Mean-spirited Christie keeps on dumping on Paterson

Recycling in Hackensack, above, and on the tony East Side of Manhattan, below.

In Manhattan, homeless men and women harvest recyclable cans and bottles left in front of apartment buildings, and get 5 cents for each one. A thousand cans or bottles translate into a $50 payday. The pink notices on posts advise residents to move their cars -- or risk having them towed away -- for a shoot by "The Good Wife" crew.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The morally bankrupt Christie administration won't give poor Paterson a break.

State troopers could put a stop to rising gun violence in the wake of state aid cuts in 2011 that forced the layoff of 125 police officers -- almost a quarter of the force.

And state grants might allow Silk City to borrow less than a planned $37 million to fill thousands of potholes in the county seat that plague residents and visitors alike.

Christie apologists

You'd think The Record's editors and columnists would call on Governor Christie to go to bat for the largely minority city.

But you'd be wrong, as demonstrated today by lame Paterson columns from Mike Kelly and John "Road Warrior" Cichowski (A-1 and L-1).

And Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin is worried not about children like Genesis Rincon, 12, who was fatally shot on a Paterson street, but about child refugees and schoolchildren who ride allegedly unsafe buses (O-2).

Deep-seated racism

Kelly, Cichowski and Doblin embody the institutional racism of the predominantly white Woodland Park newsroom -- the same stubborn bias shown by Christie himself.

If you doubt Kelly is capable of harshly criticizing Christie, take a look at his second column on the Sunday edition's Opinion front (O-1).

A "misfire" is Kelly's label for the veto of "a reasonable and minor change in state gun law" to reduce the capacity of magazines from 15 rounds to 10" -- the ones favored by mass killers.

He calls Christie's defense of the veto "pathetic," and accused the GOP bully of caving into the gun lobby to further his presidential ambitions.

Blaming the victims

But there is not even a hint of criticism of Christie in Kelly's overlong Page 1 column headlined with a rhetorical question that, as usual, the reporter never answers ("Can tragic death be catalyst for change?").

This is another long and winding column that generates heat, but no light -- lots of research, lots of irrelevant numbers, lots of interviews with the same old sources, even the number of college degrees and high school diplomas held by city residents.

No opinions

But, again, Kelly doesn't seem to have an opinion about what is happening in Paterson, as he does about guns, and doesn't blame anyone, let alone Christie, whom he finally mentions deep on the continuation page:

"Governor Christie's administration -- already pressed for cash itself and unable to make pension payments for state workers -- has given no indication [of] coming to the city's aid" (A-6).

Why hasn't  Editor Marty Gottlieb asked his Trenton staff to question Christie or his aides on why they apparently are doing nothing about gun violence and infrastructure problems in Paterson.

What pussies.

Pathetic sections

It's Sunday, but there is hardly any municipal news in Local, the section put out by the lazy, incompetent assignment editors, Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza (L-1).

North Jersey's downtowns are dying, but the lead story on the Business cover today is about a Fair Lawn couple involved in a trademark dispute (B-1).

An enormous amount of space in Better Living is devoted to the bimbos on "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" (BL-1).

And Travel Editor Jill Schensul writes about owning a small island near Sardinia that costs $1.5 million euros (T-1).

Hey, let's take up a collection.