A tale of two governors

by janusrising

Chris Christie is an interesting figure. Politically, I disagree with him on a lot of things, but I will say one thing for the man — he stands up for what he believes in, and he cares for the people of his state. When Hurricane Sandy hit, right in the middle of election season, he stood his ground and played an apolitical role and welcomed the President with open arms–much to the chagrin of the Republican party.

Paraphrasing: “How dare he be friendly with the commander in chief?”

That’s the thing about Republicans nowadays, it’s become party over country. It never should be party over country. That’s not the way this works. I mention Christie because recently he called out the Republican-controlled House for spending all their time gabbing about the fiscal cliff and refused to vote on aid for Hurricane Sandy.

 ”There’s only one group to blame,” said Christie in a speech this afternoon, “the House Majority and their speaker John Boehner.” The livid Republican governor continued: “We respond to innocent victims of natural disasters not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans — or at least we did until last night.”  — source

And it’s like…he’s right. Democrats have done it, too, but the Republicans seem to be doing a lot more of it now, and the only one getting hurt is us — the American people. Y’know, the ones without the hundred-thousand-dollar salaries and benefits and pages to attend to our every whim and desire.

The bill eventually passed, but not unanimously. 67 votes went no, 67 votes from the Republican party.

What the hell?

Sometime in the last decade, the Republican party went from conservative to full-blown radical. The new crop of House GOP members that went to Congress under the pretense of “cleaning up Congress” and “fixing the economy” had not even unpacked the boxes in their offices when they about-faced on their promises and made their whole m.o about making President Obama a one-term president. And rather than work on the accountability, on the “let’s fix this shit and let’s be this Tea-Party Approved Vanguard of Change!” it was … “Nah, let’s just be obstructionist. Because fuck it.”

Good to know that Christie’s calling them out on it. Good to know SOMEONE from their party is looking at the way the Republicans are going and thinking…”If I don’t say or do something, my party’s going to follow the Whigs into oblivion.”

And then you have this guy:

That’s Governor Tom Corbett (R-Pa).

If you’ve been under a rock for the last year and don’t know about the Sandusky Affair, here’s a quick recap:

• Joe Paterno, college football’s most storied coach, gets sacked from his position at Penn State for being complicit in not reporting the child sexual abuse being perpetrated under his nose by his defensive coordinator and architect of championships — Jerry Sandusky.
• Paterno dies, and Sandusky is brought up on multiple counds of sexual abuse of a minor (which he got through his Second Mile charity) and sent to the slammer. By multiple counts, I mean fifty two counts of sexual abuse of a minor. And all counts occurred RIGHT under everyone’s noses.
• the NCAA comes down with the banhammer on Penn State, stripping them from all their wins from 1998 – 2011.They are also assessed 60 millionn fines, scholarhsips removed, and they are banned from post-season collegiate bowls for the next 10 years.
• This was not the NCAA’s death penalty. The last time this happened was in 1986, when the Southern Methodist University Mustangs were hit by it, and they didn’t ever make a bowl game until 23 years later. In the eyes of the NCAA, if you take payments for playing football, you are worse than diddling little boys in the shower room.

Anyway, so, despite the tantrums thrown by students about scapegoats this and we didn’t know this was going on in front of our noses that and Nuremberg this, the new AD and the new President were sacked and the new up-tops were essentially tripping over themselves to take the punishment.

To be fair, some students have the right to be upset because they are essentially getting their school punished and the guys responsible (other than Sandusky) are pretty much getting off scot-free, not only that, but a number of the football players in the roster right now were all toddlers when the abuse was going on. But the school had to get punished.

So that was it, and everyone else accepted it, even the people who wanted to nuke Penn State from orbit (just to be sure), and we all moved on.

Right? Right?

Nope.

Governor Tom Corbett has a problem with that. You see, the NCAA overstepped their boundaries when it came time to sanction Penn State. Apparently, when you punish a university for knowing about the sexual abuse of one of its employees, aiding and abetting it by employing the monster sexually abusing his children , you are overstepping your boundaries.

Nevermind that Corbett himself helped approve $3,000,000 for the Second Mile Charity that served as the feeding ground for Sandusky’s apetite.

He wants to sue the NCAA for overstepping their boundaries.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the NCAA is a decrepit organization that is notoriously and frustratingly inconsistent, but in this case, they are in the entire right for going after Penn State. And the good governor, like a number of Republicans, is ignoring real issues, and deciding, “Let me just focus on this minutiae.”

I’m not a politician, but I think if I was in office, the last thing I would want is to have my name be associated with “is against punishing child rapists” and that is exactly what Governor Corbett is doing.

Though, to be fair, this recent crop of Republicans are completely okay with being associated with “is against civil rights”, and this fits right up in the Tea Party routine: “Government or private incursion in our lives is WRONG…unless of course there’s gays involved or women want control over their own bodies.”

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