Is Bridgegate Even In The Top 5.....
of Christie Administration misdeeds? I don't know. The "bombshell" revelations from the first day of the Bridgegate trial really weren't bombshells to anybody who has been following Mr. Christie's reign of terror in New Jersey. I guess the big revelation was to finally hear somebody publicly acknowledge what we have all known for quite some time-that Christie knew what was going on at the George Washington Bridge from the earliest stages of this depraved stunt.
While this is the behavior that found its way into a federal court house and the one that captures everybody's attention because it is spectacularly vindictive and stupid, is it really the top Christie scandal? How does Bridgegate rank when you consider the other fun activities Mr. Christie and his playmates have engaged in over the last seven years? I mean we're on Volume IV of the Christie Crime Digest and it's not all related to Bridgegate. How do you see closing down the bridge access lanes to punish a town in relation to the rest of what has taken place? Consider the following-in no particular order:
1. Ruining the career of an honest prosecutor to cover up the insane shenanigans of the lunatic sheriff of Hunterdon County and her equally crazy lackey.
2. Costing the already strapped New Jersey Public Pension system over $1.4 billion in lower returns and higher fees just to give the pension management business to his friends and large contributors.
3. Extorting large campaign donations from United Airlines executives when he had leverage over the airline at Newark Airport. His mentor Samson went down for strong-arming a personal favor in re-establishing a direct flight to South Carolina at the same time.
4. Accepting lavish gifts from people he may have met only once, but still calls "friends". This included a trip to Dallas on his "old buddy" Jerry Jones who was looking for a big contract with the Port Authority when he covered all the expenses for Christie and his family to attend a Cowboys playoff game in the Big D.
5. Using Sandy disaster aid to further his political aims and coerce or punish municipalities to promote his political fortunes, including trying to strong-arm the mayor of Hoboken into supporting a development project for one of Samson's clients.
6. Privatizing the state lottery and turning management of the program over to a large donor (complete with significantly lower returns)
7. Using his publicly funded staff to use their official powers and duties to further his political career and position him to run for President.
8. Selling out the people of New Jersey to his buddies at Exxon Mobil by settling for pennies on the dollar in a major environmental damage suit.
9.Undoing years of hard work and hard fought gains in environmental protection to satisfy the special interests that got Christie elected in the first place.
10. Manipulating all sides of the transaction in trying to develop the monstrosity of a mall in the Meadowlands knows as The American Dream Mall.
I'll leave it at 10 but the pattern of bullying, intimidation, and using his public position for personal gain and aggrandizement is overwhelmingly clear. Oh I'm going to be following the Bridgegate trial closely. How could I not? But does Bridgegate even make the top 10 of Christie's misdeeds? Maybe, I'm not sure.
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When you really think about it, this sounds like an alternate version of the Revenge of Lard Ass from Stand by Me. And Christie just stood back and took it all in.
