Contracts Are Sacrosanct - Unless They're Workers' Contracts

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake gets right at the hypocrisy of Chris Christie on this issue:

It seemed like only yesterday that a contract was sacrosanct. Remember 2009, and those AIG bonuses, paid for with taxpayer dollars?

The administration official said the Treasury Department did its own legal analysis and concluded that those contracts could not be broken.

Larry Summers:

We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts.

But now that we’re talking about breaking contract to pay back pensions that middle class workers have paid into over the course of their professional careers, well — that’s another story.

Chris Christie:

The promises of the past are too expensive.

Meanwhile she points out that New Jersey invested $115 million of the state's pension fund in Lehman Brothers right before it went belly up.

Oops!

And both Whitman and Christie refuse to fully fund the state's pension fund, further exacerbating short falls.

Oh, well!

Guess we'll just have to raise the retirement age, slash benefits and turn the whole system into one big 401(k) giveaway to Chris Christie's criminal friends on Wall Street.

That's what Chris Christie means when he calls for fiscal discipline.

That's what I call rank hypocrisy.