Jim Epstein on Chris Christie and the Port Authoritarians

“I feel violated,” New Jersey resident Leon
Keylin told USA Today after
hearing the dirty details behind the Bridgegate traffic jam that
choked the city of Fort Lee last September. The politically
motivated gridlock that paralyzed his hometown attracted the
interest and ire of the nation, in no small part thanks to the
presidential ambitions of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Jim
Epstein writes that while Christie’s office has taken most of the
heat for screwing over drivers on and around the George Washington
Bridge, another directly responsible party has so far dodged most
of its share of the well-deserved blame. The Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey, the government agency that ordered up the
punitive gridlock, is a bastion of power, patronage, and
bureaucracy that violates commuters and taxpayers on both sides of
the bridge every day of every year.

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