Faux Populist Christie

With practically every new political book out there being on Trump  our Governor Shinebox, as one of the books I am reading dubbed him, keeps getting more minutes on the public stage, with another book even mentioning pensions.

In the 2009 campaign Christie vowed to protect public employees’ “sacred” pensions. Four months after taking office he discussed pensions at the conservative Manhattan Institute, run by one of his money men, hedge fund manager Paul Singer: “Our benefits are too rich,” he said, “and our employees aren’t contributing enough either.” During that campaign, too, he attacked Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine for unethically investing retiree money on Wall Street. In office, Christie awarded pension management contracts to his own Wall Street Friends; in 2011 Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Associates, received a contract to manage $200 million in state public pension funds. Then in 2014 Christie, facing a fiscal crisis, put $696 million into the pension fund instead of $1.58 billion, and the next year $681 million instead of $2.25 billion. Meanwhile, he increased taxes on the working poor and vetoed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $8.50. No wonder when Christie delivered a speech at a secret meeting held by the Koch brothers, David Koch, whom no one would mistake for a populist, introduced him as “my kind of guy.” (page 122)

From the books: