Stupid headline hides truth about GOP-led Congress

A sign in the unisex bathroom at Pushcart Coffee on Ninth Avenue and 25th Street in Manhattan.

Shivering tourists on a walking tour of Manhattan's Theater District on Saturday, another frigid, sunless day.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A headline declaring "deep divide in D.C." certainly is familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper in the last few years.

But after months of hysteria in The Record and other media about Tea Party radicals and other Republicans taking full control of Congress and dismantling President Obama's health care law and other initiatives, reality has set in.

On Monday's front page, more than two months after the 2014 election, Columnist Herb Jackson reports voter turnout was pushed down "nationally to its lowest point since World War II," and ending gridlock is "overly optimistic, to say the least."

Jackson blames voter apathy on a "bitter election," but the media also are at fault for ignoring issues in favor of conflict and sound bites, and failing to reveal the lies in GOP attack ads.

However, the main headline on his column used the old "deep divide in D.C." and ignored the real truth -- no end to gridlock in the new Congress, despite Republican majorities.

Monday's A-2 carried another long correction of a story in the Local news section, the one on Sunday about Brendan Jordan, 7, the New Milford boy who died in a school accident.

Today's paper

Page 1 today is dominated by Staff Writer John Cichowski's Road Warrior column -- based on press releases, phone interviews and fatal accident reports (A-1).

If the past is any guide, Cichowski likely has committed a number of errors in citing state police data, and he continues to refer to pedestrian deaths as "crashes."

Weak laws

Cichowski should be calling for stronger laws to hold drivers criminally responsible for killing a pedestrian.

Now, drivers can use the excuse that they "didn't see" the pedestrian as a get-out-of jail card.

Older drivers

The challenges facing older drivers is another issue the lazy, demented reporter has neglected in the more than 11 years he has been writing the column.

That can be plainly seen today in the two photos that run in Local, where head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, hold up another older driver to ridicule.

Look at the helpless expression on the white-haired woman's face -- as captured by an ambulance-chasing freelancer -- after she drove her 2009 Honda Civic "over a guardrail and retaining wall and down an embankment at a condominium complex" in Ridgewood (L-3).

Of course, the woman didn't "drive" her car through the guardrail on Monday afternoon.

She likely mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal, a common error for elderly drivers.

Is driver retraining available for older drivers such as this woman? 

Cichowski could care less, and Sykes and Sforza fear any such public service stories would deprive them of the filler accident photos they so desperately need to complete their weak local news report.  

Second look

On Sunday, Columnist Mike Kelly criticized Governor Christie for not attending the funeral of another pedestrian, Cliffside Park Special Police Officer Stephen Petruzzello, who was killed by a driver who claimed she didn't see him (Opinion front).

But Kelly gets absolutely no editing, and thinks readers have nothing better to do than plow through a dozen long introductory paragraphs about Christie the football fan and a gubernatorial vacation.

The criticism appears on the continuation page, and many readers may have been so bored by all the background they never saw it.

It seems silly to tell someone who has been a columnist for more than 20 years: Put your criticism in the first paragraph and leave the background for later.

But it's necessary with Kelly, one of the paper's chief word pushers.

Read More

No news today, but here are a few second looks

Repairs to the parking lot, roadway and sidewalk of the Alfred N. Sanzari Medical Arts Building on Essex Street in Hackensack seemed to drag on for months, and made visiting Starbucks Coffee a challenge. When I stopped there on Friday, the work had finally been completed.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Some days you have to question why the media spends more time trying to predict the future than they do on reporting what has happened.

In the crystal-ball category, you can put all the speculation in the past few years about who is going to be the standard bearer for the do-nothing Republicans in the 2016 presidential race.

Today, on Page 1 of The Record, Herb Jackson's NJ/DC column on the fate of a new Hudson River rail tunnel also falls into the former, "no news today" category.

But you have to believe the clueless columnist has never fought the horrendous traffic into New York when his lead paragraph mentions the tunnel in the same breath as projects denounced "as wasteful pork" (A-1).

That's in keeping with the policy of The Record's transportation reporters to ignore how difficult it has been in recent years to find a seat on a rush-hour train.

