Over sized Load backs up traffic and delays Valley Hospital paramedic unit
July 17,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blogRidgewood NJ, Yesterday Two (2) tractor trailers, each carrying over sized loads consisting of prefabricated structures, caused major traffic jams in Ridgewood on Friday morning, 07/17 after one (1) of the trucks snagged a set of overhead wires on North Maple Avenue resulting in a section of that road being closed for almost two (2) hours.
Fortunately, phone and cable TV service to only one (1) home was affected, but while Ridgewood PD officers analyzed how they could escort the troublesome trucks out of town without causing additional wires to be taken down, traffic began to build as a result of the road closure. Officers eventually settled upon a route used by a previous segment of the truck caravan, and both trucks were seen crossing the border into Paramus shortly after 12 noon. No injuries were reported during the incident.
One more serious issue a paramedic unit from The Valley Hospital was delayed responding to a life threatening emergency call in Paramus as a result of getting caught in one (1) of the traffic jams caused by the incident.
WASHINGTON — Furious American Federation of Teachers members are demanding the union withdraw its endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling it premature and undemocratic.
“There was no internal discussion. Zero. Zip,” said Steve Conn, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. “This is wrong and something needs to be done.”
The 45-member AFT executive board voted Saturday to back Clinton despite an AFL-CIO request to wait until July when the presidential field is more set.
Even before the killing of four Marines in Chattanooga, Tenn., in an “act of terrorism,” Americans revealed a deep concern about Islamic extremism and a very high worry about ISIS, according to the latest poll from Pew Research.
Some 53 percent, more than the average in the non-Islamic world, said they are “very concerned” about Islamic extremism in the United States, said Pew.
While the numbers were lower than for some countries in Europe that have experienced domestic Islamic terrorism, they were much higher than a few years ago. In 2011, for example, 32 percent told Pew that they were very concerned.
There’s a new poll out on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-=Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) approval ratings. Hint: Things are not going well.
Boehner has a 36 percent approval rating while McConnell sits at an all-time low of 35 percent.
It’s easy to see why: these two men are responsible for one GOP failure after another to deliver on its promises.
Conservatives have long argued that Boehner and McConnell needed to lead on conservative issues. But both have led—in Democrats’ direction.
So much so, in fact, that one wonders whether the country’s top two GOP leaders have been in cahoots with President Obama the entire time.
It’s time to stop trying to salvage these two. It’s time for them to go.
Let’s look at just the last few weeks.
It is well established that Boehner and McConnell spent 2014 promising they would do everything they could to get rid of Obamacare, if voters returned both chambers of Congress to the GOP.
Now that Republicans control Congress, each time an opportunity has risen for GOP leadership to stop Obamacare they have backed down. Worse, Boehner and McConnell’s preferred strategy of punting Obamacare to the Supreme Court backfired, again, in spectacular fashion.
When the 5-4 decision declaring gay marriage a right across the country came down, conservatives everywhere blasted the court’s overreach. Even Chief Justice John Roberts, who has been of little use to conservatives, made it explicitly clear that the decision was not constitutional.
But Boehner and McConnell made it perfectly clear that they wouldn’t do anything to challenge the decision and it would not be a priority for the Republican Congress.
The Left has already announced its intentions to challenge religious institutions’ tax status, including Catholic schools and Catholic hospitals. You might think Boehner, who is a Catholic, might show a little concern for religious liberty.
On one of the most important court decisions of our time where religious liberty could be threatened—where are our Republican leaders?
Filling the leadership void are Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Ida.), who have introduced religious liberty bills that would protect Christians, Jews, Muslims and other Americans of faith who reject the court’s decision.
Why isn’t McConnell out front with Lee’s bill? Why isn’t Boehner promoting Labrador’s legislation? Both of these bills should’ve been on the floor of each chamber on Friday, June 26, at 10:01 a.m., one minute after the Supreme Court announced its decision.
