Christie's last big speech is a big flop

Many Harley-Davidson motorcycles are deliberately modified to make as much noise as possible, but many owners get away with it because they are cops and firefighters. See today's Road Warrior column. (Wikipedia)

What's not reported in The Record today is that Governor Christie is certain to lose his bid for a second term now that he has alienated so many middle-class voters during his first three years in office.

In his final State of the State speech on Tuesday, the GOP bully hitched his star to the recovery from Superstorm Sandy, determined not to look back on what many observers see as a series of major policy failures (A-1).

On Nov. 5, voters aren't likely to forget how:

Christie broke his 2009 campaign promise to lower local property taxes, failed to expand an overburdened mass-transit system, told the Big Lie of a "Jersey Comeback," cut numerous programs so he could veto modest tax surcharges on millionaires that would have raised $1 billion in new revenue; and doled out hundreds of millions in business tax breaks with little or no effect on the state's lagging economy.

More diarrhea

Editor Marty Gottlieb gives us yet another column from Staff Writer Charles Stile, who praises Christie's "political ingenuity" (A-1).

You could call Stile prolific, if his columns weren't so boring and so pro-Christie, and didn't smell like diarrhea.

Where are the ear plugs?

On the Local front today, Road Warrior John Cichowski makes an impassioned plea for more training of people who own motorcycles, but doesn't explain what this has to do with the commuting problems he's supposed to be writing about (L-1).

What he doesn't tell you is how many Harley-Davidson owners disturb everyone else by deliberately modifying their bikes to make as much noise as possible, and get away with it because they are cops and firefighters. 

And do Ninja bikers need more training so they can better terrorize motorists on highways by weaving in and out of traffic at insane speeds?

Fat people are sick people

An Opinion piece argues "fat people" are the targets of employment, health care, education and "public spaces" bias --  what author Abigail 
Saguy calls "unequal treatment based on stereotyping fat people as lazy, unmotivated, sloppy and lacking in self-discipline and competence" (A-9).

If that's so, how do two lifers at The Record -- head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Project Editor Tim Nostrand -- hold onto their jobs, despite their appearing "lazy" and "unmotivated" in their mission of providing comprehensive local news coverage? 

The article also ignores that "fat people" have more health problems, are out sick more and see more doctors than other employees, and paying for that raises health-insurance rates for everyone else.

Native son lampoons Christie's weight

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Satirist Bill Maher is proud of his New Jersey roots.

On his HBO show, satirist Bill Maher, who was born in New Jersey, riffed on Governor Christie's asthma attack and his brief hospitalization.


Recalling Christie had difficulty breathing on Thursday, Maher said, "He first noticed he had a problem when he had trouble inhaling a pizza."


On Friday night's "Real Time with Bill Maher," the satirist said the governor was in a supermarket and felt a tightness in his chest.


"And then he realized he got stuck in the dairy case."


The governor is OK, Maher noted, adding, "The hospital today upgraded his condition to gigantic." 


The doctors say he's up and about, "and taking helicopters to travel 20 feet."


One doctor told Christie, "You have to stop eating ice cream out of big, 5-gallon tubs.


"And he [Christie] said, 'Why.'


"And the doctor said, 'So I can examine you.'"


Clowning around


Admittedly, this kind of slapstick would pale in the face of a serious discussion in the media of the governor's health problems and obesity.


But Editor Francis Scandale and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin at The Record of Woodland Park have no interest in making the governor feel uncomfortable about his obsessive eating -- just as Scandale has avoided confronting fellow employees and the paper's restaurant reviewer about the same behavior.


Scandale apparently doesn't know -- or likely doesn't care -- that such grossly overweight employees as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes call in sick a lot more than employees of normal weight, and that drives up health insurance premiums for everyone.


Sykes has been the real power in the newsroom for years, and no one is going to tell her to get healthy.


Debt-ceiling disgrace


On the congressional stalemate over the debt ceiling, Maher likened the debate to a pissing match that had reached an awkward moment.


Everyone is "out of piss" and they're "standing there with their dick in their hand."


"One party has no brains," he went on, and the other party "has no balls."

One town gets special treatment

Image by birdphone via Flickr

With the seeming regularity of the seasons, The Record of Woodland Park takes the pulse of Ridgewood's bustling downtown (photo), while virtually ignoring the increasing number of empty storefronts on Hackensack's Main Street after the newspaper moved out of the city where it prospered for more than 110 years.


A new rewards card designed to lure shoppers to Ridgewood is explored in a long story with photos on the front of the Local news section today -- at least the fourth major story about the village's downtown in the last two years. Meanwhile, the decline of news from Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood is apparent again today, and those struggling downtowns haven't been featured in the paper in many years.


Ridgewood has gotten even more special attention, because of a well-organized group of wealthy residents opposed to expansion of The Valley Hospital. In the past two years, those stories have been numerous and repetitive. The paper never made as much fuss over several expansions of Hackensack University Medical Center, some of which required the demolition of homes. In Ridgewood, the hospital is expanding on its own land.


Hackensack's downtown is beginning to slide back to what it was like in 2005, with many empty storefronts and the homeless roaming Main Street. A new county shelter seems to have removed the homeless, but in the last six months, at least three food businesses have closed, and other storefronts remain vacant.

