More tax cuts for the wealthy, crumbs for the poor

In the City Council meeting room, the Hackensack seal is crooked.

Thanks to sloppy work by editors, reporters and copy editors, The Record doesn't help readers understand how many low-income residents would benefit from an expansion of Medicaid in New Jersey (A-1).

On Tuesday's front page, Columnist Charles Stile mentioned "300,000 ... families," but in a staff-written story on A-6 the same day the reference  is to "300,000 of the state's 1.3 million uninsured."

On Page 1 today, the paper reports Governor Christie will bring "104,000 citizens" into the program next year.

F.U. to middle class

What is clear is that Christie continues to give business-tax breaks to the wealthy, throw crumbs to the poor and screw the middle and working classes in the state.

You won't find any mention of how a modest tax surcharge on millionaires -- which Christie has vetoed at least twice -- would raise $1 billion in sorely needed revenue or what the governor plans to do to boost the economy and job creation.

Yet, today's coverage is so upbeat, and even includes another wildly exaggerated Stile column on the GOP bully's "leadership style," and his chances for reelection and an eventual White House bid (A-6). 

More A-1 errors

More sloppy work by Production Editor Liz Houlton's wrong-way copy desk is evident in Mike Kelly's column on the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (A-1).

The photo caption starts with a typo: "Flower were laid ...."

And sticklers would insist on a comma after the first line of the headline:

Attack overshadowed

but never forgotten  

  

Then, readers encounter a Kelly who fails miserably in an attempt to write a coherent, hard-hitting column, and the reason is clear.

He's has been beating the pathos out of the 1993 attack and 9/11 as if they were dead horses, using them as the basis for numerous, long-winded columns. Enough already.

Mr. Trite

Look at his first line: "The calendar told us 20 years had passed."

As if a talking calendar isn't bad enough, the second paragraph contains a multitude of sins:

A "stoic group of 100 relatives and friends ... huddled in the February chill ... at the patch of landscape known as Ground Zero," and "the terrorist bombing ... that killed six people ... was as real and vivid as morning coffee."

Give me a break. "As real and vivid as morning coffee"? How trite can you get?

At the end of the third paragraph, Kelly mentions the truck bomb exploded on Feb. 26, 1993, and follow that with a quote: "And then 9/11 happens."

Huh? Not "then." It was more than eight years later. 

As usual, he pads his column shamelessly, using six extra words to say "Ground Zero." In Kelly's desperate try to fill space, it's "the patch of landscape known as Ground Zero."

"Landscape"? This man is a tongue-tied hack. 

Where was head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza or whichever assignment flunky sent this disaster to the copy desk for spell-checking?   

Another local snooze

On the front of Local, readers looking for news find another Road Warrior column based on a highway safety "report,"  and a big story about a dog that was shot and beaten in Iraq.

At the top of the page, the Englewood City Council rejects a $674,000 plan to repair the Mackay Ice Arena, which is in a minority neighborhood (L-1).

Hackensack news is conspicuously absent.

But The Record carries yet another story about the Paterson book drive it is sponsoring (L-1).

Laughing at death

Most of the readers of The Record are over 50, and tens of thousands of them take Lipitor and other statins to lower cholesterol and prevent heart attacks.

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill says grapefruit "is downright dangerous" to statin users, yet she promotes National Grapefruit Month with three recipes for the citrus fruit that include butter, sugar and vanilla bean "creme" (BL-1).

Check out her what-me-worry grin in the thumbnail photo with the "IN YOUR KITCHEN" column.