Bogota's Tea Party radical is headed for certain defeat

I saw few fellow U.S. Senate primary voters on Tuesday at the Fairmount School on Grand Avenue in Hackensack.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

If former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan is elected to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey, he'd knock himself out trying to deny health insurance to tens of millions of Americans who are living and dying without it.

The Tea Party radical also would fight to give employers the "freedom" to create millions of jobs, The Record reports today in front-page stories on the victory of Lonegan and Newark Mayor Cory Booker in Tuesday's primaries.

Of course, Lonegan doesn't mention that wealthy business owners are prisoners of their own greed, refusing to cut their profits by hiring workers and spending money to insure them.

The conservative Republican rose to his level of incompetence as the three-term mayor of tiny Bogota, where he cut spending, but apparently was unable to lower property taxes (A-6).

Today's stories say Lonegan was state director of a Tea Party group, Americans for Their Own Prosperity, until March (A-1) or June (A-6).
 
Wealthy racist

The wealthy racist is wrong for North Jersey and wrong for America. Does anyone doubt Lonegan will fail now as he has in the past when seeking higher office?

I'm sure Governor Christie is happy, having thrown away millions on a special election to ensure Booker doesn't appear on the GOP bully's November ballot.

Finally, the Record's photo captions often raise questions in readers' minds -- such as who is that black man in the room of white Lonegan supporters, a hotel employee, a reporter (A-6)?

Or is that President Obama crashing the party? LOL.

Paving news

Anyone who bothers reading the Road Warrior column today could be forgiven if they think they've picked up a dry paving industry journal (L-1).

Staff Writer John Cichowski fabricates a debate over the merits of milling and "a super pavement mix," ignoring that speeders and runaway trucks are intent on killing  people whether the road is smooth or rough.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes indicates her staff is struggling to bring in local news by running a big photo of a downed traffic-light pole on L-1.

A story on L-3 reports the Hackensack Board of Education, a remnant of Zisa family rule, has named Robin E. Coles to a vacancy.

Coles is described as a parent who "is active in her church and community," but readers learn nothing about her views on education or what kind of job the city's dysfunctional school board is doing.

Wretched excess

Italian-Americans and other fettuccine lovers are heaving this morning as they scan a recipe for BLUE CHEESE ARTICHOKE PASTA (BL-1).

Clueless food blogger Kate Morgan Jackson recommends readers use 6 ounces of full-fat, artery clogging blue cheese, 1 cup of heavy cream and a half cup of butter to prepare a half-pound of fettuccine (BL-2).

She advises readers to warm the plates to keep the pasta hot during the ambulance ride to the emergency room.

Hackensack again gets the cold shoulder

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I guess Hackensack readers are just so much chopped liver. Anyone who lives here, The Record seems to say, doesn't deserve to know what's going on in their city, where the paper was founded in 1895 and where patriarch Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg frolicked as a kid in his enormous back yard.

Staff and program cuts at North Jersey schools are front-page news in the Woodland Park daily today, but you won't find a word about the Hackensack district -- one of the biggest -- continuing a news blackout on the city. Clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado seem to have forgotten Hackensack exists.

Of course, Glen Rock schools are included in the story, as is the Tenaflly district. Does that have anything to do with Editor Frank Scandale calling the former home or with his kids attending school there, or with Publisher Stephen A. Borg and his children, who live on a $3.65 million "estate" in the latter?

At the bottom of A-1 today is a terrific feature about Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who is battling cancer but who endured during the voting marathon that passed health-care reform. I especially like how the senator exposes the sickos who fought to defeat the measures. (Photo: Lautenberg before he shaved his head.)
 
Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin is exposed for the elitist he is by Ringwood Schools Superintendent Patrick Martin, whose Op-Ed piece on A-23 today shames us for turning our backs on the Ramapough Mountain Indians. You might recall the Doblin-endorsed editorial a few months ago, urging sick Upper Ringwood residents to accept a pitifully small settlement in the decades-long Ford Motor Co. dumping case.


Just remember it was Stephen Borg who replaced The Record's long-held motto on the front page -- "Friend of The People It Serves" -- with marketing hype -- "The Trusted Local Source." He's sadly mistaken if he thinks readers swallow that bullshit.

