With tax plan as with everything else, Trump aims to screw the middle class

President Trump's one-page tax plan may have fooled the writer of The Record's Page 1 headline, but cartoonist Dave Granlund and other newspapers denounced the phony's assault on the middle class.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

The New York Times Editorial Board calls it "President Trump's Laughable Plan to Cut His Own Taxes."

The Record's Editorial Board? It's out to lunch, as usual, and hasn't said a peep about Trump's assault on middle-class tax deductions.

But the Woodland Park daily's bumbling editor, Gannett veteran Richard A. Green, is running a Page 1 headline based on spin from Gary Cohn, a Trump administration official who is a multimillionare:

'REALLY BIG' TAX PLAN UNVEILED

The story Green should have played outside is buried on 11A.

As the headline over a story by the paper's own Washington correspondent says, "Trump's road to tax overhaul is full of potholes."

Trump's plan to eliminate the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes would hit hardest in New Jersey, where we pay the highest local property taxes in the nation.

The Times editorial thundered:

"... The skimpy one-page tax proposal released" by the Trump administration "is, by any historical standard, a laughable stunt by a gang of plutocrats [wealthiest citizens] looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the country's future.

"Two of Mr. Trump's top lieutenants -- Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, both multimillionaires and former Goldman Sachs bankers -- trotted out a plan that would slash taxes for businesses and wealthy families, including Mr. Trump's, in the vague hope of propelling economic growth.

"... Some middle-class families might not benefit much or at all, because the plan does away with important deductions like those for state and local taxes."

Today's paper

Two of the three other stories on the front page are from Passaic County (1A), as if Green couldn't find stories of equal interest to the majority of readers in Bergen County. 

The Record could run a story on "the relentless violence that plagues" the streets of Paterson every day, as it does today.

But when are reporters going to take a hard look at whether the city's Police Department is doing everything it can to protect minority residents from guns.