In nasty health-care battle, racism is rearing its ugly head

From cartoonist Steve Sack, a Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning in 2013, on the "Russian hookers rumor" dogging President-elect Donald J. Trump a week before he is inaugurated.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A black journalist strongly suggests racism is behind the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act or what Republicans curse as "Obamacare."

"Neither President Obama nor his detractors saw political advantage in discussing the Affordable Care Act as an anti-poverty or racial-justice program, but it is both of those things," Kai Wright reported today on WNYC-FM, a National Public Radio station based in Manhattan.

"Between the January 2014 launch of new coverage options and ... that August, the nation's public-insurance program for the working poor grew by roughly 7 million people.

"As of this summer, it had gone up by more than 10 million," Wright said in a story adopted from one he wrote for The Nation's special issue, The Obama Years.

"The Affordable Care Act overall has likely saved hundreds of thousands of black lives, and it has certainly produced one of the most significant advances in racial equity on record:

"By the end of 2014, in just one year's time, it had entirely erased the disparity in health coverage between white and black kids," Wright said.

Media coverage

Like many news outlets, The Record repeatedly refers to the Affordable Care Act as "Obamacare," adopting a favorite pejorative used by Donald J. Trump during his Republican presidential campaign.

Tea Party radicals compared the health-care law to the Holocaust, but Republicans failed repeatedly to have the 2010 law declared illegal.

Now that Trump won the Nov. 8 presidential election, Republicans who control Congress have begun the process of repealing the health-care law, which provides coverage to 20 million Americans who didn't have insurance.

But Trump and Republicans have been careful to avoid saying just how many of those Americans are black and Hispanic or what will replace the health-care law.

Medicaid expansion

In The Record today, the last two paragraphs of an Associated Press story on 6A reports the law "steered billions of [federal] dollars to states [including New Jersey]" to expand "the Medicaid health program for the poor."

"The health care law does have problems, but independent experts say it's an exaggeration to call it a total failure," according to the AP.

The Record and other media have found it far easier to quote critics of the health-care law than to actually do any reporting about the coverage.

My experience

More than eight years after I left The Record, I am paying slightly less for health insurance for my wife and son, purchased on the federal marketplace, than I did in the years after I became eligible for Medicare -- not Medicaid, as I had written.

I had to purchase their coverage from North Jersey Media Group until I was able to buy policies for them under the Affordable Care Act.

Food confusion

On the Better Living cover today, a headline declares:

"Most Anticipated Restaurant

 Openings in 2017"

But readers turning to the centerfold find only five restaurants listed, which would mean no other restaurant opening in the next 11 months is among the "most anticipated" (10BL and 11BL).

Meanwhile, the headline over the story is totally different:

"New Restaurants To
Look Forward To In 2017"

To add to the confusion, the dish pictured on the cover isn't identified, as it usually is, on 2BL, where readers are told:

"On the cover: There have been plenty of new restaurants that have opened in North Jersey in the past few months."

All of this sloppy work appears under the byline of The Record's food editor, Esther Davidowitz.
  

To Christie, New Jersey has become an 'afterthought'

The Little Ferry Circle may be history, but construction continues, narrowing Route 46 to one lane in places, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie's veto of a bill to ban or limit smoking in public parks and on beaches has generated a lot of news coverage and outraged editorials.

But I haven't seen any coverage of Christie also vetoing a bill to allow New Jersey's Medicaid program to pay for abortions, as reported this morning on WNYC-FM.

Today's Page 1 column on the smoking-ban is another rote recitation of the political reasons for Christie's move (A-1).

As usual, Staff Writer Charles Stile can't muster an opinion -- the stock-in-trade of columnists who work for every other newspaper on the planet.

An editorial urging the state Legislature to override the veto also doesn't condemn or, God forbid, even criticize the GOP bully (A-18).

For that, you'll have to read the editorial on myCentralJersey.com, a Gannett company.

Here is an excerpt:

"Gov. Christie’s national ambitions have gotten in the way of good public policy in New Jersey yet again, this time with his veto of a bill that would have banned smoking in public parks and limited it at many beaches.

