Corruption on a grand scale in New Jersey.
Wednesday was the two year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy coming ashore in New Jersey. Governor Christie went out for a presser at Belmont and ran into an echo of his own bad acts.
If you watch corporate MSM news shows, you have seen clips from Christie's confrontation with former Asbury Park Councilman Jim Keady.
The footage MSM editors put on the television screens show Gov. Christie telling Mr. Keady to "sit down and shut up."
USA Today headlines it: "Christie gets tough with heckler over Sandy progress."
Clearly, Christie was amped up. He counterattacked Keady with the rawest, most aggressive parts of his repertoire of public speaking skills.
"Il Duce" in his dreams? Or simply Duce the Toad?
Well, as it turns out what we see in the clip is a politician who had just been caught out publicly for freezing $800,000,000 of public money in a Republican-controlled slush fund. This is the bulk of municipal funding out of Federal relief money related to Hurricane Sandy. The name of that program is Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM.) Total funding: $1.1-billion.
And only $219,000,000 has gone out to the NJ cities and towns. The remaining $800,000,000 might as well have been at one of those famous Undisclosed Locations until FOI requests pulled out detail-lines to go with New Jersey budget numbers.
Of course, as you would expect, Jim Keady phrased the issue in terms of local constituents: "Christie, you are sitting on $800,000,000 in Sandy recovery money. Get it to families in need.” Thing is, the very act of hiding the $800,000,000 and not reporting the account structures in Sandy progress reports make this yet another Christie-related Federal corruption case.
$800,000,000: A Magic Number in New Jersey
For folks who follow New Jersey scammeries, that figure of $800,000,000 matches exactly to Christie's other Super Size scandal. That is the pay-to-play extravaganza surrounding the Zanadu/Zanapoo/American Dream mall building project sited up next to Giant Stadium. Alan Marcus and David Samson, known to you previously from the Bridgegate fiasco, are also the big players in that scam.
Marcus is Republican party boss for Bergen County. Samson, of Wolff & Samson, was responsible for the then-secret agreement from New Jersey Transit to build a transit station in a favorable location for one of his firm's real estate clients. Together with Christie's office, in it for the arm twisting. This is the subject of the ongoing Federal investigation related to Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer's statement that Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno threatened to withhold Sandy aid if Mayor Zimmer didn't greenlight building that transit station.
So now the same crew of thugs have sequestered $800,000,000 from Sandy money. This started as Federal money. Now it sits under control of the Republican governor of New Jersey where very little is known and there is nothing going that resembles sunshine. Every little tid bit of information out of these guys requires a law suit.
Jim Keady disagrees with labeling the $800,000,000 as a "slush fund." There's a danger that readers will infer that Christie is planning to use the money for campaign purposes. Or just stealing it. That's not the intent, but Jim surely has a point. To be clear: the intent here is to imply that the $800,000,000 is being held back while Christie & Pals figure out how to use the money to support Republican towns and Republican office holders. Yes, partisan use of these funds. No, not an outright theft; not a CREEP scam like Watergate.
New Jersey Public Radio compiled a list of 18 situations that illustrate Christie's performance in office. Please, follow below le trump l'orange.
Here's NJPR's eighteen corruption and cover-up situations:
1. The governor’s office won’t say how much taxpayers are spending on the attorney representing Christie in various abuse-of-power investigations. Democratic legislators are spending $350-an-hour. The Bergen Record has filed suit.
2. Who paid for a trip that the governor took to Dallas last year? What were his expenses while there? And what other cities did he go to on his trip? The invoices provided, viewable here, were unclear as to where the governor went, what his expenses were, and how much taxpayers had to pay. A separate request to the State Police on the cost of his security detail was denied outright. A lawsuit has been filed.
3. Christie’s commissioner of Community Affiars, Richard Constable III, has ignored questions about why the state fired a $68 million contractor responsible for distributing $780 million in Sandy housing aid. He has refused to provide a copy of the $10.5 million termination settlement given to the contractor, nor has he said what company, if any, is taking over the distribution of the aid.
4. Emails from Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak’s government email account were not provided when requested by The Record, which was investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures. Legislative subpoenas uncovered the documents and found that the governor’s office was intentionally or unintentionally violating the Open Public Records Act.
5. Christie’s office maintains no lists of visitors to the governor’s mansion, the gubernatorial beach house on the Jersey Shore or the complimentary 20-person suite at Giants and Jets games. Without lists, there are no documents for reporters to request.
6. New Jersey Transit refused to release its hurricane preparedness plan after Sandy flooded rail cars and caused $120 million in damage. The transportation commissioner didn't show up at a hearing when the legislature launched an investigation.
