New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (Republican, of course) has left the northeastern political consensus that policies should be pursued to reduce carbon emissions. (Reduction of carbon pollution emissions is aimed at tackling global warming.)
Since May he has opposed the Northeast agreement (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, RGGI) to cap carbon emissions.
(Christopher Baker in NJ.com,
"Gov. Christie announces N.J. pulling out of regional environmental initiative", May 26, 2011.)
Christie vetoed state legislature law last Friday that committed to supporting carbon emission controls by 2018.
Democrats will try to engineer an
override of Christie's veto.
As a moderate blogger said, Christie has just nixed his chance to become presidential nominee in 2012.
* * *
Wonder why television anchors and other news personalities are so bent on pursuing the center-right pro-corporate consensus (notice how some of them pushed Christie to run for president)?
Perhaps their big salaries have something to do with it. The multi-millionaire anchors have it in their interest to oppose President Barack Obama's talk about taxing millionaires.
See this report from August 9, 2011 in MediaBistro:
Alex Weprin, "Who Makes What in TV News?"
The highest paid news anchor is NBC “Today” anchor Matt Lauer, who brings in around $17 million a year.
. . .
Among the evening news anchors, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams leads the way with a $13 million a year contract, followed by Diane Sawyer at $12 million. “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley makes less than $5 million a year, or less than a third of what Katie Couric was making on the program.
On cable, Anderson Cooper‘s CNN/Warner Bros. syndicated show deal brings in $11 million a year, followed by Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, who makes $10 million a year.
NBC's "Meet the Press"' David Gregory's salary is publicly unknown, but
FAIR has suspected that he is earning something in the neighborhood of the $5 million that Chris Matthews is making.
David Gregory, Fat Cat in Denial
02/23/2009 by Jim Naureckas
David Gregory sticking up for bank stockholders on Meet the Press (2/22/09):
There's a larger point here, which is, first of all, the more...the shares of...these banks gets talked down...the closer you get to wiping out the shareholder completely. And it's, it's not clear to me that everybody understands that the investor in this country, who is not just a fat cat, the investor is us.... It is the taxpayer, it's the teacher, it's someone who's invested in a 401(k). The investors on the sidelines, scared to death about taking any risk. And unless that changes, this economy really can't turn around.
Matthew Yglesias writes today (2/23/09) on the oddity of Gregory making a distinction between fat cats and people like himself. I can't find a published estimate of Gregory's salary, but his NBC colleague Chris Matthews reportedly makes $5 million a year (Washington Post, 1/8/09), as did his Meet the Press predecessor Tim Russert (Washington Post, 5/23/04), so Gregory's salary is probably in that neighborhood, give or take a few million. This is a hundred times the median family income in the U.S.--not counting Gregory's spouse's income; she used to be a vice president at Fannie Mae, making an estimated $3 million a year.
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