Some in the GOP are heavily engaged right now in deflecting, diverting, and dismissing. It's "D" week, here in New Jersey! To get you to look OVER HERE at some SHINY OBJECT so you won't think about the loss of nearly half a billion smackeroos to our schools. Or why the Governor's dillydallying on applying for $268 million federal dollars to hire back some of our teachers so class size is more manageable, for those same schools. Or whether all this may represent a fundamental lack of support for public education, and a defunding of same. And while, yes, the government still has to go on whilst an investigation of the events leading up to the Race to the Top "mistakes," it's funny how some people didn't get the memo that New Jersey politicians look ridiculous right now trying to blame the feds for a Jersey bout of incompetence, and how others continue tough-talking, using terms like "reform" with no apparent sense of irony for what and who they're willing to sacrifice for their own "reform". Cases in point:
Even if the administration did everything right, the Obama administration was never going to give the governor a nickel," DeCroce said. "There was no chance he was going to get that money from D.C.
Hearings: They're coming. And they'd better be well-run, with tough questions asked. That's the direction I'm looking in. Screw the shiny objects. Keep your eye on the ball, NJ Legislature.
Chris Christie won the Governor election with less than 50% of the vote. That means more than half of the voters wanted someone other than him to govern.
He has consistently abused his power. He pulled rank as a US Attorney to get out of a ticket when he went the wrong way down a one way street, and also pulled rank when he got a speeding ticket in an unregistered car to avoid being towed. He failed to disclose his close financial relationship with top assistant Michele Brown, a conflict of interest. He gave huge no bid contracts to his boss (John Ashcroft) and the man who didn't prosecute his brother for securities fraud, while 19 others were prosecuted. He governs with a personal vendetta to the detriment of New Jerseyans.
Those are just off the top of my head. And they aren't "partisan policy disagreements". They are basic character traits of a man with a short temper who is set in his ways, come hell or high water. We already had a nightmare of a similar "leader" that just left the White House. And Christie is a disciple of that regime.
And this current situation with the $400 million in education funding that NJ students now lose out on after he took over the application process - accusations and documented support from Bret Schundler that Christie again is playing fast and loose with the facts all while lashing out at anyone who dares to point out the truth.
Understanding that many in the corporate media are overwhelmed and overworked, it would be nice to see some more reporting on this very disturbing pattern of reckless behavior and how these ethical issues on Christie's part are a danger to the state and its future. Christie has shown that he does not negotiate in good faith - if he even negotiates at all. He is not one to be trusted, and his word has been proven over and over to conflict with his actions and reality.
The $1 trillion Iraq war has gone from early successes, to the chaos of civil war, to a surge, and now to the draw-down to 50,000 troops. After eight years there has been immense suffering and loss on the part of Iraqi, American, and allied partners. President Obama spoke about the war Tuesday night from the Oval Office. New Jersey veterans, family of the fallen, and those who help returning vets have their opinions.
The President began his speech saying, "Good evening. Tonight I'd like to speak to you about the end of of our combat mission in Iraq." He went on to explain that violence will not necessarily end. Cranbury resident Sue Niederer, who lost her son, Army Lt. Seth Dvorin, to an explosion in February 2004, was quoted by the Star Ledger as saying, "The combat mission is in no way over. There's 50,000 of our soldiers over there and they have guns."
After eight years of different missions, Obama's goal is to create a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant country." He feels this goal is achievable. The true measure of the war, however, is yet to be written. There is no doubt its cost has been high.
A few minutes ago, former NJ Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, fired a few days ago for "lying" to Governor Christie about events connected to the state's bungled Race to the Top funding for NJ schools, released documents he believes will set the record straight that he is telling the truth, and it is the governor who is not being truthful. From the chronology, comes this extraordinary quote. Schundler:
I have thought about the possibility that beyond my being a scapegoat for his misstatement, the Governor might be angry at me for not telling him the interview was videotaped. In my defense, I never believed I needed to say, 'Governor, stick to the truth, there's a videotape.' Perhaps I should have.