The proposed ban was overwhelmingly supported by the Legislature, and it’s really nothing more than a common-sense public health measure. There are dangers from secondhand smoke even in open-air places, and the ban would have also reduced litter and fire hazards.

But none of that matters to Christie. He explained the veto with predictable and tired blather about unwanted government intrusions on local jurisdictions — even though he’s perfectly happy to intrude when it suits him.

In the meantime, remember, Christie isn’t governing for any of us, even though that’s his job. He’s governing for himself. You may not mind when you agree with him, but wait until you don’t. Then you may not be quite so content with a governor for whom his own home state is an afterthought."

You can read the entire editorial by clicking on this link:

Christie says no -- to good public policy


13 times 9/11

Ignore Staff Writer Mike Kelly's second lame column in as many days (A-1).

Then, turn to Local for moving coverage of 9/11 anniversary observances in Hackensack and other towns (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

Why bother?

Staff Writer Elisa Ung gives a lukewarm, 2-star rating to Marmaris Cafe in Edgewater, a Turkish restaurant that served her dry chicken kebabs and gamey lamb shanks (BL-20).

Does the place serve fish or shrimp? Not a clue. Ung confines herself to two food groups -- meat and dessert.

And the restaurant reviewer never grills restaurant owners on the origin of meat and poultry they serve, but when she encounters low-quality food, as she did here, why bother with a full-blown review?

A few paragraphs of warning would suffice, leaving room for an appraisal of a place all of us would want to visit.

Kates Bros.

Joan Verdon, The Record's retail reporter, writes mostly about malls, and big box and luxury stores -- big sources of North Jersey Media Group's advertising revenue.

But on Tuesday's first Business page, she did a terrific job reporting that the 73-year-old Kate Bros. shoe store in Hackensack won't be closing after all.

Like many reporters, Verdon assumes readers are intimately familiar with Hackensack's Main Street.

The address -- 329 Main St., at Berry Street -- is mentioned only in passing near the end of the story.

More tax cuts for the wealthy, crumbs for the poor

In the City Council meeting room, the Hackensack seal is crooked.

Thanks to sloppy work by editors, reporters and copy editors, The Record doesn't help readers understand how many low-income residents would benefit from an expansion of Medicaid in New Jersey (A-1).

On Tuesday's front page, Columnist Charles Stile mentioned "300,000 ... families," but in a staff-written story on A-6 the same day the reference  is to "300,000 of the state's 1.3 million uninsured."

On Page 1 today, the paper reports Governor Christie will bring "104,000 citizens" into the program next year.

F.U. to middle class

What is clear is that Christie continues to give business-tax breaks to the wealthy, throw crumbs to the poor and screw the middle and working classes in the state.

You won't find any mention of how a modest tax surcharge on millionaires -- which Christie has vetoed at least twice -- would raise $1 billion in sorely needed revenue or what the governor plans to do to boost the economy and job creation.

Yet, today's coverage is so upbeat, and even includes another wildly exaggerated Stile column on the GOP bully's "leadership style," and his chances for reelection and an eventual White House bid (A-6). 

More A-1 errors

More sloppy work by Production Editor Liz Houlton's wrong-way copy desk is evident in Mike Kelly's column on the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (A-1).

The photo caption starts with a typo: "Flower were laid ...."

And sticklers would insist on a comma after the first line of the headline:

Attack overshadowed

but never forgotten  

  

Then, readers encounter a Kelly who fails miserably in an attempt to write a coherent, hard-hitting column, and the reason is clear.

He's has been beating the pathos out of the 1993 attack and 9/11 as if they were dead horses, using them as the basis for numerous, long-winded columns. Enough already.

Mr. Trite

Look at his first line: "The calendar told us 20 years had passed."

As if a talking calendar isn't bad enough, the second paragraph contains a multitude of sins:

A "stoic group of 100 relatives and friends ... huddled in the February chill ... at the patch of landscape known as Ground Zero," and "the terrorist bombing ... that killed six people ... was as real and vivid as morning coffee."

