Washington Post Misses the Point

An article in tomorrow's Washington Post entitled:

Governor Focuses on Fiscal Health of N.J.

is written with all the objectivity of a Corzine for Governor press release. It attempts to paint Governor Jon Corzine's popularity problems as being linked to him trying to "do the right thing" about the dreadful financial condition of the State of New Jersey. Of course, anyone familiar with what's going on in New Jersey knows that nothing could be further from the truth - the only thing Jon Corzine has done about the terrible fiscal condition of the State of New Jersey is to make it worse than ever.

A case in point is the budget he is currently trying to ram through the N.J. Legislature. His budget does not address the cause of our financial problems in any meaningful way, instead, he continues to plunder the State’s treasury and borrow against our children’s future to benefit the political cronies that allowed him to buy the Democratic nomination for Governor in 2005.

Apparently, the reporter for the Post made the same mistake that we, the voters of New Jersey, made in 2005 - he listened to what Jon Corzine says. The problem is that Jon Corzine usually says one thing, then does another.

Jon Corzine says he wants to attack wasteful municipal spending but what does he do? - he cuts the aid to Municipalities that are well-run instead. The reason is simple enough - virtually all of the worst-run, graft-ridden cities in the state are run by his cronies, so he can’t cut there!

Jon Corzine says he wants to bring wasteful school spending under control, then what does he do? He pours billions of dollars into school districts that spend money hand-over-fist on everything but education. Corzine and his cohorts need the votes that money will deliver – so while these school districts cheat children of their futures - Jon Corzine and his Department of Education look the other way.

Jon Corzine says he wants N.J. to stop borrowing money, but what does he do? He tries to push through the biggest bonding scheme ever attempted by any state ever.

Jon Corzine says that the N.J. State Constitution requirement that voters approve all bonding should be followed, but what does he do? He pushes a $3.9 billion dollar bonding scheme through the legislature to fund additional School Construction without voter approval - in spite of the fact that the last School Funding Bond resulted in billions of dollars of waste and fraud, and pennies on the dollar actually spent on school construction.

Jon Corzine is not unpopular because he’s doing the right thing, he’s unpopular because the citizens of New Jersey have come to realize that he may on occasion say the right thing - but do the right thing?

Apparently, Jon Corzine doesn’t even know how.

Comments

[hammer111]

I recently moved to northern Virginia after living in New Jersey for many years. My jaw hit the floor when I read this biased piece of trash in the national new section of the WaPo on PAGE A3 of the Sunday edition. I immediately left a message with their obudsman listing the fallacies of the article, and followed up with three e-mails. I also posted a comment on the online version of the article itself, here is what I posted (please note, I am not a partisan ideologue for either party!):

hammer111 wrote:
Mr Richburg: I have already written the Wapo ombusdman to complain about this misleading, misguided, incomplete and innaccurate description of why corzine is unpopular. Bergmanson's comment is very accurate. You sound like the head of the Corzine admiration society. Corzine came IN with low popularity for many reasons such as using his wealth to discourage the popular Codey not to run in the primary, and his image as a fast talking Wall Street hustler who bought the senate seat with his wealth. He only won by beating the weak and even more distatedful Forrester. His popularity got worse because of issues like attemtpting to sell or lease the Turnpike, his messy divorce, the Carla Katz-CWA state worker contract scandal (still ONGOING!! do you have such a thing as GOOGLE???!!!), Zulima Farber, and more.

Your implication that he is unpopular because he is an idealistic truth teller trying to do the right thing is ludicrous, and could only be promoted by a Corzine admirier. Try asking someone other than some pointy headed liberal elite professor type next time.

And this isn't about Democrat versus Republican, or lib versus con politics, I personally see a lot of similarities between Bush and Corzine, and dislike both. there is a lack of character and honesty with both men and their administrations.

