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  The jovial manipulator has been replaced by a guy with a grudge.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.

Comments

  1. Brilliant piece, GA!!! Your description of Terry "The Tower" Castellano was spot-on. I thought I would retch last night when she put her glasses on the end of her nose and had the utter nerve to say..."You know, my heart and soul are with Hoboken". Yeah, right. The Tower just so happens to be the source of the stupid rumor circulating around town that there is a "Conspiracy" afoot to reelect the Mayor. The implication, of course, is that the Tower and her Council mates must do everything in their power to prevent the Mayor's reelection and facilitate her personal and political destruction. This should not and cannot stand! From here on out until the Mayoral election in 2013, we will hear nothing other than "NO" from these wretched creatures who will criticize, obstruct and generally behave in a mean-spirited way towards the Mayor and everything she attempts to accomplish. This is what we have to look forward to from these self-absorbed idiots for the next two years. I wonder how many voters in the First, Second, Third and Fourth Wards think this is what these creatures were elected to do? There ought to be a law. RECALL BETH MASON... we can't start soon enough!

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  2. I personally want the mayor to serve a 2nd term if she is willing. Unlike those 4 idiots, she is doing a good job and serving the people of Hoboken w/ distinction. But will she even run again after having to deal w/ these despicable people? Our only salvation will be a recall and some indictments. We need to get rid of the Mason/Russo clown brigade.

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  3. Thanks, rudy-D. These creatures count on the ignorance of the public to escape accountability.

    I can't help feeling last night was a tipping point.

    When the layoffs begin, lights will start going on in this town.

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  4. Yes, I believe that last night may have been a tipping point...MORT jumped the Shark big time and folks are beginning to notice just how utterly ruthless, calculating and cynical they are. They definitely have a problem...there is no rational basis for their votes of late and there will be no rational basis going forward for their war against the Mayor. People will begin to ask themselves why MORT keeps voting down things that make perfect sense and benefit the City. They have a long way to go with all their obstructionism until the 2013 Mayoral election. I only hope that enough Hoboken residents get completely fed up with these idiots, that they simply start tuning them out.

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  5. Beautifully written GA. I keep thinking that they must have a master plan, but I can't fathom how they'll recover from this. Look what they're doing to their friends, and to our City!

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  6. @Mr Bond: I think it falls to Reform to really stress getting the word out that a supermajority of six votes was needed for the bonding modification to pass. I have in my travels talked to several people about the politics of this situation, and as delved into in a subsequent post on this blog, three out of four of them said things to the effect of "why did it fail? Which one of Reform didn't vote for the re-bonding? We're the majority, right?"

    In my book that's a very real, very damaging perception problem.

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