Christie cuts become clearer

Image by drewgram via Flickr

With The Record of Woodland Park, readers have to become detectives, searching the paper for clues to the biggest stories of the day. With most other dailies, you'd find those stories on the front page.

But the lazy, incompetent editors become bored with important stories -- such as the state's budget crisis and Governor Christie's drastic cuts in aid -- so the issues bounce onto and off of Page 1 with regularity.

On the front of Local yesterday, the acting education commissioner said state school aid to municipalities wouldn't be cut as much as previously announced. But today, two stories -- one on A-8 and the other on the Local front -- reveal how Christie's cuts will affect nearly 12,000 legal immigrants and more than 1,000 low-income students in Bergen and Passaic counties.

The legal immigrants would lose state health insurance under the NJ FamilyCare program, and the students are enrolled in an after-school enrichment program in Englewood -- one of more than 100 in the state that may have to close.

You might remember Christie has refused to renew the so-called millionaire's tax on people like the wealthy Malcolm A. Borg and his son, mansion-loving Publisher Stephen A. Borg, of North Jersey Media Group. He also plans to cut taxes for the prosperous owners of small businesses. And although he won't even raise the low gasoline tax a couple of cents, he didn't hesitate to slash subsidies to NJ Transit, forcing the agency to propose a 25% fare hike and service cuts for rail and bus riders, some of whom can't afford cars.

So if you hunt around the paper and remember what you read in days and weeks past, you can see a pattern emerging here. Of course, editors at good newspapers do that work for you, but at The Record, Frank Scandale, Frank Burgos, Deirdre Sykes, Tim Nostrand and Alfred P. Doblin and their good-for-nothing subordinates couldn't care less about readers.

For example, look at Doblin's silly column on the editorial page today, where he compares the ruinously expensive home rule system to "a very big cow." Well, big cows produce big turds. So does Doblin.