Ritual Sacrifice in the Garden State- A Guest Post From Tod Theise (D-NJ)

Tod Theise is the intrepid Democrat in northernmost New Jersey taking on the most conservative Republican left in the Northeast, Wall Street shill Scott Garrett. We started covering his race last May and when I was trying to wrap my head around the colossal compounding series of infantile blunders being made by New Jersey's governor I turned to Tod for some help understanding exactly what happened. One thing I saw clearly was that Christie's arrogance is simply amazing. He screws up then blames Obama. When that won't fly, he blames his own Education Secretary, the guy with credibility inside the far right. Christie was already is on thin ice with conservatives in New Jersey, so why would he can one of their genuine icons?  All in all, it looked like a very good week for Democrats in the Garden State. Let's let Tod take it from there: 

- by Tod Theise

Call me a glass-half-full kind of guy, but I actually expected New Jersey Governor Christie to demonstrate a modicum of leadership by taking responsibility for the epic blunder that robbed New Jersey schools of $400 million of federal education funds. In submitting the application for Race to the Top funding, Christie’s administration made a “clerical error” that lowered the application’s score. New Jersey’s loss was Ohio’s gain as the Buckeye State edged past Jersey to garner the tenth and final funding slot.

As the news spread of this debacle, Christie was faced with the first real crisis of personal character of his governorship. He could accept responsibility for this screw-up and ask forgiveness of the people whose interests he’d sworn to protect. Or he could pursue the course taken by your garden variety toddler caught in the act by an angry parent and throw a self-aggrandizing tantrum to deflect culpability. Well, so much for my cockeyed optimism. The Governor formerly referred to by George W. Bush as “Big Boy” proceeded to pitch a fit, attempting to assign blame first to the New Jersey Teachers Association (”NJEA”). Ironically, Christie had wrested the application process from the NJEA as part of his continuing efforts to score political points by pummeling teachers for every evil under the sun.

When this tactic wore thin, he maladroitly turned his sites on the Obama administration. Christie maintained that the President was duty bound to inform Christie’s administrators that they had botched the insertion of rudimentary date information on the application. This flea-bitten dog failed to hunt and Christie was running out of victims to toss on his ritual pyre. The last refuge for Christie’s cowardice proved to be the scapegoating of his handpicked Education Secretary Bret Schundler. Christie’s appointment of Schundler as Education Secretary was hailed by conservatives as a stroke of genius. Bret had built much of his street cred as a leader of Jersey’s right wing based on his support for education reforms such as charter schools. His appointment by Christie served to solidify Big Boy’s support with those on the right who had never quite accepted him as one of their own.

Christie decided to unceremoniously fire Schundler. I knew Bret Schundler back in the day when I was
a Republican. Whether you agreed with Bret or not, he has always been a man of impeccable character and has a heart for people rarely seen in politics. He readily bonded with a young Cory Booker when Booker was a Councilman in Newark and a rising star in the Democratic heavens. Despite his strong conservative leanings, he invariably treated those with whom he disagreed with respect and sought common ground on many issues with his political opponents. He didn’t deserve to be thrown under the bus by an ill-tempered adolescent masquerading as a Governor incapable of taking accountability for his own inexcusable mistake.

This incident isn’t about partisanship or ideology. It’s about right and wrong. And what Governor Christie did to Bret Schundler was incalculably wrong.

Rachel Maddow's perspective in the context of Obama Derangement Syndrome, something from which Christie cerianly suffers... mightily:




UPDATE: Christie And Schundler In A Hot Debate Over Who Lied More

This is ugly and getting uglier. TPM looked into the charges flying back and forth between Christie and Schundler, while people in New Jersey are just dazed that these two ego-maiacs lost them $400 million in education funding.

Schundler now says he made it clear to the the governor that he did not try to provide additional information to the Department of Education officials because the rules don't allow states to correct or add to their applications after they are submitted. He told TPMMuckraker that he told Christie prior to the press conference not to say that Obama was at fault or suggest that his office wasn't to blame. But Schundler has also said that he may have made a mistakenly told the Governor that the conversation with a reviewer about the missing data took place during the official presentation when it actually happened after the camera was turned off.

