UPDATE: We'll finally be able to say good riddance to Christie, N.J.'s worst governor

The defining moment in Governor Chris Christie's eight years in office was the Bridgegate scandal in September 2013, when many believe he orchestrated a five-day traffic jam at the Fort Lee end of the George Washington Bridge. That was his way of retaliating against the borough's Democratic mayor, who had refused to endorse the GOP thug's reelection bid in November 2013.

This January 2014 Daily News front page accurately predicted the impact of Bridgegate on Christie's presidential bid, which crashed and burned in February 2016. Then, he endorsed New York billionaire Donald J. Trump for the GOP nomination.

600 mean-spirited vetoes marred

conservative ogre's two terms

Editor's note: A day after The Record heaped praise on Governor Christie, NorthJersey.com fact-checked his last State of the State speech, and reported many of his claims were misleading. The report doesn't appear in today's print edition.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

After dropping out of the presidential race in February 2016, Chris Christie failed miserably to salvage his reputation as the worst governor in New Jersey history.

Despite the upbeat news media coverage of his last State of the State address on Tuesday, the GOP bully will forever be defined by the 2013 Bridgegate scandal, and his 600 vetoes of progressive legislation aimed at improving the lives of most state residents. 

In every year of his two four-year terms, Christie made major decisions that brought New Jersey to its knees.

They ranged from killing a major expansion of mass transit to bungling the recovery from Superstorm Sandy to trying the sabotage the Affordable Care Act to wrecking the state's finances.

Crappy coverage

Wednesday's coverage of his speech in The Record, my local daily newspaper, is yet another example of the crappy journalism readers have had to endure since Gannett bought its publisher, North Jersey Media Group, in July 2016.

Political Columnist Charles Stile and Trenton reporter Dustin Racioppi, who is assigned to cover Christie, filed reports that treat the conservative ogre much too kindly.

The sub-headline over Stile's Page 1 column called the speech a "praise-filled swan song."

"Swan song"? For Christie, it's more like a "gorilla song." 

A front-page box labeled "Highlights" refers to Christie boasting "about his proudest moments over eight years in power."

The box also refered to the speech as a "90-minute victory lap," and his many failures were called "challenges."

Christie and Trump 

No surprise, given that The Record was the only major New Jersey daily that failed to call for Christie's resignation after he threw his weight behind Donald J. Trump's White House bid.

Nor did The Record even report the Star-Ledger and six Gannett papers had demanded Christie step down after endorsing Trump, a racist, con man and serial liar.

Stile was Christie's chief booster in his first term, portraying the governor as a "bipartisan reformer" despite liberal use of the veto pen to control the majority Democrats in the State Legislature.

And after writing an expose when Christie's vetoes numbered in the 300s, Racioppi never bothered to tally them again, even when they sailed past 500.

Wednesday's editorial in The Record contained a far more honest assessment of Christie's reign, noting "he ran to win," but that "his failure is that he did not run to govern for eight years" (10A).

Vetoes go missing 

Nowhere in The Record's nearly two full newspaper pages of text and photos on Wednesday is there any mention of Christie's veto of a $15 minimum wage or a tax surcharge on millionaires (1A and 6A).

Nor are there references to his voodoo finances, which robbed funds from women's health initiatives, environmental cleanup, mass transit and other programs to balance the revenue-starved state budget year after year. 

And his massive 90%-plus cut in state subsidies to NJ Transit effectively put the state's commuter rail and bus operator on the road to ruin.

That has given Record transportation reporter Curtis Tate the chance to write a long series of critical stories that usually fail to mention Christie's role in trying to destroy the agency.

New rail tunnels

In 2010, his first year in office, Christie signaled his war on mass transit by cancelling new Hudson River rail tunnels, then grabbing nearly a billion dollars in leftover funds from NJ Transit and the Port Authority to fix roads and bridges.

That allowed the conservative ogre to delay hiking the state's second-lowest-in-the-nation gas tax until November 2016, rescuing a Transportation Trust Fund for road and rail improvements he nearly drove into bankruptcy.

Good riddance

Next Tuesday, Christie will finally leave office, and he'll be succeeded by Democrat Phil Murphy, who has the unenviable job of repairing all the damage the GOP bully did.

Even Christie's so-called 2% cap on local budgets hasn't failed to stem the rise of property taxes, highest in the nation.

