No matter that it looks like "Christie cronies made sure they protected their boss [from the GWB] like he was a Sicilian godfather in the wrong pasta joint"(1)
The record of failures by this media-created, colossal, destructive, consummate phony continues without pause.
Since 2010, New Jersey could have been adding jobs and saving the region's infrastructure and environment with free money from the federal government for the ARC Rail Tunnel Project.
Instead, he did this:
Governor Chris Christie came to office in 2010 staking New Jersey’s economic turnaround on the resurrection of two stalled construction projects. Now, one is a $2.4 billion flop, and the other is years behind schedule.The flop is the Revel Casino, into which Christie poured $216 million in tax breaks, but was closed last month after two bankruptcy filings. The other project is "American Dream," Christie's plan to turn the failed Meadowlands Mall "Xanadu," into a "Mall of America" type Gargantua, featuring shops, restaurants, an indoor ski slope (!), a Ferris wheel and 35 Pinkberries (ok -- I made the last one up).
The Dream turned Nightmare has $390 in tax breaks, but has been held up by, among other things, a lawsuit by the Giants and Jets related to game day traffic (who says the NFL never does anything helpful?). Although some work has now started, most of the $1.9 billion in planned financing has not been finalized, and the borough of East Rutherford hasn't approved issuance of $524 million in redevelopment bonds tied to American Dream revenue.
These huge faiiures have been accompanied by eight credit downgrades and horrible job growth -- New York has regained its 2012 employment levels, while New Jersey has regained on about half the jobs it lost in the recession.
It will take until 2018 for New Jersey to reach 4.09 million employed, its January 2008 level, according to the Economic Advisory Service of Rutgers University in New Brunswick.(2)
But he's Joe and Mika's pal, so what the heck.
(1) Rude Pundit
(2) cited in Bloomberg