MANVILLE: Christie is showing his own type of lack of leadership

To the editor:
   Chris Christie has been campaigning for Mitt Romney across the country and the main focus of his distorted rhetoric is that President Obama lacks leadership.
    The truth of the matter is that it is Governor Christie who lacks leadership. Leadership means thinking outside the Republican box. So far the people of New Jersey and the country have seen nothing but a loudmouth bully. He uses language that would get a child into trouble, calling his opponents idiots, numb nuts and liars. The people of New Jersey know he is not, by any stretch, a nice guy. Christie is an egotistical elitist who continues to follow his party’s dysfunctional ideology.
    Under Christie’s lack of leadership, people in New Jersey pay one of the highest property taxes in the country. Property owners have seen a 20 percent increase in property taxes over the past two years. Christie’s budget-cutting moves have been a disaster for the people of New Jersey. He rolled back pensions and health benefits for the public workers, froze cost-of-living adjustments, cut funds for mental health care, tightened Medicaid eligibility requirements and privatized off-track betting.
    Under his watch, the state has approved more than $12 billion in tax subsidies for corporations. That alone would buy a lot of food stamps for the poor! Christie has cut benefits and pensions for police and firefighters.
    There has been $75 million in job training cuts, more than 3,000 community health center jobs eliminated and $34 million in cuts to homeland security. If the governor wants a chance to show true leadership, he must raise the taxes on the 221,000 millionaires and corporations in New Jersey receiving all the tax benefits. As a sign of the ultimate true leader, you must ask Mitt Romney, Grover Norquist, Charley and David Koch and Paul Ryan if it is OK to raise taxes on the super-rich.
    Governor Christie has become a major spokesperson for Mitt Romney. This fact alone should show the kind of leadership we, as a country, would have under a Romney presidency. We cannot let that happen. Vote for President Obama on Nov. 6 and keep America moving in the right direction.
Joseph Tenore
Hillsborough