Tag Archives: Corruption

Chris Christie – Lane Closure Crisis

Chris Christie

All government is coercion.

We allow ourselves to be governed in exchange for a certain degree of order.  We allow ourselves to be subject to the confiscatory practice of taxation in order to pay for that order, that law and order.

And we give power to men that we wouldn’t otherwise give.

Power corrupts – absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The Christie administration retaliated against a political slight.  But they didn’t retaliate against the political operative, in this case a democrat mayor who didn’t endorse Christie for governor – no, they retaliated against the people that live in the mayor’s town.  The Christie administration order lane closures to ensure a traffic nightmare would take place on a bridge serving the mayor’s town.

This isn’t denying an appointment, this isn’t leaking sensitive information to the press and this isn’t shelving legislation favored by an opponent.  This is wanted abuse of political authority it retribution of a perceived slight.

This was planned, this was deliberate and this was malicious.

I’m not sure that Christie himself ever knew or gave the order – that may or may not come out.  But in the same way that Obama sets the tone in the White House and is responsible for the various scandals under his watch, Mr. Christie is responsible for the actions of his deputy chief of staff.

Will this signal the end of his career?  Who knows – I doubt it.  Traffic is traffic after all.  And, to be sure, the only career he has remaining is to be a serious contender for the GOP nomination in 2016; something he wasn’t guaranteed to win before this happened.  But if I had to guess, this alone doesn’t sink his chances, in fact, how he handles it may serve to help him.

Hurricane Katrina: Saving New Orlean’s Children?

Busts are painful.

Destruction is brutal.

Death is horrible.

However, it is out of all those things that the sprouts of future generations come.  New Orleans’ is proving that this is just as true today as it’s always been:

Katrina also washed away much of New Orleans’s sorry public school district, where majorities of students consistently failed. Once again, citizens are improving on what they had. The city’s biggest education reform is that the majority of its 35,000 public school kids now attend charter schools overseen by a state-run school district. It’s too early to tell much from test-score results, but it’s clear that the success and optimism of charter school operators—from the national KIPP outfit to local nonprofits—at getting schools up and running has been a big factor in residents’ decisions to return home.

Often the way things are is simply a legacy of the way things have always been.

And if it took Katrina to save a city full of kids that haven’t had a chance in generations; well, so be it.