Cheap shot: Just a little bit

What does Governor Christie want? According to Radio Iowa:

“Every time I come here to Iowa I get a great sense of affection and respect from the folks here, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be universally loved and if you want to be universally loved in this business, then you’re the absolute poster boy for being ineffective,” Christie said during this afternoon’s news conference. “I don’t care about being loved. I care about being respected.”

For example:

Image via Business Insider.

In other New Jersey news, a piece from WNYC radio about the sad case of the 116-acre Roche campus in Nutley, which has been vacant since the company left New Jersey last December:

In 1990, New Jersey's 41,900 pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs accounted for 20.2 percent of the U.S. pharma industry. In 2013, after years of decline, the state's share was 9.7 percent, or 26,900 jobs..... cutting-edge research is no longer being conducted on closed campuses in the suburbs. Instead, the action has moved to small, collaborative facilities in cities and on university campuses.

Strangely enough, massive tax breaks don't appear to have been enough to keep these companies in the state. It's a nice moment to recall how Christie reacted to the news that Roche would leave when it came out in July 2012:

Not even the loss of 1,000 high-paying jobs as Roche abandons its 80-year tie to New Jersey is enough to shake the one-note insistence of the Christie administration that taxes are all that count in holding and attracting jobs. “Roche made the determination that despite the fact that we offered them a very significant package of incentives that they were going to do much better in another state,” was the governor’s explanation to a Mahwah town hall crowd. The governor neglected to add that New Jersey’s offer was made the day before the Roche announcement.

The loss of Roche and Merck is costing not only the state but municipalities as well: four Jersey towns (Nutley, Clifton, Readington, and Summit) losing $29 million a year in their own tax bases. But the governor's out in Iowa acquiring some of that R-E-S-P-E-C-T.