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"

James Comey feared Trump would lie after meetings on Flynn and Russia probe

James Comey testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today about his meetings and phone calls with President Trump, who fired the FBI director, claiming he is a "nut job" (photo credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images).

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

Editor's note: The headline was incorrect when this was posted originally. To correct it, I changed "Kelly" to "Flynn.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Fired FBI Director James Comey testified today he made sure to write detailed memos after his conversations with Donald J. Trump before and after he was inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.

"I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document," Comey told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Comey referred to Trump's propensity to lie as "the nature of the person [the president]," according to a New York Times transcript.

And he said he wrote memos after all or nearly all of the nine conversations he had with Trump in person or on the phone.

The former FBI director, who grew up in Allendale, noted he never wrote memos after conversations with President Obama or President George W. Bush.

Here is how ABC News reported Comey's testimony and White House reaction:

"The White House denied that the president is a 'liar' [LOL].

"Comey, among other things, also said during the course of his testimony:

"The Trump administration tried to smear his reputation;

"The president had said Comey was 'doing a great job' before his firing;

"He leaked his notes hoping for a special counsel;

"He believes he was 'fired because of the Russia investigation';

"And Trump never explicitly told him to drop the Michael Flynn investigation."

I doubt the accuracy of the ABC News reporting on Trump "never explicitly" telling Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn, the national security adviser who was fired for lying about his meetings with the Russian ambassador.

Comey testified that when Trump, then the president-elect, said he hoped the FBI would drop the Flynn investigation, he took that as a direct order.

And when Comey testified he told Trump he personally wasn't under investigation, I was reminded of how Governor Christie successfully insulated himself from prosecution in the Bridgegate scandal. 

Glued to TV

Many Americans took the day off to make sure they were in front of the TV when the hearing started at 10 a.m. today.

At the gym this morning, a man on the exercise machine next to me said his wife was traveling, and he was planning to get coffee and bagels before going over to his mother's house to watch Comey's testimony.

Comey spoke for only about 5 minutes, and didn't read the prepared statement the committee released on Wednesday.

The rest of the time, he answered questions from the chairman and vice chairman, and other committee members.

Two days after jet crash near Teterboro, pilots still are unidentified charred corpses

Boy, the shit is really hitting the fan in the nation's capital after The New York Times reported that in February, President Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to end the investigation of Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser who resigned after lying about his contacts with Russian officials. This cartoon -- "ANYONE CAN GROW UP TO BE PRESIDENT" -- is by John Cole of the Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pa.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

Editor's note: This post has been updated with the identity of the co-pilot who died in Monday's crash of a Learjet near Teterboro Airport.

VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

How long should it take for a newspaper like The Record to identify the two pilots whose Learjet crashed and burned short of their Teterboro Airport runway on Monday afternoon?

Thousands of words about the crash appear in the paper today, but readers don't know their names or whether they left behind wives, children or parents.

The focus today is on whether the pilots' decision to stay in Manhattan instead of Philadelphia set them up to crash as the result of a "rogue gust of wind" near Teterboro Airport (1A).

Check out the amateurish photos on Page 1 today: 

The bigger one is a trick shot of another jet landing at Teterboro that seems to show the aircraft below telephone-pole wires on Route 46.

Above that, a photo shows police officers gathered near their vehicles. What the F! That's worthy of the front page?

Trailer park news

Meanwhile, veteran Columnist Mike Kelly could have chosen any of the thousands of people who live in Hackensack high-rises or homes in Carlstadt or other towns to illustrate the danger and menace of the airport.

Instead, he found a 30-year-old man who lives with his "mother, brother, sister and three dogs" in a Moonachie trailer park across the street from the south end of the jetport.

The headline:

"Airport's neighbors still struggle with anxiety"

When the jet hit the parking lot of Carlstadt's public works building and burst into flames, Matt Vitale heard a "boom -- loud, metallic, deadly," Kelly says (6A).

"The trailer shook. The dogs started barking. Vitale got no sleep."

Another Kelly column that undoubtedly will be submitted for a Pulitzer Prize.

This evening, HackensackDailyVoice.com identified the co-pilot as Jeffrey Alino, 33.

"There are reports that the plane was upside down when it crashed," Daily Voice reported.

Living near Teterboro means endless noise

More slanted reporting on aircraft noise

Learjet 35A

On Tuesday, The Record reported Learjets like the one that crashed have been involved in 61 fatalities from 1979 through 2015.

A May 24, 1988, crash killed four in the middle of the night when a Learjet 35A crashed into "a Woodland Park hillside minutes after it left Teterboro [Airport]."

Federal investigators cited the pilot and co-pilot's "poor judgment and limited experience, as well as 'known deficiencies in equipment,'" Staff Writer Dave Sheingold reported, without elaborating.

And The Record's story makes no attempt to compare the Learjet 35A's safety record to other corporate jets.

The Record: A letter contains sticker shock about my 7-day home delivery subsciption

A cartoon from Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune compares President Trump to a docile breed entered in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show by shirtless Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Until I received a letter from The Record, I wasn't aware I am paying more than $100 a year for 7-day home delivery of the once-great daily newspaper I worked for until 2008.

