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" As noted a while back here, Dave Sirota at Pando Daily is all over Chris Christie&amp;#039;s dubious maneuverings with the pension money owed to New Jersey&amp;#039;s public employees. He&amp;#039;s all over it like stupid on Louie Gohmert, Dave is. The scandal has entangled Charlie Baker, the odds-on Republican candidate for governor here in the Commonwealth (God save it!), and Baker lawyered up this week. Which, as a fair-minded blog, we point out means nothing as regards Baker&amp;#039;s involvement -- if any -- in the pension shenanigans, but it&amp;#039;s not exactly the optic with which you want to kick off your campaign for an office you&amp;#039;ve already lost once in your life. This cannot be said of Christie, who is hip-deep in what on the surface looks very much like a pay-for-play scheme by which $200,000 came into his campaign by companies that were doing business in one way or another with the state&amp;#039;s pension fund. This, of course, strikes at one of the pillars of Christie&amp;#039;s political biography, and at one of the primary applause lines in his regular stump speech, in which he tells the heartwarming tale of how brave Chris Christie got up in front of a room full of firemen and told them that changes would have to be made in their pensions and how, by the end of his speech, they were virtually carrying him down the boulevards in triumph. (I said &amp;quot;virtually,&amp;quot; ya bastids. Play along.) Naturally, this narrative suffers a bit if it turns out that the Christie campaign was using the business of those pensions as an ATM. (And, of course, it should never be forgotten that said pension fund was in trouble largely because a succession of New Jersey governors had welched on their obligation to retirees and underfunded it.) Now we discover that the investigation into the Charlie Baker end of things will be conducted, not by an independent body, but by someone out of the state treasurer&amp;#039;s office, possibly because investigating itself worked out so well for the Christie Administration as regards the George Washington Bridge. This has struck some observers as odd. Adam Liebtag, a member of the investment council and president of Communications Workers of America Local 1036, questioned why a Treasury Department auditor is handling the matter instead of a deputy attorney general or the state Election Law Enforcement Commission. &amp;quot;The potential violation in question related to the State Investment Council regulation, so it&amp;#039;s the State Investment Council&amp;#039;s right to make a final determination,&amp;quot; McDonough said. &amp;quot;The auditor for the treasurer is simply reviewing the facts and reporting back to help the State Investment Council come to a conclusion.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And you think that the treasurer&amp;#039;s determination is conclusive?&amp;quot; Liebtag said. &amp;quot;If they come back and say, &amp;#039;Well, we don&amp;#039;t think he is. We don&amp;#039;t think he meets the definition,&amp;#039; I&amp;#039;m not sure that I would be personally comfortable with that as enough.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, Sirota has caught Christie not merely defending his work with the pension fund, but actively bragging about it. Again. Except that he was boasting of returning less than market value on his investments and, apparently, hoping nobody would notice. This is worse than the bridge scandal because every political scandal involving large sums of money changing hands in curious fashion is worse. More than ever, Chris Christie looks like an old-time political boss and, worse, somebody who wasn&amp;#039;t even up to that job. For more coverage of Chris Christie, follow Scott Raab&amp;#039;s ongoing series here. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30981/chris-christie-pension-problem-charlie-baker-052914/>