Werthless wrote:... I eagerly await to see how quickly de Blasio ruins the NYC schools ecosystem and worsens the schooling options for poor students.

Youseff wrote:

Werthless wrote:... I eagerly await to see how quickly de Blasio ruins the NYC schools ecosystem and worsens the schooling options for poor students.

it's nice to have dreams

or am I perceiving this mean-spirited comment wrong?

Werthless wrote:Sounds like you're a global warming denier defriender.

I think it's funny that you referred to this person not as a loose acquaintance but a minor conservative-celebrity friend.

“The thing that I think is getting a little tiresome is the gay community have so bullied the American people and they have so intimidated politicians that politicians fear them and they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere. Well, not with the Constitution you don’t.”

dajafi wrote:

Youseff wrote:

Werthless wrote:... I eagerly await to see how quickly de Blasio ruins the NYC schools ecosystem and worsens the schooling options for poor students.

it's nice to have dreams

or am I perceiving this mean-spirited comment wrong?

I would suggest that the interests of the teachers union are both much clearer and much more politically salient than the interests of "poor students," and that the two might not always be in perfect alignment.

But it's very early days yet.

Youseff wrote:

Werthless wrote:... I eagerly await to see how quickly de Blasio ruins the NYC schools ecosystem and worsens the schooling options for poor students.

it's nice to have dreams

or am I perceiving this mean-spirited comment wrong?

jerseyhoya wrote:It's basically impossible to perceive Werthless's comment in a way other than how he meant it without having a completely fucked up perspective on how most people you disagree with politically view public school reform...and probably many other issues.

Perhaps the boldest use of the Port Authority as a political tool, a complex sleight-of-hand that raised questions at the time but succeeded anyway, involved large toll increases at the Hudson River crossings in 2011. The episode has recently drawn scrutiny in several major New Jersey newspapers.
At the time, the agency wanted to raise money on the bond markets. But it was becoming apparent that it would not be able to raise enough without a toll increase.

No governor wants to raise tolls, even by an agency shared with a neighboring state. But the issue was particularly nettlesome for Mr. Christie because he had branded himself a fiscal conservative.
An account fleshed out by several participants describes what was essentially a political campaign to convince voters that Mr. Christie had lowered the tolls rather than maneuvered to raise them. While officials in New York signed off on the maneuver, the participants said, the Christie administration was the driving force.
Mr. Baroni took charge. He set up a confidential war room on the 15th floor of the building on Park Avenue South and put restrictions on who could enter. Inside, agency employees ran numbers for various proposed increases, and set up computers to monitor news coverage of the plan.
The initial projection for car tolls had been an increase of $4, spread over two years. But on Aug. 3, Mr. Wildstein, Mr. Baroni and Mr. Samson went to Trenton and met with the governor and members of his senior staff.
Mr. Christie instructed the group to propose a plan for a $6 increase for cars by 2014. He told them that he would publicly rail against it, and that the agency would then agree to a lower number, easing the inevitable political fallout while still getting new income, according to a person who was briefed by an attendee on the participants and what was said.
The possibility of a similar ploy — announce an outrageously high increase, and then knock it down — had been considered before toll increases were proposed in November 2007, in a meeting between Port Authority officials and the administration of Gov. Jon S. Corzine, according to two people involved in the discussions, but it was dismissed as too contrived.
Not this time. The plan was announced three days after the meeting in Trenton, on Aug. 6, a Friday afternoon. Within two hours, Mr. Christie and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York produced a joint statement expressing “obvious and significant concerns.” Mr. Christie described his first reaction as, “Are you kidding me?”
The day before the Port Authority board was to vote on the increase, Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo released a letter declaring that they had found a way to lower the toll increases — for cars, the cost would go up $4.50 by 2015, rather than $6 by 2014. “We are pleased that our work together resulted in lowering of the original toll increase,” they said.
The board approved the increase unanimously.

For a state that lost hundreds of lives on Sept. 11, the gifts were emotionally resonant: pieces of steel from the ruins of the World Trade Center. They were presented by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to 20 carefully chosen New Jersey mayors who sat atop a list of 100 whose endorsements Gov. Chris Christie hoped to win.
At photo opportunities around the mangled pieces of steel, Bill Baroni, Mr. Christie’s top staff appointee at the Port Authority, told audiences how many people wanted a similar remnant of the destroyed buildings, and how special these mayors were.
Mayors lower on the list of 100 — such as Mark Sokolich, of Fort Lee, at No. 45 — received other Port Authority perquisites: an intimate tour of the National September 11 Memorial, or the new World Trade Center construction site, or Port Authority money for jobs programs or new firefighting equipment, even in towns far from the port.

