>“Sheila Brogan discussed proposed legislation to move the annual school board elections and budget vote to November. The Board passed a resolution in opposition to this proposed legislation.”
November school elections bill moves forward
A bill that would allow New Jersey school elections to be held in November cleared an Assembly panel Thursday, the last day of scheduled committee meetings before the current lame duck session ends.
The legislation has been promoted by its sponsors as a property tax reform measure because it would move the school elections from April to November, when voter participation is generally higher.
The bill – which cleared the Assembly Budget Committee during a Thursday afternoon meeting — would also allow school districts to avoid putting their budgets before voters if spending stays within the 2 percent cap on levy hikes that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2011. (Reitmeyer, The Record)
>Proposed bill would let wineries ship directly to Garden State customers
New Jersey residents are one step closer to being able to buy wine directly from Garden State vineyards and have it legally shipped to their doorsteps.
An Assembly panel gave the go-ahead Thursday for a bill permitting small wineries — those producing less than 250,000 gallons a year — both in and out of state to ship wine to New Jersey residents. It would also allow in-state wineries to sell to the public directly from their vineyards and shops.
If passed by both houses and signed by the governor, the bill (A-4436) would make New Jersey one of 38 states that allows direct shipping of wine to residents, a list that includes New York but not Pennsylvania, according to the Wine Institute, a lobbying group for California wines. Previous versions of the bill have been in the works since 2008. (Knox, NJ Spotlight)
Under new N.J. bill, personal injury lawyers would have to wait 30 days before contacting accident victims
State lawmakers want to give accident victims a head start over ambulance chasers with a bill that would punish lawyers and other professionals who write to them within 30 days of an accident.
The measure (A4430) was approved 6-0 by the Assembly Judiciary Committee today and is expected to be taken up by the full Senate and Assembly on Monday.
Currently, lawyers, doctors, chiropractors and other health care workers are barred from soliciting victims in person, by phone or online for 30 days — although the bill’s sponsors say the law is largely unenforced, if at all. (Friedman, The Star-Ledger)
>Pot center to appeal township’s rejection in court
A Westampton Township board had voted, 5-2, against a proposal to open a medical marijuana operation inside a vacant former factory after an emotionally charged evening hearing that ran nearly into Thursday.
Surrounded by his lawyers, planners, and medical experts, William J. Thomas, the chief executive of Compassionate Care Foundation, packed up his papers.
“Oh, yeah,” he said when asked if the nonprofit would appeal to Superior Court. (Hefler, The Philadelphia Inquirer)
>TO GOOGLE OR NOT? ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LIBRARIANS HOST WORKSHOPS
Parents and guardians are invited to join the RPS Elementary Librarians as they offer ways to access and utilize online resources to help with homework and research. The following three sessions will cover the same material: Orchard School Library: Wednesday, January 18 from 9-10 a.m.; Somerville School Library: Tuesday, February 14 from 10-11 a.m.; Willard School Library: Wednesday, March 7 from 9:45-10:45 a.m. Click here for the flyer.https://tinyurl.com/6stc93d
>NFL game streaming may be costly for Verizon Wireless users By Roger Yu, USA TODAY
The National Football League will live-stream the wild-card playoff games Saturday, but viewing them on smartphones could be costly for Verizon Wireless customers whose data plans are capped, says Public Knowledge, a communications advocacy organization.
“Watching all of those games would exceed the cap on data usage the company has imposed, and would cost customers extra money,” says Public Knowledge. The organization has launched a new website, Whatismycap.com, to help consumers monitor their data usage.
The NFL says it will live-stream Saturday’s wild-card playoff doubleheader, the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl both online and via NFL Mobile to Verizon Wireless customers.
>Obama’s Sham Constitutionalism by Roger Pilon This article appeared on The Daily Caller on January 5, 2012.
In a brazen display of the arrogance for which President Obama is so rightly infamous, his unprecedented “recess appointments” yesterday of Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and of three others to serve on the National Labor Relations Board are not only unconstitutional, since the Senate is not presently in recess, but, in the case of Cordray, legally futile under the plain language of the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB — a point too little noticed by media accounts of the move.
