Hat Tip: Rufus
Showing posts with label Chris Christie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Christie. Show all posts
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Who is Maura Lee and Why is she targeting Gov. Chris Christie?
HAT TIP: TIGERHAWK
Author of DOJ report targeting NJ Governor Chris Christie has history of using position for political purposes, sources say
The Daily Caller has learned that the author behind the recent report from the Department of Justice that targeted five former U.S. attorneys for excessive travel expenses has had, according to our sources, a troubled history in the DOJ and attempted in the past to use her position to smear conservatives.
When the report surfaced last week, the investigation’s timing and targeting especially of New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, who has steadily been raising his national profile, raised red flags.
According to the DOJ report, Christie — favored by many conservatives to run against President Obama in 2012 — spent a total of about $2,000 more than his budget allowed on 23 trips he took between 2007 and 2009. Almost immediately after the report’s release, conservative media and the blogosphere lit up with accusations that the report was politically motivated and meant to malign a rising star in the Republican Party.
Tom Fitton, the president of DOJ watchdog organization Judicial Watch, agreed with that sentiment, telling TheDC that his first instinct was that the report was nothing more than a hit job from an “ideological and hostile Justice Department that leaked the report.”
New information obtained by TheDC shows that that narrative may be true.
The report’s author, Maura Lee, began her DOJ career in the civil rights division, but now works in the DOJ Office of Inspector General. Hans von Spakovsky, former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, supervised Lee and told TheDC that he was “astonished” when he found out she was the author of the report.
According to von Spakovsky, Lee was “one of the most belligerent, unprofessional lawyers” he encountered during his time at the DOJ. “Because of her,” he said, “we had to completely change our security protocol.”
Another former senior DOJ official who asked not to be named confirmed Lee’s involvement in strategizing to leak information to the Washington Post, saying that she was not a trustworthy person and had major political motivations.
Von Spakovsky described one case where Lee was caught breaking into the e-mail of a colleague, Joshua Rogers, specifically because Rogers was conservative and Christian. “Lee was radically left. She made it plain that she didn’t like Rogers,” von Spakovsky said.
He went on to call Lee’s efforts at DOJ a “major security breach.”
“She was one of the most partisan career people I ever met,” von Spakovsky told TheDC. So partisan, in fact, that he describes Lee as someone who would encourage other DOJ lawyers not to pursue cases so that the Bush administration would not be able to take credit for being progressive on voter and civil rights issues.
When asked, von Spakovsky said Lee is “so biased, there is no way she could investigate and write an objective report. I can’t imagine anyone more inappropriate to be working on this kind of report in the IG office.”
According to another former DOJ employee who worked closely with Lee, Lee first got into trouble while working in the Voters Rights Division during the Bush administration. There, according to the former coworker, Lee was caught breaking into other employees’ e-mail accounts and spreading around personal information.
The former coworker also alleges that Lee sent out e-mails to the more “left-leaning DOJ employees,” suggesting that they leak sensitive information to the Washington Post. According to this former DOJ employee, once Lee was found out, the entire security system within the Voters Rights Division had to be revamped.
Not only that, but according to this source, Lee’s superiors – including von Spakovsky – were authorized by the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility to search her e-mails. They found evidence of Lee’s attempts to leak information to the Washington Post on, among other things, the Texas redistricting issue in 2005 when a handful of DOJ attorneys argued the new plan was unconstitutional because it unfairly favored Republicans.
Shortly thereafter, Lee moved to the Inspector General’s office, where she authored this latest report. Although the report did not mention Christie by name, it mirrored accusations made in 2009 about Christie’s travel expenses that nearly derailed his gubernatorial campaign.
When contacted by TheDC, Lee refused to comment.
Both von Spakovsky and the former DOJ employee are of the opinion that considering the history of its author, the recent report targeting Chris Christie is absolutely politically motivated. Moreover, both said that another IG report was also done on internal travel expenses of DOJ employees that, in some cases, exceeded the budget limit by tens of thousands of dollars. That report, however, was never released.
“There is absolutely no logical explanation for why this report [for the five attorneys general] would get leaked and the one about internal employees was kept confidential,” said von Spakovsky.
Christie’s office has not yet returned TheDC’s request for comment.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/16/author-of-doj-report-targeting-nj-governor-chris-christie-has-history-of-using-position-for-political-purposes-sources-say/#ixzz15U7NyEyw
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/16/author-of-doj-report-targeting-nj-governor-chris-christie-has-history-of-using-position-for-political-purposes-sources-say/#ixzz15U6w7noJ
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
"This is the crap I have to hear." NJ Gov, Chris Christie
Wall Street Journal 20, 2010
The Christie Example
New Jersey government workers should have 401(k) plans instead of pensions.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has become the national pacesetter in state fiscal reform, and he's once again lighting up Youtube with his defense of taxpayers against the appetites of government-employee unions. The plan he announced last week to reform public pensions is crucial to saving the Garden State from economic calamity, but it falls short on one crucial part of long-term reform.
New Jersey has officially run up unfunded liabilities of $46 billion in its pension plan and $67 billion in its medical plan, though some estimates put the shortfalls much higher. Absent reform, the Republican Governor says the unfunded pension liabilities alone will explode to more than $180 billion over the next 30 years.
Most notably Mr. Christie's plan includes a rollback of the fraudulent 9% pension increase that triggered recent civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Without the money to pay for enhanced benefits, and unwilling to suggest even higher tax rates, legislators cooked the books in 2001 by pretending that the pension funds had more assets than they actually did, and therefore could cover larger payments. The fraud was repeated in various state bond offerings. Unions like to cast benefit hikes as sacred promises on the part of taxpayers. But in this case they are more accurately viewed as offenses that would draw prison terms if committed by anyone in private business.