First is a 7-page written chronology which begins with the dizzying events of the last few days, including a press conference called to blame the Obama administration for the funding loss, in which the governor said something Schundler says the governor knew was not true. Next come emails between Schundler and Maria Comella, a spokewoman and top staffer to Christie. Next is a draft of a letter to US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, submitted to Christie Chief of Staff Richard Bagger. It makes, as he says, points he knew the Governor's office wanted, but does not include a claim that Schundler's team provided the federal interviewers with the data NJ's application was missing. Finally come two rewrites Bagger did of Schundler's Duncan letter. In the first, you will see that an assertion has been added - apparently untrue - that Schundler provided those missing figures to the federal interviewers. In the second, Bagger has removed the false claim that Schundler provided those missing numbers to the interviewers, because Schundler had insisted that was not true. Schundler says he transferred Bagger's second rewrite to his letterhead, signed and emailed it to Washington, following up with a pdf of that letter.
This is all breaking now. We haven't had much time to sift through it, but I wanted to get it all up now to you raw, so you could begin to read it for yourself. Schundler provided all these documents, and we uploaded them from the first place we saw them, Asbury Park Press:
Gov. Christie wants us all to move on off his bungled Race to the Top application that cost the state nearly half a billion bucks. Get over it. Stop mentioning it. Don't ask no questions. Ah, and that application for $268 million in federal aide to replace teacher jobs he hasn't applied for? What? Well, I support public edu... hey, is that Mika Brzezinski? How's my tie? I'm the Decider!
Christie's got his man. He wants to offload all of this onto former Education Commissioner Bret Schundler: "Don't lie to the governor," says the Governor. But there are signs Schundler, with whom I agree on nearly nothing, but who even political foes can see may be being unfairly maligned, is tired of hearing himself impugned for what he maintains he did not do. Christie demands this all to evaporate on his explanation that Schundler told him (and his staff) that he gave the missing Race to the Top info the funding reviewers in D.C., when he did not. But Schundler says the opposite, that he told Christie (and his staff) that he did not give that info to them. Schundler now says it's the Governor who's lying:
The Governor is saying I misled him and that is absolutely untrue.
That becomes important because it is not clear that Schundler knew the required information was not in the application, and because the application was hastily changed over Memorial Day weekend, though details there are sketchy, to date. What hand Schundler had in making those changes - unclear, to date. A reported draft of the application with edits, in Schundler's handwriting removing budget information federal officials request in the application, has not been produced to date, and the Christie administration has not responded to requests for those documents.
The "mystery" of the fatal "error" is not solved.
(read about it below the fold)
Since last night, our traffic here at Blue Jersey has soared, largely thanks to Rachel Maddow's coverage last night of Gov. Christie's extraordinary efforts to offload fault for his administration's $400 million Race to the Top mess.
Links to Blue Jersey are being facebooked (thanks!) & tweeted widely (wow, thanks!). So, today, our regulars are joined by zillions of newbies.
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I was responsible," he said in an interview today with The Star-Ledger. "What can I say? I don't think they're making it up.
- Bret Schundler to Star-Ledger
Actually, "making it up" would occur to me, yes. And I think I could make an even stronger case for "making it all up as they go along."
Christie administration sources - here I will include former Education Commissioner Schundler - have changed their story several times, and now are trying to settle fault on Schundler. In a dizzying few days, they've shifted blame from the governor himself owning up (for about 4 minutes) to...everyone. "Mid-level" employee. Federal bureaucrats. NJ teachers. President Obama. Rahm Emanuel... Schundler.
This story is not stable. And that means Christie's Dept. of Education - and how it makes decisions - is not stable, or may not be.
The governor himself has been caught with video proof that something he loudly claimed was in fact not true. And given he's the guy at the top, that also creates instability.
