Despite 8 years of Christie, high property taxes, N.J. still has good oysters, Red Bank

DAY TRIP TO RED BANK: I loved this Caesar-style Warm Cabbage Salad ($12), topped with an unsalted anchovy, at B2 Bistro + Bar in Red Bank, a garden-to-table restaurant where we had lunch last Sunday before seeing a play, August Wilson's "King Hedley II."

NEW JERSEY OYSTERS: I started lunch with a trio of these wonderful Elder Point Oysters from Delaware Bay ($2.75 each). Another great New Jersey oyster is the Cape May Salt, which I've enjoyed at the 100 Steps Supper Club + Raw Bar in Cranford.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- It's always great to get out of Hackensack, where I live, and try to forget my high property taxes and the city's crumbling streets.

But you can substitute the name of almost any other town or city in New Jersey, where hundreds of local home-rule governments, no matter how small, insist on having their own police chief, superintendent of schools and on and on, running up the tax bill.

Now, I don't know anything about how well or poorly Red Bank is run, but a day trip to that bustling shore city can almost make you forget all of the damage to mass transit, the environment and state finances left by GOP bully Chris Christie after 8 years as governor of New Jersey.

That was the case last Sunday, when we drove down for lunch at B2 Bistro + Bar and a play at Two River Theater, the latter an event sponsored by WBGO-FM, the great jazz station in Newark.

We saw another play, "A Raisin In The Sun," there in October 2017, also a trip for members of Jazz 88.

The theater is expanding, and there was no parking in its own lot, but just a couple of blocks away, parking was free in the lots of the NJ Transit rail station.

What a concept. NJ Transit rail lots open and free on Sundays for visitors to Red Bank. Are the NJ Transit rail lots in Hackensack free on Sunday?

B2 BISTRO + BAR: The open kitchen and pizza oven at B2 Bistro, which serves food from New Jersey farmers, fishermen and specialty purveyors.

BUTTER SERVICE: I don't use butter, but my wife does. I was able to pluck a few microgreens off of the tray.

SWEET AT THE ROOT: I also ordered a side of Glazed (Root) Vegetables ($7), but found them too sweet.

BLUE CHEESE BURGER: My wife enjoyed her thick Dry Aged Burger, served with a cone of french fries and a small salad. The burger was $19, including $3 for blue cheese.

AMERICAN CENTURY CYCLE: Two River Theater, above and below, is half way through a presentation of August Wilson's American Century Cycle, 10 plays exploring African-American life for each decade of the 20th century. All of the plays but one ("Ma Rainey's Black Bottom") are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District, where Wilson was born and lived until 1973.

KING HEDLEY: In August Wilson's "Seven Guitars," set in 1948, the character King Hedley I is "a Haitian man who lives by his own set of principles ... and searches for a woman to have a child with," according to the program. Another character, Ruby, "is traveling to Pittsburgh after a love triangle in Alabama leaves one of her lovers, Leroy, dead and another, Elmore, in prison. After she arrives, Ruby and Hedley form an unlikely relationship," the program explains.

KING HEDLEY II: The play takes place 37 years later, in 1985. King Hedley I is dead. "After years on the road, Ruby returns to Pittsburgh ... to see her son, King Hedley II.... Elmore (one of Ruby's former lovers) sends a letter telling Ruby that he is coming to visit.... King works to establish his own legacy in the decaying Hill District [where nearly everyone is armed]. But like his namesake from 'Seven Guitars,' King Hedley II lives by his own set of principles," the program notes.

UPDATE: The Record tries to panic us into thinking all of our taxes are going up

Jimmy Margulies, onetime editorial cartoonist at The Record of Woodland Park, has North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wondering about how much he can get for his nuclear missiles after President Trump's lawyer paid $130,000 to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

During his successful campaign and in his budget address on Tuesday, Governor Murphy made clear he wants to raise taxes only on New Jersey's millionaires.

But on Tuesday, he also proposed restoring the 7% state sales tax, which former Gov. Chris Christie cut to 6.625% before he signed a 23-cents-a-gallon hike in the gas tax in October 2016.