The Ridgewood coverage often took its cue from protesters, although the paper, eager for increased hospital ad revenue, endorsed the expansion plan. But when former Managing Editor Jim Ahearn erred in his column on the proposed height of the new hospital buildings, the corrections ran on A-2 as well as on the opinion pages -- the first time I have ever seen that.


The Record has never reported how its move out of Hackensack, along with parent company North Jersey Media Group, has changed River City, where it was founded in 1895. Hundreds of printers and other employees were scattered to the winds by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, and others were downsized -- apparently motivated by Borg's desire to make a killing on the sale of 150 River Street and nearly 20 acres of surrounding land, a windfall he has been denied so far, leaving his father Mac as a ghostly presence in the building.

Why does Ridgewood get so much attention? Is it the enterprise of Staff Writer Evonne Coutros, who is assigned to the village, compared with other local reporters, who seem to wait for direction from their clueless assignment editors? Or is it the desperate need for local news copy as the staff's overall productivity has plummeted under the coddling of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who clucks over her reporters like a Mother Hen?

Or is it a conscious decision by the editors and their absentee bosses -- the Borgs -- to cover people like themselves -- a mostly white, upscale audience found in the Ridgewoods of North Jersey and not in the Bergen towns with significant minority populations?

Also in Local, a rare story on people with Alzheimer's disease who wander away appears on L-3. For every Alzheimer's story the youth-oriented editors run, it seems, there are 10 stories on autism. Just another example of what a great job Sykes and Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale are doing. 


Today's front page is solidly New Jersey, and includes a patch story on a poor schmuck from Saddle Brook whose health insurance is so hellish, he has been trapped in a hospital for three years. But the editors must have really been desperate if they led the paper with possible privatization of roadside-service patrols on non-toll highways.

Demonizing Obama, teachers

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Can't you see the lazy, incompetent editors of The Record of Woodland Park rubbing their hands in glee at the opportunity to demonize President Obama and North Jersey teachers -- the two major stories on today's front page?

What's with the unflattering photo of Obama in his big moment of triumph, signing health-care reform into law? Why run a big, A-1 photo showing him with his eyes closed (another black man with vision problems, like ethically challenged New York Gov. David Paterson)? That surely wasn't the only photo available.

And why give health-care reform such a negative spin, with a photo over line reading "LAWSUITS COME QUICKLY AFTER BILL SIGNING"? Again, that seems designed to deprive Obama and supporters of their big victory. (Photo: A handsome Barack Obama takes oath of office.) One thing you can say about the conservative editors: They love aggravating readers.


It makes sense that court challenges to health-care reform would be embraced by the unhealthy editors I worked with at The Record. There was no limit on their sick time, so they could be out for weeks with back problems or with the flu (they refused to get a flu shot). Of course, those employees raised the cost of health insurance for the rest of us, who, like me, had a great attendance record and had to take up the slack when they were "sick."

The second punching bag today are teachers, as they have been for years in The Record, where editors have blamed their salaries and the salaries of police officers for why property taxes are so high in all the little, inefficient towns we live in. So Governor Christie gets the lead position on the front with his call that teachers forgo raises and pay for medical benefits to make up cuts in state aid and avoid layoffs.

What has the governor given up in this austere time? What about the Borgs and his other rich, ruling-class friends? What sacrifices are they making?  The Record is silent on that.

The Hackensack news blackout continues in Local, where only Passaic County schools are discussed in "every day" education coverage. Haitian relief stands in for any news from Teancek and Englewood.

Is it fair to call The Record's editors racist? You decide, but first recall  how Editor Frank Scandale got rid of his only black columnist and his only Hispanic columnist; count the few minority staffers in the newsroom; consider how clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes does her best to ignore Hackensack, with its large black and Hispanic populations; and weigh the deliberately negative treatment of the president on Page 1.

Mac delivers bad news to retirees

Privately held North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record and Herald News, again is cutting expenses to avoid further layoffs, NJMG Chairman Malcolm A. Borg said in a letter to retirees I received Friday. The letter is signed with his nickname, "Mac." (I don't know whether that is from a love for  mac 'n cheese or whether it's short for MacDaddy or Mac the Knife. Or is that the standard abbreviation among wealthy whites for Malcolm?)

 
Effective Jan. 1, NJMG will no longer reimburse retirees monthly to help them pay for Medicare supplement insurance and will no longer contribute toward the cost of dependent's medical insurance. All medical plans will move to United Healthcare "in order to help contain costs." Mac gives no estimate of anticipated total savings.

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"I can assure you that this decision is not indicative of the great appreciation that I have for your many years of service," Mac wrote. "Despite our difficulties, North Jersey Media Group is still able to go forward, largely because of the work of its talented and dedicated staff -- both present and past."

"I trust you will know that we had no other choice in this matter," he added.


Mac doesn't say NJMG is losing money. In fact, The Record has never lost money and if it had, we were never told it did. That hasn't stopped layoffs, restructuring and salary freezes, but the number of employees affected has never been been made public.


Mac cited dramatic declines industrywide in advertising revenue ("our life-blood") that have forced NJMG "to drastically reduce expenses in order to remain a viable company."