Schundler's account is particularly vexing, that he should accept that culpability now. The governor says Schundler "mislead" (read: lied) to him and everyone else about what happened. But there's considerable evidence that suggests another scenario entirely. Those wrong numbers were swapped in by the administration during a hasty Memorial Day weekend revision. Email records from last week appear to show Schundler did notify Christie's top staff that there was an error they didn't try to clarify it in D.C., and further suggest (as this video seems to support) that it may have been because Schundler's team didn't know the mistake was in there when they presented NJ's application in D.C.. (In the video, watch those heads snap around, like wha?). Christie's claim (during his 'blame the feds' phase) was that Schundler had tried to tell the funding reviewers the correct info. Schundler, who is every bit as credible here as Christie is, disputes that. We should only believe Christie's account? And why would Schundler now change direction from 2 days ago saying with some defiance he's been straight with the Governor all along ... to meekly repenting in sackcloth and ashes? Why? And why now?
New Jerseyans should take into account Schundler's own very precarious personal situation, and ask themselves if that made him more vulnerable to the requirement of powerful GOP leaders that he fall on his Christie's sword. Schundler has financial problems, and reports say he asked to be fired instead of resign, so he could collect unemployment. (Irony of ironies, government reform may make Schundler ineligibleto collect).
If Schundler's financial situation is unstable, and at the same time, Christie's plan to offload his own responsibility on the federal government (no longer credible due to that video) backfires, and his own failures are starting to be called out, was Schundler vulnerable to promises by powerful Republicans that his financial woes would evaporate if he took one for the Gipper?
Rachel Maddow has a good timeline of all this, if you're playing catch-up on this story.
The further misadventures of Gov. Christie, the screwup, the $400 million dollars we won't get, and the chain of Christie excuses, the timeline that doesn't quite add up, and some stupid stuff said about Barack Obama that backfires big. Rachel Maddow hit this tonight:
The Christie Administration has cast a wide net, blaming everyone from mindless drones in Washington to Rahm Emanuel and the Obama Administration itself. The facts are clear, that the mistake in New Jersey's Race to the Top application originated in the Governor's office and the blame game should begin and end there.
The Governor was already prepared to scapegoat President Obama before that kind of blew up in his face, instead of taking the blame himself as he should have. Even before this mess started with former Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, the Christie administration was already planing on what they're response was going to be to be, simply to blame the federal government.
Never mind that the federal government and the Obama administration are the reason we even have a Race to the Top program and funds we could apply for that can help this state. The Christie administration is still going to try and scapegoat them. Gov. Christie is contributing to the shrill nature of politics in this state and in this nation yet again with this scorched earth policy.
The governor needs to apologize to the Obama administration and to the President directly, take responsibility, and stop trying to push it away from his desk.
It turns out the United States Department of Education keeps video of the presentations of Race to the Top applicants. And that video, obtained by Star Ledger (that's it, below) directly contradicts Gov. Christie's claim that Washington bureaucrats were at fault for not letting NJ just fix a basic error in the application.
Does anybody in Washington, D.C. have a lick of common sense? Pick up the phone and ask us for the number. - - Gov. Christie
Actually, Christie's characteristic bluster aside, the video reveals that the NJ team was asked directly for that information, and they struggled to answer, and couldn't provide it. In fact, they apparently never provided it. Watch:
Excerpt of N.J.'s Race to the Top interview shows officials with no budget answer
The government's video raises a good many questions, and issues. And if New Jerseyans are not getting straight answers from their governor - which this video would suggest they are not - then we expect hard questions to be asked at hearings in both the Assembly and Senate.
I'm going to run Assemblyman John Wisniewski's statement tonight, in full, because it's going to be part of cutting through some of the misdirection of the last few days. Wisniewski, NJDSC Chair:
First Christie wanted to blame the teachers, a familiar refrain from this Governor. But the teachers - a stakeholder with the state in bringing education money to New Jersey - signed off on the correct version, one that would have moved NJ from 11th place with no funding into the Top 10 and $400 million for New Jersey Schools.
Christie personally decided to scrap the agreement and didn't even ask the teachers to sign on to his own version which was submitted. In the process, Christie threw his Education Commissioner under the bus saying he knew better.