Parting shots at Governor Corzine

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In what is apparently its last story on Governor Corzine, The Record of Woodland Park doesn't hide its long-held bias against the outgoing Democrat by reporting in a Page 1 story today that "improvements he says his administration made" include education policy and school funding, the child welfare system and expansion of health care.

That's how State House Bureau  reporter John Reitmeyer (or in this case, Wrong-meyer) makes it clear to readers the paper thinks this is only Corzine spin -- in other words, the governor accomplished nothing in office. Reitmeyer also focuses on the weird notion that the wealthy Corzine should have used his money to build homeless shelters and schools. Has The Record ever asked any other politician to build a school or homeless shelter?


Indeed, in another Page 1 story today, about the inauguration of Republican Chris Christie as governor, there is no suggestion he should build a homeless shelter or school with his money. But political Columnist Charles Stile says the "organizing principle" of Christie's administration will be a battle against public school teachers. (The Record has long blamed the "high salaries" of teachers and police officers for towns' financial woes and high property taxes.) Some of Stile's purple prose suggests he hates the teachers union even more than Christie. Why is Stile being assigned to the Christie story in place of a supposedly objective reporter?

Does Christie really care about public school children? I don't see anything in the Christie story about the new governor attacking the obesity epidemic by making sure public schools give children the right food to eat.

The continuing bad news from Haiti occupies the bottom of the front page today, but fashion-plate Editorial Page Alfred P. Doblin has yet to complain in the week since the quake hit about the slow, heart-breaking pace of getting food, water and medical care to survivors, the turf battle over the single airport runway, the breakdown of law and order or any other issue raised by the glacial pace of recovery.

In the editorial today on Christie, The Record says he takes "office at a time of national discontent with government." Really? Didn't the banks bring the economy to the brink of ruin? It's government that is trying to fix the mess caused by their greed. It's government that is trying to extend health care to 30 million Americans without it, while employers like The Record cut employee and retiree health-care benefits. What about discontent with The Record, which has turned its back on readers in Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, which has segregated elementary and middle schools?

In the Local section today, there are stories from Pompton Lakes (two), Paterson (two), Passaic County, Woodland Park and Ringwood, but nothing but police news from Hackensack and Teaneck. Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano covers Haiti relief efforts in her town, but, except for the swearing-in of the new mayor, she hasn't written an Englewood story for about a month. Where is head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot Sykes" and the rest of the lazy, incompetent editors who are supposed to be supervising Fabiano?

By relying on the Chicago Tribune rather than doing it himself, food and recipe editor Bill Pitcher offers readers an unhealthy recipe to increase their intake of cabbage, one of the most nutritious vegetables around.

Image via Wikipedia

 He's too lazy to call a restaurant in North Jersey for one of their great cabbage recipes -- such as Jamaican cabbage and salted codfish or Korean soft-tofu stew with cabbage kimchi -- so you get a recipe for cabbage and sausage, packed full of mystery meat and preservatives; and told the meal should include buttered potatoes and ice cream. Now that's a healthy meal. Way to go, Pitcher.

Three reporters on one story?

The Record of Woodland Park is trying to milk the murder of a 9-year-old North Jersey boy for all it's worth. The desperate, incompetent editors assigned three reporters to the story today and put it back on Page 1, but you won't find any news in the paper from Hackensack or the other towns those reporters are supposed to be covering.

The three reporters spend so much time describing the murder suspect's mental illness, none of them questions why the boy was sent to stay with relatives in New York City on a regular basis, why he was up at 3 in the morning in his uncle's apartment or whether there was a sexual motive for the crime.

Two other staff-written stories appear on the front page, including the unusual appearance of a column by consumer reporter Kevin DeMarrais. He says cable television customers have options in the battle over higher fees for programs, but have you noticed how difficult it is to find the savings or the bargains touted by newspaper columnists such as DeMarrais, whether it is for TV service, airline fares or hotel rooms?

