You think the Governor had no part to play in the State not having a budget?
Did what? Close the beach? What would my reaction be if Obama, or Clinton, had not closed the beach? I would wonder why so many people are blaming Obama/Clinton for closing the beach when it appears that they didn’t close the beach. I would also wonder why so many people still believe the initial reports from the lame street media.
Do you think the legislature had no part to play in the State not having a budget? Isn’t passing a budget one of their primary duties?
At any moment I expect the lame stream media to remember the role that the NJ legislature played in the closing of NJ parks. But I’m not holding my breath or anything time consuming.
I wonder why you continue this charade of pretending to not understand the question? No one is fooled.
Or are you truly that stupid?
My god, you’re an idiot.
That’s the reaction you’re looking for, I assume.
Thanks for not answering my question. I can’t say that I’m surprised. Fucking idiot.
Exactly.
Check out this photo. Just look at it. Consider how busy that beach would be were it open. Now consider that Chris Christie is sitting there, soaking up the sun, after being at least partially responsible for the shutdown. The optics are not good, to put it bluntly. When your actions as governor ruin a vacation weekend for thousands of people, you don’t then claim special privilege to avoid getting yours ruined in the exact same way. It’s not illegal, obviously, it’s just a colossal dick move.
Bolding mine. Might as well tell a quadruple amputee to climb a flight of stairs.
I didn’t take it as giving the appearance of shutting down the beach for his own private use. Not at all.
It’s the reality that his actions fucked up a LOT of people’s weekend plans, but he just blithely went ahead with his own.
Remember that it wasn’t just the state beaches that were shut down. All of the state parks, forests, and recreation areas were shut down too - and NJ has a wealth of them. All sorts of people people who planned to go hiking, boating, fishing, camping, biking golfing, picnicking, and countless other things had their weekend plans destroyed. Liberty State Park and the ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were shut down too! Visitors from all over the world were affected.
Never mind all the police who had to work extra hours keeping people away.
But what did Chris Christie care? Let them eat cake indeed.
(I live in New Jersey. I am currently in Berlin, Germany. This story is being reported here by BBC International! The traction that this thing is getting is unbelievable. )
As Lord Feldon pointed out in this thread ( http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=830333 ), it’s even worse. Despite **Isilder[/b}'s assertion that the state park closure didn’t affect residents whose houses were grandfathered in prior to the Park establishment:
Only they couldn’t stay – the police booted everyone out.
I would also like to point out that the budget crisis was entirely of Christie’s making. He decided that the budget needed to have a clause in it where the state would recapture funds from Horizon Blue Cross to pay for his opioid treatment program. Horizon (and pretty much everyone else) disagreed. He had to cave in on it before the 4th.
So not so much tone deaf as deaf from shooting a gun too close to your head with no ear protection on.
Yeah, sure.
Consider a hypothetical situation during the Obama administration where Congress didn’t raise the debt ceiling, say, and therefore a spending bill wasn’t passed and the federal government had to shut down essential services. Then, say, the Obama family took a trip to a national park that had been closed to the public.
You honestly expect us to believe you would have said, “Eh, the media is blowing this out of proportion. The President has the right to go to that park. The shutdown is Congress’ fault, after all. Let’s get back to the real business of governing.”
Ha. We all know you and the other usual conservative suspects on this board and elsewhere would have had an absolute hissy fit. You would have freakin’ lost your minds with outrage. And I suspect that despite your earnest denials, you know that would have been your reaction, too.
I can handle a lot of anti-liberal, anti-progressive, anti-Democratic points of view. But for the love of Goldwater, the blatant hypocrisy is just too much to bear.
Does golf count as a “park”?
Just a thought, unrelated to the main thrust of this thread, but that last one I posted got me thinking.