That was the first and last tax hike the GOP bully signed during his eight years in office -- starving New Jersey of revenue and prompting him to grab money from mass transit, the environment, women's health and other programs to balance his budgets.

Still, The Record of Woodland Park wasted no time trying to panic non-millionaires into thinking their taxes are going up, too.

"Gov. Phil Murphy unveiled ... $1.6 billion in new taxes that will hit the paychecks of the wealthy and retail purchases of everyone in the state," the lead paragraph of a Page 1 story declared on Wednesday.

Of course, that was a reference to the miniscule hike to restore the state sales tax to 7%, but The Record's reporters made sure to bury that on the continuation page.

Does anyone care? If you can't afford a hike of a few cents in the sales tax, then your personal finances are a disaster.

'Ambitious' agenda

The story, written by James Nash and Dustin Racioppi, called Murphy's first-year agenda "ambitious."

A preview on Tuesday's front page asked, "How is he [Murphy] going to pay for his progressive promises?"

One of the biggest mistakes Gannett editors made was assigning Racioppi to cover Murphy.

The Trenton reporter's coverage of Christie largely ignored the nearly 600 vetoes the GOP thug executed to kill bills passed by the Democratic majority in the State Legislature.

Among many other measures, they included raising the minimum wage, taxing millionaires, hiking the gas tax to fund transportation improvements, and restricting the sale of assault-style rifles.

Affects who?

Inside Wednesday's paper, a graphic showed "how Murphy's $37.4B budget could affect you."

Turns out Uber and Airbnb services would be taxed for the first time in 2019. 

Big deal. Shouldn't they pay taxes, too?

Millionaires would pay a 10.75% tax on every dollar of income over $1 million, compared to an 8.97% tax on income over $500,000 now. 

Long overdue, and the 1% will hardly notice it.

Murphy said NJ Transit fares won't be going up in 2019.

Three cheers.

The state's earned income tax credit program would get an additional $27 million, giving more tax relief to low- and moderate-income earners.

And the state's minimum wage would be raised to $15, starting with a jump to $11 in 2019.

Sounds like a win-win for the vast majority of New Jersey's 9 million residents.

So, why is The Record's coverage of Murphy and his proposals so negative?

Correction

A rare correction on Wednesday's 2A noted a headline on Page 1L on Tuesday was "incorrect."

"A former Hackensack police officer will receive $105,416 for unused sick pay and vacation days."

The sub-headline on Tuesday said the payout will be "105,00."

There was no correction of Tuesday's incomprehensible Page 1 headline over the fatal crash of a helicopter into the Hudson River:

"BAG BEHIND CRASH?"

North Korea summit may be a distraction from mountainous breasts Trump adores

Adult film star Stormy Daniels is suing President Trump so she can make, uh, a clean breast of her affair with the New York billionaire after Melania Trump gave birth to their son, Barron. Melania is the stormy weather forecaster in this sendup from cartoonist Dave Granlund.

Cartoonist Granlund satirizing the war of words between North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and President Trump over which leader has a bigger nuclear "button."

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

We've survived another insane week of the Trump presidency -- with visions of an adult film star's enormous, surgically enlarged breasts and a possible summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Donald J. Trump would be the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader in hopes of obtaining a nuclear-disarmament pledge.

But former President Jimmy Carter obtained a nuclear disarmament agreement with Un's grandfather in 1994, according to ABC News.

And in 2009, former President Bill Clinton also went to North Korea at a time when tensions were high over its nuclear program, and helped free two journalists.

Just a distraction?

Trump's visit isn't a sure thing, but he's got such a mess on his hands at home it may not matter.

And all the coverage of a possible summit is distracting from last week's real news:

The probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election is intensifying, and could result in an obstruction of justice indictment against Trump as one former aide after another is charged or cooperates with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

And details of Trump's affair with a big-breasted porn star starting in 2006, after son Barron was born, are spilling out even as she sues to be allowed to tell all, including "still images" of what satirist Bill Maher speculates is Trump's "junk." 

Meanwhile, many are asking why Trump isn't applying sanctions Congress already OK'd against Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his war crimes in Syria, and his recent, Kim Jong Un-like boast of having "invincible" nuclear weapons that could destroy U.S. defenses.