Next Christie tried to blame the President saying the Obama administration was being unfair or politically motivated because Christie's administration pointed out the error. But the Obama administration, unlike the Christie administration, is open and transparent and actually taped the meeting. The video catches Christie in his bold face lie and shows administration representatives were asked not once, but twice and both times they did not correct the application.
Then Christie tried to say it was a clerical error made by one person, so they would just hire another. But the video also makes clear Christie's representatives were woefully unprepared and had no response when the issue was raised.
When is Christie going to take some responsibility? It's too late to fix his incompetence, which cost the state of New Jersey and its people $400 million that was rightfully theirs. But it's not too late to admit that his ego-driven desire to pump up his national Republican credentials did great harm to our state's students and taxpayers.
Hearings in New Jersey's state Assembly and Senate will be held and we will get to the bottom of this. The investigation will help ensure that this can never happen again, and decide whether NJ needs an independent committee to oversee all future federal applications because the Christie administration is unable to do their job without failing. New Jersey cannot afford to lose another $400 million because Christie and his appointees are unprepared for their job.
How did this happen? Simple mistake? Poor choice? And what kind of qualifications - and commitment to public education - do the people running Christie's Education Dept. really have?
The Assembly Speaker has ordered a hearing to get to the bottom of the Christie administrations errors in applying for the federal Race to the Top funding. Oliver:
With nearly half of a billion dollars lost because of human error, this hearing is an absolute must. The state, our taxpayers, and most of all our children deserve answers from the administration as to how such an egregious blunder could have been overlooked with so much as stake.
UPDATE 8/25 4:30pm: Senate President Steve Sweeney and Majority Leader Barbara Buono are announcing the Senate Legislative Oversight Committee will also schedule a hearing into this matter. Buono, who will chair, said the goal will be to change the state's method of handling similar applications in the future. Both say their review was made necessary by Gov. Christie's blaming his administration, plus federal grant reviewers and even the President for NJ's 11th place finish. Sweeney quoted the Governor that responsibility fell on "one mid-level staffer" but he contends "it's the fault of a process that seems like it was set up for failure."
Questions have been piling up all day, not the least of which is this: Is this incompetence on the part of Education Commissioner Bret Schundler's office - either by an individual or individuals, or as a culture of the way his office works? Or, did Governor Christie's administration treat this program and its opportunities as a political football, punting because they didn't get everything they wanted, throwing the game? Did they give this effort their best, or send in people with poor qualifications in leading public schooling?
Date and time has not yet been set but the hearing will be via the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Christie administration officials who will be called to appear before the panel include Education Commissioner Bret Schundler.
The governor this morning made efforts to minimize the seriousness of the apparent blunder, blaming "Washington bureaucracy" (a familiar GOP whine) and referring to NJ's missed opportunity as "one piece of paper" in a thousand-page application. NJ's application provided information for the wrong years on a question worth just under 5 points of 500. NJ lost by 3 points, coming in 11th nationwide - the first 10 state programs got funding.
Derek Roseman, spokesman for Senate President Stephen Sweeney and the majority Senate office, gets our quote of the day, off the story on the mind-numbing news that New Jersey lost out on on $400 million dollars in the federal Race to the Top program because an application Gov. Christie signed off on contained an error of the kind you get when you don't read simple instructions.
After making a high-profile bid for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education reform money, New Jersey fell three points short of receiving "Race to the Top" funding, in part because of an error by the Christie administration in the state's application, records obtained by The Star-Ledger show.
One five-point question on the application asked for budget information comparing the 2008 and 2009 school years. However, the state submitted information comparing the current year to 2011.
That mistake cost the state 4.8 points. The state lost points in other areas as well, the records show.
But how could they have made this mistake?
New Jersey's application was submitted after a heated battle between Christie and the NJEA.
The union and hundreds of its local chapters had signed onto an earlier version of the application, in which Schundler had agreed to compromises on tenure and merit pay. But the administration hastily rewrote the application over the Memorial Day weekend, scrapping the agreed-to changes.
The final application, which was submitted without the backing of the NJEA, was driven to Washington the day of the deadline because the papers could not be faxed or e-mailed.
