Are these the right links? The first one was of some British guys...

NM it has been fixed

Unfortunately there just aren't enough Christies out there (California needs one desperately). And as long as there are politicians elected by beholden to the elite public unions, the discussion will not be as frank as the one Christie is forcing.

We have a reality of A) revenues are down B) the tax base is hurting financially and C) we have to cut back. Without a Christie the conversation is not based on the reality but based on "children will suffer because we want to fire teachers" or "houses will burn down because we want to fire firemen" or "we will be in danger from crime because we want to fire policemen". Without a Christie type, the MSM will focus on the supposed harm if we dare force the union to cut back like most everyone else is.

Well, TW, all those things are true... if you fire workers, you have less people to do the work and then not as much gets done.

However, you're right, if you don't have the money to pay the workers, thats the way it goes.

There's a harsh reality here, in that NO, THE GOVERNMENT DOESN"T HAVE TO DO THAT FOR YOU in lots of cases.
You can't pave your road, but don't believe the teachers when they say "more money! MORE MONEY!" - because, if you look closely, it's not going into the classroom.
My county voted for a school funding bill, and watched all $34 million disappear into an administration building.
No, the fire department can't save your home in many cases, so make sure you know what they CAN do and what you HAVE to do.
Pay attention, because the only reason you're out of money now is that you didn't make sure it was going to the right place the first time, and you didn't make taxes go to the things they were collected for. No, it's not all right to let taxes go into a general fund!

Say it with me: Government agencies are not required to protect you.

And bunches of them voted themselves pay raises in the last couple of years. Post that where you can see it.

I like his style, but I'm too cynical to admit he could be a good president. I'm beginning to think there can no longer be a good president. Politics are so divided in Washington, congressmen will vote against their own constituents' interests and their avowed stances on issues if it's presented by the wrong side or makes an opposing president look good.

They're about keeping each other out of power.

As you say, he's too sensible to be president, Amy. A sensible person would not aspire to the office in the first place.

NicoleK, that isn't necessarily true. There is the availability to get the same work done with more efficiency (possibly privatization when it's feasible). However, I was speaking to the same point Christie was making (similar to what we experienced here in San Jose). Some of the unions were not willing to help save jobs. "no" to any contributions to insurance costs, "no" to even a freeze in pay (not asking them to take less, just asking them to take the same for an extra amount of time). Many public unions are so out of touch with what is financially happening around them....it's astonishing.....and one reason why public unions should be abolished.

TW, less workers means less potential work. Yes, 50 effective workers can do as much as 100 lazy ones, but they can't do as much as 100 effective workers.

Is firing half the work force going to magically make the other half more effective?

You get what you pay for.

In some cases, that is a shiny new administration building.

In any case... the finance point is true. If the money isn't there, it isn't there and we need to make do with less.

The trouble with people (Americans or otherwise) is we want great services but we don't want to pay for them.

Gov. Christie’s stock has plummeted after he and Lt. Gov. Guadagno were both AWOL during the recent blizzard. With Christie in Florida and Guadagno in Mexico during the snow storm a state senator was left in charge of response. The Lt. Gov. position was just recently created to cover such contingencies when the governor is away. This loudmouth should know that nobody is perfect.

NicoleK, sure 100 effective workers is > than 50 effective workers. It's also not applicable to this argument. The real world argument is based upon how many effective workers you have, how many are actually needed, how efficiently the task is administered and completed. Government work, unfortunately, is too often bloated and inefficient (noticed first hand from spending/working a lot of time in DC).

"You get what you pay for".....I think it was Amy, but I could be wrong, that brought up the DMV-Starbucks analogy. There is a Starbucks next to the DMV. At one place you get good, friendly service and one place you get less than good-less than friendly service. At one place the workers are paid well with unbelievable benefits and the other place their pay and benefits are modest at best. Guess which two traits go with each place???? Government work has, unfortunately, too little place in the phrase "you get what you pay for"
Lastly, I agree about the wanting services but not pay for them. Too many Americans fit that mindset. A 'please cut spending except for what I like'. But that isn't everyone. And too many of those who do want services definitely don't want to pay for it while already paying very little to nothing for it in the first place. With that said, I can't fathom why anyone would agree to send more money to DC or Sacramento. It's that nagging old inefficiency, not getting what you pay for thing.