See: Trump isn't the only cause of stress in our lives

See:'Do You Remember When Love Was King?'

These doctored photos of President Trump and Kim Jong Un, above and below, appeared on Twitter (@bornmiserable).

N.J. environment

As today's front-page story in The Record shows, the environment in North Jersey went to hell while Chris Christie was governor from January 2010 to January 2018.

Now, the Woodland Park daily's environmental reporters are spending all their time on toxic disasters in Pompton Lake and Edgewater, the latter just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

"Elevated levels of  a chemical that can be harmful to humans ... has been wafting in the air from the Quanta Superfund site in Edgewater for nine months [italics added] as workers continue to entomb a century's worth of pollution on the property closely surrounded by homes and businesses, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports.

If the foul-smelling, potentially harmful air has been present for nine months, why is The Record just writing about it now?

Dysfunctional Englewood

The small city of Englewood has been mismanaged for decades.

Just look at the segregated elementary and middle schools; and high property taxes, despite revenue from the owners of million-dollar mansions on the East Hill, a small industrial area and hundreds of new apartments downtown and along Route 4.

Now, The Record leads today's Local front with a story under this headline:

"Englewood's 'dire' finances

 to be studied"

In the same sentence that quotes the "city manager," Englewood is referred to as a "borough" (1L).


Copy editors wanted

Readers eyes are rolling at another Mike Kelly piece that keeps them guessing on the meaning of the headline on today's Opinion front:

"It's time for a new plan

for Hudson rail tunnels"

Readers have to plow through thousands of words of background information on the Opinion front (1O) and the continuation page (4O) before Kelly reveals his solution in the last five paragraphs:

Appeal to the Port Authority to take over the project now that Trump has refused to fund the second attempt to replace the 100-year-old tunnels, which Christie initially killed in 2010. 

High schoolers put news media to shame by confronting Trump on Florida murders

Cartoonist Jimmy Margulies listing the five stages of grief among officials after another school shooting: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance -- with a payoff from the gun lobby.

Editorial cartoonist Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune shows how from their fortresses, President Trump, Republicans in Congress and conservatives call for more -- not fewer -- guns.

STUDENTS TAKE OVER ROLE

 OF CALLING FOR REFORM

 -- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Surely, we are witnessing one of the darkest chapters in the history of American journalism.

Once, in the not too distant past, reporters saw their role as challenging authority, exposing wrongdoing and calling for reform.

Now, our news media have ceded that responsibility when it comes to gun control to high school students who survived the Parkland shootings, which were nothing less than 17 premeditated murders.

During "listening sessions" at the White House, not a single reporter confronted President Trump, and asked him how he could allow the murders of 17 innocent students and staff members in a Florida high school.

Instead, they scribbled furiously, and strained to capture photos and videos of his ridiculous proposal to arm teachers and other school staff.

Reporters have been reduced to the role of stenographers and videographers.

One Colorado teacher who showed a TV reporter the loaded pistol he carries in his classroom even was quoted by the CBS Evening News as saying he would be justified missing a gunman and killing an innocent student, if he could stop the death of more kids.

Confronting Rubio

At a forum in Florida, angry students and parents confronted Sen. Marco Rubio and a top representative of the National Rifle Association -- "demanding that politicians and lobbyists support stricter gun-control measures," the New York Post reported.

Promoting AR-15

Today, Columnist Mike Kelly uses the front page of The Record of Woodland Park to promote the semi-automatic AR-15 -- used in the Parkland murders -- as "deadly" because it is so "easy to fire [and] load," and as "the most popular rifle in America" (1A).

The irresponsible columnist at my local daily newspaper also went to a firing range near his office to shoot an "AR-15-style rifle."

He uses the first two paragraphs of his column to describe in detail how easy it was to pick up the deadly weapon, load it and squeeze the trigger time and again -- essentially recounting how Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz killed student after student on Feb. 14. 

His column today is "shameful" and "idiotic" -- the words Kelly himself used on the Opinion section front just a week ago to describe how we don't confiscate the weapons of people like Cruz when "they are behaving strangely."

