his reforms would help teachers since his budget cuts had resulted in so many lay-offs among the selfless pedagogues that populate New Jersey’s public schools. “We have some of the best schools in the country,” quoth la Corfield, “and you have done nothing but lambaste us.”

Pardon us while we dab away the tears.

When the Governor began to respond, Ms. Corfield rolled her eyes and acted like one of her pupils taunting a classmate. That was when Gov. Christie delivered one of his classic put-downs. “If you want to put on a show then just sit down. But if you want to have a respectful discussion then let me answer your question.”.... 

[emphasis mine]

Yes, thank God we have macho hunks like Chris "Go Get Me a Sandwich, Honey" Christie to put bimbos like this in their place. You almost feel sorry for these dopey dames, but they've gotta understand that when the men are talking business, their job is to shut up and get everyone another cold one.

I mean, why do these women keep challenging him publicly? Who do they think they are? Don't they understand that teaching isn't a "real" job - that's why so many women are in education - duh. And that's why studs like Christie feel free to bash them in a way he reserves only for teachers.

So STFU, baby, and "...just sit down." Be thankful you've got a job and that we pay you anything at all.

(Honestly, I can't keep this up...)

I know some of you out there are thinking I'm reading way too much into this - I'm not. One reason this guy has gone after teachers is that he knows a part of his extreme base has never cottoned to the idea of women being treated like equals in the workplace. It's dog-whistle politics and it's disgusting. It's also very clever - anyone like me who calls him on it will instantly get branded as a "real sexist," just as those who call Glenn Beck on his code words get branded as "the real racists."

See, if I call him on attacking women publicly, he'll say that they never should have gotten in his face in the first place if they can't take the heat. Again, he won't acknowledge that he is in a power position: he controls the forum, the mic, and the media. Which is why he never, ever debates his opponents in a neutral setting, and why he only goes on friendly media outlets like Imus (another great friend of women) or Scarborough. Like all bullies, he is, at heart, a coward. He can only do battle with teachers who have no media experience but - in the end - way more courage than he does.

And so "teacher" becomes a proxy for "woman." There are many women in teaching today because it's a very good career to have if you're smart and you want to be the primary caregiver in your family. When the kids go to school, you'll work their hours, so you can still get dinner on the table and watch them over the summer. I would think that "pro-family" conservatives would be praising women for choosing teaching as a career - but that would require them to really be "pro-family," which most are not.

OK, now that that's out of my system: let's address the mendacity of his acolyte, Roger Kimball, author of this little piece of Y-chromosome puffery:

Christie didn’t “lambaste” teachers, he said, he lambasted the teachers’ union, especially its leaders. 

I've already called Christie out on this numerous times. My personal favorites: "greed and excess" in schools; teachers saying "Pay me first"; and, of course, teachers as drug dealers. The idea he loves teachers and hates the union is absolute garbage.

Why were so many teachers laid off in New Jersey?  Because when the Governor called upon teachers to take  one-year pay freeze and contribute 1.5% — one-and a half percent! — of their salaries to the cost of their health care (full-family medical, dental, and vision coverage, by the way), the union leaders said “No way. Not a penny.” 

First of all, we DID give the 1.5%. The union wasn't happy - who would be? - but there were no strikes, and no call for job actions. The NJEA and all teachers know times are tough, and while it really pisses people off to see millionaires get a tax cut while the rest of us take a pay cut, we pretty much understood what was going on and took it in stride.

Second: find me one teacher in NJ who ever had "full-family medical, dental, and vision." EVERYBODY has restrictions on doctor choice, copays, fees for prescriptions, and limits on reimbursements. I don't know of any school district that offers full dental - my school's dental is really, really expensive and doesn't cover much (ask my kid's orthodontist). Vision is a joke - the state plan is an eye examine once a year. And all benefits are part of compensation negotiations and affect salary.

Teacher benefits are good, not great, and they are not any better than what most college-educated professionals receive working in major corporations; professionals who make, on average, more than teachers even accounting for summers off.

Result: nearly a billion-dollar shortfall in the budget, which necessitated scads of lay offs. (Had Gov. Christie’s proposal been accepted, the state would have saved more than $700,000,000.)  “So who’s really to blame?” he asked: the Governor or the intransigent teachers unions?

I've been writing about this for months: Schundler's numbers on this were cooked from the beginning. The freeze numbers were based on teacher raises applied to ALL school employees - bus drivers, custodians, etc. They never took into account the loss of income tax revenue from the freeze, either. The money included the 1.5% that got passed into law anyway.

Don't take my word for it: the Office of Legislative Services analyzed the numbers and found that a freeze wouldn't have covered 1/4 of the reduction in school aid.

