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| In a photo taken appropriately on April Fool's Day this year, the new World Trade Center taunts commuters who pay exorbitant Hudson River tolls to help cover its huge cost overruns. Of course, if they try to switch to buses or trains, they won't find any rush-hour seats, thanks to the Port Authority's and Governor Christie's regressive mass-transit policies. |
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
Is it really front-page news that Port Authority Commissioner Anthony Sartor owns and runs a large New Jersey-based engineering firm that has worked alongside some of the biggest contractors on the new World Trade Center project?
Or that as head of the bistate agency's WTC Redevelopment Subcommittee, he's bowed out of voting more than 100 times to avoid possible conflicts of interest?
Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record thinks so, but readers are all too familiar with an agency that is packed with Governor Christie's cronies and powerful commissioners whose outside interests pose ethical dilemmas.
The coverage they haven't seen from Gottlieb and Staff Writer Shawn Boburg or any of the paper's transportation writers relates to on-the-ground commuting issues -- exorbitant and still rising tolls, and packed buses and trains.
That's all set against a background of Christie killing new rail tunnels into Manhattan, and the Port Authority refusing to expand bus or PATH service.
Page A-2 today carries the fourth correction in 2 days from The Record's hard-working editors and reporters.
Elderly drivers
Road Warrior John Cichowski and the editors continue to ignore the challenges faced by older drivers.
On head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local front today, a 71-year-old Korean-American woman tries to explain why she drove the wrong way on a one-way street, leading to a collision that killed her 84-year-old husband, who wasn't wearing a seat belt.
But the editors and their reporter didn't go far enough and explain how a 32-year-old woman in a 2012 BMW X5 couldn't avoid the head-on collision (L-1).
Was the much younger woman texting on her cellphone or speeding? Readers have no clue.
Today's column from Cichowski is yet another discussion of the 2010 law that requires drivers to stop for pedestrians in marked crosswalks (L-1).
But his time would be better spent helping older drivers find refresher courses or places where they can go to learn more about defensive driving.
Got carcinogens?
On the Better Living front, doesn't that plate of burnt grilled chicken look yummy?
It's just what the doctor ordered for readers in search of more carcinogens -- harmful chemicals that form when meat and poultry are cooked over high heat.
In recent months, The Record has been publishing recipes from a bumbling food blogger, Kate Morgan Jackson of Upper Saddle River.
Here, Jackson combines chicken and buttermilk for a double dose of harmful, artery clogging animal fats, and doesn't even recommend readers use organic or antibiotic-free poultry (BL-2).
For tips on preparing healthy meals, see:
Do You Really Know What You're Eating?
The breast meat from conventionally raised chickens do have less fat, but that's relative to the dark meat, which the recipe lists as an alternative. No animal fat is better than even a little. And white meat from chickens raised with antibiotics tends to dry out when overlooked, as it was here.
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