Tag Archives: New Jersey

What exactly is Chris Christie’s view on contract law?

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A NJ.com headline caught my eye: “‘Contract’ isn’t a magic word in N.J. pension legal battle, lawyers argue”

A claim by public worker unions that they have a right to full pension funding challenges the core of New Jersey’s constitutional structure, attorneys for the state said in a brief filed Friday.

 
I find odd the silence from Republicans (and everyone else?) as Gov. Chris Christie’s attorneys appear to challenge the fundamental supremacy of the rule of contract law that holds together much of Anglo-American jurisprudence and property law.

I mean, I guess there’s a valid question about whether or not the state can make and be bound by contracts in violation of the constitution, but I’m not really sure the contract in question is in violation of the constitution.

To my untrained eyes at least, they’re making some pretty bizarre constitutional arguments (mostly centered on state balanced-budget requirements and the like) to prove that contention.

In principle, it sounds similar to the arguments being raised (on the issue of constitutional tax caps) by moderate tax reform advocates, about not binding future legislators by decisions of current legislators/voters — except that in Colorado’s case, they’re challenging the validity of certain state constitutional provisions (which took away the legislature’s effective authority to raise taxes at all) under the U.S. Constitution, rather than (as New Jersey is doing) trying to void contracts because they conflict with stringent state constitutional requirements.

Moreover, even if the New Jersey contracts are indeed unconstitutional, issuing bad-faith contracts is a pretty big problem as far as governing strategies go…and also tends to undermine the strength of contract law in the country.

I don’t have much else to add on this topic at the moment, but I’m flagging it now in case it develops into a bigger story later.

Chris Christie’s latest scandal involves EZ Passes

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Remember how Christie still believes he’s going to run for president and have a shot? New scandal discovered:

On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey issued a subpoena to members of the state legislature seeking records related to Baroni’s testimony at a 2013 hearing on the Bridgegate scandal. At that hearing, Baroni disclosed that he possessed E-ZPass customer data showing the traffic histories of constituents of state lawmakers who were interrogating him. Experts tell IBTimes that the disclosure of E-ZPass records appears to have violated state law protecting the privacy of drivers and also raises serious questions about the degree to which government agencies can keep tabs on the comings and goings of citizens.

 
Do read the full thing. It’s another impressive insight into the constant abuses of power and intimidation that have been hallmarks of the full Christie administration.

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New Jersey still no clearer on Charlie Baker’s role in scandal

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Weird that the Boston Globe Editorial Board endorsed Charlie Baker for Governor of Massachusetts after the paper’s own coverage back in June about the connections between Baker and the pay-to-play scandals of the Chris Christie Administration in New Jersey:

Baker’s new-found notoriety in the Garden State came to a head when the New Jersey State Investment Council agreed to seek a legal review of the $10,000 donation he made to the New Jersey GOP in May 2011 — just seven months before General Catalyst, the investment firm where he is listed as an “executive in residence” principal, received $15 million from the state’s pension fund.

The council’s decision sparked a series of headlines across the state that has put Baker in the middle of the ongoing media feeding frenzy that is swirling around Christie and his administration.

Just last week, a Washington-based campaign finance watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New Jersey attorney general, and the state’s Election Law Enforcement Commission to investigate a possible connection between the donation and the investment.

Here’s a sampling of some of the headlines over the past month: “N.J. pension fund’s investment draws pay-to-play inquiry” is the way the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, philly.com, headlined its story. “Christie administration to investigate pension investment tied to Massachusetts Republican” topped the story in the Newark Star Ledger. The Asbury Park Press and the Bergen Record covered the meeting with stories detailing the controversy.

The Inquirer website salted the wounds with a huge photo of Christie on a stage with Baker, then the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee, when the New Jersey governor came to Massachusetts to campaign for him. It also carried a head-shot of Baker farther on in the story, with the phrase “pay-to-play” in the caption. The controversy is also drawing national media. Businessweek ran a piece about the council’s decision, Fortune magazine has weighed in, and CNN’s website has also followed the story.

 
According to David Sirota, writing in the International Business Times last week, Chris Christie is now actively suppressing information related to the inquiry into Baker’s involvement in the situation in New Jersey.

As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has helped Charlie Baker with millions of dollars worth of ads supporting his Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign. But that’s not the only way he may be boosting the GOP candidate in the final weeks of a close election: Christie officials are blocking the release of the findings of New Jersey’s pay-to-play investigation into Baker.

