Really. The mayor of a New Jersey city has all the power he needs to accomplish anything at all that happens within the borders of the city. The New Jersey constitution apparently gives a mayor the powers of Batman. He could go down to the Port Authority and start punching people in the face until someone starts opening lanes.
I don’t think you believe a word of what you’re saying.
What does Sokolich’s competence or incompetence have to do with anything? He didn’t cause the damned traffic jam.
Questions about how he handled the jam are just a side issue that distracts from the main issue; which is probably exactly what their meant to do.
Precisely. The Blame The Victim ploy is just one of the weapons in the sad array of distractions, strawmen, non sequitirs, and howls of “no proof!” that have been flung in desperation to deflect any blame from Christie.
If it’s in hope of preserving his viability as a presidential candidate, that … is no longer a consideration.
The bolded claim - Sokolich gave up because a couple of Port Authority employees wouldn’t return his call.
Unfortunately, there has been an amazing lack of information about Sokolich’s heroic 4-day effort to solve the massive traffic jam affecting Ft Lee. Either Sokolich didn’t provide the media with the details or the media didn’t report them. What has been reported is that Sokolich called Port Authority Baroni and Baroni/Wildstein refused to call him back.
*Uh, we had a slight sourcing malfunction, but…uh, everything’s perfectly fine now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now. How are you?
(post shortened for clarity)
In order to help me better understand the inner workings of New Jersey mayoral protocol, could you provide a cite of any law, or regulation, or SOP as to why the mayor of Ft Lee wouldn’t have been permitted to, or was restricted from, contacting anyone and everyone, who he thought could have alleviated the traffic problems in Ft Lee?
I believe he also tried to call the governor’s office and if I’m not mistaken one of the staffers apologized to someone because she mistakenly took his call. He likely had a limited list of people that he could call at the Port Authority, it’s a big enough organization that he very likely didn’t know where to turn when his normal contacts refused to talk to him. Ditto the governor’s office. But this whole focus seems to be blaming the victim. It seems like telling a stabbing victim “what do you mean, you’re down three units of blood? It’s your own damn fault for waiting for an ambulance instead of hailing a cab.”
While Batman would certainly have had no problem personally moving the traffic cones back, the Flash could do it faster. 
I wouldn’t expect the same from a mayor of Sokolich’s mere human abilities. I would, however, expect a mayor to burn up the phone lines and track down every possible lead that could help alleviate the traffic problem.
I consider the “victims” to be the people stuck in traffic and the people in Ft Lee who were inconvenienced for 4 days. (Was the reported death a result of a delay in reaching proper care in time?) There is plenty of blame to go around. The people known to have created the traffic jam, the media who failed to ask the right questions, the mayor elected by his constituents to handle just such unexpected debacles.
So what you’re getting at here, if I’m reading this correctly, is that Sokolich is the real villain here, because he wasn’t effective enough at preventing the governor from hurling his city into chaos for four days as a means of petty partisan retaliation.
I’m sure that’ll go over like hotcakes in the '16 primaries.
Mayors are not generally elected with the assumption that they will have to be able to overpower the governor and an interstate super-agency when the governor and the interstate super-agency maliciously conspire to inflict harm on the city and stonewall efforts to change it. Mayors and other elected officials who share co-geographical jurisdictional authorities are generally expected to be operating in good faith.
And there’s absolutely no reason for me to have written those sentences, because they are blindingly obvious to everyone. You’re being disingenuous and shameless by writing those lines.
I agree. A reasonable assumption for the mayor would be that he was working with other public servants who had the best interests of the people in mind. It would be reasonable to assume that urgent phone calls to the Port Authority and the Governor’s office would be returned. Hopefully, he never before encountered the case where other public servants were carrying out a political vendetta.
Well stated.
The reason was and is to distract and deflect.
Any sacrifice in the service of protecting Christie is not too great.
No, you’re not reading it correctly.
I consider Sokolich to be ineffective because he wasn’t effective. Port Authority Foye was effective and ended the traffic jam in Ft Lee. It’s up to the Ft Lee voters to decide if Sokolich’s efforts are worth reelecting him again.
It’s obvious that Port Authority Wildstein and Baroni plus Kelly are the real villains because they were involved in the planning, implementation, and attempted coverup of the Great NJ Lane Reassignment debacle. There may be others.
I have no problem waiting for evidence of Christie’s involvement, if there is any to be found.
You consider Sokolich to be ineffective because you want to blame someone other than Christie and his cohort.
You keep misspelling “Christie crony Wildstein”.
True. There are quotes of both men stating that they each had one constituent- Chris Christie.
"I consider Sokolich to be ineffective because he wasn’t effective. Port Authority Foye was effective and ended the traffic jam in Ft Lee. It’s up to the Ft Lee voters to decide if Sokolich’s efforts are worth reelecting him again. "
I just finished lunch. I’m going to have a cookie now.
Try and stop me, smart guy! You will, in your simple worldview, now become either effective, or not.
Oops, too late. You are ineffective.
“It’s the code, sir. Code! That’s a big word with the men who live on the frontiers of Empire. Morale can crumble very easily out there. Drink, women and unpaid gambling debts, those are the steps down.”
Still, I would prefer some actual evidence against Mr. Christie other than that he’s such a fat fuck he’s bound to be the one who did it.
Points to doorhinge for creativity. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to blame the part time Mayor of Fort Lee (pop 36,000) when the Port Authority, an inter-state organization, closes 2 of 3 toll lanes from Fort Lee without prior announcement and keeps them closed for 4 days. And the idea that more phonecalls from the Mayor of Podunk would get the Port Authority to change its mind is hilarious.
Foye deserves kudos for ordering the reopening of the lanes from Fort Lee. But normal people understand that he could do so because he, you know, had line authority at the organization controlling the bridge.
At any rate, methinks the key incident was the Sep 13th column by John Cichowski at the NJ Record. That’s the sort of thing that gets the attention of our public servants. Did Mayor Sokolich prod the columnist to write that column? Not clear, except that he was quoted prominently.
Let’s roll the tape: Sokolich said he had written and phoned at least one Port Authority official for an explanation, to no avail. He would not name the official except to call him “a highly placed individual who has always been helpful to us.”
“Please print this,” the mayor noted. “I’m always proud and pleased with this administration even though I didn’t support the toll increases. So I don’t understand the basis for this. Is there a punitive overtone here? Is there something we should have done? I just don’t know.” Those look to me like strong words from a pro-active part time mayor who is not afraid to stand up to criminal activity.