Hey Chris Christie, Now That You've Given Exxon A Multi-Billion Dollar Present......

[Laxman]

10. Valentine's Day Was A Couple Of Weeks Ago.....

but some gifts are better late than never.....

From Christie to ExxonMobil, with love

The infamous Bayway refinery sits along the Turnpike off Exit 13, a stretch that established New Jersey in the American imagination as the state that smells like rotten eggs.

Working class families are packed tight against the refinery, but security guards patrol behind a tall fence to keep prying eyes away. Warnings are even posted at a neighboring cemetery.

Exxon-Mobile has good reason to hide this land. Because, according to a 2007 Appellate Court decision, it could be a scene from a dystopian fantasy novel. Tidal ponds serve as "sludge lagoons" and vast stretches of marshlands are "mostly covered with a tar of petroleum products." Leaking pipes and rusty storage tanks have caused "widespread groundwater, soil and sediment contamination."

If there were a prison for polluters, Exxon-Mobile would be on death row for these sins.

So why did Gov. Chris Christie smuggle in a key to help them escape? Why did he settle a $9 billion suit for just $225 million?

Why did he send in his own lawyer to overrule the legal team that had been working on this for years - a team that had already won the early rounds establishing Exxon-Mobil's guilt?

"Something is not right," says Sen. Bob Smith, chairman of the environment and energy committee. "This smells like a dead fish, worse than the refinery."

All true. Christie has to explain this.

Read the rest here:http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/03/from_christie_to_exxonmobil_with_love_moran.html#incart_river