Society Cafe Concert Series at Ridgewood Unitarian Society
The Society Café Concert Series offers a series of acoustic singer/songwriter, folk and Americana concerts at the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood. Wine, dessert and coffee, all provided by local vendors, are available before the shows and during intermission. The next concert will be on Saturday evening, March 2nd, and features rock / Americana musician James Maddock. British born James Maddock was first recognized in the U.S. as leader of the band Wood (Songs From Stamford Hill – Columbia Records), when the band toured with Paula Cole and Train. Songs from Stamford Hill, which remains a fan favorite ten years later, produced a Top 5 Triple A hit (“Stay You”) and was featured on the TV drama “Dawson’s Creek”. In 2009 Maddock released the exquisite collection of songs, Sunrise On Avenue C, for which he won the 2010-11 New York Music Award for Best Americana Album. Maddock followed Sunrise in 2011 with Wake Up and Dream,which NYC’s WFUV 2011 Listener’s Poll named one of the top albums of 2011. He has just released a new album, Another Life. “His timeless songwriting style, which seems to draw from great songwriters of every era, conveys quiet confidence and lovely intimacy.” – National Public Radio Show starts at 8. We start serving wine and dessert at 7 when doors open.
Advance tickets are $20 and can be purchased via PayPal on the Society Café website, www.societycafeconcertseries.com. Tickets are $25 the night of the concert. For any booking inquiries or information about the series, contact Mark Meding at m.meding@att.net. The Unitarian Society of Ridgewood is located at 113 Cottage Place, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, www.uuridgewood.org. Office: 201-444-6225
Now available now at
The Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood
~Gary, Barbara and Collin
The Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood
The Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood | 10 Chestnut Street | Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450
Phone: 201-447-2204 | Email: info@tobaccoshop.com
Hours: Monday – Saturday 10:00AM – 5:30PM and Thursday Night 6:30PM – 8:30PM
CVS agrees to pay $650,000 after giving customers wrong prescription pills
By Star-Ledger Staff
on February 25, 2013 at 11:16 AM, updated February 25, 2013 at 10:16 PM
By Amy Ellis Nutt and Christopher Baxter / STAR-LEDGER STAFF
TRENTON —
Pills for breast cancer patients instead of chewable fluoride tablets for children; a drug for schizophrenia instead of a drug for high blood pressure; pills to fight cholesterol instead of pills to treat diabetes.
These are a few of the errors made by five CVS pharmacies in three New Jersey counties from Dec. 1, 2011, to March 24, 2012, according to a report released today by the state Division of Consumer Affairs.
In announcing that his office had concluded a nearly yearlong investigation into a medication mix-up at a CVS in Chatham last March, State Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa disclosed that CVS stores in Budd Lake, Cherry Hill, Rahway and Scotch Plains had collectively filled dozens of incorrect prescriptions by mixing different medications in the same bottles.
All of the incidents apparently occurred last March, with one incident resulting in an emergency room visit.
Editors Note : better balance or encouraging laziness and failure or maybe schools should focus on more substantive learning instead of all this PC gobble-gong ?
Monday February 25, 2013, 2:06 PM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
Reel Link Films, the organization behind the 2009 documentary “Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture,” has featured Ridgewood High School (RHS) in documentary spots, commending its recent initiatives for student wellness. Highlighted are its homework-free school breaks and occasional “sleep-in days,” which began last June.
“It’s happening in Ridgewood, New Jersey,” said filmmaker Vicki Abeles in an email sent to supporters this January.
In an online sample letter advocating homework-free breaks, which the Race to Nowhere team encourages individuals to send to their district representatives, the team calls Ridgewood a “success story.”
But, all this begs the questions, have RHS’ breaks and later school start times been a success?
Based on the responses of some administrators and parents, some of whom may have seen their children do schoolwork during February break this past week, the answer seems to be that there have been positive changes, but some issues have stayed at the status quo.
Valley Hospital submits new plan to expand
Wednesday February 27, 2013, 12:05 AM
BY MARY JO LAYTON, BARBARA WILLIAMS AND COLLEEN DISKIN
STAFF WRITERS
The Record
More than a year after its plan to double in size was rejected in Ridgewood, The Valley Hospital submitted a new proposal this week that offers little change in scale or design.
The project filed with the Ridgewood Planning Board this week still calls for the hospital to increase significantly — from 570,000 to 910,000 square feet, excluding parking — and includes buildings up to 94 feet high on a site in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
“I was under the impression that if Valley came back with a change, it would be a substantial change,” said Councilwoman Bernadette Walsh. “I’m not seeing drastic changes.”
