Month: September 2012

The US economy is still in a sorry state
By Edward Luce

In a waning presidential first term nothing compares to the importance of securing another one. In Barack Obama’s case, there is an added spur to his drive for re-election. The president believes the American economy will spring back to life over the next four years and cannot abide the thought of Mitt Romney reaping the credit.

Mr Obama’s impulse is more than understandable. However unearned, an economic revival that coincided with a Romney first term would easily be marketed as a “Romney boom”. But even if – as many expect – Mr Obama wins on 6 November, he should be wary of the growing belief in America’s impending manufacturing renaissance.

https://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/48da980c-03dd-11e2-9322-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27NJrNCn0

China Appears More Competitive Than US: Dalio
Published: Friday, 21 Sep 2012 | 12:52 PM ET Text Size
By: Javier E. David
Special to CNBC.com

The emerging debate over the health of China’s economy demonstrates how the world’s second largest economy is actually more competitive than the U.S., well-known hedge fund manager Ray Dalio told CNBC Friday.

The founder and co-chief investment officer of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, likened China to Japan in its economic heyday.

“Years past in Japan when it was going strong, they called a recession anything less than 3 percent growth,” Dalio told CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” in an interview. “In China, anything less than 6 percent growth is a recession meaning it also…causes a lot of financial problems. It’s disruptive and it’s a problem.”

https://www.cnbc.com/id/49120271

Senate GOP furious newspaper got better briefing on Libya
By Alexander Bolton – 09/22/12 06:00 AM ET

Senate Republicans are furious the Obama administration rebuffed their attempts to learn details of the Benghazi attack, only to give the coveted information to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Senators say they were rebuffed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when they pressed for more information about the attack that killed U.S. envoy Christopher Stephens in Libya.
“That is the most useless, worthless briefing I have attended in a long time,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters after the closed-door session.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/251109-senate-republicans-upset-obama-administration-passed-them-over-for-the-new-york-times

Medicare Bills Rise as Records Turn Electronic
By REED ABELSON, JULIE CRESWELL and GRIFFIN J. PALMER
Published: September 21, 2012 182 Comments

When the federal government began providing billions of dollars in incentives to push hospitals and physicians to use electronic medical and billing records, the goal was not only to improve efficiency and patient safety, but also to reduce health care costs.

But, in reality, the move to electronic health records may be contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients by making it easier for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care.

Hospitals received $1 billion more in Medicare reimbursements in 2010 than they did five years earlier, at least in part by changing the billing codes they assign to patients in emergency rooms, according to a New York Times analysis of Medicare data from the American Hospital Directory. Regulators say physicians have changed the way they bill for office visits similarly, increasing their payments by billions of dollars as well.

The most aggressive billing — by just 1,700 of the more than 440,000 doctors in the country — cost Medicare as much as $100 million in 2010 alone, federal regulators said in a recent report, noting that the largest share of those doctors specialized in family practice, internal medicine and emergency care.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/medicare-billing-rises-at-hospitals-with-electronic-records.html?_r=0

The New Normal: More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes as miserable economy takes its toll
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 10:03 EST, 22 September 2012 | UPDATED: 00:43 EST, 23 September 2012

Suicide is a bigger killer than car crashes, according to an alarming new study.

The number of people dying from suicide has drastically increased, while car accident deaths haven lessened, making suicide the leading cause of injury death.

Suicides via falls or poisoning have risen significantly and experts fear there could be en more going unrecognised, specifically in cases of overdose.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207089/56-million-suicide-prevention-programme-launched-study-reveals-Americans-lives-die-car-crashes.html

PHOTO COURTESY OF COLDWELL BANKER RESIDENTIAL BROKERAGE

Seven Ridgewood agents sell more than $1 million
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 2012, 2:04 PM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS

Seven sales associates with the Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage office in Ridgewood have each surpassed $1 million in written business for July. The office total for the month was $36 million.

Coldwell Banker sales associates who surpassed $1 million in written business for July are, from left, Peggy Jung, Khodr ‘Sharif’ Elatab, Barbara Nudelman, Terry Hassan, Ghada Abbasi and Theresa Druce. Kathy Insley also earned the distinction, but is not pictured.
The sales associates who attained this achievement are listed below.

Ghada Abbasi ($8.1 million), the No. 1 sales associate in the Ridgewood office, has 29 years of real estate experience and represents buyers and sellers in Bergen County. She ranks among the top one percent of Coldwell Banker agents worldwide and is a member of the company’s International President’s Premier. She has also earned the New Jersey Association of Realtors (NJAR) Circle of Excellence award at the highest Platinum level from 2004-2011 and has been named to the prestigious Coldwell Banker President’s Council. She is an accredited specialist in relocation and luxury home sales…..https://www.northjersey.com/ridgewood/170726316_Seven_Ridgewood_agents_sell_more_than__1_million_.html

For more information about buying or selling a home, contact Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage inRidgewood/Glen Rock at 201-445-9400. The office is located at 44 Franklin Ave. in Ridgewood. Listings can be viewed at www.coldwellbankermoves.com.

https://www.northjersey.com/ridgewood/170726316_Seven_Ridgewood_agents_sell_more_than__1_million_.html

photo by Kurt Markus

Grammy award-winning singer, Jewel, at Bookends Friday
September 22,2012
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Grammy award-winning singer, Jewel, was at Bookends in Ridgewood on Friday to meet fans and sign copies of her new book “That’s What I’d Do.”

