With Christie, the 'Dream' is a living nightmare

At a vacant house on Summit Avenue in Hackensack.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The Record's front page today and other media are jumping the gun on the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington "for jobs and equal rights" (Aug. 28).

But it's typical of the Woodland Park daily to focus on the recollections of freedom marchers from Englewood and Paterson who heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech -- and not on how poorly minorities are doing since Governor Christie took office in 2010 (A-1).

GOP bully

Christie discriminates against the high (John E. Wallace, the black state Supreme Court associate justice he dismissed) and the low (all those workers denied a hike in the minimum wage by his veto).

You don't even have to be black or Hispanic. His mean-spirited budgets and his broken promise to lower local property taxes have hurt the state's middle class, too.

It's no wonder Democratic challenger Barbara Buono has loped 10 points off Christie's supposed lead in the gubernatorial election, according to a new poll (A-3).

Obama, Egypt

Christie's endorsement of Tea Party crackpot Steve Lonegan for a U.S. Senate seat from New Jersey was front-page news, but President Obama's backing of Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the presumed victor, ends up on A-5 today.

A day after the Syrian government allegedly used chemical weapons to kill hundreds of innocent civilians (A-1), the editorial page is shedding tears over the supposed death of "democracy" in Egypt (A-18).

I am still waiting for the media to report on the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, its ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups, and the full extent of its persecution of Christians.

The media's continued inability to confirm who has used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians is a testament to their cowardice in not going to the scene of the massacres, reducing their reports to the level of "he said/she said."

Bathroom humor?

Also on A-18 today, three letter writers call for the firing of the NJ Transit officials responsible for failing to safeguard locomotives and rail cars from Superstorm Sandy damage.

"NJ Transit, the sixth-largest system in the United States, is still struggling to restore service to pre-storm levels," says Lisa Padron of Wayne.

Maybe, in the past 10 months, I missed The Record's assessment of NJ Transit "service" in the thousands of words written about bathrooms at the Hoboken terminal and Penn Station in Manhattan. 

Hackensack change?

Today, a follow-up to Tuesday's Hackensack City Council meeting reports the appointment of "a prominent ... lawyer with ties to the Christie administration" to guide redevelopment in the city (L-1).

Brian M. Nelson is another well-connected Republican hired by a council that was swept into office this year on a platform that pledged to end the insider deals of former Zisa family administrations.

The appointment of Nelson not only sends the wrong message about patronage.

More apartments?

He is wrong for the city, if he continues to encourage developers to build more apartments in a city whose public schools are already bursting at the seams, necessitating the lease of a vacant Catholic school building.

Today's story reports the city is considering "opening a municipal [parking] lot near Foschini Park" for development proposals.

The only development there should be a municipal pool.

That's what voters said Hackensack was sadly lacking during a forum for Mayor John P. Labrosse Jr. and the other candidates at Mount Olive Baptist Church in early May.

Of course, The Record didn't cover the forum.

Dead copy

The Record's wire editor has ignored the deaths this week of two giants of jazz piano.

I haven't seen obituaries for either Marian McPartland or Cedar Walton.

Yet, the local editors continue to run filler photos of fender benders and other minor accidents in the same section with obits and death notices.