The non-stop attack on Chris Christie continued today after he vetoed the actions of the Pinelands Commission at its last meeting. For those who do not know, the so called pine barrens are the largest undeveloped tract of land along the east coast. New Jersey has a commission that "supervises" the area and regulates allowable construction. At the last meeting, the commissioners voted to grant a 5% across the board to all employees of the commission. Christie said that this move was in clear disregard of the financial situation of the state and the commission, so he killed the raise with a veto.
So far, so good. Christie has fought against excess compensation for public employees since he took office. Clearly, there was no need to grant every state employee at the commission a 5% raise. Inflation since the last raise has been nowhere near 5%, and the employees of the commission already earn more than people in comparable jobs in private industry. The raise should never have been granted and Christie was right to stop it.
So what is the upshot of all this? You guessed it. The coverage of the veto in the media is that Christie only vetoed the measure in retaliation for the commission failing two months ago to approve a pipeline measure that the governor wanted. Get it? The story is that Christie is retaliating just like happened with the traffic on the George Washington Bridge. Most likely, MSNBC will devote its entire evening schedule to this veto and what they will call Christie's acting like a bully.
I do not particularly like governor Christie, but this is getting ridiculous. To date, there has been no proof whatsoever that Christie had any involvement with the bridge lane closure, but media outlets like MSNBC still give coverage to the story every day. An investigation was done into Christie's involvement and it found that Christie was completely uninvolved. It made no difference to the media. Now we have a story about Christie acting to prevent New Jersey from going back to its old spending habits by giving unwarranted raises to workers who already make more than their counterparts in private businesses. The media reports it as part of the bridge scandal and uses it to attack Christie. It is enough already. People should just tune this stuff out.
So far, so good. Christie has fought against excess compensation for public employees since he took office. Clearly, there was no need to grant every state employee at the commission a 5% raise. Inflation since the last raise has been nowhere near 5%, and the employees of the commission already earn more than people in comparable jobs in private industry. The raise should never have been granted and Christie was right to stop it.
So what is the upshot of all this? You guessed it. The coverage of the veto in the media is that Christie only vetoed the measure in retaliation for the commission failing two months ago to approve a pipeline measure that the governor wanted. Get it? The story is that Christie is retaliating just like happened with the traffic on the George Washington Bridge. Most likely, MSNBC will devote its entire evening schedule to this veto and what they will call Christie's acting like a bully.
I do not particularly like governor Christie, but this is getting ridiculous. To date, there has been no proof whatsoever that Christie had any involvement with the bridge lane closure, but media outlets like MSNBC still give coverage to the story every day. An investigation was done into Christie's involvement and it found that Christie was completely uninvolved. It made no difference to the media. Now we have a story about Christie acting to prevent New Jersey from going back to its old spending habits by giving unwarranted raises to workers who already make more than their counterparts in private businesses. The media reports it as part of the bridge scandal and uses it to attack Christie. It is enough already. People should just tune this stuff out.
No comments:
Post a Comment