Give me a break. "As real and vivid as morning coffee"? How trite can you get?

At the end of the third paragraph, Kelly mentions the truck bomb exploded on Feb. 26, 1993, and follow that with a quote: "And then 9/11 happens."

Huh? Not "then." It was more than eight years later. 

As usual, he pads his column shamelessly, using six extra words to say "Ground Zero." In Kelly's desperate try to fill space, it's "the patch of landscape known as Ground Zero."

"Landscape"? This man is a tongue-tied hack. 

Where was head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza or whichever assignment flunky sent this disaster to the copy desk for spell-checking?   

Another local snooze

On the front of Local, readers looking for news find another Road Warrior column based on a highway safety "report,"  and a big story about a dog that was shot and beaten in Iraq.

At the top of the page, the Englewood City Council rejects a $674,000 plan to repair the Mackay Ice Arena, which is in a minority neighborhood (L-1).

Hackensack news is conspicuously absent.

But The Record carries yet another story about the Paterson book drive it is sponsoring (L-1).

Laughing at death

Most of the readers of The Record are over 50, and tens of thousands of them take Lipitor and other statins to lower cholesterol and prevent heart attacks.

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill says grapefruit "is downright dangerous" to statin users, yet she promotes National Grapefruit Month with three recipes for the citrus fruit that include butter, sugar and vanilla bean "creme" (BL-1).

Check out her what-me-worry grin in the thumbnail photo with the "IN YOUR KITCHEN" column. 

Needy seniors get a good screwing

Image by davef3138 via Flickr
The Hackensack, Minn., Fire Department, above. North Jersey's Hackensack might as well be in Minnesota for all the coverage it gets since the The Record moved to Woodland Park.

Governor Christie -- who seems beholden to conservative millionaires -- will be forever known for his mean-spirited budget cuts, such as reducing Medicaid spending by $75 million.


Page 1 of The Record today documents the screwing of vulnerable seniors in long-term care -- one of three long and winding process stories interim Editor Douglas Clancy hopes will upset readers.


Let them try to figure out the two other densely written exposes on public contract "errors" and private county security (A-1).


I read the long, poorly edited lead paragraph of the latter a few times, and I'm still not sure if I understand it.


Pity poor seniors


The Medicaid story is an example of how the Woodland Park daily's assignment desk covers senior citizens, reporting only the concerns of those who are in nursing and assisted-living homes.


What's the obituary of North Korean madman Kim Jong Il doing on the front page of a North Jersey paper, when expanded local obituaries are routinely buried in the back pages of the Local section?


The photo of a Bergen County police sergeant at Bergen Community College in Paramus really looks phony, especially because I never saw a county police officer in the months I attended classes there (A-8).


Little local news


The big Hackensack news in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section affects only the handicapped -- a suit over accessibility at The Shops at Riverside and a nearby Hooters restaurant (L-1).


When is the last time The Record wrote about how Hackensack's Main Street is faring during the recession? Or Teaneck's Cedar Lane? Or Englewood's Palisade Avenue?


All in all, a pretty boring edition.

Where is the father, the pastor, the counselor?

Image via Wikipedia

Why doesn't the Road Warrior write about rail and bus commuters?

I plowed through Mike Kelly's cliches on Page 1 today, his unanswered questions and his wasted paragraphs on how Damian Williams got from Teaneck to Bound Brook on the day he was shot dead, and I scanned the full page of text and photos on A-6, the continuation page.

The Record columnist spent weeks "investigating" Williams' life after the 24-year-old was killed on March 19, but he doesn't say a word about the man's father, the family's pastor or school counselors.

Kelly show here, as he has many times before, that he feels more comfortable dealing with cops, prosecutors and coaches than exploring the emotional and psychological details of family life.

Hey, Editor Francis Scandale, do you read any of the Page 1 stories before they're  published or do you just go by faith?

The columnist also shows that he gets no assignment editing before his stuff is sent over to the news layout desk and then the copy desk for headlines and photo captions. 