If you are looking for news of your town in the Local section, you won't find any, but there is plenty of crime, fire and accident coverage -- what passes for local news in the former Hackensack daily. In fact, on the front page today is a promotion for a video of a "stubborn" house fire on northjersey.com, the pathetic Web site of North Jersey Media Group. Is that all the so-called digital news group could come up with? 

If you usually ignore the Business section, you'll miss health-care news, an example of odd packaging. Shouldn't health-care and non-profit news appear in the feature section, Better Living? It took years for the lazy editors to put restaurant sanitary inspections in the Friday entertainment-restaurant section, though the list often omits Wyckoff and many other towns.

The danger of  food editor Bill Pitcher using recipes from outside sources can be clearly seen today in Better Living's so-called 15 Minute Chef (no home cook can prepare this meal in that time; it's just hype). The all-knowing Washington Post says you can't find wild salmon this time of the year, so advises us to use artificially colored farmed salmon. But wild Alaskan sockeye salmon is available frozen year-round at Costco, including the store down the street from the old Record building, Trader Joe's and other stores.

On the opposite page, an article from the Chicago Tribune sounds like "Healthy Eating 101" as it tries to persuade readers to try such nutritious foods as sardines, cabbage, tomatoes and broccoli. The "how to eat" cabbage paragraph ignores the wide availability of cabbage kimchi in North Jersey.

The thinnest of papers

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One thing that jumped out at me after looking over today's thin paper is continued -- even redundant -- coverage of everywhere except Hackensack, Teaneck and Engelwood, the three most diverse towns in The Record of Woodland Park's circulation area.

Do readers really need a second, detailed sob story about wealthy Ridgewood's downtown (photo) on the front of the Local section? What about Cedar Lane merchants and Palisade Avenue merchants and the businesses on Main Street in Hackensack -- the last hit particularly hard by the absence of hundreds of newspaper employees scattered to the wind by the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group?

At least this Ridgewood story tells how greedy officials raised parking meter rates -- a crucial detail left out of the previous story, as we learned from outraged letters to the editor. Was this story intended to correct the earlier story, which I believe ran several months ago, without making the omission more obvious?

On Page 1, I read over a puzzling sentence a couple of times before I realized the news copy editor and the desk supervisor just passed it over on autopilot. In the guilty plea of a hedge fund manager, Staff Writer Andrew Tangel wrote the defendant "didn't face the roughly 40 people in court." Duh. Of course, anyone who has attended a court hearing knows the defendant faces the judge -- not the audience -- but in a sense still comes face-to-face with his accusers. What was the point of saying he didn't "face" the FBI agent, attorneys and investors? It only confuses readers. To add insult to injury, a fact box with a photo of the moron is topped with the words, "Day in court," a phrase usually associated with hard-pressed plaintiffs, not greedy, thieving financiers.

A story promoted on the front page under the headline, "Health care bill could raise costs," reveals that 33 million uninsured Americans would finally be covered. Wouldn't that add to our health-care expenses? The story makes it sound controversial, instead of just common sense.

The Business, Editorial and Better Living pages are throwaways today.


See earlier post: "A modest proposal"

Did the reporter miss something big?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

On Nov. 5, The Record ran a front-page story on a protest by 10,000 people in Washington over health-care reform. Some of the protesters confronted Rep. Steve Rothman, who was leaning toward voting for the measure, the newspaper's crack Washington correspondent, Herb Jackson, reported.

Jackson wrote that among the signs he saw was one with the words, "No socialism."

But I had to watch "The Daily Show" to find out that some of the protesters were sick crackpots who equated health-care reform with the Holocaust. One of the signs shown on Comedy Central was an extremely large photo of a pile of bodies at a German death camp under the words, "National Socialist Health Care, Dachau, Germany, 1945."

Did The Record's reporter only cover the confrontation between Rothman and residents of his district? Did Herb Jackson see the death camp photo sign and not report it? Were The Record's editors concerned showing the photo would reveal the protesters for the sickos they are and that readers might question the sensational Page 1 play of the story? Has The Record -- which has lost many readers in recent years -- made any attempt during the long health-care reform debate to separate fact from the lies, myths and frightening distortions we've all heard or is it just trying to sell newspapers?