The White House gave Boehner and the GOP the middle finger when it was announced that Lois Lerner’s hard drive was destroyed. The only way to get the IRS to jump to attention now is for Congress to levy its power of the purse to close the bank window to that office. That is the role of the U.S. House of Representatives and Boehner is abdicating it.
The Benghazi drama continued in the Senate last month where there are still far too many questions and little to no satisfactory answers. Where is the leadership from McConnell in making sure the Obama Administration is held accountable for this massive intelligence failure? Imagine how Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would be acting if this kind of tragedy had occurred under a Republican president?
Hillary Clinton stands to lose the most from Americans finding out the entire truth about what went down in this tragedy. You might expect a Republican to think this was important.
When Trade Promotion Authority was passed, Republican leadership could have at least tried to get something for conservatives out of the deal from the White House—but Boehner and McConnell never asked, or thought to ask, and predictably got nothing.
With these two in charge, conservatives never get anything.
Reporting on a recently released survey by Rasmussen Reports that indicates that 62% of Americans oppose sanctuary city policies, Telemundo, the nation’s second largest Spanish-language network, slanted its coverage in favor of maintaining the controversial policy. Reporting from the sanctuary city of Chicago, Telemundo correspondent Janet Rodríguez cited an unauthorized immigrant in favor of the policy, along with two quotes from Congressman Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), who had the gall to minimize Kate Steinle’s murder, at the hands of a hardened criminal and five-time deportee, in the sanctuary city of San Francisco.
No fool like and old fool: John McCain needs to do as he is so fond of telling others to “shutup” apologize and retire
COLIN CAMPBELL IN 6 HOURS
Real-estate developer Donald Trump is furious at Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) for dismissing the supporters of his presidential campaign.
McCain, the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nominee, was quotedin a Thursday article in The New Yorker criticising Trump’s heated rhetoric against illegal immigration.
The senator also said Trump’s big rally last weekend in Phoenix, Arizona, was supported by the “crazies” in his state.
“This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me,” McCain said. “Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.”
Trump responded on Twitter by blasting McCain and demanding an apology:
Note for the editor : John actually the GOP needs to offer some competitive ideas on how to run the county , not just be the party of “Democrat Lite “
LYNDHURST—John Mitchell, a challenger in Bergen County’s race for the Board of Chosen Freeholders said he is running for reelection in November for two reasons: 1. He wants to bring Bergen County back to a two party system and 2. He believes his budget methodology can benefit residents of Bergen County. (Alfaro/PolitickerNJ)
This week’s map shows the real value of $100 in each state. Prices for the same goods are often much cheaper in states like Missouri or Ohio than they are in states like New York or California. As a result, the same amount of cash can buy you comparatively more in a low-price state than in a high-price state.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has been measuring this phenomenon for two years now; it recently published its data for prices in 2013. Using this data, we have adjusted the value of $100 to show how much it buys you in each state.
For example, Ohio is a low-price state. $100 there will buy you stuff that would cost $111.61 in a state closer to the national average. You could think of this as meaning that Ohioans are, for the purposes of day-to-day living, eleven percent richer than their incomes suggest.
The states where $100 is worth the most are Mississippi ($115.21) Arkansas ($114.29) South Dakota ($114.16) Alabama ($114.03) and West Virginia ($113.12). In contrast, $100 is effectively worth the least in the District of Columbia ($84.96) Hawaii ($86.06) New York ($86.73) New Jersey ($87.34) and California ($89.05.)
Regional price differences are strikingly large; real purchasing power is 36 percent greater in Mississippi than it is in the District of Columbia. In other words: by this measure, if you have $50,000 in after tax income in Mississippi, you would have to have after-tax earnings of $68,000 in the District of Columbia just to afford the same overall standard of living.
