Christie screws N.J. middle class in bid for White House

Some tenants of the so-called luxury Avalon Hackensack at Riverside apartments near Route 4 have been worried about their safety since a fast-moving fire in January destroyed a similar Avalon complex in Edgewater, where the same cheap, lightweight wood construction was used. One-bedroom apartments start at $2,180.

Hackensack tenants have an excellent view of The Shops at Riverside parking garage on one side and the parking lot of the Home Depot Shopping Center on the other. A long, zigzag ramp gives tenants access to Home Depot, Lotus Cafe and other businesses.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today reports Governor Christie's shameless cuts to the state pension system and its mass-transit agency -- two pillars of the middle class.

How did reporters like Charles Stile and Melissa Hayes, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and Editor Martin Gottlieb ever lend credence to the GOP bully's White House aspirations with a dismal record that stretches back to 2010, his first year in office?

Now, NJ Transit commuters are screaming about higher fares and reduced service, and public-workers unions are suing Christie for cutting more than $1 billion from a payment and violating his own pension-reform law (A-1).  

Self-serve gas

How did The Record's upbeat story on the likely end of self-serve gas get it so wrong?

For Monday's A-1 story, Staff Writer Richard Newman talked to everyone except Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who is quoted today as saying full service is here to stay (A-1 and A-3).

"As the leader of the Senate, Sweeney can block the bill," Newman reports today -- belatedly. "We just don't post it for a vote," the former union leader said.

Animal v. human news

Record Editor Martin Gottlieb continues to devote good parts of Page 1 and the Local front to animal news, but remarkable humans often get the cold shoulder.

See L-6 today for the obituary of Mark Samitt, a Woodcliff Lake resident who died of melanoma at 52. 

I guess there wasn't room on the Local front today to report that as he battled the disease, Samitt enlisted hair stylists in a potentially life-saving awareness campaign.

Bored teens

I've never seen a photo showing teen apathy better than the one on the Local front today (L-1).

If these kids are our future, look out.

An FBI analyst is shown speaking to students in Hackensack, warning them of Islamic State recruitment techniques, but most are so bored and uninterested they aren't even looking at him.