It was, according to New Jersey’s governor, a $400 million mistake. The state was drenched in recriminations on Wednesday as Gov. Chris Christie said a clerical error by a midlevel official had caused the state to lose out on $400 million in federal school reform money — an error that caused its Race to the Top grant application to fall short of the 10-member winner’s circle by just three points.
“That’s the stuff that drives people nuts about government, and that’s what the Obama administration should answer for,” he said. “When the president comes back to New Jersey, he is going to have to explain to the people of the state of New Jersey why he is depriving them of $400 million that this application earned them, because one of his Bureaucrats in Washington couldn’t pick up the phone and ask a question.”
But federal officials released a video on Thursday evening showing that Mr. Schundler and his administration had not provided the information when asked. Mr. Christie, asked later Thursday about the videotape in a radio interview, said he would be seriously disappointed if it turned out he had been misled.
Christie fired Schundler, so that’s good.
But, shouldn’t Chris Christie explain to the people of New Jersey why he didn’t pick up a phone and ask a question before pointing at Obama, because that’s what people hate about bureaucrats, how they won’t do that?
Too, is it ordinary to videotape a competitive grant process? I’m glad they did and do, or I’m sure there would be all kinds of false charges, but is that what’s been done in the past?
August J. Pollak
The icing on the cake is that Schundler asked to be fired rather than resigning…. so he can collect unemployment benefits.
Frank
I read the article. Not once did Christie apologize for falsely accusing people…
Kay
@August J. Pollak:
It’s a little more complicated than Christie lets on, too. They lost points on several measures, and some of those he was directly responsible for.
It’s a weirdly non-accountable accountability statement, where he seizes on the clerical error (and subsequent lie).
rufflesinc
Nor a fat-free one.
Brachiator
It was hot outside yesterday. I blamed Obama.
4tehlulz
Government officials should pick up the phone whenever something’s unclear on an application, just like private businesses do.
Dork
Who names their kid “Chris” when the surname is “Christie”? The stupid alliteration is almost certain to have garnered him myriad noogies, swirlies, and “chris-squared!” nicknames in school. The brain damage alone explains why he now lives in Jersey and is a Republican.
rufflesinc
As someone who’s employment is not unemployment-benefit eligible, I’m confused. I though unemployment benefits were for layoffs, no for “firings”? Can someone clear this up?
edit: a S-L commenter pointed this out in NJ law: “”You must be determined to be unemployed through no fault of your own as defined under New Jersey law. “
Jules
I’m not sure, but the Obama administration did promise more transparency….
Michael
Christie may be fat, but Michael Moore is fat, too. And so is Helen Thomas.
Comrade E.B. Misfit
I question why a Republican governor is trying to push his way up to the Federal feed trough. Shouldn’t he be acting like a principled teabagger and turning down Federal money?
quaint irene
Since there’s a hell of a lot of money involved, I’m not surprised these official application meetings are taped.
This was all over the Star Ledger today.
Apparently the ‘question’ Christie was so incensed about, was asked not once but twice. Each time Schundler stammered that they didn’t have the info. They were even given a chance to get back to the committee with it. They never did.
It was also revealed that Schundler and the teacher’s union had amicably worked out the application together. For some reason, Christie scrapped it, and a second one was cobbled together a few days before the final deadline.
Guess he wanted to smack down the teacher’s union one more time.
Zifnab
Perhaps we should do something about all this free health care they’ve been handing out at the state level, because they seem all to quick to take a ride on the WHAAA-AAAMBULANCE every chance they get. It’s costing the state a fortune.
Michael
@August J. Pollak:
Unemployment is bad only when it is collected by negroes, hispanics and blue collar workers.
Punchy
From what I read, the main error was from using 2011 numbers when they should have used 2009 or 2010 numbers. There’s some difficult problem solving.
Num63rz r hawd.
beltane
Isn’t this type of incompetence just what the voters of New Jersey wanted? They have no cause for complaint, as Christie’s negligence is exactly what any sane person would expect from a Republican.
