Evidence mounts of Christie's pivotal role in Bridgegate

Traffic on Center Street in Fort Lee crawling toward Main Street on Monday, when construction on Main made driving in the borough an ordeal, as it has been on so many days in the past two years.

A digital sign on Main Street warned motorists of similar disruptions through Friday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm betting the 1.5 million pages of evidence federal prosecutors won't make public show Governor Christie had a pivotal role in the George Washington Bridge political-retribution scandal.

Indeed, the GOP bully could be one of the unindicted -- and as yet unidentified -- co-conspirators mentioned in today's Page 1 story in The Record.

There is a lot more negative news on Christie in today's paper, but you won't find it on A-1, where it belongs.

Joke's on us

Editor Martin Gottlieb used precious front-page space to recap the stupid jokes that closed out David Letterman's late-night TV career (A-1).

Letterman's 6,028th and last show on Wednesday night upsets only insomniacs and workers stuck in crappy night jobs, like the luckless copy editors in the old Hackensack newsroom.

On A-4 today, readers can find stories on an attempt to stop Christie from developing the Liberty State Park waterfront in Jersey City, and on a favorable legal opinion from his appointee on disclosing gifts from Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones and other friends.

Mass transit

More on Christie can be found on A-20 today, where an editorial finally calls on the worst governor in New Jersey history to "make mass transit a priority," noting in an understatement that he hasn't done so since taking office in 2010.

For years, The Record has reported negatively on the extension of light rail to Bergen County, and ignored the need to expand both bus service to Manhattan and the PATH commuter rail system (A-3).

The editors also allowed Road Warrior John Cichowski to stray far from his role as a commuting columnist, and almost exclusively cover problems associated with driving and drivers.

Now, the editorial declares, "Mass transit needs public subsidies; there isn't anyway around that fact.

"Taking commuters off highways is a boon for  commuters in cars as well as for commercial truckers."

Correction

On A-2 today, Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza acknowledge that after decades of covering similar local stories, they don't have a clue which Ho-Ho-Kus board will hear a large-scale housing plan on June 4.

In Local -- the section edited by Sykes and Sforza --the death of that vicious German shepherd at the hands of a Wyckoff cop three weeks ago gets better play on L-1 than the L-6 obituary of jazz music executive Bruce Lundvall, 79, also of Wyckoff.

Low gas prices

An Associated Press story reports low gas prices in early 2015 didn't boost the economy, as the media predicted they would (L-9).

Of course, the clueless wire-service reporter, Christopher S. Rugaber, doesn't bother exploring whether low gas prices encouraged people to drive more.

That would have worsened air pollution, increased traffic congestion and discouraged owners of gas-guzzlng SUVs from switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Christie screws N.J. middle class in bid for White House

Some tenants of the so-called luxury Avalon Hackensack at Riverside apartments near Route 4 have been worried about their safety since a fast-moving fire in January destroyed a similar Avalon complex in Edgewater, where the same cheap, lightweight wood construction was used. One-bedroom apartments start at $2,180.

Hackensack tenants have an excellent view of The Shops at Riverside parking garage on one side and the parking lot of the Home Depot Shopping Center on the other. A long, zigzag ramp gives tenants access to Home Depot, Lotus Cafe and other businesses.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today reports Governor Christie's shameless cuts to the state pension system and its mass-transit agency -- two pillars of the middle class.

How did reporters like Charles Stile and Melissa Hayes, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and Editor Martin Gottlieb ever lend credence to the GOP bully's White House aspirations with a dismal record that stretches back to 2010, his first year in office?

Now, NJ Transit commuters are screaming about higher fares and reduced service, and public-workers unions are suing Christie for cutting more than $1 billion from a payment and violating his own pension-reform law (A-1).  

Self-serve gas

How did The Record's upbeat story on the likely end of self-serve gas get it so wrong?

For Monday's A-1 story, Staff Writer Richard Newman talked to everyone except Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who is quoted today as saying full service is here to stay (A-1 and A-3).

"As the leader of the Senate, Sweeney can block the bill," Newman reports today -- belatedly. "We just don't post it for a vote," the former union leader said.

Animal v. human news

Record Editor Martin Gottlieb continues to devote good parts of Page 1 and the Local front to animal news, but remarkable humans often get the cold shoulder.

See L-6 today for the obituary of Mark Samitt, a Woodcliff Lake resident who died of melanoma at 52. 

I guess there wasn't room on the Local front today to report that as he battled the disease, Samitt enlisted hair stylists in a potentially life-saving awareness campaign.

Bored teens

I've never seen a photo showing teen apathy better than the one on the Local front today (L-1).

If these kids are our future, look out.

An FBI analyst is shown speaking to students in Hackensack, warning them of Islamic State recruitment techniques, but most are so bored and uninterested they aren't even looking at him.

Christie: I'd beat Hillary Clinton just like I defeated Buono

Our weird weather hasn't ended. I encountered fog on Woodland Street in Tenafly on Monday morning.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie isn't even the GOP candidate, yet The Record today devotes a long front-page story to the wannabe president's saber rattling and talk of taking on China, Iran, Russia and Syria.

And buried deep in the story by Salvador Rizzo is the biggest laugh line of all:

The GOP bully said "he would be able to beat Hillary Clinton, if he decided to run for president, because it would be similar to the race he ran against another Democratic female senator, Barbara Buono" (A-6).

Who is this State House Bureau reporter, Rizzo? "Another Democratic female senator"?