I really want this guy to run for President. But I am afraid that Patrick may have nailed it when he said that a sensible person wouldn't even run... It's a shame.

... the conversation is not based on the reality but based on "children will suffer because we want to fire teachers" or "houses will burn down because we want to fire firemen" or "we will be in danger from crime because we want to fire policemen".

That's the way they try to spin it, anyway. If we reduce the size of government, is it necessary to fire teachers, policemen, or firemen? I would say no - there are so many other things we could cut. But speaking of cynical, I think that when governments are forced to pare themselves down, they start with those services the taxpayers need the most, in order to punish us for demanding cuts in the first place, and rid us of the notion that the size of government can be reduced.

Gov. Christie’s stock has plummeted after he and Lt. Gov. Guadagno were both AWOL during the recent blizzard.

And my understanding is that the roads got cleared anyway...so, Governor is away and things still got done. Huh. Who knew that delegating could work. If you hire the smartest people you can find, that is.

Starbucks and the DMV is a really odd comparison. At the DMV, obviously they don't hire enough people to cover all the folks who need their services. At Starbucks, they do. Compare Starbucks to another coffee place. Otherwise it makes no sense.

Pirate Jo, that's an interesting thought.

"Starbucks and the DMV is a really odd comparison. At the DMV, obviously they don't hire enough people to cover all the folks who need their services. At Starbucks, they do. Compare Starbucks to another coffee place. Otherwise it makes no sense."

The comparison between Starbucks and the DMV is a poor one, but for different reasons that you think: it gives the DMV too much credit for having an easier job to do.

My thoughts from another post:

"Starbucks v. the DMV is a poor comparison in another way: Starbucks has a much more difficult set of tasks. Starbucks is in the food service business.

Food has a way of spoiling, getting contaminated, etc. Food must be brought from some far away place, often in a matter of hours to retain freshness, and food must move under tightly controlled conditions. That food must then be served in a pleasant and tastefully appealling way within, literally, seconds of the customer's placing the order at the counter.

And Starbucks achieves that somewhere around, I suspect, 99% of the time for a few dollars of a customer money.

Making things more complicated, the menu is often changing, so new items are including or withdrawn from the mix, requiring training, etc. Also, employee turnover is high, so the ongoing training of new employees must be efficient and highly effective.

The DMV, by contrast, has the same employees for decades. The DMV offers a precious few limited services to customers. The services and plastic/paper items the DMV serves up almost never, ever change. And obviously, those items cannot spoil or go bad, etc.

But yet, the DMV takes longer, costs more, and provides lousier service than Starbucks. Why? Because no one has to give a shit at the DMV--you will be back no matter what.

I often say we should outsource things like the DMV to 3 or more private companies who bid on the work, who can then get franchises to set up kiosks and retail shops offering DMV services. Government's role is limited to auditing the vendors to ensure compliance with security procedures, etc. Let the vendors compete for customers on service and fees. Watch the fees drop and the wait disappear."

Governor Christy is a breath of fresh air in a political atmosphere where being PC and getting re-elected far outweigh common sense. Public unions are out of step with reality and have been mollycoddled by the left for so long that they feel not only entitled but justified in there position. We must make hard decisions in all levels of government to get spending under control. Asking a public union in this economic environment to take a pay freeze for 1 year hardly seems like just cause to scream from the roof tops that the sky is falling. The very idea that a leader of a teachers union would ask its members to pray for the death of anyone is beyond absurd. Where is the outrage from the union members? Why would any union member want someone this vile representing them? Most union members would never except this type of behavior outside there own union. Shame on them all for excepting it here. Public unions simply have no accountability in actions or words.

“As you say, he's too sensible to be president, Amy. A sensible person would not aspire to the office in the first place.”

Spot on comment, just look at our most recent presidential elections,

Obama vs. McCain
Bush vs. Kerry
Bush vs. Gore

These are the best 5 candidates for the most powerful office in the world that we could come up with? How absolutely deplorable of both parties to give us this list of underachievers to vote for. Like most people I know, I didn’t vote for a candidate I thought I could get behind. I voted against the candidate I thought would do more harm. How pitiful that our political party leaders on both sides can’t or will not give us better candidates than this…..