It’s generally the case that states with higher nominal incomes also have higher price levels. This is because there is a relationship between the two: in places with higher incomes, the prices of finite resources like land get bid up. But the causation also runs in the opposite direction. Places with high costs of living pay higher salaries for the same jobs. This is what labor economists call a compensating differential; the higher pay is offered in order to make up for the low purchasing power.
This relationship is important, though it is not the only thing that matters. Some states, like North Dakota, have high incomes without high prices. Adjusting incomes for price level can substantially change our perceptions of which states are truly poor or rich.
For example, Nebraskans and Californians earn approximately the same amount in dollars per capita, but after adjusting for regional price parity, Nebraskan incomes can buy more.
This has substantial implications for public policy, which is often progressive with respect to income.
Many policies – like minimum wage, public benefits, and tax brackets – are denominated in dollars. But with different price levels in each state, the amounts aren’t equivalent in purchasing power. This has some unexpected consequences; people in high-price-level states like New Jersey will often pay more in federal taxes without feeling particularly rich.
file photo Boyd Loving
JULY 16, 2015, 7:41 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2015, 11:00 PM
BY JOHN CICHOWSKI
RECORD COLUMNIST |
THE RECORD
While eyeballing cars from a shoulder on Route 17, police usually don’t get too excited by speeds that inch past the 55-mph limit. But when a jet-black Jeep shot by his cruiser at 79 mph this week, a Waldwick cop hit the gas pedal for a short chase that yielded a skittish speeder with a sense of humor.
“He told me it’s scary out here,” Sgt. Bob Woessner said moments later as he wrote a ticket. “He wondered how we do this each night.”
Sgt. Robert Woessner pulls over a speeding car on Route 17 south, close to the spot where Waldwick Officer Chris Goodell was killed after a tractor-trailer slammed into his police car one year ago.
The speeder might as well have been preaching to the choir. As he does most nights, Woessner was using radar to chase down speeders on a busy stretch of 17 where scariness reached a new threshold just one year ago today when a tractor-trailer slammed into a police cruiser carrying a colleague who was also pulling radar duty there. Patrolman Chris Goodell, 32, the sergeant’s close friend, was killed instantly.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-05) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in calling on President Obama to demand that Cuban officials extradite New Jersey cop-killer Joanne Chesimard and New York City terrorist William Morales as the United States announces the reopening of embassies in both countries. Chesimard and Morales are convicted felons who escaped to Cuba and were granted political asylum by the Castro regime. Cuban officials have publicly announced they will not negotiate any extradition as a condition for normalized relations between the United States and Cuba.
“It is imperative that your administration ensures that justice is served by making the extradition of Joanne Chesimard’s and William Morales’ a top priority,” said the group of lawmakers in the letter to President Obama. “In recent months Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman said “the return from Cuba of fugitives from U.S. justice is an issue of long-standing concern to the United States that will be addressed in the broader context of normalizing relations.” However, there has been no evidence of progress in securing the return of these fugitives.”
Reps. Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02), Tom MacArthur (NJ-03), Leonard Lance (NJ-07), Bill Pascrell (NJ-09), and Peter King (NY-02) also signed Garrett’s letter.
Click here to read the entire letter to President Obama.
About Chesimard and Morales:
Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1977. In 1973, New Jersey State Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper made a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. When the troopers asked the vehicle’s driver to exit the car, one of the passengers, Joanne Chesimard, pulled out a gun and began shooting. During the ensuing firefight, Foerster was hit twice in the chest and Harper once in the shoulder. The injured Foerster was then shot twice in the head—execution style—with his own sidearm.