Mr. Christie's plan would eliminate automatic cost of living adjustment (COLA) increases for both current and future retirees. And he'd raise employee contribution levels to the retirement plans and make it harder to get disability benefits, which have become a cottage industry of fraud. Other proposals include lowering the expected returns in the pension funds from 8.25% annually to a somewhat more realistic 7.5%.
When it comes to medical benefits, the Governor would provide state workers with a plan similar to what federal employees enjoy now—more options, but also more responsibility for paying the bills. State workers would pay 30% of health costs, up from an average of 8% now. Retirees wouldn't have to pay higher premiums but would accept higher co-pays.
Far from being onerous, these changes are consistent with current standards across private industry. The Christie plan would eliminate a major chunk of the state's unfunded liabilities, and for that he deserves kudos. And if he can convince today's legislators (most of them Democrats) to right the wrongs of their predecessors, he will justly earn the cheers of Garden State taxpayers.
But missing from the Christie proposal is the most important reform for the long-term: shifting government workers from pensions to 401(k)-style plans that have become the norm among private workers. This type of structural reform would prevent future politicians from simply repeating the mistakes of the past and returning to padding pensions when taxpayers are paying less attention.
Government pension systems are inherently flawed because the politicians who bestow benefits upon state workers are the same politicians who seek votes and campaign contributions from the unions representing these workers. When it's time to negotiate the benefits, the politicians and unions are often sitting on the same side of the table, facing no one representing the taxpayers.
As large pools of money controlled by politicians or their agents, pension funds are also magnets for corruption, with a history of pay-to-play scandals in various states. They allow ambitious politicians to use pension holdings in public companies not as levers to demand better returns, but as weapons to force shareholder money to serve political agendas.
Defined-contribution systems such as 401(k) plans create healthier incentives all around. Accounts are controlled by the individual workers, not pension fund bosses. Relying on the growth of their investment accounts to fund retirement, government workers have their interests aligned with those of private workers: Everyone wants a thriving economy.
Governor Christie has previously promoted the use of 401(k)-style plans for government workers, but Democrats resisted and he apparently concluded the cause is hopeless. But other states have introduced such programs in gradual fashion, say, for new hires, or perhaps offering a hybrid plan of a limited pension combined with a 401(k). By dropping the issue without a fight, Mr. Christie has given away too much even before the unions get to the table.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Meet Conservative New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
HAt Tip: Tigerhawk
Fat, blunt, funny, a northeast kind of guy, street smart, articulate, an attitude you find in the corridor from Philadelphia to New York City, Chris Christie is surprising folks by doing what he promised and that is trying to cut New Jersey politicians and public unions down to size.
Christie put forward a plan to eliminate $10.7 billion from New Jersey's massive $38 billion budget for 2011 -- a cut of nearly 30 percent. He has taken on the state teachers union, demanding that teachers take a one-year pay freeze and begin contributing something to their state pensions and health benefits. When the union balked, Christie called on New Jersey voters to send a message by defeating local school budgets at the polls. Voters responded by rejecting 54 percent of the school spending plans, the most since 1976.
You have to go to 1:10 and hear what he said about John Corzine. Below is what New Jersey was offered and took a pass on.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Can the Republicans screw up the next Presidential campaign?
The Republicans could not be foolish enough to think the American public would go for Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee in 2012, could they? Barack Obama could not possibly be that lucky, you think?
_____________________
What the election results mean for Barack Obama and Sarah Palin
Toby Harnden
Telegraph
So, 24 hours after the votes have been counted and as the chattering classes fall silent, what does it all mean? Here are 10 thoughts to take away:
- Barack Obama needs to be very afraid. If he doesn’t start to notch up concrete achievements, the Democrats could take a pasting in next year’s mid-terms, setting the stage for his being a one-term president.
- Sarah Palin roared and had a considerable impact in New York’s 23rd District, which the Democrat narrowly won. Trouble is for her that the result showed the limits of her appeal. There was no exit polling and so there is much supposition but it seems that her intervention energised conservatives but alienated centrists. Perhaps the national Republican who came out best was Mitt Romney, who decided not to get involved.
- The 2008 presidential election was probably an aberration rather than a seismic shift in the political landscape. Obama’s winning formula of massive turnout from the young and the black plus support from independents seems to be a thing of history.
- Bob McDonnell’s thumping 18-point win in Virginia shows how Republicans can win again. He and Chris Christie, the New Jersey victor, did not take up Palin’s offer to campaign for them and played down their social conservatism – so this could be bad news for Palinites.
- The national Republican party is in disarray. If they don’t get their act together then Obama will win a second term by default if nothing else.
- The media narrative about NY23 – that it was about an intolerant Right purging a noble moderate – is rubbish. What happened was a very liberal Republican and awful candidate was chosen in error/arrogance and the people rejected her. She then showed her true colours by sabotaging the GOP. There’s a lot of Democratic gloating but you can bet the farm on a Republican being elected there in a year’s time.
- This is likely to make health-care reform more difficult to achieve because conservative Democrats in the House will be fearful of signing their own death warrant by backing Nancy Pelosi and Obama.
- Calling your opponent fat is not a winning strategy. Even if he is.
- After the result in Maine, the battle over gay marriage is far from over.
- It’s the economy stupid and despite all the White House spin, it seems they get that.
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