Editors ignore Christie role in housing and health-care woes

A Christmas Tree went up in the lobby of Englewood Hospital and Medical Center the day after Thanksgiving.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Staff Writers Lindy Washburn and Salvador Rizzo of The Record continue to give Governor Christie a pass on his bid to sabotage both President Obama's health-care initiative and landmark court rulings on affordable housing.

In fact, the conservative Republican governor's name is completely missing in Washburn's upbeat story on the Affordable Care Act (3A).

Nor does the GOP thug's name appear in Rizzo's piece on skeptical state Supreme Court justices hearing a plea from towns to forgive their affordable housing obligations in the past 17 years (4A).

Gee, it isn't news that Christie takes credit for an expansion of Medicaid in New Jersey -- thanks to an infusion of federal funds -- but refused to set up a state marketplace residents could use to buy health policies under the Affordable Care Act.

That has thrown New Jerseyans onto the overburdened federal marketplace, and reduced their choice to two insurers in 2017, compared with five this year.

Nor is it a secret Christie tried to abolish the Council on Affordable Housing, the state agency that is responsible for ensuring that all 566 municipalities in New Jersey provide their share of low- and moderate-cost housing.

Many of Christie's supporters live in largely white suburban towns that have refused to accommodate affordable housing and an influx of minorities.

Water on brain

The Record's so-called commuting columnist continues to diss long-suffering NJ Transit bus and rail riders to lavish praise on NY Waterway, a trans-Hudson ferry company that celebrated its 30th anniversary this week (1A).

Taking the ferry is the most expensive way to commute to the city with the exception of driving there yourself and paying exorbitant parking rates.

Page 1 today also appeals to high rollers who are willing to pay $10 for a reserved parking space at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus.

Gannett editors put this story on the front page to please one of the paper's biggest advertisers.

More Bridgegate

The story that belonged on Page 1 today is Superior Court Judge Bonnie Mizdol in Hackensack saying she will release a Bridgegate-related decision on Friday (1L)

Bill Brennan, a former Teaneck firefighter with a law degree, is asking her to appoint a special prosecutor in the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal (1L).

Brennan wants Christie prosecuted for doing nothing when he learned about the Fort Lee traffic jams in September 2013.

Christie wasn't named in a federal indictment, but three of his former aides or associates have been convicted of conspiracy and other charges.

All said he knew about the lane closings while they were happening.

Still, the governor has somehow managed to avoid testifying under oath and in public on what he knew and when he knew it.

EPA mileage rule

An Associated Press story on a proposal to boost average fuel economy and emissions targets in the U.S. also appears to be slanted toward other big advertisers -- automakers and auto dealers (16A).

The U.S. Environmental Agency proposal is a victory for the environment, but the story doesn't discuss the impact of auto emissions on climate change or their role in the deaths of 53,000 people every year.

The EPA is standing by an Obama administration proposal for an average fuel economy of 50.8 mpg by 2025, compared to 35.3 now.

Each automaker would be required to hit that average across its entire model line -- including hybrids and EVs -- not for individual vehicles (the acronym CAFE stands for corporate average fuel economy).

Manufacturers are upset that to meet the targets, they would have to reduce the number of highly profitable but gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs they sell.

This year, both Ford and Nissan have ramped up production of big SUVs and pickups to take advantage of low gas prices.

Favoring polluters, bi-state transit war, 'unique' restaurant

This New York Times image from 2007 shows Paul Eugene VanDunk with granddaughter Alexis Dennison holding a photo of her mother, a cancer victim. VanDunk and other residents of Upper Ringwood blame many cases of sickness and death on toxic paint sludge and other waste dumped in their neighborhood by Ford Motor Co., which operated an assembly plant in nearby Mahwah until the late 1970s.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today is promoting a controversial plan to pave over toxic soil in several North Jersey towns that would save Ford, DuPont and other wealthy corporate polluters tens of millions of dollars.

Assurances that capping 166,000 tons of paint sludge is safe are falling on the deaf ears of Upper Ringwood residents a few months before a referendum that would force Ford Motor Co. and borough officials to remove the pollutants (A-1).

The Environmental Protection Agency would allow the waste to stay in the ground even though North Jersey's drinking-water reservoirs are nearby.

