From post #27:
Chronos: “This was not done for anyone’s personal benefit, and so trying to make sense of it in those terms won’t work. It was done as an act of spite. The purpose was to hurt people, and it succeeded in that.”
You guys have to be more specific about the meaning of ‘hurt’ and ‘people’.
It seems that the purpose of the bridge closure was to hurt a political opponent by hurting the voters in his area. If the voters then took out frustration on the political enemy, great. But mainly it was to hurt the people, thus showing the political enemy “don’t mess with us”.
It’s like a gang leader sent some members out to randomly beat up citizens in a rival gang’s territory. They are sending a message: Don’t Fuck With Us.
Of course they meant to hurt people. That was the whole point.
I’m sorry, but you said people are saying it was done “simply to hurt people” in a twirling mustache, kick the puppy, kind of way. Yes, it was done to hurt people (the mayor? the state senator?), knowing that it would also hurt the commuters. But it wasn’t done simply to hurt people – it was done out of spite or revenge or some other stupid, childish political reason.
Do you understand the difference? Someone who was “simply evil”, as you mention upthread, may do something “simply to hurt people.” I claim that no one is claiming that.
However, someone who is looking for some political revenge or something may do something that hurts people in order to get that revenge.
I see a logic disconnect in your statement. “If the voters then took out frustration on the political enemy, great.” But if not? It is pretty clear from people local to NJ posting in this thread that almost no one living there would blame the mayor for the problem that was clearly Port Authority’s. So - are you claiming that they wanted to hurt the people just for the sake of hurting the people, even if it didn’t hurt the “political enemy”?
I give credit to Chronos for being able to express himself clearly. He certainly does that in other threads. If he meant hurting the mayor or the state senator, he would have said so. No. He said that THE purpose of the exercise was to hurt people. Not anyone in particular. Which is, as I pointed out, seriously stupid.
Good. Now convince Chronos of that.
You’re wrong. Chronos is. And that is the person to whom I was replying.
Was it ever in contention? The claim in post #27 was that the purpose was to “hurt” people and that is was an “act of spite”. Am I unique in finding “purpose” synonymous with “motive”? Maybe. But that post, to me, quite clearly conveyed the claim that the motive was to cause harm to (as later clarified) “motorists” and “the people of the city” and the “mayor.”
Now, maybe by “hurt” we just mean “inconvenience and cause to rue the day they crossed the governor” but in that case it’s not merely an “act of spite.” And I don’t think that’s what you mean by “hurting people.” Is it? Am I missing something here?
It’s difficult to read texts like these and conclude that inconveniencing people was not the purpose.
At best this is indifference to the traffic jam being a pain in the ass to people who didn’t do anything. It’s hardly worth this much quibbling.
Steve Kornacki, of MSNBC and was/is from NJ, offered this as a more likely cause of the lanes being closed, on the Rachel Maddow Show. The funding for the redevelopment project has not been delayed (I think the resident portion has been completed, while the office buildings have not been started), and the attractiveness of the project depends upon the easy access to the GWB. It’s possible that this was an attempt to further delay, or scuttle altogether the funding, and thus open up the parcel for some other group.
And raising further suspicion, were Christie’s remarks when the matter was first raised in December. The Governor asked why would Fort Lee have three lanes, anyway? And then, in an aside, said someone should look into this. That kind of comment could further jeopardize the funding for a project that relied on easy access to the GW Bridge.
Some other developer, friend of Christie, or of someone in his office, may want to see the Fort Lee project go into default and then snatch it up at a bargain price.
As Deep Throat once said to Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money.”
Except again, its not clear why the traffic study would cause anyone to worry about the lanes being closed when the project was actually finished. If anything, the chaos from just three days of closure would presumably reassure investors those lanes weren’t going anywhere.
The project costs a billion dollars. I don’t think anyone can “snatch something up” at that price. You need investors, building plans, permits, etc. If someone else was interested in the property and positioned to actually do something about it, I think the local Jersey press would already know about it.
And in this case, it doesn’t appear like anyone either gained or lost any money. There’s nothing to follow.
So what does the sentence “Time for some traffic problems in Ft. Lee” mean, if not “we want to cause problems for Ft. Lee”?
It is not speculation at this point to say that this was done to hurt people. We have the e-mails from the people who did it, stating why they did it, and the reason they stated was because they wanted to hurt people. This is a known fact, and there is no point arguing it.
That seems like a pretty fine distinction.
If hurting people had been merely incidental to some other reason for closing the bridge, I’d see where you might have a point. If, for example, somebody had offered them a bribe to close the bridge and they took the money and didn’t care whether or not it inconvenienced people.
But it’s clear that their purpose for closing the bridge was to inconvenience people. The fact that they were inconveniencing people for a reason rather than just to be dicks seems rather trivial. Because regardless of their motive, their intent was to inconvenience people.
And, as always, your claim that “lefties” are the ones who make blanket accusations is undercut by the fact that your claim is itself a blanket accusation.
Perhaps the motive was simply to scuttle the project so that the Fort Lee politicians couldn’t get credit for economic development.
This is strange to me. Is it really just my political leanings that cause me to draw a meaningful distinction between the “why” and the “how”?
It doesn’t strike me as entirely academic either. For example, if Chronos is that that the motive was spite and the purpose was harm to the motorists or the city, then I find it substantially less likely that Christie was personally involved or even aware. I have no trouble believing him capable of heavy-handed intimidation, but damage for damage’s sake?
Marley-I use the RIDE, a subsidiary of the MBTA (our local transportation authority), to get places. I couldn’t pick the head of the RIDE or MBTA out of a line-up. I suspect that’s true of most Bostonians.
We’re not talking about naming the head of the agency. We’re talking about having heard of the agency at all.
BTW, to more broadly contribute to the discussion: this got national traction because it’s the busiest stretch of HW on Earth, under the jurisdiction of a potential Presidential candidate.
Marley, the 1st thing a Bostonian would say if you asked if they were familiar with the MBTA is,“Oh, you mean ‘the T’?”. 
nm
True, but when the T turns into a mess I would not ever think to blame the Mayor of Cambridge. I wouldn’t even blame the Mayor of Boston. Heck, even with the closing of the Longfellow Bridge and all the traffic that causes, the mayors aren’t on my radar at all.