In addition, this week Schundler admitted that he, not a mid-level staffer, apparently edited out the crucial data this week that caused the state to lose out on the funding. Schundler has said that the federal Education Department recently found a draft of the Race to the Top application that has edits in Schundler's handwriting which remove the data federal officials requested.

Memorial Day With Tod Theise

We first ran into Tod Theise, the progressive New Jersey Democrat running against corporate shill Scott Garrett, when he did a guest post here a few weeks ago about the personal odyssey that brought him to the Democratic Party. When I first met Tod he talked a lot and with great enthusiasm about his service in the New York Guard and what it meant to him. I invited him back today for another guest post and I asked him to talk about how his service will make him a more valuable congressman for people living in Bergen, Passaic, Sussex and Warren counties. Here's his guest post. If you like what you read, please consider helping him get his message out in one of the nation's most expensive media markets.

Republicans May Not Like Empathy But There Are Times When It Is Essential-- A Guest Post By Tod Theise

My military service best falls under the heading better late than never. I had hoped to enter the Army or Marine Corps after college but acquiesced to my parents’ wishes to attend law school. It meant a great deal to them as I would be the first “professional” in our family. Upon graduating law school in 1987, I once again flirted with entering the military. Unfortunately, my father suffered a massive heart attack that summer and I opted to take care of my family. Two decades later, I would be given another chance to give something back to my country as a soldier.
 
In January 2007, I was commissioned into the New York Guard (the “Guard”) as a 1st Lieutenant.  The Guard was created during WWI in response to homeland security concerns. The prospect of German U-boats surfacing off the shores of Long Island and Brooklyn were enough to have the State of New York charter what amounted to a State Militia. The Guard allowed men and women such as me who were too old to serve in the “regular” armed forces an opportunity to participate in domestic defense initiatives.
   
I had initially attempted to enter the Guard in 2004, but the particular unit I was applying through made errors with my paperwork. I was frustrated, yet never gave up the dream I harbored since childhood. In 2006, I reconnected with the Guard through a fellow attorney who served as recruitment coordinator for the 7th Civil Affairs Regiment. I told my wife that I wanted to join and explained the nature of and duties inherent in the Guard. I also told her how much this meant to me.  With her blessing, I entered the Guard. 

My unit is a remarkable collection of men and women. Our personnel include Judges, partners at major New York law firms, attorneys from various backgrounds and non-professionals who bring myriad experiences to bear in performing their duties. We receive no compensation for our service and provide anywhere from $300,000 to $400,000 in legal services to soldiers and their families every year. We also receive training in numerous areas of homeland defense. I have received certifications in suicide bombing prevention and response along with completing nearly a dozen learning modules in emergency preparedness. I have also been trained at a very basic level in dealing with weapons of mass destruction.
   
This training is critical given that I and my comrades are first and foremost soldiers. The fact that I work just a few blocks from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan brings a sense of immediacy to my service. My BDUs (battle dress uniform) often hang in my office and I have made my peace that in the event we are attacked again, I will put them on and do whatever is necessary to protect our nation and save as many lives as possible.
      
My tenure in the Guard has had an indelible impact on how I view not only war, but peace. When my unit travels to Fort Hamilton, Floyd Bennett Field or some other military facility to perform what we affectionately refer to as “will drills,” we are confronted with a reality most Americans never witness. It is a sobering experience to sit down with a young man or woman to discuss things like the disposition of their remains or draft a health care proxy in the event they return from Iraq or Afghanistan incapable of making decisions regarding medical care. It is heart rending to make small talk with a twenty-year-old about how he wants his kid brother to get his prized hot rod if he doesn’t make it back. Even more difficult is addressing issues involving children and what happens to them when mommy or daddy comes home in a flag-draped casket. 
 
Our soldiers are not action movie characters or cartoonish fodder for our entertainment. They are flesh and blood. They are our brothers and sisters. They are our sons and daughters. They have precious dreams that they sacrificially defer in order to preserve our liberties. I often find myself looking for a quiet place amidst the frenzy of our legal services operation to bow my head, say a prayer and shed some tears at the prospect that some of these soldiers will not be coming home or that their lives will be forever changed by the hell that is war. That their families will sit down for Christmas dinners to come with an empty place setting that will never be filled. That their children will grow up never knowing their mothers or fathers. That they will leave a piece of their soul in an Iraqi desert or Afghani mountain range. 