So, all together now, Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Donald J. Trump after NBC fired him for calling Mexicans rapists and drug runners. After Governor Christie dropped out of the presidential race in early 2016, he endorsed Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

In this 2010 photo, real estate mogul Jon Hanson, left, a major fundraiser for Christie, is shown with the governor. Hanson also was a close friend of Malcolm A. Borg, then chairman of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record. Hanson and Borg once jointly owned a private jet based at Teterboro Airport. Before the Borgs sold NJMG to Gannett, did the friendship color The Record's news coverage of Christie and Hanson, who also served as an adviser to the governor? 

When reporters asked Governor Christie whether he had any role in the September 2013 closure of access lanes to the upper level of the George Washington Bridge, he joked he moved the traffic cones to block two of the three lanes, below.

Christie was never charged in the scandal, but he spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds so his legal team could write a whitewash report about his so-called lack of involvement. In the court of public opinion, he was found guilty of directing aide Bridget Anne Kelly to declare that it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

  

Our illegitimate president is dying to sign illegitimate GOP tax break for super rich

Using President Trump's own boastful words from the "Access Hollywood" tape, cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News contrasts his election to the firings of Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein, all of whom were accused of sexually harassing women.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

With every tweeted lie and racial slur, President Trump shows just how unfit and unstable he is to hold the highest office in the land.

Yet, just before 2 a.m. Saturday, Senate Republicans, with only one holdout, approved Trump's massive tax break for the super rich, including wealthy corporations that threatened to withhold GOP campaign funds in the crucial 2018 midterm elections.

They would go into effect on Jan. 1, according to Vox.com:

"Republicans are on track to pass a tax bill by the end of the year, and if they’re able to stick to that schedule and the bill is signed by ... Trump, it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

"The sweeping overhaul of taxes would reduce rates for corporations and individuals (although individual tax cuts would eventually expire), and would also repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, effectively kicking 13 million people off their insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

"But Americans won’t see a big difference in their tax return when they sit down to file this spring; the proposed cuts in the bill contains would show up the following year.

"'When they’ll really see the difference is a year from March and April,' said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget."

A big disappointment in terms of news coverage is how the media continue to quote the multitude of lies Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans have told about the economic benefits of their bill.

And in a news analysis on Saturday, The Times questioned whether the coming big win will help or hurt Republicans:

"...It remained to be seen whether the result ... will spare Republicans from the emerging political backlash that was evident in Democratic election victories around the country last month."

Russian probe

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn became the fourth Trump insider to plead guilty or be indicted in the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and the special counsel expects him to cooperate and implicate others.

Emails shared with The New York Times and newly public documents reveal that Flynn was in touch with senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after his pre-inauguration discussions with Russia's ambassador, contradicting the White House's portrayal of "a rogue actor," the newspaper reported.

Prosecutors also have interviewed Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and adviser.

"FLYNN READY TO NAME NAMES"  was the all-caps headline Saturday on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park, my local daily newspaper.

Political cartoonist Dave Granlund commenting on the firing of "Today" show host Matt Lauer after women complained about sex harrasment and worse. The Record of Woodland Park described him as the "lovable" co-host of the NBC morning show.

Is Trump insane?

In today's Record of Woodland Park, Columnist Mike Kelly must be the last journalist in America to question Trump's sanity (Opinion front).

On Friday's front page, Kelly used one of his favorites words in the first sentence of a column on a job fair for state prison inmates who were about to be released.

"Robert Fudali stood in the center of a gymnasium at Northern State Prison in Newark ... and gazed into his future."

Kelly has used the word "gaze," "gazed" or "gazing" so many times in the past that some readers' eyes just roll when they see it.

Here is Kelly's first sentence from a May 31, 2007, column: 

"Brandon Kennedy gazed through the chain-link fence outside his Paramus school on Wednesday."

And when Kelly doesn't use the word, many readers notice, as I did for Eye on The Record when I read his 2014 column on Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer:

"Today's paper doesn't add a thing to the Bridgegate scandal, especially Mike Kelly's lame column on Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, one of the Democrats who have complained about the GOP bully's muscle flexing (A-1).

"His lead paragraph is a turnoff:

"'Dawn Zimmer sits in a chair in a quiet, sun-splashed conference room next to her mayor's office on the second floor of Hoboken's City Hall.

"At least the burned-out columnist didn't have her 'gazing' out the window or into the distance or whatever, as he has had so many other subjects in the past.

"With an intro like that, readers fully expect the reporter ... will tell them next where City Hall restrooms are located."

