Cure for the New York/New Jersey Beach Boy Blues

The beach boys we are speaking about are not old California wannabe surfers.  They are two hot shot, east coast politicians with a new found expectation of free federal money (is there any other kind?) to rebuild their ocean and water front coastal home, business and infrastructure improvements that found themselves directly in the predictable path of a low pressure natural occurrence named, appropriately, Sandy.  We once knew a tempestuous gal of the same name.  As we recall, she was a tad costly but never in the 10 digit category.

So, back to these two boys and their whining expectations.  They have tallied the damage and now are sitting on their hands; well in one case; hand sitting could produce significant carpal bone damage, wailing about the failure of Uncle Sam to send them some money.  Oh boo-hoo-hoo, they just can’t get anything done without some of that always available, low or no cost, federal money.  But we, at TheFundamentals, have a plan - a cure – a simple way out of this fix they are in and it can be accomplished with just a little effort from within their own state boundaries.

In New York, there are several very large public employee pension funds – ditto for the home state of the morbidly obese, used-to-be belt tightening and always ready with a simple answer – Chris Christie (more about him later and our major mea culpa to our readers for massively misleading them about this character.   When we make a mistake, it is a big, fat one; that’s for sure.)  Now these pension funds are overflowing with lots of taxpayer dollars which always seek good investments.  And what better investment that rebuilding the homes, businesses and infrastructure of the New York and New Jersey beachfront communities?  By investing their billions of dollars in these home projects they will not only guarantee the ongoing availability of those high paying, highly benefitted, and really well pensioned “public jobs” but they will also rebuild the tax bases in the Sandy-damaged communities.  So, you see, it is a win – win – win; the last win is for us federal taxpayers who don’t reach in our pockets to waste; 'er, we mean, invest our hard earned dollars in boondoggle projects staffed with overpaid, underworked unionized labor and their supportive friends with names like Soprano, Bonanno and DiMeo.

What we wonder about is why are Cuomo and Christie so anxious to beg the feds for something when they could do it on their own?  This brings us to our massive mea culpa.  We screwed up – really big time and we apologize to our readers.  We bought into this Christie guy’s rhetoric – his bologna – his tough talk.  In our defense, we offer this quote from him:

“We must and we will shrink our government, and that means making some tough choices, tightening our belts.”  CChristie, before le deluge

We have learned a lesson.  Frankly it is a mistake to ever anticipate politician’s actions before they are tested in trying times.  Both these guys are politicians – not businessmen.  We don’t think this policy need be applied to private sector individuals, who have proven themselves in difficult circumstances, but we bought into Christies bluster and his bulliness and we were dead wrong – about him and his commitment to personal responsibility and good fiscal governance.

In the meantime, and this really is wishful thinking, the feds should tell Christie and Cuomo to use their own pension funds and stop whining.  Get to work.  Both have the money in their backyard – use it.