A leader for a residents’ group echoed Walsh’s comments and predicted a tough sell for many in the community that fought Valley’s previous proposal for a $750 million expansion.
“It’s still about 75 percent bigger than the existing hospital,” said Peter McKenna, president of Concerned Residents of Ridgewood, a group that has repeatedly called for a smaller expansion.
Valley officials say the project is essential to helping one of the state’s top-rated hospitals remain competitive with cutting edge technology and single-patient rooms.
“We look forward to presenting the details of the modified plan and to demonstrating how the changes we have made will positively impact the community,” Megan Fraser, a Valley spokeswoman, said on Tuesday.
Tri-State Transportation Campaign released its annual list of “most dangerous roads for walking” in the Tri-State Area
Febuary 26,2013
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Tri-State Transportation Campaign released its annual list of “most dangerous roads for walking” in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut , the annual survey of pedestrian safety for the Tri-State area found that on many New Jersey roads, walkers and motorists continued to compete for road space.
The Tri-State Transportation Campaign found that 1,200 pedestrians were killed on roads in Conneticut., New Jersey and downstate New York between 2009 and 2011.
The good news for Ridgewood was that of the nine deadliest roads in New Jersey, four were in the South Jersey , two were in the Central and surprisingly only three were in population dense North Jersey.
Pedestrian fatalities dropped in New York and Connecticut but up slightly in New Jersey. The report sites that in the last three-year stretch, 440 pedestrians died on New Jersey roads, up slightly from the 436 killed from 2008 to 2010 in last year’s survey.
file photo Boyd Loving
The report found that about 60 percent of pedestrian deaths in New Jersey were on arterial, or main roads, as Route 130, Routes 1&9 and Route 1 even though they only make up only 15 percent of roads in the region.
The next six deadliest roadways in New Jersey each having eight deaths over the three-year period, included Route 30, also called the White Horse Pike, in Camden County; Route 9 in Middlesex County, Routes 1&9 in Union County, Route 46 in Morris County, Route 9 in Ocean County and JFK Boulevard, also known as Route 501, in Hudson County .
file photo Boyd Loving
While Ridgewood has seen more than its fair share of pedestrian and motor vehicle accidents in recent years the CBD continues to offer special concerns for both walkers and drivers .Despite the best efforts by local police everyone needs to be extra careful and pay particularly keen attention driving n the Village . While on a smaller scale the CBD suffers from many of the same issues ,distracted driving, high density , low visibility as many of New Jerseys most dangerous roads.
Readers say Healthcare is the biggest scam in this country
The article Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us even made Medicare out to be a hero, believe it or not. The real reason for the valley expansion is nicely explained here.
Something to think about: I had an emergency operation that cost 19000 and change. My insurance paid for it sans the deductible. About a year later I’m discussing the cost of the operation with an employee from valley. She said ” your insurance didn’t pay 19000 dollars for that operation they probably paid between 8800 and 9300 for. BUT if I did’t have insurance I would be on the hook for the whole 19000, And in nj the hospital could put a lein on my house for the payment. If the hospital can charge the ins co. those figures why do they get away with beating up the uninsured for whole inflated bill?
Most relevant to Ridgewood is the expose of the hospitals amazing profits, and need to continually expand, buy doctors’ practices, etc. The pay of their executives, their p.r., all at the expense of the residents.
Its not the doctors or the nurses who benefit, it is the hospital and the health care industry itself. The hospitals are scrambling to play down this amazing story, but they cannot.
The non profit argument is a myth, and even if some people want P.I.L.O.T it is a false argument, cause it wouldn’t matter to the hospitals bottom line, they make so much money and they would use this as an argument to expand.
John Kerry says Americans ‘have a right to be stupid’ and tells how he lost his diplomatic passport at age 12 after sneaking out to Soviet-controlled East Berlin in 1950s
‘In America, you have a right to be stupid, if you want to be… and we tolerate that,’ Kerry said to a packed Internet cafe in Berlin Kerry stopped in Berlin as part of his nine-country trip abroad – his first trip as secretary of state He recalled how he learned about the divide in postwar Berlin as a young man living with his American diplomat father
By Hayley Peterson
PUBLISHED: 00:00 EST, 26 February 2013 | UPDATED: 16:17 EST, 26 February 2013
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recalled for young Germans Tuesday when he snuck out of the American embassy in divided postwar Berlin at age 12 for a clandestine bicycle ride into the Soviet-controlled eastern part of the city.