NJ Transit

Every weekday morning, thousands of NJ Transit commuters wonder whether they'll find a seat on their rush-hour bus or train.

Thanks to Governor Christie's drastic funding cuts and the do-nothing Port Authority, NJ Transit service hasn't been expanded in decades.

Don't tell that to Curtis Tate, who spends all his time writing about everything but the service, as he does today on Page 1:

"Management exodus at NJ Transit"

Only way to beat Trump and clones is vote in every election, always pick a Democrat

Jimmy Margulies, former editorial cartoonist at The Record of Woodland Park, commenting on Democratic candidates winning races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia last week, above.

Another Margulies cartoon. Back from his Asian trip, Trump is expected to serve up the middle class in trying to get the GOP tax cut for the rich passed and signed into law.

'The Resistance showed up

 at the polls,' Bill Maher says

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

We've heard lots of theories explaining why a Republican con man, liar, racist, sexual predator and tax dodger won the 2016 presidential race by a technicality in the Electoral College.

"Rural America still really dislikes Democrats," said an Opinion piece that ran on Monday in The New York Times.

"...The key to Democrats' fortunes in 2018 and 2020 will be to execute on the fundamentals -- pick quality candidates who don't mess up, make sure voters get to the polls [italics added], and take advantage of President Trump's low approval numbers ....," said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at New America, a Manhattan-based think tank.

He is among those weighing in on last Tuesday's off-year elections, and referring to the tens of millions of unenthusiastic Democrats who stayed home on Nov. 8, 2016, and effectively defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In New Jersey and Virginia, enough Democrats went to the polls last Tuesday to overwhelm Republican gubernatorial candidates who were seen as Trump clones or surrogates.

Satirist Bill Maher said those and other victories across the country are "all being chalked up to a radical, new Democratic strategy called actually voting."

Mayor-elect Wilmot Collins of Helena, Mont., in a photo from Facebook.

The Resistance

In his Friday night monologue on HBO, Maher said he was feeling better than he had in a whole year.

"Democrats finally won some elections," Maher said. "The Resistance showed up at the polls."

Democrats won governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, a lesbian was elected mayor of Seattle, and a Latina single mom won the balloting for mayor of Topeka, Kan., said the host of "Real Time with Bill Maher."

A Liberian refugee is the mayor-elect in Helena, Mont., a conservative state with a history of tensions over immigrants.

Wilmot Collins, who arrived in Helena 23 years ago,  will be the first black mayor in the state's history. 

The election was non-partisan, but Collins leans Democratic and has been critical of Trump, Slate.com reported.

'Liberal revenge'

Maher called some of Tuesday's election results "liberal revenge fantasy."

The satirist said a "shill for the NRA" was beaten by the boyfriend of a shooting victim, and a Republican member of Virginia's state legislature who wanted to restrict the bathrooms transgender people use was beaten "by a trans woman."

Maher said just like in her gender reassignment surgery, "she made sure America has one less dick."

In The Record

Today's front page in The Record of Woodland Park, my local daily paper, is dominated by news of a federal jury deadlock in the corruption trial of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, the Democrat who is New Jersey's senior senator.

As is The Record's habit when covering a big trial, a long news story on the latest developments in the Newark courtroom runs with an even longer column on the same exact events by Mike Kelly (1A and 6A). 

Kelly's byline identifies him as "Columnist, North Jersey Record" -- a fictitious publication.

A column that echoes a news story is the surest way to tell readers editors are desperate to fill space as the newsroom staff struggles after more than 350 of their colleagues were laid off by Gannett Co.

The latest to go is Bob Klapisch, The Record's baseball columnist. @BobKlap said in a Nov. 3 tweet:

"Looks like I've come to the end of the road with the Bergen Record. The baseball column has been eliminated by Gannett. On to free agency."

Big laugh line

The biggest laugh line on Page 1 today is in a news story on Trump's proposed tax plan.

The Record actually quotes Governor Christie, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House adviser Ivanka Trump as saying "the package of tax cuts and simplifications would unleash economic growth not seen since the turn of the century" (1A).

Republicans have used the same argument in trying to sell tax cuts for the rich and wealthy corporations since Ronald Reagan was president nearly 30 years ago, and none of us has seen any of that trickle-down proseprity.

The Valley Hospital

New stories today and Monday on a proposed new Valley Hospital in Paramus don't mention the Ridgewood hospital's tax-exempt status (today's Local front, Monday's front page).