"On Friday of Memorial Day weekend we all signed off on the same application," Hiltner said. "By Tuesday morning, a different application had been submitted. How much time could have been put into that application?" (emphasis mine)
Apparently, when a radio DJ says "Jump!," Christie says, "Off of which bridge?", because Christie forced Schundler to rewrite the application at the last minute to make it more to Gearhart's liking. And then called the DJ to beg forgiveness.
Apparently, that last-minute rewrite didn't catch the fatal flaw. So now NJ loses out on the money because Chris Christie needed to appease a radio personality.
It's a stunning combination of ineptitude and cowardly pandering to your base. Remind you of anyone?
In a couple of weeks, the front porch of my house will be painted with the words to Imagine in purples, charcoals and greens, next to the column with the words to Schiller's (and Beethoven's) Ode to Joy. My own little art defense to the cultural warfare against Muslims of this last week. A drop in the bucket, but all mine.
There's some crossover here at Blue Jersey with Democracy for America (DFA). This week, DFA broke with founder Howard Dean after Dean's just plain wrong statement about the Muslim center in Ground Zero's neighborhood. Arshad Hasan's reply for DFA is one I proudly stand behind. It's all here.
I didn't write about it - despite the fact I lost somebody I knew at the World Trade Center, as many here did - because the public disagreement with Dean was wrenching. But some idiot just sent me another nasty, racist rant about Muslims. So, I'm going to paint my porch. And though, it's not what we usually do here, I wanted to share this video, from Glee - brought to you by Fox, with no apparent recognition by them of the irony.
Glee's nerdy adolescents every week stumble through high school roadblocks and embarrassments and manage creativity, decency and alertness to each other's differences with more elegance than most of the people who have a microphone in public life ever do. Kids in chairs, kids with Down's, kids who can't hear, gay kids whose lives surprise their parents. It's not anything so mundane as tolerance. It's the joy of difference. This is my moment of zen today, and grace, and glee:
Imagine there's no country
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
Today we learn that Chris Christie's "ME! ME! ME!" version of NJ's Race To The Top application has failed to qualify for $400 million in education aid from the Federal Government.
No doubt, Christie will blame the application's failure on the "intransigence" of the NJEA. But there is a laundry list of reasons why few serious educators would sign on to many of Christie's proposals/Obama's dubious stipulations.
Christie has said in the past that "words matter," and that's true. He clearly knows it, too, because he has been a master of using descriptive language like "crass," "intransigent" and "greedy" to cast the NJEA as a horror show.
But as unsavory as the current political climate may be, New Jerseysans have known the NJEA a lot longer than they have known Chris Christie. New Jerseyans who went to public schools and have fond memories of teachers, classrooms, school plays and learning great things. Do you know who was there? The NJEA.
And if you didn't go to school here, but your kids do, think back before Chris Christie. Did you have a negative opinion of your children's school and teachers? Did you feel like you had better run for your life because the schools here are so utterly atrocious? I'm betting the answer is no. And do you know who has been in those public schools since 1853? The NJEA.
Not that they're perfect. Far from it. But nobody is. And with regard to Race to the Top - for a number of reasons too long to enumerate here - NJEA is right on the money. They didn't sign on to the plan because it was a crappy plan, built not of collaboration, but of politics and Chris Christie's drive to be the king, baby.
Today, Governor Christie loses, in front of God and everybody. I guess that's why it's called "governing," and not "telling everybody what to do-ing."
This includes a basic paper trail and a manner in which the votes can be audited and verified, among other basic things. But the reality of this all is that in many many states, voters are still facing the same issues with respect to potentially stealing elections. Just because there was a big win in 2008 doesn't mean that the same vote theft and shenanigans that went on in 2000, 2002 and 2004 are gone. In fact, many other countries still use the same paper in a locked box as their means of voting - and they have the winner declared pretty damn quickly as well.
But I guess when the companies that make and run the voting machines for the overwhelming majority of the votes are major contributors to one of the political parties, that is integrity enough. We should just trust them, right? It's only one of the most basic rights and it's not like elections have consequences, right?
