Focus on transgender kids, abused horses ignores rest of us

Richard Stenken and Steve Eisenberg, volunteers at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, presenting their $500 scholarship to a high school junior volunteer on Friday during the 40th annual Volunteer Recognition Awards and Luncheon.

Volunteer Betty Karlsen, right, was recognized for  giving 26,000 hours to the hospital. In answer to shouted questions from other volunteers, Karlsen said she has been volunteering at the Englewood hospital for more than 48 years.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One look at the thin Sunday edition of The Record speaks volumes about how Editor Deirdre Sykes avoids covering such local issues as school elections and property taxes.

Her major story on Page 1 today is about transgender children searching for identity -- the media's hot topic of the year (A-1).

And on the local-news front, readers get a heart-warming story on a Mahwah farm that rescues abused and abandoned horses (L-1).

You'd never know there are school elections on Tuesday in Hackensack and other Bergen, Passaic and Hudson county communities.

Or that property taxes continue to skyrocket in home-rule communities with their endless duplication of services.

They include small-town police chiefs who are paid around $200,000 a year to clip Dunkin' Donut coupons and fetch refreshments for the department. 

Campaign material from Citizens for Better Schools urges Hackensack residents to vote for candidates 1, 4 and 6 to fill three seats in Tuesday's Board of Education election. But a sample ballot shows the nine candidates' names appear without the usual numbers, below, apparently the work of the political machine that is seeking to hold onto control of the school board. So voters will have to pay attention to last names: EISEN, POWELL and SASSON.

Voters also will have the opportunity to vote "yes" or "no" on a $79 million tax levy, which supports a total school budget of $104 million. School taxes represent nearly half of the total bill. On Tuesday, polls open at 2 p.m.

Property taxes

Just when I thought my annual Hackensack property tax bill is high, I've been meeting people from Teaneck, Englewood Cliffs and Tenafly who pay far more.

An Orthodox Jewish woman from Teaneck said she is paying about $37,000 in taxes on her 5-bedroom house.

And an African-American man said he recently moved to Wayne, because he was sick and tired of paying $37,000 in property taxes in Englewood Cliffs.

Now, he's cut his property tax bill in half.

Meanwhile, a woman who lives in Tenafly said she is paying $40,000 a year in taxes on an admittedly large home and property.

Yet, when is the last time Sykes has assigned a reporter to one of the hottest, most controversial local topics around? 

Today's paper

The most compelling piece on the front page today is the moving obituary for Petrina Di Cosmo, 95, a Fair Lawn woman, "who mothered her own kids, a slew of foster kids and just about any kid who came her way" (A-1).

Di Cosmo, who was universally known as "Mom," is shown in a Page 1 photo with her mixed-race son, Anthony, whom she adopted when she was 57.  

Christie and guns

For a refreshing change, Mike Kelly gets right to the point in the lead paragraph of his Sunday opinion column on Governor Christie making it easier for people to carry guns (O-1).

Still, the veteran reporter, who has been writing a column for more than 25 years, needs to work on his sense of outrage.

The strongest comment he can muster on O-1 is this lame sentence:

"Well, he [Christie] seems to have his own agenda."

Second look

Readers had an especially hard time fathoming Road Warrior John Cichowski's April 8 column on auto-emissions testing, and this abomination was on the front page no less.

In an email to management that also was sent to Eye on The Record, a reader from Hackensack said:

"The Road Warrior's front page column on Friday, April 8, lived up to its stellar reputation for being clueless & misleading, offering up classless & humorless jokes, presenting quotations of insensitive, exaggerated, and completely out-of-touch rantings from his readers, who appear to be stuck in what can only be described as "The Twilight Zone" from the 1960's since it has little bearing on the reality of today."

Then, the reader compared Cichowski to Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race for the GOP presidential nomination:

"Road Warrior and his Record handlers seem to now be emulating Donald Trump, who gets away with the most classless, exaggerated, unsubstantiated, and laughable false statements. To their small cadre of fooled believers, the Road Warrior and Trump can do no wrong. For those living outside their foolish bubble, the Road Warrior and Trump are regularly mocked and represent what is the worse in people and journalists, some of whom unconditionally reward both of their over-the-top and out-of-touch views and supposed 'facts'."

Editors: Syrian refugees aren't demons Christie claimed

A homeless man walking across the street was killed on Christmas Day at Garrison Avenue and Cedar Lane in Teaneck, above. Now, police have put up a digital sign asking for help in finding the driver of a large black SUV that fled the scene.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A Page 1 story on Syrian refugees who have settled in Paterson continues The Record's gentle treatment of Governor Christie.

