Christie's rich friends are crying poverty

A 44-ounce sugary drink costs only 99 cents at Governor Christie's favorite rest stop on the Garden State Parkway south, not far from the Route 1 exit to Trenton.

I'm leafing through The Record today, looking for something on Governor Christie's opposition to raising the minimum wage.

He's arguing businesses hit by Superstorm Sandy can't afford it, though he's been on record against it since June.

The front page today is dominated by a revised $36.9  billion bill for Sandy recovery, and the appointment of another Christie pal to the $141,000-a-year-job of "storm czar."

But on Wednesday, a radio-news report made it sound like the governor would veto any minimum-wage hike during the recovery, which could take 3 to 5 years.

Christie said nothing about whether all those businesses damaged by Sandy will eventually be made whole by insurance or why businesses that gouged consumers in the days and weeks after the storm's Oct. 29 landfall shouldn't raise their minimum wage.

Nor did the governor mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks he is giving businesses, which presumably could then afford to raise the minimum wage.

Pay to play

Maybe these wealthy business owners could afford to pay their workers a decent wage, if they didn't send the governor all that campaign cash he'll be using in his re-election bid. 

The Democrats' proposal is to raise the minimum wage to $8.50 from $7.25 an hour, with annual cost-of-living hikes.

Many restaurant servers, who receive tips, make less than half of the hourly minimum wage.

Christie has gone on record as early as June, promising to veto any bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature to raise the minimum wage.

Ignoring workers

I didn't see anything about this nasty fight among the wealthy in Wednesday's A-1 column or an A-10 editorial on Christie's bid for a second term.

The editorial mentions Christie's allegedly "bipartisan record," including "a cap on property taxes," but conveniently ignores that property owners in most towns continue to see higher tax bills -- directly contradicting the GOP bully's campaign promise.

New shooting details

Despite new information provided by Prosecutor John L. Molinelli (A-1), an editorial and a letter to the editor from Mike Connor of Wood-Ridge ask for even more details on why a black robbery suspect armed with a knife had to die from police bullets on Sunday in Leonia (A-20).

Today's Local front carries a second story from Hannan Adely, the new Hackensack reporter, who says the sponsors of a rejected 19-story medical high rise are suing.

Pool coverage

But the thin, 6-page local-news section carries six Law & Order stories, including two photos of minor accidents that crowd out municipal news the editors were too lazy to land.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes ordered Layout Editor Jim "Corny" Cornelius to put on L-1 a photo of four divers searching a Secaucus community pool after a deranged driver and his or her Cadillac went off the diving board (L-1).

The driver likely was catching up on the latest Road Warrior column when he/she missed a turn and got a free wash for the gas-guzzling vehicle.

The photo caption, written under the supervision of Production Editor Liz Houlton, never tells readers what the divers were trying to recover.