Home rule

Since Jan. 1, the Local section has been filled with swearing in stories and photos, but today, the editors ran an especially unflattering photo of Jayme Ouellette, who was bending to place her hand on a Bible held by her step-grandson (L-3).

Either the new Rochelle Park mayor is pregnant or she is overweight, but readers are left to speculate.

Amateur hour

All of the swearing in stories have run without comment from the editorial writers, who should at least ask residents to hope that the latest amateur elected to run their town will do a better job than the previous one.

In wealthy Tenafly, the editors haven't attempted to explain why residents rejected two proposals that would have had big environmental benefits, an expanded nature center and extension of NJ Transit's light-rail system to the town's center.

Or why town officials didn't override those narrow-minded residents.

A story on the Tenafly reorganization ran on Sunday's L-3.

Nazerah Bugg

Stories on tributes to Nazerah Bugg, 14, the aspiring Paterson basketball player who was killed by random gunfire in September, haven't reported whether police are doing a better job of protecting Silk City residents from gun violence (L-1 on Sunday).

In fact, the image of the police The Record has promoted in recent years is heroic, and the editors have failed to question the job they are doing -- whether it's stopping the murder of innocent young girls in Paterson or burglaries in Tenafly.

This policy has backfired, as shown by all of the woefully incomplete stories The Record runs on pedestrian deaths, murders and other news the police and prosecutors refuse to discuss with reporters.

Read More

Christie is wrong for New Jersey, wrong for the nation

The Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, above and below, was a source of frustration for North Jersey commuters years before The Record's editors took notice. Only angry letters to the editor roused the paper's transportation writers out of their deep slumber and distracted them from their driver-oriented coverage. Now, the editors are ignoring the problems of NJ Transit rail commuters, who scramble to find rush-hour seats on crowded trains.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In the last few months, The Record's editors had an epiphany:

Governor Christie's mean-spirited policies in New Jersey will have an impact on the 2016 election, if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.

But today's Political Stile column is largely a rehash of which Christie policies "are popular with conservative voters in key primary states" (A-1).

Those conservative voters meant little in the last presidential contest, when President Obama easily won election to a second term, and they won't help the GOP bully, in the unlikely event he is his party's nominee.

That will especially be true, if Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, heads what could be the first all-female White House ticket.

Who needs another Bush or a Christie in the White House?

Jackson stumbles 

A correction on A-2 today notes Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson was wrong in his unusually dull Page 1 column on Monday about his central premise -- how often a U.S. Senate ethics rule has been applied.

How embarrassing. This amounts to a "never mind" from the arrogant reporter, who claimed Rule 23 is "virtually toothless" and "has never been used."

Even the copy editor was fooled into writing this wrong front-page headline:

Senate's
strict rule 
on donors
never used

This Jackson correction and all of the errors readers find in the Road Warrior column makes you wonder about the soundness of the reporting and editing at the Woodland Park daily.

Mercedes in Montvale

In a letter to the editor, Montvale resident Kurt F. Kron says Mercedes-Benz USA is paying about $917,000 in property taxes on about 37 acres in his town -- "a 31 percent discount even after revaluation" (A-8).

In view of the official panic over rumors the U.S. arm of the German automaker might leave for the South, Kron suggests financial incentives should also be offered to keep residents in Montvale.

Read More

A fading Christie lacks the temperament to be president

On Saturday, The Record reported twice on the front page that Hackensack University Medical Center's mobile treatment unit for potential Ebola cases is "behind" a McDonald's on Essex and South Newman streets in Hackensack. But that's not the case. The hospital-owned lot is actually between the McDonald's and NJ Transit's Essex Street Station.

In today's paper, a front-page photo caption says the mobile treatment unit is "near a McDonald's." City officials want the hospital to move the unit, above. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

"Sit down and shut up."

With those words, Governor Christie dismissed another protester, even though everyone but The Record thinks the GOP bully has bungled the recovery two long years after Superstorm Sandy (A-3).

"Why isn't he [Christie] in Ship Bottom today?" protester Jim Keady of Spring Lake said. "Why isn't he in Ortley Beach, where people aren't back in their homes? He's got to finish the job."

