The guy is a town hall rock star: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx723c9uBr0"]YouTube - Chris Christie: This is the Crap I Have to Hear[/ame]
I like him, but let's be honest. The guy is at least 1.5 or 1.75 rock stars. He appears to have eaten a rock star or two.
Public teachers are eee-vul! They must be stopped. Christie has declared a jihad against teachers Guess where Christie sends his kids to school
No - he yells at teachers too. Tells them "you don't have to do this job" at townhalls. This joker has no tact and is mean-spirited. I hope he goes national like that other "GOP rock star" Christie Whitman.
Here he is "yelling" at teachers: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkuTm-ON904"]YouTube - Governor Christie Responds To Teacher During Town Hall[/ame]
The union didn't support him in the election and now it's payback. He also supports charter schools which puts teachers' jobs at risk. I guess that's "love for teachers"
what do you disagree with in that second video? How do charter schools put teacher's jobs at risk? Wouldn't more schools create more jobs?
Do charter schools have to accept special needs students? Do the teachers have to have the same licenses? Why do we need charter schools if NJ is ranked 2nd or 3rd nationally in public education? You have to ask these questions first before buying into the Christie spin machine that NJ public schools are broken and he has to ride in (well, waddle in) and save them And is he funding the teachers' pension system? No - just like his predecessors
Of course it does. More schools equals more jobs for teachers. Especially schools that tend to have a smaller student/teacher ratio would mean opportunities for more teachers.
Teacher licensing keeps what could be good teachers out of the profession and saddles our kids with professional educators exclusively instead of having a mix including people with actual real world experience. Unless you live where dark people live, of course. How about these part timers fund their own pension system like everyone else does. Seriously, why are teachers the only professionals with unions. Be one or the other. A professional or a tradesman. You can't have it both ways.
What isn't? Part of being a professional is the ability/responsibility to negotiate what you believe is an appropriate level of compensation for your services. Unions strip teachers of that power while also stripping them of accountability for a level of quality of work deemed appropriate by their employer and superiors. I understand the inconvenience of negotiating with 30,000 auto workers individually so unions make sense. A school district with 100 teachers does not have the same issue. Smaller and larger professional companies can do it so scale is not an excuse.
VFish, based on these videos, I love this guy. I feel the biggest unfunded mandate other than Social security is public pensions. All other pensions have gone the way of the dodo, but if you work for the feds, state, or county government, you can retire at 20 years with unlimited pension support? That is crazy. But, as you may know, I'm a flaming liberal because I disagree with other republican efforts such as complete deregulation and tax cuts, the gay marriage amendment, support for offensive wars in the middle east, and fear of brown people. Why do I bring this up? Because if somebody ousted all the Tea Party morons, and the Republicans were able to be more fiscally responsible types, then maybe the Republican party could gain the support of moderates. That being said, moderates don't vote as regularly as the batshit crazies.
Matt, the tea party is about smaller government and lower taxes. Period. On everything else you’ll never get any agreement with the movement. As the tea party picks up momentum other groups try to glom on. I’m not against gay marriage. TBH, I am of the Kinky Friedman school of thought – Gays have the right to just as miserable as the rest of us. That said, gay marriage is not a big issue for me.
I'm against lower taxes without similar reductions in spending. The party that won't approve new programs without identifying spending should also not approve tax cuts without identifying program cuts that offset the loss of revenue. If the Tea Party wanted my vote, the first plank of their platform would be that every government agency will receive a 10% reduction in budget for next year, and that 10% of the lower-performing government employees will lose their job each year. We'll call it the "Jack Welsh" model. When I say EVERY agency, I mean all of them - DoD, DHS, FBI, CIA - everyone. None of this "smaller government except for the military" crap.
Lots of professionals have unions. They just don't call them unions. The AMA and the ABA are very, very powerful unions. Of course, athletes and entertainers have unions too.
Every NJ governor in the last 20 years back to Florio has played games with the public pension system. Not funding it, borrowing against it, not investing wisely. This has been a long time coming Teachers go into the profession knowing they won't break the bank but have ample time off and a good pension. I don't find it an outrageous expectation to have a decent retirement. There will be changes, and they'll have to kick in more for pension and health. But the teachers union alone has not created this mess. That's where Christie is full of shit
You said, "He also supports charter schools which puts teachers' jobs at risk." The pros and cons of charter schools are a completely different argument. Just answer the questions.
Right - the fact that they might very well suck and are not subject to the same rules is not relevant to a talk about public education
I find it an outrageous expectation to have a fully-funded, limitless retirement that includes health care - especially considering nobody else in any industry is expecting one. NJ Teachers average about $60,000 a year. Need I remind you that the national average is around half that. The problem is that people THINK they DESERVE to get paid a lot more, because they have a big-ass house and a $30,000 car and $200 cable and they eat out all the time and thats "just a middle class lifestyle." That's BS. Buy less stuff, save for retirement like any sensible person. Just because you live paycheck-to-paycheck doesn't mean you're not middle class. It just means you're spending all your money, you moron.
Trade organizations are not unions and you know it. Stop pretending they are. When has the ABA gone out on strike or the AMA collective bargained for higher wages?