... he wouldn't have had as much power as he does in NJ. That's the thought that kept swirling in my mind as I read this AP article, posted this morning on TheDailyJournal.com:
Christie's eyes and ears at Port Authority holds key answers
I'm by no means an expert on any of this, but it's a logical conclusion based on some of the stuff I've learned over the past month -- most notably the characterization of the NJ governorship as far more powerful than the same position in all the other states. Within his or her respective state, all the other governors operate within boundaries that have somehow been loosened far more in NJ than any in other member of the United States of America.
As the NJ scandals continue to unfold, something we've all suspected since the beginning of time is coming into clear view.
It is the unfortunate reality that power without checks and balances will. always. inevitably. lead to corruption that, given enough time for the spiral to spin downward, decimates the Middle Class.
The revelations (aside from the allegations that have not yet been proven) regarding Christie's Sandy recovery funds shed light on just one such incident among an untold number of abuse-of-power transactions; it just happens to be huge and very high-profile. Note that several other greed-and-power-driven incidents attributed to Christie's regime have been reported over the past month, but the ones that get the most media attention are the big ones, to the tune of Four Million Dollars and above. It's not a stretch to extrapolate that collectively, corrupt power plays are grossly under-detected and mostly under-reported in the media.
My point is that all of these transactions, despite differences in the unique circumstances of each, involve diversion of wealth into the hands of the 1% from a vastly larger number of people in the 99%.
Further extrapolation leads to a hypothesis that this is simply an inescapable phenomenon, a manifestation of one of the less-pretty facets of human nature. Therefore, corruption can creep into Democratic circles, not just Republican ones. I believe there have been many cases that support that hypothesis.
So the bottom line is that the NJ scandals should be raising a huge, bright-red flag to the people of this country. Something is fundamentally out of synch in our Government for The People, leaving it constantly vulnerable to that not-so-pretty facet of human nature. We need to figure out how the downward spiral managed to keep spinning for so long and so fast in NJ. If we don't figure it out, if all we aspire to do is to complete all the investigations and "close the case," then the spiral will go out of control again somewhere else.
And I'm curious whether anyone else agrees with this line of reasoning. My default guess is that a lot of people have already expressed the same concerns; if you've seen an article somewhere that speaks to this, please share in the Comments! Thanks!
