Chris christie's traffic jam - Part 2

[Mike PSS]

That pension fee shit affects every taxpayer in the state, not just the pensioners.

A fee structure review and change should be done FIRST before any pension changes to existing or future recipients are even considered.

Our company is through Vanguard, who's fee structure is from 0.2% to 0.5%; while many others are upwards of 2.0% or more. Doesn't sound like much, until you begin to understand what compound interest really means compared to overall financial returns nowadays.

[Old Dan]

Lotsa folks in Jersey wanna see Christie run fer President, just so's he can stop bein Governor.

[Old Dan]

Yall... Report: Christie spent $300,000 in taxpayer money on food and drinks by Jonathan Easley

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has spent about $300,000 of taxpayer money on food and drinks during his five years in office, according to an analysis released Monday.

The report from New Jersey Watchdog found Christie spent more than $82,000 alone at MetLife Stadium, the home of the New York Giants and New York Jets, during the 2010 and 2011 football seasons.
The New Jersey Republican State Committee later reimbursed the state for the full amount, and Christie has since stopped using the expense account at sporting venues.

“Whenever the Governor hosts an event in his official capacity, the discretionary account is available to pay for those costs associated with official reception and hosting and related incidental expenses,” a Christie spokesperson told The Hill in a statement. “The official nature and business purpose of the event remains the case regardless of whether the event is at the State House, Drumthwacket, or at a sporting venue.”

“Nonetheless in early 2012, the Governor made the decision that costs associated with hosting at the sporting venues were better paid with non-state funds, and those expenses incurred during 2010 and 2011 were reimbursed by the NJGOP,” the statement continued. “This week, to ensure this remains the case in full, the NJGOP reimbursed the Treasury for an additional $3,367.22 to deal with an accounting anomaly.”

The Associated Press first reported on Christie's luxury box spending last week. Christie addressed the matter during a stop in New Hampshire over the weekend, in which he called the expenses "completely justifiable," but said he decided to stop using the expense account to avoid the appearance of political impropriety.

"Quite frankly, in today's world where everything is kind of twisted and turned to look like it's something wrong when it isn't, I just said in 2012 to my folks, 'Listen, let's just have the state party pay for this, so to the extent there's anybody there who's political, people can't make the argument that we're using taxpayer money for anything that even looks like politics,'" Christie said, according to the AP.

The New Jersey Watchdog report also found Christie spent more than $100,000 on groceries and alcoholic beverages from retail stores, including $76,000 in 53 trips to Wegmans supermarket; $12,000 in 51 trips to ShopRite; and about $6,500 in seven visits to ShopRite’s liquor counter.

The report said it’s unclear “whether the goods stocked the pantries and filled the refrigerators at Drumthwacket, the governor’s official mansion in Princeton, or the Mendham house where Christie and his family live.”

Christie’s office disputed the insinuation in the report that the goods were purchased for personal use, arguing that all of the expenses were related to official events. Wegmans and ShopRite both offer catering for large events.

Christie spent about $110,000 on other catered events for state receptions and special events, which the report said was “more consistent with the stated purpose of the allowance.”

Christie’s office has a $95,000-per-year expense account for official state events and operations at the governor’s mansion and State House.

The spending detailed in the New Jersey Watchdog report appears to be at odds with Christie’s image as a blue-collar everyman who has taken on teachers’ unions and the state’s bloated pension system in an effort to rein in spending.

In February, The New York Times ran a report about Christie’s lavish travel requests, detailing instances when the New Jersey governor relied on wealthy benefactors to pay for expensive trips for himself and his family.

Christie is considering running for president. He entered 2015 near the top of the polls, but his support has fallen sharply in recent months.

The New Jersey Republican is currently buried in seventh place nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, taking 5.5 percent support.

--This report was updated at 2:36 p.m.

[Old Dan]

Yall, here goes Chris Christie unintentionally advocatin for summary execution of all prisoners in the USA.

Christie: ‘You Can’t Enjoy Your Civil Liberties If You’re in a Coffin’
by Josh Feldman | 10:51 pm, May 18th, 2015

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is getting ready for a 2016 campaign, and in New Hampshire today, he made it clear he is not with the civil libertarians in the Republican Party. In a speech he gave earlier today, he said that concerns about government snooping are “baloney.”

Christie continued to discuss these matters at a New Hampshire town hall hours later, and according to multiple reports from the town hall, he got pretty damn serious about the threats America faces.

Christie invoked 9/11 and said bemoaned how President Obama has made America “weaker and less reliable in the world.” He dismissed the suggestion by critics that Americans gladly gave up their liberties after 9/11 in order to feel safer.

And in case there were still any doubts about his seriousness on the matter, Christie had this to say:

The governor had also said two months ago that tax money obtained from legalized marijuana is “blood money.”

