Christie's 'reform' of entitlements is bad news for you, me

Hackensack police are citing an exemption in the Open Public Records Act in denying Eye on The Record a video statement from Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office on March 10, the day after his unmarked car struck and fatally injured Hue D. Dang, 64, of Hackensack. He was not charged. The exemption cites an active investigation of the fatality by the Union County Prosecutor's Office.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Even a story reporting Governor Christie plans "to reform Social Security, Medicare and other benefits" sends shivers down the spines of anyone approaching retirement age.

Christie and other conservative Republicans love to throw around the word "reform" to mask their mean-spirited raid of public benefit programs and entitlements, as shown by today's Page 1 story in The Record (A-1).

And gullible reporters like Herb Jackson, the paper's so-called Washington correspondent, have swallowed whole all the broken promises that word represents.

Rare story

Today's front page also carries a rare story on seniors suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia -- a follow-up to a murder-suicide in which a 100-year-old Elmwood Park man killed his 88-year-old wife before committing suicide (A-1).

"The risk of dementia increases dramatically with age -- more than 5 million Americans age 65 and older have Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia among older people," Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton says.

Of course, the Woodland Park daily has long ignored the problem, and I can't recall a single story on day care for seniors with dementia, even though some of the programs started more than a decade ago.

A perfect candidate for such a day care program is Staff Writer John Cichowski, also known as the Road Warrior, whose chronic errors can only be explained by some form of dementia coupled with a total breakdown in traditional fact checking.

Bottom feeding

A story on the first Business page reports a Walmart with a 24-hour supermarket is opening in two weeks in a new shopping center in Teterboro (L-8).

Consumer Report's May 2015 cover article, "The Best Supermarkets in America," ranks Walmart next to last on its list of 68 chains.

The magazine rated markets nationwide based on 62,197 responses to a survey on the quality of produce, meats and poultry, and bakery goods, as well as store-prepared food, staff courtesy and store cleanliness.

"And what of Walmart, consistently one of our lowest-ranking grocers dating back to 2005? This year, the nation's largest grocer ... earned low marks in every category other than price," according to Consumer Reports.

But you can be sure The Record will publish one glowing story after another about Walmart in return for tens of thousands of dollars in sorely needed advertising revenue.

Non-profit medical center giving Hackensack $5.1 million

At Tuesday night's meeting of the Hackensack City Council, Jerry Lombardo, right, chairman of the Upper Main Street Alliance, announced that two developers, Alfred Sanzari Enterprises and Meridia, are donating $40,000 toward the cost of the Atlantic Street park the business group urged the city to build on downtown parking lots. George Capodagli, the developer behind the Meridia Metro apartment project on State Street, is giving $25,000 of that amount.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Hackensack University Medical Center, a non-profit that holds more than $130 million in tax-exempt property, will pay the city $5.1 million over three years, officials said Tuesday night.

In a second development, Capt. Nicole Foley, head of the Hackensack police Traffic Division, has been reassigned.

The move came after numerous complaints from residents that police failed to enforce no-parking rules on 70 streets during the winter, entombing vehicles, hampering snow clearing and endangering drivers on streets too narrow for two cars to pass.

HUMC payments

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, City Manager David Troast said as the result of "tax appeals," the huge medical center will contribute $5.1 million over three years for "progressive projects."

He declined to be more specific.

At earlier meetings, Mayor John Labrosse, an HUMC employee, said the city was talking with the medical center about paying for the repaving of Prospect Avenue, a heavily traveled street lined with high-rises that resembles a third-world camel track from the pounding of traffic, including ambulances.

But the repaving of Prospect and other streets was announced a couple of weeks ago with financing from a bond and grants.

City Manager David Troast said a "frugal budget" approved by the Hackensack City Council will raise municipal taxes 3.99% or a hike of $155.99 on the average home. During the public portion of the meeting Tuesday night, no resident rose to comment on the spending plan.