Nor does Staff Writer Lindy Washburn ask Paramus officials and residents about the potential impact on their property tax bills, if the hospital pays no taxes on the $750 million project after it is completed in 2023.

The hospital's Ridgewood campus would still offer medical services, but after a 10-year battle, village residents succeeded in stopping the development of bigger buildings on the property.

Although fewer than 30 people showed up for Monday night's hearing on a new hospital in Paramus, The Record's headline today called the move "popular" (1L).

Election results

Half of your property tax bill may go to support schools in your town, but The Record has never taken school elections seriously.

School election results from last Tuesday's elections in Bergen and Passaic counties did not appear until Monday (6L).

Results of county and municipal elections appeared on Sunday's 7L.

Democrat Assad Akhter, the first Muslim to sit on the Passaic County Board of Freeholders in 2016, was elected last Tuesday to serve out the rest of an unexpired term.

On his Facebook page last Tuesday morning, Akhter posted photos of voters who were shocked and brought to tears by the defeat of Clinton in the 2016 presidential election:

"Do you remember this feeling?? It happened a year ago to this day.... and our nation has been suffering ever since. Don't let this happen here in New Jersey! Don't take victory for granted! Don't allow others to make excuses for not voting! This is our future....GET OUT THERE AND VOTE! VOTE ROW B IN PASSAIC COUNTY!"

NJ Transit

The Record led the Sunday edition with another in a series of so-called investigative stories on the "crisis" at NJ Transit, the state agency that provides bus and train service (1A on Sunday).

Little is made of the annual state funding cut of more than $300 million Christie imposed on NJ Transit, forcing the agency to raise fares and cut some service.

"The agency was once considered a model for mass transit," Staff Writer Curtis Tate said on the continuation page before making an awkward veiled reference to Christie's funding cut of more than 90%:

"But after years of lackluster state funding, it struggles to fully fund its operations and capital improvement program."

Former Trump campaign chief is indicted in probe of Russian meddling in election

To emphasize President Trump's insensitive comments to the widow of a black soldier killed in Niger, political cartoonists Marian Kamensky, above, and Steve Benson, below, invoke the image of Trump tossing paper towels to storm victims in Puerto Rico.

Many more cartoons can be found at Cagle.com, a website that relies on contributions from the public.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

UPDATE: President Trump's ex-campaign chief, Paul Manafort, and his former business associate were indicted today. And a Trump aide, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian professor who said Moscow had thousands of emails with "dirt"on Hillary Clinton.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

No major news outlets, including The New York Times and Washington Post, have been able to add details to a CNN report that a grand jury has "approved the first charges" in the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 Russian election.

On Friday night, CNN claimed an exclusive, reporting "the charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge."

"Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as today, the sources said.

"It is unclear what the charges are," CNN said of the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Could this first indictment mark the beginning of the end for Trump, who was elected nearly a year ago, when millions of Democrats sat out the election?

All he has accomplished so far is dismantling many of the health and environmental achievements of former President Barack Obama.

Residents of Clinton Place in Hackensack go all out in the weeks before Halloween, above and below, drawing hundreds of visitors from near and far.

Most of the decorated homes are on Clinton Place between Summit and Prospect avenues.

The Record

On Saturday, my so-called local daily newspaper, The Record of Woodland Park, ran a Page 1 story from USA Today on CNN's report, but there was no follow up on Sunday.

Instead, most of Page 1 was devoted to the fifth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. One sub-headline said:

"The Garden State is still storm proofing its vulnerable infrastructure"

In nearly five full pages of coverage, there was no blame placed on the Christie administration for bungling the recovery from Sandy (1A, 5A-6A, 8A-10A).

And a front-page column by Mike Kelly defended wealthy Margate residents who fought the construction of protective dunes that block their beachfront views of the Atlantic Ocean (1A).

NJ Transit

Also on Page 1, The Record reported NJ Transit's rail ridership declined 3 percent last year, echoing declines in public transit ridership in almost every major urban area.

"According to the American Public Transportation Association, U.S. transit ridership fell 2.88 percent in the first six months of 2017, almost identical to the 2.9 percent annual decline at NJ Transit," Staff Writer Curtis Tate said on 10A.

Tate reported low gas prices have lured many commuters back to their cars.

But The Record has never reported on the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains and buses, or written about growing traffic congestion and air pollution at the Hudson River crossings, where toll-booth waits of an hour or more are commonplace.