Kerry told the story to a group of young people in a packed Internet cafe in Berlin as he defended U.S. freedom of speech laws, saying that ‘In America, you have a right to be stupid.’
‘As a 12-year-old, I saw the difference between the east and the west,’ said Kerry, who had lived in Berlin in 1950s with his family and American diplomat father. ‘I saw people were in darker clothing and there were fewer people in the street. There were fewer cars. I didn’t feel the movement and the energy that existed elsewhere.’
GAO Report: Obamacare Adds $6.2 Trillion to Long-Term Deficit
By Andrew Stiles
Obamacare will increase the long-term federal deficit by $6.2 trillion, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released today.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), who requested the report, revealed the findings this morning at a Senate Budget Committee hearing. The report, he said, “confirms everything critics and Republicans were saying about the faults of this bill,” and “dramatically proves that the promises made assuring the nation that the largest new entitlement program in history would not add one dime to the deficit were false.”
President Obama and other Democrats attempted to win support for the health-care bill by touting it as a fiscally responsible enterprise. “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future,” Obama told a joint-session of Congress in September 2009. “I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”
The new report exposes the “lack of honesty” surrounding such claims, Sessions argued. “The big-government crowd in Washington manipulated the numbers in order to get the financial score they wanted, in order to get their bill passed and to increase power and influence,” he said. “The goal was not truth or financial responsibility, but to pass the bill. This is how a country goes broke.”
Sequestration : Where Could We POSSIBLY Cut the Federal Budget?
Amy Payne
February 26, 2013 at 7:35 am
https://tinyurl.com/aufzj6p
If you had to cut your family’s budget, where would you cut?
Would you immediately start starving your children and stop wearing shoes? Of course not. You would look at the extras in your life—whether they were coffee shop lattes, movie tickets, or restaurant meals.
It’s a good thing the President wouldn’t be handling your budget. As Dan Holler of our sister organization, Heritage Action for America, has said: “If President Obama were making the decision for your family… he’d tell you to stop buying gas for your car and explain how you could only eat five days a week.”
Now that President Obama has turned against sequestration, he is suggesting that spending cuts to federal agencies must result in dire consequences. Firefighters, emergency responders, and teachers will all be cut, he claims. Media outlets have played up these sob stories, copying White House releases in their local news stories and soliciting sad testimonials from people who supposedly would be affected by these cuts.
But the question remains: Why would federal agencies cut their most vital assets instead of trimming around the edges? After all, the sequestration cuts are only 2.4 percent of federal spending.
“catastrophic,” spending cuts
Take a couple of examples.
President Obama said that “Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country.”
It won’t come as a surprise to most Americans that there is waste and inefficiency at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In fact, a congressional report “found that TSA is wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.” Another report found that the TSA “has continually grown its ranks despite fewer travelers.”
President Obama said that “Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off.”
First of all, as Heritage researchers have pointed out, “No federal education program operated by the Department of Education directly funds teacher salaries—this is a state and local responsibility.” And there are plenty of programs where inefficiencies are burdening our education system. A congressional report listed a number of duplicative or ineffective education programs that could be cut.
As if these exaggerations weren’t enough, Reason.com reported that the Office of Management and Budget warned of sequestration cuts to an agency that doesn’t even exist. As Reason’s Mike Riggs noted, this raises questions about the accuracy of the Administration’s attempted impact statements.
There is one area where the sequestration cuts will have harsher impacts—national defense. Heritage has warned of the impact on military readiness and America’s ability to defend itself, because defense bears a much larger portion of the cuts than the rest of the budget. The President is now acting concerned about the military after paying it little mind throughout the sequestration debate, using a shipyard as his backdrop for today’s anti-sequestration pep talk.
It makes no sense to hit defense the hardest with these cuts, while sequestration leaves major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid untouched. Congress should reprogram these spending cuts to target the waste and inefficiencies it has already identified in federal agencies—like those listed above. Heritage’s Patrick Louis Knudsen, the Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, even helpfully outlined places to find $150 billion in spending cuts that would make a lot more sense.
So no, we don’t have to fire firefighters and teachers and airport screeners. What Congress should be doing is what every American family does—tightening its budget by cutting things that are unnecessary.
Michael Kaiser, M.D., Appointed Clinical Director of The Spine Center
February 25, 2013 — The Valley Hospital is pleased to announce that Michael Kaiser, M.D., FACS, FAANS, has been appointed as Clinical Director of The Valley Hospital Spine Center. Dr. Kaiser is a board-certified neurosurgeon practicing both in Ridgewood and New York.
