Last week, Former NJ Republican Governor Christie Todd Whitman tweeted: “Hitler has nothing on Trump”. She later deleted it after being harshly criticized. Image by Associated Press.
On Thursday, Nov 14, Stockton’s “Hughes Center for Public Policy” will honor former GOP Governor Christie Todd Whitman and former Democratic Governor Jim Florio with its “Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award”.
The Center’s spokesman Ed Salmon (former Democratic Assemblyman and lobbyist) said this honor is given for “professional excellence. . . public service, civility, and bi-partisanship”.
Republican Whitman was elected Governor of NJ with large GOP majorities in the State Senate and Assembly in 1993. They ousted Democratic Gov. Jim Florio and Democrats who doubled the state’s main income tax bracket from 3.5% to 7%. Whitman and Republicans also promised to empower citizens and taxpayers with “initiative, referendum, and recall” and make public schools accountable to parents and taxpayers.
Whitman and the GOP quickly betrayed everyone who expected them to change things. In less than eight years, they turned NJ into the solid “progressive” and “blue” Democratic state it is today.
Instead of rolling the state’s middle income tax bracket back to the 3.5%, it had been before, Whitman Republicans only lowered it to 6.37% and kept 90% of the tax hike in place. Meanwhile, Republicans cut the lowest 2% bracket, even though it had never been raised!
Whitman punished small business owners by retroactively collecting the little known “use tax” for the first time in years.
Whitman Republicans refused to cut the massive hikes in state spending that caused Florio Democrats to raise taxes in the first place. To make up for the difference, she and GOP legislators borrowed billions, in direct violation of NJ Constitution which required voter approval.
Whitman packed the NJ State Supreme Court with “progressives” who found loopholes in the borrowing limits of our NJ State Constitution. Her Supreme Court also created and expanded mandates that raised state and local taxes.
Whitman’s reckless borrowing with the Transportation Trust Fund guaranteed future gas tax hikes. Her billion dollar borrowing for new school construction left little income tax money for its intended purpose of property tax relief. She had NJ pension funds borrow 2.75 billion at 7.5% interest to speculate in the stock market.
When the NJEA teacher’s union complained about much needed reforms being made by Education Commissioner Leo Klagholz, she fired him.
Whitman and her GOP super-majority in the legislature refused to adopt the citizen initiative and referendum they had promised. They instead gutted the ability of voters to remove bad officials in special recall elections by doubling the signature requirements.
Whitman’s Republicans also adopted “Open Space” legislation. It was immediately used to bail political insiders of both parties out of failed real estate deals by using tax dollars to pay full price for useless land. It also let certain wealthy insiders avoid the inconvenience of paying property taxes on the “open space” that surrounded their mansions by having the government buy it and block future development on it.
Whitman resigned as NJ Governor in January of 2001 to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Republican President George Bush. Three days after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Whitman publicly claimed that the area around Ground Zero was safe, even though most at the site knew the area was still highly toxic.
In 2015, Whitman publicly compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Last week, she tweeted “Hitler has nothing on Trump.”
Stockton’s honor “swamp” politicians Florio and Whitman. Meanwhile, it systematically excludes conservatives and supporters of President Trump from every area of campus life. So does almost every college and high school in America.
What can we do? Alex Newman will offer some suggestions at a special LibertyAndProsperity.com 9:30 AM breakfast discussion. This Saturday, October 26, 2019 at 9AM at the Shore Diner. Alex Newman is a respected international journalist, educator and co-author of the book “Crimes of the Educators — How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children”.
Seth Grossman, Executive Director of LibertyAndProsperity.com
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