Keady held up a sign -- "STAY IN NJ & FINISH THE JOB" -- an apparent reference to Christie's travels raising money for conservative politicians like himself who have been waging war on the middle and working classes. 

Well, is there really any chance Christie will even get the nomination, given his far-from-presidential temperament and his low approval ratings in New Jersey?

If he can't veto bills, he just tells his critics to shut up and sit down.

Voter apathy

He was elected to a second term last November, but the turnout was the lowest for any gubernatorial election in state history.

Christie won, because droves of voters stayed home.

In fact, none of the election coverage so far has addressed how much voters are turned off by the partisanship in New Jersey and Washington, and the Woodland Park daily's relentless focus on politics.

Take today's Page 1 column on the challenge to Rep. Scott Garret, R-Wantage, in the 5th Congressional District, which includes Bergen County (A-1).

Columnist Charles Stile and other staffers give the most coverage and credibility to the candidate who raises the most money, but never say why that is so important.

And this year, I haven't seen one analysis of the distorted and false attack ads big campaign money buys.

Even such an eminence as Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson left out damaging information about Garrett in the first front-page piece on the challenge posed by Democrat Roy Cho, an attorney who lives in Hackensack.

What The Record reported as Garrett's initial opposition to federal Sandy aid is now being called  "raising questions about the potential for wasteful spending" (A-11).

Wednesday's paper

High school football has such a grip on Editor Martin Gottlieb that he ran a two-year-old story about a Paramus Catholic player and his mother all over Wednesday's front page.

Gottlieb again led the front page with lots more on Ebola, even though not a single case has been confirmed in New Jersey.

Two more embarrassing corrections appeared on A-2.

In Wednesday's Better Living section, clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson continues to recommend recipes that turn healthy ingredients into artery clogging nightmares (BL-2).

Her Lobster Frittata includes five whole eggs, a half-cup of cream, 2 ounces of cream cheese and 4 ounces of Swiss cheese.

Jackson should visit a hospital cardiac ward, and talk to patients who have had heart attacks from clogged arteries before she pushes another unhealthy recipe.

Third look

How can Road Warrior John Cichowski be so wrong about so many things in column after column, escaping even basic fact checking by his assignment editor, the copy desk and six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton?

In last Friday's column, which I discussed on Tuesday, Cichowski was relating the history of George Washington Bridge construction.

Then, the clueless transportation writer said:

"Until the Holland Tunnel was completed in Hoboken in 1927, the main method for drivers to get their cars across the Hudson River was by ferry...."

Of course, the New Jersey entrance to the Holland Tunnel is in Jersey City, not Hoboken.

And, of course, no correction appeared.

Read More

With Christie in office, we might as well follow H.S. football

A dental and medical building in downtown Closter shares the street with nail, hair and foot-massage salons; several Korean restaurants and a caterer, and a couple of empty storefronts.

More Korean restaurants and businesses can be found in two nearby shopping centers, Closter Commons and Closter Plaza, both of which are badly in need of a makeover.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record is doing his best to distract readers from the Nov. 4 election.

For the fourth day in a row, the focus appears to be on high school football and Ebola, a potential epidemic created by the media (A-1).

One Page 1 headline seems premature:

SAYREVILLE STARTS HEALING PROCESS

With seven high school students facing sex-crimes charges -- "stemming from an act of sexual penetration on one underclassman," The Record reports -- Sayreville's wounds won't be healing anytime soon, especially if the media has anything to do with it (A-4).

Good health news

The front page today also carries some rare positive news about the federal Affordable Care Act, which Governor Christie did his best to derail in New Jersey (A-1).

In fact, with Christie waging war on the middle and working classes, we might as well follow something as inconsequential as high school football.

Readers have given up hope that Gottlieb and The Record will ever realize the mean-spirited Christie is the worst Garden State governor ever.

Against everything

The GOP bully is anti-everything: 

He's against affordable health insurance, expanding mass transit, taxing millionaires, cleaning up the environment, etc., etc., so on and so forth.

