New Jersey had its credit rating cut one step by Standard & Poor’s, handing Chris Christie his eighth downgrade, the most ever for a Garden State governor.
The reduction to A, the sixth-highest level, with a stable outlook follows a Sept. 5 downgrade by Fitch Ratings. It gives New Jersey the same general-obligation grade as California, which is on track for an upgrade as revenue exceeds Democratic Governor Jerry Brown’s estimates. Only Illinois has lower ratings than New Jersey among U.S. states.
“New Jersey continues to struggle with structural imbalance,” S&P analyst John Sugden in New York said in a statement today. “The governor’s decision to delay pension funding, while providing the necessary tools for cash management and budget control, has significant negative implications for the state’s liability profile.”
Christie, a 52-year-old Republican in his second term, broke his promise this year to make $2.5 billion in extra pension payments in fiscal 2014 and 2015 to help trim unfunded obligations. He has called for more changes to the plan as costs for employee benefits crowd out other state spending.
Last year, my personal investments provided over a 19% return and I paid no investment or broker fees.
Under Chris Christie’s dysfunctional fiscal management, the New Jersey Public Pension fund returned 15.9% (2014) but paid $398.7 million dollars in fees (fiscal 2013). Since his term in office began in 2009, the pension fund had paid billions in fees, has underperformed the market, and the governor has not made a full payment to the system.
There’s fiscal management for you. Imagine what he’d do to the country as president. On second thought, let’s not.
All of this economic tomfoolery, detailed in a new report in the International Business Times, tell you all you need to know about why Chris Christie is not only unsuited to be president, but why his tenure would be a disaster for the United States’ economy. He is steeped in the old trickle down theory that brought us the Great Recession and the Billionaire’s Recovery. He’s warming up in New Jersey by soaking the middle and working classes with higher payments, property taxes and fees, while insulating the wealthy by refusing to even entertain the idea of more revenue for needed state services.
And his latest gambit, a state commission to look into how to reform the state pension program, is led by a Christie campaign contributor and former Reagan Administration economist, Thomas J. Healy, who says that the commission is not political. Should I be skeptical?
The recent decision in California regarding teacher tenure is causing a great deal of anxiety in public education and in those states where teacher tenure still has some meaning. The ruling that tenure is unconstitutional because it denies students the right to a decent education is an interesting take on the subject, but it obscures the truth about how tenure works and why it’s still needed.
I’ve already visited the subject, but it’s worth repeating that tenure is NOT, I repeat, NOT a guarantee of lifetime employment, no matter how many times the know-nothing reformers repeat that it is. Earning tenure merely means that after four years in one district, a teacher must get a due process hearing if a school district wants to fire them. In New Jersey, the tenure laws were changed in 2012 to streamline the process so it didn’t take years and a lot of money in order to fire a teacher. Now, an arbitrator hears the case and generally rules within five months, and their decision is final.
Opponents of tenure, and these are the people who want to privatize all government functions in the United States except the military, say that tenure, and unions, protects bad teachers and makes it almost impossible to fire them. They also say that seniority rules that protect experienced educators at the expense of newer teachers when there are layoffs are outmoded and result in many young, energetic educators being let go before they can even begin their careers. I will admit that there are teachers in classrooms right now who do not belong there and who should not be teaching. There are also middling teachers for whom a younger replacement might mean an improvement in children’s education.
But blaming teacher’s unions is not the answer. No, the real reform in teacher retention, training and development rests with the administrators who run the school districts and schools. They are the ones who have the ultimate power to evaluate and make hiring decisions about their staffs. If these administrators keep teachers who should not be in the classroom, then they will be the ones responsible when those teachers do not turn out to be effective educators.
And who are these administrators? They are self-selected people who decide on their own to become principals and superintendents. There is no national or state organization that recognizes and encourages people who would be excellent administrators and sets them on a path to effective leadership. It’s the luck of the draw, and the deck is thinning in New Jersey due to Governor Christie’s support and signature on a law that limits pay for superintendents and other upper echelon school management. Yes, yes; I’ve heard the false argument that money doesn’t matter in education, at least where pay is concerned, because the false common wisdom is that teachers do not enter their field for the money. If you don’t pay people enough, though, then you don’t get good people to fill those jobs whose charge is to maintain and grow excellent teaching staffs.
