Newly elected Republican Governor Chris Christie is taking heat from the left over his budget freeze. As they say, you know you’re over the target when you’re taking flak. And right now, Chris Christie has big government squarely in his sights.

Here are some excerpts from his recent speech to the Democrat-controlled NJ legislature:

New Jersey is in a state of financial crisis. Our state’s budget has been left in a shambles and requires immediate action to achieve balance. For the current fiscal year 2010, which has only four and one-half months left to go, the budget we have inherited has a two billion dollar gap. The budget passed less than eight months ago, in June of last year, contained all of the same worn out tricks of the trade that have become common place in Trenton, that have driven our citizens to anger and frustration and our wonderful state to the edge of bankruptcy.

…So today, I am beginning the process of fiscal reform and discipline. Today, we are going to act swiftly to fix problems long ignored. Today, I begin to do what I promised the people of New Jersey I would do. Today, I begin to give them the change they voted for in November.

…The “InvestNJ” program has a large unspent balance and a failed record in actually creating new jobs. We can save taxpayers $50 million by terminating this program now. Instead, I believe we should create, without significant public expense, a one stop shop to clear away obstacles and speed the path to job creation – the New Jersey partnership for action.

…By far the biggest category of spending we will need to cut, however, is that for programs which actually have merit, and in most cases make sense, but which we simply cannot afford at this time. Like any family, and like forty two other states with constitutionally required balanced budgets, we must live within our means. New Jersey does not have a revenue problem—we already have higher taxes than any other state in the union. We have gone down the road of ever higher taxes to pay for Trenton’s addiction to spending. What has it given us? 10.1 percent unemployment, a dormant economy and a failure of hope for growth in our future. Higher taxes is the road to ruin. We must, and we will, shrink our government.

This is how it’s done.  Other Republican governors, senators, congressman and candidates better be paying attention.

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When the city of New Haven tried discriminate against the police officers who passed their promotion test, because they weren’t appropriate ‘diverse’ for the PC crowd, the Supreme Court rightly struck it down.  Now, the Justice Department’s Civil Right Division is suing New Jersey for not discriminating on behalf of black and hispanic officers who don’t pass the written exam for promotion in the same numbers as white officers.  Though of course that’s not how they frame it.

The exam, a written test that New Jersey police officers must pass in order to advance to the rank of sergeant, quizzes candidates on state and local laws.

“This complaint should send a clear message to all public employers that employment practices with unlawful discriminatory impact on account of race or national origin will not be tolerated,” said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department will take all necessary action to ensure that such discriminatory practices are eliminated and that the victims of such practices are made whole.”

Actually, what this complaint tells us is that it’s more important to bow at the alter of identity politics than to insure that police officers know and understand the laws which they are tasked to enforce.  Unless there is evidence that the test itself is inherently racist, i.e. that the questions somehow lend themselves to be answered better by white test takers than others, then there is no discrimination.  But there is no such evidence.

The entire argument of discrimination is based on nothing more than a few percentage points of difference between how white and minority candidates perform.

White officers pass the New Jersey test at a rate of 89 percent, as opposed to 77 percent of Hispanic candidates and 73 percent of African-American candidates.

So what? What percentage of right-handed and left-handed people pass the test?  What percentage of blondes and brunettes?  How is race any more relevant to understanding the law than these entirely superficial characteristics?  The fact of the matter is that races are not taking the test – individuals are.  Individuals who study and know the material pass, individuals are not prepared fail.  Those who fail should not be promoted.  Dicing these individuals into artificial categories and comparing passing percentages is entirely meaningless.

“Our suit does not have an issue with a written exam period, but we do believe it has a disparate impact on African-American and Hispanic candidates,” Alejandro Miyar, a spokesman at the Justice Department Civil Rights Division, told The Daily Caller.

Disparate impact is a little-known legal term that describes an employment practice that isn’t intentionally discriminatory, but which results in a discriminatory outcome. It is forbidden under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Disparate impact was first described by the Supreme Court in the 1971 case Griggs v. Duke Power Co. which found that “good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as ‘built-in headwinds’ for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability.”