After the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, Christie said he would bar any Syrian refugee, even an orphan, from coming to New Jersey.

The GOP bully later expanded that, saying he wanted to keep them out of the entire country.

Today's upbeat story on the Alteibawi family from Daraa, called a "flash point for the Syrian uprising," mentions Christie in the overlong first paragraph (A-1).

Heavy editing

But to the chagrin of many readers, Editor Martin Gottlieb toned down any criticism of the governor's fear mongering and racial animosity.

Gottlieb is known as a hands-on editor who often heavily edits and rewrites front-page stories to give them the same kind of "context" they have at The New York Times, where he had a long career.

The family, Staff Writer Hannan Adely says, found themselves "in the center of a national debate over Syrian refugees with even Governor Christie weighing in on their arrival."

How does Christie's bid to keep all refugees (read "terrorists") out of New Jersey become "weighing in on their arrival," except in the mind of an arrogant editor who seems intent on polishing the governor's image?

In fact, The Record waited more than a week after Christie's first anti-refugee salvo before publishing a story on the peaceful Syrian community in Paterson, where immigrants from Aleppo and other cities put down roots more than a hundred years ago.

Dictatorial rule

The rest of Page 1 today is devoted to endless second-guessing of President Obama's move to tighten controls on guns.

Columnist Charles Stile, the paper's chief Christie apologist, recalls how the governor called Obama a "dictator" three weeks ago (A-1).

But nowhere in his boring political column does Stile point out that by executing more than 430 vetoes to stop the majority Democrats in the state Legislature, Christie surely is the one who has imposed dictatorial rule right here in the Garden State.

Hackensack news

Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza continue their boycott on Hackensack news in today's Local section.

I can't find any mention of Tuesday night's City Council meeting.

And Hackensack University Medical Center and city officials weren't even mentioned in a Tuesday story on L-1.

That story had local officials reacting to a bill that would require non-profit hospitals to make modest payments in lieu of tens of millions of dollars in property taxes.

Searching in vain for local news that matters to me

In Hackensack, a former bank building at 210 Main St. is slated to be converted into apartments, one of the projects city officials are counting on to revive the faded downtown. I recall the original United Jersey Bank as having a majestic interior, including a high ceiling that was ornately decorated.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Page 1 of The Record today, Editor Marty Gottlieb is keeping his eye on legalization of gay marriage nationwide, school news and sports.

The front page carries a follow-up to Monday's report on how wealthy, one-school districts want to lift the salary cap on superintendents imposed by Governor Christie in 2011.

Of course, The Record has always ignored why Christie didn't impose a similar cap on police chiefs, some of whom are paid more than $200,000 a year.

And on the superintendents' pay, the editors never explain why small towns need a superintendent or what that educator actually does (A-1).

Raising superintendents pay would adversely affect Gottlieb's biggest audience, baby boomers and seniors, who pay extremely high school taxes, but that issue is never raised.  

On top of that, the home-rule system of government has proven a huge financial burden to property tax payers with its mindless duplication of services in the 86 towns in Bergen and Passaic counties. 

But Gottlieb, who lives in Manhattan, hasn't a clue, and his local assignment editors have been defending  the system for decades.

An editorial on A-10 bemoans the "brain drain" that inhibits more affluent districts from pursuing the "best and the brightest" to lead their schools.

Why isn't Edtorial Page Editor Alfred Doblin upset about another school issue, Englewood's segregated elementary and middle schools, more than 60 years after the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education?

Local news?

A photo on the Local front today shows a man with a cane who got off an NJ Transit bus on Anderson Street in Hackensack (L-1).

The caption notes the man "negotiates the slush and ice," but fails to report a snowbank created by city plows has blocked the bus stop itself for more than two weeks.

The weather story with that photo doesn't list Hackensack High School as one of the school that closed on Monday.

News handouts

Why did the lazy local assignment editors and the reporters working under them blow their cover in the first paragraph of today's lead story on L-1?

Staff Writers Stefanie Dazio and Abbott Koloff note the arrest of a suspect in the strangling death of Jordan Johnson of Fort Lee was announced in "a news release." 

On Monday, The Record reported on Page 1 details of who killed whom in Friday's murder-suicide in Closter were revealed by Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli on Twitter.

Excessive background

Every story needs background for readers who may not have been keeping up with crime developments.

