MORT: The Bottom of the Deck

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GA watched  last night as the 4 members of MORT (Mason, Occhipinti, Russo & Terry Castellano) dropped the axe on the necks of working moms and dads just in time for Christmas.

Moms and dads who work for the City, that is.

GA knows a few- cops and firemen, and their kids who go to Wallace school with my daughter, LA (Little Avenger). I wonder what it will be like for them this Christmas, released into a  lean job market in a slow hiring season.  How will they make ends meet? Will they have to choose between paying bills or gifts for their kids?  What will financial  stress do to these families?

These are our neighbors.

It didn't have to happen.

The midtown garage bond conversion from non-taxable to taxable would have incurred no cost to Hoboken, and added $50K per annum to City coffers.

A no-brainer, right? 

Not for the brains of MORT, steeped in their bitter brew of political self-interest, narcissism, entitlement, and cruel calculation.

Here they are, the people who CHOSE to put the City in financial jeopardy and create jobless households.  Straight from the bottom of the deck.

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Tim Occhipinti came with a script, signaling his keepers had pre-wired the deafness to reason and logic on display last night.  Nope, he stuck to his script and read it- big words and all, with the lilt of manufactured outrage mixed with glee at scoring a touchdown for his team.  Team MORT.  His skull a fortress impenetrable to the suffering his "Me too!" governing would play in putting Hoboken men and women out of work.  In spite of adults speaking slowly and clearly to The Fool like they were teaching a 4 year-old how to ride a bike with training wheels, their words bounced off him like rubber bullets.  No, Timmy came to please his masters.  His masters want the chaos MORT creates to be blamed on the Mayor.  And The Fool of Team MORT left with the script he came with, no wiser but flushed with victory.

Mike Russo is the brains of MORT.  Rage- real hatred for the Mayor has crept into his City Council theatrics. It feels personal;  a real departure from the Russo modus operandi of  'it's only business' and 'politics is a contact sport'.  The jovial manipulator has been replaced by a guy with a grudge. GA thinks he's furious at the mayor for calling in the FBI.  Now the dominoes are falling around him.  Friend (and 'revenue stream?) Al Areszzo gone, the Russo Civic Association at 420 Adams closed, fear of FBI scrutiny frustrating his mother's job search;  the mayor's pulling away his ability to do favors for people which is Russo's source of power, influence and money- favors such as clearing a seat on the zoning board.  My seat, for example.  (And you ain't getting it, either)  Another sign of his diminished influence is his inability to  score Mamma a job.  Of course he's livid, and taking it out on the object of his fury,  Dawn Zimmer. Layoffs?  Collateral damage. Russo now sports a tiny inverted triangle on his chin, looking more like The Devil every day.



Beth Mason plays The Empress of MORT.  Profoundly narcissistic, anyone who challenges her sense of entitlement must be destroyed. She blames others for her own failures; her vendetta against the Mayor and people of Hoboken (for twice rejecting her) rules her political life. She's completely reactive; can't articulate what she's for but can tell you what she's against. Her rage has hollowed her out, made her indifferent to the suffering of others; flexing her 'muscle' and wreaking pain on the people of Hoboken was her aim last night. She's all reflexes now.  The Empress cannot believe her predicament; the possibility of a Federal indictment looms. She blames the Mayor for bringing the FBI to town, and not the immorality or illegality of her own actions- she's the victim.  The plan: make chaos for the Mayor and link her to Governor Christie  (hence the mythical "Christie endorsement") to set up a 'political victim' defense if  she goes down.  If.  Until then, The Empress is using all resources at her disposal to cause as much pain as possible for the people of Hoboken.

Terry Castellano plays The Tower of MORT.  GA will go to the Tarot meaning here:

The card is one of the negative cards in the Major Arcana. It symbolizes changes, conflict and over all disruption of life. Bad news and calamity are quite often following this card. As a card that signals an end of a cycle, this usually means difficulties in relation to it.  This card being negative in nature has little to add to it. The secondary meaning quite often represent drastic or more sudden changes than the primary meaning indicates. A generally bad card and a difficult one to interpret in a positive way. 

There you go. "A generally bad card". The Tower supports her cousin, The Devil.  She carries his vendettas  minus his pleasant veneer. Her visage is scowling, she makes faces, is openly disrespectful toward those she dislikes including members of the public, and speaks out of turn- often in a hostile and disruptive manner. The Tower does not fear consequences.  The Tower can coldly refuse funding repairs for Hoboken's police station that doesn't have heat in the winter nor properly flushing toilets.  The Tower can refuse a simple bond refinance to save the City from  layoffs.  The Tower is a soldier.  All for the greater good of destroying our popular Mayor and  what she represents- 'new' Hoboken.

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So last night Hoboken saw politics played from the Bottom of the Deck.

Now our City has a financial crisis it should never have had.  And many Hoboken families can expect a crisis they don't deserve.

With MORT to thank.