Hysterical N.J. gas-tax opponents don't deserve equal time

In Hackensack, the exterior of the Bergen County Justice Center is nearing completion as work continues on the covered pedestrian bridge to the courthouse, below, near the medieval ramparts of the old county jail. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Koch brothers -- oil billionaires who back right-wing candidates in a war against the middle class -- are financing a campaign to stop a gas-tax increase in New Jersey.

The crackpot New Jersey chapter of Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by the evil brothers, urges drivers to say "no to a crazy new gas tax," a Page 1 story in The Record reports.

Staff Writer Christopher Maag actually devotes his second paragraph to the group's ridiculous ad showing "a father stealing things from his kids, including the family dog Sparky to pay for a gas-tax increase" (A-1).

The story is the latest to reflect how The Record allows wealthy special-interest groups, polls and politics to shape its reporting on important public issues.

Maag gives undue weight to hysterical anti-tax opponents without ever citing the logic of drivers paying a higher gas tax to fix roads and bridges, and to improve mass transit.  

Solar farms

The first paragraph of today's solar farm story claims "the projects could depress the price of solar credits that some homeowners rely on to pay off their rooftop ... arrays" (A-1).

But nowhere does Staff Writer James M. O'Neill mention that PSE&G has placed a floor of $400 under each credit a homeowner uses to repay the utility under its solar-loan program.

That compares to the average of $220 the reporter cites in his story. In 2010 and 2011, a so-called SREC fetched as much as $650.

Ruben Enukashvili

There are few details in the story about driver Christine Ko, 20, and how she killed pedestrian Ruben Enukashvili on Sunday night, allegedly while drunk (A-1).

Was the 86-year-old Georgian native in a Fort Lee crosswalk when he was struck by Ko's car? Is she a liquor store clerk in Fort Lee or her hometown of Ewing? Was she working that night?

Ko, who is charged with vehicular homicide, a first-degree crime, also received motor vehicle summonses.

John Walton

A story on another fatality -- the death of a 101-year-old driver who grazed a firetruck and crashed into a Paterson firehouse -- doesn't say whether former firefighter and Pearl Harbor survivor John Walton suffered a medical emergency (L-1).

Walton, who crashed on Sunday, died in the hospital on Tuesday. 

A photo of the accident and a seven-paragraph story appeared on L-6 in Monday's paper.

But for some reason, the reporter didn't identify the driver or give his age, reporting only that he was "elderly."

The man was taken to a hospital after receiving "emergency medical treatment" from firefighters, according to the story.

Staff Writer Linda Moss even interviewed Deputy Fire Chief William Henderson, who witnessed the accident but apparently didn't know or didn't tell her who Walton was.

Today's obituary reports Walton was Paterson's oldest living war veteran.

With Christie's support, Big Oil is ruling New Jersey, too

At the post office in Hackensack, employees used official Postal Service tape to hold together these signs.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

For decades, the noxious Bayway Refinery has given hundreds of thousands of visitors a negative impression of the state as they drive by on the New Jersey Turnpike.

And it helped fortify the "Cancer Alley" reputation of the Garden State, which had the nation's highest incidence of the disease in the 1970s.

Who knew that Exxon was at the same time contaminating 1,800 acres of wetlands at the oil giant's former refineries in Linden (Bayway) and Bayonne, according to a lawsuit the state filed 11 years ago?

Now, The Record says, a Superior Court judge has OK'd a settlement of the case for a mere $225 million, most of which will go to balance Governor Christie's voodoo state budget and to pay legal fees (A-1). 

The state had sought $9 billion in damages when the case was filed in 2004 by the James McGreevey administration (A-6).

Koch brothers

Is it any coincidence the Koch brothers, who made their fortune from the refining and distribution of petroleum, are putting hundreds of millions of dollars behind conservative Republicans like Christie in the 2016 presidential race?

Big Oil and the nation's automakers also have worked hand in hand to fight the production of more efficient cars and trucks, and to delay implementation of higher gas-mileage standards.

That only aggravates air pollution and hastens climate change -- two environmental issues that aren't mentioned in a wire-service story on increasing traffic congestion (A-1 and A-4).

Today's front page

With not one but two silly sports-related stories on Page 1 today, the Exxon ruling is the only news of any real relevance to North Jersey residents whose property taxes continue to climb as the state's economy sours under Christie.

In Ridgewood, it seems, desperate residents are stealing street signs and even poles, and selling the scrap metal as they struggle to pay property tax bills inflated by the wasteful system of home-rule government (L-1).