Jewel or Jewel Kilcher was born May 23, 1974, is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress and poet. She has received four Grammy Award nominations and has sold over 27 million albums worldwide.

Jewel was born in Payson, Utah. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to Homer, Alaska. Jewel learned to play the guitar while at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, where she majored in operatic voice. She started writing songs as early as the age of 16. and got her start plying in front of a live audience at Ray’s Coffee House in Traverse City, Michigan.

For some time Jewel lived the “starving artist lifesty” money was tight so she lived in her van and traveling around the country doing street performances and small gigs.She gained some recognition by singing at the Innerchange Coffeehouse and Java Joe’s in San Diego, California .

Jewel was discovered by Inga Vainshtein in August 1994, in San Diego . She cut her debut album, Pieces of You, in 1995 when she was 21. It was recorded in a studio on Neil Young’s ranch, and was backed by his band.

At her peak Jewel was chosen to sing the American national anthem at the opening of the Super Bowl XXXII in January 1998 in San Diego. She was introduced as “San Diego’s own Jewel!”

sourced form : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_(singer)  and https://www.jeweljk.com/

Village Council Schedules Special Public Meeting For Wednesday, September 26 (Yom Kipper) to Appoint New Municipal Court Judge

VILLAGE COUNCIL
SPECIAL PUBLIC MEETING
SEPTEMBER 26, 2012
7:00 P.M.

1. Call to Order – Mayor

2. Statement of Compliance with the Open Public Meeting Act

MAYOR: “Adequate notice of this meeting has been provided
by a posting on the bulletin board in Village Hall,
by mail to the Ridgewood News, The Record, and by submission to all persons entitled to same as provided by law of a schedule including the date and time of this meeting.”

3. Roll Call

4. Comments from the Public

5. Resolution to go into Closed Session

6. Closed Session

A. Personnel – Municipal Court Judge

7. Resume Open Portion of Special Public Meeting

8. Resolution #12-233 – Appointment of Municipal Court Judge

9, Discussion of Timing for Village Council’s Public Workshop Meeting on October 3, 2012

10. Adjournment

Mixed message from real estate as uneven recovery continues

New Jersey’s commercial real estate market continues to have a mixed recovery, as major gains in some sectors are being tempered by slow growth in others, a panel of developers said today.

The panelists, speaking at the annual RealShare NJ conference in New Brunswick, told an increasingly familiar story that includes a thriving multifamily market, a healthy industrial sector and an office market stymied by the state’s tepid job growth.  (Burd, NJBIZ)

https://www.njbiz.com/article/20120919/NJBIZ01/120919804/Mixed-message-from-real-estate-as-uneven-recovery-continues

History 101: On September 22, 1862, following the Union “victory” at the Battle of Antietam, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued

Today is the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

Although January 1st, 1863, is the date most Americans identify as the day the Emancipation Proclamation officially took effect, the ideals of the Proclamation had been carefully contemplated by President Lincoln many months before.

Lincoln first proposed the idea of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in the summer of 1862 as a war measure to cripple the Confederacy. Lincoln surmised that if the slaves in the Southern states were freed, then the Confederacy could no longer use them as laborers to support the army in the field, thus hindering the effectiveness of the Confederate war effort. As an astute politician, however, Lincoln needed to prove that the Union government could enforce the Proclamation and protect the freed slaves. On September 22, 1862, following the Union “victory” at the Battle of Antietam, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued, this preliminary proclamation would go into effect three months later on January 1, 1863.

The Emancipation had an immediate and profound effect on the course of the war. In addition to saving the Union, freeing the slaves now became an official war aim, garnering passionate reactions from both the North and the South. The Proclamation also allowed for African-Americans to join the Union’s armed forces, and by the end of the war nearly 200,000 would honorably serve.

Initially the Proclamation applied just to the states in rebellion, but it paved the way for the 13th Amendment, adopted on December 6, 1865, which officially abolished slavery in the United States.

https://www.civilwar.org/150th-anniversary/emancipation-proclamation-150.html#

Why The Polls Understate Romney Vote
By Dick Morris on September 21, 2012

Republicans are getting depressed under an avalanche of polling suggesting that an Obama victory is in the offing. They, in fact, suggest no such thing! Here’s why:
1. All of the polling out there uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin.
In English, this means that when you do a poll you ask people if they are likely to vote. But any telephone survey always has too few blacks, Latinos, and young people and too many elderly in its sample. That’s because some don’t have landlines or are rarely at home or don’t speak English well enough to be interviewed or don’t have time to talk. Elderly are overstated because they tend to be home and to have time. So you need to increase the weight given to interviews with young people, blacks and Latinos and count those with seniors a bit less.
Normally, this task is not difficult. Over the years, the black, Latino, young, and elderly proportion of the electorate has been fairly constant from election to election, except for a gradual increase in the Hispanic vote. You just need to look back at the last election to weight your polling numbers for this one.
But 2008 was no ordinary election. Blacks, for example, usually cast only 11% of the vote, but, in 2008, they made up 14% of the vote. Latinos increased their share of the vote by 1.5% and college kids almost doubled their vote share. Almost all pollsters are using the 2008 turnout models in weighting their samples. Rasmussen, more accurately, uses a mixture of 2008 and 2004 turnouts in determining his sample. That’s why his data usually is better for Romney.
But polling indicates a widespread lack of enthusiasm among Obama’s core demographic support due to high unemployment, disappointment with his policies and performance, and the lack of novelty in voting for a black candidate now that he has already served as president.

https://www.dickmorris.com/why-the-polls-under-state-romney-vote/