:rolleyes:
:rolleyes:
:rolleyes:
One eye-roll for everything partisan and/or stupid in that sentence.
Sure, now. But back when officials in the Christie administration were closing lanes, I think it’s safe to say they didn’t expect the negative consequences that have appeared. Presumably they were figuring they’d close the lanes for a few days, fuck with Fort Lee, and then move on with the message having been sent.
To use my movie analogy, Sgt Hartman wasn’t expecting to end up getting shot when he encouraged the platoon to organize a blanket party. Just because you have a plan doesn’t mean your plan concludes the way you expected.
I’ve said before that the mistake people like Wildstein and Kelly made was not realizing their environment has changed. Official or not, Christie was being looked at as a potential Presidential candidate and that meant national attention is now focused on him. Things that happen in New Jersey are no longer just local politics.
If this had happened in Pennsylvania, for example, nobody would have cared very much. It would have been reported in the Pennsylvania media but it wouldn’t have been a major national news story. Because Tom Corbett isn’t going to run for President in 2016.
Why not? I think people are over-estimating the political knowledge and interest of the average voter. most people in Fort Lee probably don’t know that there is such a thing as a port authority, much less that it has jurisdiction over the bridge. When things go wrong in a city the mayor gets blamed whether or not it’s their fault.
As a broader example of this, look at the role the economy plays in president elections, even though the president has actually fairly little control in how it turns out. If Putin was pissed off at Obama and wanted to punish him, secretly sabotaging the US economy wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
Eh, it wouldn’t have attracted as much national interest if it weren’t for Christie’s Presidential hopes. But locals and state politicians still would’ve been interested, there still would’ve been a State Senate investigation, those emails still would’ve been subpoena and Wildstein and Kelly still would’ve been screwed.
(and it probably still would’ve attracted some national attention, simply because so much of the US population, money and media is concentrated in the greater NYC area, so local news there tends to get reported more then that of, say, Cleveland)
I find this post interesting, in a case-study sort of way. The evidence is indisputable that Republican officials deliberately acted in such a way as to hurt people. So what’s the Republican response? To question as much else as they can about it, in the hopes that the cloud of questions will obscure what is known clearly. So we know that they deliberately hurt people, but we don’t know why they deliberately hurt people. But is that even important? The important thing is that they did.
But if it had remained on the state level, the Christie administration would have been able to contain it. That was, after all, the point of the incident - it was showing people what happens when you defy the Christie administration. Anybody in New Jersey who might have been thinking about pressing the issue would have had to consider the consequences - push for an investigation and your name goes on the same list.
It grew because it was a national issue. People outside of New Jersey are more willing to take on the Christie administration because they don’t feel as threatened by it.
Well you need to work on it. Because saying you just don’t know isn’t going to go very far when the evidence is so overwhelming.
Maybe your argument should be that nobody can prove the government closed the bridge - maybe it was closed by some random passer-bys. Or maybe that nobody could have anticipated that closing lanes would affect traffic. Or maybe that the bridge never actually closed and this was all just an illusion.
The problem you’re facing is that the smoking guns were revealed early in this case. We’ve seen the emails from the officials where they openly discuss what they’re going to do and why. They come right out and admit they know their actions are going to cause problems and that’s their goal. There’s no way you can spin this.
It’s sort of like once a politician gets accused of sexual harassment, people start coming out of the woodwork to say there were harassed, too. Once someone breaks the ice, others are less afraid to come forward. Local politicians were living in terror of the Christie thugs, but once their thuggery became known then they can come forward as well.
No we don’t. We know that they deliberately acted in a way that lead to people being hurt. There is a difference between the two statements.
Those who closed those lanes very definitely had a purpose. It may have been to cause problems for the mayor. It may have been connected (as someone suggested) to some kind of real estate development. It may have been to cause problems for the Democratic leader in NJ whose district this was. I have no idea which one it was or if it was any of these. But it is stupid to suggest that the purpose (not the result, but the purpose) was simply to hurt people. That’s the idiotic hyperpartisan “my opponents are simply evil” dehumanizing crap that lefties so often employ.
This would be kind of like saying someone in your area wouldn’t know who runs the DC Metro, except it’s even more absurd because the Port Authority runs several huge bridges, the major international airports, buses and PATH trains, and it owns the World Trade Center. And then there’s the notorious Port Authority (bus terminal) on 42nd Street. People know this agency, especially people who commute between New York and New Jersey.
Everybody in Ft. Lee is aware of the Port Authority and their control over the bridge. It will produce headaches for the mayor, but he can easily blame the Authority. The whole town is considered an on-ramp for the bridge.
Well, that depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is, doesn’t it? :dubious:
:rolleyes:
Maybe I’m just confused, but the evidence as to “why” hasn’t struck me as overwhelming. I don’t see Terr claiming that the officials accused didn’t orchestrate the lane closures or that the lane closures didn’t hurt people. It was suggested that the purpose was to “hurt” motorists. Terr took issue with that. It’s also been suggested that the purpose was to punish the mayor, punish a state legislator over judge picks, or to disrupt a development. I too am curious about the “why” (this whole thread is dedicated to curiosity over the why). Since the evidence is overwhelming and it’s openly discussed in the emails, perhaps you can tell me what the answer is?
Your “defense” seems to be along the lines of -
They didn’t actually mean to hurt people; They merely took actions against someone else for some reason, knowing that people would be hurt.
That seems to be pretty much the same thing.
The only difference was, you’re saying that their acts were not entirely done to hurt the public; they were also done to screw with someone in authority they did not like.
Big deal. They did something to hurt people knowingly.
No, just no. Almost everyone in NJ & NYC know that the bridges & tunnels are directly under the port authority. The mayor would not normally be blamed.
We aren’t sure what the motive for hurting people was, but we are sure that the means included hurting people. Or is that point still in contention?
No. I am saying it is seriously stupid to claim that their PURPOSE was to hurt people. Their purpose was definitely something else. They may not have cared whether what they did to pursue that purpose hurt people, or didn’t take it into account, or whatever. But to claim that they did it simply to hurt people is ridiculous.
WTF? No one is saying they did it simply to hurt people. They did it for some petty political revenge or something, knowing that it would also hurt people. Unless you claim that causing a massive traffic jam wouldn’t normally put anyone out?
No, it’s the only explanation that makes sense, given the evidence and the nature of the incident.
They may have only wanted to hurt one person in particular, but they meant to hurt someone by their actions.