But today's account of the arrest in the Fort Lee man's death seems excessively long -- perhaps because the editors, no matter how hard they try, can't generate more local Bergen news.

And Sunday's and Monday's stories on the Closter couple, Michael A. Tabacchi and Iran Pars Tabacchi, contain the same exact sentence when discussing the 15-month-old boy who was orphaned, but who isn't named:

The toddler is "by all accounts the centerpiece of a marriage that was taking root in a quiet, suburban neighborhood" (Monday's A-7 and Sunday's A-1).

But nothing is made of the age difference: The husband was 27 and the wife was 41.

The story on Monday also repeated interviews with their High Street neighbors that were published on Sunday. 

Christie plan freezes out commuters, taxpayers

A packed NJ Transit train heading for New York's Penn Station on Tuesday morning. Governor Christie isn't moving to improve or expand mass transit this year.

Property taxes keep going up in Hackensack and every other North Jersey community, but such services as the routine filling of potholes are seemingly neglected. Above, Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, near Summit Avenue.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

A columnist and editorial writer for The Record are so busy interpreting and analyzing what Governor Christie said in his budget address on Tuesday that they completely lost sight of what he didn't say about property taxes, tolls and mass transit (A-1 and A-8).

For the fifth year in a row, Christie won't be lowering local property taxes, as he promised to do in his 2009 campaign.

Nor will he do anything about rising tolls, increasing traffic congestion and packed mass transit.

The economy, stupid

Job creation? Boosting tax revenue and funding the state Transportation Trust Fund? They are not on the GOP bully's agenda.

Today's coverage of the Christie budget plan is superficial at best (A-1, A-6, A-7 and L-3).

The biggest laugh line is Columnist Charles Stile noting that Christie is an "admirer of Ghandi" (A-6).

And Stile continues to struggle with his writing and standard cliches, as in:

"[Christie] didn't call for a broad-based tax cut -- a recognition, perhaps, that the proposal would probably get laughed out of the room."

Not the proposal. Christie would probably be laughed out of room, given the sad state of the New Jersey economy.

Hackensack news

The lead story on Page 1 today is Hackensack Police Director Mike Mordaga's continuing crackdown on quality of life crimes and violations, in this case, drug dealing (A-1).

Tara Sullivan's column at the bottom of the front page shows the media are intent on covering every athlete who declares he or she is gay, no matter how obscure.

These so-called journalists should ask themselves why fellow staffers who are gay fear coming out, lest they encounter employment discrimination, in Woodland Park and elsewhere.

Locals are yokels

The Record's Local news report today includes a dramatic photo of one truck rear ending another in Fort Lee that injured "at least one person" (L-6).

Congratulations to Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi for this award-winning shot.

In his Sunday column, Road Warrior John Cichowski insisted on calling an obscure traffic circle in sleepy Franklin Lakes a "roundabout."

He also claimed a homeowner backing out of his driveway could see through shrubbery and trees and report on whether other drivers were stopping at a stop sign.

A concerned reader notes the homeowner could drive forward out of his driveway, but insists on the more dangerous maneuver of backing out:

"Unless this person has X-ray vision from his driveway entrance to the High Mountain Road stop line, which is blocked with multiple trees and dense shrubbery, he is not able to see whether cars stop while he is pulling out.

"What is even more outrageous is that his driveway is set up to allow him to turn around so he can more safely exit going forward. Yet, he has chosen for 50 years to back out, which is a much more dangerous maneuver."

See a link to a corrective e-mail to management and the editors on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers: 


Road Warrior's exaggerations go round and round

Thanks, Gov. Christie, for screwing up our Garden State

The Fairmount School, one of the polling places in Hackensack, where there was no waiting to vote on Tuesday afternoon. Only about 45 percent of registered voters statewide turned out on Tuesday, according to NJ.com.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Governor Christie easily won a second term on Tuesday, meaning our Garden State will surely go from bad to worse in the next few years.

Democrat Barbara Buono -- the state senator who was betrayed by the bosses of her own party, anti-feminist voters and The Record -- fought the good fight, and earned the respect of many state residents.

This election season also will be remembered for the cowardice of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who put his personal ambitions above the crying need to get rid of the GOP bully.

And Democrats shouldn't forget that President Obama campaigned for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, but only sent a get-out-the-vote e-mail to New Jersey that didn't even mention Buono by name.

From bad to worse

What's in store for New Jersey in Christie's second term? 

