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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (148254)	10/27/2010 5:44:37 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 542139

The law won't change that. Those forests aren't in Calif. They are in the US. Takes Big Government to get them out. This only covers state forests.

To: Katelew who wrote (148254)	10/28/2010 10:08:41 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 542139

Kate, you like Christie, don't you? I'm afraid he is just a politician like all other NJ politicians. He is just more glib than most, moves the money into different places which makes it seem like he is doing something different (which, I suppose, in a sense he is, but it isn't really qualitatively different), and he seems to be a pretty good liar. Except, like most of them, he doesn't know when to stop lying, or when a videotape might pop up that shows that he has been lying. Or, at least, someone in his administration was been lying. With the proliferation of small video cameras and high quality smartphones that take good videos as well as pictures, we will see more and more of that, I hope and believe. On August 25, 2010 it was announced that New Jersey had lost out on $400 million in Federal Race To The Top education grants. "Gov. Chris Christie said a clerical error by a midlevel official had caused the state to lose out on $400 million in federal school reform money — an error that caused its Race to the Top grant application to fall short of the 10-member winner’s circle by just three points...The mistake, resulted from a failure to correctly read a straight-forward question worth not quite 5 of the competition’s 500 points. The application asked states vying for billions in federal funds to compare their 2008 and 2009 school budgets to illustrate their commitment to education financing. Instead, a New Jersey official, whom the governor would not identify, compared the state’s 2010 and 2011 financing, thus forfeiting the points." [59] Christie criticized the Obama administration by saying that “This is the stuff, candidly, that drives people crazy about government and crazy about Washington... the first part of it is the mistake of putting the wrong piece of paper in, it drives people crazy and, believe me, I’m not thrilled about it. But the second part is, does anybody in Washington, D.C. have a lick of common sense? Pick up the phone and ask us for the number... that’s the stuff the Obama administration should answer for. Are you guys just down there checking boxes like mindless drones, or are you thinking? When the president comes back to New Jersey, he’s going to have to explain to the people of the state of New Jersey why he’s depriving them of $400 million that this application earned.” [60] The New Jersey Education association rebuked Governor Christie by suggesting that the Governor's rejection of a compromise worked out by his Education Commissioner Bret Schundler with the Teacher's unions on May 27 was to blame. The rejection of the deal with the teachers union meant that the state had little more than 3 days to complete the grant applications which were due on June 1. The New York Times reported on August 25, 2010 that showed that the state lost more points in other areas of its application, in part because it got only 59 percent of its 645 school districts to agree to carry out Race to the Top reforms, and only 1 percent of its unions. In New York, which was among the winners, all districts signed on... New Jersey lost 14 points for the union’s lack of support, and 16 points for its failure to make as much progress on statewide student and teacher data systems as other states. Even in the area with Mr. Christie’s most aggressive changes, in educator certification and evaluation, the state came up 14 points short.[59] On August 26, the U.S. Department of Education released a video showing that the budget issue had been specifically raised at a meeting with Schundler, contradicting Christie's claim that the federal government had not informed them of the error. In response, Gov. Christie asked for Schundler's resignation, saying that Schundler had misinformed Christie of the facts of the situation. Schundler initially agreed to resign, however the following morning he reneged on this promise, and asked to be fired instead - citing his need to claim unemployment benefits. Schundler maintains that he told Christie the truth, and that Christie is misstating what actually occurred.[61] en.wikipedia.org