As Murphy tries to fix what Christie broke, I wonder who will end evils of Trumpism?

Editorial cartoons continue to explore Russian interference and influence in the 2016 presidential election that Donald J. Trump won in the Electoral College. Steve Sack of The Star Tribune in Minneapolis takes on Russian trolls aiming to influence voters on Facebook, above.

Cartoonist Milt Priggee of Cagle.com has President Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin sailing off into the sunset. Trump has refused to embrace a tough public posture on Russia, as his aides have urged, The New York Times is reporting.

WASHINGTON POST: TRUMP'S 
FALSE CLAIMS (LIES) TOTAL 2,436

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

Editor's note: See a comment at the end of this post about the April 4, 2018, edition of The Record, including errors, the Kushner Companies in Hackensack, Mitt Romney and Toys 'R' Us.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

I started wide-eyed at a headline on the front page of my Gannett-owned local daily newspaper last week:

"NJ bills on

equal pay, 

sick leave

advance"

Even the lack of punctuation in "NJ" couldn't hide the significance of another progressive initiative by Governor Murphy, who was elected last November to end the long nightmare of the Christie administration.

That was The Record's edition on Tuesday. 

Other front pages last week reported Murphy's expansion of medical marijuana, and a proposal for $50 million in additional tuition assistance to low-income students -- the first step "toward making the [community] colleges entirely tuition free by 2021."

The story on equal pay for women began:

"Working women in New Jersey could soon have one of the nation's strongest laws guaranteeing pay equity after lawmakers moved Monday to pass a measure that would ban employers from paying them less than men for 'substantially similar work.'"

Who will end Trumpism?

So, those headlines and other moves by Murphy to fix mass transit, heal the environment and tighten gun control have me wondering who will be elected to begin repairing all the damage to our democracy since Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president in January 2017.

Beside trying to reverse everything Obama, Trump signed a tax law that was a massive giveaway to wealthy corporations that fund conservative Republican campaigns for Congress and the White House.

Will Trump be undone by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's wide-ranging investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election or will control of Congress shift to the Democrats after this November's midterm elections?

Either way, I'm on the edge of my seat.

WP Fact Checker

On March 1, The Washington Post's Fact Checker reported:

"In 406 days [since assuming office], President Trump has made 2,436 false or misleading claims."

For example, here is what Trump said about his tax cut on Feb. 24, 2018, and what the Fact Checker says.

Trump: "I really believe that while the tax cuts are the biggest ever, there has been no bill like that."

Fact Checker: "Trump's tax cut is 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning it would be far smaller than President Ronald Reagan's tax cut in 1981 -- which was 2.89 percent of GDP.

"Trump's tax cut is the eighth largest tax cut --and even smaller than two tax cuts passed under Barack Obama."

The sign for the Borg's Woods Nature Preserve in the Fairmount section of Hackensack, above and below, was leaning against a tree on Saturday.

Who was Roberta Starr?

Before March 2017, when the payroll-slashing Gannett Co. laid off about 50 reporters and editors at The Record of Woodland Park, expanded local obituaries appeared frequently in the news columns.

Essentially profiles in death of prominent local residents, these expanded obituaries have been few and far between in the past year.

On March 11, the photo with a paid death notice for Roberta Starr caught my eye, because she was a knockout.

A Brooklyn, N.Y., native like me, Mrs. Starr was a classically trained opera singer who "became the first female cantor accepted by the Herzliah Hebrew Institute in New York."

Mrs. Starr "was first, foremost, and always a teacher," the paid death notice said, noting she was profiled in The New York Times in 2001.

Mrs. Starr, 77, of Hackensack died on Feb. 19. The cause was cancer. She is survived by three children and nine grandchildren.

This paid death notice for Roberta Starr of Hackensack appeared in The Record's Local section on March 11, 2018.

General Poor's Tavern

The Record's story on the closing of General Poor's Tavern on Main Street in Hackensack was missing an important detail.

"When The Record had its offices on nearby River Street, the bar was a local hang-out for reporters looking for a story tip or just a cold brew," Staff Writer Rodrigo Torrejon reported last week.

But General Poor's was far more than that: 

It was the place for going away parties for Record newsroom staffers who were heading for bigger and better things.

I lost track of how many of those parties I attended, but at one point in the Nineties, I just stopped going to those boozy farewells.