You won't find anything about that in today's edition of The Record, where election results appear on A-1, A-6, A-7, L-1, L-3, L-6 and L-7, and where an A-10 editorial wishes the rotund politician "good luck."

NJ.com reported only about 45 percent of registered voters cast ballots on Tuesday, suggesting that Buono also fell prey to the state's legions of apathetic morons.

Media hype

Today's front page also carries more exaggerated coverage of the suicide of Richard Shoop, 20, of Teaneck inside the Garden State Plaza (A-1, A-8 and A-9).

The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley on Tuesday covered the mall suicide as part of a review of "mass shootings," even though Shoop reportedly "looked people in the eyes ... telling [them] not to worry, that they were not his target" (Page 1 of The Record).

Out of order

First let's review all the damage Christie has wrought, starting in 2010, when he dismissed the only African-American member of the state Supreme Court.

Christie's attempts to remake the court in his own conservative image have been thwarted by the state Legislature's majority Democrats, also known as the Trenton Men's Club, whose members refused to confirm the legal turkeys he nominated.


Railroads commuters

His then cancelled the Hudson River rail tunnels -- the biggest mass-transit expansion in decades -- and rubber-stamped higher tolls on the turnpike and at the Hudson River crossings.

That means drivers must sit in nightmarish rush-hour traffic jams for the privilege of paying as much as $13 to get to Manhattan, and other commuters can't find enough seats on trains and buses.

And Hudson River tolls will be going up again on Dec. 1.

Christie also has refused to replace retiring state troopers, leading to a dramatic decline in the enforcement of laws against speeding, tailgating and other reckless driving.

Christie also demonized teachers and state workers, but it remains to be seen just how much money will be saved by his so-called pension reforms.

However, he didn't stint on adding cronies from his years as U.S. attorney to his administration and to the bloated payroll of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

No-tax crackpot

Christie's refusal to raise taxes of any kind has left state finances in disarray, and the New Jersey economy still hasn't recovered from the recession -- only 50% of lost jobs have been restored, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to wealthy business owners.

Local property taxes continue to increase, despite Christie's promise during the 2009 campaign he would lower them, and residents get little in return.

Rough ride

In a few days, I will drive over the same pockmarked street to deliver my quarterly taxes of $4,264 to City Hall in Hackensack, where the powers that be paved every block of Euclid Avenue except mine. 

State roads are in no better shape, because of Christie's refusal to raise the low gasoline tax and reinvigorate the Transportation Trust Fund, which pays for infrastructure repairs and mass-transit improvements.

A year after Superstorm Sandy, thousands of residents still can't return to their battered homes, but the news media boosted Christie's reelection by portraying him as a leader who can walk on water.

Introducing 'Vito'

He still claims the mantle of bipartisanship, even though his middle name is "Veto" and his big, fat mouth resembles that of Vito Corleone's.

On Tuesday, voters rejected Christie's veto of a hike in the minimum wage, and approved an increase to $8.25 on Jan. 1.

The Record's story reported opponents claimed automatic raises in the minimum wage would increase "employers' costs" (A-7).

I guess the reporter couldn't bring herself to translate that into what it really means: Greedy employers fear automatic hikes would cut into their record profits.

Shoop suicide

On WBGO-FM radio news, I heard Christie saying the Shoop suicide in Paramus raised the need to pay more attention to mental health issues.

Christie, who lagged behind other governors on tightening gun control, didn't even refer to the rifle Shoop stole from his brother.

Indeed, all of the people who voted for Christie should have their heads examined.

New Jerseyans face another four years of a mean-spirited politician who has already earned the reputation of the worst governor ever, hurting women, minorities and low-wage workers.

We can only hope he quits in 2016 and runs for president, setting himself up for the biggest humiliation of his life -- defeat by Hillary Clinton, a woman and a Democrat.

Wealthy hospital wines and dines Hackensack officials

Deputy Mayor Marlin G. Townes, second from left, announced near the end of Tuesday night's meeting at City Hall that he and other Hackensack officials had attended the lavish 125th anniversary celebration of Hackensack University Medical Center.

A growing Hackensack University Medical Center has destroyed the residential character of its neighborhood, but as a non-profit pays no taxes to the city of Hackensack on property with an assessed value of $130 million.

The medical center uses many city services and, a few years ago, took over the profitable ambulance service from the city Fire Department.

Only a fraction of its patients live in Hackensack.

