Let's hope Wacko picks Fatso for the GOP presidential ticket

A statue of Alexander Hamilton, a founding father who developed Paterson as one of the first industrial centers in the United States. The statue faces the Great Falls.

On Main Street in Hackensack, a neglected historical plaque notes the street once was called King's Highway and later Front Street.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Wacko racist billionaire Donald J. Trump has little chance of beating Hillary Clinton in the November presidential election, and he'd definitely seal his fate if he selected Governor Christie as a running mate.

Today, Christie tracker Matt Katz of WNYC-FM News sent an unsolicited memo to Trump on why he should and definitely should not pick his fellow Muslim hater as his vice presidential candidate on the GOP ticket.

In the negative, Katz cites the continuing problem of Bridgegate, including David Samson and missing emails and texts; and Christie's weight, which raises legitimate questions about his health.

Then, Katz notes "New Jersey doesn't like Christie" and the state "is in political paralysis."

Katz's reporting on Christie, including a book he wrote on Bridgegate, has been so far ahead of The Record's fawning Charles Stile, former Staff Writer Melissa Hayes and too-long-fan Alfred P. Doblin, editor of the editorial page.

Thumbs down on Kean

What a terrible civics lesson The Record splashed across Page 1 today in the form of a column from the clueless Mike Kelly.

Kelly reports that former Gov. Thomas Kean is so "disillusioned with Trump and ... Hillary Clinton that he might not vote for president" (A-1).

"As politicians," Kelly quotes Kean as saying, "he finds both lacking."

But that is why Kelly's and Editor Deirdre Sykes' relentless focus on politics is so wrong.

When they go to the polls, readers should judge Trump and Clinton on their plans for Social Security, health care, immigration and a host of other crucial issues, not on their politics.

And everyone should vote. 

Look at the unusually low turnout for municipal and school elections in Hackensack, and how apathetic residents have allowed one self-interested family to dominate the city for decades and to continue to run the schools.

In recent week, the Hackensack Board of Education picked Johanna Calle to fill a vacancy.

She was the only member of the Team Hackensack slate -- backed by former Mayor Jack Zisa and disgraced former Police Chief Ken Zisa -- to lose in April's school board election.

More politics

Besides Kelly's column on Kean, two other major elements on A-1 are devoted to partisan politics.

The only local human-interest story on Page 1 today is a gripping account of the July 13, 1895, hurricane that hit Cherry Hill, a section of what is now River Edge, killing three.

"In mere minutes, every house was splintered, tipped over or swept away," says Staff Writer Jay Levin, who is the local obituary writer.

Older drivers

A story from USA Today notes New Jersey ranks as the eighth-most dangerous state for older drivers (A-4).

Let's hope that rouses Staff Writer John Cichowski out of his deep sleep, and that the problem gets a lot more attention in his Road Warrior column, which has been devoted far too many times to the trials and tribulations of teen drivers.

Lincoln School

On the Local front today, a story notes the demolished Lincoln School in Englewood was "at the center of the school district's struggles with desegregation in the early 1960s" (L-1).

But Staff Writer Matthew McGrath neglects to report that many former and current residents who sent their kids to the Lincoln School are glad to see it go, because by the time it closed in 2008, it was segregated once again, and had only a few white students.

In recent years, Sykes has focused her reporting on desegregation efforts at Dwight Morrow High School, ignoring the city's segregated elementary and middle schools. 

I'm racking my brain on what Christie has done for us lately

The Anderson Street Bridge has finally reopened between Teanack and Hackensack after crews worked to strengthen the span, but traffic still is restricted to one lane in each direction. Meanwhile, two major eyesores on Cedar Lane at River Road in Teaneck -- a shuttered diner and a long-abandoned gas station -- have been demolished.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's Page 1 story in The Record on how Governor Christie has frozen $2.7 billion in NJ Transit projects sounds horrendous.

That's until you realize it's a bargaining chip in the road-and-rail funding fight between the GOP bully and the Democrats in the state Legislature, and will probably be lifted in a week or two.

Then, commuters will go back to fighting each other for rush-hour seats on buses and trains, and Staff Writer Christopher Maag will continue to completely ignore them.

Veto crazy

Meanwhile, Christie has executed more than 500 vetoes and cut transit subsidies, causing far more damage to New Jersey residents than a temporary halt in road and rail projects.