That's $104 or 28 cents an issue, said a woman who took my call this morning after I was put on hold for more than 15 minutes and listened to music from the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra.

After June 4, my home delivery subscription will go up only 40 cents, to $104.40 (charged to my credit card at $8.70 a month), she said.

And there is no charge for access to NorthJersey.com, which is even more poorly edited than the print edition, if you can imagine that.

That's double the $51.48 a year I paid in 2010, when I still received a discount for being a former employee.

But the woman hastened to add the "regular rate" for 7-day home delivery is $457.60.

Why didn't I know how much I paid for the Woodland Park daily?

My account is enrolled in auto pay, and renews automatically.

The letter also informed me I "will receive 4 premium editions throughout the year, which will be charged at $1 each."

Idle boasts

While I was on hold, a recorded message played over and over again, touting The Record's "restaurant reviews," which ended last November with the departure of critic Elisa Ung.

Today's Better Living section contains not a restaurant review, but a story on "North Jersey's Best Chicken Sandwiches" (1BL, 10BL and 11BL).

If you don't eat poultry or meat, screw you, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz seems to be saying.

The message also boasted of "the best local news coverage anywhere" -- a patently ridiculous statement even when the Borg family owned the paper.

Today's paper

President Trump continues his assault on the news media and "fake news" after former Gen. Michael Flynn resigned as national security adviser (1A).

A long Page 1 story on the suspensions of the high school principal and nine other high-level district employees in Englewood never explains what is wrong with "more than 3,000 graduation credit and grade changes in the previous year" (1A).

Paul Berger, a transportation reporter who covers the Port Authority, continues to spend more time reporting on the woes of unarmed guards at the George Washington Bridge than he does on the commuters who are caught in horrendous traffic jams at the bridge and other Hudson River crossings (1A).

He also has ignored reporting on a quick fix for a lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit buses and afternoon delays at the midtown-Manhattan bus terminal:

More exclusive Lincoln Tunnel bus lanes (both in the morning and afternoon) on Route 495.

About one-third of the first Business page in the L-section was missing when we found our copy of The Record, which was tossed far from the familiar spot in our driveway today. The missing third of the page ended up in the A-section, next to the editorials.

Local news 

Governor Christie's White House dreams were dashed by the Bridgegate scandal, and now a Bergen County judge has cleared the way for an official misconduct complaint against him to proceed to trial (1L).

The GOP thug has tried to put Bridgegate behind him by launching a number of initiatives to address "the epidemic of addition" to prescription drugs (Thursday's front page).

Also on the Local front, Staff Writer John Cichowski continues to base his so-called commuting column on a small number of wackos who email him incessantly so they can see their names in print (1L).

Today's Road Warrior column celebrates Neanderthal drivers who disable such collision-avoidance systems as backup cameras, adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring and lane-departure warnings.

If Ruskies did help elect Trump, then now is the time to 'Lock him up! Lock him up!'

A cartoon from Jeff Darcy of Cleveland.com portrays the warped mind of President Trump, who is shown equating Nordstrom "killing" daughter Ivanka's fashion line to President Putin killing thousands of civilians in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war and in Ukraine.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The New York Times is reminding readers that President Trump "has still refused to answer questions about contact between his campaign and Russia," and an Op-Ed columnist called that "an unacceptable silence."

Meanwhile, a Times editorial notes:

"President Trump may have thought the departure of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, would end the controversy over his administration's involvement with Russia, but the damning revelations keep on coming.

"The whole fiasco underscores the dysfunction and dishonesty of his White House and how ill prepared it is to lead the nation."

The New York newspaper has taken the lead in reporting Trump-Russia contacts, as is evident on the front page of The Record, where a USA Today story quotes The Times:

"The New York Times reported that law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted calls and phone records showing Donald Trump's presidential campaign aides, as well as other associates, having repeated contact with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the [Nov. 8] election" (1A).

As evidence mounts of Russia's role in electing Trump, many recall how The Record of Woodland Park and news outlets across the country demonized his opponent, Hillary Clinton, without any evidence her private email server endangered national security or broke the law, as Republicans claimed.

They also recall how our very own GOP thug, Governor Christie, whipped the Republican National Convention into a frenzy of calls to "Lock her up! Lock her up!"

So, now may be the time for Trump critics to start chanting, "Lock him up! Lock him up!"

The FBI is calling

Also on Page 1 today, Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports:

"FBI agents have been calling Syrian refugees in New Jersey and asking to meet -- alarming advocates who say they fear the visits could be a first step toward surveillance at a time when refugees have been cast as a suspect group" (1A).

Christie was the first, in November 2015, to advocate barring Syrian refugees, including children, from New Jersey and the rest of the country.

Then Trump incorporated that Syrian refugee phobia into his controversial travel ban, which has been suspended by a federal appeals court.

Local news?

Gannett's editors have put readers of local news on a starvation diet.

That's the only conclusion you can reach after looking at today's Local front and seeing a story on who will pay for replacing "the high school's aging synthetic turf field" in tiny Waldwick, population 9,839 in 2013 (1L).