I Think that Chris Christie now has a "-Gate" Scandal on His Hands

Pass the Popcorn

Christie's two recently resigned political appointees to the Port Authority have lawyered up:

Two appointees of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who recently resigned amid a controversy over lane closures at the George Washington Bridge have retained private attorneys, according to correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, former executives at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, have sought outside counsel amid an investigation into why traffic lanes leading to the nation's busiest bridge were closed, the documents showed.

The hirings came as correspondence and documents related to the bridge controversy are due to be delivered soon to a legislative inquiry of the state Assembly.

The Democrat-led Transportation Committee subpoenaed documents from people involved in the incident, including Messrs. Baroni and Wildstein and leadership of the authority, seeking more information about how the lanes were closed and why.

Mr. Wildstein recently hired Alan L. Zegas, a criminal lawyer from Chatham, N.J., to represent him, according to an email sent from Mr. Zegas to the state Legislature Tuesday.

Mr. Zegas was co-counsel to former Newark Mayor Sharpe James in 2008 in response to federal corruption charges brought by Mr. Christie when he served as the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, according to Mr. Zegas's biography.

Mr. Baroni retained Michael Himmel, of Lowenstein Sandler LLP. Mr. Himmel works at the firm's New York City and Roseland, N.J. offices, and specializes in white collar crime, according to his biography.

I figure that this will eventually degenerate into finger pointing, and the question is whether it will just involve Mssrs Baroni and Wildstein, or if it will go higher.

As Much as I Like Liz Warren, I Wish that Martha Coakley Had Beaten Scott Brown in the Senate Race in 2010

She ran a truly horrible campaign, but her tenure as Massachusetts AG has generally been pretty positive.

Case in point, her most recent report showing that not-for-profits pay obscene remuneration to their top executives, and proposing changes in corporate governance:

Nonprofit groups in Massachusetts are paying their chief executives huge amounts of money and giving them lavish perks unavailable to most workers, according to a new report from Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office that calls for reform in the way groups disclose executive compensation.

The 92-page study, which covered 25 large charitable organizations in Massachusetts, mainly hospitals, insurers and colleges, found all of them paid their leaders at least a half-million dollars a year in total compensation. And many of the organizations offered their executives an assortment of other benefits, including bonuses, deferred compensation, auto allowances, financial planning, life insurance and other benefits that are more commonly associated with corporate leaders.

Even when executives retire, they often leave with hefty severance or consulting deals that allow them to earn millions more. The executives covered by the report each received between $487,000 and $8.8 million in total compensation each year between 2009 and 2011 — pay levels that Coakley’s office said should cause concern in some cases.

“It is not always clear that large compensation benefits packages are actually necessary to attract and retain talent,” the report argued.

Gee, you think?

Doubtless, there is some politics involved here, Coakley is looking to run for Governor, but when we are talking about tax-exempt organizations, there is a direct governmental interests, because it is the taxpayer who pays for these excesses.

News from South of the Manson-Nixon Line

The US offers free "lifeline" cell phone service for the poor.

In Georgia, the powers that be decided to levy a fee on the free cell phones, because ……… They just want to hate on the poor, I guess.

A Federal Court just told them to go Cheney themselves:

A federal judge has blocked Georgia's plan to charge low-income residents $5 per month for cell phone service that currently is provided free of charge.

The fee was set to take effect on Jan. 31 and would have made Georgia the only the U.S. state to charge for the federally subsidized phone service.

"The public interest tilts in favor of providing telephone services to low-income households that otherwise would be unable to afford mobile phones," U.S. District Court Judge Richard Story wrote on Tuesday in a temporary injunction that stops the new fee while a court challenge is pending.

Nationally, about 14 million households participate in the Lifeline phone program, according to the Universal Service Administrative Co, the nonprofit organization that administers the program.

The level of hate and evil here is only exceeded by the pettiness shown.

Un-dirtyword believable.

Deep Thought

Seen on Facebook.

Frau Merkel Speaks the "S-Word" to Barack Obama

No, I don't mean the word, "Sh%$," though the Germans have many words for excrement, I mean the word Stasi, as in the East German secret police:

The dispute also reflects very different views of how far the state should go in conducting surveillance, both at home and abroad.

In an angry conversation with Mr. Obama in October after the phone monitoring was revealed, Ms. Merkel said that the N.S.A.’s activities reminded her of growing up as the daughter of a Protestant minister in East Germany. “She told him, ‘This is like the Stasi,’ ” said one person who had discussed the conversation with the chancellor.

Another person familiar with the conversation said Ms. Merkel had told Mr. Obama that she was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, “the N.S.A. clearly couldn’t be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out.”

This is, to quote Joe Biden, a "Big f%$#ing deal."

Angela Merkel grew up in the DDR, and this likely not a term that she invokes lightly.

The capabilities of our state security apparatus are remarkable, but the custodians of those capabilities, the NSA, CIA, and the rest of the three letter acronyms, cannot be trusted to deploy these capabilities in the best interest of the United States.

They are simply too enamored of their abilities, and so act without regard to the consequences of a potential failure.

Bush Used Phoney National Security Excuse to Cover Up For His Saudi Buddies

I am so not surprised by this. There is a reason why Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saudr, is also known as "Bandar Bush" for his close ties to the Bush Crime Family.

We know that the Bush administration flew members of the Saudi royal family out of the US following 911, and now we know that they redacted all references to the House of Saud funding terrorism from the 911 report:

With relationships changing between the US and major actors in the Middle East, perhaps it is inevitable that the issue of Saudi Arabia’s funding of terrorism in the US is being revisited.
George W Bush in the Oval Office

Congressmembers Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass) recently got access to unredacted copies of the 2002 report of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry (JICI) on 9/11. You may recall that 28 pages of that document had been redacted by George W. Bush for “national security purposes”. It has been widely reported that the 28 missing pages of the JICI report document a money trail from the Saudi Royal Family to the 9/11 hijackers.

‘I was absolutely shocked by what I read,’ Jones told International Business Times. ‘What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me. I cannot go into it any more than that. I had to sign an oath that what I read had to remain confidential. But the information I read disappointed me greatly.’

This is no new revelation. At the time of the JICI report’s initial release, there was controversy about the extensive redactions and the information that was being withheld. Fourty-six Senators (all Democrats but one) signed a letter asking Bush to release the 28 pages. Bush refused.

The Congressmen Jones and Lynch (The Dem, Lynch, is also pretty right-wing, FYI) are doing their level best to say that Bush covered up for the House of Saud without actually revealing technically classified data.

I do not expect Obama do declassify this.

First, his actions over the past 5 years indicate that he has no interest at all in transparency, and 2^nd, he is not sutpid, and he understands taht there is an implicit contract between him, and George W. Bush, and whoever is Obama's eventual successor, that dirty laundry will not be revealed.

Quote of the Day

And here’s the thing: Republicans don’t want to help the unfortunate.

—Paul Krugman