38 Replies to “Straight Talk”

  1. Wow!!!!!!! Can I pulllleeez move to New jersey and vote for him?? What an absolute legend. What a wonderful person.

  2. Amazing – a politician’s lips move, and no lies come out. What the hell is up with that?!

  3. It’s always a pleasure to listen to Gov. Christie. What a great communicator.

  5. This deserves to be seen and heard all around the Net. Gov Christie makes it plain when he talks he takes his mandate from the voters seriously. He must have to take on the powerful teachers union and lay it out plain as day. We could certainly use some of that plain talk coming from anyone besides those morons who pass for journalists in Canada and the US these days.
    I have heard that Gov. Christie’s clear articulation has prompted many to think he may be THE candidate for 2012 for Prez.
    We could do worse. Come to think of it, we ARE doing worse. And much worse to come.

  6. When someone like Gov Christie asks one of his most powerful adversaries to come clean and cooperate by opening their books HE KNOWS SOMETHING.

  7. America needs a hundred guys like this one.
    Canada could get by with ten.
    Obama’s greatest, and perhaps only contribution to American political life has been sending bullshit detectors off the scale, prompting an awakening of hibernating common sense.

  8. In a strange coincidence. The fondations and many of the ideas and I think even the campain slogans for the common sense revolution from Mike Harris came out of what Governor Whitman started in New Jersey.
    Tax Cuts etc.
    Makes you wonder if lightning will strike twice.

  9. Governor Christie.. I know you are busy in New Jersey but if you have a brother or sister, please send them to Ontario.

  10. My kind of guy.
    I hope he is successful and I can’t wait to see what his game plan is for this battle.
    With Obama and the Demos… set to add greater legal empowerment to unions he’d better hurry up too.

  12. Amen.
    The unions use students as human shields to get what they want. If students cannot string sentences together, there is a problem. If it is the teachers’ fault, do not reward those teachers with fat bonuses. It’s simple.

  13. Where I live, the local governments are allowed to have bond referendums, and the most common ones are for education. There is enormous social pressure to vote in favor of them, and people look at you as if you’re an ogre if you dare even suggest that we’ve already been shoveling too much money into that bottomless pit. Even the school grounds are covered with “Vote Yes! It’s for the children!” signs, which I think is a blatant conflict of interest for a government entity to actively propagandize like that.
    People are going to have to wake up to the fact that the failings of public education have little to do with the dollars. Per capita spending is already very high. People are also going to have to stop falling for the emotional appeal behind anything that says it’s “for the children”. The education system itself is broken. I don’t see the sense in spending thousands of dollars to put a brand new engine into a 1977 Pinto with mismatched door panels.

  14. Can we make him an Ornery Canadian and elect him PM?
    Plain talking, no dissembling. Gotta love it.

  15. Stephen @ 6.26
    Problem here in Ontario is that Harris was defeated by the Teachers Union because he didn’t just get up and speak it like da man.

  16. Liars hate those who speak the unpleasant truth, and who act in accordance with it.
    Savitri Devi

  18. Rar! He may not be taking payoffs from the unions, but he’s surely getting kick backs from the food industry. 🙂

  20. I sure hope a whole bunch of others on the ballots this year down here are paying attention to Gov. Christie and noticing that taking a firm stance and talking straight is what is going to get results, not trying to pander to every special interest group.

  21. I wish Gov. Christie well, but most political leaders have found fighting with the teachers’ unions proves suicidal. Across this country, premiers have repeatedly tried to point out that their fight is not with teachers (or nurses, or other public employees) but with their unions. The teachers’ unions respond that the premier is “bashing teachers” and “harming kids”. Our politicians always guess that all of those “good, hard-working, caring teachers” will turn on their manipulative leadership, and they are always wrong.

  22. Robert of Ottawa
    […..Problem here in Ontario is that Harris was defeated by the Teachers Union because he didn’t just get up and speak it like da man.]
    Yep that is why Ontario is run by the unions and it is now a have not province. McSquinty gets his orders from the unions….especially the Teachers Union.

