Exit Stage Right, Crooks

Only one of those two men left office today, but Blue Jersey is making the link in a convincing fashion.

"He suggested that he had few, if any, regrets, and said he was proud that the New Jersey Legislature never overrode one of his vetoes, even as he vetoed more bills than any other governor of New Jersey. He leaves office under criminal indictment on charges alleging abuse of power, a case that could play out during a presidential campaign.

This is an actual quote from today's New York Times. The only change is that I replaced Texas with New Jersey. Christie's presidential rival, Rick Perry, is leaving office under a cloud of indictment. Will history repeat itself if Christie opts to run for the White House in 2020?

Pretty striking. Might be totally accurate. Rick Perry leaves today after 14 years in office. I doubt Texas will miss him, though his incompetent successor might lead them to.

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People Would Much Rather Romney Run Than Christie...

All the press wants to talk about are the doubts about Mitt Romney from Washington Republicans. They act like Christie could run though. He's toast:

A new CBS poll shows 29% of Republicans would like to see Christie run for the Republican nomination for president. But 44% say no. Only former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s numbers are more underwater: 30% of Republicans say they’d like to see her run, but 59% disagree.

In contrast, 59% of Republicans would like to see Mitt Romney jump into the 2016 race, while 26% believe he should stay out.

That's not an electable number. When 15% more of your own party would like to see you sit it out, you can't win. Less people want him to run than Palin. Just consider that. 

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Chris Christie's Attempt to Screw His Successor, New Jersey

This is going on right now, in the quiet of budget season:

Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson heard oral arguments on Thursday, January 15th, 2015, to consider the legality of Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to cut the pension payment in this year’s budget.

Days before the end of the last fiscal year, Judge Jacobson ruled that the state’s revenue shortfall resulted in a fiscal emergency. She allowed the governor to cut the payment by nearly $900 million. However, Judge Jacobson also found that without a fiscal emergency, workers would be contractually entitled to the full pension payment under the 2011 reform law.

Lawyers representing all public-sector workers returned to court to fight for the payment Gov. Christie has vowed not to make in the current budget.

Let's be clear here, retirees pay for their own benefits, and receive that money, plus the interest in return. Christie asked for reforms after being elected, and he got them. Now he's still refusing to pay in his share of the bill. He's going to drag things out in court long enough to leave the problem to his successor, who will have to make the payments then. Does he care? No. That's obvious. New Jersey be damned at this point, Governor Soprano wants to be President, so he'll forego payments to avoid a tax increase.

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Christie's Problem on the Right Flank.... in Jersey

Maybe Chris Christie should have just given his "State of the State" in Texas?

Gov. Christie's head of transportation said Monday he is against any cutbacks in PATH service between New Jersey and Manhattan, opposing a report commissioned by his boss and Gov. Cuomo that suggested eliminating overnight service to save the Port Authority millions of dollars each year.

"This is not the way I would save money," Jamie Fox, who once served as deputy executive director of the Port Authority, told a meeting of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority. "Mass transit is the future of this state."

Yes, NJDOT head Jamie Fox came out against the report and subsequent reform plan of Governor Christie, before the plan essentially died. This happens as New Jersey's DOT runs out of money to fix the bridges around the state that are unsafe, and has had to begin closing them.

No word on if Governor Christie closed Fox's home street.

That's nothing compared to this though:

Gov. Chris Christie’s State of the State speech on Tuesday pushed one of New Jersey’s most conservative state senators over the edge, leading to the harshest criticism of the governor ever from a Republican state lawmaker.

State Sen. Michael Doherty (R-Warren) said Christie when he first ran in 2009 “sold himself to the people of New Jersey that he was going to change it.”

“And he didn’t,” Doherty said in a phone interview.

“The governor’s possible national ambitions have distracted him from doing the job he was hired to do in the State of New Jersey,” he said.

In an interview with PolitickerNJ.com published this morning, Doherty was quoted calling Christie a “failed” governor. Asked about it by NJ Advance Media, Doherty declined to repeat that exact word. But he nonetheless offered a scorching review of Christie’s speech — in particular his focus on Camden.

I don't have much to add there. Chris Christie isn't so loved in the NJ Republican circles these days I guess. 

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New Jersey Likes Their Bridges Open, Chris

Oh how the mighty have fallen....

Christie’s national focus has intensified the movements of those Democrats seeking to supplant him, however, and that pension deal he once struck with the help of Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) now looks like a distant planet given those political demands that Sweeney must now fulfill to the public sector unions if he wants any shot whatsoever in a Democratic Primary.

