Ultra corrupt New Jersey Governor Chris Christie faced boos when he had the nerve to accept an honorary degree from a public university when he has been on a jihad to slash funding for public education at all levels. (Newark Star Ledger 5/16/10)

Rutgers University awarded degrees to the largest class in the school’s 244-year history today in a traditional ceremony that included an honorary degree — and a smattering of boos — for Gov. Chris Christie.

Richard McCormick, Rutgers’ president, officially conferred the record 12,651 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees during the nearly four-hour ceremony beneath elm trees on Voorhees Mall at the state university’s New Brunswick campus.

Following Rutgers tradition, New Jersey’s new governor was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree in his first year in office. Christie, who has proposed cuts to higher education funding, received a few jeers and hisses from the crowd when he was introduced. Before the ceremony, members of the faculty union stood at the entrance to the green and asked those attending to sign preprinted letters calling on the governor to restore a proposed 15 percent cut in state funding to Rutgers.

Tradition or not, Rutgers' decision to award Christie with an honorary degree was highly disturbing. Throwing undeserved honors at politicians who want higher education to be limited to the very rich goes against everything a public university is supposed to stand for. Rutgers really debased itself as an institution.

Yet, one can recognize the pressure Rutgers was under. They had to be concerned that if they took the high road and refused to give Christie an honorary degree, that sleazebag would have retaliated at the first opportunity. We have allow so many institutions in our country be debased by dishonorable politicians like Christie that we all need to stop and think about what has happened.

Christie has rammed down a lot of oppressive service cuts to the middle class and poor of New Jersey on the claim that the state's budget deficits are forcing him to do so. That is absolute nonsense. Christie easily could replace deficits with surpluses by making the rich pay their fair share in taxes. He simply refuses to do so because he is bought and paid for by wealthy campaign donors. In fact, he has proposed cutting the taxes of the rich. Militant Ginger took issue with this back in March.

Because in the best tradition of Reagan Republicanism, Chris Christie has decided to top his hack and slash budget proposal with a whopping $1 billion dollar tax cut for the top 2% of New Jersey earners. Those racking in more than $400,000 a year will actually get more money; while the poor and middle class of the state eat up the meat and potatoes of Christie's so-called 'fiscal conservatism.'

None of this will be even slightly surprising to anyone who is familiar with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Wealthy speculators caused this recession with their reprehensible economic misconduct, and Christie is deliberately exploiting the situation to steal money from the middle class and the poor and give it to the people guilty of causing the whole problem in the first place.

Why do Americans tolerate this kind of blatant political corruption? How much more are the people going to suffer before we hold the politicians and wealthy parasites accountable for what they are doing to us?