Wolf Howling: new jersey

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

After Six Months In Office - There is Hope & Change

Chris Christie is doing the impossible in bluest of blue states, N.J. In a state with the legislature firmly in control of Democrats, he is defeating the unions, holding the line on taxes, and decreasing spending. It is far more steamroller than bipartisan. At NRO, they document how Christie has done it and the daunting hurdles that still remain.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Anti-Obama

With Obama, we get supremely nuanced speeches and expiration dates on every one of his pronouncements. NJ Gov. Chris Christie Cristie could not be more the opposite in virtually all respects. I sincerely hope Christie succeeds in turning around NJ. If he does, there is no limit on how high he can go in elective politics. Below is his most recent youtube appearance, directed at a news reporter describing his tone as confrontational. Enjoy.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Gov. Chris Christie - What Leadership Looks Like

Articulate fiscal hawks like Paul Ryan in the House and Chris Christie as Governor of New Jersey give a glimmer of hope that our deeply listing ship of state might yet be righted. I have blogged on Ryan here. Today, from Plumb Bob Blog, comes a post on Christie's actions to date and his most recent speech to the assembled Mayors of New Jersey. This from Plumb Bob Blog:

Speaking, as I was this morning, of politicians with the stones to make the necessary cuts in spending…

Mike Shedlock (with a hat tip to Michelle Malkin) reported on a remarkable speech by New Jersey’s new governor, Chris Christie to the New Jersey League of Municipalities, that illustrates what Real Men® who hold office will have to be doing for the next several decades.

He minces no words:
• government programs will have to be cut

• government salaries and benefits will have to be cut to the size and scope of comparable private sector salaries and benefits

• government-worker unions will have to cede power

• tax increases are not an option, and

• politicians will have to behave as though the next election does not matter.
In just five, tense weeks of holding office, he already has actions to match his words; budget officers showed him 378 ways to freeze spending to close a $2.3 billion gap in a $6 billion pool of money in the budget, and he signed 375 of them. . . .

Unfortunately, Gov. Christie's speech is not on YouTube yet, but it is on video here. It is well worth the time to listen. Christie shows what leadership looks like. Compare and contrast that with the left's (and some on the right's) treatment of Sen. Bunning for merely having the temerity to suggest that the left, having just paraded in front of the cameras in their new fiscal hawk costumes after passing pay-go, actually pay for yet another extension of unemployment benefits. That is the opposite of leadership. Unfortunately, it appears to be pervasive throughout Congress and the Executive Branch today.

Monday, January 25, 2010

If At First You Don't Succeed, Campaign, Campaign Again

Obama's poll numbers are tanking - as are the poll numbers for his signature legislative effort, universal Obamacare. Obama's coattails are not merely short, but after Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey, apparently non-existent. Unable to fathom how he has gone from being the hope 'n change Messiah during the campaign, carrying the Democratic party with him to electoral victory, to someone who makes Jimmy Carter look like a model President, Obama has decided to go back to his comfort zone - campaigning - in a big way.:

After last week's devastating defeat in Massachusetts, President Obama ordered a review of Democratic strategy and has decided to bring back some of the key people who helped him win the presidency, hoping they can work their magic on troubled Democrats. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, the president is taking greater control over party strategy and is bringing back his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee congressional and governors' races in hopes of preventing a Democratic massacre in November. . . .

The reality is that Obama does not seem yet to have left the campaign mode. Some might think that a detriment in a sitting President. Not Obama and his clique, however, whose response to the problems or governance is to campaign more and harder. Who are we to judge? Oh, that's right. We're the electorate. That's our job.

At any rate, Plouffe, he of campaign magic, is apparently equally as clueless as to the reasons for Obama's downfall. Plouffe has has outlined a sure fire strategy to change Obama's fading fortunes in an op-ed at the Washington Post. Democrats will survive a November massacre if they just "do what the American people sent them to Washington to do." Given that Obama campaigned to the center during the general election, I would have to agree with that. But what Plouffe means is actually to do what the far left base of the Democrats wants them to do. That means, explains Plouffe, first and foremost, immediately passing health care.

One wonders if Plouffe bothered to turn on a t.v. covering the Massachusetts election for TED KENNEDY'S ANCESTRAL SEAT. Apparently not. That said, there might be more to this than meets the eye. Plouffe adds a "P.S." that "[h]ealth care is a jobs creator." Who knew? We can solve all of our problems at once. Given that health care bill would create over 100 new bureaucratic entities, Plouffe's probably not even gilding the lilly with that one. Pass health care and solve our unemployment problem all in one fell swoop. Genuis. No wonder the left feels that they are meant by birthright to govern we, the unwashed masses, by fiat. And if we don't understand that, well, they'll just make a greater effort to explain it to us in the future.

Second on Plouffe's list is that "[w]e need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them." Top down job creation is not how a capitilist system works - or at least not if the goal is the creation of permanent jobs. Government funded jobs from a spending bill are by definition temporary. Of course, it may well be that Plouffe is only concerned about jobs lasting from October to mid November of this year.

On a related note, just on Sunday, the left took credit for creating a whole bunch of jobs - the only problem was that none of the President's staff doing the Sunday talk show circuit could agree on how many. The numbers ranged from "thousands" to "1.5 million" to "2 million." Quite a spread there. Plouffe might want to start out his effort to convince the electorate of the veracity of Obama's job creation claims by making sure that whatever number Obama's speech writer dreams up while on a "fairy dust" bender is the same one used by the rest of the Obama Administration in public.

Plouffe does note, rightly, that "full recovery will happen only when the private sector begins hiring in earnest." What he doesn't explain is why, then, did the Democrats only allocate 2.6% of the $787 billion stimulus bills to helping small business - the hands down best engine of new job creation in America - with another 10% for infrastructure improvements. Well, at least Obama and Plouffe can point to public sector jobs. They did very well from the stimulus.

Unfortunately, as a high school student could probably have explained to Obama and Plouffe, the public sector itself creates no wealth. Public sector employment is wholly dependant upon tax receipts from . . . the private sector (or money borrowed from China which has to be repaid by private sector tax receipts, as the case may be). While public sector functions may be necessary, paying for them is a leech, not a benefit, to the economy. So Obama pissed away close to a trillion in borrowed money for virtually no return on investment. Since Plouffe glosses over those facts, I guess he is taking a mulligan on that one.

Plouffe's ultimate solution is to tell America not to be fooled by Republican criticism as the Bushies are responsible for all of Obama's ills. Apparently Obama was never inagurated and Bush is a year into his third term. If only.

And Plouffe, lastly, calls on Democrats to loudly trumpet their many achievements during the past year. He cites as one of them the great "transparency" instituted by Democrats. Whatever else you may say about Plouffe, the guy obviously has a world class sense of humor.

I am sure the return to a campaign mode that Obama, in reality, never left will work out well for Obama and the Democrats. Indeed, I applaud them for doing so as an alternative to governing and would remind them that, should they fail, not to give up hope. The answer is just to campaign, campaign ever harder.

You know, if this wasn't so deadly serious for our nation, it would be fun just to sit back with some popcorn and watch. These jokers are caricatures - of themselves.