[daap-umop-bnp]

Stick a fork in him. (Not a fat joke.)

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/...l_tv_edit.html

For months, we have wondered how Gov. Chris Christie thinks he can win the presidency when New Jersey is in such rotten shape after his six years in office.
Now we may have our answer: The man has lost touch with reality.

In a national TV interview Monday, Christie was asked to explain why 65 percent of New Jersey voters think he'd make a bad president.

His answer: We love him so much that we want him to remain our governor.

"They want me to stay," he told Megyn Kelly of Fox News. "A lot of those people in that 65 percent want me to stay. And I've heard that from lots of people at town hall meetings."

[Old Dan]

Ex-Official Says Chris Christie Broke Grand Jury Law
By KATE ZERNIKE
JUNE 7, 2015

The players at the center of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal are not finished causing headaches for Gov. Chris Christie.

The latest indication comes in a sworn statement by David Wildstein, a former Port Authority official and the admitted mastermind of the access-lane closings, that describes Mr. Christie breaking the law as he exercised a heavy hand over state politics from the front office.

Mr. Wildstein’s statement, in a civil case separate from the federal prosecution in the bridge case, offers the first insider confirmation of a long-rumored tale of New Jersey political corruption, and places Mr. Christie at the center of it. It also portrays the governor, a former United States attorney, casually revealing information about a grand jury proceeding he had overseen, which violates federal law.

It reinforces nagging doubts about Mr. Christie just as he says he is preparing to make an announcement this month about whether he will seek the Republican nomination for president. Even apart from the potential violation of grand jury laws, the statement reinforces the image of Mr. Christie as an intensely hands-on manager who used the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the George Washington Bridge, to deal with political problems. And Mr. Wildstein, a former political blogger who is known as a pack rat with a long memory, indicated that this may not be the end: His statement says he has emails and further “documents to be produced for inspection.”

Christie's people done said "nuh uh."

The statement is Mr. Wildstein’s response to questions in a lawsuit by Gerard J. Speziale, who was the three-term sheriff in Passaic County when the Port Authority hired him in August 2010 for a $199,000-a-year job.

Mr. Speziale, known as Jerry, a colorful and often controversial former narcotics detective, was so popular in Passaic County that he had raised more than $1 million for his re-election campaign, despite only token opposition.

When he took the job at the Port Authority, he said he wanted to spend more time with his ailing wife, and pledged to donate the $600,000 left in his campaign account to charity.

His fellow Democrats cried foul, noting that it would hurt other Democrats on the ballot and remove his war chest, which could have been used to help other candidates. Calling for a federal investigation, one county freeholder, Bruce James, called it “nothing but a quid pro quo into giving out a government job in order to get somebody out of the race,” according to The Record, a North Jersey newspaper.

Democrats called it the long arm of Mr. Christie, but his office scoffed at that idea.

In the lawsuit, filed against the authority, Mr. Wildstein and several others, Mr. Speziale says he was brought into the job to root out corruption, but was harassed when he tried to reveal it. He ended up leaving for a job in Alabama that paid far less. (He recently returned to Passaic County as the police director in the crime-plagued city of Paterson.)

Mr. Wildstein’s statement, sent to lawyers in the case late Friday, says that in June 2010, Mr. Wildstein met in the governor’s private office with Mr. Christie and others, including Bill Baroni, then his boss and Mr. Christie’s top staff appointee at the Port Authority; Michele Brown, then the governor’s director of appointments; and Richard Bagger, then Mr. Christie’s chief of staff.

At the meeting, Mr. Wildstein says in his statement, Mr. Christie directed the Port Authority officials to fire Arthur Cifelli, who held the double titles of deputy superintendent of the Port Authority Police Department and deputy director of security, and to hire Mr. Speziale in his place.

“Christie told Wildstein and the others that he wanted to get Speziale to drop his re-election bid to help Republicans win the post, and to take Speziale’s campaign war chest,” the statement says.

The governor, according to the statement, told the others that he “would not have Cifelli working for his administration” and that Mr. Cifelli had perjured himself during the grand jury proceedings related to John Lynch, a former State Senate president who had been one of the most influential Democrats in the state.

Mr. Christie told those assembled in his office that he would first have to talk to David Samson, then chairman of the Port Authority board, “since Samson was friends with Cifelli and Lynch,” Mr. Wildstein says.

Under federal law, prosecutors may not identify people who have testified before the grand jury except in extremely limited circumstances, generally restricted to other law enforcement entities or proceedings.

The statement also reveals a list of about 40 people with whom he discussed Mr. Speziale’s hiring, duties and resignation — indicating that Mr. Wildstein was regularly involved in administration conversations, and not the lone-wolf operator that Mr. Christie has described.