The documents being withheld pertain to an investigation of Baker’s $10,000 contribution to the New Jersey Republican State Committee. The contributions came just months before Christie officials gave Baker’s company, General Catalyst, a contract to manage New Jersey pension money. New Jersey’s pay-to-play rules prohibit contributions to state parties from “any investment management professional associated” with a firm managing state pension money.

When the campaign donations and subsequent pension contract came to light in May, Democrats criticized Baker, who was then launching his 2014 campaign for governor of Massachusetts. In response, New Jersey launched a formal investigation into Baker’s contributions. The Newark Star-Ledger reported at the time that Christie officials “said the review would take several weeks.”

In a reply to International Business Times’ request for the findings of the audit under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, Christie’s Treasury Department said the request is being denied on the grounds that the documents in question are “consultative and deliberative material.” Despite officials’ assurances in May that the probe would take only weeks, the New Jersey Treasury said in September that the investigation is still “ongoing” — a designation the department says lets it stop the records from being released.

 
As a reminder: If the governor of Massachusetts has to resign for some reason — which, between scandals and promotions to Federal offices, is pretty common for U.S. governors in general these days — the lieutenant governor becomes Acting Governor of Massachusetts. From New York to Arizona, in the last six years, we’ve seen some pretty terrible lieutenant governors fail to rise to the challenge when suddenly promoted. If Charlie Baker becomes governor, and his term ends unexpectedly early for any reason, his current running mate, anti-gay Karyn Polito, would be the acting governor of Massachusetts.

Chris Christie mocks adults earning minimum wage

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Here’s a thing Chris Christie just said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today:

“I gotta tell you the truth: I’m tired of hearing about the minimum wage. I really am.

“I don’t think there’s a mother or father sitting around a kitchen table in America tonight who are saying, ‘You know, honey, if our son or daughter could just make a higher minimum wage, my God, all of our dreams would be realized.’”

 
And if you haven’t immediately identified the problem with that statement (which I helpfully bolded), here’s a good summary from Steve Benen:

Also note the part of his comments related to children: as if the minimum wage is primarily for young people.

Whether Christie is tired of hearing the truth or not, the fact remains that the vast majority of Americans who work for the minimum wage are over the age of 20. About half of them work full time.

It’s not about creating economic conditions in which “all of their dreams would be realized”; it’s about creating economic opportunities for those who are struggling to keep their heads above water and combatting systemic poverty.


 
I’m a bit curious as to what sort of service industry jobs typically staffed by adults Christie believes are not paid at minimum wage (or arguably less, in the case of waitstaff jobs). I’m guessing he probably doesn’t interact directly with those people anyway, however.

chris-christieGovernor Christie’s efforts to block a minimum wage raise in New Jersey were eventually overturned by a statewide ballot initiative.

Had he and other political leaders raised the minimum wage at state and federal levels more consistently over the past couple decades, to keep pace with inflation, the real purchasing power of every minimum wage paycheck would have remained at levels high enough that people wouldn’t be bringing up the issue so frequently now. Instead, it was allowed to decline significantly in value, leaving full-time minimum wage workers and near-minimum wage workers below the poverty line and unable to make ends meet.

Raising the minimum wage further would help significantly boost aggregate demand in the economy and thus spur consumption-driven growth. The experience of other peer economies with higher prevailing wages has demonstrated that there is plenty of room to sustain higher wages before there are any harms to the job market. It would also reduce the burden on government assistance programs and allow small businesses to hire more people to meet the increased consumer demand resulting from people having more spending money available and less debt to pay off.

Political bullying: Why Christie and LBJ aren’t at all the same

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Leaving aside the obvious way they aren’t at all the same — President and Senator Lyndon Johnson was a statesman while Governor Chris Christie most certainly is not — I found this distinction by Michael Zuckerman in The Atlantic to be particularly compelling and important to understand: “Americans may admire a politician who can play hardball, but it matters whether his victim is a political opponent or an innocent citizen.”

Now, with the caveat (which Zuckerman acknowledges too) that Congressman Johnson was definitely not a statesman and his election campaigns to the U.S. Senate included not just bullying but outright ballot-box stuffing, and keeping in mind Johnson’s advocacy for some unsavory policies along the way, on balance Johnson is most notable, in terms of results achieved, for his bullying of other Senators and members of Congress into accepting civil rights legislation, voting rights legislation, anti-poverty programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and much more. These helped millions and continue to do so today.

