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.

The dangers of governing with a mandate you haven’t earned

Gov. Chris Christie won 49 percent of the vote in November to defeat an unpopular incumbent governor by 5 percentage points.

To many — primarily his Republican supporters — that was a landslide and gave him a mandate. But the math is pretty simple: More than half of the state’s voters backed someone other than Christie and — a key point that has been lost in the discussion — only one Assembly seat changed parties. Christie’s win, it would seem, had more to do with him not being the other guy.

And yet, he has been governing aggressively from the right, using a hatchet to chop the state budget into bits, apparently ready to make Grover Norquist’s goal of a government small enough to drown in a bath tub a reality.

So, what has been the response? The state’s papers (aside from conservative Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine and me) have given him a fairly wide berth. The public, however, appears to have a far less generous view.

Monmouth University released its latest poll today, showing that the governor’s approval rating has been on the decline and that many are dissatisfied with his budget:

When Governor Chris Christie unveiled his first state budget last month, he claimed the cuts were tough but fair. The latest Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll finds that Garden State residents agree with only half of that assessment. The cuts may be tough, but New Jerseyans see some groups, including teachers, as being disproportionately hurt. The poll also finds the governor coming up with the short end of the stick in his battle with the state teachers’ union.

Governor Christie’s job rating currently stands at 41% approve to 44% disapprove among all state residents, and 42% to 44% among registered voters. As a comparison, 34% of New Jerseyans gave thumbs up to the prior governor, Jon Corzine, at the same point in his term, while 37% gave a negative rating.

The driving force behind public opinion on the governor is his budget plan, something that an overwhelming 9-in-10 New Jerseyans have been paying some attention to. Governor Christie’s proposal gets mixed reviews. Among those aware of Christie’s budget plan, 46% say that his proposal is the product of tough and thoughtful choices, while an identical 46% see it as more of the same old political dealings. This may not represent an overwhelming endorsement of the incumbent’s plan, but it is decidedly more positive than opinion of Jon Corzine’s first budget, which only 32% saw as tough and thoughtful, compared to fully 60% who felt it was the product of backroom deals.

Furthermore, 22% of the public say they are satisfied with Chris Christie’s budget plan and another 32% say they can live with it even if they are not necessarily satisfied. However, a sizable 44% report being dissatisfied with the governor’s proposal. Again, these numbers are not great, but slightly better than his predecessor’s – only 10% of New Jerseyans were satisfied with Corzine’s initial budget, while 41% were dissatisfied.

To be fair, the governor had a disastrous fiscal situation to deal with. The state has been spending more than it has been taking in for years, and it has been clear since the day Jon Corzine took office in 2006 that something had to be done. To his credit, Gov. Christie is attempting to put the state on sounder fiscal footing; his approach, however, ignores public priorities and has little to do with fairness.

I’ve written about this before — including yesterday — but this budget leaves tax revenue on the table in the form of the expired income tax surcharge on those making more than $400,000. It slashes spending on public education (while leaving the charter school law in place, meaning that charters can form and ultimately siphon money from traditional public schools); asks poor seniors to pay fees for services and so on. There is a lot of pain being spread here, but the folks at the upper end of the income bracket, the ones most able to afford cuts, are the ones being spared.

We will have three more years of this — unless this petition to recall the governor catches fire (not likely). The best hope is a concerted and focused campaign by New Jersey voters to push back against the governor’s budget, to make it clear that the priorities he has outlined in his spending plan are not priorities supported by  a majority of New Jerseyans and to give support to legislators of either party who are willing to stand up and make it clear that they will not support the budget.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Ideology, shortsightedness and the Christie administration

A story in today’s Star-Ledger gets at the crux of the ideological manner in which Chris Christie has approached the state budget.

I should make it clear that all governors approach budgeting with an ideological bias — it is at the center of what it means to creat policy and budgets, by assigning dollar values to programs, are policy documents.

But Gov. Christie has rhetorically approached the budget as if his only goal was weening the state off unnecessary spending. He has talked repeatedly about how we have lived beyond our means for too long and how we need to stop, pretending that his cuts have had little to do with his political philosophy.

That, of course, is horse hockey (as Col. Potter might say on “M*A*S*H”). Christie has targeted the teachers union as the boogeyman of his administration, while slashing programs designed to ameliorate the effects of economic hardship (changes in unemployment benefits, for instance).

Today’s Ledger, cites another program cut (as part of a larger story on the potential loss of federal aid) that stands out for its callousness toward women and its consistency with the anti-abortion right’s antipathy toward women’s health issues:

The state is giving up a chance to get federal money for family-planning services after Christie proposed cutting all funding for doctor visits that include gynecological visits, birth control, breast exams and disease testing and treatment. Because the Christie administration doesn’t want to put up any money for the services, the state had to withdraw an application asking the federal government to fund 90 percent of the bill, a decision Democratic lawmakers have criticized.

Christie, as he made clear during the campaign, is a pro-lifer. That does not automatically place him in what I’ll call the antiwomen camp; but the antiabortion movement has a history of attacking women’s health programs. Christie’s budget cut must be seen in this vein, especially when paired with his unwillingness to reinstate the higher marginal rate on those who earn more than $400,000 a year.

The state’s press has been a bit soft on the governor since he came to office, allowing him to write his own narrative and create his own political story. In doing so, Christie gets to portray himself as being above politics, acting without the kinds of motivations that drive other politicians. That, of course, could not be further from the truth.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Mine explosion explodes myth of clean coal

I wish improved safety oversight and regulation would be enough to prevent future disasters like the West Virginia mine explosion, but the reality is that the most effective regulation will only have a modest effect in the future.

The reason has nothing to do with regulation, which should be strengthened significant, but with coal itself. Coal requires physical extraction, which is horribly dangerous. The only way to prevent these deadly events in the future, as Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone told Keith Olberman on Tuesday, “is to stop mining and burning coal.”

It can’t be done overnight, Goodell admits, because the United States “get(s) half of our electricity from coal.”

No one is suggesting that we stop burning coal immediately. But, you know, it‘s very clear in the big picture that the sort of era of fossil fuels is over, that we‘re moving away from coal in general.

Or, at least we should be.

The dangers and environmental impact of the extraction process bely the promise of future technological fixes on the climate front. Even if so-called clean coal wasn’t just a mirage, a pipe dream, the cost of digging it out of the ground is just too high and it will only get higher and higher and it’s just not worth the price.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.