Torrejon's story also was the first acknowledgement I've ever seen that The Record's decision to close its landmark River Street headquarters in 2009 hurt General Poor's, and other businesses on or near Main Street, like Solari's.

"The relocation of the Social Security office [and] The Record headquarters' move to Woodland Park ... have dealt far too many blows to the pub at 45 Main St.," Torrejon reported.

See: Hackensack is behind rank-and-file cops

Abandoning River City

As Trump divides nation, men + women, Democratic voters are saying, Never again!

After President Trump asked the military to plan a July Fourth parade in Washington, D.C. -- like the one that wowed him when he visited France -- the popular vote loser was portrayed as just another tin-pot dictator by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

As our long national nightmare drags on into a second year, women candidates and their Democratic supporters are vowing to turn out in record numbers in the November 2018 elections for Congress.

Racist, con man, pussy grabber, tax dodger and serial liar Donald J. Trump won the 2016 presidential election in the antiquated Electoral College because of lower Democratic turnout.

"He won because Hillary Clinton was less attractive to the traditional Democratic base of urban, minorities, and more educated voters," Forbes opinion writer Ori Ben-Shahar said of Trump on Nov. 17, 2016.

"The story of Hillary Clinton's defeat ... is not the Trump Movement erupting in ballots.... The story ... is very simple: 

"The Democratic base did not turn out to vote as it did for Obama. Those sure-Democrats who stayed home handed the election to Trump," Ben-Shahar said.

Headquarters of The New York Times on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, opposite the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

'Slovenian Sphinx'

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd wrote a scathing opinion column about Trump:

"He [Trump] is an idiot savant who plays in the roiling ocean of Twitter as naturally as a blubbery-necked sea lion.

"Only Donald Trump, a Rat Pack relic who spurred the reckoning with his transgressions toward women, could send out a tweet taking credit for the women's march.

"But the Slovenian Sphinx has her moments," Dowd said of Melania.

"Trump could humiliate his wife by being a big, horny pig [cavorting with a porn star and telling her not to worry about Melania, at home with a new baby], but he is the one who comes off as ... an embarrassing husband and an embarrassing president and an embarrassing leader of the free world."

See: Trump presidency cannot possibly last

Also: Media love Trump Liar of the Union speech


'Promises, promises'

The Record, my local daily newspaper, today launched a project to hold Governor Murphy "accountable" for the promises he made while campaigning for the job (1A).

The all-caps headline over the story, which covers half of Page 1:

"PROMISES, PROMISES"

I'm certain the Woodland Park daily never did this when GOP thug Chris Christie was governor nor have the editors bothered to hold Trump "accountable" for all the lies he tells about his so-called accomplishments.

Today, Dustin Racioppi, the reporter who covered Christie -- and served as one of the paper's chief apologists for his mean-spirited rule -- wrote stiffly:

"The Record will update this list as needed with the status on these promises as Murphy moves through his tenure."

Racioppi is no wordsmith, but the same can be said about Charles Stile, Mike Kelly, John Cichowski and so many others left in the wake of the mass layoffs after Gannett bought North Jersey Media Group from the Borg family in July 2016. 

For these and many other reasons, readers and critics have long referred to The Record as "The Wretched."

Best bites?

I was shocked by the list of "Best Bites" from Chef Christine Nunn, owner of Picnic Catering by Christine, as published in The Record's Better Living section at the end of January.

She recommends food shops selling pork, beef, veal and cold cuts without saying whether any of the meat is free of harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and carcinogenic preservatives.

Is any of the produce she recommends organic? Readers don't have a clue.

For fish, she ignores The Fish Dock, a small shop in Closter that sells an astounding variety of fresh fish direct from Iceland, not from a wholesaler.

And the five -- soon to be six -- H Marts in Bergen County carry as many Asian ingredients as Mitsuwa in Edgewater, and at far better prices, plus the Korean supermarkets offer free food samples on the weekends.

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."

  

On Clinton, food shopping and more, my local newspaper delivers a warped reality

A BRIDGE TOO FAR: This is what the project to replace the Midtown Bridge linking Hackensack and Bogota looked like on Saturday, above and below.

NOVEMBER OPENING: Officials of Bergen County, owner of the bridge, closed the two-lane Hackensack River span on March 16, and said the work would take about 242 days. The new bridge is scheduled to open "on or about" Nov. 13.

