The Other Christie Traffic Scandal

January 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times takes this opportunity of Christie mea culpas and denials of knowledge to remind us of another traffic mess he proudly takes credit for.

It’s proper now to recall an action Christie took in 2010 that he owned up to quite proudly. This was his unilateral torpedoing of a $9-billion federal-state project to build a commuter train tunnel under the Hudson. The project would have doubled capacity on the route–a crucial improvement given forecasts of sharply rising ridership and the decreptitude of the existing tunnel. It was the largest public transit project at the time, and had already begun. Christie’s refusal to approve his state’s share killed it.

The cancellation made Christie a darling of the conservative budget-cutting movement, instantly raising his profile as a GOP up-and-comer. Two years later, he was still crowing about his courageous act before conservative audiences.

His depiction of the project was typically blustering and deceitful:”They want to build a tunnel to the basement of Macy’s, and stick the New Jersey taxpayers with a bill,” he said. You’d think that was pretty funny, unless you were a New Jersey commuter who knew that the “basement of Macy’s” in midtown Manhattan is actually Pennsylvania Station, where the commuter trains go.

By then, Christie’s rationale for killing the tunnel had been exposed as a passel of lies. He had claimed that it would cost more than $14 billion, and that New Jersey would be on a “never-ending hook” for 70% of the cost. In fact, as the Government Accountability Office reported, $14 billion was the maximum estimate, and $10 billion the most likely final bill. And New Jersey’s share was 14.4%, not 70%.

But the cancellation allowed Christie to divert the state’s share of the tunnel budget to a state highway fund, which in turn allowed him to avoid raising the state gasoline tax–already among the lowest in the nation–by a few cents.

So here’s the toll: Christie sacrificed the long-term welfare of his own citizens for short-term personal, political gain. He did so with bluster and deceit. Even after his own figures were exposed as bogus, he didn’t hold a two-hour press conference to apologize and promise it wouldn’t happen again.

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Christie – Nailed

January 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment

From the NY Times

A series of newly obtained emails and text messages shows that Gov. Chris Christie’s office was closely involved with lane closings on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge in September, and that officials closed the lanes as retribution against the mayor whose town was gridlocked as a result.

Mr. Christie has insisted that his staff and his campaign office had nothing to do with the local lane closings, and said that they were done as part of a traffic study.

But the emails show that Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff in Mr. Christie’s office, gave a signal to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to close the lanes about two weeks before the closings occurred.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” she emailed David Wildstein, Mr. Christie’s close friend from high school, and one of his appointees at the Port Authority, which controls the bridge.

The editorial board of the Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper is not amused.

His attempts to laugh this off now appear to be dishonest, though we can’t yet be sure that he personally knew about the correspondence of one of his top aides. Still, Christie bears responsibility either way. If it turns out he did know, he is obviously lying and unfit for office — let alone a 2016 presidential run.
And even if he did not, his officials are liars. If Christie can’t control them, how can we trust him as a potential future leader of our country?

How about a class-action suit by all those trapped in traffic that day — business deals lost, baby-sitters doing over-time, urinary pain and suffering?  Looks like a slam-dunk to me.

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Governor Christie — What a Guy!

December 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Don’t know if you’ve been following the saga of the George Washington Bridge lane-closure which, for one week, created a mist of automobile exhausted particulate matter all over Fort Lee, New Jersey.  Rachel Maddow, at least, has been bringing us up to date every evening.  Quite a bit in the print papers today, my favorite of which by Michael Powell in the NY Times begins thusly:

Gov. Chris Christie is a wonderfully primal New Jersey politician who embraces three truths: Transparency is for squares, bluster is your friend and fingerprints are a pain.

Richard Cohen, at WaPo unaccountably decides Christie can’t have known, much less ordered the lane closure, but has taken a body blow, nonetheless:

…the damage has been done. Christie’s all-but-declared presidential campaign has taken a hit. His Joisey bona fides — a certain swagger and cocksureness — have been highlighted. (No one would cast Jimmy Stewart for this role.) Christie is a man of rare political ability, but he has a short temper and the affect of a bully. Worse, he unaccountably lacks affection for the media and sometimes shows it. Lots of politicians play hardball. Christie plays beanball.

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