Trump called 'the most dangerous nominee in our lifetime'

GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump doing a good imitation of a demagogue.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Bridgegate trial jurors presumably are deliberating in secret again, and the distraction of the World Series is past, so in five days voters will decide the fate of our nation.

The Record and other news media should be ashamed of themselves for devoting so much time to the hysteria of GOP racist Donald J. Trump, and for printing AP trash like the story on Page 1 today:

"Some Republican lawmakers ... are threatening to block [Hillary Clinton's] Supreme Court nominees, investigate her endlessly or even impeach her."

Over at The New York Times, OP-ED Columnist David Leonhardt calls Trump "the most dangerous nominee in our lifetime."

Recalling 1964 GOP White House hopeful Barry Goldwater, who "mused about using nuclear weapons in the Cold War," Leonhardt said:

"For Republicans today, Trump is scarier than Goldwater.... He is racist and sexist -- having refused to rent apartments to African-Americans, retweeted neo-Nazis, besmirched Muslims and Latinos and boastfully molested women.

"For years, Republicans have been frustrated by liberal sensitivity on race and gender. Comes now Trump, spewing bigotry."

And anti-women rhetoric against Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, who is leading in the all-important state polls. 

Local news?

For another comprehensive Law & Order report, turn to The Record's Local section today.

Murder and mayhem are mixed liberally with election news from the 5th Congressional District, where The Record has endorsed Democrat Josh Gottheimer over Tea Party radical Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage (A-10).

Staff Writer John Seasly continues his one-dimensional coverage of Hackenack (L-2).

Today, he reports City Attorney Alexander H. Carver III will "reluctantly" resign when the City Council picks his replacement, set for Dec. 1 (L-2).

Seasly hasn't covered a single Hackensack Board of Education meeting, even though school taxes represent 44% of residents' bills (another quarterly property tax bill is due on Nov. 10).

He hasn't reported the board is asking residents "to take an active role" in the selection of a new superintendent of schools or that a forum is scheduled for Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the high school.

And he hasn't bothered to report that more than 3 months ago, city officials halted work on a 14-story residential-retail project, the biggest so far in the renewal of downtown Hackensack.

Reporter again ignores bitter partisan battle for Hackensack

Hackensack Board of Education President Jason Nunnermacker ran unsuccessfully for City Council twice with the backing of the Zisa family political dynasty, which controlled the city for decades before reformers were elected in 2013. Now, he attends council meeting regularly to attack Mayor John Labrosse and other officials.

At a council meeting in May, Nunnermacker, in a hoodie, tried to hide from the camera after Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino rebuked him publicly for falsely claiming he and other school board members were responsible for cutting taxes $214 for the average homeowner. A citywide revaluation cut city and school taxes an average of $400 for about one-third of homeowners, she noted.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

John Seasly, The Record's Hackensack reporter, continues to ignore the Zisa family's battle to regain control of the city they ruled for decades.

A slate of Zisa allies -- including school board member Jason Nunnermacker -- was defeated in the 2013 municipal election, but the family continued to control the Board of Education, where Nunnermacker is now president.

And Richard Salkin, the board attorney and a former city attorney, lost his second job as municipal prosecutor after Mayor John Labrosse and other council members took office.

In April, two members of Team Hackensack, backed by former four-term Mayor Jack Zisa and other Zisas, were elected to the Board of Education and the third member of the slate was appointed later to fill a vacancy -- solidifying their control.

Seasly completed ignored the Zisa family's role in the school election, as well as the issues brought up by the other candidates, including three backed by the current council.

He also ignored the proposed $104 million school budget, which accounts for 44% of a homeowner's property tax bill and which exceeded the city's own spending plan.

'A frequent critic'

Today, in a story on the Local front, Seasly identifies Salkin as "a frequent critic of the municipal government," but doesn't mention all of the jobs the attorney held during Zisa administrations or when the council was controlled by the family's allies (L-1).

