Bordentown Mayor Joe Mallone Praises Christie’s Divisive Attack on Public Education
Christie vomits up assaults on affordable housing and the independence of the judiciary
Bordentown NJ (8/23/16)
[Update: 8/26/16 – Hiding behind pre-school, the Star Ledger Editorial Board is having buyers remorse for drinking Christie’s Charter School Kool-Aid:
His plan is an ugly attempt to inflame the worst tensions in New Jersey — white v. black, suburban v. urban — and he doesn’t want to take the heat. ~~~ end update]
Gov. Christie was literally in my backyard this morning, just a block away at the Bordentown Hope Hose Firehouse, so I figured I’d check out the show.
Supporters of public education were out early and in numbers to protest the Governor’s plan, which would slash aid to NJ’s 31 “Abbott” school districts – mostly poor and black – and reallocate State funds to more wealthy and white suburban towns.
The Gov.’s plan for “equal” per pupil state aid is a retrograde and racist throwback to the days of separate but equal, with a toxic mix of blame the victim and anti-tax, anti-government, anti-intellectual sentiment.
It is designed to play upon the worst motives and resentments that wealthy white suburbs have for the redistribution of State funding to poor and black cities.
Christie’s policy “solutions” to urban poverty, educational disadvantage, housing, jobs, economic and social injustice, and appalling de facto segregation was the Neoliberal playbook: eliminate local school boards and democratic impediments to corporate “management”; provide labor “flexibility:”, (e.g. attack teachers unions and union rules, seniority, tenure, mandate a longer school year and school day, etc); more privatization & Charter schools; more corporate subsidies to relocate suburban jobs to places like Camden – policies, all of which, even if they work, provide no educational benefits to the kids and the people who live there and just stimulate gentrification, perpetuate segregation and social injustice, and generate windfall profits to real estate speculators and developers and nothing for existing communities.
(in fairness, the Gov. did say ONE good thing in response to a mom who lost a child to drug addiction & overdose: a change in policy favoring drug treatment over incarceration and the need to shut down prisons and convert them to treatment centers. Don’t know if that was just rhetoric or whether its actually happening though.)
I stayed for the Governor’s presentation and 15 minutes or so of questions from the audience, but had to leave, a little disoriented and sick to my stomach from the ugly assault I heard by the Governor.
Aside from the the Governor’s warped views on education, race, and urban issues, perhaps the lowest point was when Christie demagogued the “legislators in black robes” in an open attack on the Constitutional role of the judicial branch and judicial independence.
Christie is no scholar, but as a trained lawyer and a man that swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, his attack on the Court and individual judges was shameful and unforgivable.
And shame on Mayor Joe Mallone for praising the Governor for speaking out on the issue.
Some pics:
PS – after last night’s near riot at the DEP hearing – where I was physically thrown out of my seat by a big union guy – I got a kick out of being asked by a State Policeman to enforce the reserved seat next to me – here’s his SP colleague – sitting in the right place! Surely just a coincidence!
source: Agnes Marsala, People Over Pipelines (8/23/16)