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Thursday, January 09, 2014

Water Weight!

After a successful reelection, New Jersey governor Chris Christie is now facing a controversy that attracted national attention.

Republican governor Chris Christie is under fire for allowing his aides block off the George Washington Bridge in 2013. That issue landed in the newspapers and became the newest headache for the governor.

The often colorful and yet brash governor of the Democratic state of New Jersey is often floated among the junk food media as a formidable candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Already, the junk food media is piling on this distraction as it was a misled war into Iraq believing that the president of that country was harboring nuclear weapons.
Christie tells New Jersey and the country that he's apologizing for the scandal.
The governor easily won reelection and now in his second term the Republican is now finding out that it's not going to be an easy second term.

Back on September 9, 2013, the dedicated toll lanes for a Fort Lee, New Jersey entrance to the upper level of the George Washington Bridge were reduced from three to one until early morning on September 13, on orders from David Wildstein (who was hired by Christie appointee Bill Baroni) without notification to Fort Lee government and police officials. It caused additional hours each day of even more significant traffic congestion than normal and major delays for school transportation and police and emergency response within Fort Lee during and after the peak hours of travel.

The reduction in these toll lanes occurred due to a purported traffic study, but raised speculation to that they were retribution directed towards Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich for declining to endorse Christie's re-election campaign.

On December 13, 2013, Christie announced he had accepted the immediate resignation of Baroni and the immediate departure of Wildstein from the Port Authority. Asked whether the lane closures had been ordered as political retribution, Christie answered "absolutely, unequivocally not."

Christie added: "I've made it very clear to everybody on my senior staff that if anyone had any knowledge about this, they needed to come forward to me and tell me about it. And they've all assured me that they don't."

The New York Times published emails and text messages on January 8, 2014 tying Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, to the closure. The content of the released communications suggested not only that the lane closures were ordered with the knowledge that they would cause a massive traffic jam, but also that this was the intended effect.

Christie released a statement later that day denying knowledge of the scandal, rebuking Bridget Anne Kelly for her role in the lane closure event, and vowing that "people will be held responsible for their actions".

The following day, Christie apologized for the lane closure and said that he was "embarrassed and humiliated" by the behavior of his staff. He also fired Kelly for lying to him.

The mayor of Fort Lee has accepted his apology and other top Democrats in New Jersey have also commended him for his response.

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