GregB
Has anyone checked the kerning on the application yet? Having an application rejected like this is a phenom.
morzer
@Punchy:
Bit early for Christie to play the McArdle defense isn’t it?
ppcli
“Too, is it ordinary to videotape a competitive grant process?”
I’d never heard of this, but I like the idea. Given past and current Republican practice, I hope the administration is videotaping every single interaction with that gang, however trivial, including borrowing staplers and giving directions to the cloakroom.
Punchy
Maybe if they’da framed the questions in ways Jersians would have been more familiar with….
1) To arrive at how many teachers you employ, please estimate the amount of hair spray and chewing gum sold annually.
31) Just how many standard toxic waste dumps distance are there between your elementary schools in Treton?
118) Multiply The Situation’s clothing line’s worth by the estimated annual wife-beaters produced and divide by the general rankness of the body odor of a standard Jersian to arrive at a quantifiable (that means countable, like what you do with your fingers) monetary need.
Mary G
@beltane: Yes, the Republicans believe that government is useless and every time they are put in charge of it, they prove it.
Stillwater
But, shouldn’t Chris Christie explain to the people of New Jersey why he didn’t pick up a phone and ask a question before pointing at Obama, because that’s what people hate about bureaucrats, how they won’t do that?
The argumentus de la contradictatorio. Most people don’t even know how to spell that (???), let alone be aggrieved by it. But good catch on your part: these guys are hypocrites in so many ways.
Rick Massimo
Oh, please. He keeps the base riled up was false charges; then he gets the facts and “gets to the bottom of what happened.” Meanwhile, the base stays riled up, even if they can’t always put their finger on why.
Culture of Truth
When you’re dealing a bunch of guys from Jersey, it’s well-advised.
morzer
@Culture of Truth:
Respect good, videotape better. As the Godfather almost said.
Culture of Truth
Schundler was a teabagger before teabagging was cool. He probably never wanted that dirty tainted money.
Poopyman
@rufflesinc:
Well, I guess it’s no fault of his that his boss is an ass. I’d just like to hear the rationale at his unemployment interview.
Mnemosyne
@quaint irene:
So IOW, Christie decided to torpedo a perfectly good application that may have gotten $20 billion for his state because he wanted to poke the teachers’ union in the eye? And now he’s whining because his interference is what caused them to lose out on the money?
Yeah, that sounds par for the course for a Republican.
FlipYrWhig
@Culture of Truth: It’s probably the least embarrassing thing people from New Jersey gladly consented to having videotaped that day.
beltane
@Rick Massimo: His base is stupid (dare I say retarded) and permanently riled up. Republicans have been perpetually angry for decades. I’m 42 and have never seen anything but angry white men who are angry. Our most privileged demographic group has long been suffering from a bad case of WATB disease.
Breezeblock
Governor Taft owes the Obama Administration an apology.
The fat fuck.
The Bobs
So when is Christie going to apologize to Obama? What an ass, he should fire himself too.
burnspbesq
@Frank:
Undoubtedly one of the more unhinged commenters will suggest that as a former United States Attorney, falsely accusing people is second nature to Christie and he doesn’t see anything wrong with it.
burnspbesq
@Dork:
You get half a “fuck you” for that statement. The brain damaged ones are those who ignorantly mock New Jersey, which is a great place to grow up and live. I live in OC, and I would move back to Bergen County in a heartbeat.
freelancer
Not the first time Christie has fucked something up with respect to his responsibilities.
His prosecutorial overreach as an AUSA was ridiculous.
stuckinred
If these knuckle draggin, moonpie eating, coke cola swigin morons in Georgia can fill out the forms it can’t possibly be THAT hard!