Christie helped cripple NJ Transit by cutting state subsidies to the agency by more than 90%.

Endorsing Murphy

On Sunday, The Record's Editorial Board endorsed Democrat Phil Murphy for governor in the Nov. 7 election.

"Murphy promises a more progressive, inclusive agenda than [Republican Lt. Gov. Kim] Guadagno," an editorial on 2O stated.

"Guadagno ... has moved further to the right, abandoning her centrist roots during these last weeks of the campaign," according to the editorial.

Defense of Christie

Sadly, The Record mentioned that it endorsed Governor Christie in 2013, when the GOP bully won a second term.

His re-election came just two months after his aides and a crony at the Port Authority secretly ordered the closure of access lanes to the George Washington, causing five mornings of traffic chaos in Fort Lee. 

The editorial claimed Christie "during his first term" showed "an ability to forge deals with Democrats who controlled the Legislature."

But, of course, The Record forgets  Christie used hundreds of vetoes and the threat of more vetoes to achieve his deals.

And Sunday's editorial shocked readers by mentioning Christie's "stalwart defense of Muslims living in New Jersey," without providing any context.

That ignores he tried to ban all Syrian refugees from coming to New Jersey and the rest of the United States after the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015, a few months before he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump.

Pedestrian deaths

A column on Sunday's Local front raised an alarm over the 166 pedestrians killed crossing New Jersey "roads" last year (L-1).

But for some reason, Staff Writer John Cichowski pads the column with 10 or 11 paragraphs (8L) on a Ridgewood woman who was severely bitten on her arm by a small dog "upon leaving Saddle River County Park" (he doesn't say whether she was driving or walking out of the park or whether the dog walker was in a crosswalk).

Most of the rest of the column discusses crackdowns in Hackensack and Paterson on jaywalking pedestrians, and drivers who violate state law by refusing to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks.

The headline over this rambling piece:

"The price we pay for

darkness, deer and dogs"

In N.J. race for governor, GOP ads using the same kind of lies that elected Trump

Jimmy Margulies, former editorial cartoonist at The Record of Woodland Park, on the standard excuse after a mass shooting like the one that killed 58 and wounded nearly 500 in Las Vegas on Sunday night -- "Now's not the time to discuss gun control."

In "LET THEM FLOW FREE," Cartoonist Joep Bertrams portrays President Trump's crocodile tears as bullets.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Governor Christie's lieutenant during the nearly 8 years of mayhem they caused in New Jersey can't afford to run for the job on the issues.

So, Lieutenant Gov. Kim Guadagno's attack ads are employing the same type of lies Republicans have used for decades, most recently in Donald J. Trump's campaign for president.

The Nov. 7 gubernatorial election is a little over a month away, and Democrat Phil Murphy is leading in the polls.

Let's hope Democratic voters, confident that he will win, don't stay home in droves, as they did nationwide when Hillary Clinton was called the clear winner before the Nov. 8 election.

2013 election

Christie was elected to a second term in 2013 in the lowest turnout for a gubernatorial election in state history. 

Thousands of Democrats sat out the election.

In 2010, his first year in office, Christie eliminated state funding for family planning. And he's vetoed higher taxes on the wealthy and a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

To tame the Democratic majority in the state Legislature, the GOP bully also used nearly 600 vetoes to kill a wide range of other bills they approved, including tighter gun control.

He was elected in 2009 on his promise to lower property taxes, but the 2% cap he pushed through only slowed the increases, and New Jerseyans still pay the highest levies in the nation.

2017 campaign

In a Monmouth University poll released on Tuesday, Murphy was ahead by 14 points.

Property taxes are the top issue for New Jersey voters, and Guadagno has staked her campaign on a promise to lower tax bills, if elected governor, just as Christie did.

But governors have little control over local property taxes, which are set by municipal and school officials and assessors in each of the state's 565 home-rule communities.

And they are even higher in places like Hackensack and Englewood, where large tax-exempt hospitals shift the burden to home and business owners.

"A whopping 85 percent of voters said they haven't heard of a property tax plan from either candidate, according to the poll," Observer.com reported.

"And 70 percent said if they did see a proposal to lower property taxes, they would dismiss it as a campaign ploy."

Attack ads

"The 15- to 30-second spots touch on familiar talking points," Observer.com said of the ads both sides are running: 

"Democrats portray Lt. Kim Guadagno ... as an alter ego of Gov. Chris Christie, the least popular governor in the country.

