Chris Christie traffic scandal: An end to presidential plans?

I give you proof of Mr Obama's moderation and you come back with this?

There really is no hope for you is there? Your hate will destroy you.

Well I'm off to run some Sunday chores and watch some playoff football.

 

You've become an excellent example of looney far right America and how out of touch you've become. It's like you carved out your own country in your mind and started this divergent path of crazy a decade ago.

 

A lot of people had the impression of Christie as a bully, at least rhetorically. Prior to Hurricane Sandy he did have the reputation as a tough in your face conservative and even though his embrace of Obama during Sandy greatly reduced his standing among conservatives he was still very harsh towards critics of his actions during Sandy.

Further there is a lot of new reports coming out that Christie and his staff had also behaved vindictively and pettily towards people didn't support them politically.

 

Here's an article about how this scandal is closer to business as usual for NJ.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-jersey-politics-20140112,0,2881356.story#axzz2qD6ApUzD

Chris Christie bridge scandal looks to many like Jersey as usual
Shady political behavior has never gone out of style in New Jersey. The George Washington Bridge traffic disaster may just be the latest example.

HADDONFIELD, N.J. — A four-day traffic hell that trapped cars headed to one of the nation's busiest bridges, supposedly engineered by gleeful political operatives as payback: Deeply stupid, for sure. Unbelievably vindictive and petty. And, in its way, so quintessentially New Jersey.

The George Washington Bridge scandal that has engulfed Gov. Chris Christie, bizarre as it is, also somehow stands as an example of the state's hardball political traditions.

In the Garden State, political bosses have never gone out of style, corruption cases pile up more victims than the Sopranos, and elbow-to-the-face tactics are shrugged off by voters — as much a part of Jersey culture as boardwalk custard and stainless-steel diners.

The state has an outsized history of sleaze and outright public thievery. Frank Hague, boss of Hudson County for three decades, had a desk with a specially designed drawer that could be pushed out toward a visitor, the better to receive a discreetly dropped envelope full of cash. There were a lot of envelopes: When he retired, he was said to be worth $10 million.

Other ethically challenged New Jersey politicians have become enshrined in popular culture: cable TV's popular "Boardwalk Empire" features a bloodier version of Atlantic City boss Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, and the new movie "American Hustle" is based on the Abscam sting that took down a U.S senator from New Jersey, the mayor of Camden and six congressmen.

"If you look at the big-city mayors of the state, it's usually the express lane to the penitentiary," said Republican political consultant Steve Schmidt, who suggested that the bridge scandal fell somewhere near the state's norms. "As stupid as this is, it's not necessarily going to make someone familiar with New Jersey politics fall out of their chair."

And the cases keep coming, as colorful as ever. Even as Christie was at the gold-domed State House on Thursday, blaming the Fort Lee mess on his aides, the mayor of Trenton was going on trial down the street at the federal courthouse as a result of an FBI bribery sting.

Mayor Tony Mack is accused of working with Joseph "JoJo" Giorgianni, a rotund sandwich shop owner and convicted sex offender, to take bribes from an informant to smooth the way for a parking garage project that never really existed. Giorgianni referred to himself as "St. Joseph," prosecutors told jurors, as in: "St. Joseph always provides."

By New Jersey standards, the Trenton case is pretty ho-hum; the FBI here has been using that same crooked-businessman ploy to bring down mayors and other officials for decades. In 2009, a money-laundering and corruption investigation ensnared 44 people, including several mayors, as well as a rabbi who pleaded guilty to running an illegal operation to sell kidneys to people needing transplants.

"I guess that's evidence of the culture," said Brigid Callahan Harrison, a professor at Montclair State University who has studied New Jersey political corruption. "When politicians are approached with this, they don't automatically think, 'sting operation.' They think, 'business as usual.'"

The bridge mess, which emails from Christie aides suggest was political retaliation, perhaps for the Fort Lee mayor's failure to endorse Christie's reelection, "underscores the already held perception of seediness and thuggery in New Jersey — and particularly New Jersey politicians," she said.

Christie, a Republican, came into office in 2009, vowing to wipe out that low-rent reputation. When he served as United States attorney in New Jersey, Christie made a reputation as a corruption buster, prosecuting 130 corruption cases involving both Republicans and Democrats; on his office website, he says he never lost one.

Since taking office, Christie has reveled in a tough-guy political style. "I am who I am," he said Thursday. "But I am not a bully."

Yet former Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican who met Christie when he was a 14-year-old volunteer on Kean's campaign, said the incident would play into Christie's reputation as a man with an "enemies list." (The duo's relationship has itself fallen to a Jerseyesque move: Christie angered Kean recently when he teamed up with Democrats to try to unseat Kean's son as minority leader in the state Senate. The attempt failed.)

"Nobody around Christie is going to say no to him," Kean said.

Kean called the epic traffic jam baffling, particularly since the New Jersey governor's office, considered the most powerful in the country, offers any number of more artful opportunities to take revenge. The governor has sweeping powers over ostensibly independent agencies (such as the one that runs the bridges), the power to appoint nearly all statewide officials, including judges and the attorney general, and a line-item veto.

"You can fool around with the projects of every mayor in the state, if that's what you want to do," Kean said. "If I wanted to do something like that, that's the way I would do it. There's no fingerprints."