Sending servicemen and women into the line of fire is the most solemn decision any elected official will ever make. Before such a decision is made, it is incumbent upon those in power to consider exactly what they are placing at risk. I subscribe to a very simple standard for whether to commit troops to the field-- would I send my own son or daughter to fight. Most politicians could not answer this question in the affirmative. Yet they wrap themselves in the flag and reflexively send other people’s children across the globe to fight for causes not worthy of their own progeny’s blood. I hope there is a special corner of hell carved out for these hypocrites.   

My service in the Guard has, more than anything, taught me to value our troops at a very human level. I pray on this Memorial Day that I never discount who they are for the sake of political expedience. 

Republicans Will Be The Quasi-Peace Party And Obama Will Trap Democrats Into Voting For Pointless War That Will Never Be Won

Yesterday we looked at the cynical trick the White House is using to pass it's unpopular Afghan War supplemental. They're offering Democrats a "sweetener" in the form of $23-25 billion to keep public education and public safety of a local level from collapsing, to get them to vote for a package that includes that money plus the $33.5 billion for the occupation and escalation in Afghanistan. The money to save teacher, firemen and policemen jobs will be enough to get reluctant Democrats to go along with more war-- or at least give them an excuse for voting for it. Ironically, it gives Republicans an excuse to vote against it!

Pelosi says she won't lean too heavily on anti-war Democrats this time. (I guess that explains why Rahm Emanuel hasn't left to be mayor of Chicago yet.) House Dems say the Senate can go first on this one and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn says he's going to put together a filibuster.

House Republicans have strongly criticized the effort to tack on the education funding, suggesting that they could oppose a war-spending bill for the second year in a row. Some Republicans have called the education funding another “bailout” that will add to the country’s $13 trillion debt.

“Giving states another $23 billion in federal education money simply throws more money into taxpayer-funded bailouts when we should be discussing why we aren’t seeing the results we need from the billions in federal dollars that are already being spent,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a statement.

Boehner and other Republicans have called for a “clean” war-spending bill.

“Our troops and the American people need this bill right now, not weeks from now, and certainly not after it’s been loaded up with billions in bailouts,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.

While Republicans are balking at the idea of including the education funding with $33.5 billion for the war, the inclusion of the teacher fund-- which could save as many as 300,000 jobs, according to its proponents-- could make House liberals take a second look at the package.

Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) has opposed an escalation of the Afghanistan war, but he hasn’t ruled out backing a package that also included money for teachers.

“We’ll review the whole package the Senate will send us, but at this point he’s inclined to vote against the funding,” an aide to McGovern said.

Jonathan Tasini is running for the upper Manhattan House seat now being occupied by corrupt Democrat Charlie Rangel. Jonathan didn't like the way the White House paired this two issues anymore than we did-- and he put this video together last night:



If you think a progressive leader like Jonathan Tasini would make a good alternative to a special interests embarrassment, please help him raise the funds he needs to run an effective grassroots campaign in NYC.


UPDATE From Florida And New Jersey

Blue America-endorsed House candidate Doug Tudor is a career naval officer who was as disturbed by this trickery as the rest of us are around here; in fact-- in some ways, more so. This morning he issued this statement: “Our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are putting their lives on the line everyday in Afghanistan. Instead of playing political games to win votes for a failing war effort, the leaders of my party should ask for an honest vote for continued funding. I, for one, would vote no, but members should be able to vote on issues of war and peace without those issues being connected to domestic spending packages. On a final note, if a member of the leadership ever tries to 'lean' on me regarding a war vote, he or she will be in for a big surprise. The thought of a Member of Congress allowing himself or herself to be pressured to vote a certain way when our troops’ lives are at stake is disgusting.”

Yesterday we met Tod Theise, who's running against right-wing warmonger, Scott Garrett. Today he told me that "decisions regarding war and peace should be based on tactical and moral imperatives alone. War purchased by legislative inducement can never be just or rational.  Peace offered at the behest of political patronage can never be lasting or meaningful. Any funding for the war effort in Afghanistan must be based exclusively on what is best for our national defense and our troops in the field. Period."

Meet Tod Theise-- Taking On Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Practicing On Winston Churchill

My name is Tod Theise and I am running as the Democratic Congressional candidate in New Jersey’s 5th District. Don’t worry. These days I start out everything I write or say like that. I promise, it gets better. 
 