Tesla Motors on Tuesday accused New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration of a political double-cross that could hobble the electric automaker’s growth in the Garden State.

The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission on Tuesday adopted a rule that blocks the company from selling directly to consumers in the state. In a post on the Palo Alto company’s blog, Tesla said the administration had “gone back on its word,” claiming two top Christie aides had agreed not to move forward with the regulation.

And the company framed its complaint in a way the Republican Christie would understand.

“This is an affront to the very concept of a free market,” Tesla’s blog post read.
But a Christie spokesman rejected the accusations of a double-cross. The regulation, he said, won’t prevent Tesla from seeking legislation to allow direct sales in New Jersey.

“Since Tesla first began operating in New Jersey one year ago, it was made clear that the company would need to engage the legislature on a bill to establish their new direct-sales operations under New Jersey law,” said spokesman Kevin Roberts. “This administration does not find it appropriate to unilaterally change the way cars are sold in New Jersey without legislation and Tesla has been aware of this position from the beginning.”

As Tesla ramps up sales of its luxury electric sedans, the company has found itself challenged in state after state by auto dealer associations who view direct sales as a threat. Tesla refuses to sell its cars through franchise dealerships the way other automakers do, preferring to set up its own nationwide network of stores. New Jersey already has two, one in Paramus, the other in Short Hills.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk argues that traditional dealerships that also sell gasoline-powered cars would be a bad fit for Tesla. After all, one of the company’s long-term goals is to make those cars obsolete.

slugsrbad wrote:getting caught is a bit embarrassing, but it's a typical political move.

While it was sandwiched between several other, better attended sessions, the discussion of Republican progress on reforming the broken criminal justice system -- a discussion that included Perry as well as anti-tax activist Grover Norquist -- laid out a future-looking policy pathway for a party that desperately needs them.

On issues of sentencing reform and prison recidivism, Republicans -- especially several governors in southern states -- have been leaders, earning praise from prison reform groups from both sides of the aisle for efforts to save money by implementing rehabilitation programs and curbing skyrocketing prison costs. In fact, a non-partisan study issued last year about how Massachusetts, which is undisputed as one of the bluest states in the union, could cut prison costs, credited Republican-led states with how they've tackled prison reform.

That's why -- more so than the many practice-runs of stump speeches by 2016 hopefuls delivered in front of a friendly crowd -- the criminal justice discussion at CPAC is supremely important if the GOP's stated desire to re-brand is for real. "This is our chance to show we can provide solutions to effect significant problems," said Norquist, who along with the rest of the panel laid out an argument for why criminal justice reform should be a prominent conservative cause.

The renewed focus on enacted cost-saving criminal justice and sentencing reform marks a dramatic, decade-long shift by Republican governors, many of whom previously won election by stumping on tough-on-crime platforms. As many Republican governors have noted, a way to cut state costs is to decrease the number of people being locked up for non-violent offenses and ridding the law books of mandatory minimum sentences for those offenses.

Prominent Republicans who once trumpeted tough-on-crime stances now calling for sentencing changes and rehabilitation programs for drug and other non-violent offenders include Perry, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. This year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has made calls for mandatory minimum reform a major focus. "We're not a soft on crime state, ya know what I'm saying?... We're tough on crime," Perry said. "But I hope we are also seen as a smart on crime state."

Werthless wrote:

Youseff wrote:

Werthless wrote:... I eagerly await to see how quickly de Blasio ruins the NYC schools ecosystem and worsens the schooling options for poor students.

it's nice to have dreams

or am I perceiving this mean-spirited comment wrong?

I don't actually want that happen. I want the charter schools to thrive in NYC and elsewhere, because I think a poor family should not be forced to move from a poor neighborhood in order to get a good public education.

In my mind, with what I've read about de Blasio, it's just a matter of "how quickly" he openly wages war on charter schools. He's already cancelled 3 charters.

pacino wrote:Are you kidding me?:

dajafi wrote:The problem is that most people are either pro- or anti-charter, based on ideology and/or what they want to see happen to public schools in the larger sense. I'm broadly sympathetic to greater school choice and the salutary pressure they can put on the system as a whole to change--ironically, it's a little bit like the halo effect on competitor firms when one company in an industry unionizes--but I see no reason to radically expand charters based on the results to this point.