That list includes the governor, Mr. Samson, other agency officials and Mr. Christie’s attorney general, chief counsel and several deputy chiefs of staff, as well as Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of Homeland Security, who was brought in to conduct a review of Port Authority security.

(Mr. Chertoff now represents Mr. Samson in a federal investigation surrounding accusations that he used his position on the Port Authority board to enrich himself, including getting United Airlines to reinstate a little-used flight to an airport near his weekend home in South Carolina.)

Under his agreement to cooperate with federal prosecutors, Mr. Wildstein is obligated to be truthful, including in any civil proceedings. He is to be sentenced in the bridge lane case this summer.

Last week, the two former Christie administration officials facing trial in that case — Mr. Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff — won a small victory when the United States attorney’s office said it would not object to their lawyers’ attempts to subpoena more documents from the law firm the governor hired to do an internal investigation after the scandal exploded in January 2014.

The firm and the administration said that the investigation had exonerated the governor. But members of the governor’s staff said they had been misquoted, or challenged its portrayal of characters and events. And the report left unresolved many contradictions between the accounts of key players.

Defense lawyers say they expect that the subpoena will produce notes showing even more contradictions, reviving questions about what the governor knew, and when, about the lane closings.

[TySixtus]

Yall... Report: Christie spent $300,000 in taxpayer money on food and drinks by Jonathan Easley

This seems pretty stupid to me. Also $300k in five years is nothing if you're talking about paying for events, catering, etc. Christie is a loud-mouthed slob, but this looks like reaching.

[Old Dan]

This seems pretty stupid to me. Also $300k in five years is nothing if you're talking about paying for events, catering, etc. Christie is a loud-mouthed slob, but this looks like reaching.

Well, he done spent it on hisself, with no accountin fer who was eatin.

The records released by the governor’s office did not include receipts or descriptions of what was purchased. Such secrecy would change under a bill introduced by Assemblymen Troy Singleton, D-Burlington, and Vince Mazzeo, D-Atlantic.

“New Jersey taxpayers have every right to know where their hard-earned money goes,” said Mazzeo. “Any governor who makes a responsible and appropriate use of this expense account should have no objection to complying with what’s required under this bill.”

If enacted, A-4424 would require the governor to disclose expenses with receipts in an annual report to be posted on the State Ethics Commission web site.

“There is a growing sense of cynicism in politics today and it is imperative for those of us in public office to overcome that cynicism by ensuring a more transparent and accountable system,” added Singleton.

[Old Dan]

Chris Christie and his fiscal responsibility, yall. He done wasted millions and now the pensions aint funded. One of my lady friends done said this:

"Our Governor and his administration wasted billions of dollars so now our state can't afford to cover the pension plan our state workers have been paying into for years and some how it's the folks that actually did their jobs that have to pay??!!"

$21 billion wasted, and itemized, yall.



PS: I aint seen no citations fer this, so I dunno how accurate it is. But I do know them pensions aint funded.

[Old Dan]

Last week, yall, South Jersey done got hit by a massive storm front called a derecho, with these straight-line winds that knocked out power to thousands of people, toppled trees, destroyed homes, left businesses without power (my daggone doctor just got back to their office yesterday, the storm was last Tuesday). My neighbor lost a tree, it fell in my yard, yall, but no damage was done, so he done took a day offa work to clean it up. Cars got flipped, the mall done got tore up, and there was major damage that one of my buddies said "hell, my yard looks worse now than it did after Hurricane Sandy."

So it's a week later, over 10,000 folks in South/West NJ aint got no homes, no power, no nothin, and NO HELP from ol Governor Christie. He aint been down to South Jersey, he aint talked about it, he aint asked fer federal disaster relief.

But he wants to be yer President, yall!

BREAKING: Chris Christie tells supporters he is running for president
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told supporters on a conference call Tuesday that he will run for president.

Now, I'm just gonna paste the story as they done published it.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told supporters on a conference call Tuesday that he will run for president.

The call, confirmed by campaign officials, comes ahead of a rally at Christie's old high school in Livingston, New Jersey, where the Garden State governor will publicly announce his intentions to run.

Christie becomes the 14th Republican presidential candidate to officially enter the race and will face a tough, uphill climb to the top of the crowded field. The Bridgegate scandal that has consumed much of his governorship over the past year and a half has taken a major toll on Christie's standing among fellow Republicans.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last week found that 55 percent of Republican primary voters said they could not see themselves Christie.

"they could not see themselves Christie" ... mebbe Christie needs to move out the way

[SkepticTank]

it's been fixed. now says ...see themselves supporting Christie.

That's good, because I don't think I could support him by myself either. Maybe 3 or 4 strong guys together could.

[Old Dan]

Here goes a letter about Christie not helpin South Jersey after that huge storm last week, yall.