One thing I neglected to do before writing the ombusdman was to Google YOU to get an idea of who you were. My preconcienved notion was that you were either some naive junior reporter chosen to fill an empty spot in the paper who was fooled by the corzine spin machine and his admirers, or else a biased liberal corzine admirer with no interest in telling the truth. Now that I have Googled you, I see you are an accomplished author and established reporter, so that only leaves one choioce. You are biased, at least toward Corzine, if not his ilk in general, and were not interested in being objective or giving an accurate account of reality.

As someone who really hates the Foxnews type tactics in today's media, I also have an extreme dislike for biased repotrers like you who actually give right wing whackos evidence of a liberal media bias.

Back to Corzine: your implication that he has no further ambition than being Governor, or that he is a "citizen politician" is ludicrous. Only someone being dishonest, or someone with no familiarity with Corzine or New Jersey didn't understand that Corzine was attempting to climb the political ladder with some hopes of maybe being a Presidential contender, or perhaps garnering a VP or cabinet position before his retings went in the dumper. And he doesn't want to make a career of politics?! If he gets a second term that will be at least 10 plus years in politics...that doesn't sound like a CAREER to you??

Your revisionist history of Corzine is a sad example of very poor journalism. No, I am not an expert, the point is you don't have to be to know I am right.

I recently moved to northern Virginia after many years in New Jersey, and so I knew how wildly off-base your "article" was. As I mentioned to the ombudsman, you and your editors have done a great disservice to the WaPo because you have called into question my and other's ability to trust other articles in the paper. I KNEW the facts of this article were phony, but what about a similar article about some other state Governor?? Would I believe such innacuracy since I would have no personal knowledge of the subject? BAD JOB BY YOU!!

As you can see from most of the comments on here, those in NJ know you are disengenuous, while those outside of New Jersey accept your "facts" for the most part. This is disturbing, and shows I am right to be angry with your fairy tale.

Again, this is not a political issue, I am rather centrist in my view, but b ecause of Bush and the Iraq war have not voted for a Republican since 2002 (I voted for bush in 2000, Kerry 2004 for example.) If Codey would have run for Gov, I would have voted for him. As it was, I voted for the third party candidate against Corzine, Pawlikowski, after I decided against voting for the Rpeublican challenger Foreester, due to his use of Dcik Cheney in fundraising. ( I should have held my nose and voted for Forrester, of course...my mistake.)

As I noted to the ombudsman, this seems to be an example of the drastic cuts at newspapers in staff and resources, since this kind of senseless, misguided drivel ended up on PAGE A3 of a newspaper like the WaPo!!!

And a note to the editors: I blame the editors and managers at the WaPo as much as you, for allowing this totally biased and unchallenged article to get the OK!!!!!

Here are the emails sent to the WaPo ombudsman:

1.:

The article "Governor Focuses on Fiscal Health of New Jersey", Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 was misleading, misguided, incomplete, innaccurate, and painted a most untrue overall picture of why Corzine is unpopular and what his ambitions were, or are.

How does such a poor article get on page A3 of your paper, anyway? I have read about the drastic cuts at newspapers in staff and resources, and this must be an obvious example. Where is the fact checking? where is the editor who should have understood this reporter fell for a lot of administration spin?

Corzine is unpopular for many reasons.

For example, his money intimidated the popular Richard Codey to not run against him in the primary. Then there is the Carla Katz scandal, still ongoing (please Google it), he tried to SELL the NJ Turnpike BEFORE he started the media campaign mentioned in your article, his unqualified Attorney General pick Zulima Farber,(Google it!), messy divorce, and many other actions of arrogance, hubris, slick maneuvering, and shady deals, have caused him to be unpopular.

Also, the idea that he had or has no ambitions beyond being the Governor, and that he is some kind of statesman or "citizen politician" is ludicrous to anyone with even the most limited knowledge of him and New Jersey. His career moves, and media posturing show that he definitely has (or had) Presidential ambitions, not to mention VP or a cabinet position (hopefully NOT an Obama Treasury Sec). And he used his MONEY to buy his offices, some "citizen politician" ! Who really wrote this article? Corzine himself, his current girlfriend, someone on his staff, or his mother? Sorry to be so sarcastic, but I am venting my extreme frustration and disappointment in finding out that the WaPo can not be trusted to even get a very simple straightforward story even remotely correct.