Yet, Editor Deirdre Sykes continues to cover his every word, burp and fart on the front page, especially when he stumps for wacko racist Donald J. Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee (A-1).

The Record is the only major daily in the state that declined to call for Christie's resignation when he first endorsed Trump.

The A-1 story on housing -- next to the Christie-Trump campaign appearance -- reports the governor also has refused to enforce the state's existing affordable housing laws.

An advocate is quoted as saying the laws don't just benefit low- and moderate-income families -- which opponents take to mean minorities -- but also help disabled and elderly residents.

Local news?

Sykes continues to rely on court and other Law & Order news to fill her Local section (L-1 and L-3).

On L-2, a story on downtown Englewood seems to be saying officials aren't alarmed by a recent survey that found 27 store vacancies, because that is less than "a similar survey three years ago ... that there were 30 vacant storefronts."

So, I guess readers can conclude city economic development officials have done little or nothing about vacant storefronts for three years.

Staff Writer Matthew McGrath is mistaken when he reports Palisade Avenue has "four traffic lanes."

There are only two lanes each way between the monument and Grand Avenue/Engle Street, part of the reason traffic in the small city is horrendous.

Not just typos

Friday's edition of the weekly Hackensack Chronicle -- one of the papers the Gannett Co. bought from North Jersey Media Group -- contained typos in two headlines:

On Page 2, a headline said:

"Dinosaur exhibit set
for more to Teaneck"

The story was from Todd South of The Record, and he made clear the word in the headline should have been "move," not "more."

On Page 8 of the weekly, another headline said:

"Work is delayed on
Hackensack ats center"

The story from Staff Writer John Seasly of The Record was about the city's Performing Arts Center, not "ats center."

City Council rebukes school official who claimed he cut tax

Hackensack Board of Education President Jason Nunnermacker (he's the one with the double chin) hiding from the camera at Tuesday night's City Council meeting, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Hackensack Board of Education President Jason Nunnermacker was being dishonest when he claimed at a public meeting that school officials "cut taxes for the average homeowner by $214," city officials said Tuesday night.

Near the end of a long City Council meeting, Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino said Nunnermacker "had absolutely nothing to do" with potential property tax cuts from a citywide reassessment of home values.

Apropos of nothing, Nunnermacker rose to speak at the May 3 City Council meeting and declared:

"On the superintendent's behalf, we cut taxes for the average homeowner by $214 -- under my presidential leadership." 

(A week later, Nunnermacker announced at a school board meeting that Superintendent Karen Lewis had been suspended with pay for reasons he didn't disclose.) 

Cites revaluation

On Tuesday night, Canestrino, speaking for the mayor and council, said the citywide revaluation is the "sole reason" some homeowners could see a total cut of about $400 in city and school taxes.

School taxes make up 44% of the total property tax bill.

Canestrino noted the reassessment lowered the value of one-third of the homes in the city, one-third stayed the same and one-third went up.

She also noted the school board approved a $4.2 million hike in the tax levy that a tiny minority of registered voters approved in the April 19 election.

The $79 million tax levy supports an overall budget of $104 million, higher than the city's own. The hike in the city tax levy was $2.1 million -- half of the board's increase.

The Record didn't bother covering the issues or the nine candidates in the school board election or report on the budget in any detail.

Councilwoman Deborah Keeling-Geddis, right, again led the city's African-American community in criticizing officials for the embarrassing Lt. James Prise promotion. Councilman David Sims, second from right, left the meeting to take care of a personal matter before Keeling-Geddis read a statement and audience members, including clergy, spoke.

Lt. James Prise

Staff Writer John Seasly of The Record covered Tuesday night's City Council meeting, but his story in the Local section today doesn't report any of Canestrino's comments about Nunnermacker (L-1).

Nor does Seasly report that City Councilwoman Deborah Keeling-Geddis again led members of the city's African-American community in criticizing officials for promoting police Lt. James Prise to captain, only to return him to his original rank when it was learned he failed the oral portion of the state civil service exam.

Prise was the city's first black police lieutenant and was heralded as its first black captain at a March 8 ceremony in City Council Chambers.

City Manager David Troast said Prise's promotion was "provisional" pending the results of the oral exam, but he still thinks he was the right choice to lead the Police Department after the retirement of Police Director Mike Mordaga.