To further insulate Salkin from charges of partisan politics, the reporter deftly quotes Labrosse, the mayor, as citing "the lawyer's loyalty to the Zisa political family" (L-7).

"It's a political stunt that stinks of the old-style politics that have plagued this town forever," Labrosse says, referring to another lawsuit Salkin filed against him.

That let's the reporter, his assignment editor and Editor Deirdre Sykes off the hook for their slanted reporting and shocking disregard for Hackensack residents and readers.

2017 election

A Zisa-backed Team Hackensack slate is expected to oppose the reelection of Labrosse and other council members in the non-partisan May 2017 election.

Let's see if Seasly manages to ignore that contest as he did the school board election:

Zisa-backed school trustees sworn, 
editors could care less 

With reporters like Seasly telling only half the story in Hackensack, the county seat may once again be cursed as "Zisaville."

Christie-Trump tax deal

Today's paper carries extensive coverage of Governor Christie becoming "a Trump man," as if readers missed the GOP bully's endorsement of the wacko racist presidential candidate in February (A-1, A-3 and A-6).

Still, I can't find a word about a New York Times report that in December 2011, the Christie administration settled a lawsuit seeking payment of $30 million in overdue taxes and interest owed by his friend Trump's Atlantic City casinos.

After six years in court, the state agreed to accept just $5 million, The Times reported on Tuesday.

Editors boring us with same old stories week in, week out

Paramus police and the borough's emergency medical technicians responded this morning to CityMD, a walk-in urgent-care center on Route 4 east. A woman was taken out of the building on a gurney, above. Paramedics from Hackensack University Medical Center rolled up after the Paramus units.

It's not known how many patients walk over after eating too much Louisiana-style spicy fried chicken at the Popeyes next door. One spicy chicken breast contains 45% of the recommended daily intake of saturated fat and 34% of the recommended amount of sodium.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Manhattan-bound commuters continue to scramble for rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains and buses that cost more to ride because of Governor Christie's deep cuts in state subsidies.

But Editor Deirdre Sykes is ignoring all of that to bring us a boring "analysis" on why rail unions are looking for a better deal than in a contract proposed in March (A-1).

And a sub-headline saying a strike is unlikely is an instant turnoff to commuters, and the vast majority of readers, who don't take mass transit.

Dwight Morrow

Today, the only break in the heavy coverage of national and state politics, and the future of Atlantic City is another story about Englewood's failing public high school (A-1).

The photos on Page 1 and A-10 seem to suggest a tutoring program at Dwight Morrow High School was aimed only at Latina students who were at risk of not graduating.

For a decade or more, Sykes hasn't assigned any stories on Englewood's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black or Hispanic.

Hackensack police refused to say whether any of the drivers were charged after this two-car collision on Tuesday morning at Prospect Avenue and Clinton Place in the city's Fairmount section.

Police news

Sykes and Managing Editor Dan Sforza couldn't put out a local-news section without plugging holes with lots of police and court news, and news about the police.

Today, Staff Writer John Seasly has yet another story about who is running the Hackenack Police Department, while ignoring the rest of Tuesday night's City Council meeting (L-2).

Readers get more slanted reporting on Teterboro jet noise

This Teterboro Airport-bound business jet was among several I saw passing low over homes and an elementary school in southwest Hackensack on April 18 -- two weeks after a new flight path was supposed to keep aircraft away from nearby Hackensack University Medical Center and Prospect Avenue high-rises.

The Fanny Meyer Hillers Elementary School is in the neighborhood, which hasn't seen any relief from aircraft noise.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today and this past Monday reports a new flight path to keep noisy corporate jets away from Hackensack never went into effect on April 4.

That wasn't news to residents of southwest Hackensack, where business jets heading for Teterboro Airport continue to skim the roofs of Prospect Avenue high-rises and Hackensack University Medical Center.