Christie has what is needed to be a successful national leader. While his rhetoric would get massively toned down if he ended up in the White House for practical purposes, I see some of Bill Clinton's better points in him. He's pragmatic and speaks direct to voters. Also while a Republican, his social views are in line with the "average" American.

I see a full court press by the union institutions to discredit him. He must scare the hell out of their leadership.

I used to live in New Jersey. It snows there *every* *winter*.

They know how to clear the streets without help from the Governor.

"Governor Christy is a breath of fresh air in a political atmosphere where being PC and getting re-elected far outweigh common sense."

Outweigh. Christie. I see what you did there.

"Just love the guy. Love. Love. Love."

Mega-dittos.

Krugman's on Fatso:

"It’s always important to realize that someone can disagree with you politically without being a bad person. But there are bad people in politics, too. Maybe it’s just my bias that gives me the impression that there are more mean, self-centered whiners on one side of the aisle than on the other; but anyway, a spectacular performance by my governor:

When asked about the hundreds of people trapped in their homes for days, Christie said unless they lived on state roads, it’s not something his administration would have been able to change.

“If someone is snowed into their house, that’s not our responsibility,” Christie said.

When asked about mayors who said they were forced to divert their resources to unplowed state roads instead of clearing local roads Christie said, “I know who these mayors are and they should buck up and take responsibility for the fact that they didn’t do their job.”

Just brimming with generosity, he is"

.

I used to live in New Jersey. It snows there *every* *winter*. They know how to clear the streets without help from the Governor.

It snows in New York every winter, too. You'd think the NYC sanitation department would have that street clearing thing down, too. And yet Bloomberg is in trouble for the failure of his sanitation department to clear the roads in a timely manner.

In fact, some of the drivers were too busy getting drunk to bother plowing the streets.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/slushed_sloshed_fX907nPJIEevDILBvlYAtK

Krugman's [sic] on Fatso:

Krugman's what on Fatso?

When asked about mayors who said they were forced to divert their resources to unplowed state roads instead of clearing local roads Christie said, “I know who these mayors are and they should buck up and take responsibility for the fact that they didn’t do their job." ... Just brimming with generosity, he is....

From the Jersey Journal:

Residents from Frank's [Bayonne, NJ] neighborhood called the Department of Public Works and were told that Mayor Mark A. Smith was in charge of clean-up. Frank's calls to the mayor's office went unanswered.

Frank then told the Journal that when neighborhood people asked a private contractor working with the city to clean up the streets when the snow would be removed, the contractor replied, 'We're done. Everyone's on vacation."

Frank said everyone in his community is enraged, especially since other parts of the city have been completely cleaned.

[...]

The Journal's calls to the [Bayonne] Department of Public Works and the mayor's office went unanswered.

[...]

Clarena Jones of Jersey City had similar complaints. Jones called City Hall to find out when garbage pick-up would resume. She was then told by an automated message to call the Jersey City Incinerator Authority because municipal offices are closed in observation of New Year's. The JCIA did not answer Jones's calls and their website did not have any post-blizzard updates or new schedules.

Did your municipality make sure that your community was dug out from the snow before taking their holiday vacation?

"The trouble with people (Americans or otherwise) is we want great services but we don't want to pay for them."

I beg to differ. We want great services and think that all we have to do is give someone money to get them!

@Amy:
"At the first sign of rain, I start manically saving my writing to my flash drive every few minutes or so, because the power's likely to go out at any time."

You might look into this -

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/technology/personaltech/30basics.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

BACK UP YOUR DATA Why: Because photos are not the only important things on your computer. With online backup services, you do not have to buy any equipment; you just install software, which sits on secure servers and runs in the background, regularly updating a mirror image of all your files while you spend time on more important things, like confirming that Ben Gazzara really was the bad guy in “Road House” (he was).

How: Go to sosonlinebackup.com. Pay $80 a year. Install the software. Sleep easy.

@Conan

Apparently the New York City guys were trying to send a message, and as I recall, they were never all that good at getting rid of the snow in the first place. In our town, snow removal was done by independent contractors, and those guys were out and running at the first inch of snow. Humm? Independent contractor vs. city employee. Something to think about?