Capt. Foley

The reassignment of Hackensack police Capt. Foley apparently is unrelated to the fatal pedestrian accident on March 9, when she cleared a detective of any wrongdoing in the death of a 64-year-old Vietnamese-American woman.

Foley was quoted in The Record's March 11 story on the accident at Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street, saying police do not know where Hue D. Dang was "standing" when she was hit by an unmarked car driven by Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero, 49, of Wayne.

Foley did not mention the Jackson Avenue crosswalk to The Record's police reporter, Stefanie Dazio, nor tell her Dang fell to the pavement with her feet in the crosswalk and that a plastic grocery bag she was carrying fell next to one of the car's wheel.

Neighborhood residents believe Straniero may have been looking left to see if traffic on Kennedy was approaching Jackson Avenue and turned right toward Route 80 ramps, hitting the woman when she was in or near the crosswalk.

On Wednesday, one resident referred to Dang as the "woman who got creamed."

When Eye on The Record contacted the state police and state Attorney's General Office, expressing concern that no charges were filed against the detective, the Union County prosecutor's fatal accident unit was asked to investigate.

Today' paper

Staff Writer Todd South of The Record covered Tuesday night's Hackensack City Council meeting, but any story he may have written doesn't appear in the paper today.

As you can see from the Local section, crime news took precedence on L-1 and L-2.

Page 1

For the second day in a row, Editor Martin Gottlieb blesses readers with another all-New Jersey front page (A-1).

Unfortunately, Gottlieb included a boring Charles Stile column on Governor Christie's presidential ambitions that reads much like the 100 others the Trenton reporter has written on the same subject (A-1).

If you Google "Charles Stile and Governor Christie," you get 18,700 "results."

Gottlieb also included a big photo of Tiger Woods and his adorable children as the editor and sports Columnist Tara Sullivan try to help the wealthy pro golfer rehabilitate his image as a womanizer and home breaker (L-1 and S-1).

David Samson

In an unintentionally hilarious story, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg reports David Samson --Christie's father figure, confidant and adviser -- is retiring from the practice of law (A-1).

What's hilarious is that his firm, Wolff & Samson, is changing its name to a real tongue twister -- Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi -- and will likely lose millions in billings to other firms that are easier to remember.

Samson resigned as Port Authority chairman, the job Christie gave him, in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal. 

More corrections

Local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, and Production Editor Liz Houlton admit today to two major screw-ups on Tuesday's A-1 and in an L-3 story on March 31.

Detailed corrections appear on A-2 today.

One correction notes one of the Woodland Park daily's front-page stories on the murder-suicide in Elmwood Park incorrectly reported the day on which the elderly couple died.

"It was Sunday" (not "Wednesday afternoon"), the correction states, referring to Michael Juskin, 100, who killed his wife, Rosalia, 88, with an ax before slitting his wrists (see A-1 follow-up today).

In Tuesday's story, the "Wednesday afternoon" reference appears in the first paragraph of Staff Writer Stephanie Akin's A-1 sidebar on the prevalence of domestic violence among seniors.

How many editors read that first paragraph and missed the error before it was published?

How many of those editors are pulling down six figures and laughing all the way to the bank?

Don Smith

Photographs credited to veteran Staff Photographer Don Smith have been missing for weeks. 

Is he on vacation? Did he get fired? Has there been another downsizing at North Jersey Media Group?

Ignored by the editors, enraged 100-year-old kills his wife

Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack at 4:44 p.m. on Monday, one month after Hue D. Dang, 64, was fatally injured in or near the crosswalk by an unmarked car driven by Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. After Hackensack police declined to file any charges, the investigation was taken over by the Union County Prosecutor's Office.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Can you "accuse" a dead man of homicide?

The brain-dead editors at The Record of Woodland Park say you can in the very first paragraph of today's report on a centenarian who killed his 88-year-old wife with an ax before committing suicide (A-1).

Even the headline on the Page 1 story is vague, referring to the killer, Michael Juskin of Elmwood Park, as being "at the center" of the case:

"100-year-old at the center of murder-suicide"

The headline should have said he killed his wife, Rosalia, with an ax, and then the sub-head could have mentioned he suffered from dementia.

