Call for Entries and Save the Date: Annual RHS Alumni Art Show
12th Annual Alumni Art Show
Exhibit Dates: December 12, 2016 – January 5, 2017
Location: RHS, Carroll Art Gallery – Room 137
Reception: January 5, 2017 at 7 p.m.
Alumni Artists: We will be collecting your current, ready-to-hang creative works the week of December 5. Please consider sharing your talent! Please forward to you alumni friends….help spread the word!
I have been so lucky to find dedicated and interested and motivated teachers for my kids from k all the way through the high school. There have been one or 2 who are absolutely apathetic or just plain bad at their jobs. 99% have gone way above and beyond for my kids.
At every turn I am disappointed with the majority of the administration, the BOE and their never ending ability to pass the buck. Nothing changes. Nothing gets done. Spend more give less. Just playing in to the business side of education. No one I can locate in the BOE or main offices of the Ridgewood schools takes ANY responsibility for Ridgewood schools or seems to give a leap about children or education.
That stumps me and THAT never had changed. Ever.
November 2,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Vote NO on Question #2 on Election Day. By doing so, WE THE PEOPLE can push back the gas tax increase.
“New Jersey voters have a chance to force Trenton lawmakers to go back to the drawing board on Election Day by opposing a ballot referendum question that would allow New Jersey to amend its constitution to dedicate the revenue from the gas tax to fund the Transportation Trust Fund.”
The Ballot referendum question would allow New Jersey to amend its constitution to dedicate the revenue , that’s a euphemism a constitutional amendment to automatically raise your taxes every year!
Voting no on the measure would force lawmakers back to the bargaining table, according to Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno, who spoke recently on NJ101.5’s Bill Spedia radio show.
“A vote for number two is a vote for the gas tax,” Guadagno said. ‘If you like the gas tax, then you’re going to like number two.'”
#VoteNoOnTwo
Rebecca Spalding @rcurtisspalding
S&P 500 down 3.2% since Aug. 8, a good sign for challenger
Market correctly signals outcome 86 percent of time since 1928
Few institutions have a better track record calling presidential races than the U.S. stock market. At the moment, it’s sending information that counts against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The performance of the S&P 500 Index has signaled the outcome of every presidential election since 1984, according to an analysis by Strategas Research Partners LLC. A gain in the benchmark for American equity in the three months prior to the vote has seen the incumbent party win 86 percent of the time since 1928. Right now, the benchmark gauge is down 3.6 percent since Aug. 8 with just a week until the vote, a fact that in isolation augurs well for Donald Trump.
Aside from the three-month interval, the S&P 500 fell Tuesday by the most in three weeks, slipping for a sixth day to 2,111.72, making its first foray below 2,100 since July 7 before rebounding. The gauge is in its longest slide since August 2015 amid polls showing the race for the White House is tightening. The CBOE Volatility Index surged Tuesday by 9 percent to the highest since June 27.
Scale of FBI investigations into Clinton’s closest aides and friends is becoming clear
Besides Huma Abedin, a swathe of long-time loyalists are at the center of investigations including Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe
John Podesta ran the Clinton Foundation which is under investigation while his brother Tony is also focus of a probe about foreign corruption
Cheryl Mills already received limited FBI immunity during Clinton email investigation – and is key Clinton fixer
String of other names are being looked at or have been caught up in earlier scandals
By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTERS
PUBLISHED: 09:32 EDT, 1 November 2016 | UPDATED: 14:56 EDT, 1 November 2016
The extent to which Hillary Clinton’s key advisers are now the focus of major FBI investigations is becoming clear.
The Clintons’ long-term inner-circle – some of whom stretch back in service to the very first days of Bill’s White House – are being examined in at least five separate investigations.
The scale of the FBI’s interest in some of America’s most powerful political fixers – one of them a sitting governor – underlines just how difficult it will be for Clinton to shake off the taint of scandal if she enters the White House.
There are, in fact, not one but five separate FBI investigations which involve members of Clinton’s inner circle or their closest relatives – the people at the center of what has come to be known as Clintonworld.
The five known investigations are into: Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin’s estranged husband sexting a 15-year-old; the handling of classified material by Clinton and her staff on her private email server; questions over whether the Clinton Foundation was used as a front for influence-peddling; whether the Virginia governor broke laws about foreign donations; and whether Hillary’s campaign chairman’s brother did the same.
The progress of the Clinton Foundation investigation and that into McAuliffe was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The FBI does not generally comment on investigations, so it is entirely possible there are more under way.
Here are the advisers and consiglieri – and how the FBI is looking at them
By MEGHAN KENEALLY
JORDYN PHELPS
Oct 31, 2016, 3:33 PM ET
The White House says it will remain neutral regarding the reopening of an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server, after the discovery of more emails that FBI Director James Comey said may be relevant.
After a letter from Comey to Congress on Friday, which stated that new emails found on a laptop used by Clinton aide Huma Abedin “appear to be pertinent to our investigation,” members of both parties have criticized the timing of the move.