In general, Gov. Christie’s bullying has been of average people — including citizens asking reasonable questions at town hall meetings — and of far less powerful politicians in the state who aren’t really blocking him from achieving policy goals but are just insufficiently supportive of him personally. That’s not helping people. And his staff certainly hurt a lot of ordinary people (via hurricane relief withholding and bridge closures) in their quest to bully the mayors of Fort Lee and Hoboken for failing to support Christie’s re-election bid in a timely manner.

More from Zuckerman:

Many politicians accept the slings and arrows of the game because they accept the basic Machiavellian premise: “not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good,” as philosopher-turned-politician Michael Ignatieff has argued, “but also that they shouldn’t worry about it.” It’s the recognition that the political space is one of conflict, and one where morality is limited in some ways.

Even so, morality is not—and never should be—absent from the equation: The key stipulation, which Machiavelli took seriously, is “in the name of the public good.” In other words: You may have to do ruthless things to your political opponents, but you do those things because they help your constituents. It matters, in politics, who benefits.

Such is the case with LBJ’s strong-arm tactics. Yes, he deceived, threatened, and browbeat colleagues—”That man will twist your arm off at the shoulder and beat your head in with it,” Dixiecrat Senator Richard Russell, a staunch opponent of civil rights, famously observed. But we are, rightly, most tempted to forgive LBJ these trespasses when he undertook them on behalf of his constituents, especially disenfranchised black people in the South and poor people across America—when he was bullying, you might say, for a cause.

 
Americans crave a strong executive who gets things done. We’re a people of action who created a system designed to accomplish little, slowly. But Christie is doing it wrong.

Rising seas threaten coastal drinking water

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Here’s a global warming impact you may not have considered: saltwater contamination of drinking water in some coastal areas. It’s especially worth discussing, to me at least, because of my longstanding interest in water policy and because I just completed an environmental geology course, where we discussed the science behind drinking water supplies and coastal processes.

Basically, due to rising sea levels brought on by global warming, millions of Americans (and presumably people around the world) face possible destruction of reliable water supplies in low-lying areas. This can happen due to saltwater intrusion into the groundwater — something that has been occurring on Long Island for some time now as wells deplete the aquifers — or by saltwater further penetrating coastal marshes in estuaries, reaching into the non-tidal freshwater marshes. Also individual incidents such as storm surges, which often contaminate drinking supplies and treatment facilities, are going to be exacerbated by higher sea levels.

I’m particularly concerned because the state where I currently live (Delaware) has a coastline that is mainly an estuary, which was the subject of a new study on the impending problem. The potentially affected freshwater found in the coastal regions along the lower Delaware River and estuary provides drinking water for several million people in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. I caution you that the blog post I’m about to quote has some glaring errors, but I’ve tried to fix/remove them here:

Fresh water that now is flowing to the sea in the Delaware estuary is threatened by future sea-level rise resulting from rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions, a new study finds. As sea levels rise, salt water will move inland up the estuary.
[…]
The Partnership for the Delaware Estuary studied impacts [PDF] on drinking water, tidal wetlands and shellfish like the local oysters and freshwater mussels in “Climate Change and the Delaware Estuary” and how people can adapt to help protect the threatened resources.

Drinking water, tidal wetlands and shellfish are key resources for the estuary; and all three are vulnerable to effects of climate change, including warmer temperatures, higher sea levels and saltier water. Oysters alone brought about $19.2 million into the [region] in 2009.
[…]
Currently a “narrow fringe of freshwater wetlands” protects the freshwater, but the wetland marsh plants are very susceptible to rising salinity.

 

Low-lying wetlands of the lower Delaware River and estuary. Key: Red=Tidal wetland, Green=Nontidal wetland. NVCS map via the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.

It looks like there’s a pretty noticeable correlation between some of those freshwater wetlands and the population distribution on the New Jersey side…

If they become tidal wetlands instead of freshwater, that’s a big problem.

If you’re at all familiar with the disaster-ridden English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, then you probably know that, “the colonists soon discovered that the swampy and isolated site was plagued by mosquitoes and tidal river water unsuitable for drinking, and offered limited opportunities for hunting and little space for farming.” While the hunting and farming issue is not as much of a problem for the coastal United States these days, rising sea levels could basically expand a lot of estuaries and make much more of the seaboard’s water “unsuitable for drinking.” I know Jamestown had more problems than its drinking water, but everybody needs clean, freshwater to survive, and there are a lot more of us now living in threatened areas than ever before. We don’t want to repeat Jamestown if possible.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.