Port Authority Scandal Is Result of Leadership, Patronage Mess

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

This article is a little long but worth the read:

Wildstein, a high school friend of Christie, created traffic havoc in Fort Lee for four days in September by closing two dedicated lanes heading into the George Washington Bridge for a phantom “traffic study.” He also ordered his subordinates not to inform the Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, who is an appointee of New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, or Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich.

Strange how this is the story that gets legs with all of the other crap our beloved governor has pulled. Next, people need to start looking into the billions of dollars in Sandy aid that he is controlling. Mayors who endorsed Christie get their aid. Those who don't....good luck rebuilding your town.

[Laxman]

1. I Read This Over Coffee This Morning

Good thing Professor Robins is at a point in his career where he doesn't have to fear reprisals!

The failure to notify Mayor Sokolich and the Fort Lee Police Department runs “completely contrary to the Port Authority’s traffic engineering ethos, which historically and traditionally pays an enormous amount of deference to making sure everyone in local government is fully briefed,” Robins said.

“(For Wildstein) to make Port Authority employees promise not to tell local officials makes it clear this was willful, malicious misdeed because there is no other reason to go forward without briefing local officials,” Robins added.

You're right about the Sandy money-and state transportation aid and any other assistance that this guy's administration has any control over. He is vindictive, manipulative and petty. He'll hurt large amounts of people in an attempt to even a political score with one opponent.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

7. Just a Follow- up

This probably deserves its own thread, but here is what I was partly talking about when it comes to the Sandy recovery money. And Beach Rat- you forgot to mention the Sandy Commercials featuring Christie's family at the beach that were really recovery money funded campaign commercials.

Read this:

http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/12/16/sandy-recovery-still-slow-in-forgotten-parts-of-jersey-shore/

[Baitball Blogger]

2. This kind of thing affects us all since it becomes an example for every other state.

Political Patronage should be criminalized. I mean, more than it is today.

[Beach Rat]

3. The Tip of The Iceberg

People need to know before Nero takes the throne. When's this list going to end? Berating teachers, bullying people on the boardwalk, helicopters to his kid's baseball game, gets sued (and loses) for defamation, shields his brother from criminal prosecution, travel abuses while U.S. Attorney, lobbyist for wall street, its exhausting just typing this. And there's more!

Wally Edge was a Republican who served two terms as governor of New Jersey separated by a stint in the U.S. Senate. He died in 1956, but his name lived on into the 21st century as the alias of a political pundit by the name of David Wildstein.

Wildstein is perhaps the only man in New Jersey even more politically ambitious than our governor, with whom he attended Livingston High School. While Christie famously volunteered to campaign for Tom Kean Sr. at the age of 14, Wildstein did so at the age of 12.

Wildstein made it as far as mayor of Livingston, but his career in electoral politics hit a dead end in the 1980s when he was still in his 20s. In 2000, Wildstein employed his encyclopedic knowledge of New Jersey politics to found the political website that became politickernj.com, writing under the pen name “Wally Edge.”

Wildstein didn’t reveal his real identity until 2010, when he became his former high-school buddy‘s “eyes and ears” at the Port Authority, according to a remarkably prescient profile in the Record last year by reporter Shawn Boburg. Boburg quoted Wildstein’s fellow workers there as calling him “intimidating, hardworking, intelligent, private and fiercely loyal to the governor.”

Here's an article from a conservative columnist with the Star-Ledger- http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2013/12/gw_scandal_is_a_bridge_to_chri.html

I want him gone from my state, but I don't want to visit him on the rest of the country either!

[MyOwnPeace]

4. Keep us informed.......

we need to know all we can about Gov. KK. There was a reason (or many) that Mittens did not select him as his VP.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

5. I'm Sure There Were Many Reasons...

What you hear and what the media chooses to report really is only the tip of the iceberg like Beach Rat said. Fear, intimidation, bullying, manipulation... they're all his stock in trade.

[imthevicar]

6. "Strange how this is the story that gets legs"

"Strange how this is the story that gets legs with all of the other crap our beloved governor has pulled."
That's cause bullshit Traffic jams Affect everyone, This kind of vendetta can end a political life, we can only hope.

[Laxman]

8. Just A Month Ago....

resurrecting an old thread because it's interesting how things have played out since then. Some times things are exactly what they appear to be.