"Republicans paint Democrat Phil Murphy as an out-of-touch millionaire [and liberal] bent on raising taxes."

In a TV pitch to middle-class homeowners, Guadagno falsely claims Murphy "already said he will raise your taxes," including "higher sales taxes."

But Murphy's $1.3 billion tax plan targets only millionaires, corporations and pot smokers, if he is successful in legalizing marijuana.

"Murphy's tax plan does not include an increase to the sales tax," Observer.com reported.

'Same old playbook'

The Murphy campaign's first and only ad so far links Guadagno to Christie, and his administration's school funding cuts and corporate tax breaks.

"The Christie playbook failed New Jersey," Murphy says in the ad. "Now Kim Guadagno wants another try."

The Record, my local daily newspaper, reported the Monmouth University poll on Wednesday.

On Monday's front page, Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi reported the candidates' positions on luring Amazon's second headquarters to New Jersey.

But Racioppi, as he has been doing for weeks, quoted liberally from an attack ad, but didn't bother asking for a response from the Democrat's campaign.

The ad said Murphy's call for a $15 hourly wage shows he is "really loaded, really liberal and really doesn't get New Jersey."

Las Vegas

To hammer home how the print edition of The Record plays second fiddle to NorthJersey.com, I couldn't find a word about Sunday night's Las Vegas massacre in the paper delivered to my home on Monday.

Instead, the front page was dominated by hysterical residents of wealthy Saddle River complaining about coyotes.

"Daily, I am terrorized by these animals," one woman claimed.

Then, after a solid day of massacre coverage on TV and radio, The Record devoted all of Tuesday's front page to the story.

How to fill space

On Page 1 last Friday, Columnist Mike Kelly wrote a tribute to a woman who was killed trying to catch a train in NJ Transit's Hoboken Terminal a year earlier, leaving behind her husband and 18-month-old daughter.

Of course, the death of Fabiola Bittar de Kroon deserved recognition, but Kelly struggled mightily to fill the columns he usually devotes to his subjects, and yet this seemingly endless piece had big holes in it.

He traced her last steps after she dropped her daughter Julia at a preschool. 

"Witnesses say De Kroon kissed Julia as she always did when she bid goodbye to her daughter," Kelly wrote.

Later, he noted a few Hoboken residents "still talk about Fabiola de Kroon, saying they continue to feel a personal and professional kinship with her."

Sociology lesson

He goes on to give a sociology lesson, reporting "more than half of Hoboken's 53,000 residents are in their early 30s," and "like De Kroon, almost 55 percent juggle professional careers and the challenges of starting and raising a family, according to Census figures."

Kelly also interviewed a worker in the coffee shop the victim frequented, the mayor of Hoboken, a pastor, the police chief and a commuter.

But I couldn't find any quotes from the dead woman's husband, Daan de Kroon, nor whether he has filed a wrongful death suit against NJ Transit, alleging the railroad's negligence caused the train crash that killed the innocent bystander.

A jury can award tens of millions of dollars in damages based on her age and her potential earning power, as well as for the loss of companionship suffered by her husband and daughter. 

Food coverage

In the absence of a weekly restaurant review, The Record's food coverage goes from bad to worse.

Today's Better Living cover declares:

"CELERY IS THE NEW

'IT' VEGETABLE"

On Wednesday, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz listed fall dishes on the menus of nine North Jersey restaurants in what sounded more like advertising than food reporting.

Last Sunday, Better Living listed 29 places in New Jersey to pick your own pumpkin.

And in last Friday's Better Living tab, the "EATS ON THE CHEAP" feature recommended the mystery meat and other dishes served at 11 casual places.

The same restaurants appear often in Better Living, including Kimchi Smoke, Bobby's Burger Palace, Mighty Quinn's Barbeque and Juicy Platters.

In a listing of halal restaurants a couple of weeks ago, Davidowitz deferred to a Paramus resident with a YouTube series, but the piece omitted Aleppo, the best Syrian restaurant in Paterson's South Paterson neighborhood.

Muslims can cook

Davidowitz visited five halal restaurants recommended by Sameer S. Sarmast, a Muslim of Indian descent who lives in Paramus.

And she notes New Jersey has the second largest Muslim population in the United States after Michigan.

"A lot of them, as I hope you and I will learn over the years, can really cook," she says.