There is more to the Christie case than meets the eye. Governor
Chris Christie is guilty as charged. No question about it, he used the power of
his office for self-aggrandizement and not to benefit the people he serves. One
of the TV talking heads while relating the report commissioned by Christie on
his guilt or innocence misspoke. He referred to Christie as Governor “Crispy”.
How appropriate that is? He is well done. The problem is that he does not believe
that and a number of powerful media people agree with him. The point is they
may be right but how can that be?
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A jury if 12 can rely on circumstantial evidence to convict
a person of murder, if it is strong enough, so why can’t a jury of millions of peers, who have been offended, convict
a politician of using his powers of office to enhance his own fame and fortune?
Of course, he is guilty. So how can it be that some people can claim he is not guilty?
The truth seems to be that they know he is guilty but their attitude is, “so
what”.
They have a point. Politicians have been doing what he
continues to do since the beginning time. The reference here is to his using taxpayers’
money to hire a law firm he is associated with and pay them $1,000,000 to
exonerate him of all guilty. Count the zeros in that number on their paycheck,
which is a lot of money to do nothing. Let me restate that, they found him innocent of using the powers
of his office to enhance his own fame and fortune, the very thing he did in hiring
them.
“We the people” have become so numb to political corruption that
we accept it. We act as if we somehow do
not realize the power we have as a people. The American people honor and
respect the way we vote. For example, suppose the People of New Jersey voted
49.9999% against Chris Christie as governor; if only one in 10,000 voted
against him; he would not be governor. To know the power of the vote, just look
at all the money spent and manipulations made to change the vote, suppress the
vote, to advertize to influence voters, to gerrymander districts, tell lies,
and publish new story releases at the very last minute in news cycles; all of
this we do with one purpose in mind; to influence the vote.
The bottom line is that until we have a free and fair vote,
we will not know if the people have found him guilty even without a smoking
gun. Now, reread the last paragraph. Can anyone be so naive as to think that he
(Christie) will not continue to use all of these things in addition to the
power of his office to influence what voters think. Can anyone be so naive as
to think that we will have a “free and fair vote”? Can Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer
rest easy now that Christie’s guilty has been exposed and this has all become
known? Can Bill Stepien have his reputation restored as effective political
advisor or can Bridget Ann Kelly get her influential job back? The answer to that is, No, and they shouldn’t!
Nevertheless, will the New York: New Jersey Port Authority retain and even expand
its power? The answer to that is, Yes!
People are expendable organizations that generate influence and powers for
politicians are not.
For the Chris Christie scandal to have meaning, we must use
the power we still have in our votes start to try to change things in a fundamental
way. It is not just New York and New Jersey; it is the entire political system.
A good place to start is not by destroying the government but by making it
better. We must resort to such primitive and naïve notions as honesty and integrity.
It is wrong to suppress vote; it is wrong to gerrymander, it is wrong for the
supreme courts to equate dollars with word; and it is wrong to lie in political
ads. What Karl Roves is doing is wrong; what Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson are
doing is wrong; and what Chris Christie did is wrong. They have had their trial and we must vote in favor of finding them
guilty.
URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated
Very well worded. I entirely agree with your analysis of the state of our political systems. We only differ on a minor point. You propose that somehow the D team is better than the R team. I see that the representatives of both teams are dredged up from the same sociopathic segment of the human species, all corrupted, all worthy of our scorn and contempt. Sadly, I don't see any happy circumstance where we would vote for a candidate picked by billionaire moneys and then by some miracle actually see that person represent the needs of the majority. IMO, It's all about the special interests and more welfare for the rich. BTW, I'm still watching that exponential rise in the wealth for the top 5% $RICH$ citizens.
ReplyDeleteRight on; billionaire picked candidates do not support the people. As you know, I do see a big difference between the numbers of billionaires on the D team verses the R team. I have yet to see a D team billionaire contribute to a single identified candidate but every R team billionaire has a candidate they support; try Thom Tillis, Ted Cruz, or any radical right wing candidate.
DeleteThe D team is struggling to come up with competing dollars to match Sheldon Adelson and Koch Brother, Walton family, etc or to counter a 15.1 million dollar dinner for Boehner. I receive 20 to 30 requests per day to send in $3 to $5 to this or that campaign.
More importantly, the D team has no one equivalent to Castro haters such as Cuban based Rubio and Cruz, or Ayn Rand followers such as Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor. I can easily name ten name “extreme right wing candidates but not one radical Democratic candidate. The D team has no organized effort to support primary challenges like slum gangs based on a protection racket.
Name one Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh equivalentt in liberal radio. On and on.
Sadly, your glasses seem to be fitted with a political polarization that distorts your view on the true nature of people who choose a career in politics. Your view seems to be that only the R team has an issue with greed and corruption at the bequest of their billionaire backers.
ReplyDeleteMy curiosity was peaked regarding who the "top campaign operatives" might be when I recently read, "Many of the biggest Democratic donors and top campaign operatives are aligning behind Hillary Clinton.
Ref:
> http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/2016-contenders-off-and-running-in-the-money-race-103014.html"
Well, one one source of money there is the "Ready for Hilary Clinton.." SUPERPAC. So, who or what constitutes the donors to this organization? Just a quick search yielded the names, George Soros, Marc Benioff, Alice Walton, Jon Stryker, and Steve Mostyn. Rather $wealthy$ donors, billionaires I believe. Of course, they expect absolutely nothing in return since they are on the D team... Oh, just today I read that the Supreme Court has now opened the door to unlimited donations to campaigns. Nice, huh?
Ref:
>https://www.readyforhillary.com/home
>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/ready-for-hillary-donors_n_4706498.html
:-) Oh, please don't insult what little intelligence I have by saying that it is all the small donors.. or any other such fantasy that this oh-so-good SUPERPAC is nobly limiting the amount of individual contributions. That bit of political hog-wash broke my BS meter. I've been to the Donate page and the box at the end reads "Other Amount" and does not limit it. I tried $1,000,000 and it was happy to take a credit card number for that amount.
So, anyway, so goes the D team's struggle to keep up. I'm looking forward to see how the mid-term elections play out. Speculation on this is that the R team will capture a majority of wins. Maybe it is all that billionaire backing?