In response to comments from the audience that the City Council should issue a public apology to Prise, Canestrino and Mayor John Labrosse said officials have apologized a number of times, but that The Record hasn't reported any of them.

Censorship

A front-page story today reports that Bergen County had one of the state's 191 "apartheid schools," or "schools where 1 percent or less of the student population was white," according to a 2013 Rutgers University report.

But even though a Record reporter added material to the story from The Associated Press, that district isn't identified (A-1).

"Apartheid schools" certainly would fit the elementary and middle schools in Englewood, where desegregation efforts in the last decade have focused only on Dwight Morrow High School.

Over the years, Dan Sforza and other Record reporters assigned to Englewood have routinely ignored the city's dysfunctional school system.

Then, Sforza spent many years as a local editor who assigned reporters to cover stories in Englewood before he was promoted to managing editor this year.

Staff Writer Mathhew McGrath, who covers the city now, has written about education, but never reported the city's elementary and middle schools have few white students nor has he asked the superintendent what, if anything, he intends to do about that.

Editors shrug as Christie continues screwing New Jersey

Traffic on Route 4 east in Paramus moving sluggishly toward the George Washington Bridge this morning just before 9, above and below. Most of the vehicles carried only a driver.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie hasn't lost his ability to control what reporters and editors say about him -- at least in The Record of Woodland Park.

Christie is refusing to discuss "his disappointing bid for the White House [and] his controversial endorsement of Donald Trump," The Record's State House Bureau reports on Page 1 today.

"After his brief and tightly controlled appearance in Trenton [on Monday], Christie sets off to campaign with Trump in Ohio and Kentucky," reporter Dustin Racioppi says.

Still, the best Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin can manage in an editorial today falls far short of outrage:

"Not good enough. Not good enough at all" (A-8).

What preceded that is a long paragraph on Christie's "unwillingness to explain, to the people of the state that elected him as a Republican who supported diversity, how he can now support a presidential candidate who would mass-deport 11 million immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the United States, and who was unable to unequivocally denounce the Ku Klux Klan when repeatedly asked to do just that on CNN on Sunday."

Really? What about Christie's bid to bar Syrian refugees from New Jersey and the nation? 

What about his mean-spirited dismissal of the only black New Jersey Supreme Court justice, John E. Wallace Jr.?

That was as racially charged as Christie's recent attacks on President Obama.  

Fatal hit-run

The hit-run death of a 7-year-old West New York girl on Monday as she was walking in a crosswalk with her mother is tragic enough (A-1).

But readers can't help recall how Road Warrior John Cichowski wrote a number of columns demonizing red-light cameras, which reduced crashes, injuries and deaths, and penalized speeders.

On columns about yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, the clueless Cichowski also quoted drivers saying they wanted to run down jaywalkers.

Local news?

Monday was the deadline for candidates to file nominating petitions for the April 19 school election in Hackensack and other towns.

In Hackensack, three vacancies on the nine-member board will be contested, and voters have a chance to vote "yes" or "no" on the district's proposed budget.

The Record covers schools in Englewood, Paterson and many other communities, but largely ignores Hackensack.

Last Wednesday, a story on the Local front called the Englewood district "the worst in Bergen County -- 76th out of 76."

Yet, Superintendent Robert Kravitz didn't address the city's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black and Hispanic.

And Staff Writer Matthew McGrath apparently didn't know enough about the district to ask what Kravitz is doing to integrate those schools.

Governor Christie's whirlybird diet

Image via Wikipedia

Headquarters of the National Association of Realtors.

A few months ago, I read that Governor Christie went on a diet, but two photos of him on the front page of The Record today show a man who is asking everyone but himself to make sacrifices in these difficult economic times.

Editor Francis Scandale should have assigned a more aggressive reporter than Staff Writer Matthew McGrath to the story.

McGrath quotes Christie as saying he took a state police helicopter to Montvale to fit his son's baseball game in between two Trenton meetings, but the reporter never asks  the governor why he didn't use a car.

Penny wise, pound foolish

In the photos, Christie doesn't look like he has lost any weight. In fact, I guess he has difficulty walking because he had to be driven a short distance to his waiting helicopter.

Since he took office in January 2010, he has asked state residents to be disciplined and rely less on state aid for education, health care, legal aid, property tax rebates and many other programs.