It’s a terrible cycle and the California ruling will unfortunately reinforce the idea that if we could only fire incompetent teachers that our schools would improve. Of course, that would be true, but the problem is that schools wouldn’t only fire incompetent teachers. They would fire expensive teachers, union leadership members, teachers who cross administrators or don’t fit the boss’s vision of what a successful teacher looks like. It would also open the floodgates for purely nepotistic and corruptive practices that would make the schools worse. Facebook gave the Newark school system $100 million dollars; don’t you think that any corporation would love to make hiring and firing decisions?
There is far more to this reality than what the know-nothings are saying in response to the California ruling. Only time will tell if the political winds indeed do blow eastward in this country.
Wealthy people, thank heavens, are safe. After saying that “there’s nothing off the table” concerning the budget, it turns out that there is something off the table, and that’s any revenue from wealthier residents or businesses. So essentially what we have is the Republican ideology that says that unions are destructive, raising revenue is not viable, and the middle class must bear the brunt of the costs of quality public schools and public services. And if they can’t pay for it, then oh well.
I’ll say it again: Christie will not win another general election in his lifetime. Donors know it, which is why they’re looking more favorably at Jeb Bush (shudder), and the far right has already abandoned him. Meanwhile, those of us who still proudly live in New Jersey will need to endure Christie for an entire second term.
(CNN) – A high school senior’s lawsuit against her mother and father for financial support and college tuition hit a hurdle Tuesday when a New Jersey judge denied the teenager’s request for immediate financial assistance from the parents.
Rachel Canning, 18, alleges in her lawsuit that her parents forced her out of their Lincoln Park, New Jersey home, and that she is unable to support herself financially. The lawsuit asks that her parents pay the remaining tuition for her last semester at her private high school, pay her current living and transportation expenses, commit to paying her college tuition and pay her legal fees for the suit she filed against her parents.
Her parents say she left home because she didn’t want to obey their rules.
Judge Peter Bogaard denied the request for high school tuition and current living expenses at a hearing Tuesday in New Jersey State Superior Court. Another hearing will be held in April on other issues in the suit, including whether Canning left home of her own accord, the judge said.
Canning, an honor student and cheerleader at Morris Catholic High School in Denville, says in court documents she had to leave her parents’ home because of emotional and psychological mistreatment, alleging, among other things, that her mother called her “fat” and “porky” and that her father threatened to beat her.
“I have been subjected to severe verbal and physical abuse by my mother and father,” Canning wrote in a court certification. “I am not willingly and voluntarily leaving a reasonable situation at home to make my own decisions. I had to leave to end the abuse.”
Canning left her parents’ home at the end of last October. After spending two nights at her boyfriend’s home, she moved into the home of her friend in a nearby town, where she has been staying ever since, according to court documents.
Anyone who’s been paying attention to New Jersey politics and education should have seen this one coming from a mile away: the resignation of Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf. What makes it even more predictable is that he’s taking a job with his good buddy, and former Education Chancellor of New York City, Joel Klein. Those two might be the only people currently working in education today who are making big time money. There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with improving schools.
Governor Christie is talking a good game about extending the school day and year and is making noise about having public workers contribute more to their pensions and benefits than they are now, but those proposals won’t become law as long as the focus is on Sandy funds and the George Washington Bridge. The same is true of a new Charter Schools bill, vouchers and weakening employee sick day policies. Done. Over. Not going to happen. The new teacher evaluation system is up and running and is working just as poorly as those who know about the teaching profession said it was going to work, so there’s not much more a Commissioner can do. Cerf is smart enough to see this, so it’s goodbye for him. And I can’t really blame him.
My interaction with Commissioner Cerf came last January, and I wrote about it at length here and here. In short, I was not impressed with either his answers to my questions or his attitude towards education. His main point throughout our discussion was that the state Board of Education supported him, and as long as that was the case there wasn’t anything he needed to change. He had little to say about the mechanics of teaching, because he never was a teacher, so the subject was foreign to him, and he seemed to be a completely political animal, which didn’t surprise me. So when the Christie Administration scandals began piling up, I figured he would be one of the first to leave because, really, there isn’t going to be much else to do on education.
Whoever becomes the new chief will essentially be a caretaker for the rest of Christie’s term. They’ll get to oversee the implementation of the Common Core Curriculum Standards and the PARCC tests and all of the mischief that those will bring. The test scores will ruin some teachers’ careers and of course there’s all that Facebook money to spend in Newark, but otherwise, I don’t see the Democrats caving the way they did in 2011. It will be up to the next administration, presumably, OK, hopefully, a Democratic one, to undo some of the damage. By that time, Cerf will be on to a new adventure.
