Lawyers, lawsuits and legal fees

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Reporters covering the death of a Hawthorne man in an SUV-train accident fill today's story with lots of quotes about what a "great kid" he was and what a great family he came from, but they fail to resolve conflicting information on whether warning lights were flashing at the Franklin Lakes railroad crossing Monday night (A-1 and L-1).

Police say they were working, but many paragraphs later, reporters quote a survivor's relative as saying he was told the lights weren't flashing. The crossing doesn't have a gate, but that's left unexplained, too.

Lawsuit around the bend

You can bet there's a big lawsuit coming against the driver, who has a spotty record and wasn't supposed to be driving two non-family members in his SUV at the same time; against the railroad for not providing a gate at the crossing and possibly against other defendants, but don't expect to read about it in The Record of Woodland Park.

More lawyers are lurking behind Governor Christie, who refuses to repay the $271 million in federal funds spent on the Hudson River rail tunnels before he killed them (A-4). The Star-Ledger story notes Christie has retained a politically connected law firm, Patton Boggs, at $485 an hour to contest the bill.  

The former Hackensack daily hasn't questioned Christie's decision to hire that high-priced law firm or his naming of two pals from his days as U.S. attorney: a former New Jersey attorney general as chairman of the Port Authority (A-4) and a retired Somerset County prosecutor as executive director of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners (A-1). 

Cops and robbers

There's so much law-and-order news in Local today, you'd think head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes planned it that way -- to fill the yawning space left from failing to cover municipal news.

Even Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado continues to boycott that city's municipal affairs, writing today about hiring by the beleaguered Police Department and a murder investigation by the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

A second look

Monday's Page 1 story on renewal of the battle over the millionaire's tax in New Jersey has not one, not two, but three graphics filled with percentages, tax brackets and other related numbers (A-1 and A-10). 

But nowhere in the the story do readers find any revenue projections from a proposed tax surcharge on the roughly 16,000 millionaires in the state.  Was Editor Francis Scandale asleep or just running interference for his pal, the governor?

Now, income over $500,000 is taxed at a rate of only 8.97%.

Democrats want to raise that to 10.75%, but Christie is vowing to fight that, as he did successfully last year, lest his many wealthy supporters demand to know why they are no longer immune to the pain he has visited on the middle and working classes.

Readers are tired of the B.S.

Image by Martin LaBar via Flickr

Indoor farmers' markets aren't the only place to buy good produce in winter.

That's enough B.S. 

We're tired of Editor Francis Scandale catering to a fierce minority who claim most or all of us are interested in the Jets, Giants, Mets and Yankees, and that justifies Page 1 play. 

He's got a weak spot for putting sports all over the front page of The Record of Woodland Park, because he's addicted to male bonding in the news meeting -- the ass-slapping, high-fiving and jock-strap waving.

Scandale's skewed news judgment and desperate attempts to "sell papers" are well-known, and today is the 10th anniversary of the day he took over as editor. Is anybody celebrating?

 

In all likelihood, Scandale is only following orders from another jock, Publisher Stephen A. Borg, the dimmest light bulb in that wealthy publishing family. I may be wrong, but front-page sports coverage seemed to increase noticeably after Borg took over from his father in mid-2006.  

I'm from Brooklyn, but I've adopted New Jersey as my home state, and none of those overpaid athletes play for a New Jersey team. In fact, the Giants and Jets have a magnificent new football stadium in the Meadowlands, yet still call themselves the New York Dickheads. Fie on all of them.

But thanks to Scandale, win or lose, the Jets have claimed significant front-page turf recently, including today, despite mediocre reporting and writing by John Brennan, a former sports reporter. Brennan can't think clearly, can't write clearly. Can you believe his opening paragraphs from Pittsburgh today?

Wait until next year

He reports that Jets fans preferred seeing their team lose in the playoff game against the Steelers on Sunday over seeing them go to the Super Bowl and lose there. You can't make up this kind of confused reporting.

Sunday's and today's Jets packages are so big, there was room for only one other story on A-1.

You only have to read the headline on that second story to realize this is real news, which should have led the paper today. It's also of interest to just about everyone -- renewal of the battle over levying a millionaire's tax -- a battle Governor Christie won last year, while he systematically cut nearly every program for the middle and working classes, and eliminated property tax rebates for seniors.

Staff Writer John Reitmeyer says there are roughly 16,000 millionaires in New Jersey. When are we going to see the story on how many of them are financial supporters of Christie, who also has given the wealthy a break by not raising the tax on their gas-guzzling limos and SUVs? I'd say we're never going to see that story in The Record.

Did you see the A-1 streamer over the masthead? 

"FARM-FRESH PRODUCE RIPE FOR PICKING IN THE DEAD OF WINTER."

"Farm fresh" and "ripe for picking" are a little too much exaggeration for my taste, especially when low prices are the real reason people buy produce sold at indoors "farmers' markets."

And while Staff Writer Sachi Fujimori did her usually good job on the story (Better Living front), she should have focused more on the Paterson Farmers' Market, which has the lowest prices in the region, as well as being the only one that caters to both Middle Eastern and Hispanic consumers.

And here's an odd thing for Fujimori to say: "Just because the outdoors farmers' markets have shuttered till spring, it doesn't mean you have to subsist on shriveled or overpriced fruits and vegetables." 

Who, exactly, is selling those? Good produce is available in just about every supermarket, especially the Korean-owned ones, which are known for their competitive prices.

Local yokels

A local personality is featured for a change on L-1 today -- a singer-songwriter from Fair Lawn -- in the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH series, which is "brought to you by" a luxury car dealer's ad above the fold.

A long budget-deliberations story from Ridgewood appears on L-5, among the obituaries. Budget-cutting plans in Englewood also have been reported in Local, but I have yet to see anything similar from Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado, one of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' pets.