One would think that understanding the law goes to the heart of measuring the job capacity of police officers.

This is the same Justice Department that dropped the charges of voter intimidation against the Black Panthers after the case had already been won.

No, there’s no radical, racial agenda at Eric Holder’s DoJ.

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Talking heads everywhere are telling you what yesterday’s election results mean.  Clearly you need one more source.

In some sense they mean little more than the obvious: that the states of New Jersey and Virginia sided with Republicans based on the issues in their respective states.  Certainly the corruption from top to bottom of the New Jersey Democratic Party and the tax raising ways of Corzine, along with fears that Creigh Deeds would raise taxes in Virginia, played an important part in the defeat of both.  But was there also an anti-Obama sentiment?

It’s hard to say the extent to which there was anti-Obama sentiment, if at all.  Most voters didn’t admit to casting a vote influenced by Obama in either direction, but that doesn’t mean that those who disapprove of the President weren’t more motivated than his supporters.  It’s quite likely that they were, and it’s hard not to consider that opposition to ever expanding government in Washington could have driven extra turnout from conservatives and small government independents, who went heavily for Republicans.

The economy was a key issue in every race, and the takeaway lesson for Democrats going into 2010 is that they are in trouble if it doesn’t improve.

But enough of the two party battles, what about the intra-Republican dispute in NY-23?  While RINO’s and their self-serving cheerleaders on the left will be emboldened by Hoffman’s loss, the race is hardly an indictment of conservative candidates.  Hoffman not only got 45% of the vote in a district carried by Obama in 2008, but he did it while battling both major parties with limited resources for most of the race.  Moreover, the fact that Scozzafava was still on the ballot with the Republican label may well have been the deciding factor. She received more votes than make up the gap between Hoffman and Owens, and that’s before counting the absentee ballots, many of which were mailed while she was still a viable candidate.

For the national Republican establishment, this is no vindication of their strategy.  In the end they spent almost $1 million on a candidate that endorsed the Democrat.  That is an inexcusable embarrassment.  The best lesson they can take away is: there’s a reason you hold primaries.  If there had been a Republican primary, Hoffman would have defeated the union loving, stimulus supporting, health care nationalizing Scozzafava and then had the Republican party behind him, rather than against him, in his race against Doug Owens.  The outcome likely would have been in his favor.

For conservatives, the lesson here is that third parties are not viable.  Yes, this was a rare case and it could have worked in NY-23.  But elsewhere, particularly at the national level, it’s simply a bad idea no matter what.  Conservatives have to continue working to restore the Republican Party as the home of small government voters.  For those who would stand in our way and think the “big tent” moderate Republican Party we have now is the way to go, I’ll leave you with this election night statistic:  In Virginia, 36% of voters identified themselves as Republican, while 39% said there are conservative.

Further reading: Matt Latimer on The Right and Wrong Lessons from Tuesday’s elections, and Michelle Malkin on The GOP elite’s $1 million object lesson — and the message of NY-23

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Here’s the latest on tomorrow’s elections:

McDonnell continues to lead by double-digits.

Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat, no doubt to the embarrassment of the national party boobs who spent almost $1 million on her campaign. Hoffman leads in recent polls.

Nate Silver asks (and answers) 15 questions to help illuminate the tight New Jersey race. He gives a slight edge to Christie, whose supporters are more enthusiastic. Corzine’s saving grace may be the Democrats state machine apparatus.

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No, not the people from South America that seem to have such an unusually high concentration of sexy women:

New Jersey is drawing the line when it comes to bikini waxing.

The state Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling is moving toward a ban on genital waxing altogether after two women reported being injured in their quest for a smooth bikini line.

Both women were hospitalized for infections following so-called “Brazilian” bikini waxes; one of the women has filed a lawsuit, according to Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the cosmetology board.

Technically, genital waxing has never been allowed — only the face, neck, abdomen, legs and arms are permitted — but because bare-it-all “Brazilians” weren’t specifically banned, state regulators haven’t enforced the law.

Ugh…technically, it has.

Do I really need to go into much detail about why it’s stupid to ban elective activity over a few people getting hurt?  Really? Nah…I don’t.

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