In any case, snow removal is a municipal responsibility (except for state roads, and I didn't hear about a problem with them) and is not on the Governor's task list. And even if it was, one assumes he has a phone.

I can hear the call now:

"Governor, it's snowing. What shall we do?"

"What did you do the last time?"

"We sent out snow plows."

"Ok, well, let's try that."

Amy - you might want to look in to either Mozy or Carbonite for online backup. They are cheaper. Mozy's owned by EMC (biggest storage company out there) so they probably aren't going away soon. Mozy is what I use, because they had their Pro product out that supports servers first. I've got customers using both for various things, no bad experiences.

Carbonite pulled one guy's nuts out of the fire when his hard drive seized up.

And in CT we didn't have any problems with snow removal.

Gee, what's the one variable here? The union in NYC wanted to send a message and figured that if they beat enough people up they'd cough up the money.

EPIC FAIL!

Apparently the New York City guys were trying to send a message, and as I recall, they were never all that good at getting rid of the snow in the first place.

The union in NYC wanted to send a message....

Which indicates how much control Mayor Bloomberg has established in "his" city.

He needs to understand what Richard J. Daley tried to make John Lindsay understand, "you were elected to sweep the streets."

Bloomberg needs to quit buying extra terms and policing the fat content of restaurant food and start making the city work.

In any case, snow removal is a municipal responsibility (except for state roads, and I didn't hear about a problem with them) and is not on the Governor's task list

Apparently, the mayors of several New Jersey cities are blaming Christie's vacation for their own inability to clear the snow in a timely manner.

Paul Krugman, already unhappy with Christie for canceling the NY-NJ tunnel project, leaped on this as an opportunity to accuse Christie of being heartless and incompetent.

However, the Jersey Journal article I quoted indicated that at least in Bayonne and Jersey City the problem was not the state's (or the governor's) fault. The city government agencies responsible for clearing the snow in those cities shut down for the holidays.

The one I always hear -- teachers are underpaid.

I would like anyone to compare median income to teacher's income at the the same time in the that profession. Yes, your top programmers, doctors, lawyers are going to be ahead. But where are they compared to carpenters, plumbers, and masons? I'll bet you they are ahead.

Yes your top people are going to be ahead -- but they also probably have paid more for their education.

Hmmm...a three month vacation every year, 100% medical, dental and vision? Underpaid? Nah.

I do have to say, he was a bit hypersensitive about the joke about praying for his death. Perhaps it's because I believe that praying for someone's death is so antithetical to the nature of prayer that it would avail you nothing. It was a joke, and actually pretty funny.

I personally think teaching is a great gig, if you can get into it.

Weekends are guaranteed off, three month vacation every year. I mean, three whole months to pursue whatever it is you want. I could do my writing then and still draw a paycheck. Climb mountains, do anything your little heart desires.

But then there's the kids...and the umpteen billion rules we have in place which only serve to keep teachers from appropriately disciplining the students.

Ironically, Chris Christie, for his supposed attacks on the educational system, is showing us how the system failed him. His math skills need work.

He says, at 2:24 (first video), referring to the 1 billion dollars in Federal Aid that NJ schools received the year prior, "Despite that, I only cut 820 million from the budget, which means we spent an additional 280 million dollars."

Uh, no it doesn't.

@Patrick at January 4, 2011 1:04 AM

It was crystal clear to me what he said. They lost one billion in federal funding and increased state funding $280 million, hence the 820 million difference.

The state spent an addition $280 million, the loss is due to the difference in federal funding.

Trust, I belive Patricks point was 1 billion munis 820 million = 120 million

@lujlp: Trust, I belive Patricks point was 1 billion munis 820 million = 120 million
___________

Actually, 1 billion minus 820 million is 180 million, not 120 million. *wink*

(Just teasing, honest mistakes like that are so easy to make.) :)

Thank you for pointing that out. I stand corrected. I looked at 2 + 8 twice and didn't catch the math error. I doubt the Governor did it intentionally either, but his point is still true... more state money is being spent.

Yeah, what can I say being fun is dyslexic, its not just for spelling

Thsi is why I dont do my own taxes

Patrick, teachers don't get paid during summer vacation. I don't know why everyone thinks this. Many teach summer school (for lower wages than they receive during the school year) or work second jobs.