It's time to cruise into the weekend with haiku. Lots to news to write about. Menendez & Lautenberg are digging for the truth why the Lockerbie bomber is free. The right-wing gins up outrage over the Islamic cultural center 2 blocks from Ground Zero. CNN's Top 100 House Races comes out, with 2 NJ races. SEC goes after NJ for securities fraud. Steve Sweeney's Gloucester Freeholder Board gets slapped with a court-ordered monitor to check their transparency.
Remember the rules? Write your verse - 7 syllables, then 5, then 7 again - on the topic suggested, then you get to set the topic for the next haiku. I'll start you off:
So, someone sent me a way too long video that they received which was of the "you eeevil soshulist Demmocrats better watch it cuz we are coming to git ya" variety, and I decided that it was way too easy to come up with a powerful rebuttal.
That being said, I put this little video together to remind everyone just how things were back when Republicans ruled Congress (and the White House). And that this is precisely what they will do if they regain power.
The Washington Post editorial board (generally not known for being the most progressive opinion page) gave him a shout-out today, citing him as the sole Republican to speak out for the sane position on religious freedom:
And Republican leaders - and we use that term loosely - have been almost universally eager to exploit the issue for political purposes. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie objected to both sides using the issue "as a political football," but he is the rare exception.
Christie, who's become a conservative icon, took a vocal stand against the xenophobia and mob mentality driving the opposition to the Park51 Muslim community center in Manhattan. More than that, he took a stand for one of our most fundamental founding rights.
In the words of our governor:
We cannot paint all of Islam with that brush. We have to bring people together.
You made New Jersey proud Monday, Governor.
Governor Christie chose to speak out, taking one for the team to remind us all what too many Americans too often forget: religious freedom doesn't belong to one faith - it belongs to everyone. No religion can claim a monopoly on the Constitution, and no race or ideology can claim exclusive access to the core values at the heart of America.
New Jersey witnessed the collapse of the towers from just across the Hudson. The Garden State grieved for the lives that were so senselessly lost, and we prayed for the commuters who would never make it home from the World Trade Center Path Station.
A cadre of fanatics sought to undermine America. They do not deserve the power to watch us undermine American values. Millions of Muslim Americans - whose religion claims as wide a range of members as every other - should not suffer for an attack that violated the country they love, too.
So we of the ACLU-NJ - as well as (we hope) everyone who believes in the First Amendment - thank you, Governor Christie, for speaking up Monday for religious freedom, for the Constitution, and for New Jersey.
Allison Peltzman works as communications specialist for ACLU-NJ, but this is what she believes no matter what her job is.
This got posted over by the Blue Jersey Radio post, so I'll pull it up into the sun for its own little while.
It isn't just the "professional left" that puts the starch in the White House's shorts. Now, we get word from inside a closed-door meeting at the White House with state-based equality groups that Brian Bond, Dep. Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, had some interesting things to say:
Morgan Meneses-Sheets, executive director of Equality Maryland, stated, "Respectfully, we need President Obama to push for full inclusion of the LGBT community on ENDA, on marriage- we need the full get, not the lesser get. The highest office in the land sets the tone for the whole country." Bond agreed, but expressed frustration at the often intense criticism levied, particularly by bloggers, against an administration that is "99 percent supportive of your issues." [emphasis added]
This reminds me of the deep blue howl after Garden State Equality announced it was closing the gAyTM on political party contributions, after the utter failure of NJ Democrats to be what we elected them to be (full disclosure: proud member of GSE board here, and that decision was frickin' unanimous). Democrats - here in NJ & in DC - are delighted to take money from gay people and orgs supporting their issues, but you can make the same argument on the President that we here in the Garden State make about the Dems: he hasn't done enough. The White House isn't where it needs to be - on DOMA, on marriage equality...
But it makes me wonder. If gay bloggers have the White House frustrated, what about us? We've got both kinds at Blue Jersey - straight 'n gay. So, let me put down the Cheetos and straighten the collar of my flannel PJ's with the little poodles on them and ask: Did we piss the White House off too?
