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," indeed. Or 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.