The unfolding ‘Christie’ story presents the most significant opportunity to reestablish vast areas of good governance for the American people in my lifetime, imo. And I’m 63. Now I have ‘Christie’ in single quotes for the simple (and profound) reason that the ways of corruption are certainly not limited to any one man, however BIG they might be. The pervasiveness of the money corruption in our culture is so dominant that few are free to investigate its multitudinous forms. We lucked out, however. ‘Christie’ was (is) the oligarchs dream guy creation. So ‘Christie’ is opening a bunch of doors that can (will) lead to the heart of the darkest fascist power plays (and players) of our time. So don’t go small on ‘Christie’. Don’t stop looking, don’t stop adding one and one together. Don’t let your own judgments (however snarkily excellent they might be!) distract you from peering ever more closely into the very Pits of Psycho Greed Head Hell. We can do this. We can tell the truth here and live once again in a land based in truth and filled with compassion. Don’t let calling someone out or adding an emo-driven label be the only response. When ‘Christie’ is taken as a personal failing, we all lose. Stay centered. Take Heart. Be Indomitable. Perseverance furthers. Evil is being exposed.
This series will highlight links that have been rapidly accumulating for the past three weeks or so. Often, the early reports can contain little facts that assume much greater significant further down the road.
How Christie Used the Port Authority as His Political Cash Cow
“The bi-state agency, with its steady stream of income from tolls and airport fees, provided more than $3.3 billion to support New Jersey projects favored by Governor Christie, who was cutting budgets in Trenton and refusing to raise the gas tax to fund transportation projects. Several of the projects went to state facilities not under the Port Authority’s purview.”
Louise from the comments…..
“‘Chris Christie’ is the most potent threat to our democracy that we have yet faced. Those of us in NJ have watched in horror as this fascist dictator has grown ever more powerful. If past behavior is predictive, he is using his complete control of Sandy funds as his ultimate piggy bank: $25 billion dollars. You could buy the entire country with the money that will flow into his dark money collection plates.”
Too shrill? Too dark for you? Just imagine what a ‘Christie’ could do with the NSA at his disposal.
Here’s a story from two years ago about cost overruns with the ‘Freedom Tower’.
Getting to the Root of Port Authority Cost Overruns
From the comments……
“Get rid of this dysfunctional useless behemoth of a patronage mill. Let NY take care of their space and let Jersey take of theirs. This black hole money sucking POS organization should have been disbanded when the ports left NY. No it was allowed to get its’ tentacles into too many things it had no need to be into. The World Trade Center is the major cluster fleck this organization was allowed to have a say in. Disband it already!”
Christie’s “Personal Piggy Bank”: the Port Authority
All of these projects were all directed to Christie by David Wildstein and Bill Baroni. They helped Christie scratch backs, or punish or eliminate offenders. The CNN report that revealed Wildstein’s specially created job says that “Wildstein’s role included scrutinizing the agency’s business for the governor and that’s why he was given such a broad title, sources said.” Now we know what Wildstein was doing in his specially-created job: looking for money for Christie’s slush fund.
Christie’s interests weren’t being enforced and protected by just Wildstein and Baroni. Dozens of Port Authority jobs went to Christie loyalists, as this 2012 article outlined. Christie lavished “his guys” with no-show and low-work, highly paid livelihoods far more lavish than they could have obtained elsewhere. A review of the names of those so favored is a Who’s Who of NJ political big wheels and their relatives. If you took care of Christie’s family, he would take care of yours. You cross Christie, you starve. In the worst recession since the Great Depression, and in a state with an unemployment rate of 8.4%, those jobs are mighty big and tasty carrots.
No wonder Christie is lawyering up with the Guiliani big guns, and stonewalling investigations that lead to corruption that he doesn’t consider “appropriate.” Citizens of the state may discover just how he has been using their tax dollars and supreme Executive power to enrich himself, his cronies, and the national Republican party.
majcmb1 from the comments….
“This is massively anti-American, even Soviet-style corruption. The Port Authority’s professionals, despite being responsible for running a vital piece of infrastructure, were put under the thumb of apparatchiks who, in service to their party, cared not a whit about the ramifications of their actions on the local people or the economy.
