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“Chris Christie Versus The Lying Liars”: Somewhere Along The Line, Christie Missed The Lessons Of Glass Houses And Black Kettles

It’s been a rough turn in the spotlight of late for two New Jersey women: Bridget Kelly, Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, and Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken. Both have found themselves accused of lying. In Kelly’s case, Christie used his January 9 “Bridge-gate” press conference to announce that he had fired her “because she lied to me.” In Zimmer’s case, Christie’s lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, has declared false Zimmer’s account of how Hoboken was denied post-Sandy aid for political reasons.

But Kelly and Zimmer can take some solace in this: when it comes to being called liars by Christie, they have plenty of company. The word rolls easily off the tongue for Christie—in that January 9 press conference, he used it six different times. Guadagno never used the “l” word specifically, but the accusation of dishonesty against Zimmer was clear all the same—and awfully familiar to people who’ve watched Christie over the years. Here is just a small sampling of the other people in the accused-liars club:

1. While running for the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1994 Christie accused one of the Republican incumbents, Cecilia Laureys, of lying about the existence of minutes for a meeting on the purchase of new police computer systems. “I don’t know why she did it, but she lied and it’s not the first time she lied about the whole thing,” Christie said. Laureys and another Republican on the board would later sue Christie for defamation over an ad he ran that wrongly asserted that they were under investigation.

2. Shortly after his election as governor in 2009, Christie branded as “political lying” a proposal by Assemblyman John McKeon to change the ways that governors appoint senators during vacancies.

3. In 2010, Christie accused his education commissioner, Bret Schundler, of having lied to him over the state’s bungled application for federal education funding. After firing Schundler, Christie told reporters that the upshot of the episode was “Don’t lie to the governor.” Furious, Schundler produced e-mails showing that he had been forthright with the governor about what had happened with the grant failure.

4. Also in 2010, Christie called “a lie” the claim by General Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver that she had asked to meet with him about a proposed compromise on public employee arbitration reforms. Again, e-mails subsequently undermined his charge.

5. In 2012, Christie had this to say to voters about Assembly Democrats’ proposal for a 20 percent tax credit: “They’re lying to you.”

6. Also in 2012 (just before their rapprochement over Hurricane Sandy) Christie accused Barack Obama of lying in saying that Mitt Romney wanted further tax cuts for the wealthy. “Stop lying, Mr. President,” he said.

There are two ways of looking at this tendency by Christie. One is that he has had the great misfortune in life of having found himself surrounded by an uncommonly mendacious lot of people. The other is that, with his own credibility and veracity now seriously on the line, he somewhere along the line missed the lessons about glass houses and black kettles.

 

By: Alex MacGillis, The New Republic, January 22, 2014

January 24, 2014 Posted by | Chris Christie | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“It Was All For Spite”: A Scandal We Can Sink Our Teeth Into

During the Lewinsky scandal, our nation’s brave pundits spent a good amount of time fluttering their hands in front of their faces and expressing dismay that they had to spend so much time talking about something so lurid. The truth was that they loved it like a labrador loves liverwurst, but some scandals are just more fun than others. Does it concern a lot of dull policy arcana, or something a little more human? Is there room for lots of speculation about people’s motivations? Are there interesting characters—your Gordon Liddys, your Linda Tripps—to liven up the proceedings? These are the things that make a scandal.

We haven’t yet met the people at the heart of the Chris Christie George Washington Bridge scandal, but since they’re people in New Jersey politics, I’m guessing that if we ever get them in front of the cameras, a new media star or two would be born. And what I find glorious about this story is that the action in question had no practical purpose whatsoever. It didn’t enrich anyone or give anyone an unfair political advantage. It was just for spite. Members of the Christie administration, it now appears, created monumental traffic tie-ups in the town of Fort Lee, which abuts the G.W. Bridge, simply because the mayor, a Democrat, didn’t endorse Christie in an election he would win by 22 points.

We now have some fabulous emails and texts, including the smokingest of smoking guns, where a top Christie aide emailed a Port Authority official and said, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” to which he replied, “Got it,” and it was made so. If it sounds like something out of an episode of “The Sopranos,” that isn’t just because it takes place in New Jersey. The only danger I see is the possibility that the cat has been let out of the bag too soon, and there won’t be even more juicy revelations to come. But we can hope.

In all likelihood, Governor Christie will say that he knew nothing of these nefarious doings, and nobody’s angrier about it than he is. Anyone whose name is on an incriminating email will be shown the door forthwith, having so brazenly subverted the tradition of integrity in public service for which the state has long been known. It may well be that Christie knew nothing about it; after all, he isn’t an idiot, and only an idiot would think screwing over a small-town mayor in so public a fashion, just before an election you’re going to win in a walk, would be a good idea.