Christie seems to spend much of his time lately out of town, raising money for GOP conservatives and stumping for other Republicans.

N.J. and ISIS

Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson explores the New Jersey congressional delegation's stance on ISIS, the militant Islamic group that is trying to take over Iraq and Syria (A-1).

With only three weeks to go before the election, he should be doing a better job contrasting the positions of Roy Choy, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage.

The Tea Party icon is seeking a seventh term of naysaying from the 5th Congressional District.

What kind of reporter is Jackson? A lazy one. 

Why doesn't he or another staffer ask residents of the district -- which includes Fair Lawn, Hackensack and most of Teaneck -- what they think of the job Garrett hasn't done.

Another screw-up

Also on Page 1, the headline on a brief says "$2.7B is pledged to rebuild Gaza."

But when readers turn to the full story on A-6, the amount pledged to Gaza doubles to $5.4 billion.

Here are some other numbers: 

Incompetent Production Editor Liz Houlton gets a six-figure salary to prevent such errors from getting into the paper.

Why not halve her salary?

Fund-raiser report

Today, the front of Local focuses on the charity fund-raiser of the week: Curing diabetes.

But you won't find the paper's food writers checking their blood-sugar levels anytime soon.

They're too busy pushing dessert and other sugary foods as a major source of nutrients. 

The front of Local also carries a photo and story on the installation of a Martin Luther King Jr. statue on the Hackensack campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University (L-1).

On Saturday's Local front, a stand-alone photo of Bergen County's first MLK statue forgot to mention whether the memorial was on the Teaneck or Hackensack campus.

Read More

Animal editors ignore humans in our 'suburban jungle'

Spotted on Cortland Place, near Newcomb Road, in Tenafly after 8 on Sunday morning.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's editors seem obsessed with animals, the original inhabitants of our "suburban jungle," if you accept the phrase used in a clever Page 1 headline on Monday.

But the sad truth is readers can't bear all of this hype about critters displaced by development in North Jersey -- a story the paper seems to cover ever few years, starting way back in the 1980s (A-1 today and Monday).

Editors go wild 

"Suburbia is growing more wild," Staff Writer James M. O'Neill claimed in Monday's takeout.

But that's contradicted by the A-1 photo caption and sub-headline, both of which report some species are disappearing or are "virtually extinct."

Today's front page holds little interest for the human residents of North Jersey.

And the humans who work at the Woodland Park daily still struggle with preventing error from getting into the paper, especially in the Road Warrior column.

Two more embarrassing corrections appear on A-2 today.

Insulting women

Then, you turn to the Local front today, and wonder why a bloc of female lawmakers calling for financial penalties against the National Football League was deemed less important than another bear running loose in Ridgewood (L-1).

Indeed, some professional athletes have been treating girlfriends, spouses and children like so many footballs.

But sports-loving Editor Marty Gottlieb doesn't seem to notice or care.

Dissing commuters

What is the point or relevance to North Jersey commuters of the Road Warrior column on comedian Tracy Morgan not wearing his seat belt before a truck slammed into his limo van on the New Jersey Turnpike in June (L-1)?

Was Morgan's friend, James McNair, wearing his seat belt? If so, it didn't prevent his death.

The local assignment editors again rely on Law & Order news to flesh out their thin section today (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

Second look

Staff Writer John Cichowski's Sunday column was filled with numerous errors as he attempted to report on a poll about unsafe driving behavior, according to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"The Road Warrior reported that a Rutgers-Eagleton poll indicated that 81% of drivers over 64 considered driving while eating, drinking and cellphone yakking to be very unsafe -- a much higher rate than drivers 18 to 29 (45%), drivers 30 to 49 (50%), and drivers 50 to 64 (58%).

"Road Warrior's cited survey statistics were only for talking on a hand-held cell phone. There was different statistics for talking on hands-free cell phones, as well as for eating or drinking."

Cichowski also was wrong on whether driving fatalities are rising: 

"The Road Warrior indicated that the perceptions of New Jersey residents that road safety is improving is wrong because Garden State driving fatalities are rising.

