Editors ignore GOP attacks on minority rights

Hackensack's Main Street often resembles a ghost town, despite the efforts of a public-private partnership called the Upper Main Alliance. Curiously, some of the empty storefronts are owned by C.J. Lombardo Co., whose CEO, Jerome J. Lombardo, is chairman of the very same Upper Main Alliance. On the 200 block of Main, a welcome sign of renewal: Attili's Grill & Cafe, above, will replace Pfeiffer's/El Potrero Grill.

A few doors down, a sign promises a new Hispanic bakery.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The Record's elaborate coverage of the March on Washington's 50th anniversary sets up a phony comparison between President Obama's speech on Tuesday and the spellbinding "I Have a Dream" delivered by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (A-1 and A-18).

Mike Kelly's boring Page 1 column appears designed to obscure the president's basic message:

That sinister forces -- including Governor Christie, Tea Party crackpot Steve Lonegan (A-1) and other conservative Republicans -- are trying to dismantle the rights won by minorities over the past 5 decades.

"It was another humid August day," is the best Kelly -- aka "The Shit Eating Grin" -- can manage for his first sentence on such a momentous occasion. 

The column goes downhill from there.

The last paragraph of the A-18 editorial finally acknowledges the president's real message: 

"In the end, Obama [is] asking Americans to take up a new march for unity and equality."

Hackensack views

The victory of a reform slate in this year's Hackensack City Council election appears to have prompted head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Deputy Assignment Buffoon Dan Sforza to end the drought on Hackensack news.

But the local editors continue to ignore two big stories:

1) The failure of the public-private Upper Main Alliance to revive the fortunes of Main Street, despite years of promotion.

2) The continuing, crushing burden of three, large tax-exempt entities -- Bergen County, Hackensack University Medical Center and Fairleigh Dickinson University -- on homeowners and other property tax payers in the city.