Start with the constitutional point. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution grants the president the power “to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate.” In the debate that has followed yesterday’s events, most of the focus has been on whether the Senate is in fact in recess. Two points bear on that question. First, Article 1, Section 5 says that “Neither House … shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days” — and the Republican-controlled House did not consent, precisely to block the president from making recess appointments, just as the Democratic Congress did in November 2007 and for the rest of George W. Bush’s presidency. And in both cases, members of the Senate appeared every three days to gavel the Senate into “pro forma” session. In fact, only the day before Obama acted, the Senate conducted a pro forma session, convening the second session of the 112th Congress. Moreover, no less than Obama’s most recent appointee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, writing as his solicitor general on March 23, 2010 to the clerk of the Supreme Court, averred that “the Senate may act to foreclose [recess appointments] by declining to recess for more than two or three days at a time over a lengthy period.”
And second, as Professor John Yoo noted yesterday, “it is up to the Senate to decide when it is in session or not.” Consistent with the separation of powers, “the President cannot decide the legitimacy of the activities of the Senate any more than he could for the other branches, and vice versa.”
>White House proposes 0.5 percent pay increase for federal workers By Ed O’Keefe
The White House will propose a 0.5 percent pay increase for civilian federal employees as part of its 2013 budget proposal, according to two senior administration officials familiar with the plans.
The modest across-the-board pay jump would be the first increase for federal workers since before a two-year freeze began in late 2010. Raises for within-grade step increases and promotions have continued during the freeze.
>Labor unions primary recipients of Obamacare waivers By Paul Conner Published: 9:18 PM 01/06/2012
Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.
Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.
By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.
>Real Jobless Rate Is 11.4% With Realistic Labor Force Participation Rate Tyler Durden’s picture Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2012 10:23 -0500
One does not need to be a rocket scientist to grasp the fudging the BLS has been doing every month for years now in order to bring the unemployment rate lower: the BLS constantly lowers the labor force participation rate as more and more people “drop out” of the labor force for one reason or another. While there is some floating speculation that this is due to early retirement, this is completely counter factual when one also considers the overall rise in the general civilian non institutional population. In order to back out this fudge we are redoing an analysis we did first back in August 2010, which shows what the real unemployment rate would be using a realistic labor force participation rate. To get that we used the average rate since 1980, or ever since the great moderation began.
The Board of Ed has been looking for solutions to save money and over the summer they installed devices (at an unknown price to me) for every room that will turn off lights if there is no motion in a certain time. This must not have been enough because when students and teachers got back from over the break plastic boxes covered the thermostats in all of the class rooms which are designed to keep students and teachers using too much heat.
This seems like an IDIOT proof plan! NO ONE could possibly mess this one up, huh? Oh wait, they DID! As we all know, thermostats need air holes in order to survive (they need to breath too apparently) so whoever made this device was smart for doing it. The one slight (now keep in mind, this is a REALLY slight issue), is that ANYONE with half a brain can figure out within 10 seconds that a paper clip can be used to up the heaters to “warmest”. Essentially, you need to be smarter than a lab rat to use the heating system now.
Let’s think about how much this cost the BoE and our precious tax dollars. Assuming that each device was 20 dollars and that there are around 150 thermostats in the whole school that means that over $3000’s was spent on defective devices. We also have to look at the cost of the janitors who installed it, assuming it takes 12 minutes to install (and move to the next one) one and a janitor is paid $15 an hour to do this how much additional cost is it? Around $500’s was the cost of the janitor to install these devices. That means over $3500’s of tax payer money was spend on a defective device.
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>NJ school board members didn’t do a background check
More than 350 local school board members in New Jersey face losing their jobs or even going to jail for not completing a criminal background check required under a new law.
Board members were required to complete the background check by Dec. 31.
The Star-Ledger of Newark reported that 165 charter school board officials and 189 non-charter school board members failed to submit the background check in time.
Under legislation passed last year, they are required to resign their positions immediately and could be charged with a fourth-degree crime if they refuse to step down. (Associated Press)
