Cory Booker: the inexorable rise of Newark's neoliberal egomaniac
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/cory-booker-newark-neoliberal-egomaniac(...)
It'd be one thing if the Soviet-style personality cult and let's-come-together Twitter banalities – recent days have seen him post self-help quotations from Bruce Springsteen and the Dalai Lama – were just marketing for a progressive political program. But Booker is a far more conservative figure than the Cult of Cory, which is too busy making Superman or Chuck Norris jokes, may actually realize. He is a long-time advocate of charter schools and, more quietly, of voucher programs: a favorite hobbyhorse of the men of high finance. George Will, the paleoconservative columnist of the Washington Post, is a big fan. Michelle Rhee, the fallen DC schools chancellor whose union-busting, corporatist education reforms resulted in a citywide cheating scandal, is someone Booker calls "a friend of mine" – and we should add that Newark's charter schools were embroiled in a cheating scandal of their own last year.
And of course, Booker has the unwavering support of the big bad industry just across the river from Newark. Since his days as a city councilor, he has hoovered up cash from the financial services sector – but unlike many other tri-state Democrats who seduce the Street in a marriage of a convenience, Booker legitimately thinks that big money knows best and the public sector should do its bidding. When, in May 2012, Booker confessed that he found it "nauseating" for the Obama campaign to impugn Mitt Romney's career in private equity, Democrats were shocked. They shouldn't have been.
Booker's whole career has been a testament to a poisonous financial-corporatist consensus, which dresses up the interests of big money in post-ideological garb. (That helped him win the support this weekend of the most powerful man in New Jersey: George Norcross III, the feared political boss and owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who said he liked Booker because he was "a Democrat that's fiscally conservative yet socially progressive."
Remember that $100m donation to the Newark schools from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, promoted with its very own Oprah episode? The cash didn't go into the Newark school system; it's controlled by a non-governmental fund, with Booker on the board, and has been so unaccountable that the ACLU had to sue the city to learn what was going on. (Booker's office first denied that the emails the ACLU sought existed; when a judge ordered the emails to be made public, the Booker team released them on Christmas Eve.)
Add to this Booker's privatization of the Newark sanitation department, and his repeated attempts to do the same to the water supply, and the picture becomes clearer. In the world Booker and his cohort inhabit, there are no systemic problems and no class interests. There are only pesky inefficiencies, to be fixed with better data and more money from smart, happy, rich people who can spend their cash far more sensibly than the public sector.
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I always had a funny feeling about Cory Booker. He just seemed too slick, too pretty, for some reason. He seemed genuine, but there was just something about him I couldn't exactly put my finger on. Now I know why... Thanks for educating me, Enrique. I loves to learn.
He hasn't won the primary yet. Go over to Politics 2013 - and you will see -
There are folks in NJ that will NOT be voting for Booker in the Primary. Myself included.
NEWARK elects Booker for Mayor - not Democratics in Hunterdon, Somerset, Warren Counties, etc. etc.
He's got to win in areas of the state are already leaning VERY heavily towards Pallone. Why? It's about the Education. When his platform of vouchers gets out to those of us in affluent communities that pay outrageous property taxes that are DIRECTLY LINKED TO our PUBLIC SCHOOLs he's going to find himself challenged.
All of you - please help us.
Look up Frank Pallone's record. Give him $5.
Then even if it is only $5 - can you please donate to Buono for Governor's campaign> The Democratic Leadership is ignoring her (including President Obama) - and with Lautenberg's death - it's like Democratics have completely forgotten that we have GOT TO STOP CHRIS CHRISTIE IN 2016.
A Senator Pallone with his stellar progressive VOTING RECORD and a Progressive Democratic Governor will make all the difference to the daily life of this Jersey girl! 
That has been the push from some (yeah, I'm talking about you Rahm et al) since the late 1980s -- socially moderate to liberal/fiscally conservative and knee bending to Big Business. 
The perfect political triangulation. And anathema to the Democratic values I grew up with and cherish.
The GOP isn't the only Party having problems within its' ranks.
And plus one for Rush Holt.
At the end of the day - I think it's good for folks outside of NJ to SEE how varied the New Jersey liberal/progressive is and that we are not ALL for coporate shills.