Winston Churchill once proclaimed, “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” Many a right-wing ideologue has used Churchill’s pithy quote to support the notion that idealism is an inevitable casualty of experience. Admittedly, this theory plays out with regularity in the lives of millions of Americans who endure the hard knocks of day to day existence. They are left with an understandable suspicion that the deck has been stacked against them. Good people become increasingly disposed to dispensing with the “Golden Rule” in favor of a more immediately gratifying ethic-- one that justifies muting the call to be their brother’s and sister’s keeper for the sake of pragmatism. Politicians, pundits, preachers and plumbers run what amounts to a societal fight club. They pit neighbor against neighbor, admonishing that life is a zero sum game in which one man’s blessing comes at the expense of another man’s wallet. They collect the spoils of discord and strengthen their grip on our nation’s conscience.
     
History, both long past and recent, leads me to reject the idea that it is a political virtue for a nation to compromise its highest ideals for the sake of expedience. For eight years under George Bush we pursued this course and reaped economic chaos, a depleted military and unprecedented loss of liberty. This is not a manifestation of national maturity. It is an abrogation of our core values.  Pitting the collective head and heart against one another in a competition for our national soul is an exercise in intellectual dishonesty that led directly to policies like institutionalizing torture in the name of freedom. 
 
At a personal level, I reject the premise that the passage of time and the attendant hardships we face inevitably elevate the head over the heart in terms of rendering sound judgment. The catalyst for this pilgrim’s political progress from GOP acolyte to Democratic Congressional standard bearer has been a long-simmering matter of heart. I’m sure that there are many people like me strewn across the American political landscape. People whose challenges shaped their moral and spiritual evolution. People whose conscience exceeded the limitations of the prefabricated ideology they had been sold. Obligatory campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, what distinguishes my run for Congress more than anything is how and why I came to be a Democrat.
         
I grew up in a very traditional yet surprisingly diverse household. Both my sister and I were adopted, so the normal preoccupation with bloodlines never factored into how I viewed those around me. My mother was a first generation Hungarian allegedly descended from minor nobility. My father was a hardscrabble son of the City of Newark whose lineage traced back to Moses and Jacob Theise who settled in Poultney, Vermont shortly after Ulysses S. Grant took the oath of office. My parents were moderate Eisenhower Republicans but neither was overtly political. The fervent interest in law and government was uniquely my own. I registered as a Republican in 1980 and worked on Ronald Reagan’s first Presidential campaign. I headed off to law school to prepare to save the world from the tyranny of the masses and returned home baptized in the abiding belief that I had grown to Churchillian manhood in record time. 
       
I arrived home in June 1987 poised to pursue any of a wide array of opportunities I viewed as potential tickets to success. One problem: my father suffered a massive heart attack. I studied law in another part of the country and my connections were decidedly not in New Jersey. I chose to stay in my home town of West Orange to take care of my parents as they faced the prospect of a long term health crisis. This marked the first crack in the ideological house of glass I had constructed out of shards of social Darwinism. I saw firsthand how programs like Medicare not only saved my father’s life, but afforded him the kind of medical care that allowed him to live another decade-- a decade that enabled him to see two beloved grandchildren come into the world and me get married. The very government I had been enticed to cynically dismiss as antithetical to personal prosperity was the only thing standing between my family and destitution. 
    
Over the course of the next decade, I became involved in my community in a variety of ways. I volunteered to mentor at-risk inner city youth in the Essex County Youth House. The Youth House was a filthy hole. It was the subject of a Federal Court Order demanding its physical reconstruction and putting an end to multiple forms of inmate abuse. The young men and women who passed through its halls like so much human refuse had little chance to escape the cycle of degradation that in most cases resulted in a lifetime of incarceration or death. In retrospect, the eight years I spent placing emotional band aids on gaping psychological wounds was arguably the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. At that time, my heart and head played ping pong with my loyalties as I became increasingly involved in Republican politics. The old timers in the party were outwardly amused at what they perceived as wasted sympathies. They dismissed this bleeding heart routine as a phase I was going through, much like disco or the leisure suit.
 
