so I'm posting this now in anticipation of being too incapacitated from either alcohol or laughter to do it later. Speaking of anticipation, the
Surgeon General (the U.S. government's top-ranking doctor) reportedly suggested at a press conference this morning that
people play a safer variation of the traditional debate drinking game by only consuming alcohol when one of the candidates says something reasonable.
So here's the latest on Tunnel-Gate:
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TPM.com: NJ Transit...leases and shares tracks with Amtrak, which was given the Northeast corridor of track between Washington, D.C. and Boston when it was created in 1971...To make a trip from New Jersey to New York, trains pass through a tunnel – one tunnel...(that) was designed in 1902...On the New Jersey approach to the tunnel is a rotating rail bridge that’s even older, prone to getting stuck, and that caught fire a few years ago...
Last Monday...rush hour (NJ Transit) trains were delayed by at least an hour. Then last Tuesday morning, a circuit breaker tripped west of the tunnel, cutting off power to train signal equipment and reducing the tunnel’s capacity to just one train per tube at a time...The next day, delays topped 90 minutes after another set of electrical problems in the tunnel...There were even more delays again on Friday, due again to electrical issues. All of this happened just days after NJ Transit’s board approved a 9% fare hike.
From Iowa, Christie blasted Amtrak for failing to maintain the region’s rail infrastructure, never noting that Congress had recently voted to cut $1 billion from the agency’s budget...(H)e said that if he is elected president, he will see to it that a new tunnel is built under the Hudson...
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Quote:
Gothamaist.com: Christie, who condemned his constituents to decades more of gridlock and crowded train platforms by pulling the plug on a Hudson River tunnel in 2010 after construction had begun...(said) in an interview with Larry Kudlow of WABC:The reason I killed the ARC Tunnel was: the federal government was contributing to it, the state of New Jersey was contributing to it, and the state or city of New York was contributing nothing. And New Jersey was going to be responsible for every nickel of cost overrun...which at that time was estimated to be 3-5 billion dollars...
If I'm president of the United States, I call a meeting between my secretary of transportation, the governor of New York, and the governor of New Jersey, and I say, "If we're all in this even-steven, if we're all going to put in an equal share, then let's go build these tunnels underneath the Hudson River and walk away as equals. We're all equal for the upfront costs, and we're all equal for the cost overruns."
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But why you couldn't do that as governor, governor?
Quote:
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North Jersey.com: Christie appears to have forgotten that $3 billion of the allocated $9 billion for ARC came from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The two states in this particular bistate agency are New York and New Jersey. So while New York City was not required to pony up cash, New Yorkers through the Port Authority were contributing toward a third of the total allocated funding...That sleight of hand may still come back to haunt Christie if investigators find that using Port Authority funds for a road not under Port Authority jurisdiction violated bond covenants. But that is another story.
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Quote:
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Gothamist.com: Just so we're clear...Christie lied...An audit by the federal Government Accountability Office later showed that, though Christie claimed New Jersey would pay 70 percent of the tunnel cost, the actual proportion was 14.4 percent. He also said estimated cost overruns had ballooned leading up to 2010, but the amount hadn't changed in two years...The move did, however, allow Christie to fill the gaping hole in the road repair budget without raising taxes on motorists, which he promised not to do in his campaign.
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And now that you're telling your "stories" on a national level, governor, it's that much more important that you keep them straight!