"Residents’ perceptions are correct since fatalities have decreased over the previous four years and the past decade. While fatalities are higher in 2014 than 2013, it is because road fatalities reached a record low in 2013."

For the blow-by-blow on a reporter who is setting a record for inaccuracy, see:

Readers Poll: Get rid of error-prone Road Warrior

Restaurant expose?

I agree that Claire Insalata Poulos, founder and president of the 15-year-old Table to Table, is doing important work by collecting fresh restaurant leftovers to feed the hungry, but why does this Better Living cover story go on and on (BL-1)?

If you bother plowing through all the testimonials, Poulos sounds like she is ready for sainthood (BL-1 and BL-6).

Poulos is a natural for the work; her name "Insalata" means "salad" in Italian.

But in general, shouldn't Food Editor Esther Davidowitz be writing more about restaurants and consumers?

Instead, she makes multimillionaire celebrity chefs and restaurant owners like Mario Batali, Drew Nierporent and Emeril Lagasse seem like such swell guys for donating food they had been throwing away for decades.

Garrett blinders

On Monday, The Record published a Page 1 column on Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, and his opponent in the Nov. 4 election, but failed to report the arch-conservative initially opposed spending $50 billion for Superstorm Sandy aid.

On Tuesday's A-6, Columnist Herb Jackson was outed by the campaign of challenger Roy Cho, a Hackensack attorney.

The six-term Republican's reelection campaign, it turns out, sent out a postcard claiming "Scott Garret worked to bring immediate relief to Sandy victims."

Read More

Columnist dismisses challenge to Tea Party puppet

Utility work on River Street in Hackensack, near the mothballed headquarters of North Jersey Media Group and The Record, made driving difficult last week.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Staff Writer Herb Jackson of The Record is a veteran who is assigned to Washington, where he writes the NJ/DC column, which you'll find on Page 1 today.

In recent years, Jackson has mastered the art of slipping a dagger into any Democrat who challenges one of Congress' most conservative members -- and twisting it.

Rep. Scott Garrett, a six-term Wantage Republican whose district now includes liberal Fair Lawn, Hackensack and most of Teaneck, is a puppet of the Tea Party and against just about everything, especially social programs.

Money talks

Today's column reports Garrett and his Democratic challenger, attorney Roy Cho of Hackensack, began running TV ads this month (A-1).

But Jackson is dazzled by Garrett's fund raising, nearly $3.2 million, compared to Cho's expected $900,000, and he's already called the race on that basis alone.

Jackson never mentions Garrett's initial opposition to federal aid for Sandy victims or his desire to delay eligibility for both Social Security and Medicare, starting with people born in 1958 and after.

Cut health care

Nor does he discuss Garrett's plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act -- which has given health insurance to tens of millions who never had it -- and boost defense spending to $699 billion in 2022.

Jackson has so much pull in Washington he couldn't even get an interview with Garrett, who doesn't announce where he is campaigning and hasn't agreed to debate Cho.

What kind of reporter is Jackson when he doesn't even report Garrett's mean-spirited policies and positions, as listed on the congressman's own Web site?

See: I'm Scott Garrett, and I hate people

Crystal balls

Today's Jackson column is long-winded -- typical of The Record's white, middle-age columnists.

So, he saves the knockout punch for the last paragraph after reporting Cho's charge that Garrett is even against federal spending to repair the transportation network relied on by 1 million people in Bergen County alone.

"It's an argument Garrett's challengers have been making since 2002," fortune teller Jackson reports. "And so far, none has come close to succeeding."

The Nov. 4 election will decide representation in the boomerang-shaped 5th District.

Here is a post I wrote in 2012 on how The Record and Jackson treated Adam Gussen, then-Teaneck's deputy mayor, the previous Garrett challenger:

Nobody at The Record knows his name

Hackensack news

On the Local front today, Staff Writer Todd South reports Al Dib, Hackensack's legal analyst and historian, has unearthed information that "averts wrangling" over development of a 4.3-acre parking lot near Forschini Park, as the headline puts it (L-1).

South still hasn't done a follow-up to his story on a group of Democrats who propose to change the form of government and switch to partisan elections in an effort to regain the power they lost in 2013.