So, in addition to taking glee in Christie's personal bullying of teachers, Kimball is an uniformed dope. He gives men a bad name.

Funny thing is, he bears a sartorial resemblance to one of the founders of the He-Man Woman Haters Club...

And Christie does remind me of Spanky...

@GovChristie's Casual Relationship With The Truth

Over at Blue Jersey, "interested observer" finds proof that Chris Christie wasn't telling the truth when he said he only met Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in 2013. It turns out this past December Christie claimed he had been friends with Jones for far longer:

And that would also seem to back up what he said with Steve Adubato this past December:

However, in an interview with Steve Adubato on PBS in late December, Christie was far less specific, telling his interviewer, "I've become friends with Jerry over the last five years."Adubato, looking a bit surprised, took note that the two men were apparently on a first-name basis, interjecting, "'Jerry'?" To which Christie said, " "Yeah. Jerry.' He allows me to call him 'Jerry'. I don't call him, 'Mr. Jones.' I call him 'Jerry.' And I've become friends with Jerry over the last five years."

So if "Jerry" didn't meet Chris until 2013, why have they been friends for 5 years with Christie saying he got his first call way back in 2009?

We'll have to see how all this impacts the investigation into whether Christie influenced the awarding of a contract to Jones's firm by the Port Authority. But we don't have to wait to put this incident into a larger context that explains the character of New Jersey' governor.

Because for a long, long time, Chris Christie has had a casual relationship with the truth:

- Chris Christie, in the 2009 campaign, told teachers and cops: "I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor." We all know what happened next.

- When confronted on breaking this explicit promise in 2012, Christie said: "When I wrote that letter, I had no idea the pension system was about to go bankrupt." But everyone had been talking about New Jersey's pension time bomb for years before he wrote that letter, meaning Christie was either brazenly lying or frighteningly clueless (or, perhaps, both).

- When the expansion of charter schools appeared to be tied to political favors back in 2011, Christie said he didn't know one of the most controversial beneficiaries of that expansion, Amir Khan. Yet Khan sat directly behind Christie during at least two "town halls," and reports put Khan backstage with Christie before one event.

- Back in 2011, Christie claimed that New Jersey was the highest-taxed state, and that wealthy people were leaving New Jersey because of high taxes. Neither claim was true.

- In 2010, Christie told school districts across the state they would have their aid cut by 15%; he then proceeded to cut it all, and tried to blame the about face on his then education commissioner, Brett Schundler.

- Speaking of Schundler: Christie blamed him for the botched Race To The Top application in 2010. But Schundler testified that Christie himself insisted on the changes that scuttled the application.

- middle girl at DailyKos has a nice roundup of some of Christie's whoppers, including misstating the costs of the ARC tunnel, blaming the feds for screw-ups on Sandy aid, downplaying his relationship with David Wildstein, and, of course, Bridgegate.

- Christie's blatant disregard for the facts related to Bridgegate include making up a claim about the number of lanes available only to Fort Lee.

- Christie makes claims that he has slowed the growth of taxes, but he doesn't account for slashing property tax rebates. His response to being caught in this weasel wording? Hiding the data.

- Christie said he was the first governor to endorse Mitt Romney. He wasn't. (Personally, if Romney does run, I'm looking forward to seeing how Christie lies his way out of telling this lie.)

- Christie publicly misstated the medical condition of Kaci Hickox and threw the region into an unnecessary panic over Ebola.

- In 2011, Christie said that if teachers had taken a pay freeze, there would have been no teacher layoffs because the money saved would have made up for his cuts in state aid. The Office of Legislative Services later proved this was not true, and even the teachers union-bashing Star-Ledger Editorial Board chastised the governor for promoting this falsehood.

If Christie had only lied about his relationship with Jerry Jones, that would be bad enough. But this latest mistruth is just one more example of Chris Christie's long established pattern of deception, misstatements, and straight up lying.

Why, then, would anyone believe anything the man has to say now?

It all comes down to this.

Hippity-Hoppity...

...Christie's on his way:

He continued to plug a state aid proposal that Commissioner of Education Bret Schundler pitched to him and which Christie in turn took public. Designed as an alternative to layoffs, school districts in which teachers agree to one-year wage freezes would receive state aid equal to the amount of social security and Medicare payroll deductions that would accompany salary increases.

A proposal which will save maybe 200 jobs -  0.14% of the teaching/administration workforce.

And the Bridgewater school board prez points out that if teachers do agree to cutbacks that aren't total wage freezes, they may not be eligible anyway:

"If the proposal requires a total freeze of teacher salaries, we would not be eligible unless the union were to make significant additional concessions," Brookner said. "If lesser concessions suffice to trigger the proposal, then we may be entitled to a restoration of some aid cuts."

 Again, the money's so small, it's not going to do much anyway.