  23. “I wish Gov. Christie well, but most political leaders have found fighting with the teachers’ unions proves suicidal.”
    I may be totally misreading things, but I believe the fight is a bit different this time. The budget crisis presently faced by New Jersey, California, and so many other government entities, is not like the usual budget crisis where a handful of curmudgeons gets blamed for being stingy with the purse strings and then it finally all blows over. We’re looking at a situation where there’s literally no money to continue funding the benefits allotted to public employees, and their continued shrill lashing out at the forces of reality is nakedly quixotic.
    I think what you refer to, the suicidal nature of going against the teachers union, has in the past always depended on arousing sympathy from parents who are scared into believing that their children are about to be shortchanged at school. But in the current economic mess, there are so many people either unemployed or underemployed, and they see people like that teacher who confronted Christie, and they just get incensed over the galling reality gap.
    This teacher was complaining bitterly that freezing their raises and directing 1.5% of their salaries towards their own pensions was going to reduce her income to (something like) $71,000. I think the average taxpayer, who probably is doing good if he earns half of what that public school teacher was dismissing as an insult, has finally been exhausted of sympathy for public employees. For years the gravy train kept rolling, paying for itself with tomorrow’s revenues, but “tomorrow” has finally turned us over to a debt collection agency. Christie is one of the few doing what needs to be done and refusing to apologize for it, and I think he will emerge victorious in his struggle with the Union Beast.

  24. Roseberry and sasquatch have it right. The unions run the educational, the health care systems and the government departments. The provincial premiers gave up trying to deal with them years ago.
    Hope Gov. Christie succeeds.

  25. Hell hath no fury like a teacher scorned.
    I expect the crybaby Alberta Teachers Union to start rattling thier sabres again. Like the crybaby Alberta Nurses Union, it’s been a few years since we’ve heard from them, they’re now doing regular TV and radio ads and their bank accounts are fat again.
    Betcha Stelmach caves to both groups.

  26. the last 3 days all your top story utube clips have been unavailable. just wondering why this is, timing?

  27. John, they all work for me, and apparently for the other commenters here who refer to the videos’ contents. The only thing I can think of is that you’ve clicked your “work offline” button, in which case an message like “try again later” shows up on the vid screen.

  28. thanks EBD. technologically challenged, but I just click on the utube still at Kate’s.

  32. I often get that “error occurred” thing. I think it is because I have a slow connection. When you do get it does it load in fits and starts? If so speak to your service provider.

  34. Can you Say
    Thankyou Mr.(future)President
    who has the richest Union in Ontario? We all know the answer to that. Who got raises during a economic downturn? again we all know the answer.
    if more people would get some balls & say No More we would not be in this mess in Ontario.
    And what is McGuinty’s answer to all, Raise Your Taxes!

  35. Anyone ever hear of the Lottery for Education?
    Here in the great state of NC our woman governor Purdue upheld an Educational Lottery without asking the voters and has raised 2.5 billion dollars.
    Our granddaughter came home last month with a note asking parents to send chalk, crayons, or pencils so the teachers don’t have to buy them.
    We need a governor like Christie that doesn’t steal kids lunch monies.

  36. I don’t consider most civil servants overpaid. Most salaries are reasonable for the level of training and education required. What is wrong is
    – 35 hour work weeks
    – 5 or six weeks vacation after 10 years
    – special leaves (20 to 30 days each year)
    – low level of actual productive work although some is not the employees fault; they are assigned work that is pointless by political masters!
    – stress leave. Police and firefighters can have stressful jobs but teachers, clerks and administrators do not.
    -unions dictating levels of service and manning levels.
    Their pensions (superannuation) and group insurance are not great. They must contibute 7-8% of gross pay to the plan. Work it out on an actuarial study and they are getting a 4-5% ROI AFTER employer contibutions. OK but not great and remember after contibutions and pension adjustment they have only a few hundred dollars of RRSP contribution room each year. Hardly worth setting up an RRSP. The group insurance is at or below most private employer levels.
    As The Iron Lady proved, the key is to get the unions to strike and let them stay on strike. Most public servants (I’ve been one) have their paycheques planned out for years in advance. After a few months on strike pay their strike collapses.

  37. Bravo!
    Every politician could learn a lesson from Mr. Christie. Because information now moves the way it does, the old style of pandering and pork barrelling is passe. Everytime pork rolls out, every riding who didn’t get pork hears about it. Buying votes has become too expensive.
    The next election should be the time Harper starts acting more like a fiscal Conservative. Let the Libs wishy wash and pander…it will be there end.

  38. “I don’t consider most civil servants overpaid. Most salaries are reasonable for the level of training and education required. What is wrong is:
    – 35 hour work weeks – some public service jobs, but not all. 37 1/2 and 40 are just as common.
    – 5 or six weeks vacation after 10 years – 4 after 10 years is normal, 5 after 20, 6 at 25.
    – special leaves (20 to 30 days each year) – not sure what this refers to. No such thing in my experience.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation