As a New Jersey resident, I've gotten to watch Chris Christie in action first-hand for a number of years and it hasn't been very pretty. I could see how his call-it-like-he-sees-it, shut-your-stupid-mouth-hole approach might make for interesting sound-bytes on the national stage. His personality would probably serve him well on a show where twelve strangers share a house and compete in weekly challenges for prizes.
But as a governor, it's been a different story. First, there was the tunnel project he killed. This project was massive and would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs just when the economy was at its worst. On a personal note, my home value probably would have jumped and the time spent on my daily train commute to New York would have dropped. For the citizens of New Jersey, it was a win-win as long as we could handle paying a few more cents at the gas pump. To me, that didn't seem like such a big deal. Gas was already four bucks a gallon and that was still cheaper than many areas of the country.
The beauty of the whole tunnel debacle is that now Christie supports tunnel expansion. Granted, there's no federal funding in place now to support the project and should it happen, it will be completed far beyond the projected 2018 date of the killed plan. But why get something needed done with a incremental tax hike and federal funding when you can do it with increased borrowing and less than ideal solutions eight years late? Of course, that increased borrowing part will be a little tougher since New Jersey got its credit rating knocked down. When I act like that, I get denied a lease on a Toyota Corolla, but when a conservative politician does that, he gets re-elected.
We get what we deserve, I guess, since we put Christie back in power after his first term. It seems like his constituents have finally caught on, however.
Kansas has the same problem... a governor with all the financial acumen of this guy:
His budget problems have existed since his first term, but for some reason the people of Kansas wanted to see how this whole thing played out and put Brownback in office a second time. The results should surprise no one, but they are still bad. What's interesting is the gambling-addict approach that so many conservatives take to their economic policies by doubling down on bad ideas hoping for the next round to be the one that pays for all those past losses. In this case, infrastructure, schools, and pensions will be the areas hit in order to make sure tax cuts continue on. Do tax cuts have photos of every conservative politician standing over a murdered hooker? I don't understand where that blind adherence comes from.
When not steering his state's budget into icebergs, Brownback likes to lead local Wrong Side of History parades. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Brownback would resist the crushing wave of LGBT progress (which still has a ways to go, no doubt), but I'm curious to see how he responds when the Supreme Court takes a stab at gay marriage later in the year.
Finally, I wanted to give Sarah Palin a special send-off since I have a feeling we might not be seeing as much of her as expected in the next presidential election cycle thanks to this (coverage of her speech starts at the 2:45 mark):
I'll let Bill Mahr break down the response to her speech:
But I just wanted to take a moment to wish her the best as she moves on to whatever the next stage of her career brings. For old-times sake...
Happy trails, Sarah. You have some impressive shoes to fill and I don't doubt that someone on the right will fill them.