7. The State Police would not release overtime data nor copies of its own policies. The ACLU then sued.
8. Lawsuits are required for information that should be provided through the Open Public Records Act. A Feb. 11 request to the Department of Treasury for the bid documents for Sandy contractors wasn’t filled until May 20. An identical document, though, was received by the affordable-housing advocacy group, the Fair Share Housing Center, on April 24, because it sued.
9. Requests for documents are often rejected by anonymous government officials. Christie record keepers would not provide the Bergen Record with names of the government employees who act as the legally-mandated “Records Custodians” in each Christie department.
10. The government’s financial contracts and bids for services are often heavily redacted because the companies involved are given the opportunity to black out whatever information they want.
11. New Jersey voters approved $1.3 billion last November for capital projects at state colleges and universities. But after two politically-connected religious institutions got funds, the Christie administration refused to publicly disclose the criteria it used in its selection process. Higher Education Secretary Rochelle Hendricks testified before a senate committee, but refused to talk about the matter.
12. Christie officials wouldn’t disclose the names of those who evaluated bids from contractors that sought to create Sandy tourism ads. The committee ultimately hired a more expensive contractor that gave Christie a starring role in the “Stronger Than the Storm” TV ad campaign.
13. Christie created a Sandy transparency web site, but it does not appear to be regularly updated. A $68 million contract for a company to develop a housing program wasn’t online months after the company was hired.
14. Invoices for a Sandy contractor were blacked out so extensively that the Bergen Record filed suit.
15. A housing advocacy group was denied data to help it determine whether low-income and minority New Jerseyans were getting a fair share of the $1.8 billion in federal Sandy aid. The group filed suit.
16. When Christie privatized the $2.8 billion lottery, his state treasurer refused to testify to Democrats to answer questions about why the privatization was being carried out.
17. Christie’s Treasury Department allegedly violated the state constitution when it didn’t include key information on a tax revenue report that Christie himself had mandated through an executive order when he took office. The treasurer has also repeatedly missed a deadline on issuing revenue reports, while a promised citizens commission on financial transparency was never set up.
18. The Department of Education would not give the Asbury Park Press a list of schools the state was investigating for possibly tampering with state tests. The newspaper sued.
Then there's comments. The nut-buster laying out Christie's assignment of his cronies to auditing roles for Sandy money:
look from nj
Regarding your 18 points, one might shed some light for me over my concern about the Sandy Federal fund monitoring.
The 30 firms that are on a qualified list that the State has approved include some JOINT BIDDING firms and at least one of the firms is Wolfe Samson, whose name is NOT listed as the "monitor" as the auditing firm's name is listed but in fact, the bid package that was accepted by CC's administration includes both the auditing firm and Wolf Samson in it's response to the proposal for auditing assistance.
Reading that joint response lists Lori Grifa as Wolfe's main contact person for David Samson's law firm.
I believe a similar situation exists with William Palatucci, who is listed on Gibbons PC law firm web site as leading a team specifically formed to assist the state of NJ.
If anyone is concerned with Todd Christie as a Director of a 175,000 person auditing firm of E & Y bidding, they should be more concerned with either Samson/Grifa or Palatucci getting any part of the auditing contract over the use/misuse of the Federal Sandy billions.The 30 firms that are on a qualified list that the State has approved include some JOINT BIDDING firms and at least one of the firms is Wolfe Samson, whose name is NOT listed as the "monitor" as the auditing firm's name is listed but in fact, the bid package that was accepted by CC's administration includes both the auditing firm and Wolf Samson in it's response to the proposal for auditing assistance.
Reading that joint response lists Lori Grifa as Wolfe's main contact person for David Samson's law firm.
"E & Y" is Ernst & Young. A perfect combo of accounting and politics.
So when the $800,000,000 came up with Jim Keady and his poster at Belmar -- a threat to go public -- the whole of this massive scam threatened to halt Christie's career in its tracks.
Christie can block traffic lanes and threaten mayors. He can do his "il Duce" act for the cameras. He is the Perfect Republican.
How long until his people come up with a Jersey version of the Fascist "Eia! Eia! Eia! Alalà!"
What's chances Christie can get Snookie for his head cheer leader ???
With Jim Keady on the scene and the small cloud -- the image of the $800,000,000 in fresh hundred dollar bills swirling around before us -- the Christie move to a politics of the "il Duce" pattern becomes more difficult.
Corporate MSM ??? Don't expect that bunch to question "il Duce." For them, apart from the Star-Ledger and a few other local Jersey-based media, these $800,000,000 scams will remain invisible.