Face
Just think…if this happened next February, the R-controlled House would be mulling Negro Impeachment(TM) for such a egregously transparent dissing of a Republcan governor due to blatantly partisan politics.
burnspbesq
The rhetoric is still a bit over the top for my taste, but behold Greenwald kicking ass.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/
Culture of Truth
Yes, even before this happened Chris Chris waged war on teachers and promised to upend the education system with his BFF Bret – this is well-known and indeed the centerpiece of early days in office.
It’s like George Bush complaining Saddam Hussein didn’t call him to tell him he didn’t really have WMD.
Legalize
I don’t understand why the Gov is even trying to get federal funds, period. I thought begging for money was socal ism. The GOP is a principled party that believes in small government. Surely whining about not getting your millions from the feds is inconsistent with that principled position. I bet the media will point out inconsistencies like this.
Violet
@Michael:
And Al Gore! Don’t forget Al Gore!
quaint irene
@burnspbesq:
Simpatico, bumspbedq. I was about to reply to Punchy’s post upthread.
Hey, way to go, including every lame, tired cliche about New Jersey.
You only forgot Piscopo’s old ‘What exit are you from?’
roshan
Is there more to the story than a simple clerical error on part of Christie’s administration? I mean they lost $400 million of the school money. Is there some union breaking going on behind this? Or is it something else? I believe that there is a different motive behind losing the money other than the clerical error.
Culture of Truth
Doc said he should lose 200 pounds. So he fired Bret Schundler.
burnspbesq
@quaint irene:
165.
Scutch
What’s really funny is that Shundler was the right wing golden boy a few years back. People thought he was going to be president.
Face
I just spat water all over my monitor. The simple delivery of snark does that every time.
RSR
Obviously accusations will be flying, but here are statements from the NJEA and the state Democratic chair via: http://kyw.cbslocal.com/2010/08/27/gov-christie-fires-education-commissioner-over-funding-blunder/
Steve Baker, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, says Christie has scapegoated Schundler:
“Back in May, Commissioner Schundler worked with NJEA and other stakeholders to put together a ‘Race to the Top’ application. It was a good application and would have been a winning application.
“At the last minute, Governor Christie got word of this, became furious that NJEA had been involved in the process, threw out that application, and submitted his own application — a weaker application that didn’t win.”
New Jersey Democratic state party chairman John Wisniewski reacted to the firing with the following written statement:
“It’s no surprise that Governor Christie chose to let Commissioner Schundler take the blame for his blunder. No matter what happened at the presentation, the fact remains that if the governor didn’t scrap the agreement
painstakingly negotiated with various stakeholders including teachers and instead submit his own application at the last minute, we’d be celebrating the awarding of $400 million to New Jersey schools. Instead
we’re left to watch New York and Delaware qualify for nearly $1 billion in ‘Race to the Top’ funding for their children.”
Bobby Thomson
I would certainly tape anything even indirectly involving a lying sack of shit like fat fuck Chris Christie.
Halteclere
In my industry (private company supporting state entity) meetings where bids and proposals are discussed are always audio recorded. It helps the state entity ensure my company provides all the service the company owner promised out of the side of his mouth when trying to land the contract.
quaint irene
An education association involved in applying for funds for….education?
Preposterous. No wonder Christie scrapped it.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Mnemosyne: You have no idea just what a horse’s ass Christie is. If Corzine would have done the honorable thing(like Ritter in Colorado) we could have probably kept the Governor’s chair in NJ. Oh well!!
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@roshan: Union busting is part of it. And they aren’t taking it lying down. Christie really is scum.
slag
@4tehlulz:
Heh.
Seriously, I’m fairly tired of people dissing bureaucrats these days (as for people dissing New Jersey…eh.). Having had multiple recent experiences with some of my local bureaucrats, I have nothing but the best to say about them. And each time I’ve had to interact, I’ve dreaded the prospect. But after each interaction (even those that couldn’t give me exactly what I wanted), I’ve walked away feeling not only pleased but effusively satisfied. In each situation, the individuals I was dealing with went far above and beyond what I was asking of them. Of their own free will and because (surprisingly enough) they clearly enjoyed their jobs and wanted to do them well. Which is much more than I can say for my interactions with the private enterprises I’ve had to deal with lately.