I’ve ridden my bike up and down Island Beach State Park from one end to the other a few times. You kind of get the impression that you’re riding down a thin strip of sand with beach grass and plants between you and the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Barnegat Bay on the other, with no a whole lotta anything else. I know about the Ranger stations and some other buildings (including what I suppose is the Governor’s Mansion), the Aeolium (a cute little museum), and the Services building at the public beach. But I sure as heck didn’t know about those grandfathered cottages inside the Park. Don’t recall seeing them or any access roads to them off that one main drag down the middle of the Park.
The Horizon bill was a separate piece of legislation. In early June, Christie decided he wanted $300 million for his opioid treatment stuff, but also the bigger piece of the bill that kept getting missed since it got tied to the budget was that it would force Horizon to become the “insurer of last resort” for NJ … which drove them to insolvency the last time that was tried (in the 90’s) and had the larger Blue Cross organization saying they were going to disassociate from Horizon should it happen. Keep in mind Horizon is the main health insurance for about 1/2 the population of the state.
Since Governor “Senior Summer” Christie didn’t really do anything with this until June, and since the U.S. Congress is busy fucking up healthcare anyway, and since it just made sense to wait and discuss the Horizon bill on a separate timeline that wasn’t tied to the budget deadline of June 30th, Speaker of the Assembly Prieto basically said “look, let’s get the budget done first, then we can talk about your Horizon bill”.
(Aside: it should be noted at this point that both of the major-party candidates for Governor - Dem. Phil Murphy and Repub. Kim Guadagno [Christie’s Lt. Gov] - said they weren’t in favor of the Horizon bill and would push to overturn it in ~6 months when they were sworn in.)
Christie said “Uh-uh no way, pass my Horizon bill or I veto the budget!”*
There was arguing. The NJ Senate kowtowed to Christie and passed both, but there was a showdown in the Assembly… Speaker Prieto didn’t let the Horizon bill go to the floor for a vote and put up the Budget instead. About a 1/3 of the assembly voted for the budget (mostly Dem), about a 1/3 voted against (mostly Repub), and the 1/3 who were supporting Christie were flat out abstaining, meaning the budget didn’t get enough votes to pass or fail.
Thus limbo.
Thus posturing.
Thus Governor “F 'em all, I shoulda been president” Christie’s “This facility is closed because of this man <picture of Speaker Prieto>. Call him: <office number>” posters on all state facilities.
Thus Christie’s tone-deaf trip to the beach … while the Senate and Assembly leadership were in Trenton trying to do deals.
“Run for governor, and you can have a residence!” Indeed, Mr. Christie. Indeed.
You jackass.
- Technically he threatened to line-item veto about $300 million of education and other democratic-project funding
Oh, lordy. Then there’s this today:
Speaker Prieto says “Anyone who contends Governor Christie is an honest man has spent too much time sitting in the sun with him or in traffic on the George Washington Bridge."
Christie apparently line-item vetoed things he was expected to leave in based on the deal, because why not? It’s obvious Christie literally doesn’t care about NJ at all anymore.
-Screwing people out of planned holiday getaways/vacations/plans. Check. The hell with them.
-Threatening to arrest people, IN. THEIR. HOMES. if they do not vacate. Check. Only a handful. Who cares?
-Throwing in overtime pay to insure these things happen. Check. Not my problem.
-Making it more difficult for beach/shore businesses to actually DO business on the busiest holiday of the Summer season. Check. They’ll forget after awhile.
-Appearing as a power mad asshole, giving double middle fingers to everyone I’m not related to. Priceless.
Maybe he was paid to do this by the writing staff of SNL because they were running low on ideas for an upcoming show. You can’t make this stuff up, even in New Jersey, Dr. Feder!
Nahhh!
SNL is on hiatus until the Fall. By that time, most people who aren’t in NJ will have forgotten about this. They’ll be concerned with the World War starting in Korea or the Russian takeover of Amazon dot com via hacking or something else.
No. If things were different, things would be different. People chose to act as if the NJ Legislature or the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey doesn’t exist. Their choice. Haters gotta hate.