Christie has gotten what he wanted here by virtue of his ability to jail, outmaneuver and/or intimidate those power players whom he needed to advance a political agenda in a tough guy state built by political party organizations.

Although he still has his alliances in the other party, the game has changed, and is changing each day.

Gleeful national Democrats seized on bullet points that stare Christie and this dog-eared state in the face as he tries to gaze into those Fox News cameras.

New Jersey ranked last year at or near last in the nation in job creation and has an unemployment rate higher than the national average. New Jersey has seen a record-breaking eight credit downgrades and the highest property taxes in the country.

Then there’s Bridgegate and its ongoing associations.

“During last year’s address, Christie sidestepped questions about his involvement in the apparent political payback scheme that shut down lanes on the George Washington Bridge, threatening public safety,” Democratic State Party Chairman John Currie complained in advance of today’s State of the State. “And, since that time, he has fought efforts to obtain basic information about his administration’s operations, continued to bully constituents and members of the media, and unrepentantly abused the powers and resources of his public office.

“Governor Christie has been an unmitigated disaster for our state,” Currie added. “While he wastes taxpayer dollars in a shameless effort at self promotion, his policies trample the hopes and dreams of New Jersey families. In the wake of his hypocrisy, Sandy survivors have been left out in the cold and pensioners were robbed of funds they were promised. Meanwhile, his economic record is one of repeated credit downgrades, increased property tax burdens, and stunted job growth. The true state of the state is vulnerable and neglected and, for this reason, the governor should really strike an apologetic tone.”

I wonder how he'd do if he were running for Governor now... 

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Take Christie Seriously?

Well, not so fast on dismissing Christie.

The New York Observer has learned that Chris Christie for President has landed a highly coveted name to be its finance chairman for a 2016 campaign that is quickly taking shape. As soon as the end of this week, Mr. Christie will announce that Dallas investor Ray Washburne will be its new finance chair, tasked with raising the $80-100 million it is expected to cost to win the GOP nomination.

Mr. Washburne most recently served as the Republican National Committee finance chairman, taking the reins after the party’s failure to win the White House in 2012.

Reached on Monday afternoon, Mr. Washburne would not directly confirm the appointment but did tell the Observer, “I’m finance chairman of the RNC and we have our annual meeting this week in San Diego and I’m not standing for re-election. All I’ll say is I’m going to be very involved in 2016, but stepping down should be very indicative of what I’m thinking about. I wouldn’t say you’re reporting anything incorrect. But Chris hasn’t announced anything yet and he’s going to one last governor’s inauguration in Maryland, but I don’t want to say anything more than that.”

Well, that is big. It's just one bundler though. Let's see where things go in the weeks ahead. It's the first thing that makes me think Christie will actually run. 

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Christie Has Been a Corrupt Hypocrite for a Long Time

Christie (upper right) doesn't seem so happy to be in Green Bay anymore...
From an Albert Gattullo tweet.

Oh, the irony- that Governor Chris Christie, long before Bridgegate, and long before he and Jerry Jones became traveling buddies all over America to watch the Cowboys- would do and say this:

New Jersey law says toll records cannot be released to any person or governmental agency unless they have a subpoena or court order. E-ZPass terms and conditions declare that "account information will not be disclosed to third parties without [customer] consent except as required or permitted by law."

Despite those protections, Lautenberg's records became fodder in Christie's attempts to diminish the senator. At the 2012 press conference, Christie cited E-ZPass records to question whether the senator spent enough time attending to his state's business.

“What was he doing going through the tunnel or over the bridge 284 times for free in '05 and '06?” Christie asked. “Was he ever in Washington? And when he wasn't in Washington what was he doing in New York? Did he ever spend any time in New Jersey?” Citing the travel records, Christie called Lautenberg "an embarrassment to the state."

Even before Baroni first publicized Lautenberg's toll history, such accounts were apparently being shopped quietly to the press as a means of embarrassing the senator. A source who worked for Lautenberg at the time confirmed that his office received a media inquiry about his travel records several months before Baroni's appearance at the 2012 hearing. The source said that led Lautenberg aides to conclude that Christie or the Port Authority was trying to use the private records to plant an unflattering story about the senator.

After Baroni testified about Bridgegate in 2013, Christie's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, sent a text message to him saying: “I know it’s not a fun topic, and not nearly as fun as beating up on Frank Lautenberg, but you did great, and I wanted to thank you."

