Christie Rambles About Other Governors, Lies About Himself

Chris Christie is a riot. This guy just says whatever he's thinking, which is how he charms the political media, who to be charitable, look like fools for him usually. Typically, governors leave each other alone. Not Christie.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said that he's not worried about businesses leaving for Illinois after retaliatory ads were placed in New Jersey publications criticizing the state's business climate, the AP reports.

Said Christie: "Let me tell you something: We won't lose any business to Illinois as long as Pat Quinn's the governor. He's a disaster."

Could it be because Quinn called a spade, a spade?

Quinn said Walker, elected last November, and GOP New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has been most public about poaching jobs from Illinois in the wake of an Illinois state income tax hike, are being unduly “provocative.” It’s all about political “theater,” Quinn said.

Quinn and other Democratic governors are strategizing with union leaders while here.

“We are not sympathetic at all to Scott Walker. We think he is on the wrong track, the very wrong track,” Quinn said. On Tuesday in Washington Quinn will address the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council meeting. Quinn’s top political operatives are also in D.C.: David Rosen, his fund-raiser, and Holly Copeland, the chief operating officer of his political organization.

Poaching governors

After Quinn signed into law a state income tax hike —raising the rate for business to 7 percent from 4.8 percent — the individual rate rises to 5 percent from 3 percent — Christie, Walker and GOP Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels pitched Illinois business to move to their states. Christie was the most aggressive, running newspaper and radio ads in Illinois and stopping earlier this month at the Union League Club in Chicago.

At the NGA, I asked several governors if these sales calls were unseemly; after all, the tables could be turned on them.

“It’s all going on right now already. I just did it publicly,” Christie told me. “You don’t think it’s going on privately in every state? It absolutely did. [Former Pennsylvania] Gov. [Ed] Rendell poached an enormous amount of business from New Jersey during his time as governor. This stuff happens all the time privately, I just did it publicly.”

Christie is just making stuff up. I live in Pennsylvania. The reason our unemployment rate was better than the national average at the end of Rendell's term was that he created new jobs, not because he went fishing for other states' jobs. Christie can't do that because his policies aren't good.

In fact, Christie won't even tell you what he actually did the last year. He basically lies about everything he claims he did. Christie, a man void of any real ideas, has tried to charm the media, and turn public employees into the enemy, the very reason for the suffering of so many middle-class citizens in his state. In Christie's world, millionaires can't pay a point or two more on the income tax, but workers making $50,000-$60,000 need to take harsh cuts, children need to see the overall spending on their education get slashed, and he's not paying into the pension system as scheduled. I'll bet he'll tell us the pension system is bankrupt because of the workers too, not because he and his predecessors over the last 15 years haven't paid into it. This guy has a lot of nerve attacking the Governor of another state. At some point, the public will wake up to the disaster this guy is. He can't even square up with the public on what he's done.