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Gov. Chris Christie has been lauded in some circles as a straight talker. He tells the truth, these folks say (and before you accuse me of putting up a straw man, just read all the laudatory clips written about him in the past).
But the reality is Christie is a fraud. I’ve made this point before, but with the governor set to give the keynote speech in Tampa at the Republican National Convention, and the national press about to fawn all over him, the critique had to be made by someone with a national reputation. Enter Paul Krugman.
Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist and The New York Times’ most effecxtive op-ed writer, deconstructs Christie in a scathing column that makes it clear that he “talks a good (and very loud) game about his willingness to make tough choices,” but has followed through in a very selective manner.
The governor was willing to cancel the desperately needed project to build another rail tunnel linking the state to Manhattan, but has invested state funds in a megamall in the Meadowlands and a casino in Atlantic City.
Also, while much of his program involves spending cuts, he has effectively raised taxes on low-income workers and homeowners by slashing tax credits. But he vetoed a temporary surcharge on millionaires while refusing to raise the state’s gasoline tax, which is the third-lowest in America and far below tax rates in neighboring states. Only some people, it seems, are expected to make sacrifices.
Christie would never admit to any of this and I suspect that the national press will fail to notice any of it — which is what they did when Christie Whitman became a national darling in the 1990s. So, expect the hero worship to continue.
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- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Hank Kalet 