But Christie himself is far from disciplined. Why did the electorate trust a man who doesn't know enough to eat wisely and moderately -- or even wear a hat in the hot sun -- to fix the state's financial problems?  

This whirlybird diet isn't working for Christie, so it's no surprise taxpayers end up eating crow.

By the way, the main A-1 caption violates Record style by referring to Governor Christie as just "Christie" on first reference. 

We feel your pain

The lead story today -- on falling home prices -- just shows how greedy many Realtors and homeowners were as they drove prices to stratospheric levels before flaming out. 

The Record's rah-rah Real Estate section, created by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, celebrated the excess. But even record prices didn't stop Borg from borrowing $3.65 million from the company for a new, bigger house.

A second A-1 story also is about Christie, whose state Supreme Court nominee was approved by a Senate panel. He's won another battle in his war to remove the high court's two minority justices.

Embarrassing typo

A refer in the lower-left corner of Page 1 misspells the food editor's last name. And, no, "macarons" isn't a typo, though the paper doesn't bother clearing up the confusion with macaroons.

Macaron is the French spelling of macaroon.

In Local, readers looking for Hackensack news will find a police brief on L-7. Readers in many other towns won't find any news.

Editors discover new homeless species

Image by Arslan via Flickr

The homeless in Paris live in stylish mini-tents on the banks of a river.

I guess the homeless in Bergen and Passaic counties should be grateful a Wyckoff lawyer has gone to court to defend their "right to shelter" on public land. 

But they might be asking why Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes and one of its members, Jeffrey J. Wild, are fighting for "dozens" of homeless people living in a "tent city" in far off Lakewood, and not for them (A-1).

This is quite a story in The Record today, complete with a spotlight bio box and a total of four photos, including one of a tent with the proverbial white-picket fence. 

Wild certainly can't be the only North Jersey lawyer doing pro bono work. Is the coverage payback for work he or his Roseland law firm might have done for North Jersey Media Group or the Borg family?

Maybe he helps only the rare, tented homeless, not the garden-variety homeless in North Jersey. Or, perhaps, Wild owns one of those multimillion-dollar shore homes, and finds the Ocean County-based court case especially convenient.

Again, Editor Francis Scandale and one of his Page 1 stories raise a lot of unanswered questions. 

More horse manure

In response to zero phone calls from readers, Scandale again gives A-1 play to a story by Staff Writer John Brennan on deals to privatize horse-racing tracks.

On A-8, an editorial calls for more state funding of legal services for the poor with nary a word of criticism for Governor Christie, a lawyer who seems to believe only wealthy people deserve legal representation.

Proud reporters

On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Staff Writers Chris Harris and Matthew McGrath pull out all the stops on coverage of Memorial Day parades:

 "Practically every inch along the 1-mile parade route [in Bergenfield] was taken up by chairs occupied by proud Americans wearing patriotic tees. You could hear the oohing and aahing among the spectators as classic cars like the Mustangs and Challengers motored past."

Where are the news copy editors when you need them?

Mac Borg's hometown

I saw Englewood's poorly organized parade, and noticed big changes in that city's business district that have never been reported in The Record.

Ann Taylor, a national retailer, has closed its Palisade Avenue store, and the Blue Moon Mexican restaurant next door plans to take over the space. Will the Starbucks next to Blue Moon also expand?

The Mercedes-Benz dealer on Grand Avenue, where Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg once bought his tank-like sedans, has started an enormous expansion project stretching to South Dean Street.

But there still are plenty of empty storefronts on Palisade Avenue, including Green Line, a market that was paying a $25,000 monthly rental on the ground floor of a luxury apartment building, and an upscale bakery shop called La Dolce Divas.

A sign on the back door of Green Line says it is "closed for renovations."

Neglecting Hackensack

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado, who was hand-picked for the job by Sykes, also has ignored hard times for Main Street, especially after The Record and NJMG moved to Woodland Park from 150 River Street.

Today, Alvarado has as story on a walking tour of Main Street that will focus on its past glory -- not its forlorn present (L-6).

Lots of hot air

Were you one of the 1,577 "lucky" New Jersey residents "to get" one of those portable air conditioners offered by a full-page ad on L-10 today? 

The call is free, but I don't see anything in the ad saying the unit is free.

The ad, like the editors, made you a sucker.