March 11, 2011--Chris Christie & Peter King

Yesterday, I awarded the Lifetime Hypocrisy award to Peter King for not so subtly demonologizing all Muslim-Americans while claiming that he was concerned about only those who might become radicalized while in the past he had been a fervent supporter of his own favorite terrorists--the Irish Republican Army who killed thousands of innocents but were widely aided and abetted by many in the Irish-American community and never investigated by Congress.

Today, the Newbie Hypocrisy Award goes to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the latest darling of the Republican Party. He has eclipsed Sarah Palin as the political hottie-du-jour because of his seemingly cant-free, blunt, tell-it-like-it-is way of presenting himself and his ideas.

Like most of his fellow Republican governors, his favorite target of criticism and abuse, the ones he holds most responsible for our current budgetary and debt crises are lowly school teachers. He has made his reputation racing around his home state; then to Washington; and most recently everywhere in the media, from a cover story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine two weeks ago, to Morning Joe , to all sorts of Fox so-called news shows.

Everywhere he elicits squeals of adoration for being just the kind of real guy we need to lead us as soon as next year. This after he has been governor for 15 months. Polls show he could give Barack Obama a run for his money (ditto for The Donald Trump, if you can believe it); and Christie matter-of-factly says, yes, I could beat him.

He claims, though, that he's not running because he is not yet ready to be president, but do not be too surprised if after the current crop of GOP candidates implode (Palin's star has more than faded; Newt will not be able to overcome his own hypocrisy--trying to bring Bill Clinton down because of his philandering while Newt himself was fooling around with members of his own staff while his first or second wife lay in a hospital dying of cancer; and of course Mike Huckabee just this week torpedoed himself by comparing Obama to Kenyan Mau Maus, southern-racist-white-boy code for "scary black militant"), after the collapse of these candidates, when presented with a choice between Ron Paul (or his clone, son, Rand) and a reluctant Chis Christie, I suspect all coyness will end and Chrisie, for the sake of the party and America, will declare himself ready for prime time.

But by then, maybe even by next week, his star also will have faded since there will be more and more exposés of the sort from yesterday's New York Times which reveals the inaccuracy and hypocrisy of many of his statements about those evil public employees he proclaims are responsible for our troubles. (Article linked below.)

As I have written here, public employees, because of their often bloated benefits packages, are mighty contributors to many of our states' fiscal woes, but fact-checking shows that Christie has routinely cooked the numbers to make his points and reputation. But that reputation as a truth-telling straight shooter doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I had a taste of this on my own a week ago. After a charasmatic session on Morning Joe , which left Joe and Mika dewy-eyed, I checked what Christie claimed about public workers in Camden, New Jersey. He beat up on them by stating, with his usual mien of certainty, that of public workers' compensation packages there fully 72 percent is for health care and retirement benefits.

This seemed astonishing to me and so I did the best Google would allow to check. It turns out that, at most, half of their pay goes for benefits. Admittedly still a lot of money, likely too much in the current economic climate, perhaps too much under any circumstances; but far from the 72 percent Christie claimed.

I thought, he either misspoke or it was extra clever of him to make a conscious lie more believable by claiming the percentage was 72 rather than the rounder 70 or 75 percent.

And now the front-page New York Times story. Again, Chrisie's exaggerations (or, if you prefer, his untruths) are relatively small ones, but they are ubiquitous and thus form a pattern of sly deceit designed to build his image and fuel his national ambition.

Note, before I share some examples of his spinning the truth, it is revealing that the usually overly-loquacious Christie refused to be interviewed for the Times piece. Never a good sign.

One of his frequent charges is that when teachers' unions fail to get concessions through collective bargaining they end run the process and appeal to the state legislature to award them the benefits they couldn't get through negotiation. This works, he claims, because the unions have contributed to the campaigns of the very people to whom they are appealing.

The truth is that on the occasions when the Legislature granted the unions new benefits, it was for pensions, which were not by law subject to collective bargaining — and it has not happened in eight years.

He contends, as well, that in school districts where teachers have agreed to givebacks, they have been able to avoid layoffs and no academic programs have been affected. The facts contradict this. The few dozen school districts where employees agreed to concessions last year still saw both layoffs and cuts in academic programs.

And he hasn't told the whole truth about his tax policy. Everywhere he goes he proudly proclaims that he made budget cuts without raising any taxes. But the facts again show otherwise. Last year he cut deeply into tax credits for the elderly and the poor. I guess they either don't count or . . . vote.

If you think this is just another of my partisan rants, tune in on Monday when i have a few things get off my chest about my president, Barack Obama.