I suggest you call up to someone at The Star Ledger, let them read this article, and then ask them if I have a point. Actually, isn't that part of what a what a good reporter does?

I can't tell you how disillusioned I am to discover that WaPo is using such a useless, unhelpful, senseless piece of garbage to fill space on page A3 of their paper. If I sound angry, its because I am. If there is a similarly misleading article next week about something I am not familiar with, how will I know. I caught this because I recently moved to northern Virginia after living in New Jersey for many years. Again, this is evidence to me of the decline and the kind of self fulfilling prophecy of the deterioration of newspapers in today's world. After all, I myself have today become less trusting and eager to waste time reading something which might be just as wrong tomorrow or next Sunday.

I have long respected the Washington Post even before I moved here , and yes, there are still many excellent jobs done by your reporters and columnists, including you. I just wonder how such a bad article could receive such prominence in your paper. Thank you.

Reply:

The editor of the Star Ledger is a friend of mine. I'll check it out.

Deborah Howell
Washington Post Ombudsman

2.:

Thank you. sorry to fill up your inbox, but I just want to mention quickly a couple of points I left out that I think were important. One is that Corzine came IN with relatively low ratings, partly because of the Codey issue, but also because his image of a fast talking Wall Street type who was buying the Governorship with his wealth. He was able to win in large part because of the weakness and the public's greater distaste for the Republican challenger, Forrester. I myself so disliked Forrester's use of Dick Cheney for fundraising that I voted for the third party candidate Pawlikowski, probably a mistake on my part (I should have held my nose and voted for Forrester).

"Second, is this notion that as a Wall Street honcho, and "financial type", that New Jerseyans were confident or should be so in Corzine's understanding of finance and economics, as pushed in the article by the author along with a couple of pointy-headed university types:

"Here's a guy coming out of Wall Street and high finance who's looked at the books and said 'We've got to do things differently.'" He added, "Like him or hate him, you have to admire him for putting his cards on the table.""

This is typical liberal elitist speak. As New Jerseyans well know from our proximity to Wall Street and our experience with fast talking politicians, there is another side to this story. We know that Wall Street focuses on deal making rather than book balancing or operating on a budget, and many also knew that Corzine for most of his Goldman Sachs time was in the bond side of the business where you are basically a glorified SALESMAN, and accounting and budgets are not priorities, and lets be honest, so much of Wall street is deal making and since many New Jerseyans actually WORK in Wall street or related fields, we KNOW this.

The article also said there had been in past administrations a:

"past reliance on financial "gimmicks", such as using one-time surpluses like revenue"

His attempted sale of the NJ Turnpike, which was never mentioned in the article (how convenient) would have been the MOTHER of all financial gimmicks, and everyone in New Jersey knew it. The only ones who were for it were those who would have reaped the financial gains of such a plan, for example, the state worker unions, and some other Democratic politicians. the overwhelming uproar over his sneaky, disingenuous attempt to initiate such a sale is the reason he eventually gave up and changed course with his phony media blitz and town hall marketing of toll increases instead.

I hope this information helps, and again, thank you for listening.

3.:

Sorry, in my email dated today, I note that the article did mention the "leasing' of the NJ Turnpike, which was just about as distateful to New Jerseyans as an outright sale, and I should have stated that. But the article completely understated how this percieved (or real) sell out, initiated basically in secret, soured Corzine in the ratings, and confirmed many resident's suspicions about Corzine and his slick-talking hustler image. The idea that his unpopulrity comes from his "financial truth telling" is an absolute farce perpetuated by Corzine and his admirers!

Also, I should have been clearer that even those who were not tuned in to the specifics of Corzine's "experience" still understood that his agendas were as much about increasing his power by increasing the amount of revenue available to him to disperse to gain influence, as any high minded notion of fixing New Jersey's finances. If that were really his priority, he would not have allowed such a liberal contract to go to the CWA in what he implies are such dire financial times, for example.

I promise I am finished now, and thank you again for listening!