So, why did City Council members and other city officials attend a party to celebrate the medical center's 125th anniversary in luxury suites at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford?

City officials should be negotiating with hospital officials for payments in lieu of taxes, not sipping free champagne.

Freeloaders

Councilman John Labrosse, the only incumbent seeking another term in the May 14 election, works at the medical center, and has been totally ineffective in getting HUMC to give back to the city. 

On Tuesday night, Deputy Mayor Marlin G. Townes, who described himself as a Giants fan, gushed about the party at MetLife Stadium. 

Mayor Michael R. Melfi praised the medical center and said the city of Hackensack is lucky to have the world-class complex.

Councilwoman Karen K. Sasso, who also attended, described the celebration as "a business meeting."

City Attorney Joseph C. Zisa Jr. said he didn't attend, presumably because he was too busy rubber stamping payments of tens of thousands in legal fees to fellow lawyers.

I didn't see a story about the celebration or the attendees in The Record.

Today's paper

Editor Marty Gottlieb devotes two of the four elements on Page 1 today to lawyers -- who appear to be at the root of all of our problems in Hackensack and North Jersey, where high legal fees restrict access to the courts.

There are more lawyers involved in defending doctors and others in the Medicare and insurance fraud story at the bottom of A-1.

The poorly edited story should have focused on the laboratory owning Nicoll brothers from Wayne and Mountain Lakes -- one of whom allegedly received $33 million in a six-year period that he blew on exotic cars, private jet travel and a Manhattan apartment for a "female companion" (A-6).

Dissing Hackensack

Don't look for any news from Hackensack in the Local news section, even though a reporter from The Record attended Tuesday night's council meeting.

The Local front is filled with court and process stories, but a heart-breaking piece on a hit-and-run victim is relegated to L-2, when it should have been on A-1.

Vladimir Artavia, 31, a native of Costa Rica, left his job as a waiter at Bel Posto, an expensive restaurant on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, when he was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver and left to die.

Head Assignemt Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, leave out the reason Artavia was "walking home" to Hasbrouck Heights.

He and other restaurant workers are paid so little -- less than $3 an hour -- they can't afford cars.

But God forbid Sykes and Sforza should wake up from their news comas and expose the dark side of restaurants -- one of the paper's biggest advertisers. 

Editors bury tough words about home rule

The owners of this house on Hackensack's Overlook Avenue refused to sell to high-rise developers, but were driven away by the relentless noise of multimillion-dollar business jets roaring overhead on the way to a gentle landing at nearby Teterboro Airport.

Buried in today's incredibly boring paper are some tough words about home rule in North Jersey -- a subject The Record has tried hard to avoid as property taxes continue to soar.

Way back on A-16, an editorial says "the state's tradition of home rule" has "become a luxury taxpayers can no longer afford."

"Oftentimes, the only people who truly embrace home rule are the officials doing the ruling," the editorial says.

Has it been two decades since The Record ran a municipal finance series on the expensive duplication of services in Bergen County's 70 communities?

In Hackensack, property taxes have gone up and city services have declined, including street paving and the enforcement of speeding and stop-sign laws.

Pray for the Syrians

The only element of any real interest on Editor Marty Gottlieb's front page today is the plight of Syrians fleeing government airstrikes.

Plugs a limo service

On the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski focuses his lame column on a single limo driver's complaint about a message board at the George Washington Bridge, and shamelessly plugs the limo service by name.

Then, the supremely lazy Cichowski fields questions from confused, disoriented and delinquent E-ZPass holders.

Hackensack news is missing for yet another day as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, catch up on their sleep.

Where are his glasses?

In his column on Wednesday, the tired Cichowski had trouble reading a highway safety report and misstated the number of deaths in other states. No correction has appeared.

A concerned reader pointed out the error in an e-mail to managers sent on Thursday:

"Road Warrior mistakes continue to increase, as in his Feb. 27 column on the Governors Highway Safety Association report that showed teen drivers deaths going down in New Jersey in first half of 2012 while going up nationwide in comparison to 2011.

"As shown previously, the Road Warrior continues to make mistakes based on his being unable to correctly report actual data and information from reports.

"The Road Warrior mistakenly indicated that other states, such as Indiana and Tennessee, showed increases of more than 14 deaths in the first six months of 2012, despite their GDL laws.

"The report clearly indicated that NO state had increases over 13.  Increases were 13 for Indiana and 10 for Tennessee."

Read the full e-mail on the Facebook Page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

I'm on deadline, where are my glasses?