Meanwhile, education professionals will be left to comply with rules that don’t make sense, that don’t contribute to the education of children, that saddle districts with unfunded costs associated with unproven and dangerous policies, and that reflect an attitude that doesn’t trust educators to, you know, educate. That’s hardly a legacy to be proud of.
Now this one I cannot understand. If Christie has nothing to hide, if he did nothing wrong, if he is innocent on any wrong doing and really had no knowledge of Bridgegate, then why has he lawyered up at a rate of $650 per hour? You would think that the self-proclaimed “Conservative” would want to save the taxpayers of his state that money by providing the subpoenaed documents but alas, there is something the governor doesn’t want us to see.
Governor Christie’s office has agreed to pay a high-powered attorney $650 per hour to represent it in a series of investigations into the George Washington Bridge lane closures.
That’s more than a 40 percent discount off attorney Randy Mastro’s normal rate, he wrote in a letter to state officials, and 20 percent less than the average amount charged by attorneys at the New York office of his firm, Gibson Dunn.
The terms of Mastro’s agreement were laid out in documents released by the governor’s office late Thursday in response to a public records request. A retention letter states that Mastro will help Christie’s office in several ways — including producing documents in connection with an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The reference to producing documents for the U.S. Attorney’s Office is the clearest indication that Christie’s office either has received, or anticipates receiving, a subpoena from federal prosecutors looking into whether a crime was committed. The state Republican Party and Christie’s re-election campaign confirmed earlier this month that they had received federal subpoenas but there has been no public confirmation of others.
Several people within Christie’s inner circle have also received subpoenas for documents by a joint legislative panel investigating the lane closures. The responses to those subpoenas are due on Monday. The attorney advising the investigative legislative panel, former federal prosecutor Reid Schar, is charging $350 per hour, also a discounted rate.
The biggest political crisis of Christie’s political career has also provided work for some of the biggest names in the region’s legal circles. Much of the cost is likely to be borne by taxpayers, although the Port Authority announced earlier this month that it would not pay the legal bills of the Christie ally and Port Authority executive who implemented the lane closures, David Wildstein.
Bomb squads and hazardous material teams fanned out across New Jersey on Friday after packages containing a suspicious white powder were delivered to as many as seven hotels near the site of the Super Bowl on Friday, according to multiple reports.
Authorities also were testing white powder contained in a letter sent to the Manhattan office of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, law enforcement officials told CNN. The letter opened in the mail room contained white powder, according to law enforcement officials.
No injuries were reported in either case, and NBC 4 reported that none of the New Jersey hotels were hosting the athletes who will be playing at MetLife.
WABC 7 reported the packages went to an Econo Lodge on Washington Avenue in Carlstadt, the Renaissance Meadowlands Hotel on Rutherford Avenue in Rutherford, the Homewood Suites by Hilton on Route 17 in East Rutherford and the Hilton Hasbrouck Heights Meadowlands on Terrace Avenue in Hasbrouck Heights.
No evacuations were ordered, WABC 7 reported.
America is set for the coldest month of the century as weather forecasters predict yet another freezing blast of Arctic air – putting Super Bowl Sunday in jeopardy.
Teams have been warned to stay on high alert for changes to the scheduling of the first Super Bowl to be played in an open-air stadium.
Temperatures have already hit record lows, at times making parts of the U.S. colder than the North Pole, and are expected to plunge in the coming days.
The timing could not be worse for one of the biggest global sporting events, which will be exposed to the full force of the elements at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on February 2.
Eric Grubman, NFL vice president of business operations, told the Denver Post: ‘We are advising teams to prepare in case a contingency plan goes into effect.’
The game could be moved to the preceding Friday or Saturday or the following Monday if authorities decide the weather will constitute a danger to public health.
Broncos coach John Fox and Seattle coach Pete Carroll will be the first to know if the event is rescheduled.
Matt Rogers, president of Commodity Weather Group LLC, said: ‘The crazy thing is that the current cold snap this week look to be a bit more modest in the face of next week’s outbreak.
‘The cold coming for the end of January is sufficient to make this the coldest month of the century so far and the coldest the Lower 48 has felt in the last 20 years.’