Anyway, in honor of my local bureaucrats, I’m standing up for bureaucrats everywhere. You go, bureaucrats!
adolphus
Yes and no. It was a competitive grant process and some states won and some lost. The line had to be drawn somewhere and the line between NJ (#11 and a loser) and MA (#10 and a winner) seems to only be about 20 – 25 points in some ranking system. Apparently this error would have been enough to make them more competitive, assuming the information was accurate and rated high enough. But they lost points in other areas as well. So pointing at this ONE error and saying it was to blame is like pointing to that last strike out in 5-4 loss in baseball as the one who lost the game. What about all those other strike outs and errors? Just because they happen earlier in the game doesn’t make them less consequential. Had those other areas been better, this one clerical error might not have mattered at all.
Just thinking out loud. I didn’t know about any of this before this morning and have enjoyed spending some time catching up.
Reading through NJ newspapers for an hour on this and all the give and take between NJ officials of various stripes I just can’t stop old clips of the Three Stooges running through my head. This whole thing was a major TEAM fuck up on their part. Don’t blame Curly.
JGabriel
Kay @ Top:
Two points:
• It may not be ordinary, but remember: Obama was the state rep. who got Illinois to videotape police interviews. Maybe the administration expected recriminations like this.
• New York would like to say to New Jersey: Thank you. Boo-yeah!
.
Joshua
Blaming the Obama Administration first is what partisan hacks do. Christie is a partisan hack and has always been a partisan hack – remember, he made his name launching politically motivated investigations against Democrats as part of Bush’s DOJ.
Christie also blamed the NJEA (the dreaded teacher’s union) for not agreeing to several provisions outlined in the RTTT grant. What Christie did NOT mention, of course, was that Schundler and the NJEA actually did reach a compromise on several of those provisions, but were not able to put it in their application.
Because Chris Christie rejected it.
This guy is a damn joke. He’s nothing but bluster and bullying. I can’t believe so many in the GOP think he is a “rising star.” He’s as unlikeable as it gets.
Davis X. Machina
@Joshua:
A joke. And a bully. And unlikeable.
So he’s the presumptive GOP frontrunner in 2012, then….
TheNickronomicon
Christie is actively trying to poison the relationship between elderly voters and teachers. It’s as simple as that. We (teachers in the state) are blamed for rising property taxes. Rather than address the issue in a responsible or thoughtful manner*, he’s risen to power through fearmongering and demagoguery (shocking, I know). He’s uninterested in dialogue with NJ teachers and is instead doing his best to destroy the teachers’ unions. This fat fuck is form my county, from one of the richest (and fucking smarmiest) towns in the state, and it’s fucking disgraceful that he’s shittingon both public servants and schoolkids to benefit….well, fat rich old fucks like himself. DIA fucking F, scumbag.
* The issue being rising property taxes and their connection to school funding, as I think mistermix talked about the other day. A thoughtful response would be to find a way to address this rise in taxes, and the need to spend money on education. There’s no reason the two NEED to be interlinked. Christie does not make a conservative case for finding a solution to either problem; he simply wields a rhetorical club.
Maude
This is more than a blunder. More than 300 houses are for sale in one zip code in NJ. Not a county, but several towns.
The clerks did it right. Apparently, up the food chain, on a weekend, the application was changed and then driven down to DC the day it was due.
Before Chrisite saw the tape, he said on the all Chrisite all the time radio station that he didn’t see the tape, but if that happened, he would be very disappointed.
Huh?
The fat liar has caused serious damage to the state.
The AG of NJ is not going to be paying attention to public corruption that the previous AG had set up.
I do think that there needs to be an investigation of Christe. There is something rotten in all this and unfortuately for the govenor, he caught caught.
