“Whether he discussed it or not, he’s doing their bidding,” insists Jeff Tittel, the director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “The Governor has a problem about completely telling the truth. If the Governor was Pinocchio, you’d be getting hit with his nose about now.”
Those were among Tittel’s remarks today during my interview with him this afternoon on my Pacifica Radio show here on KPFK in Los Angeles. (Full audio posted below.) Needless to say, he doesn’t have much confidence in NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s latest denials about his relationship with the billionaire oil magnate Koch brothers.
As we’ve reported over the past 24 hours, last night, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) scammed a local radio host concerning his meetings with the Rightwing billionaires. Earlier today, finally, local media forced a direct answer from him on whether he ever discussed the landmark Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) with the Kochs. The co-owners of Koch Industries, the second largest private company in the nation, which they inherited from their father, hate the RGGI cap-and-trade plan to curb pollutants, as created by 10 Northeastern states. Christie’s unilateral withdraw from the agreement last May was a shocker, though one celebrated by the Kochs and their well-funded Climate Change Denial Machine who had long been lobbying against it.
Today, Christie denied the topic ever came up in either of two now-known private meetings with Kochs, both revealed by Part 2 of our exclusive report last week at Mother Jones on the secret speech Christie gave for the Kochs at their ultra-exclusive Summer Seminar near Vail, CO last June, and David Koch’s introduction to it. (Audio we obtained and transcribed, from that speech, is posted right here.)
After we’d broken the story last week, Tittel, told AP the secret Koch Tapes provide “the smoking gun that shows [Christie’s] been working with the Koch brothers from the beginning.”
But now, even after Christie insists that discussion of RGGI “never came up” during discussions at either the Colorado appearance, or during his secret two-hour meeting with David Koch in New York City earlier this year, Tittle is not inclined to believe him. He explained his reasons why on today’s KPFK show, where you’ll also get to hear some of the audio from the Koch seminar (such as when Koch describes Christie as “my kind of guy”), and Christie’s bamboozling of the NJ radio host who had asked him about the topic last night…
Download MP3 or listen online here [appx 28 min]…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/KPFK_BradFriedman_KochTapesChrisChristie_JeffTittel_091411.mp3]
Also, since I received a lot of nice compliments on it, the video of Sam Seder’s interview with me — also discussing the Koch tapes — from this past weekend’s Ring of Fire, is posted below…
During this same time period, AFP ran a issue campaign of lies in NJ about the allegedly high cost of RGGI and negative impact on the economy and jobs.
Christie echoed those same lies in his excuse for killing RGGI.
Read about it all here:
Republicans Caught Lying About Costs of RGGI
http://tinyurl.com/3mktcdu
Christie RGGI Withdrawal Plan Slammed at Trenton Hearing
http://tinyurl.com/3cfcj8p
I wrote this on March 28, 2011:
Christie Bowing To Koch Brothers on RGGI
http://tinyurl.com/4f7xglt
Brad, long before your Secret Koch Tapes articles were published, NJ progressive Democrats announced a plan to recall Gov. Christie.
It would be interesting to know what impact these revelations have had on their effort.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did and it never will” Frederick Douglas
If You Live in NJ – SIGN THE PETITION!!!! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dumpchristiecrats/ or go to http://www.nj-can.org and click on the “Sign the Petition” block/button/widget
Actually PDA-NJ(Progressive Democrats of America-New Jersey) is only a small part of this state wide grass roots movement called NJ-CAN (nj-can.org to “Dump The Christie-crats and “Recall Christie”. We ar a coalition of activists, retirees, private citizens, public employees,union and non-union residents who got fed up when (alleged)Democrats not only steamrolled an anti-labor bill through the legislature in 10 days but they gave Christie the biggest victory of his term to date.
Our first objective is to have NJ Senate President Sweeney & NJ Assembly Speaker Oliver removed from their leadership positions by the Democratic Caucus, (then the Recall Campaign)