The New York Times  reported that "aides to Mr. Christie cheered Mr. Baroni’s performance" at the Lautenberg hearing. The Times also reported that Baroni "sent word through mutual friends to people on Mr. Lautenberg’s staff that he regretted the scene" in which he divulged the travel records, but that "the instructions, he explained, had come from Trenton."

In 2014, Andrew Perez, then a fellow at the Huffington Post, filed an open records request with Port Authority officials asking for all documents related to Lautenberg’s enrollment in the E-ZPass program, as well as any communications at the Port Authority about those records. He also asked for the Port Authority’s internal policy on employees accessing citizens’ private travel data.

“I figured that since Baroni and the governor already disclosed these records, they should be provided to me, and I expected the Port Authority should have a detailed policy on who at the Port Authority was allowed to access E-ZPass records,” Perez told IBTimes. 

Instead, the Port Authority rejected his request, saying that “certain records are exempt from disclosure” under the agency's policy of not releasing documents that "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of an individual." Along with that rejection notice, the agency did release a document promising E-ZPass customers “nondisclosure” of their records.

"If we now know the Port Authority says these records cannot be divulged, then the big question is: How did Mr. Baroni and Gov. Christie get access to them?" said Loretta Weinberg, one of the Democratic state senators who led the New Jersey legislature's investigation into the Bridgegate affair. "The privacy policies appear to have been breached in order to try to embarrass a U.S. senator and browbeat him into not asking tough questions. Not only must the governor answer for this, but his Port Authority commissioners and the Port Authority executive director need to explain how these records were obtained in the first place."

IBTimes asked P.J. Wilkins, the executive director of E-ZPass, whether public officials like governors have the right to review customers’ travel records without a subpoena or court order. He answered: “In all my years of [working at] E-ZPass, I have never seen that happen.” He said that without a subpoena, “I don’t know why somebody would be given that kind of access to these records.”

Is Christie ever in Jersey? Does he do any work there? Did he actually close the George Washington Bridge, threaten Mayors with retaliation, and obstruct a prosecutor? If there has ever been a bigger hypocrite and general annoyance in American politics, I can't find them. 

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About Those Aspirations, Cowboy....

So if you're Jeb Bush, and you hear about Mitt Romney talking to a bunch of donors, and Chris Christie talking to these guys, who do you fear more today?

Christie met with federal prosecutors and FBI agents last month during a secret session at theNew Jersey governor’s mansion in Princeton. He agreed to sit down with investigators voluntarily after they offered him a chance to provide his side of the story. Interviewing Christie was one of the final steps in the investigation, which appears to be wrapping up, according to those briefed on it.

If Governor Christie avoids indictment in the "Bridgegate" scandal, he won't do so by much. Others are almost certainly going down, as it is clear that U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman is tightening his grip over Christie-land, and taking his predecessor down a road he didn't want to go down.

Even if he survives legally, he's not surviving politically. All Cowboy jokes aside, where's he going to get his funding? Bush and Romney are going to cut him off on Wall Street, and Bush and Perry will cut him off in Texas, even if Jerry Jones does love him. He's going to lack money, and a political pathway forward, before the corruption in his administration bites him. He'd be best to skip 2016. 

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Since Christie is Being Arrogant and Stupid, Let's be a Prick Back

That Chris Christie likes the Cowboys is a small potatoes issue. I hate the Cowboys, but i'm more offended at his cuts to public sector workers and education than I am by his football choice. Of course, he wants us all to notice that he's a Cowboys fan. He is making it clear. The cry for attention as more electable Presidential candidates like Jeb Bush show up is clear. His desperate plea for attention is really pathetic. He knows most fans in and around Jersey basically hate the Cowboys, so he's jumping up and down like a school girl in Jerry Jones's box to remind us all that he's "the boss."

Well, alright then, Chris. Game on.

Christie sometimes uses these pointless spats to score points for himself. Look at all the people making fat jokes at him, and how he's played that into a positive. Christie's good at this stuff, especially when it's pointless.

This time though, it may not be. Christie is a public official. He's a Governor to be exact. Just how much money does it cost for said Governor to travel to Texas on the public's dime for a football game? How about to go to like all of the games right now. American Bridge and Blue Jersey would like to know. There's now a formal request for that amount. I'm glad they did that, but don't stop there. Tickets to that game cost a lot. Tickets in a box cost more. Tickets in the owner's box are damn near priceless. Who bought them for the Governor? Did he? Did Jerry Jones? Did a lobbyist? Did an oil company? I'd love to know that. So would the people in Iowa and New Hampshire that Christie is obsessed with.