And I really love the people skills here:

In response to a reporter's question about whether he's hearing any positive feedback from teachers regarding the wage freeze proposal, the governor said,  "Yes, but I wouldn't attribute it to them. I think people are hearing from their constituencies, and what the people of New Jersey are saying is that it's reasonable to ask teachers to take a one-year pay freeze." 

So teachers are giving back, but don't give them credit. Oh, and Guv - if teachers have a "constituency" - it's their students. Teachers aren't politicians. They're not running around the state preening for the cameras, using autistic kids as political props.

When you leave for your next presser, teachers will actually stay and help this girl. A little acknowledgement of that would go a long way.

* Update: I reread that quote again: "Yes, but I wouldn't attribute it to them." Man, that REALLY bugs me! He finds teachers who AGREE with him, and he still has to take a swipe at them.


I'm not a fan of armchair psychology, but I am sorely tempted to to practice some here - what the hell is this guy's problem? Why is everything so personal to him?


At the very least, it points out a real lack of political skills.

NJ's Biggest Twitt

Every once in a while, either the governor or his ghost twitterer get into a little on-line spat where Christie's defensiveness and disregard for the truth come shining through:

@liberalcrone Union raises 4-5 times inflation. Free health benefits 4 life? Can we really afford that? Does it improve education in NJ?10:29 AM Oct 11th via Tweetee in reply to liberalcroneFirst: over the last 20 years, teacher pay in NJ rose 150%; the average worker's pay rose 162%. So let's cut the crap.
Second: the latest settled contracts have a 1.6% increase. See that's how it works, Chris: contracts change as wage pressures go up or down. I guess you missed that day in Econ 101.
@DarthSpacegrass Mistake [on RTTT application] was made before the ordered changes. Pls learn the facts.10:25 AM Oct 11th via Tweetee in reply to DarthSpacegrass
Uh, no. The NJEA said explicitly the last draft they had was correct; THEN Jim Gearhart demanded you change the application. 
@liberalcrone Public sector workers comp now higher than avg private sector comp in US. Suffering??10:24 AM Oct 11th
Not when accounting for education. Public worker compensation for college-educated workers (like teachers) is much lower than the private sector; it's even worse if you have a master's degree.
@liberalcrone NJ has highest tax burden in US. We are already meeting your test.10:23 AM Oct 11th 
No, we don't. CPPP says we are 31st for total revenue as a percentage of residents' income. Census numbers compiled by the Journal-Sentinel for all states this past spring put us at 40th.
@liberalcrone Pointing out the "greed" of the teachers union, NOT teachers. Never hear you talk about that though, huh?10:22 AM Oct 11th
Complete nonsense. He has talked about teacher greed time and again, and his lame excuse that it's the unions, not the teachers, is directly contracted by his first statement about teacher union raises. Be a man, Chris - stand by your words.
@liberalcrone "Richest" NJ citizens pay 9% income tax-among most in nation. Always liberal solution-raise taxes in highest tax state in US.10:13 AM Oct 11th 
9% is not a real rate, it's a MARGINAL rate (do you understand the difference, Governor?). There is no local income tax in NJ like in PA. See above about how we AREN'T #1 in taxes. And remember: The bottom 95% of taxpayers in NJ pay more of a percentage of their income in state and local taxes combined than the top 5%.
@MichaelStefano 1 shot $ is 1 shot $-delaying the day of reckoning wrong strategy. $700m would be saved by teacher pay freeze. Ur thoughts?10:11 AM Oct 11th
Blatant lie. The OLS analysis says savings from a teacher freeze are far, far less - not even 1/4 of the cuts you made. And your number came from Bret Schundler, who you said couldn't be trusted.
Oh, and since you're against "one-shots": would a teacher wage freeze be permanent?
@prblcse $25 billion spent last year on K-12 education. Let's fix the system and help kids learn, not just fatten the NJEA coffers
Dear lord, that's just so dumb on it's face. No context; no comparison. We're not #1 in spending, so what is the point of this meaningless number?
@liberalcrone love shown by status quo defenders to our kids is to continue failed ed system like Newark where 1 of 2 kids don't graduate
Bob Braun in the Star-Ledger:

To give some numbers, nationally, white males had a 78 percent graduation rate in 2007-2008, compared with a 75 percent graduation rate for black males in Newark.

@OTOOLEFAN Because the fed gov't cut aid to NJ schools by $1.057 billion for FY11. So we spent $237m more in NJ funds. Next question?

And yet, somehow, the $600 million gift he gave to NJ millionaires never figures into his equations...
I could go on all night, but what's the point? He doesn't care if he's telling the truth, because he will not pay a price for misstating, misdirecting, or outright lying.
And whose fault is that?