And why does Kelly allow the news editors to sandbag him with that ridiculous photo, showing a smile that carries all the sincerity of a used-car salesman?

More Christie pain

At least readers have a lead A-1 story from Staff Writer Lindy Washburn detailing the pain awaiting low-income Medicaid patients under Governor Christie's mean-spirited budget.

On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, her hand-picked Road Warrior columnist, John Cichowski, has his fourth straight piece on the Motor Vehicle Commission in five days.

No forced busing

NJ Transit's trains and buses bump and grind along, raising hundreds of complaints from commuters, and Cichowski is unmoved. I'm not leaving the office, he mutters. I'm not leaving the office.

What a coward Columnist Charles Stile is, putting the words "mean-spirited" in quotes to describe Christie's line-item vetoes of Democratic spending. 

How many times did he and other reporters use the Christie-sanctioned words "reform agenda" without quotes in his stories and columns on the governor's budget in recent months?

A bloody butcher

On the Better Living front, Restaurant Reviewer and Columnist Elisa Ung profiles Pat LaFrieda III, "New York's most famous butcher," who is "the guy behind the country's most acclaimed steaks and burgers" and who is "held in high regard by so many top chefs ...."

But when you read on you find out 75% of the beef LaFrieda sells is raised with antibiotics. Eat too much of that and the antibiotics your doctor prescribes won't work. 

Ung doesn't even mention whether the cattle are fed animal by-products -- kitchen scraps and bits of dead animals.

However, she's careful to say all the beef is "humanely raised."

Yeah, Ung, that's right up to the instant -- just inside the slaughterhouse door -- when a bolt is shot into the animal's brain to kill it and it's hoisted by its rear legs for skinning and dismembering.

He's died in '01

Also on the Better Living front today, Staff Writer Jim Beckerman reports the paper's former shopping blogger is to shoppers "what Dale Earnhardt Sr. is to stock car racing. A champ."

The elder Earnhardt died in a crash during the Daytona 500 in 2001, but there are plenty of stock-car champs who are still around, Beckerman. Try Jimmie Johnson next time.

Another columnist screws up big time

Image via Wikipedia

The "Miracle on the Hudson" is still Page 1 news more than two years later.

No. This isn't a post about the error-prone Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski. Nor is it about Columnist Mike Kelly, who loves to push words around with little effect.

Turn to Page A-2 of The Record today and read the face-saving item under "Clarification" to learn about how Columnist Charles Stile badly misquoted state Assemblywoman Valerie Vanieri Huttle of Englewood in a June 7 column.

Huttle said she missed lots of her children's events, unlike Governor Christie, who took a state helicopter to attend his son's high school baseball games. 

Christie struck back in his bulldog fashion, calling Huttle "a jerk" in front of New Jersey and New York press, and on CNN. 

But in his column, the name-dropping Stile paraphrased Huttle as calling the governor a "lousy father." Boy, what a leap, an irresponsible one at that.

She never used those words in her press release, hence the A-2 item today, along with two equally embarrassing corrections.

Baby, hold my gun

Another Record columnist appears on Page 1 today, thanks to Editor Francis Scandale, who tests readers' patience by putting sports out front whenever he gets the chance.

Does anybody really care whether Plaxico Burress ever "fully understands" why he carried an unlicensed handgun into a nightclub? Does sports Columnist Tara Sullivan turn out this kind of drivel more than once a week?

Saturday's paper

On Saturday, Scandale's hand-picked front-page photo is little more than an enormous phallic symbol on a flatbed truck heading to Charlotte, N.C. 

Why is the journey of the "Miracle on the Hudson" jet to a museum of such fascination to Scandale or is he just desperate to fill A-1 with anything he can grab?

Leading A-1 is a plan by Christie, who is a millionaire, to slash $32.5 million from New Jersey Medicaid, which he thinks is too good for poor families.

In a Better Living cover story on Father's Day gifts aimed at men who hate fish, a photo shows wild salmon with the color of beef.

This stuff is frozen, yet still costs about $21 a pound, compared to $8.99 a pound for fresh wild Alaskan salmon at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.