Did the Hoboken Reporter Pull the 'Tim' Letter?

Why all the blank space on The Hoboken Reporter's Letter's page?

Did you notice something strange on the Letters page at the back of The Hoboken Reporter? There were only 3 letters above an over-sized note from the paper which begins:

"The Hoboken Reporter gets lots of letters."

That's true. It sometimes takes a week or two before a submission gets to print because of the HR's volume of reader mail.

So why the sea of non-used space on the normally-crowded Letters page?  I was wondering about that when this letter came in from a reader:

Notice anything strange about the HR letters page?

They seem to have made a last minute decision to pull an approved "fact checked" letter and fill the space with filler - the bizarre insertion of the HR letter policy taking up approximately the same amount of space as Tim's op ed piece and leaving the whole page really formatted.

Think maybe they had accepted Timmy's letter without any of the fact checking they apply to others, and were going to print it obvious untruths and all,  but pulled it at the last minute (that would be Friday too late to replace it with another letter) because it had been exposed as false prior to publication by the blogs?

Look at all the empty space on the page even with the filler.  This was badly done last minute damage control by people with the design skills of a toddler who didn't have time to come up with a better designed fix.    This was literally done 1/2 an hour before their publication deadline in a panic.

The question is rhetorical - it's pretty obvious that's what happened here.  Pretty funny!

Well, GA doesn't have a crystal ball, but I think this reader is onto something.

Why the huge holes in the Letters page?   It seems fairly obvious that the media 'roll-out' of Timmy's letter would have included publication in the Hoboken Reporter. 

It makes sense that the HR pulled the plug on Tim's extraordinarily truth-challenged letter after it was thoroughly debunked on the blogs and its authorship called into question.

Timmy claims to have authored the piece, but according to sources the culprit is WhiteHorse Strategies, a political consulting firm.  Really, would a guy who can barely enunciate a 3-syllable word have Fiorello LaGuardia quotes in his quiver?  Which means the letter was the work of a paid political consultant, disingenuously accepted by the Jersey Journal as Tim Occhipinti's.  By doing so, the JJ has made itself part of the Occhipinti political machine.

GA noted there was no 'Paid for by..." language.  If  Occhipinti did not pay WhiteHorse Strategies for the letter then it was an in-kind donation. So we all will be looking for that on a future Occhipinti ELEC...

Why else might the HR have pulled the 'Timmy' letter?

Well, the author (allegedly WhiteHorse Strategies) lied like a rug about the Mayor and about Timmy.

It accused her of inaction ("Zimmer can't be trusted to fix a pothole") and incompetence.  It falsely claimed that she did no street repairs in 2012.  The truth is, she did- repaved River Street- and could have done MORE but not for the obstruction of Tim Occhipinti and the other 3 Council minority members: Mason, Russo and Castellano.  All FOUR voted 'NO' on a bond ordinance to repave Washington Street, parts of Sinatra Drive, Observer highway and Newark Street.

And Timmy has the BALLS to LIE like that about the Mayor, hurl insults at her when HE has obstructed her efforts to repave Hoboken's busiest roads.  

The letter is an amateurish work; brazenly dishonest and strident in tone, guaranteed to land with a thud. Another shot in the foot.  How many has Timmy got left?