“We are pleased to have Dr. Kaiser accept this leadership position at Valley” says Karteek Bhavsar, Assistant Vice President of Perioperative Services at The Valley Hospital. His clinical and academic accomplishments in the field of spine surgery demonstrate the high caliber of surgical excellence Valley provides our community.”
Valley’s Spine Center, part of Valley’s Neuroscience Center of Excellence, offers comprehensive diagnostic, therapeutic, and management services for all types of acute and chronic back and neck disorders. A multidisciplinary team of spine specialists with expertise in operative and non-operative treatment options, such as physical therapy, diagnostic and therapeutic spinal injections, rehabilitation, and innovative surgical techniques, develop individualized, comprehensive treatment strategies for their spine center patients.
Dr. Kaiser, who has been on staff as a neurosurgeon at The Valley Hospital since 2005, is an Associate Professor of Clinical Neurosurgery at Columbia University with advanced subspecialty training in complex spinal surgery.
His clinical skills include artificial cervical disc replacement, cervical spondylotic myelopathy, minimally invasive spine surgery, spine and spinal cord tumors, and degenerative spine disease. His research interests include clinical guideline development, evidence based treatment algorithms, and clinical outcome analysis.
Dr. Kaiser is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgery, the Congress of Neurological Surgery, the American College of Surgeons, and serves on the executive committee for the AANS Joint Section on Spine & Peripheral Nerve. He has served as the clinical guidelines chairman of the AANS Joint Section on Spine & Peripheral Nerves for the past four years. He has had over 75 manuscripts published as peer reviewed clinical articles, book chapters, and meeting abstracts. Dr. Kaiser serves as an ad hoc reviewer for several peer reviewed spine journals, including The Spine Journal and Neurosurgery, and regularly presents at the major national neurosurgical spine meetings.
A graduate of New York University, Dr. Kaiser received his Medical Degree from Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut, completed his residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York, New York, and was fellowship-trained in Neurosurgery, from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.
For more information on The Spine Center at The Valley Hospital, visit www.ValleyHealth.com/Spine, call 201-251-3491, or send an email to webinfo@valleyhealth.com.
Learning Services Home and School Association (LSHSA) Holds Spring Social
Wednesday, March 13 9:30-11:30 a.m. 135 Crest Road, Ridgewood
Join the LSHSA members for a “meet and greet” coffee. Enjoy pleasant conversation and share ideas with other parents in the Ridgewood Special Ed community. No R.S.V.P. necessary. Questions? Contact Tricia Mueller at mueller.tricia@gmail.com.
Since the LSHSA was formed in 2005, we have raised and given back to the special needs community over $20,000 in scholarships, teachers’ wish lists and staff recognition gifts. We wanted to thank the Ridgewood Community for making this possible through HSA dues and fundraisers!
Hacker Anonymous has twitter account hacked
February 26, 2013
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The hacking group Anonymous got a taste of its own medicine, when its Twitter account was hacked by little-known group called Rustle League. Anonymous’ Twitter account was down for around three hours before the group regained control.
The twitter hack comes after a series of Twitter account breaches orchestrated by Anonymous , which included a rather humors jab at Burger King, Jeep and presenter on BBC’s Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson.
Anonymous is best known for coordinating highly public attacks on big businesses and political targets such as Paypal and the US Federal Reserve.
The group itself has recently been accused of becoming lax with its own cyber security. Recently cyber security firm McAfee describing Anonymous’ work as hacking-for-hire, and suggesting the collective is going into decline.
Bergen County Sheriff Mike Saudino will speak on Defending The Constitution
West Bergen Tea Party
Join us 7 pm, Tuesday, February 26 at the Larkin House 380 Godwin Avenue, Wyckoff
(1/4 mile North of Stop & Shop on the right) More information: 201 891-5918,conservative_caucus@verizon.net
https://www.westbergenteaparty.com/
Schools begin to embrace technology
Monday February 25, 2013, 10:31 PM
BY DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Cellphones were once verboten on most school grounds, destined to be confiscated by a principal or stashed in a locker until the end of the school day.
Now, some districts are not only encouraging students to bring the gadgets to school, they are using them and other devices — laptops, tablets, even Nintendo DSIs — in class.
The about-face is a growing trend in K-12 districts nationwide, from Georgia and Wisconsin to North Jersey. Cellphones, laptops and tablets are relatively affordable, and rare is the teenager who doesn’t own at least one. As such, more teachers are incorporating Internet-based programs, applications and videos into their lesson plans, the 21st-century equivalent of the chalk and blackboard.