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Have Fun Cleaning Up Christie's Mess, Jersey

The biggest problem with the "small government" crowd's fantasy is that it both can't and shouldn't be done, and when they try to, they leave us with a mess to clean up after. Reagan left Bush and Clinton his mess, Dubbya left Obama a house-fire, and it happens in state capitols every couple years. They refuse to raise taxes, can't get legislative support from anyone sane to cut education, infrastructure, or public safety spending, and instead go into gimmick land and wreck the government's books. Their successor takes over and has to clean up after them.

Well New Jersey, it's about to be your turn. You thought Chris Christie was cool. You fell in love with his personality. You loved his "no-nonsense" talk. You bought into a fraud who's quietly turning your state into a wasteland almost as bad as our's is in neighboring Pennsylvania. He's talking with Cuomo about privatizing PATH. He won't tax millionaires. He won't build the transit-tunnel that is desperately needed to New York. His idea of reform at the Port Authority was political punishment for Fort Lee. He pulled out of the regional greenhouse gas project. He gave the Sixers a taxpayer funded practice facility in Camden. Oh, he basically made Camden get rid of their police force too. I could go on and on. He's a disaster of a governor, and well, you elected him, twice. Easily the second time too.

Well, sometime in the near future the rooster's coming home to roost. Christie continued the trend of not funding the state's pension fund. In effect, he never really balanced his books, but that's for another day. He skipped mandatory payments, and the fund hasn't paid out cost-of-living increases in recent years. Currently, his irresponsible actions are in court, and his successor is likely to have to pay out huge payments to clean up his mess. This isn't limited to pensions though- Christie did this with property tax rebates too, simply delaying and skipping payments when he decided he didn't have the funds. That has to get paid too. He'll have to clean up several of the messes in the last paragraph too, or leave those to his successor too. In other words, someone has to be accountable for this mess.

Christie wants to high-tail it out of Jersey before he is responsible for his failures. He wants to get out before everyone realizes that he killed job creation, cut the top rated schools in the nation when he took over, and cancelled a tunnel into New York City that would have created thousands of permanent jobs. He wants to get out while people don't realize what an overmatched imbecile he is. He wants to leave New Jersey to clean up after his disaster.

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Chris Christie is the Worst Person in America

Mets fan. Republican Governor. Closes down bridges, shuts down tunnel projects, hates teachers, cops, and other public workers. Loves millionaires. Oh, and he's a Cowboys fan, sitting in the box IN PHILADELPHIA next to Jerry Jones.

Chris Christie sucks. Loving Bruce Springsteen doesn't change my opinion of this clown at all. I'd say shut the bridges down on his route back to Jersey from Philly, but then we'd have to keep him.

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Indictments Coming On BridgeGate

Chris Christie keeps trying to push that BridgeGate is over, so he can move on to his Presidential ambitions. The legislature foolishly is issuing an "interim report" showing they have found no evidence of his involvement yet. All of this clearance is premature though. Indictments are coming:

Multiple sources familiar with the investigation into last year's traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge tell NBC 4 New York at least half a dozen potential federal indictments in connection with the scandal may be handed down as early as January.

Those facing potential indictment include former staffers to Gov. Christie and current and former Port Authority officials, the sources said. Possible charges may be related to what sources familiar with the probe describe to NBC 4 New York as an apparent conspiracy to cover up what they refer to as a politically motivated plot.

In other words, this case isn't over, and people are still going to get in trouble. So much for "clearing" anyone.

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Christie Loves Wasting Your Money (On Himself)

He'll close a bridge over politics, and he'll waste your money too:

The state paid more than 500 hours of overtime during a three-week period to Human Services police officers who were stationed around the clock at a former psychiatric hospital in Hunterdon County after it was identified as a location to quarantine West African travelers who had contact with Ebola patients, NJ Advance Media has learned. 

So far, Gov. Chris Christie's administration has not needed to use the former Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Lebanon Township as a quarantine area. Only Doctors Without Borders Nurse Kaci Hickox has been quarantined in New Jersey after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, and she was held at an isolated tent at University Hospital in Newark from Oct. 24-27.

All that to say he was tough on ebola. I bet it's a nice ad in Iowa. 

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Why Chris Christie Won't be President

This won't sell in Iowa.

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