Kelly definitely is one columnist who is "behaving strangely." 

Cartoonist Dave Granlund exploring what he calls the National Rifle Association's "plan for school security."

'Everybody is exhausted'

Several pages of The Record today explore "the chaos of life and its collision with technology [social media] and tragedy..." (1A, 6A, 7A and Better Living front).

"More of us [are] feeling drained, frazzled and emotionally overrun... We are exhausted," Staff Writer Jim Beckerman reports.

He blames everything from wildfires in California, rising tensions with North Korea, "the non-stop barrage of presidential tweets," mass shootings, red-blue state political divisions and three of the worst hurricanes on record.

The headlines on the Better Living front:

The Trump effect

Politics may actually be stressing you out

Of course, The Record and other news media are guilty of causing a lot of this stress by focusing on nothing but "politics," and the partisan divide in Trenton and Washington.

Issues and what is good for the people of New Jersey and the nation rarely appear in news stories and opinion columns.

Veteran Trenton reporter Charles Stile does little else but write about politics -- his tedious, boring  column is called "Political Stile," and The Record often runs his garbage on the front page.

On Wednesday, The Record reported on Page 1 that Governor Murphy praised students staging gun control protests across the country, and vowed "once again to sign a package of gun-control legislation that was blocked" by his predecessor, Chris Christie.

But the very next day, Stile's ridiculous front-page column carried this headline:

"Murphy cautious

 after Parkland shooting"

News media love Trump Liar of the Union speech, more GOP propaganda about FBI

President Trump during his first -- and probably last -- State of the Union speech on Tuesday night (photo by Win McNamee via AP). 

A photo of Trump that was published after he was fired by NBC for calling Mexicans rapists and drug runners. Same tie, same lies as on Tuesday night.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

I must be the only one who remembers when a South Carolina Republican shouted "You lie" as President Obama delivered a health care speech to Congress in 2009.

Where were the shouts of "liar" during President Trump's first State of the Union speech on Tuesday night -- or Liar of the Union speech, as I like to think of it?

Instead, I had to listen to upbeat coverage of the speech on the morning TV news, with only a minute or so devoted to a rebuttal from Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass.

"It would be easy to dismiss the past year as chaos. Partisanship. Politics. But it's far bigger than that," he said, according to CNN. "This administration isn't just targeting the laws that protect us -- they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection."

Local coverage

The Page 1 headline in The Record of Woodland Park, my local daily newspaper, is puzzling, if not downright awkward:

"TRUMP TOUTS

OPTIMISTIC TONE"

One definition of "tout" is "attempt to sell." But can you try to sell an "optimistic tone" or should that have been:

"TRUMP ATTEMPTS

TO SELL OPTIMISM"

The sub-headline claims, "Speech advances infrastructure, immigration plans."

But no action  was taken on Tuesday night -- it was just a speech -- so "advances" is inaccurate.

Liar in Chief

After telling lies his entire life, does anyone really believe Trump -- con man, white supremacist, abuser of women and tax dodger -- was speaking the truth in his call for bipartisanship and unity?

"Trump offers same policies in new bipartisan packaging," was the headline over a Politico.com report.

Sounds just like media reports about Chris Christie, when he was governor of New Jersey and hailed as a "bipartisan compromiser" even as he executed one veto after another to keep Democrats in line. 

Fact Checker

Trump's claim that African-American unemployment "stands at the lowest rate ever recorded" is a total fabrication, according to The Washington Post Fact Checker:

"The African-American unemployment rate has been on a relatively steady decline since it hit a peak of 16.8 percent in March 2010.... "The rate had already fallen to 7.7 percent when Trump took the oath of office -- it is now 6.8 percent."

During the 2016 campaign, Trump claimed falsely that 58 percent of black youths were unemployed -- the actual figure was 19.2 percent, the newspaper said.

Secret memo

And the news media can't seem to get enough of the secret GOP memo about alleged investigative abuses at the FBI as part of the Russia probe.

Reminds me of all the time and space they devoted to the endless GOP lies about Hillary Clinton's emails -- stories that helped derail her campaign against Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

See: Media rewrite Christie history