With Christie budget, we get arguments, not leadership

The single lane open on the Anderson Street Bridge from Hackensack to Teaneck was closed on Tuesday for long-term repairs to the span, which has carried restricted traffic since September 2012.  Despite Tuesday's torrential rain, not a single photo of flooding appears today in The Record of Woodland Park, where presumably the sun was shining. See photos below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Even though Governor Christie was humiliated on the presidential campaign trail, he was back to contentious business as usual in Trenton on Tuesday.

Reading between the lines of his argumentative budget speech, as reported in The Record, Democratic lawmakers likely were reminded the GOP bully standing before them has already executed more than 500 vetoes since early 2010.

Today, we're no closer to resolving some of the biggest issues facing the state, including the underfunded public employee pension fund and the debt-ridden transportation fund that pays for bridge and road repairs, and mass transit improvements.

Flattering editorial

"The good news is that Christie sounded like a governor committed to doing his job," claims an editorial on A-10 today.

Gee. To me and many others, he sounds like the combative governor who turned his back on the middle class in New Jersey to pursue a doomed bid for the White House, and now he's back to make our lives even more miserable than before.

Or you can read more crap from Charles Stile, the political columnist who is one of Christie's biggest boosters at a paper that has far too many (A-1).

Flooding on Euclid Avenue in Hackensack.

Flooding on Hudson Street in Hackensack.

Flooding in the H Mart parking lot in Little Ferry.

Local news?

The hysterical reaction to a proposal for 142 apartments in Dumont -- and the threat of a suit by the school board -- speaks volumes about what is wrong with North Jersey's home-rule system of government (A-1).

Another front-page story today shows local news is literally going to the dogs.

What is a story about the Westminster Kennel Club and dogs from Bogota (New Jersey, not Colombia) doing on A-1 today?

The local editors needed several photos of power outages and fires, as well as crime and court news, to fill their thin section today (L-1 and L-3).

News from Hackensack went missing again today.

Bill Ervolino

Readers scanning Bill Ervolino's Better Living cover story on "kitchen gadgets" sigh with relief that at least he isn't writing about his father again (BL-1).

Then, they turned the page to see yet another Ervolino column about his parents on BL-3.

Ervolino and The Record's other veteran columnists, including Stile, John Cichowski and Mike Kelly, long ago ran out of ideas.

They remind readers of the kitchen gadgets Ervolino writes about today:

They're nice for the paper to have, but does anyone really read them anymore?