A sidebar reviews similar cases in recent years, and concludes "the elderly population is often underserved by services for battered woman and overlooked by research on domestic violence" (A-6).

Gee. Shouldn't the editors of the Woodland Park daily admit how they also have ignored seniors with dementia and Alzheimer's disease for years, preferring to publish overwrought stories on children with autism?

Why 9 months?

At the center of today's rare all-New Jersey front page is a court photo of the sister and mother of Genesis Rincon, the 12-year-old who was slain in Paterson last July (A-1).

But the story on L-1 doesn't explain why the two defendants are being arraigned nine months after the fatal shooting.

Maybe it took that long for the accused killers' families to come up with the hefty retainer needed to land representation by attorneys Harvey Briete and Matthew Cavalier.

Judging from the photo on L-1, Briete's hourly rate apparently has to pay for suits that cost a couple of thousands of dollars each as well as hand-tied bow ties.

Briete also is given to hyperbole -- dismissing a plea bargain with a 40-year prison sentence for his 20-year-old client as a "life sentence," according to the paraphrase on L-1.

Another look

On Monday, I re-visited the T-intersection of Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack, where Hue D. Dang, 64, a Vietnamese-American woman who lived a few blocks away, was struck and fatally injured by a car one month before.

I took a photo at 4:44 p.m., the time police said Dang was hit by Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero's unmarked car, which was turning right toward the Route 80 west ramp.

Hackensack police said they didn't know where Dang was standing when she was struck, and didn't mention the Jackson Avenue crosswalk to the reporter who wrote The Record's only story on the case, on March 11.

No charges filed

Police didn't file any charges against Straniero, 49, who lives in Wayne and works for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

They did note "a large amount of sun glare from the west," but that shouldn't have obscured the view of Dang, who appeared to be in or near the Jackson Avenue crosswalk when she was hit.

Dang's feet landed in the crosswalk when she fell parallel to the passenger side of the car.

And, according to a neighborhood woman I spoke to on Monday, a plastic grocery bag she had been carrying landed near a wheel on the detective's silver Ford Crown Victoria.

The victim was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

The Union County Prosecutor's Office took over the investigation, and on March 31, a spokesman said I should check back in "several weeks."

Why are editors building a defense case for Menendez?

What looks like a World War II-era poster in Hackensack's City Hall shows that the benefits of whole grains have been known for many decades.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's lead story today is yet another attempt to build a defense case for Sen. Bob Menendez, who faces a federal trial that is probably more than a year away (A-1).

That means Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson and reporters in the Woodland Park newsroom likely will regurgitate these same arcane legal arguments in the days before New Jersey's senior senator goes before a jury on bribery charges.

The best story on Page 1 today reports that Exxon Mobil regarded the wetlands around two refineries in New Jersey as little more than waste receptacles (A-1).

It's unclear why Editor Martin Gottlieb led with the third or fourth story defending Menendez, and not the Exxon Mobil expose.

Even putting pollution  aside, Exxon's Bayway Refinery in Linden has irreparably damaged New Jersey's reputation with the hundreds of thousands of out-of-state motorists who have driven by the smelly complex on the turnpike. 

Robs readers

For every positive Menendez story, Gottlieb is robbing readers of some hard-hitting reporting on the corrupt campaign finance system and public officials who think nothing of repeatedly violating the public trust.

Gottlieb devotes a huge amount of front-page space to the Germanwings tragedy for the second day in a row, even though readers have tired of the story (A-1).

Local news?

A story about a small goat found roaming Paramus streets (L-1), and a long, wire service obituary on the creator of the Pet Rock (L-6) are clear indications the poor editors who got stuck working on Sunday weren't able to find much local news.

The goat headline and the plays on words attempted by the reporter all fall flat.

One unexplored scenario is that the animal escaped being curried for a family's Easter dinner.