Bet there is a law or two Chrisite ran afoul of.
He has got to go.
PurpleGirl
I worked in fund-raising for an educational non-profit for 8 years. I was the person who put together the information asked for in applications for grants. I had to read the requirement and tell the grant writer if there were special things asked for or if information had to be about specific dates, etc. You give the grantor EXACTLY what they ask for, no more no less. They will tell you what they want and for what years (expenses, revenues, budgets, etc.) You give them what they say they want and for the years they say they want it. Christie’s people failed big time.
kay
@burnspbesq:
Well, you don’t have to go that far, though, burns.
It is fair to wonder about Christie, specifically. Did he make knee-jerk accusations based on partisan bitterness before the facts were in as a prosecutor, or is this a new thing he’s doing as governor?
Because listening to “his guy” and then making a public accusation without checking with the other side on the facts sort of sucks. And that’s what he did. He can’t run on his experience as a prosecutor and then complain when people expect him not to shoot his mouth off before he has the facts.
chopper
@4tehlulz:
just like the IRS does.
chopper
@Dork:
every time i say the dude’s name i’m compelled to say it in that smug douchebag voice from corzine’s ads against the guy. which is funny, cause i think christie is doing a terrible job.
burnspbesq
@kay:
A brief, cursory Google search didn’t come up with anything that gave me heartburn – but note that I said “brief” and “cursory.”
He can’t? He may differ with you on that.
There have been a number of highly effective US Attorneys over the years whose politics are horrible. Exhibit A: Rudy Giuliani.
maus
@quaint irene:
Yep, this would have been filed properly if he hadn’t tried to snatch it away from them, for whatever idiot reason.
debbie
Mr. Christie was so busy shrinking government, he forgot to keep a proofreader. It’s not about the size of government, it’s about the effectiveness. And Christie’s just learned his isn’t.
Kerr Lockhart
@ burnspbesq
Giuliani an effective prosecutor? Check out the Pizza Connection case. A massive multi-year, multi-defendant effort which cost many millions which failed to yield a single conviction for any of many very well known bad guys. A complete f***-up from beginning to end.
Also, shouldn’t a prosecutor know enough not to p*** away the city’s money on frivolous lawsuits against every group that protests against his policies, always losing on 1st Amendment Grounds, and once again squandering millions of other people’s money.
What do you call the guy who passed the bar examination by one point? Your honor.
What do you call the guy who passed by one point the third time he took the exam? Mr. Prosecutor.
Seriously, prosecution does not ordinarily call for one-tenth of the skills of most other branches of the law, especially if you have supine judges like we have in Jersey, who just do whatever the prosecutor says so as not to be late to the golf course.
There are exceptions, like Fitzgerald, who is brilliant, but they are pretty much limited to the top-line people. Christie was and is a mediocrity, he’s just loud and obnoxious.
CalD
Because civility is for RINOs! That’s why.
Breezeblock
According to TPM, there is now some CMA on both sides. (that’s Cover My Ass)
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/former-nj-ed-commissioner-i-didnt-lie-to-gov-christie.php
So who is telling the truth? Governor Taft or Bret “Galt” Schundler?
Inquiring minds want to throw both Giant Hypocritical Assholes under the bus, and back up over them.
MichaelN
@Breezeblock:
Can we cut it out with the “Governor Taft” business? I actually had to live with that idiot, and I feel like invoking his name is just asking for trouble.
Acharn
@Michael:
Are you saying Michael Moore is not disgusting?
And Helen Thomas is 89 years old, for heaven’s sake. She has a right to be fat if she wants to. I hope I’m as mentally alert as she is when I get there.
LanceThruster
If cops need dash-cams, bureaucrats need desk-cams. Why the hell isn’t most of this stuff done in the open with transparency? For those select instances where negotiations have to be discreet due to their sensitive nature?
Breezeblock
@MichaelN:
Sorry about that, I thought it was clear I meant this Taft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft