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Just because they can afford to pay higher taxes doesn't mean they should. I think it would have been wise if the states never gave voting rights to all its citizens. Perhaps if only land owners had the right to vote, municipal budgets wouldn't be so large. For example, Jersey City's budget has grown tremendously in the last 10 years. Perhaps if only people who paid property taxes voted on such things like the education budget, people wouldn't be so quick to vote for large, bloated budgets. Why should someone who doesn't pay property taxes vote NO on a large budget. They aren't paying for it so why should they care

JPhurst,

The Governor repeated over and over again that the unions are not about the students. He made that point. His point was not about benefits.

With dues, his point is instead of spending funds on the students, they spend it on lobbyists and negative ads.

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Apparently, he is absolutely right about his audience though.

I think you just proved Christie's point that the teachers union's priorities revolve around constantly increasing their compensation no matter what. And teaching children properly falls somewhere at the bottom of the list, if at all.

What a prick.

As Governor Christie well knows, the whole point of a union is that, if workers choose to join one, it is the exclusive certified bargaining representative of the workers. That is a basic principle of American labor law.

New Jersey gives its public employees an out. It allows them to pay reduced agency fees if they choose not to be a member. Why do you still have to pay dues? Simple, even if you are not a union member, you receive the wages negotiated in the contract, the pension and welfare benefits available to the workers, and the union still has its duty of fair representation to represent non-members in grievances (such as discipline or contract violations). As such, you have to pay the agency fee, which is the estimated value of the services the union provides less union activity that is not directly related to collective bargaining and representation.

Christie knows this, but he makes it sound like the agency-fee payers are paying to the union for no benefits. It's a bullshit populist line and it shows that he thinks his audience is stupid.

The rest of the rant is basically that it is unfair for unions to, heaven for bid, do their job as bargaining agents, and, even worse, speak their minds to legislators. Poor wittle state and wocal wegiswatures, they have have to, gasp, sit down in a room with the union reps, and maybe even, gasp, a LOBBYIST! It's called "bargaining" and "advocacy" and it's a fundamental right in our system. Again, Christie knows this, but tries to portray labor relations 101 as some sort of coercion.

Christie even threw his own education commissioner, and our former mayor, under the bus. Bret Schundler, who is no pushover and certainly not beholden to unions, worked out a deal on the "Race to the top" application which got the NJEA to actually compromise and support reforms.

This is a good thing, why? Because one part of the RTTT's formula to determine winners of the funding is to obtain approval and support of all stakeholders, including unions. Not surprisingly, the federal government wants reform, but wants to make sure that all parties are on board to make it work.

So after the deal is worked out, Christie kaboshes it. Why? Because he wants his pound of flesh from the union. He'd rather have a proposal which actually may lose funding, but he can show people "I stood up to them."

The sooner we are rid of this thug, the better.

There isn't one there to boggle.........

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It boggles the mind

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And the top 1% also has about 40% of the nation's wealth. They can afford to pay a little more than everyone else.

Also the Founding Fathers imagined that black people should only count as 3/5 of a person. So maybe we shouldn't take everything they envisioned as gospel.

A politician that fights for the people not for special interest! Were can we get more politicians like him?!

Unions bully local councils........................lets dump that tier of government (local)

Feel free to contribute more.

Christie for president. Top 1% of tax payers pay more that the bottom 95% combined. I just read this fact. Our founding fathers never imagined this. Unions killing the US.
I predict, wealthy will take a residence in Cuba in time.

Awesome!

"You punch them, I punch you"

not exactly toning down the rhetoric

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vide ... ch_them_i_punch_you_.html