In fact, Staff Writer Paul Berger, who wrote tens of thousands of words on the flight-path change before April 4, was clueless until he was contacted by Hackensack gadfly Regina DiPasqua, who was quoted on Monday's front page:

"They are still flying very low," said DiPasqua, who lives near the airport and hadn't noticed any difference in jet noise that drowns out conversation and television.

"You can read the numbers on the plane," she added.

Slanted coverage

Today's coverage reports the Federal Aviation Administration says it will be another six weeks before the new flight path goes into effect, requiring pilots to begin following Route 17 in northern Bergen County (A-1 and L-1).

In the weeks before the initial start date of April 4, Berger quoted officials in Mahwah and other towns, bitching and moaning that noisy jets would be flying over their communities and schools.

I never saw similar reporting from Hackensack after moving in 2007 to the city's Fairmount section, which is under the noisy landing paths of both Teterboro and Newark Liberty International airports.

Nor has The Record quoted residents of Teaneck and Englewood in recent years about aircraft noise from Teterboro jets.

Hackensack news?

Staff Writer John Seasly has a follow-up today to the announcement by Hackensack Police Director Mike Mordaga that he is leaving the job on May 16 (L-1).

Seasly has written more stories about the city's Police Department than any other agency.

However, the reporter continues to ignore Hackensack schools and Board of Education.

Fort Lee readers will find a story on their school budget and tax hike on L-3 today, but Seasly never reported the March 1 adoption of Hackensack's much larger school budget or any details.

The $79 million tax levy to support a $104 million school budget was approved last week by a tiny minority of the 20,000 Hackensack residents who are registered to vote.

Editors giving Hackensack residents very short end of stick

Behind Hackensack High School, an eye-level tree branch has the potential to injure a parent, student or other pedestrian, especially if he has his head down as he walks up the inclined sidewalk and doesn't see it.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's edition of The Record has Hackensack residents again turning pages to find news of their city, the most populous in Bergen County.

Way back on L-3, in Local, they'll find a story about a Hackensack police lieutenant who won't be the city's first black captain, as expected, because he failed part of the exam.

That's certainly embarrassing, but some readers question why Staff Writer John Seasly seems to enjoy rubbing in the failure of the officer, James Prise, who will remain a lieutenant.

At the same time, he or one of his editors is responsible for dropping from the story the title, first name and middle initial of City Manager David R. Troast. 

Only "Troast" appears three times in the story. 

This is the same reporter who misspelled the last name of Richard L. Cerbo, who spoke at this week's council meeting and appealed for a tax cut.

New reporter

Seasly took over the Hackensack beat this year, and mostly has covered City Council meetings, writing about downtown development, the city budget, the Police Department and other related news.

He's completely ignored the biggest school system in Bergen County, and didn't cover the issues or candidates in this week's Board of Education and school budget election.

Of course, Seasly may not be the one to blame at a newspaper that has been editor-driven for decades, and now is being led so poorly by Deirdre Sykes.

Like many young reporters at The Record, Seasly takes his marching orders from an assistant assignment editor, who remains anonymous, spends most of his or her time sitting behind a computer and may not know anything about Hackensack.

Korean BBQ

Today's "Good" to "Excellent" review of a Korean barbecue restaurant has Staff Writer Elisa Ung again displaying her ignorance of the harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and low-quality feed used to raise the vast majority of beef in the United States.

That's a disservice to readers who might actually believe that any meat labeled "prime" also is, as Ung says, "high-end" or "better quality" (BL-16).

What would truly make the meat superior is if it came from cattle that were grass fed, and were raised without antibiotics and hormones, but as usual, Ung doesn't say. 

And the restaurant, Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong in Palisades Park, loses points for using gas grills, not the more authentic charcoal.

Ung also omits mention of whether the restaurant requires you to buy two orders of meat, pork or poultry (at $22.99 to $35.99 each) in order to have them cooked at the table, as most Korean BBQ places do.