Christie is utterly disgraced but this is the GOTP paradigm of governance. They have infested Congress, the military, the courts and other vital government institutions with unqualified crusading apparatchiks who do not know or care to know the technical and professional details. They only care about following orders and “winning” for their Christianized party.”
List of Christie Referrals for Port Authority Jobs
Dozens of Port Authority Jobs Go to Christie Loyalists
One was a gourmet food broker who landed work as an $85,000-a-year financial analyst at the Port Authority. Another got a $90,000 job to check maintenance contracts.
The co-author of Baroni’s recently released self-help book, “Fat Kid Got Fit: And So Can You!” was hired as the agency’s employment publications editor — a three-day-a-week job that comes with full benefits and a $50,000 salary. The co-author, Damon DiMarco, went to high school with Baroni. He is also the brother of Baroni’s assistant, Gretchen DiMarco, another referral. Baroni calls the DiMarco family one of his “other families” in the acknowledgments of his book, released this month.
Critics Accuse Christie of Turning Port Authority Into Patronage Mill
Baroni’s defense of the governor’s referrals came against the backdrop of an ongoing campaign to overhaul the agency’s management and financial practices, highlighted this week by the release of a audit that labeled the Port Authority “challenged and dysfunctional.”
In a follow up story, Christie told the Record, “I make no apologies about trying to put some people in place who are going to understand what the view of this administration is and execute … in a way that’s consistent with my policies.”
Here’s an interesting little tidbit from reading the minutes of a Port Authority meeting.
Skewed Priorities at the Port Authority of NY & NJ?
During the week of October 28, 2012, Hurricane Sandy and its associated storm surge caused significant flooding and devastating damage in Lower Manhattan and throughout the New York-New Jersey region. The storm resulted in severe flooding throughout the WTC site, particularly affecting the WTC Transportation Hub, Vehicular Security Center, WTC Memorial Museum, and One WTC, among other WTC projects in construction. Although the de-watering of the WTC site was substantially completed in early November, and pre-storm levels of construction activity resumed throughout the WTC site by the end of November 2012, Hurricane Sandy recovery activities are ongoing, to assess and evaluate damaged areas and equipment for future repair or replacement, including efforts to mitigate the impacts of future storms. Through separate actions at its meetings from February 6, 2013 through May 29, 2013, the Board, and the Committee on Operations, acting for and on behalf of the Board pursuant to the By-Laws, ratified and authorized certain actions required for Hurricane Sandy response, recovery and restoration work at the WTC site through June 30, 2013, in a total estimated amount of $306 million.
That meeting was held on June 26, 2013 and took all of 35 minutes. Supposedly, there were eleven speakers, including five members of the public, so it was all above board. As I opined early on, the Christie Jam seems to have been the final straw. There’s a lot of mismanagement to complain about.
Here’s Chris Hedges from The Trouble With Chris Christie
….Romney’s vetters were “stunned by the garish controversies lurking in the shadows of his record.”
A 2010 U.S. Department of Justice inspector general’s investigation of Christie’s spending patterns in the federal job he held before he became governor, the book notes, called Christie “the U.S. attorney who most often exceeded the government [travel expense] rate without adequate justification” and someone who offered “insufficient, inaccurate, or no justification” for stays at exclusive hotels such as the Four Seasons. In addition, the inspector general’s report raised questions among Romney’s vetters about “Christie’s relationship with a top female deputy who accompanied him on many trips,” the book said.
“There was the fact that Christie worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the Securities Industry Association at a time when Bernie Madoff was a senior SIA official–and sought an exemption from New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act,” Halperin and Heilemann wrote. “There [also] was Christie’s decision to steer hefty government contracts to donors and political allies such as former attorney general John Ashcroft, which sparked a congressional hearing. There was a defamation lawsuit brought against Christie, arising out of his successful 1994 run to oust an incumbent in a local Garden State race. Then there was Todd Christie [the governor’s brother], who in 2008 agreed to a settlement of civil charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission in which he acknowledged making `hundreds of trades in which customers had been systematically overcharged.’ (Todd also oversaw a family foundation whose activities and purpose raised eyebrows among the vetters.) And all of that was on top of a litany of glaring matters that sparked concern on [the Romney] team: Christie’s other lobbying clients; his investments overseas; the YouTube clips that helped make him a star but might call into doubt his presidential temperament; and the status of his health.”