Gov. Chris Christie burns South Jersey bridges after storm

To the Editor:

In March, in preparation for receiving a walloping 4 to 7 inches of snow, Gov. Chris Christie closed state offices and declared a state of emergency before one snowflake fell in Trenton.

Fast-forward to June 23. A massive storm caused devastating damage and left hundreds of thousands of households - his constituents - without electrical power for the lucky ones, and without a place to stay for the unfortunate.

After a full three days, the first time he addressed this natural disaster, all he said was that a state of emergency was not needed because Atlantic City Electric was restoring power.

Christie has truly proven that he is the governor of North Jersey and an embarrassment to my state.

My only hope is that the governor does not succumb to the negative publicity surrounding his inaction and then attempts to visit my town, East Greenwich, to see the damage first hand - because he is not welcome in the "State of South Jersey."

Oh, and in case you are wondering, my mother who lives in East Greenwich with a host of medical conditions that depend upon electricity for treatment, still had no power as of Monday morning. Her power lines are still lying in the street with no signs of Atlantic City Electric anywhere.

But I am told North Jersey is expecting some rain and potentially some thunder. Better get back to your office, governor, just in case they need another state of emergency.

[Old Dan]

Last night, Gov Christie done vetoed legislation that woulda modernized New Jersey's surrogacy/adoption laws, but since it also woulda helped LGBTs to become parents legally, nope! Veto.

[Old Dan]

Sit Down And Shut Up: Chris Christie's 2016 Campaign Trailer (Parody) - YouTube

Sit Down And Shut Up: Chris Christie's 2016 Campaign Trailer (Parody) - YouTube

[SkepticTank]

The bridgegate investigation has now taken down a bunch of execs at United Airlines.

[Old Dan]

The bridgegate investigation has now taken down a bunch of execs at United Airlines.

Star-Ledger editor Tom Moran, who done supported Chris Christie in both of the last two elections, yall, done wrote a scathing op-ed about how this here United Airlines scandal is gonna be the final straw fer Christie.

Christie's latest scandal could finally sink him | Moran

The irony is that this final blow to Gov. Chris Christie's presidential dream was delivered not by an enemy, but by a friend.

Christie's campaign is over, barring a miracle. I'll offer five reasons why in a moment.

But first, consider David Samson, Christie's most intimate governing partner, and the man who is inflicting this latest wound.

Even by Jersey standards, Samson's arrogance during this sordid episode is breathtaking. He faces a likely indictment soon over the infamous "chairman's flight" that United Airlines established at his request.

While chairman of the Port Authority, and in direct negotiation with United, Samson requested that a direct flight be established to his vacation home in South Carolina, according to multiple sources and several published reports.

The amazing part is that United agreed to do it. The flights went south on Thursday and returned on Monday mornings. They were half full, and were cancelled a few days after Samson resigned. Which tells you this was a personal favor, the kind that looks a lot like a bribe.

No doubt that explains why United on Wednesday dumped its CEO and two of his top deputies. They must be expecting an indictment. And so, apparently, is Samson, who recently added a hot-shot litigator, Justin Walder, to his legal team.

"If he's being told not to worry, he's not going to add another lawyer, especially an expensive and very well-known lawyer," said one prominent attorney.

So let's make the safe bet, that Samson will indeed be indicted. Why does that put the knife to Christie's presidential campaign?

And then there's 5 damn good reasons why this time, Christie aint gonna be stronger than the shitstorm.

There's 503 comments, yall, I aint even readin 'em.

[VoxRat]

We were supposed to get a list of unindicted co-conspirators on the GWB closure scandal today, but someone ("John Doe") filed an 11th hour "emergency motion" asking the court to block it.

[VoxRat]

Update:
The judge "delayed the release until Tuesday".

Stay tuned!

[VoxRat]

Here it is, Tuesday.
Still no list of unindicted co-conspirators, though.
Bridgegate names to remain secret for at least another 3 weeks

Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambro ruled that an appeal by "John Doe," one of the unindicted co-conspirators, would be granted temporarily. The order also stays "the public docketing of the list of unindicted co-conspirators."

The stay was granted, he wrote, so a full panel of appellate judges could determine the merits of the case.

Ambro ordered a tight schedule of legal briefs to be filed beginning May 23 and culminating in oral arguments before the Third Circuit in Philadelphia June 6.

[daap-umop-bnp]

Boo.

[VoxRat]

Here it is, Tuesday.
Still no list of unindicted co-conspirators, though.
Bridgegate names to remain secret for at least another 3 weeks

Update:

It turns out that panel of judges may include Maryanne Trump Barry - the Donald's sister.

(I thought I just heard on NJTV that she is on that panel; but I may have misheard).