Today’s moment of conservative zen comes from New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie is taking on the greedy public sector fat cats head on.Posted on 11/13/2010 9:19:12 AM PST by Kaslin
Gov. Christie zeroes in on all the zeroes in educational executive salaries. It's a target-rich environment.
Today’s moment of conservative zen comes from New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie is taking on the greedy public sector fat cats head on.
About the only thing that could make that clip any better would be a few uses of the word “jackwagon.” But we’ll let that slide.
For a little background, go here:
The day before the meeting Seitz is quoted in the Daily Record as saying, “Because of the proposed salary caps, I have to look at my future and the financial welfare of my family. I certainly would have options if I didn’t feel the compensation in this district, or New Jersey, is appropriate.”
The governor reacted to Seitz’s veiled threats to leave New Jersey and go to a nearby state where there is no state salary. “I will say in response to Mr. Seitz, ‘Let me help you pack.’ We have real problems in our state that we have to fix and we don’t have the time, nor the money, nor the patience any longer for people who put themselves before our citizens,” Christie railed.
Christie is brilliant to individualize the issue by making an example of Seitz. The fact is, public sector salaries have gotten out of control and the educational system is a prime example. And the problem isn’t unique to New Jersey by any means. For starters, 7 of the top 10 richest counties in the United States surround — literally — Washington, D.C. That’s no coincidence. And taxpayer money is increasingly being used for lobbying — to spend more taxpayer money. Is it any wonder that our country is in the mess it’s in?
As for educational salaries, I’ll see Christie’s Lee Seitz, and raise him a Jesus Chavez.
Who’s Jesus Chavez? He’s the superintendent of the Round Rock Independent School District in central Texas, with about 42,000 students. And he makes a lotta money.
Round Rock Superintendent Dr. Jesus Chavez has 14 years experience and is the only superintendent who agreed to talk to KVUE about superintendent salaries. His base salary is $250,000 a year.
That works out to just shy of six bucks per student. Don’t worry, though. He doesn’t think superintendents make too much.
“I don’t think superintendents get paid too much,” he said. “There is a shortage of superintendents, principals and other top level administrators. So the market and the qualifications that one brings makes it competitive.”
Shortage or not, this is ridiculous and arrogant. Parents, the vast majority of whom earn far less than Dr. Chavez, are routinely asked to kick in school supplies paid for with their own money. Schools hold fundraisers to pay for even basic classroom supplies. Yet atop the educational pyramid sit folks like Chavez, among the wealthiest in their regions. The superintendent of the Austin ISD makes a whopping $276,000 in base salary. In the case of educational executives, the rich seem to get richer while teachers and classrooms get shortchanged. Parents get hit on both ends, through rising property taxes to pay these salaries and through being hit up to pay for supplies directly.
If you cut Dr. Chavez’s salary in half, he would still be far ahead of the local median salary (which is itself probably inflated a bit by the presence of Dell’s and other high tech headquarters), and that money could pay for two or three additional teachers. Multiply that by all the other fat cats at the top of the educational food chain and pretty soon you’ve made a real difference in class sizes.
Or, you know, you could just turn those savings back over to the taxpayers who are paying these exorbitant salaries in the first place. Doing so might even be economically stimulative.
Christie is as conservative as they can get in NJ... and he’s very popular because he’s taken on the Democratic mafia that runs the state... and Tony Soprano has nothing on them!
Teamsters local 502-Commonwealth Association of School Administrators
You obviously don’t live in the northeast. Christie (and Rudy) are as good as it gets in this part of the world.
“Gosh ! I hope he runs for president”
As long as he can bottle up some of his liberal tendencies such as his stance on immigration. Maybe a Conservative Republican house would keep him in check and not wonder to far off the path.
What a great line!!
Actually Palin as President and Christie as Vice President would work out. Both are good spokesman and she would keep him on the reservation so to speak.
However, he is the most powerful spokesperson in our country one the one issue that can make or brake our nation, economic policy. He is a fiscal conservative, not only in words but in action and he is willing to take on issues and interest groups others who speak big, but shy away from.
So, we can make a choice. Wait for someone who meets perfection on every issue to us (even if it is not a federal issue) or, accept someone is most likely to restore the country.
I would take Christie, even with his faults, in a heartbeat.
The last perfect candidate died about 2000 years ago.
>>Gosh ! I hope he runs for president.<<
I’d pay big, BIG money to see Christie take on Obama in a debate. Sadly, he insists he’s not running, and unlike a certain former first lady, I would guess he means what he says.
Just say no to Palin. Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle were the writing on the wall: popular enough among conservatives to get nominated, but not taken seriously by enough others to get elected. We can’t afford to have that happen on the presidential level.
Given his figure, you can be sure he’s not in love with himself like someone we know.
Christie just does his job.
Amen. There are many things to praise about her. But, the analogy to O’Donnell and Angle is spot on.
BUMP
Thanks for the post...
If those things are true, he’s another Governator. We don’t want him even close to the White House.
RINO eccompasses a lot of things.The worst kind of RINO is the big government RINO as opposed to the social moderate RINO. There is no doubt that both Christie and Guiliani are fiscal conservatives. Their actions in office confirm it.The worst kind of RINO is a big government RINO. Yes, they are social moderates but again we would not have known they were fiscal conservatives today because neither would have been elected in the belly of the blue beast as social conservatives.Sometimes, you cannot get all you want.
It’s tough, isn’t it....I don’t suffer fools gladly... and being forced to doesn’t agree with me all too well.
IF you’ll carefully read the article starting with Intro...you might adjust your thinking on him...a whole lot of it is show. So far there are 3 articles by a true conservative in NJ. I can tell you we do not won’t this man as president.
Thanks for the link.
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