Republicans also hate wasting taxpayers money, except when they love wasting it.
New Jersey’s teabag Governor nixed a train tunnel into Manhattan that had a lot of other funding, copious economic development potential and a huge pent up market demand from tens of thousands of locked in customers, but he wants to set NJ tax payer money on fire to support a failed mega-mall. Fiscal prudence bitches !!!
The $1.9 billion megamall project called Xanadu sits in the New Jersey Meadowlands, half-finished and widely ridiculed as perhaps the ugliest building in the state, if not the country. Now Gov. Chris Christie has reached a deal with a private developer (the third, after the first two developers failed) to pour $1 billion into the project to revive and expand it.
The state would provide $180 million to $200 million in low-interest financing to the developer, which operates the Mall of America, and forgo a similar amount in future sales-tax revenue. Critics are questioning why Mr. Christie, who crusaded against government giveaways, would risk so much money to bail out out the troubled development.
What else could Governor Christie have done? Tear it down? Let it sit? Is there a better way to deal with a failed megaproject like this one?