CNN Exclusive: Port Authority Job Created for Christie Ally, Source Says
A former Port Authority employee told CNN that agency officials were told in 2010 they had to find a place for WIldstein at the executive level and the directive was coming from Christie’s office. Soon after, the position was created specifically for WIldstein. When Wildstein started, Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, Christie’s top appointee at the agency, introduced him to people as a good friend of the governor.
Soon after, Wildstein was named the director of Interstate Capital Projects, a title that previously had not existed at the bi-state agency, setting in motion a career that would eventually place the former political blogger at the center of the lane closures controversy at the George Washington Bridge.
Don’t let anyone sell you on the idea that ‘Christie’ has anything other than BIG ideas!
From Christie’s Possible Slush Fund: $2.5 Billion
How would that Federal Grant money end up in a Christie “dark money” black hole? Well, New Jersey taxpayers have suffered under the added costs of “pay-to-play” politics for decades. Non-partisan Common Cause – NJ which concentrates on pay-to-play issues, estimates that approximately 10% of almost every contract granted by all state entities (municipal, county and state) is kicked back to the politicians who authorize them, through donations to their fundraising committees and PACs, as well as other taxpayer-robbing practices. That 10% is automatically built into bids because both sides of the contracts assume it that the bid must cover the cost of kickbacks.
You can do the math. In the case of Sandy relief contracts, 10% of $25 billion is $2.5 Billion. In NJ, that amount is known as “just the cause of doing business.”
In addition, that “perfect storm” of “dark money” political spending is the result of certain conditions possible only in this, my benighted home state:
- New Jersey’s sorry history of pay-to-play. Pay-to-Play is so common as to be expected as the method of “getting things done”:
- the almost-absolute power of the New Jersey Governor, as created by the 1947 State Constitution. He is described as “the most powerful Chief Executive in the country”;
- the 501(c)(4) Citizens United decision. We have already seen dark money issues in the election which put Cory Booker in the White House ; and
- Christie’s connections to the biggest movers and shakers in both business and Republican politics.
This is from an early report by Steve Kornacki.
The Billion-Dollar Development at the Center of `Bridgegate’
This past week it was learned that David Samson, a former New Jersey attorney general who was appointed by Christie to serve as chairman of the Port Authority, apparently met with Christie in early August – information that came to light in the email and text records of David Wildstein, another Christie Port Authority appointee, which were subpoenaed and released to the public. That apparent Christie-Samson meeting would have come before Christie’s now former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, wrote an August 13 email to Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic in Fort Lee.”
Baroni, in an appearance before the state Assembly committee investigating the matter in late November, also argued that Fort Lee was getting special treatment with the access lanes. Taken together, his comment and Christie’s suggest the administration may have been looking at permanently closing or reducing the access lanes back in September.
Yes, he’s a thug. Yes, he’s trying to change the subject. But isn’t there a lot more to report on about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie? Like the fact that he’s been guilty of wildly irresponsible and sometimes lawless behavior before.
Transportation problems, for example, seem to be a Christie specialty. As bad as it was to torture Fort Lee with massive traffic congestion for four days, his actions in 2010 to kill the construction of a Hudson River tunnel for the use of New Jersey Transit were far more consequential and have and will hurt the entire region for decades to come.
Decades of planning came to fruition with the decision to build the “Access to the Region’s Core,” or “ARC” Tunnel. Funding came not only from New Jersey itself, but also from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and from the federal government.
So what did Governor Christie do with the job-creating, congestion-reducing, economy-propelling, and environment-restoring project? After the last minute (that is, once the work on the project was underway), he withdrew New Jersey’s support, losing both $3 billion in federal financing and a golden opportunity to strengthen the region for the long term in the process.
And the definition of smoking gun that the press uses is remarkably narrow; it generally requires a scandal, it demands that a politician be caught out. At the moment, it certainly appears that Christie’s “Bridge-gate” qualifies. But the bigger and more important scandals are almost always the ones hiding in plain sight. They require the press (even political reporters!) to report persistently on what a politician has done and not done — and the continuing impact of that conduct on the public — instead of focusing on the question of how and whether a politician will be able to spin something to his or her advantage.
That’s enough for Vol 1. Volumes 2-3-4-5-etc are just waiting in the wings. Click some links. Have fun. But don’t say you haven’t been informed.
