Hey Guys!
Let's not do another bypass on breaking information as we did on the "47%" video..... We (including myself,) missed this very important diary, Port Authority Shouldn't be a Patronage Pit written by a former executive director, Peter C. Goldmark!
I was executive director of the Port Authority from 1977 to 1985, and what has happened to the agency over the past two decades is unfortunate.
In the diary, he states:
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has been on the griddle after it became known a senior staff member directed the Port Authority to engineer a traffic jam in Fort Lee, seemingly as an act of political retaliation. The traffic choked up roads for days in the small borough at the western end of the George Washington Bridge.
But an important aspect of this episode has been lost in the din of a political scandal: What does this say about how the Port Authority, which operates the bridge, is being run?
(my bold)
This diary deserves to be on the Recommended List.
Please T&R, Like, Tweet, Email.
There are many diarists here who fulfill true journalistic functions of bringing us 'hidden news,' and/or in 'connecting the dots,' but we also need to create room for those who want to essentially 'whistleblow' by bringing us their experience and insights.
I think that the main way we can encourage true journalism here is to get it the attention it deserves. And if it has gone down the "Recent Diary List" before being noticed and discussed, let's try to remedy that, as I am trying to do with this diary. I confess I missed the diary as well and didn't learn of it until this morning reading comments in ericlewis0's diary, which I also recommend to you. There have been a lot of CC diaries; the 'more the merrier,' or words to that effect is what Kos has said.
And as I said in my own recent CC diary re Sandy funds
These are a sample of some unanswered questions that Chris Christie needs to answer about his use and abuse of the governor's office.
Christie appears to have employed 'brown shirt' tactics against his enemies and those who refused to do as he said. That kind of thuggery apparently had reached the level of power of enabling him to stop traffic on the world's busiest bridge for a week. Scores of people buckled, too intimidated to stand against him. Fortunately some did.
Since we now have been given the unique opportunity to stop a literal fascistic politician in his tracks, we must remove every floor board under him and expose his every transgression, since I am convinced that Chris Christie is the true face of the Republican Party. The others may wear smiling masks, but Chris Christie's thuggery and abuse of power and politics of intimidation is their goal.
It is most certainly the current Republican modus operandi.
The more we learn about and expose Chris Christie, the more we expose this current ReThuglican Tea Party Religious Right Wing group who would be happy to stop bridges and retaliate against towns and mayors, IF THEY COULD GET AWAY WITH IT.
We have to make sure that Chris Christie and his ilk, DO NOT get away with it. And we have to make sure that he is exposed on as many of his wrong doings as we can find.
In short, we have to make an example of him.
Christie will not fall easily. The edifice propping him up is dense with corporate interests, so we must work on chipping away at his foundations one stone at a time and the Port Authority Patronage culture and how Christie used it is certainly a very important target.
Come on Folks! Let's get this diary on the Recommended List, so that media, etc. will see it.