Who is the Murphy lawyer getting fat on that EDA contract?

By Rubashov

Your tax dollars at work: State spent nearly $11M to 'save' $11M. Are more savings coming?

 
NorthJersey.com reporter Dustin Racioppi has published the first in a series of articles in the Bergen Record and affiliated newspapers, detailing how an investigation of a tax incentive program has turned into yet another Murphy administration gravy train.  Murphy promised that the investigation would uncover a half-billion dollars in savings on the incentives administered through the Economic Development Authority (EDA).  So far, those savings haven’t been even close, as Racioppi writes: 
 
In the year and a half since Gov. Phil Murphy created a task force to investigate New Jersey's tax incentives, the team of lawyers said it has saved the state $11 million.
 
It's also billed nearly as much, too.
 
The task force was still working through the COVID-19 pandemic and through April — the peak in hospitalizations and deaths — and had billed the state nearly $10.6 million, according to invoices obtained through the Open Public Records Act.
 
…Known formally as the Task Force on EDA’s Tax Incentives, the legal team was named by Murphy in January 2019 after a state comptroller found flaws in the main incentive programs passed by his Republican predecessor Chris Christie and Democrats in the Legislature. The task force started billing in March 2019, the same time it began hearings.
 
…The task force had signaled earlier in the year when it issued its second report that it might have been its last. But the pandemic changed the circumstances.

“Although the task force does anticipate wrapping up its investigation in the near future, we elected to afford companies extensions on various deadlines in light of the pandemic," said Jim Walden, one of the task force attorneys and whose New York-based firm, Walden Macht and Haran, has been paid the most by the state.
 
"Thus, finishing the final report and recommendations will accordingly take a bit longer than we initially hoped.”
 
Who is Jim Walden and what are his connections to the Wall Street habitat through which Goldman-Sachs players Phil and Tammy Murphy moved? 
 
Well, do you remember the last economic crash?  Yes, the one before the virus and the government-enforced shut-down of the economy… yep, that one.  That was the time when Wall Street itself destroyed the global economy – without the help of COVID-19.  They did it all by themselves (but not without an assist from a lot of greed).
 
Millions lost their homes, their savings, their life’s work.  Suicides spikes.  So did substance abuse… opioids anyone?  Did anyone get into trouble for it?  Senator Elizabeth Warren asked that question…
 

Enter Jim Walden, the guy Governor Phil Murphy hired to run the investigation of the EDA.  We’ll take this directly from Wikipedia…
 
While a partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Walden, along with F. Joseph Warin, successfully represented Joseph Cassano, the CEO of AIG's Financial Products unit, for his alleged role in the 2008 financial crisis. U.S. Department of Justice investigators and prosecutors conducted an investigation into whether Cassano deliberately withheld information from investors and auditors.[24] Walden utilized a proactive defense strategy by engaging prosecutors early in the process to present evidence, rather than engaging the public.[25] Neither the Department of Justice nor the Securities and Exchange Commission ultimately brought charges against Cassano.[26]
 
Oh, did we mention that Jim Walden was with the U.S Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1993 to 2002?  Is this what reform groups like RepresentUs call the revolving door? 
 
So, who is Joseph Cassano?  Now wait until you catch this winner…
 
Joseph J. "Joe" Cassano (born 12 March 1955) is an American insurance executive who was an officer at AIG Financial Products from the division's founding in 1987 until his resignation in February 2008.[1] Cassano is considered a key figure in the financial crisis of 2007–2008.[2][3] Political writer Matt Taibbi nicknamed him "Patient Zero of the global economic meltdown."[4]
 
Yep, Governor Murphy brought in the guy who represented “Patient Zero of the global economic meltdown."  The guy who got “Patient Zero” off.
 
During his career at AIGFP from 1987 until he was forced to retire in March 2008, Cassano received $315 million: $280 million in cash and an additional $34 million in bonuses.[9] An initial $1 million-a-month consulting fee was later canceled.[10] According to Matt Taibbi:
 
“In fact, Cassano remained on the payroll and kept collecting his monthly million through the end of September 2008, even after taxpayers had been forced to hand AIG $85 billion to patch up his mistakes. When asked in October why the company still retained Cassano at his $1 million-a-month rate despite his role in the probable downfall of Western civilization, CEO Martin Sullivan told Congress with a straight face that AIG wanted to ‘retain the 20-year knowledge that Mr. Cassano had.’ (Cassano, who is apparently hiding out in his lavish town house near Harrods in London, could not be reached for comment.)[11]”
 
Are you happy yet… or sad?
 
At his daily press briefings, Governor Phil Murphy adopts the persona of an old-time revival tent preacher.  He talks of “blessed souls” and such.  Paid flaks like reporter-turned-politician Darryl Isherwood call him “a good man”.  But that’s the part they want you to see, carefully rehearsed and focus-group tested.  That’s the wrapper.  The product is something entirely different.
 
There’s a lot more on this.  Stay tuned…   
  

"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."

(George Orwell, aka Eric Blair)

Quoted by Chris Hedges, in his bestseller, “Death of the Liberal Class" (2010).