Nor does she say whether non-meat eaters can order shrimp to cook at the table, wrap in lettuce leaves and enjoy with kimchi and other Korean side dishes. 

All in all, here is another review that smacks far more of promotion than journalism.

Hackensack Chronicle

The Record's poor job of covering Hackensack since a major newsroom downsizing in 2008, followed by North Jersey Media Group completely abandoning the city in 2009, is bad enough.

But the Hackensack Chronicle, the NJMG tabloid delivered with The Record on Fridays, is so stale the weekly is of little use beyond lining a litter box.

The Chronicle didn't cover the issues in Tuesday's school election or report on the attempted political comeback of the Zisa family, who backed two of the three winning candidates.

The lead story today is about City Council action at Monday night's meeting.

School election results won't appear until next Friday, if then.

Repeated errors make a mockery of younger Borg's motto

The Record's Local section this past Saturday ran a photo of the old Bergen County Jail, above, but the caption said: "An iron worker working to secure a beam at the construction site of the Bergen County Justice Center next to the jail in Hackensack on Friday." The photo, cropped to show only the top of the beam and the jail's turrets and parapets, confused readers who have watched the slow construction of the Justice Center, below.

Is the beam shown in Saturday's L-3 photo part of a pedestrian bridge that will connect the new building to the Bergen County Courthouse? The Record's caption didn't say. Another photo caption, on Saturday's L-2, described a BMW as a Toyota. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

It's right there under the masthead on Page 1 of The Record every day:

"NORTH JERSEY'S TRUSTED SOURCE"

Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who took over from his father nearly a decade ago, made a marketing decision to replace The Record's original motto:

"FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE IT SERVES"

Borg followed with several big, money-saving decisions that resulted in less local coverage -- especially of Hackensack -- and a rising number of errors, which has eroded North Jersey readers' trust in the Woodland Park daily.

Monday's paper carried a story on a nationwide poll that found:

"Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias .... Nearly 90 percent of Americans say it is extremely or very important that the media get their facts correct." 

Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy

Literally hundreds -- if not thousands -- of errors have appeared in the Road Warrior column since the "trusted source" motto was adopted, and few of them have been corrected by six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton or Editor Deirdre Sykes.

Sykes handpicked Staff Writer John Cichowski to write the column starting in September 2003. 

In recent years, corrections of hundreds of editing and reporting errors by others have appeared regularly on A-2, but The Record rarely corrects an error unless someone calls to complain.

The message drummed into journalism students is "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy," especially when it comes to spelling names.

A perfect example is a story in the local-news section today by Staff Writer John Seasly, who covered the Hackensack City Council on Monday night:

The reporter quoted a resident, and made sure to describe him as someone "who regularly attends the meetings," but misspelled his last name.

Richard L. Cerbo, whose father was a former Hackensack mayor, is the one who called for a tax cut in comments before the council approved a 2016-17 budget of $100.4 million.

Seasly wrote, "Rich Serbo" (L-3).

The entrance to Hackensack's main recreation center, the M&M Building on Holt Street, where voters cast ballots on Tuesday in the city's Board of Education election. I saw three voters ask for someone who spoke Spanish, but none of the 10 or so poll workers did. One poll worker barked in English, "Just go in there [the voting booth] and vote." Poll workers are paid $200 for the day. Most are seniors who have nothing better to do with their time than sit on their asses all day as their contribution to democracy.

School election

In addition to outright errors like misspelling someone's name, the errors of omission erode readers' trust in The Record.

At Monday night's council meeting, Seasly was asked why he didn't do a story on the Hackensack school election, especially the issues involved and the attempted political comeback by the Zisa family, which backed three of the nine candidates.

The reporter said a story was scheduled to appear on Tuesday, the day of the election, but none did.

Today, The Record's coverage of the results in 10 towns devotes the least space to Hackensack, even though the city has the most students and the biggest school budget, not to mention the most candidates.