As I achieved notoriety within the local and regional GOP, that shrill drumbeat of conscience faded until I had successfully exchanged idealism for a pragmatic pursuit of self advancement. I rose through the ranks to serve as press secretary for a prominent Republican politician who was the clear frontrunner for a United States Senate seat. About halfway through the campaign, the person I thought I knew and trusted implicitly was investigated and ultimately indicted by then US Attorney and now Jersey Governor Chris Christie. In his pursuit of campaign cash, a man who had been elected as a reformer left office in the exact state of disgrace as the person he replaced. I was never questioned by authorities in connection with the investigation and emerged untainted. As much as this betrayal left me disillusioned, it was witnessing the pathological lust for money-- a pursuit that openly invited corruption-- that had the greatest impact on my political psyche. Shortly thereafter, I dropped out of politics entirely.
 
In the span of four years I had lost my mother and father, my marriage, most of my savings when the dotcom bubble burst, my home and the political stature I craved. I was unburdened of everything I worked for since returning home fifteen years before with the great expectations of my youth.  Around this same time, a young man I taught in Sunday school years before died from an aggressive form of stomach cancer at the age of twenty-nine. He and I remained close and I took a great deal of pride as I watched this son of Vietnamese immigrants graduate from an Ivy League university and grow to maturity. I cut out his obituary from the local paper, wrote the words “So as to never forget that life is cruelty and suffering” on the back, and wrapped it in clear tape to preserve it.
   
As painful as it was, this period of deconstruction was exactly what I needed. For Churchill, this would have served as a call to stiffen the upper lip and regroup in hopes or regaining paradise lost. For me, it marked a surrender of pretense and an opportunity to start my life over sans ideological baggage.  I went to work in Manhattan at a large international law firm where no one gave a damn about what went on across the Hudson River. I met a remarkable woman who had grown up in a small village in Zambia where she learned to read and write on the dirt floor of a hut masquerading as a classroom.  She defied her humble circumstances and a culture that denied women professional advancement by earning her certificate as a chartered accountant. I made the best decision of my life and married Belliah five years ago. In 2007, I joined the New York Guard as a 1st Lieutenant. My background as an attorney allows me to provide free legal services to soldiers and their families. I also obtained certifications in several areas of homeland defense and emergency preparedness including suicide bombing prevention and response.
     
And I got back into politics. My heart and head having established a firm détente, the way was paved for me to enthusiastically join a party that willingly embraces those who suffer and refuses to accept their continuing degradation. I’m grateful to have been afforded the opportunity by my fellow Dems to cut radio ads for then candidate Obama, run for County Freeholder, assume the chair of our local Democratic Committee and now run for Congress in New Jersey’s 5th Congressional District. The 5th stretches across the top of the Garden State west to east from bucolic Warren County (where I live) to cosmopolitan Bergen County. It is currently “represented” by a fellow named Scott Garrett.  Garrett’s positions are so extreme that he often finds himself to the right of Michelle Bachman. He is well-funded by corporate lobbyists and will say and do anything to get re-elected. In his 2008 race, he accused his opponent blind Rabbi Dennis Shulman of being a Hamas sympathizer. This should be one hell of a wild ride. 

I still carry the obituary of my young friend in my wallet. He didn’t deserve to die such a brutally senseless death. Neither does a child who is denied life-saving medical treatment because his parents can’t afford health care or an insurance company refuses to cover a claim. I pray that I never forget that people suffer needlessly every day. We live in a society that entices us to do everything in our power to avert personal sacrifice and further marginalize those who already exist on the margins.  The faith in which I was raised and inspired me to go to the Youth House and inner city streets has been hijacked and perverted by self-styled prophets to justify bigotry, greed and hate. The “Masters of the Universe” that infest Wall Street have turned our economy into little more than a rigged casino in which the elite play at the expense of working Americans. Alleged fiscal conservatives bristle at the notion that war should be funded on a pay-as-you-go basis while they invite unscrupulous contractors to loot the treasury with impunity. Our campaign finance laws amount to little more than legalized bribery allowing the powerful to amplify their voice at the expense of the democratic process. 
 
I want no part of this mercenary utopia. In fact, I plan to do everything in my power fight against it. With your help we can take a significant step toward this goal by defeating Congress’s chief apostle of indifference and returning principled representation to New Jersey’s 5th District.