Look at the hysterical reaction of New Milford officials, who are opposing a plan by Fresh & Fancy Farms to hold healthy farm-to-table dinners, cooking classes and festivals at River Road and Stockton Street (L-1).

Officials cite traffic "congestion" and "parking shortages" in the neighborhood.

Tea Party news

Also on L-1 today, the editors run a rare story on Rep. Scott Garrett, the Tea Party idol who represents part of Bergen County. 

As usual, the story doesn't report on what Garrett is doing to improve life in New Jersey and the nation, only what he is doing to block President Obama's every action and initiative.

Instead of pandering to a regressive like Garrett, local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza should use their Local front to celebrate the lives of people like Deborah Hubsmith, a Woodcliff Lake native.

Hubsmith, who died on Aug. 18 at 46, is founder of Safe Routes to School Partnership, which encourages children to bike or walk to school and spurs government to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety (L-6). 

Tracy Morgan

Today's Business page story doesn't say whether comedian Tracy Morgan used any of the settlement money from a 2014 turnpike crash to purchase a 22-room brick "manor" in Alpine for $13.9 million.

Instead, the Business editors' focus is on how the transaction is "the priciest so far this year in Bergen County," promoting the health of the real estate industry (L-7).

The settlement was probably reduced because Morgan wasn't wearing a seat belt when a speeding Walmart tractor-trailer slammed into his limo van on June 7, 2014.

The comedian's lawyer said he suffered a traumatic brain injury in the crash. 

This past June, NBC News reported Morgan still walks with a cane, gets headaches and has memory problems.

After the turnpike crash, The Record and other media ignored major safety questions surrounding the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter passenger van like the one Morgan and fellow comedian James McNair were riding in. 

McNair died from his injuries.

See the original Eye on The Record post from June 8, 2014:

Gravely injured comedian
rode in van prone to rollover

Ode to heart disease

Clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson of Upper Saddle River is back today with another recipe that seems healthy, but includes a half-cup of artery clogging heavy cream and chicken breasts pumped up by harmful antibiotics (BL-2).

The headline claims "Summer Chicken Pasta" is an "ode to summer," but given the heavy cream, a more accurate heading would be "ode to heart disease."

"Eat it outside for maximum happiness," Jackson suggests.

Like when you are waiting for the ambulance.
  

In New Jersey, apathetic morons stifle real change

The campaign office for Barbara Buono and Milly Silva on Cedar Lane in Teaneck.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

If Democrat Barbara Buono fails today to unseat the worst New Jersey governor ever, she can blame the legions of apathetic morons who sit on the sidelines and allow the right wing to seize the high ground.

The real poison in our democracy -- a story The Record has rarely told -- are registered voters too lazy to get off their asses and go to the polls or even apply for a mail-in ballot.

Their corrosive influence can be seen in every local and state election, but in months of election coverage, The Record hasn't bothered to interview a single voter.

Democratic edge

With a 700,000 edge in registered voters, apathy is likely the leading explanation for how a Democrat running for governor loses in New Jersey.

Of course, in 2009, when Republican Chris Christie won his first term as governor, the electorate fell for the Big Lie that he would lower property taxes.

Instead of his first term being one of compromise and bipartisanship, Christie likely employed the veto more than any other previous governor.

And The Record, which insists on calling him "popular," has distinguished itself as little more than a public-relations apparatus for the GOP bully.

What about voters?  

Instead of speaking to voters, Editor Marty Gottlieb and his gang of lazy columnists and reporters have spun endless tales, predicting the outcome of the gubernatorial election based on so-called experts, pundits, polls, politics and fund-raising totals.

I picked up a real newspaper on Monday, The New York Times, and found four large color photos of Brooklyn residents and a story on their views of the mayoral election in New York City.

Imagine that.

Steve Waldman, 65, a computer supplier, is quoted as saying the last presidential candidate he voted for was Hubert H. Humphrey, and the last mayor he cast a ballot for was Edward I. Koch.

(That's pronounced "Kotch," not "Coke," as in the evil Koch brothers behind Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing group that is financing GOP attack ads).

The Times did its interviews in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where only about half of the registered voters cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election, and less than a third voted for mayor in 2009.

A Times editorial on Monday urged New Jersey voters to approve a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 an hour, starting on Jan. 1, a move the greedy Borg publishing family opposed in a Record editorial.

Christie also vetoed a hike in the minimum for low-wage workers, one of the groups he likes to screw with his mean-spirited policies.

