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Chris Hedges: The Trouble With Chris Christie
from truthdig:
The Trouble With Chris Christie
Posted on Jan 12, 2014
By Chris Hedges
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been Wall Streets anointed son for the presidency. He is backed by the most ruthless and corrupt figures in New Jersey politics, including the New Jersey multimillionaire and hard-line Democratic boss George Norcross III. Among his other supporters are many hedge fund managers and corporate executives and some of the nations most retrograde billionaires, including the Koch brothers. The brewing scandal over the closing of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge apparently in retaliation for the Fort Lee mayors refusal to support the governors 2013 re-election is a window into how federal agencies and the security and surveillance apparatus would be routinely employed in a Christie presidency to punish anyone who challenged this tiny cabals grip on power.
Christie is the caricature of a Third World despot. He has a vicious temper, a propensity to bully and belittle those weaker than himself, an insatiable thirst for revenge against real or perceived enemies, and little respect for the law and, as recent events have made clear, for the truth. He is gripped by a bottomless hedonism that includes a demand for private jets, huge entourages, exclusive hotels and lavish meals. Wall Street and the security and surveillance apparatus want a real son of a bitch in power, someone with the moral compass of Al Capone, in order to ruthlessly silence and crush those of us who are working to overthrow the corporate state. They have had enough of what they perceive to be Barack Obamas softness. Christie fits the profile and he is drooling for the opportunity.
Activists, Democratic and Republican rivals for power, liberals, reformers and environmentalists will, if Christie becomes president, see the vast forces of the security state surge into overdrive to stymie and reverse reform, gut our tepid financial and environmental regulations, further enrich the corporate elite who are pillaging the country, and savagely shut down all dissent. The corporate states repression, now on the brink of totalitarianism, would with the help of Christie, his corporate backers and his tea party loyalists become a full-blown corporate fascism.
Wall Street was unable to mask Mitt Romneys cloying sense of entitlement and elitism, along with his Mr. Rogers blandness. But Wall Street sees in the profane, union-busting New Jersey governor the perfect Trojan horse for unfettered corporate power. Christie, eyeing a bid for the presidency in the 2016 election, has been promised massive financial backing by the Koch brothers; hedge fund titans such as Stanley Druckenmiller, Kenneth C. Griffin, Daniel S. Loeb, Paul E. Singer, Paul Tudor Jones II and David Tepper; financiers such as Charles Schwab and Stephen A. Schwarzman; real estate magnate Mort Zuckerman; former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso; former AIG head Maurice Hank Greenberg; former Morgan Stanley CEO John J. Mack; former GE Chairman Jack Welch; and Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone. David Koch has called Christie a true political hero and said he is inspired by this man. Rupert Murdoch, whose ethics seem to align with Christies, is similarly besotted with the governor. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_trouble_with_chris_christie_20140112
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Chris Hedges: The Trouble With Chris Christie (Original Post)
marmar
Jan 2014
OP
"Wall Street and the security and surveillance apparatus want a real son of a bitch in power"
adirondacker
Jan 2014
#2
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)1. Hedges - always cogent
regardless of WHICH party he's attacking.
adirondacker
(2,921 posts)2. "Wall Street and the security and surveillance apparatus want a real son of a bitch in power"
Simply put, They'll never be happy.
edited since my first comment came out wrong...and could have been perceived as a slight on the president, which was Not my intention.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)3. Highly recommend..thanks marmar. n/t
treestar
(82,383 posts)4. Kind of makes me think of the 19th century fat cat
Not disparaging his weight, but in the idea of having it all while there are poor people and thinking he's just on top on he heap.