What remains unclear is what motivates Editor Deirdre Sykes and Staff Writer Scott Fallon to turn their backs on long-suffering residents, and to forcefully promote an unpopular solution to decades of corporate pollution.

With capping, Ford and the borough of Ringwood's insurers would see their cleanup costs drop to $5.4 million from $32.6 million (A-8).

At a Superfund site in Edgewater, Honeywell and other wealthy companies held responsible for the pollution would pay only $72 million, compared to $205 million for excavation.

Drop in enforcement

One story you've never seen in The Record is a dramatic decline in the enforcement of speeding laws on state highways -- even as the Road Warrior columnist obsesses over lines at the Motor Vehicle Commission and traffic jams at MetLife Stadium (L-1).

Today's front-page story should have reported Christopher Boes, 20, of West Milford might be alive, if Butler police did a better job of patrolling Route 23 and stopped such racers as the friend driving the car in which he was a passenger (A-1).

Bi-state transit war

Check out the hysteria over the war between New Jersey and New York on replacing the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan (L-1).

The two states have been arguing for decades over which one gets the most from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Originally, the agency was called the Port of New York Authority.

We're probably going to see many more stories on where a new Manhattan bus terminal should be located.

But The Record won't be asking the bi-state agency why it doesn't expand bus service by adding one or two more exclusive bus lanes into the Lincoln Tunnel.

'Unique' BYO

Staff Writer Elisa Ung is so excited about Turtle + The Wolf in Montclair, she calls the New American BYO "unique," and rates it as Excellent to Outstanding (a half-star shy of the top rating of 4 stars).

And although she praises the "quality" of the food, only the brisket she sampled was naturally raised at Painted Hills Farm in Oregon (BL-14).

So, are readers to assume the $72-a-person roasted pig and the $45-a-person fried chicken dinners are conventionally raised with harmful antibiotics?

The money you save on wine will be blown on tolls and gasoline to get there and back. And does the place serve any seafood except octopus?

Misspells name

She might have been able to provide more details on the food, if she didn't feel compelled to report details of the chef-owner's resume and identify his business partner, whose last name she misspells.

Ung calls him "Matt Greneven," but today's correction says he is "Matt Trevenen."

That's not even close. 

Maybe she drank too much of the wine she brought or was overly giddy about eating hundreds of dollars of food -- plus dessert -- paid for by Gannett, The Record's owner.

Corrections usually run on A-2 the day after the error is made, but today's notes the review "was produced in advance."

Turns out the rave review appeared online on Thursday, almost a full day before the print edition.

The mouse squeaks again

Image via Wikipedia

Residents of Garfield have been waiting 27 years for the cleanup of cancer-causing chromium -- through government inaction and corporate stone-walling -- and what does The Record of Woodland Park have to say about it? Hear Mike Kelly, resident mouse and columnist, squeak:

"It's time government officials addressed it," is the strongest thing he has to say in his Opinion front column today. He actually compares Garfield to a moth-bitten coat. It makes you want to scream. Who the F is editing him? No. It's time for Kelly to go gently into then good night.


Did Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes know Kelly's premature ejaculation would appear in the paper on the same day the front page is dominated by a story reporting that in 30 years, only three of the 13 Superfund sites have been fully cleaned of contaminants? 


Staff Writer Scott Fallon lays much of the blame at the feet of officials at the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Need I remind you former Gov. Christie Whitman -- the first Christie to screw New Jersey -- once headed the EPA? Fallon says the cleanups have been plagued by "mistakes, inattention and questionable decisions."

Of course, The Record doesn't mention that its own inattention over the past three decades allowed the EPA to ignore most of the sites needing cleanup -- a real slap in the face to residents and readers.


No Hackensack or Teaneck municipal news appears in Local today, and many other towns are ignored, as well.


Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung isn't allowed to spend the newspaper's money to sample wine during her restaurant reviews, even though her pudgy cheeks are shown poised over a glass of red in a 2007 photo that accompanies the evaluations and her Sunday column.


So today, on F-6 in Better Living, she lists restaurants in North Jersey that have won 2010 Wine Spectator magazine awards. In 2008, the magazine, which doesn't actually visit restaurants, gave an award to a fictitious place.