Today's paper

What dominates The Record's front page today? Not the election. The editors are already tired of that.

The top half of Page 1 carries a big, black headline:

Gunman strikes panic

in Garden State Plaza

Of course, the "panic" was in shoppers, not in the Paramus shopping center itself.

The phrase "at Garden State Plaza" would have conveyed that, but six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton missed the clunky headline. 

Still, the real weakness in the story is that it fails to report the only one hurt was the alleged gunman, Richard Shoop, 20, the Teaneck man who police say committed suicide in the mall.


Who is to blame?

Was the paper's early deadlines or the five reporters who worked on the story or the editors to blame for that major omission?

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza and the rest of the Woodland Park daily's local-news operation fails miserably almost every time to get to the law-enforcement sources who have the information readers demand.

This morning, the paper's Web site, NorthJersey.com, actually has the nerve to quote a neighbor of the Shoops as saying Richard was "a nice kid."

A correction on A-2 today acknowledges the misspelling of the name of a candidate in the Bogota Borough Council election. 

How sloppy can Sforza get?

Hackensack news

The Local front today reports Hackensack High School finally got a new resource officer after the school board agreed to pay his salary (L-1).

The dysfunctional Board of Education is the last remnant of decades of Zisa family rule over Hackensack. 

Sforza couldn't find enough local news to fill his section, so he resorted to a time-tested filler photo of a non-fatal auto accident (L-3).

As usual, the caption tells readers little, especially in this case, where Ridgewood police are quoted as saying the brakes on a relatively new Mazda SUV "failed."

Maybe, the driver "failed" to use the brakes and mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead.

Christie helps rich wage open warfare

Image via Wikipedia

Will too much 9/11 anniversary coverage turn off readers?

Governor Christie has been waging open warfare for the rich against the rest of us since he took office, but now he's upped the ante considerably.


The Record reports he addressed hundreds of wealthy donors at a secret June meeting in Vail, Colo., sponsored by a pair of right-wing billionaires.

On Page 1 today, Columnist Charles Stile describes how the Koch brothers' network of "foundations, think tanks and front groups ... promote drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, fewer social services for the poor and less government regulation."


That sounds like the Republican bully's agenda in cutting the state budget this year and in 2010, but he also mounted an assault on the benefits of unionized state workers, teachers, cops and firefighters. 


The state teachers union says Christie's net worth is $3 million.


Borg way or highway


So, it's no surprise Publisher Stephen A. Borg has editors of the Woodland Park daily marching in lockstep with Christie.


Not content with the $2 million house he lived in, the wealthy scion waged his own war on the less fortunate -- his much poorer employees -- by grabbing a $3.65 million company mortgage to buy a McMansion in late 2007, followed several months later by record layoffs.


In the second part of Rich v. Poor, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson reports congressional Republicans are fighting to preserve a corrupt system of political contributions -- one that ensures only the wealthy can run for state or national office (A-1).


On A-2, two of the three corrections are attributed to sloppy reporting or copy editing.


Bad English, home version


On A-21, Editor Francis Scandale publishes a full page of 9/11 remembrances from foreign writers, including journalists and students.


I can understand awkward writing from those whose native language isn't English, but what's Scandale's excuse? Here are two excerpts from his introduction:


First, take a deep breath. 


"As we explored going outside the United States to hear what citizens of other countries took away from the attacks of Sept. 11, we came across a small town in Italy that had planned to teach the event in school."


"Many residents work in the near town of Siena ...." 


In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, the only Hackensack news is a burglary arrest (L-2). 


More red-light-running news appears on L-3, but do readers really need a 12- to 14-inch story each time a town decides to install cameras?


9/11 anniversary


Scandale began coverage of 9/11 in earnest on Sept. 1, with the first in a series of front-page stories that presumably will culminate this Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the attack on America.


I'm already sick of reading about 9/11, including the pieces from abroad, all of which sound the same. 


The only A-1 stories I read through were Staff Writer Leslie Brody's piece on the memorial to New Jersey victims and Thomas E. Franklin's account of the 9/11 photographers.


None of the coverage has mentioned U.S. support for Israel, which Al-Qaida cited originally as the reason it wants to destroy America.


More rich news


Donald Trump sued for defamation and lost, at least as far as the Appellate Division of state Superior Court is concerned. 


A brief on the case appears on L-8 today. The Record carried a glowing account about Trump the other day.


Here is the link to the full written decision, which contains a lot of information about his real and imagined net worth:


http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/a6141-08.pdf