Read More

You won't find any news in boring Page 1 'process' stories

Attractive storefronts are available on Cedar Lane, above and below, which doesn't seem to be doing as well as Teaneck's other major shopping street, Queen Anne Road, in the township's West Englewood section. Expensive kosher restaurants seem to predominate in both areas.

Few downtown merchants advertise in The Record, and the Woodland Park daily repays the favor by writing very little about their struggles. "Pay to play" is alive and well at North Jersey Media Group's flagship newspaper, too.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The major element on Page 1 of The Record today promises a "new round of debate" on state liquor licenses in mid-September.

NJ/DC -- the column from Washington correspondent Herb Jackson -- focuses on a cockamamie conservative scheme by Rep. Scott Garret, R-Wantage, to cheat New Jersey out of federal highway funds (A-1).

The two "process" pieces set up readers for what may or may not happen in the future, but they are deadly dull and have no place on the front page.

Consumer ignored

The one on updating the state's liquor license laws completely ignores the consumer, and the possible reduction in the number of BYO restaurants, one of the appeals of living and dining out in North Jersey.

Restaurants with liquor licenses rely on them as a major profit center, and they can charge $10 for a glass of wine from a bottle that cost $6.

A 750 milliliter bottle of wine yields six 4-ounce glasses. 

The shuttered Madre's Cuban Cuisine on Cedar Lane in Teaneck.

State trust fund?

Jackson's column and a recent editorial on the federal highway trust fund make no mention of the mess Governor Christie has made of the state Transportation Trust Fund, which is bankrupt.

The GOP bully refuses to raise the fund's main funding source -- the state's low gasoline tax -- just another aspect of a conservative no-tax stance that has hobbled the New Jersey Treasury.

The dumb headline on Jackson's column is inaccurate and misleading:

Garret

gas tax

bill stuck

in neutral

You can be stuck in gear, but not in "neutral."

And if the headline makes readers think Garret wants to raise the federal "gas tax," they are fools.

Slow local news

What's the point of yet another feature story on the Oritani Field Club, a Hackensack landmark that was bought by a developer in 2010, but won't close until the end of 2015 (L-1)?

The club, which is near the library, likely will be replaced by apartments and a parking garage as city officials chase tax ratables to dig themselves out of the financial hole created by Zisa family rule.

Read More

Defense attorney, U.S. senator in Englewood parade

Famed criminal defense attorney Frank P. Lucianna (with white hair, center) marching today in Englewood's Memorial Day Parade arm in arm with U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (hidden). The Englewood-born Lucianna is 91. See Page 1 of The Record today for a lame Herb Jackson column on Booker that suggests voters should decide whether to reelect the Democrat based on his record as Newark mayor, not what he's done since he succeeded the late Frank R. Lautenberg in the Senate.

The annual parade along Palisade Avenue passed City Hall, above. Participants included members of churches in the city, public and charter school students, Civil War and Revolutionary War reenactors firing their rifles or muskets, and overweight middle-age men riding and revving their loud motorcycles.  

The Englewood Corps of the Salvation Army.

Students from Dwight Morrow High School, above and two photos below.

A supercharged Auburn boat-tail speedster.

Read More

Christie is no longer believable on GWB, budget

The crews of two NYPD patrol boats on the East River stop to shoot the breeze, a scene repeated frequently when municipal police in North Jersey do the same.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record today helps boost Governor Christie's White House ambitions after his bandwagon spent months spinning its wheels in North Jersey's scandalous traffic.

When the GOP bully wants to shift attention away from the terrible job he is doing on the state economy, mass transit or any other deficiency, all he has to do is snap his fingers.

Editors like The Record's Marty Gottlieb and reporters like Herb Jackson, the paper's Washington correspondent, jump up like lap dogs to catch every deceptive morsel (A-1).

Sadly, Christie is no longer believable, no matter what he says about what he knew and when he knew it on the George Washington Bridge lane closures, the state budget or anything else.

Secret budget cuts

He has successfully kept secret cuts he will make to meet an $807 million state budget shortfall, but is there any suggestion he will do anything different than balance the plan on the backs of the middle and working classes, as he did in the past? 