There are other things that make New Jersey unusual: This smallish state has 565 municipalities and 590 school districts, each one an opportunity to award contracts and jobs to political insiders. A patronage tradition is still alive and kicking; Christie, like governors before him, stuffed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey with dozens of supporters, including an old high-school classmate on the receiving end of the now-infamous email: "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

And the state still has influential unelected power brokers such as South Jersey Democrat George Norcross, who has formed an alliance with Christie on some issues.

"Normally one party is a check on the other party," said Republican political consultant Roger Stone, a veteran of New Jersey campaigns. "In New Jersey, they get together and figure out a way they all can benefit."

Some say New Jersey's reputation as a haven for scandal is overblown. One study found that measured by convictions per capita, the state ranked as only the seventh-most corrupt in the U.S. And a 2012 study by Washington good-government groups found that New Jersey, judged by its strong ethics codes and public records laws, actually ranked as the least corrupt and most transparent state in the nation — at least on paper. Some here may have found that amusing, but not Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.

Convinced the state gets a bad rap, he says he has to work every year to persuade his students that New Jersey government is more than just a punch line.

"New Jersey politics is a full-contact sport," Dworkin said. "That doesn't mean it's corrupt. It just means people are aggressive."

Bob Ingle, a political columnist for Gannett newspapers in Trenton, said he noticed the difference right away when he moved from Sacramento. "There's an aggression in the culture here," he said. "There's also a higher tolerance for people involved in corrupt activities in public life."

When Ingle co-wrote a history of New Jersey corruption called "The Soprano State," he said his challenge was that many real-life stories were almost too weird to be true.

"The publisher made me go back in and put in: 'We're not making this stuff up,'" said Ingle. "There is just something about New Jersey that's hard to put your finger on. You just see some incredible things."

 

This is true....NJ politics are pretty old school.
Shady...corrupt...lots of kickbacks...

I'm a landlord in Hoboken and its the most corrupt city I've ever experienced...and everyone laughs it off.

I live in NJ and everyone finds this thing somewhat normal and blown out of proportion...but he is a possible presidential candidate so its a different audience. You wanna play with the big boys you gotta play by their rules.

 

What's happening with Bridgeghazi?

 

This is exactly the image I had of NJ politics. Before this blew up, didn't realize it was such a bipartisan affair and hoped Christie might be different because he was a NJ Republican (a bit of wishful thinking). I think there may be more trouble ahead for Christie if he does navigate the traffic scandal.

A presidential or V.P. nominee from New Jersey in the "Information Age"? Maybe never.

 

Have any small reasonable one bedrooms??

 

Love how texxx and his minions are laughing this off. If a Democrat did this they'd be the first to start a slaughterfest here and act like it's a huge deal.

 

And another one. Feds investigating Christie's use of Sandy relief funds. According to Feds, Christie improperly used those relief funds to produce tourism ads that starred him and his family.

Sucks that he is one of the handful of republicans, if not the only one, I would consider vote for as President and is rocked by 2 scandals.

 

lol the liberals are really feeling threatened. They're looking everywhere to try to smear Christie! Hillary's sent out the goon squad in full force!

 

<a href="http://s1141.photobucket.com/user/felixanguiano/media/obamacig.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/n595/felixanguiano/obamacig.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo obamacig.jpg"/></a>

Your panties would be all moist if it were Obama. Stop being a hypocrite.

 

LOL!!!

You have no proof of this. Just more garbage spewing out of your piehole.

 

Not so fast...

Spoiler

 

Christie is a buffoon. The media tried to sell him as a viable candidate, but the more the American people look at him, the more they will hate him. Same with Newt and Rick, both equally obnoxious, all three trying to peddle a toxic agenda. My guess is that Huckabee wins the nomination. He serves the same corporate masters that Christie, Perry, and Gingrich do, but he's very good at smothering his poison in Southern Charm.

 

The Republicans have to have a better candidate somewhere. Right......?

 

Plenty, just none that will make it through the primaries.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-chris-christie-sandy-funds-20140113,0,1864963.story

Gov. Christie faces federal probe over Sandy relief funds

U.S. investigators are looking into whether embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie misused about $2 million in Superstorm Sandy relief funds for an ad campaign that put him in the spotlight in an election year, a lawmaker said on Monday.

The inspector is focusing on a federally financed $25 million Jersey Shore marketing campaign that included a television commercial featuring Christie and his family, which cost $2 million more than a competing bid without them.

"It is inappropriate for taxpayer-funded dollars that are critical to our state's recovery from this natural disaster to fund commercials that could potentially benefit a political campaign," Pallone said in an August 8, 2013 letter requesting the investigation.

"While promoting tourism at the Jersey Shore in the wake of Hurricane Sandy is certainly a worthy endeavor, recent reports have led me to believe that the state has irresponsibly misappropriated funding allocated by Congress from the Sandy aid package and taken advantage of this waiver for political purposes," the letter said.

The winning ad, with the tag line that New Jersey was "Stronger than the Storm," aired in the spring as Christie headed into a re-election campaign to win a second term.

 

And Christie's side:

The timing is terrible for Christie, too. That said, they were advertisements to drum up tourism to New Jersey, but they happened to have him and his family in them during election time. That said, the budget for the ads was unnecessarily high because they opted with an organization that would include their family in the adverts instead of one that did not:

So that's annoying. That's $2.2 million that could've been spent elsewhere.