Voter apathy

Of course, the story Seasly missed is that voter apathy and the status quo ruled the day, with only 795 of about 20,000 registered voters approving the $104 million Hackensack school budget.

A total of only 1,293 residents voted on the $79 million tax levy, which supports an overall school budget that is higher than the municipal budget.

Mail-in ballots weren't counted Tuesday night, but unofficial results show that:

Two Zisa-backed candidates, incumbent Timothy J. Hoffman and former trustee Modesto Romero, were elected along with incumbent Lara L. Rodriguez, who was on another slate (with only 727, 604 and 711 votes, respectively).

(I reported the affiliation of the candidates incorrectly when this was first posted. The Record reported Rodriguez's vote total incorrectly in Wednesday's paper.)

Seasly never reported that school taxes represent nearly half of the total property tax bill or that the ballot was confusing, with candidates' names appearing randomly without numbers or such identification as "Citizens for Better Schools" or "Team Hackensack."

Today's paper

Even though Borg and Sykes continue to ignore Hackensack, they are doing a bang-up job of publicizing medical miracles at Hackensack University Medical Center (A-1).

Borg's older sister, Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg, once served as an HUMC board member.

The sprawling medical center calls itself a non-profit, and as a result saves about $10 million a year in property taxes.

Death of right-wing judge could return sanity to high court

Now that Antonin Scalia is gone, President Obama can restore the liberal slant of the U.S. Supreme Court, and win back some of the rights Scalia and other conservative judges took away.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Good riddance to bad judicial rubbish.

The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday was cheered by those who have witnessed the horrors of his right-wing decisions on gun rights and how special-interest money has poisoned elections.

The front page of The Record today is dominated by an Associated Press story that calls him the "most provocative member of the U.S. Supreme Court."

AP reporter Mark Sherman's flattering portrait of Scalia seems designed to have the family designate him as their official biographer (A-1).

Where is any mention of the hundreds of deaths in schools and workplaces as a result of Scalia and the court expanding the constitutional right to bear arms to individuals in 2008?

And what about the high court's decision to allow unregulated corporate donations to influence elections as a form or free speech?

This Daily News front page, referring to the Bridgegate scandal, proved prophetic when it came to Governor Christie's chances at landing the GOP presidential nomination. The GOP bully dropped out of the race last week.

Another Daily News front page called Christie a liar when it came to his role in the George Washington Bridge lane closings, which occurred about a month before his election to a second term.

Peddling a myth

The Record continues to peddle the myth that Governor Christie was a bipartisan reformer in his first term.

Contrast yet another promotional Charles Stile column arguing just that on Page 1 today with the overwhelmingly negative letters from readers.

Reacting to the lead news story on Thursday's front page citing a "bipartisan Christie," James Pepe of Hackensack wrote:

"That would be true if the definition of bipartisan means making agreements across party lines you do not plan to honor, vetoing multiparty common-sense legislation, allowing New Jersey's economy to lag the national recovery by four years or more, and allowing New Jersey's credit rating to be downgraded multiple times" (O-3).

"His New Jersey legacy will be one of failure," Pepe says.

Another reader, David P. Van Soest of Fair Lawn, declares, "I assume that he will now be looking to take back his role of 'dictator' of New Jersey" (O-3). 

Diversity ads

An advertising section called "Diversity" was delivered with today's Woodland Park daily.

The lead article carries the byline of Christina Joseph, an assignment editor at The Record.

The section promotes such companies as Bayer and Uber, as well as Holy Name Hospital.

Englewood Hospital and Medical Center ran a full-page ad. 

In past years, The Record ran Black History Month stories on the front page or Local front every February.

Those articles were one of the few times blacks would appear on the front page without being charged with a crime.

Local news?

Saturday's Local front carried the first report in many weeks on a Hackensack City Council meeting.

Staff Writer John Seasly, who covered last Tuesday night's meeting, wrote about the city restructuring the Police Department to provide more opportunity for advancement (Saturday's L-1).