Today the White House declined to state an opinion on Comey’s action.
“I’ll neither defend nor criticize what Director Comey has decided to communicate to the public about this investigation,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in Monday’s press briefing.
In an effort to stay neutral on the topic, Earnest said, the White House will continue to be “scrupulous” in “avoiding even the appearance of political interference” in the investigation entrusted to the Department of Justice and the FBI.
He also said that President Barack Obama doesn’t think Comey is trying to sway the presidential race.
Chris Sanchez
The FBI says there is no definitive connection between Donald Trump and the Russian government, reaching that conclusion after a wide-ranging investigation that stemmed from concerns about the Republican presidential nominee’s foreign associations.
In a New York Times report published Monday night, the newspaper cited law-enforcement officials who said, if anything, the cyberattacks that US intelligence agencies suspect Russia of carrying out against Democratic Party organizations were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Trump.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-donald-trump-russia-connection-2016-10
Thomas Frank
The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
November 1,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The nation’s second-lowest gas tax ended officially at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 1, and was replaced by one of the highest per-gallon rates in the nation , The .23 cent increase gives New Jersey now 37.5 cents-per-gallon.
While the party line from Trenton is that money will be used to refill the depleted TTF or Transportation Trust Fund providing the money New Jersey bridges and roads need for a massive investment .
A few things to keep in mind when you pay up at the pump;
The average cost of road repair in the US is $39,000 per mile but in NJ it’s $2 million a mile; New Jersey spends eight times the national average on its state-controlled highways.
The Reason Foundation says New Jersey spends just over $2 million per state-controlled mile on construction, maintenance and administration, triple the roughly $675,000 spent by the next-highest state, Massachusetts, and more than eight times the national average of $39,000. I call it “out of control” spending.
The state DOT disputes that number. But with reports the reconstruction of Route 35 were more than $27 million per mile, it’s clear our costs are out of control.
The state of New Jersey funds highway, bridge, and rail projects through its Transportation Trust Fund, which relies on borrowing and gas tax revenue to contribute $1.225 billion to the state’s overall $1.6 billion construction budget this year. Can anyone say “Ponzi Scheme” ?
Why the deficit and lack of funds? Is it because the corruption in Trenton has already used these allocated tax monies to offset other programs, loans, or deficits. Bad deals are made by politicians looking to get elected, guaranteeing political donations from unions, keeping project labor agreements and prevailing wages artificially inflating the costs of road work.
By some accounts, New Jersey spends the 3rd most of any state on transportation funding.
November 1,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, With the average consumer expected to spend roughly $935 this holiday season and our annual credit-card debt tab projected to reach a record $80 billion by New Year’s, store credit cards and retailer financing “deals” are sure to be in high demand. With that in mind, WalletHub today released its 2016 Store Credit Card Landscape and Deferred Interest Financing reports in order to help keep shoppers’ wallets safe.
Deferred interest plans typically offer 0% introductory terms, but they come with a catch that distinguishes them from normal 0% credit cards. If you leave even a $1 balance unpaid balance at the end of the introductory period or you pay one of your monthly bills a day late, interest will retroactively apply to your entire original purchase amount. So what you initially thought was a great deal could quickly devolve into a holiday nightmare. But that shouldn’t discourage folks from ever using store-affiliated plastic, as some great discounts are available. You just need to know where to look.
Report Highlights
2016’s Best Store Credit Cards
To compare more store credit card offers, try WalletHub’s helpful tool:
https://wallethub.com/credit-
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, November was an important month for early North Jersey families. It was “apple time” – And apples meant cider! Water wasn’t always drinkable, so cider became the popular beverage for early American families. During apple time, families would drink fresh ‘in-season’ cider. More importantly, these early settlers expanded the life of the cider by producing what we call hard cider – or “Jersey Lightning”. It was the beverage served at meals – children included!
By the 1850’s, the average Massachusetts resident was consuming 35 gallons of cider a year. But producing this cider was a labor-intensive, manual task. Then, in the late 1800s, the hand-cranked cider press was invented (see photo above). It quickly became a common household appliance that not only supplied fresh cider in season but made it possible to produce more “hard cider.”
To see a cider press and learn more about about life in the 1800’s including Lenape implements, early Dutch artifacts, farm tools, home furnishings, textiles and quilts, early cookbooks, and kitchenware come to the Schoolhouse Museum’s ‘Farm and Home’ exhibit.
To learn more about cider, apples and locally produced fruits and vegetables, and to get ready for your Thanksgiving holiday, stop by Demarest Farms in Hillsdale. Serving Bergen County residents since 1886, if you bring this article with you on November 19, Demarest Farms will donate 20% of coupon sales to the Ridgewood Historical.
Open to the public, the Schoolhouse Museum is located at 650 E. Glen Ave., Ridgewood, NJ. Museum’s hours are Thursdays and Saturdays; 1 to 3 p.m. and Sundays; 2 to 4 p.m.