On the continuation page, Jackson reports Christie "did not hesitate to blame his predecessors, state courts and his own staff" for the current budget problems (A-6).

The unflattering photo of Christie on A-6 suggests the lap-band surgery he had a year ago in February hasn't been that successful.

He still looks like he is full of crap.

GWB scandal

Another story on A-1 today calls into question Christie's credibility on last September's lane closures in Democratic Fort Lee.

The lawyer for former campaign manager Bill Stepien says Christie misspoke when he said Stepien told him he didn't have "any knowledge" about the lane closures, which were ordered by a gubernatorial aide and a crony at the Port Authority. 

On A-3 today, The Record contrasts President Obama's transportation plan with Christie's failure to find a stable source of revenue for the state Transportation Trust Fund.

The story reports Christie used Port Authority toll money for some road projects, including the Pulaski Skyway, even though previous stories said the governor grabbed $1.8 billion left over from his cancellation of new Hudson River rail tunnels (A-3).

Which is it?

Solar confusion

On the Editorial Page, a boastful columnist and a confused reader's letter to the editor combine today to deliver misinformation about solar panels (A-20).

In "Global warming: It's real. It's Here. Deal with It" (Opinion, May 11), Alan Robock says, "I have solar panels on my roof, subsidized by the state of New Jersey, and have not paid an electric bill for years."

The heading on the letter, "Solar panels not free for everyone," is incorrect. 

Robock is not saying his panels were free and he apparently doesn't read his bill carefully, because no system installed with a state subsidy would provide all the electricity a homeowner uses.

The letter writer, Melinda Thompson of Little Ferry, should be able to find a private contractor willing to install solar panels for free in return for the monthly solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) the system generates.

The contractor can sell those credits to the utility over the life of the system to recover his upfront costs. 

Read More

A couple of bright headlines are all we get today

A home with a great view in River Edge.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

There are a couple of heavy stories on the front page of The Record today, but leave it to Editor Marty Gottlieb to trump them with a big sports photo and a tease to a sports column about a pro golfer with the ridiculous name of "Bubba."

OK. The murder of three people by a gunman with ties to the Ku Klux Klan occurred in Kansas, but it has North Jersey Jewish communities on edge on the eve of Passover (A-1).

WNYC-FM radio reported today the suspect is a "known anti

-Semite."

And Governor Christie's decision to close residential centers for the disabled in Totowa and Woodbridge is hitting close to home (A-1).

Is this another desperate move to save money and patch up the wreckage the GOP bully has made of state finances?

A WNYC commentator today called closing of the New York-bound Pulaski Skyway another example of government purposely causing a traffic jam -- a reference to the George Washington Bridge scandal.

Slow-news day

Maybe the skeleton Sunday newsroom crew is responsible for this lackluster, unfocused front page.

Can a column about an upcoming election get any more boring than today's NJ/DC from Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson (A-1)?

Jackson's thumbnail photo is another puzzler, right up there with Columnist Mike Kelly's shit-eating grin.

Is the reporter rubbing his chin or holding up his head? And that raises another question: What is he doing with his other hand?

Good headlines

At least there are bright headlines on the front of the thin Local news section.

I especially like:

"129 years old, with great circulation
City celebrates its library, the first in N.J." 

I even forgot to ask myself why a Paterson story is leading the Bergen edition section.

Bad caption writing

But for every great headline, readers get plenty of uninspiring work from the news and copy editors, including the routine over line on the big L-1 photo today:

"PALM SUNDAY PROCESSION" 

And a caption on L-3 clashes with what readers can see in the photo:

"Below," the caption says, "Ashley Villalta of Ridgefield took advantage of extra dye on the ground to treat 10-year-old Giovanni Russo to a facial."

Yet the photo shows Villalta rubbing the hair on the back of Giovanni's head, not his face.

Does this suggest one of the news or copy editors is an ape with hair covering his face?

On the Better Living cover, why is the versatility of lemons in cooking limited to "baked goods and desserts," which many readers don't or can't eat?

Read More