It seems that when Chris Christie’s mentor asked this question – “is that what you want in your president?”- he was not only talking about Christie’s possible involvement in the BridgeGate crisis. It is quite possible that he got a glimpse of this report.
Poverty in New Jersey continued to grow even as the national recession lifted, reaching a 52-year high in 2011, according to a report released today.
The annual survey by Legal Services of New Jersey found 24.7 percent of the state’s population — 2.1 million residents — was considered poor in 2011. That’s a jump of more than 80,000 people — nearly 1 percent higher than the previous year and 3.8 percent more than pre-recession levels.
“This is not just a one-year or five-year or 10-year variation,” said Melville D. Miller Jr., the president of LSNJ, which gives free legal help to low-income residents in civil cases. “This is the worst that it’s been since the 1960 Census.”
And it may get worse: The report warned Census figures for 2012 to be released this month may be higher. Those numbers are expected to show some of the impact from Hurricane Sandy, which took a bite out of the state’s economy and destroyed a large amount of affordable housing.
The numbers for New Jersey — one of the wealthiest states in the nation — mirror a national trend. In 2011, the federal poverty rate was the largest it had been in 18 years, according to the Congressional Research Service.
“The Great Recession was the worst major economic event since the early ’30s,” Miller said. “It’s taken longer for the U.S. to come out of it.”
The report — the seventh issued by Legal Services — defines being poor in New Jersey as a family of three making less than $37,060. That’s twice the federal poverty rate because New Jersey’s cost of living is among the highest in the nation.
The report found:
• A record high of more than 630,000 children — 31.2 percent — lived in a household defined as poor.
• The percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds living in poverty rose from 26.9 in 2007 to 32.8 in 2011.
• Of families headed by single mothers, 22 percent were poor compared to 3.6 percent of families headed by a married couple.
• African-Americans and Hispanics had poverty rates at least three times higher than whites.
• Boosted by the consistency of Social Security payments, the percentage of elderly who were poor dropped from 26.7 in 2007 to 26.2 in 2011.
• Six counties — Passaic, Cumberland, Hudson, Essex, Atlantic and Salem — had more than 30 percent of their population living in poverty in 2011.
• Among cities, nearly 65 percent of Camden residents lived in poverty, and 79 percent of children lived in poor households. Poverty topped 50 percent in Passaic, Lakewood, Paterson, Trenton and Newark.
Christie is denying that he ever knew that his staff did this, feigning outrage at the mere thought of any kind of political retribution, tactics that the governor has perfected during his term in office. The episode shows an atmosphere of thuggery that’s ugly even by New Jersey standards, and its pettiness is surpassed only by how truly unnecessary it was. Christie was going to win the election by a large margin whether the mayor endorsed him or not, but I guess that didn’t matter. Even if we buy the governor’s denials, the atmosphere he’s created in Trenton is more noxious than any SuperFund site. And the Star-Ledger has it exactly right: this is Nixonian and the governor will pay a steep price for it with no EZPass rebate.
We are still at the beginning stage of this investigation and there will probably be more damaging revelations, but my sense is that this by itself will not end any chances Christie has for a national run in 2016 if he was not directly involved. That should either come out or his loyal staff will take the fall for him. Stay tuned.
If you teach Language Arts and Mathematics, there are probably some good resources for the effective teacher, but as a high school history teacher, there was nothing on the site. Nada. Zilch. Not even a pretense that teaching history is in any way important or even part of the curriculum. Perhaps more will be added later, but at this point, the state has no interest in engaging anyone who doesn’t teach the tested subjects. And that’s to be expected because it’s been clear for a couple of years that the NJ Department of Education is focused on testing to the exclusion of a rich, varied, integrative curriculum..
Clearly this is still a work in progress and there’s a distinct possibility that it will grow into a valued resource. It has a good deal of competition from other, more established sites and its success will be determined by how well it meets teachers’ needs. The comments on the NJ Spotlight article are negative so far, with this being the most telling:
So, I click on the link in the article, then I click on NJMC, I choose Mathematics, then Kindergarten, I click on Unit 1, then I click on SLO 1 Count by ones up to 10.
Then I click on the 3 lesson plans, choose the first one listed called “Subitizing ” (huh???) and Lesson Seed 7.EE.A.2.
It’s a lesson on area using the expression 25(x+10)-13a.
For Kindergarten?
Another lesson says there are 18 cookies in each batch requiring 2 cups of flower. How much flower for 12 dozen?
Kindergarten?
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