To contact the Museum: 201-447 3242 or [email protected]t Demarest Farms is located at 244 Wiermus Rd, in Hillsdale, NJ.
November 1st 2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and NJ TRANSIT invite the public to learn more about their recommendation for the Hudson Tunnel Project at two upcoming information sessions. During the meetings in November, the public will be able to learn more about the recommendation (Preferred Alternative) and the Environmental Impact Statement for the project.
The Preferred Alternative identifies a specific alignment that includes two new tracks extending from the Northeast Corridor in Secaucus, N.J., continuing in a tunnel beneath the Palisades, and beneath the Hudson River to connect to the existing approach tracks that lead into Penn Station New York, as well as rehabilitation of the existing North River Tunnel once the new tunnel is complete.
Both meetings will be held from 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM and will be in an open house format. Although there will be no formal presentations, project staff will be available to answer questions. See attached flyer.
The new tunnel would be constructed first, so that upon completion of construction, trains could be diverted from the existing tunnel to allow its rehabilitation. When the rehabilitation is complete, both the existing and new tunnels would be in service, providing redundant capability and increased operational flexibility for Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT.
The Project is intended to preserve the current functionality of the Northeast Corridor’s Hudson River rail crossing between New Jersey and New York and strengthen the resiliency of the Northeast Corridor. FRA and NJ TRANSIT have made a recommendation (identified a Preferred Alternative) that consists of a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River and rehabilitation of the existing Northeast Corridor Hudson River crossing, the North River Tunnel.
More information about the Hudson Tunnel Project, the upcoming meetings, and the Preferred Alternative is available at the Project website,www.hudsontunnelproject.com. Project staff may be contacted via the Project website as well, at www.hudsontunnelproject.com/contact.html.
I am completely disappointed and disillusioned with many of our teachers. I agree ,it goes to the problem with tenure. It protects hacks earning good salaries when we have enthusiastic, energetic and able bodied folks working in retail or Starbucks because they can’t find teaching jobs. I wish all those teachers with the signs and smirks would move on but they won’t because despite their protests they know they have a great deal in the Ridgewood School System.
November 1,2016
the staff of the Rmidgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Turns out that Josh Gottheimer has more in common with “family member” Hillary Clinton than he lets on.
While his mentor Hillary Clinton is under FBI scrutiny again, it’s now come out that Josh Gottheimer is currently under investigation by the United States Senate for pay-for-play allegations.
During Gottheimer’s time at the FCC, the FCC granted a conditional waiver to LightSquared, a client of Burson-Marsteller, Gottheimer’s previous employer.
“The National Broadband Plan contains an obscure provision… LightSquared is the primary beneficiary of this provision… Mr. Gottheimer may have contributed to or profited from his employer’s relationship with LightSquared and now, as the lead FCC staffer on the President’s National Broadband Plan, he may have played a role in the consideration of LightSquared’s proposed network.” (Senator Chuck Grassley, “Letter To FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski,” United States Senate, 1/30/11)
Not only did the Senate begin investigating Josh Gottheimer – The Washington Post launched its own investigation into allegations of impropriety on Gottheimer’s part.
In a shocking twist, Gottheimer refused to meet with Members of the Senate, and refused to answer questions about his role in the FCC LightSquared waiver.
Below is the timeline of the LightSquared/Gottheimer scandal – even Democrats joined the chorus of outrage over Gottheimer’s pay-for-play scheme.
November 2009: Clinton confidant Mark Penn’s Burson-Marsteller begins representation of LightSquared (Senator Chuck Grassley, “Letter To FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski,” United States Senate, 1/30/11)
June 23, 2010: Without qualifications or experience, Josh Gottheimer lands the role of FCC Senior Counselor with a special responsibility towards implementing President Obama’s National Broadband Plan (Senator Chuck Grassley, “Letter To FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski,” United States Senate, 1/30/11)
July 20, 2010: A new comprehensive public relations and marketing strategy is launched for LightSquared, spearheaded by Burson
November 18, 2010: LightSquared submits FCC application for authorization
January 19, 2011: California Democrat Rep. Anna Eshoo writes letter of concern about LightSquared waiver request
January 26, 2011: FCC grants conditional waiver to LightSquared
January 30, 2011: Sen. Charles Grassley begins investigation into Josh Gottheimer’s FCC position and his relationship to LightSquared.
February 2, 2011: Washington Democrat Sen. Patty Murray writes letter of concern about LightSquared waiver request
February 8, 2011: – Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar writes letter of concern about LightSquared waiver request
September 19, 2011: The Washington Post begins an investigation into Josh Gottheimer’s involvement in LightSquare’s FCC waiver
September 23, 2011: The Wall Street Journal launches a LightSquared investigation
March 8, 2012: After months of obfuscating, Gottheimer refuses to meet with Members of the Senate raising questions about his role in the FCC LightSquared waiver
from the desk of Superintendent’s Office
Public Vote on Full-day Kindergarten
Tuesday, November 8
Regular polling locations
6 a.m. – 8 p.m.
