the following is presented as a public service to help everyone understand the Trenton Republican  doublespeak.

A Christie Dictionary

by: deciminyan

Mon Jul 19, 2010 at 05:36:55 PM EDT

Promoted by Jason Springer: Something tells me we could do a whole "Christiespeak" series where we look at what he says and what it really means.

Sarah Palin's recent attempt to coin new words for the English language such as "refudiate" is humorous, but easy for the reader to discern her actual meaning.  Governor Christie is more subtle, and his bastardization of the English language is a bit more difficult to follow.  As a service to Blue Jersey readers, I have started a Chris Christie Dictionary.  This can be useful to  understand the governor's pronouncements.   Feel free to add more definitions in the comments to this post.

Tax. An evil method by which the government steals money from people for no apparent reason.

User fee. A way to tax people without calling it a tax.

Shared Sacrifice: A philosophy whereby taxes increase for lower income citizens so that millionaires can share in the benefits of that revenue.

Government ethics: see: Reform Jersey Now

Union: A group of workers whose sole goal is to rip off taxpayers.

Teacher: An individual worker whose sole goal is to rip off taxpayers.

Superintendent: see: Teacher

Privatization: The process of taking jobs from state workers and giving them to cronies at a higher cost to the taxpayer.

Reform Jersey Now:  Unknown - never heard of this term.

Charter School: A method to circumvent that pesky "separation of church and state" thingy.

When I was on counsel, people were always pushing privatization. I was told, privatize the water system and save money. Of course, had we sold out to New Jersey American our water rates would have skyrocketed. I was told, privatize trash pick up. Having represented a number of trash companies, I knew the trick there - low prices on the initial contract, slam the town on the renewal. Privatization does not work, it is expensive, it is inefficient and it leads to corruption. No wonder our Governor favors it.

A word from State Sen. Loretta Weinberg

http://www.bluejersey.com/user/Senator%20Loretta%20Weinberg

Privatizing government: This is more of the same from the Christie administration. Undermine our public school system, our public employees, our public TV network, and then parcel out government to private industry. Is that like the private industry successes of the Parsons' Adventure or EnCap or Xanadu?  But the most appalling point I read about the report was that the government should get out of the pre-school business and maybe increase class size from an average of 15 to 22. I have not seen the whole report and will today, but if that note is correct, I guess Christie is planning to make one of his campaign comments into a self-fulfilling prophecy - "Pre-School is Baby Sitting!" Then of course, if we privatize government, we can really cut taxes and just charge "user fees" to everyone. You can bet these ideas will be fought by some of us (and I think the majority of us) with full battle gear.

A word from Jason Springer

Christie helping the unemployed by firing people.

http://www.bluejersey.com/diary/16169/christie-helping-the-unemployed-by-firing-people

Sometimes the Christie logic completely escapes me. Take this recommendation from the Christie privatization team:

The task force also said New Jersey's 18 career centers to help the unemployed with job training and searches could be privatized.

So the way the Christie administration is going to help the unemployed is by firing more people? Really?

Campaign Financing: Fixing Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Congress is going through all sorts of contortions trying to look like they are fixing the Supreme Courts' decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. New reporting requirements are being touted as the fix to the sale of elections to corporate interests. They are not. Don't let yourself be fooled.

There is a fix to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. It is easy. It is simple. It will not be done. The fix is to end the legal fiction that corporations are persons. All it would take to end the legal fictions is the following legislation:

Corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States. Corporations are granted the following limited rights; 1. the right to sue and be sued in contract and tort; 2. the right to own real and personal property; 3. the right to enter into contracts with persons and other corporations and to be bound by contracts; 4. the right to truthfully advertise the goods and services produced or provided by the corporation to persons and other corporations. Corporations, their officers, owners, and employees may be held liable for the acts of the Corporation where warranted under the Civil and Criminal laws of the United States and the individual States, Territories, and Districts of the United States. Corporations shall have no rights not enunciated herein.

It really is that simple.

There is a good deal of misinformation circulating about the Town Hall Project. In fact the bids received were consistent with the known costs of the restoration project. After the fire, Town Council was informed that it would cost approximately 12 million dollars to rebuild the Town Hall to the condition it was prior to the fire. When I left Town Council, it was known and understood that the additions which were foreseen would likely increase the cost of the project to approximately 16 million dollars. While there are ways of cutting costs (generally by using less expensive and lower quailty materials, less energy efficient design and reducing the size of a project in square feet), I find it curious that anyone would expect that this project could have been accomplished for 11 ½ million and that the cost of a project would decrease over time.