Gannett lays off a dozen more

 at The Record, other papers

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

I've updated this report with a comment about Montvale's controversial decision to approve a zoning change for the construction of a Wegmans supermarket, first proposed more than 5 years ago. See "comments" section at the end of the post.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm still shaking my head in disbelief over The Record's double-barreled assault on Hillary Clinton, and her book on the 2016 presidential campaign she lost to serial liar and con man Donald J. Trump. 

The Opinion front of my local daily newspaper was covered on Sunday with two negative pieces on Clinton, one by Carl Golden, who is identified as a "guest writer," and the other by Columnist Mike Kelly.

Golden's piece is no surprise coming from a former journalist who served as the mouthpiece for two of the worst governors New Jersey has ever had -- Republicans Tom Kean and Christie Whitman -- but the Woodland Park daily concealed his background. 

New low for Kelly

Readers already know about Kelly's deep conservatism, and his persistent criticism of then-President Obama in pieces he wrote during the 2016 campaign based on interviews with unemployed factory workers.

But his Sunday column is a new low in misogyny for Kelly, who likens the Democrats to the fictional Corleone crime family.

What a laugh riot. 

Inexplicably, Kelly compares Democrats to family patriarch Michael Corleone, saying they "want out of the Clinton 'family'" just as the gangster wanted out of plotting murders and bribing politicians.

Nonsensical

Hillary Clinton is never going to run for office again, so his premise makes no sense.

"And just as the party is trying to reshape itself, here comes Hillary Clinton with a memoir that practically demands Democrats stop and look backward at the goat rodeo that was her campaign, " Kelly insists (Sunday's Opinion front).

"Goat rodeo"? What the F is that? We know Kelly is no prose master, but how obscure can you get?

Clinton has plenty to complain about -- from Russian meddling in the election to millions of Democrats and Bernie Sanders supporters either not bothering to vote or voting for Trump.

Then, there was her victory in the popular vote, but her loss to Trump in the antiquated Electoral College.

Yes. She was robbed.

Grocery wars?

The Record's two-part series, "GROCERY WARS," on Page 1 today and Sunday is just window dressing for shameless pandering to Wegmans, a supermarket chain that is expected to advertise heavily in the newspaper.

On Sunday, Staff Writer Joan Verdon reported breathlessly that Wegmans, which is opening a store in Montvale next week, has a "cult-like following," but could face tough competition in Bergen County.

Verdon's first three paragraphs are just bad journalism:

First, she reports company Chairman Danny Wegmans "fell in love" with the family farm on the site, and "dreamed" of the DePieros continuing to run the farm and its "down home" store even after the new supermarket opened.

But Verdon knows that hasn't been in the cards for a couple of years, so why does she try to soften readers' hearts with this sentimental claptrap?

Far-off Montvale

If you read to the end of her story, you find out the chairman of Wegmans picked the borough on the New York State border, instead of central Bergen County, because "I was trying to get near my sister," who lives in Suffern, N.Y., and "wanted a store near her."

Give me a break. 

Does Danny Wegmans really expect residents of Hackensack to drive nearly 17 miles on the congested Garden State Parkway and pay tolls to shop at a 108,000-square-foot behemoth he put near his sister's house?

I visited an even bigger Wegmans in Woodbridge in 2011 and 2012, and was shocked at the high prices for fresh, wild-caught fish, and at the mediocre prepared food:

Do we need a Wegmans in Bergen County?


Truth is, we already have two Costco Wholesales, two Whole Foods Markets and plenty of ShopRites and H Marts in Bergen County, and we don't really need Wegmans.

The long-delayed opening of Wegmans might be a shot in the arm for the paper's advertising department, but it's a non-event for tens of thousands of food shoppers.

The Montvale Wegmans was first proposed more than 5 years ago.

More flawed coverage

Sunday's paper also included a special section called "New Jersey Eats" or what the cover said are "51 restaurants you must try."

This is hardly an exhaustive list, missing many of my and, I am sure, your favorites.

Bergen County, the paper's home, is lumped into "North Jersey," and only 7 Bergen restaurants are featured.

But Morris County gets two full pages in the 12-page section.

Dumb column

Staff Writer John Cichowski has been banging out the Road Warrior column for 14 years, and he long ago ran out of anything to say about his commuting beat.