Clinton was President Obama's first secretary of state, not "another Democratic female senator," and Buono was a state senator, not in the U.S. Senate, which is where the onetime first lady served.

By the way, the byline on the story says "Salvador," but a credit at the end of another Page 1 story says, "Salvatore."

Big defeat ahead

Christie is just setting himself up for the biggest humiliation of his political life, if he thinks beating Clinton would be as easy as his 2013 defeat of Buono, who was put up as a sacrificial lamb by the sheepish state Democratic Party.

For one thing, Christie was so desperate for a second term he exacted political retribution against Democrats who didn't endorse him for reelection.

And all the reporting on politics by Charles Stile of The Record and other media turned off registered voters to the point that fewer than four in 10 cast ballots in the gubernatorial race -- the lowest turnout in history for such an election.

Obama in Camden

The president visited Camden, showing the kind of leadership in addressing police violence against blacks that Christie could never display (A-1).

In fact, Christie, from his second home in New Hampshire, belatedly referred to all of the gun violence in Paterson, where three young blacks were gunned down in drive-by shootings in about 15 months.

Christie said he is ready to work with Paterson to create the same kind of community policing credited with cutting crime in Camden.

But the last of the three blacks slain in Paterson, basketball star Armoni Sexton, 15, died about a month ago, so why is Christie just now making the offer?

Teaneck horse

Multimillionaire Ahmed Zayat was born in Egypt and owns race horses, including American Pharoah.

But Zayat, a Sephardic Jew, has lived among other Orthodox Jews in Teaneck for 30 years.

Now, the editors are making a half-hearted effort to show township residents are behind him and his horse, and are rooting for American Pharoah to win the Triple Crown (L-1).

That's likely because twice on the front page recently, victories by the horse have been called "wins" for Teaneck. That's preposterous.

The story by Mary Diduch reports Zayat Stables are in Hackensack. Boy, does that make me feel good.

And I got a good laugh out of her first line: "Bergen County isn't exactly horse country."

Of course it is. 

The Bergen Equestrian Center at Overpeck Park, Leonia, has a long history, and many Bergen residents actually stable their horses there and ride them frequently.

A second county horseback riding facility is in Franklin Lakes.

Here's a line that is irrefutable: 

Local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza -- who assigned this stupid story to a clueless reporter and then embarrassed themselves no end by missing her ridiculous first sentence -- are horse's asses.

Better Living

Today's story on the popularity and health benefits of olive oil omits one important fact:

Unlike the vast majority of corn, soy and rapeseed (canola) used in cooking oils, olives aren't genetically modified and olive oil doesn't contain GMOs (BL-2).

There is no explanation why this piece runs under the heading of 15 MINUTE CHEF.

Self-serve gasoline could be bad for air quality in N.J.

This two-pump gas station on Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs will probably never convert to self-service, even if the law is changed to allow it.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front-page story on a proposal to allow self-serve gas stations in New Jersey raises a lot of questions about prices that are never answered.

The story claims drivers pay a "full-service premium ... at the pump" estimated "at 8 cents to 18 cents a gallon," but doesn't say whether prices will be cut, if self-serve is approved (A-6).

Nor does The Record say how much the gasoline tax might be raised, and whether the net effect will be lower prices at the pump.

Cutting gasoline prices would transform a quality of life report into an environmental story, if lower prices encourage more driving and discourage the purchase of hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.

Of course, the New Jersey Gasoline C-Store Automotive Association probably wouldn't pass along labor savings to the consumer.

Members of the owners group have been charged with numerous wage violations.

Confusing numbers

At one point, the story reports self-serve pumps "would mean the loss of hundreds of part-time jobs," but a few paragraphs later notes gas stations employ about 5,000 attendants who pump gas, most of them part time (A-6).

Today's lead story on A-1 reports air pollution is getting worse in New Jersey. 

A proposal that might lead to lower gas prices and encourage more driving certainly isn't welcome in the Garden State, where mass transit is already operating at capacity.

Letterman effect

If the page proofer, news and copy editors, and other members of the newsroom production staff are still watching David Letterman, readers might finally have an explanation for the dramatic spike in errors in recent years (BL-1).

Letterman's "Late Show" was a fixture in the newsroom before the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group abandoned Hackensack in 2009.

Even more significant, moving the printing of The Record to Rockaway Township from Hackensack a couple of years earlier apparently ended the tradition of checking the first copies for errors, stopping the presses and fixing them.

Six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton has done a miserable job of ensuring accurate headlines, and all editing seems to have ended, allowing reporters and columnists to write on and on, and spin fiction if they want.

All this coverage -- today and Sunday -- of Letterman's final show on Wednesday is a waste of space. 

After I left the paper, I never watched the comedian again.

Second looks

Take a look at the corrections on Saturday's A-2 for examples of what a crappy job Houlton and the news and copy editors under her are doing.

One headline "gave the incorrect town in which seven people face prostitution-related charges."

Another correction fixed the misspelling of a Bergen County official's name, but also gave the name of his agency incorrectly.

Adam Strobel was identified as "division director for open space." The division isn't named.

The Strobel correction noted the "impact" of raising the open-space tax also was wrong in a story on Friday's L-6.

Death Valley

Sunday's Travel section cover story on California's Death Valley National Park was beautifully written by Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, the paper's chief medical reporter.

Her description of the landscape and "a silence as immense as any on earth" makes me want to visit even more than I did before (T-1).