At what point does the governor’s attacks against the state’s teachers union become seen for the petty, vengeful and unseemly vendetta that they are? After all, Gov. Christie rarely misses an opportunity to slam the NJEA — as he did yesterday.
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
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Hank Kalet 
If a person is anti-union, then I guess they will applaud Christie's disgusting attacks on the NJEA. As if the NJEA were the cause of NJ's and the US's economic problems. His rabid attacks on the NJEA are examples of bait and switch, misdirection, a straw man ploy or a red herring. Paint the NJEA as the great Satan, as the cause of NJ's deficits to cover the incompetence and/or duplicity of certain legislators. So the promises made to public sector employees will be just spat upon and ignored. But the promises made to the rich and the giant multinational corporations will be honored with interest.Christie's real goal is to destroy the unions, especially the NJEA. We live during a very anti-union era, unions are down to about 12% of the workforce. Finland has one of the top rated school systems in the world and its teachers are unionized as they are in all of western Europe.It's insane in this country, we have a whole segment of the population (many of them are billionaires) who are opposed to public education and public schools. But they are not opposed to taking public money and pumping it into charter schools (really private schools), actual private schools and vouchers.