Chris Christie, the self-declared "fiscal conservative" Republican governor of New Jersey, who routinely invokes the "taxpayer" as a means of imposing a fiscally imbalanced, worker unfriendly, privatizing far right agenda on a state that is politically and culturally moderate and not far right, is a corrupt hypocrite. And the latest evidence of this probably obvious fact is that Chris Christie uses official state resources for his own personal use. Such as state helicoptors. To go to his son's high school baseball game.
But, of course, New Jersey is supposed to be too broke to pay for things like pensions for state workers. Or the economic stimulus of a large scale commuter tunnel.
Anyway, some details on the hypocritical ways of Chris Christie.
Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son's baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter.
Right before the lineup cards were being exchanged on the field, a noise from above distracted the spectators as the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.
During the 5th inning, Christie and First Lady Mary Pat Christie got into the car, rode back to the helicopter and left the game. During a pitching change, play was stopped for a couple of minutes while the helicopter took off.
And of course, as was pointed out in the readers comments on this news link, Christie was even too lazy to walk 100 yards to the baseball field.
Here's the governor's spin
"It is a means of transportation that is occasionally used as the schedule demands," said Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak in an email. "This has historically been the case in prior administrations as well, and we continue to be judicious in limiting its use."
Anyway, imagine the outrage of Republicans if a Democratic governor in a fiscally distressed state were using state helecoptors for personal use. Think they'd be okay with that?
I grew up in NJ but live in NY, where we recall a recent powerful and blatantly corrupt state Senate Majority Leader, Joe Bruno, a Republican I might add, who was using state transportation resources for political fundraising activities. Thankfully, the law eventually caught up with him and indicted on eight counts of corruption.
Will the law, and the court of public opinion catch up with the hypocritical governor from the Garden State?