More evidence of his column being on life support was Sunday's pathetic piece on "parking karma." 

He claims a Maryland woman, Beverly Silverberg, can "almost always find a parking space" near where she and her husband are going, whether in Rehobeth Beach, Del., or even Manhattan.

What incredible B.S.

More layoffs

Unfortunately, Cichowski and Kelly survived the latest layoffs at North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record, Herald News, (201) magazine and about 20 weekly newspapers.

"Newspaper giant Gannett staged a 'mini bloodbath'" at NJMG last Thursday, Keith J. Kelly reported in the New York Post.

About a dozen people were laid off at The Record, the second-largest daily in New Jersey, and other newspapers.

Among them was John Brennan, a news and onetime sports reporter with 30 years' experience who covered the Meadowlands, including the incomplete Xanadu shopping and entertainment complex.

Two editors, Debra Lynn Vial and Carla Baranauckas; and Heather Zwain, a fashion writer, also were laid off.

Those layoffs are on top of about 350 others in two previous waves since Gannett bought NJMG from the Borg family for $40 million in July 2016.

See: A 'mini bloodbath'

As errors mount, payroll-slashing Gannett editor takes The Record from bad to worse

The big excitement in Hackensack on Saturday afternoon was a two-car collision on Central Avenue and First Street, not far from the high school.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Richard Green tries to engage readers today with a sensational Page 1 headline over a story the paper has been telling and retelling for many years:

"THE DETECTIVE
THE INVESTIGATOR
AND THE MOBSTER"

The so-called Special Report is from Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, one of the handful of veterans who wasn't laid off by Green, the Gannett editor who has slashed the payroll since The Record changed hands last July.

The problem with this latest chapter of the story is that the victim is "a reputed member of the Lucchese crime family" whose murder generates little sympathy among readers.

Yet, the story not only takes up a third of the front page, but it fills two full pages inside the thin Sunday edition (1A, 8a and 9A).

And nearly all of the allegations come from a federal suit filed by the mobster's family. 

Readers are the losers. 

The only winners here are the lawyers who are gouging the plaintiffs and defendants as this suit wends its way through the courts, only to be thrown out or settled.

Under Green, Gannett's hatchet man in Woodland Park, this is what amounts to local news.

The Local front today is dominated by an apartment building fire in the city of Passaic (1L).

Two more inconsequential Passaic County stories appear on 2L and 7L in a section delivered to Bergen County readers.

Opinion

On the Opinion front, Mike Kelly must be the last columnist in America to address United Airline's brutal removal of a seated passenger a week ago to make room for airline employees (1O).

Inexplicably, Kelly compares the removal of Dr. David Dao to the beating of African-American Rodney King by racist Los Angeles cops in 1991.

Last Wednesday, another Record columnist, Bill Ervolino, also recounted in great detail what happened to Dao, but the strongest opinion Ervolino could muster was:

"This isn't any way to run an airline."

Ervolino began his column by recalling his very first "plane trip," in 1976.

Syria and Paterson

Today, an editorial praises a project that allows Syrian refugees to relate their experiences with "poverty and violence" to their fellow students in Paterson's John F. Kennedy High School (2O).

But the editorial forgets to mention whether the refugees are fully acquainted with the "poverty and violence" those minority students have experienced growing up in Paterson.

Restaurant coverage

Since The Record dropped the weekly review of local restaurants last November, the editors have encouraged readers to jump into their cars and explore -- even if they have to drive 60 miles or more for dinner.

Today, the Travel section cover reports on "the return of Jersey Shore Restaurant Week," including a trattoria in Freehold and a Spanish-Cuban place in Brick (1T and 4T).

On Friday, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz claimed she was passing along readers' recommendations to eat in cheap, unhealthy restaurants.

There were a number of errors, including a Better Living cover photo of hamburgers on a grill with a caption that didn't identify which fast-food joint serves them (1BL and 2BL on Friday).

Inside, a centerfold photo showed food from three places, but there was no information in the text about two of them, Twisted Yogurt and La Rosa Chicken (10BL on Friday).

At Gannett's Record, too much sports on Page 1; plus, an obscure headline word

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News has been trying to go under covers, according to sexual harassment complaints filed against him. This cartoon is from Dave Granlund, who calls the network "Fox & Fiends."

