U.S. Attorney’s Trail Shows Hoboken Charges More Serious [View all]

[Laxman]

Last edited Wed Feb 5, 2014, 12:37 PM - Edit history (2)

For those of you who are getting tired of "Bridgegate" and I have to admit, I am feeling a bit of scandal fatigue myself, hang in there. I've been saying that the bridge is nothing more in the larger picture than the reason to start turning over the rocks and looking for what comes scurrying out. And we've got a whole lot of things running in all directions right now. Just the fact that the Christie Crime Digest has 25 seperate entries and is growing should demonstrate that. But Christie is in trouble, and its not because of the bridge, and no matter where you live, you should be paying attention.

An interesting article from the NJ policy news site N.J. Spotlight today contains this excerpt:

O’Connor noted that the misallocation of federal money, particularly in amounts totally more than $10,000, is illegal. That is important because the Port Authority, whose allocation of funding to projects favored by the Christie administration, receives sizable amounts of federal money, and because federal Sandy aid played a central role in both the Hoboken case and the controversial construction of a senior citizen center in Belleville, which suffered little Sandy damage, as an alleged inducement to the mayor to endorse Christie for reelection.

If Sandy money was misallocated for political purposes, the check itself would constitute evidence of federal wire fraud, O’Connor said, as would any improper orders communicated by telephone. Almost half of Blagojevich’s conviction counts were for wire fraud.

or this interesting excerpt relating to the abuse of power that is apparently (I know its not just apparent) in the Christie administration.

“Clearly, there’s something wrong here. The charges in all of these cases involve abuses of power, generally for political purposes,” Del Tufo said.

Del Tufo noted that public officials could be found guilty of violating the Hobbs Act of 1951 – which, like RICO, was originally enacted to crack down on labor racketeers -- for obtaining a payment or benefit to which they were not entitled. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Hobbs Act’s “under color of official right provision does not require that the public official take steps to induce the extortionate payment: It can be said that ‘the coercive element is provided by the public office itself’” -- in this case, the perceived power of the governor’s office.

You can read the full article here: http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/14/02/05/analysis-u-s-attorney-s-trail-shows-hoboken-charges-more-serious/?p=2

For people who live outside of NJ, you may think that this is of little or no importance to you. However, I disagree. Anytime powerful people are called to account for their abuse of power, especially when they seemed unassailable, it is a lesson to others. How many people here from Wisconsin would like to see a similar probe of Governor Walker and who doesn't think similar abuses wouldn't show up? We've seen what happened to McDonnell in Virginia. Fill in the name and state of your republican controlled location here________ and you can bet that you wish that something like this was going on there right now. And you can also bet that the toxic combination of corporate special interests and arrogant government is producing similar results.

So here in NJ, Christie became so enamored with himself and felt so untouchable that he let his ego and his thirst for power and control get the better of him. In short, hubris should be his middle name. It took a stupid stunt to expose all of the other things that have come to light. Let this be a lesson to those of you hoping for a way to level the playing field in your states. We're lucky to have a strong press corps here and even though they are much weaker than in the past, they're doing their jobs. But this roll call of abuse is simply disgusting, and unfortunately damaging in the long-term.

Its going to be Sandy money and abuse of power that will take Christie down in the end. It will have been started by the bridge caper, but that was an incident better suited for mass media consumption than the policy wonk stuff hidden in the weeds. But those policy failings and abuses are the really destructive things and what will ultimately be his undoing. So no matter where you may be from, it pays to stay interested, not just because Christie had national aspirations or just on the general principal that he's a jerk and gets what he deserves, but because this is what we need to hold our government accountable. Besides, Sandy money represents your tax dollars too.