William Morales was sentenced to 99 years in prison for his participation with the terrorist organization Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional Puertorriquena (FALN). William Morales was a chief bomb maker for FALN, and he has been linked to the 1979 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York City, an attack that injured 60 and killed four.
the staff of the Ridgewood blogMenendez will reportedly be making a speech at the Ridgewood train station today Friday at 11 AM. If you stop by you might get a glimpse of him and our mayor standing next to one another. The speech is reportedly about NJ Transit.Our guess , US Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) will most likely call for increases in long-term, dedicated Federal funding to repair and upgrade the nation’s crumbling infrastructure . Menendez will refer to the economic and environmental reasons why increased investments are necessary, as well as the lesser-talked-about national security imperatives”Menendez may also mentioned New Jersey’s Gateway Project his first question to Therese McMillan, Acting Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration. The project includes the replacement of the Hudson River tunnels and the Portal Bridge – both of which are over 100 years old and in serious danger of failing in the near future. Menendez has stressed in the past he wants the U.S. to be well-positioned to undertake big, visionary transit projects.
If we get lucky he might bash the Presidents Iran deal or chat on the juicy of his federal indictment .
Ridgewood NJ, Three years after New Jersey’s tenure-reform law was signed, the Christie administration has publicly released the first results of the new teacher-evaluation system, district by district, school by school.The state Department of Education yesterday released data for every school on the number of teachers falling into each category – they were ranked from “ineffective” to “highly effective” — of the new system for 2013-14.We pulled the numbers from the Ridgewood Schools district and this is what we found :
JULY 16, 2015, 9:39 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2015, 9:46 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — A mediator has been assigned to attempt to resolve a lawsuit that was filed last fall against the village by The Valley Hospital.
Last month, a state judge denied Ridgewood’s request to be dismissed from The Valley Hospital’s suit, which suggests the village’s Planning Board acted improperly when it rejected the hospital’s expansion plans nearly a year ago.
It was the second defeat for The Valley Hospital in four years. The suit seeks a state judge’s intervention to end the pricey and protracted stalemate.
Ridgewood’s council signed off on a mediation agreement at its meeting Wednesday night that formally retains former New Jersey Supreme Court Judge Virginia Long.
The village will pay $7,500 for Long’s assistance.
Long will earn a total of $15,000 for her services as a mediator in the case, with The Valley Hospital agreeing to pay the remainder of her fee.( we would have done it for $10,000)
JULY 16, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2015, 3:37 PM
BY MARK KRULISH
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
The Village Council took the next step toward allowing more residential buildings in the Central Business District with the introduction of five ordinances pertaining to the master plan amendments approved by the Planning Board in June.
All five ordinances were introduced by a 3-2 margin with Mayor Paul Aronsohn, Deputy Mayor Albert Pucciarelli and Councilwoman Gwenn Hauck voting in favor and Councilman Michael Sedon and Councilwoman Susan Knudsen voting against introduction.
Knudsen asked the council to table the introduction of each based on receiving a copy of the ordinances for the first time at the beginning of last week’s work session meeting.
“At that exact moment we received five ordinances, which were a total of 40 pages of complicated, detailed information regarding the changes to the master plan,” said Knudsen. “And I felt at that time because we had just received those documents at 7:30, we didn’t have an opportunity to have discussion and question the village planner in a proper work session.”
JULY 16, 2015, 8:46 AM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2015, 5:46 PM
BY STEFANIE DAZIO
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating incidents of lasers being pointed at 11 airplanes flying over New Jersey on Wednesday night, a spokesman said.
The incidents occurred between 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., spokesman Jim Peters said in a statement. No injuries were reported.
Three of the planes were at 3,000 feet of altitude, within 20 miles of Newark Airport: Porter 141, American Airlines 1472 and American Airlines 966.
The Newark-bound planes all landed safely, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said. The lasers were being shined into the cockpits, which can have a blinding effect on pilots and is “extremely dangerous,” Coleman said.
Delta Air Lines 504, Shuttle America 3489, JetBlue 2779 and JetBlue 828 planes were four miles south of the Outerbridge Crossing, also at an altitude of 3,000 feet, Peters said.
American Airlines 348, Republic Airlines 4643 and GoJet 6201 — all bound for LaGuardia — were flashed at 9,000 feet, 10 miles north of Robbinsville, the spokesman said