But it does present a problem for him, because it’s the kind of scandal you’d dream up if you wanted to undermine the Christie ’16 bid. As Ezra Klein reminds us, Chris Christie doesn’t just have a reputation for being a bully, he’s actually a bully. And it would take a bully to say to a town of 35,000 people, “Your mayor didn’t endorse me? Well see how you like it when it takes you two hours to get over the Bridge, you worms.”

But what we need is to get everybody involved under oath, so we can get to know them and hear their stories. Maybe give them immunity; that’s what Congress did with Oliver North, and his testimony was riveting. Benghazi? Boring. IRS? Snoozeville. This is a scandal that could offer some real entertainment.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January 8, 2014

January 9, 2014 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , , , | 1 Comment

“No One Likes A Bully”: Chris Christie Using The Power Of His Office To Punish Rivals

Late Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) top two appointees to the Port Authority, both of whom have since resigned, complied with subpoenas related to the ongoing bridge scandal. Soon after, state Assemblyman John Wisnieswki (D), chairman of the committee investigating the incident, acknowledged soon after that the probe will continue into 2014.

But while we wait for the process to continue and for the new materials to be scrutinized, one of the overarching questions is whether Christie could possibly be so petty as to cripple a community with paralyzing traffic, just to punish the local mayor for having refused to endorse him.

The evidence on the bridge controversy is still coming together, but Kate Zernike reported yesterday that Christie’s track record of bullying New Jersey officials for even minor slights is extraordinary.

In 2010, John F. McKeon, a New Jersey assemblyman, made what he thought was a mild comment on a radio program: Some of the public employees that Gov. Chris Christie was then vilifying had been some of the governor’s biggest supporters.

He was surprised to receive a handwritten note from Mr. Christie, telling him that he had heard the comments, and that he didn’t like them.

“I thought it was a joke,” Mr. McKeon recalled. “What governor would take the time to write a personal note over a relatively innocuous comment?”

But the gesture would come to seem genteel compared with the fate suffered by others in disagreements with Mr. Christie: a former governor who was stripped of police security at public events; a Rutgers professor who lost state financing for cherished programs; a state senator whose candidate for a judgeship suddenly stalled; another senator who was disinvited from an event with the governor in his own district.

The whole article is worth reading to appreciate just how thin-skinned the governor really is. The piece points to example after example of Christie using the power of his office to punish rivals – even other Republicans – who’ve offended him in minor and inconsequential ways.

To be sure, this is not proof that the governor ordered the lane closures that crippled Fort Lee in September. But if there are underlying doubts about what Christie is capable of when it comes to petty retribution, the available evidence paints a deeply unflattering portrait of an intemperate bully, willing to use the power of his administration to intimidate, punish, and harass.

In 2011, Mr. Christie held a news conference where he accused State Senator Richard J. Codey of being “combative and difficult” in blocking two nominees. Mr. Codey, a Democrat who had served as governor following the resignation of James E. McGreevey, responded that he had not only signed off on the nominations, but had held a meeting to try to hurry them along.

Three days later, Mr. Codey was walking out of an event in Newark when he got a call from the state police superintendent informing him that he would no longer be afforded the trooper who accompanied him to occasional public events – a courtesy granted all former governors. That same day, his cousin, who had been appointed by Mr. McGreevey to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was fired, as was a close friend and former deputy chief of staff who was then working in the state Office of Consumer Affairs. […]

Later that year, the governor was pressing hard on Alan Rosenthal, the Rutgers political scientist whom Republicans and Democrats had chosen as the tiebreaking member of the commission that was redistricting the state’s legislative districts. Mr. Christie wanted Mr. Rosenthal to vote for the map put forward by the Republicans on the commission, but instead he chose the Democrats’ plan, saying it offered more stability. Soon after, Mr. Christie used his line-item veto to cut $169,000 for two programs at Mr. Rosenthal’s institute at Rutgers.

In one of the more salient examples, Zernike pointed to an incident between the governor’s office and the state firefighters’ union. Bill Lavin, representing the union, appeared on a radio show and thought he’d extend an olive branch, calling for new direct talks between the two sides. Bill Baroni, one of the Christie aides who recently resigned from the Port Authority, was then a Christie ally in the state Senate, and called Levin to deliver an obscene message from the governor in response.

“What he said a couple of times,” Lavin recalled, “was: ‘The governor told me to make sure you don’t get this message mixed up; say these exact words.’”

In other words, Christie wanted to push back against a perceived foe, so he called Bill Baroni to relay a specific, pointed response.

It’s a detail to keep in mind as the scandal continues to unfold.

 

By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 26, 2013

December 26, 2013 Posted by | Politics | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment