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.

Christie is no longer believable on GWB, budget

The crews of two NYPD patrol boats on the East River stop to shoot the breeze, a scene repeated frequently when municipal police in North Jersey do the same.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record today helps boost Governor Christie's White House ambitions after his bandwagon spent months spinning its wheels in North Jersey's scandalous traffic.

When the GOP bully wants to shift attention away from the terrible job he is doing on the state economy, mass transit or any other deficiency, all he has to do is snap his fingers.

Editors like The Record's Marty Gottlieb and reporters like Herb Jackson, the paper's Washington correspondent, jump up like lap dogs to catch every deceptive morsel (A-1).

Sadly, Christie is no longer believable, no matter what he says about what he knew and when he knew it on the George Washington Bridge lane closures, the state budget or anything else.

Secret budget cuts

He has successfully kept secret cuts he will make to meet an $807 million state budget shortfall, but is there any suggestion he will do anything different than balance the plan on the backs of the middle and working classes, as he did in the past? 

On the continuation page, Jackson reports Christie "did not hesitate to blame his predecessors, state courts and his own staff" for the current budget problems (A-6).

The unflattering photo of Christie on A-6 suggests the lap-band surgery he had a year ago in February hasn't been that successful.

He still looks like he is full of crap.

GWB scandal

Another story on A-1 today calls into question Christie's credibility on last September's lane closures in Democratic Fort Lee.

The lawyer for former campaign manager Bill Stepien says Christie misspoke when he said Stepien told him he didn't have "any knowledge" about the lane closures, which were ordered by a gubernatorial aide and a crony at the Port Authority. 

On A-3 today, The Record contrasts President Obama's transportation plan with Christie's failure to find a stable source of revenue for the state Transportation Trust Fund.

The story reports Christie used Port Authority toll money for some road projects, including the Pulaski Skyway, even though previous stories said the governor grabbed $1.8 billion left over from his cancellation of new Hudson River rail tunnels (A-3).

Which is it?

Solar confusion

On the Editorial Page, a boastful columnist and a confused reader's letter to the editor combine today to deliver misinformation about solar panels (A-20).

In "Global warming: It's real. It's Here. Deal with It" (Opinion, May 11), Alan Robock says, "I have solar panels on my roof, subsidized by the state of New Jersey, and have not paid an electric bill for years."

The heading on the letter, "Solar panels not free for everyone," is incorrect. 

Robock is not saying his panels were free and he apparently doesn't read his bill carefully, because no system installed with a state subsidy would provide all the electricity a homeowner uses.

The letter writer, Melinda Thompson of Little Ferry, should be able to find a private contractor willing to install solar panels for free in return for the monthly solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) the system generates.

The contractor can sell those credits to the utility over the life of the system to recover his upfront costs. 

Editors play politics with Christie's reelection bid

To Staff Writer John Cichowski, a big problem for commuters is keeping their tires inflated properly, as the airhead explains in his Road Warrior column on the Local front today. Traffic inching toward the Lincoln Tunnel, above, isn't his concern.

By focusing on the politics of Governor Christie's bid for a second term, The Record's editors continue to hide the GOP bully's many policy failures.

In a negative story about Democratic challenger Barbara Buono, Christie is called "her popular opponent" (A-3).

Popular with whom? The millionaires and special interests he serves exclusively?

That story from The Star-Ledger commits the same sin as others by The Record's own staff: 

It quotes Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, without mentioning she is one of the Woodland Park daily's Opinion columnists.

Harrison's column today is all about the politics of President Obama's joint appearance with Christie on the Jersey shore (O-2).

Boring politics

Politics are dividing the nation. They put readers to sleep, whether in news stories or columns by Harrison and Staff Writer Charles Stile.

Yet, Editor Marty Gottlieb and other media leaders are news junkies who are hooked on politics for all of the supposed controversy they offer.

Is anyone going to vote for Christie in November, because he appeared with Obama or Britain's Prince Harry at the shore, as the story on A-3 suggests?

Another thin paper

Readers have to scour today's Page 1 story on state police diversity for any numbers, such as the size of the force or the current training class (A-1).

The size of the force and how that compares with past decades isn't given, but readers are left to do the  arithmetic on A-6 to get the size of the training class (6% of 20,000).

Crippled thinking

A concerned reader didn't think much of Road Warrior John Cichowski's idea for colored-coded handicap parking stickers:

"The Road Warrior continues on his merry mistaken ways in his May 29 column. He promulgates an ineffective, impractical idea about disability parking tags and irresponsible, derisive, misleading, and negligently incomplete responses to readers' comments.

"He should offer a retraction to his endorsement of a faulty, poorly thought-out idea for 3 color codes for disability parking tags. It would NOT cover many circumstances and would create too much confusion, contradictions, & complexities for law enforcement, bureaucratic oversight, and those eligible for disability parking.

"He should focus on taking responsibility to correct the hundreds of mistakes and faulty advice or conclusions in his columns over the past 9 months and prevent future problems.

"Instead, he tried to fault me and mislead readers by taking one of my comments completely out of context on a previous column regarding potholes.  

"It shows how small minded and negligent the Road Warrior is for his readers and The Record. 

"I presented facts/comments about a business owner's ineffective response and culpability for his own problems and accidents based on potholes near his Carlstadt business."  
  

To read the full e-mail, click on the following link:

Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers

Where's the aspirin?

My Medicare coverage was set years ago, so I pity readers who have to plow through Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais' confusing columns on the health-insurance program for seniors (B-1). 

Don't look for any food coverage in today's Better Living section, which had to make room for a T&A cover story on that TV show, "The Real Bimbos of New Jersey" (BL-1).

The Real Estate cover story -- "Will house hunters pay for green?" -- appears to be based on a commission-hungry real estate agent's claim that a Ramsey "home's energy efficiency should add $100,000 to its value" (R-1).

That's preposterous. 

Page 1 delivers a big dose of hype

Image via Wikipedia
Fort Lee is known for its high-rises.

If reformers need ammunition to dismantle all of those corruption-prone local governments, they'll find plenty of it in Fort Lee's inability to develop a gateway near the George Washington Bridge -- despite 45 years of trying.


Here we go again, according to The Record, which leads Page 1 today with a breathless description of the latest proposal -- two 47-story luxury residential towers. 


This is a hard sell.


The headlines exaggerate the impact on Fort Lee, which is already known as a borough of high-rises, many of them perched on the Palisades:

Going to new heights

Two 47-story luxury towers would remake Ft. Lee

If they ever get built, the buildings won't "remake" Fort Lee, but they might finally change people's perception of its bungling government officials.

I can't think of a stronger North Jersey front page, but Editor Martin Gottlieb forgets he is no longer at The New York Times and ruins it with a large A-1 photo of Rick Santorum praying with pastors, making readers wonder what ever happened to the separation of church and state.

There are three stories about Governor Christie inside the main news section (A-3,  A-4 and A-6), so why does the A-1 blurb refer to only two of them?


Poor training

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes has commissioned so many news stories and columns blaming the victims, when pedestrians are killed by NJ Transit trains, she actually thinks a new safety device at a single station is news (L-1).

The major element on the front of Local makes clear a Bronx family was at fault for the fire that heavily damaged the Bergenfield home they had planned to move into this week.

There's news from Englewood, Teaneck, Leonia and other towns, but Hackensack news is conspicuous by its absence. 

Did the City Council on Tuesday introduce the solar-panel regulations reported extensively on Monday's Local front? Your guess is as good as mine.


In a tailspin

Why did Sykes think Columnist Mike Kelly could add anything new to the debate over the "dysfunctional" and free-spending Port Authority (L-3), which is the subject of an editorial today after a number of Page 1 exposes in recent weeks. 

The Kelly column begins: "Isn't math a wonderful thing? More importantly, let us all praise that noble mathematical device -- the calculator."

He begins the column that way because he has nothing to say. 

How juvenile and boring. And as I've said 20 times before, his unflattering column photo makes him look as if he has been released from a halfway house for the mentally ill.

Another disappointing Sunday

Image via Wikipedia
Does any commuter doubt Hudson River toll hikes would have been lower if Governor Christie hadn't grabbed $1.8 billion in Port Authority funds for state roads?

Are voters supposed to clip out today's Page 1, side-by-side comparison of Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. and Steve Rothman, and save it for reference just before the primary election more than five months from now?


Why is that running now? Isn't there anything else happening -- or not happening -- in Washington? Maybe that's the story that should be on the front page of this ho-hum Sunday edition.


And why does Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson give a pass to Rothman?


The Record has refrained from reporting the anger of many Democrats who feel Rothman is ducking out of a fight against an arch-conservative Republican, Scott Garret, the U.S. representative from Wantage.


And where in this long story is the biographical material comparing Pascrell, the scrappy former mayor of Paterson, to Rothman, who is from a privileged background in Englewood?


Finally, have you ever seen a more boring headline? Where was the supervisor of the news copy desk, Editor Liz Houlton, who earned the title "Queen of Errors" when she ran the features copy desk?

Two candidates

separated by style

You can slap that generic headline on any political story for years to come. It's probably on one of Houlton's save/get keys.


GOP bully speaks


More GOP bias is evident in the bully A-1 pulpit interim Editor Douglas Clancy gives to Governor Christie, who told editors he's finally going to do something about the free-spending Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.


After all, Christie is partly responsible for the huge Hudson River toll and fare hikes, as well as the recent increases on the turnpike and parkway.


Instead of raising the gas tax on his limousine-riding supporters, Christie grabbed billions in agency funds, shifting the money from the Hudson River rail tunnels he killed to state road and mass-transit projects.


Heat but no light


An A-3 story doesn't explain how higher prices for credits sold by solar-power producers would "come at the expense of ratepayers and utilities." 


And the story ignores credits sold to utilities by homeowners (and ratepayers) who have spent tens of thousands of dollars to install solar panels.


Determined to avoid writing about commuters, Road Warrior John Cichowski bases his column today on e-mails from truckers and other so-called professional drivers (L-1). He's boring us to tears recounting all these reader e-mails.


The Local news section continues to report on seemingly endless municipal reorganization meetings.


A jerk reveals herself


Can the editors explain why an unlabeled photo that appears to have been taken in Europe accompanies a column by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung (Better Living cover)?


The arrogant Ung tells readers how they can get their "money's worth in a restaurant -- without being a jerk."


If anyone is a "jerk," it's the unseasoned reviewer herself, obsessing over dessert and blindly praising the cheap beef, poultry and fish many restaurants serve to fatten their profits.


On the Opinion front, an overly long column under the headline, "Key questions remain after Iowa caucuses," fails to answer the most obvious question -- why has The Record and other media wasted so much time and space covering the Republican nomination campaign?

Editors fiddle while New Jersey burns

Image by beedubz via Flickr

Owners of Xanadu hope there is a huge pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Editor Francis Scandale leads The Record today with a front-page story on political bickering between Governor Christie and the most powerful Democrat in the Legislature -- while New Jersey burns (A-1).

Instead of reporting when Xanadu construction will resume or whether a makeover is in the cards, Scandale runs another story on its weird exterior (A-1). Is this the 19th or 20th piece by Staff Writer John Brennan on the same subject?

Rich man's toy

Did anyone bother reading more than the first few paragraphs of Mike Kelly's boring, long-winded column on a wealthy man who wants to blow $10 million on a skating rink for his kids that would be disguised as a house  (A-1)? Now, Kelly has become a rich man's toy.

An OpEd piece by PSE&G defends the safety of solar panels mounted on telephone polls (A-11). It's too bad they weren't designed to fall and knock some sense into drivers of gas-guzzling SUVs.

Image via Wikipedia

Japan v. Korea

On the Better Living front, Bill Ervolino's Jersey Scene column classifies a big, expensive Japanese supermarket in Edgewater as among "the little known, unusual and sometimes weird things in New Jersey."

A Japanese supermarket has operated there for more than two decades -- what's so weird about that?

Unfortunately, his guides at Mitsuwa Marketplace are two men -- one Japanese, one American -- who preside over the store's annual "cutting" of the giant bluefin tuna, a performance many shoppers boycott because the Japanese are driving those huge fish toward extinction.

Ervolino also treats the Japanese with deference, something he didn't do for the Koreans he wrote about when he visited a big Korean supermarket in Ridgefield, as Eye on The Record reported Nov. 1:

"What happens when you turn a clown loose in H Mart in Ridgefield, a large Korean supermarket that has one of the best selections of fresh fish, Asian greens and other produce in North Jersey? 

"See the Better Living front, where Staff Writer Bill Ervolino chooses to buy and eat mystery pork and beef, and in the process makes fun of one of his Korean guides' English and parodies her diet, focusing on live octopus while ignoring all the healthy tofu and vegetables Koreans eat in main and side dishes."