Welcome to the Party, Star Ledger

by: huntsu

Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 05:00:00 PM EDT

promoted by Rosi

I know this has been covered elsewhere on Blue Jersey (including today's roundup) but I wanted to comment on the Star Ledger's change of heart on Chris Christie. There's a little happiness that they've joined the game finally, but also a little fury that they waited until after the man got power to figure him out.

And two, we have learned more about Christie. His ethics are selective. As governor, he has solicited secret donations from state contractors, a practice he used to consider a form of legalized bribery. When officials at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Authority were caught operating a sleazy, self-dealing patronage pit, he went ballistic in public; but when his friends on the Elizabeth Board of Education were caught behaving just as badly, he barely made a peep.
Yes, this is all guesswork, peering into Christie's heart to judge his motive. But for the record, our guess has changed.

Of course, we were doing that back in 2005, and the huntsus were having arguments with Tom Moran as far back as March 2007 in which he actually engaged Blue Jersey's reporting and investigations on Chris Christie.

huntsu :: Welcome to the Party, Star Ledger

The Star Ledger notes two cases of ethical hypocrisy from Christie the Governor, but for some reason never noticed the ones from when he was US Attorney. And if you go back to his tenure as a Freeholder and Assembly candidate, you can see that he admitted to knowingly defaming his opponents.

Frankly, there was never any indication that he was a paragon of virtue, and you have incidents of misusing his position for personal (driving the wrong way on a o-way, then running over a motorcyclist and the cop gives him a ride to his office? Really?), professional (the hissy fit over Stu Rabner) and political (not the Menendez subpoenas, but the leaks to Tom Kean Jr.'s campaign) gain going back to the earliest days of his tenure.

Hell, just Google site:bluejersey.com huntsu Christie for a taste of some of the work we did. For some it read as crazy back then, but we always knew we weren't nuts.

The evidence was there for everyone to see for a long time, and it kind of burns that Blue Jersey and a few of our friends on the web were the only ones wiling to say that Christie had no clothes on. Plenty knew it -- I'm pointing at you, organizational Democrats -- but were afraid to take him on.

So it's frustrating that it took so long for folks to come to the party, but we're glad they're here. Maybe they can prevent Christie from getting more power?

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Welcome to the Party, Star Ledger | 4 comments

Chris Christie (4.00 / 1)

Machiavelli

Big League

"Discrimination caused by ignorance and fear is a tax on human progress" - Barbra Casbar Siperstein

by: Babs NJSD @ Tue Oct 25, 2011 at 00:33:09 AM UTC

Christie was a U.S. Attorney (4.00 / 1)

on the list to be fired because he wasn't prosecuting enough high level Democrats according to Karl Rove's edict. He kept his job because he did the bidding of the Bush cartel that politicized the Justice Department.
Being a Bush cartel stooge paid off for Chris Christie. Now we're stuck with the most corrupt governor in recent memory.

Restore democracy and the Constitution for which it stands.

by: The Wizard @ Tue Oct 25, 2011 at 00:45:56 AM UTC

Is it a Tepper-ware party? (0.00 / 0)

Let's wait until they get off the anti-union bandwagon.

by: Nowlan @ Tue Oct 25, 2011 at 02:09:53 AM UTC

Christie: Naked Corrupt Bully/Machine Pol Would Be "Emperor" (0.00 / 0)

Since day one, when I first came to Blue Jersey to criticize the corrupt Democratic machine the ran the BCDO.....I have consistently also criticized Christie for being a hack.

I never bought into the bullshit that he was a great prosecutor.

Christie came from a machine background, he bought his job in a dirty pay to play scheme that SHOULD have landed him in jail...instead it landed him a job as a federal prosecutor. The very fact that that was legal should make any decent informed American want to puke!!!

I also remember that, at the time, there were many (mostly anonymous) folks here that tore into me for criticizing de facto corrupt Democrats.

If Christie was TRULY the aggressive prosecutor he pretended to be, he would have used the RICO statues and would have convicted thousands of NJ pols/officials...not just a few hundred of the low hanging rotten fruit.

As Hunstu rightly points out....it's great that sometimes the establishment press begins to criticize Christie for being a lying bully etc.....but many of us have seen through his act for years.

Sadly, the machine politics that creates a Christie is a bipartisan phenomenon.

It turns out that a Norcross or an Adubato etc etc would rather deal with a corrupt Republican that they can work with....than a sometimes bumbling and ineffectual Corzine that occasionally gave them a little bit of a hard time. ( God how I wish that John Corzine the Marine Lieutenant had manifested and had come out of his shell and had "ripped them a new one"......and by "them" I mean ALL of the state's corrupt political machines R and D alike!!! He would have been re-elected in a landslide without having to spend a penny of his own money!!!)

My sense is that NJ's machines allowed Cristie to win because they were afraid that a second Corzine administration with an ACTIVE LT Weinberg would have actually led REAL and deep reforms.......and, sadly, the progressive movement here was/is too weak to overcome the influence of the machines.

Thanks to Huntsu for consistently pointing out that the would be emperor has no clothes!

Now is the time for the progressive movement to begin to find a TRULY aggressive progressive non boss owned...non machine candidate to oppose Christie in the next election!

by: Nick Lento @ Tue Oct 25, 2011 at 13:24:13 PM UTC