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

With a silly Mets opening game covering half of the front page in The Record today, readers can only imagine all of the really important news they're missing.

Page 1 today and Monday also carried stories previewing the partisan politics involved in the primaries and election for a new governor (1A)

That leaves us to wonder when or if The Record will ever get around to covering the issues involved in those races (1A). 

Many readers welcomed Garden State of Mind from Staff Writer Christopher Maag -- the first fresh voice to be given a column in more than a decade.

But his most recent effort on an East Rutherford ice-sculpture artist got weak support from photography and the editors in Gannett's design studio in Neptune.

The three large photos that ran on Monday's 1A and 6A were basically the same, and despite all the talk in the column about Jimmy Chiappa having to move 300-pound blocks of ice by himself, no photo of that appeared.  

Asylees?

Next to that column, a headline about a Jersey City parish helping Ethiopian refugees used the word "asylees" in the main headline (Monday's 1A).

I doubt I have ever seen that word in a headline before in a career that spanned nearly 40 years.

"Parish
opens
door to
asylees"

"Home for those
with no options"

The editor who used that obscure word in the main headline could just as well have used "refugees," and then in the sub-headline say the refugees were "seeking asylum" -- the definition of "asylees."

"Parish
opens
door to
refugees"

"Home for those
seeking asylum"

The Sasson Report

will return next week

Since 2010, 500-plus vetoes show clearly it's Governor Christie's way or the highway

In Dave Granlund's cartoon, dictator and Syrian war criminal Vladimir Putin is sitting pretty despite probes into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign and election. 

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on his first day in office, but ultra-conservative Republicans wanted even more drastic cuts than proposed in the bill that was withdrawn by House Speaker Paul Ryan. "Well, we took a stab at it," killing the patient, the GOP says in this cartoon from Rick McKee.

Cartoonist John Cole notes that President Trump and his surrogates, Counselor Kellyanne Conway and Press Secretary Sean Spicer, have turned the nation's capital into "Lie Lie Land."

 -- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

From his very first veto and such major unilateral actions as killing the Hudson River rail tunnels, Governor Christie laid the groundwork for the "banana republic" New Jersey has become.

Today's Page 1 story in The Record focuses on comments by a federal judge about Christie's 2013 re-election machine, which led to closing of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, triggering five mornings of gridlock to punish Fort Lee's Democratic mayor.

On Wednesday, when she sentenced two of his former allies to prison, U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton noted that at the time of the lane closings in September 2013, Trenton under Christie sent out a clear message:

"You are either with us or against us," and that anyone perceived to be against the administration faced retribution, she said.

Lee Cortes, a federal prosecutor, noted:

"The use of government power at a publicly owned bridge to create traffic ... just to mess with one person [Fort Lee's mayor] ... are the actions out of the playbook of some dictator of a banana republic."

Early signs

But signs that Christie demanded his way or the highway were clear as early as 2010, his first year in office:

He delayed the biggest mass-transit expansion in decades and used leftover money to fix roads and bridges; pulled out of a multi-state environmental initiative, and started vetoing or threatened to veto every bill passed by the state Legislature's Democratic majority.

Among the GOP bully's vetoes: A tax surcharge on millionaires, and a phase-in of a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

For the most part, The Record's coverage focused on politics, not issues, and Staff Writer Charles Stile ignored the mounting number of vetoes in column after column polishing Christie's image as a "bipartisan compromiser."

That quality, Stile argued time and again, could propel Christie into the White House.

Alas, when the Bridgegate scandal broke, Christie's bid was dashed. 

Then, in February 2016, Christie endorsed Donald J. Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, leading The Star-Ledger and five other New Jersey dailies to call for the governor's resignation.

The Record never joined that chorus.

Starving seniors

Editor Richard A. Green's choices for the front page continue to bewilder readers.

Today, he runs a story bemoaning Trump's proposed cuts to Meals On Wheels programs for seniors, many of whom are shut-ins or disabled (1A).

That appears above the fold, but below the fold seniors and other readers are told they "must" try eight restaurants, including three of the most expensive in Bergen County (1A, 10BL and 11BL). 

Maybe, Green is suggesting that after the Meals on Wheels program ends, vans can be retrofitted to carry seniors in wheelchairs to $100 dinners at the Saddle River Inn, Ho-Ho-Kus Inn & Tavern and Cafe Panache.