A couple nuggets that have been in print for weeks but seem worthy of another look.
First, earlier I mentioned the documents released today which suggest that Port Authority police were telling angry commuters that the traffic jams were due to a decision made by Mayor Sokolich. Here’s the specific language.
But TPM Reader RE points out that this letter was reported in the Star-Ledger way back on November 13th.
In case you missed it from last night, the BridgeGate story simply doesn’t add up.
Courtesy of TPM Reader DD, here’s an article in what would normally seem the non scintillating tollroadnews.com. It is significantly out of date; published on December 17th. But it’s interesting because it looks at the story as of that moment not through mainly through the prism of national politics and scandal-watching but civil engineering and scandal management. So it’s a helpful perspective on whether or mainly whether this didn’t make sense in those terms
Yesterday Richard Branson’s ‘Virgin Galactic‘ did its third supersonic test of its SpaceShipTwo space craft with which they plan to soon start running paid passenger flights into space. Images after the jump.
Take a moment to read this piece by lawyer and feminist writer Jill Filipovic on online harassment for women. I read it quickly yesterday when we published it but read it more carefully today. It’s bracing and upsetting. I’d like to say it’s shocking but I’m not sure I can. I get all sorts of flak in my line of work. And though I have developed an extremely thick skin there is a level of toxicity in it that enters your system no matter what you do. But in more than ten years of doing this I think I can count on one hand the number of times someone has even suggested they might do me some physical harm. And only in one of those cases did I think it was even remotely serious. Clearly, Jill’s experience – and that of many other women – has been quite different. And the point of her piece is that for women this harassment often skip off the rails of the virtual world into real life.
There’s been a mystery about just who David Wildstein was texting with in those now infamous texts where he says “I feel badly about the kids … I guess” and the mystery person replies “They are the children of Buono voters.” Well, it was Bridget Kelly.
A couple very interesting new threads on the Bridgegate story. As I’ve mentioned, as the scope of the Bridge closure effort and the attempt to cover it up grow, payback for a small town Mayor’s Christie non-endorsement has seemed increasingly implausible as a motive. This morning Brian Murphy went on Steve Kornacki’s show to discuss a major billion dollar development project which would have been gravely impacted (perhaps scuttled altogether) by any permanent move to create a traffic choke point in Fort Lee. (There’s an important disclosure that both men have been very forthcoming about: both worked for Wildstein in former lives when Wildstein ran a NJ politics website called PolitickerNJ.com.) But before getting to that there’s another aspect of this story which I think deserves attention.
This morning I told you about the “follow the money” angle now emerging on Bridgegate. The theory was first floated by Brian Murphy this morning on Steve Kornacki’s show. I asked Brian to expand on his thinking in a piece for TPMCafe and here it is. It’s a must read.
[THIS POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED.]
We’re looking for a web designer to join our team for a very specific and important job. The job title is Front End Web Designer. And that’s a pretty good description. But I really want to find just the right person for this position because it’s critical to the very ambitious plans we have for this year. If it might be you or if you might know someone who’s a fit, I really hope you’ll get in touch with me.
To date, whether we’ve had one, two or three techs working at TPM we’ve generally taken a “full stack” approach. Each member of the team has a hand in programming and front end design and everything in between. But with our goals this year we’re taking a different approach – two programmers focused on building out our new publishing platform and a third focused on front end design.
ICYMI yesterday, Brian Murphy’s close look at the billion dollar development project that might be at the heart of the BridgGate scandal.