The usage of New Jersey state employee pension funds for the Horizon Lights' development at Fort Lee is now at the heart of Bridgegate.
Pension funds undergirded Hudson Lights development in Fort Lee, records show
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....According to documents found through research at the office of the Bergen County Clerk, the State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund E holds a majority 55 percent ownership interest in the Tucker Development and Acquisition Fund, L.P.. The documents were hand-dated on March 15, 2012 and officially recorded by the county clerk on May 16, 2012.....
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Four days after the traffic lanes reopened, Tucker Development formally announced $218 million in financing for Phase I of Hudson Lights, a large-scale, 1-million-square-foot mixed-use redevelopment, according to Multi-Housing News Online.
Also on Sept. 17, Tucker made public his partnership in the Hudson Lights project with Murray Kushner of Kushner Real Estate (KRE), a Bridgewater developer who over the last five years has given $100,000 to Christie and the NJGOP....
Far more knowledgeable minds than mine will, hopefully, add their expertise to today's story from
PolitikerNJ.com. Please read the entire piece. It provides a much needed context for not only the players involved in BridgeGate, but also NJ state employees ongoing battle with Christie over the State's usage of their pensions.
Last September, Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent piece Looting the Pension Funds in which he breaks down the failure to rein in Wall Street and pass legislation to protect Public Pension Funds.
"...Not only did these middle-class workers already lose huge chunks of retirement money to huckster financiers in the crash, and not only are they now being asked to take the long-term hit for those years of greed and speculative excess, but in many cases they're also being forced to sit by and watch helplessly as Gordon Gekko wanna-be's like Loeb or scorched-earth takeover artists like Bain Capital are put in charge of their retirement savings.
It's a scam of almost unmatchable balls and cruelty, accomplished with the aid of some singularly spineless politicians. And it hasn't happened overnight. This has been in the works for decades, and the fighting has been dirty all the way....."
Public employees are still seeing their money disappear into the pockets of the well connected and not their own. As the thievery continues, those in power have and are portraying our state employees as the villains. Like other Governors, Christie is still targeting the innocent - public employees and their pensions. It's past time to put a stop to such blatant wrong doing.
The floor is yours.