Iran’s foreign minister and chief negotiator in nuclear talks with the West declared victory for his country, stating that no matter how the negotiations end, Tehran has come out “the winner,” according to remarks made on Tuesday and presented in the country’s state-run press.
Javad Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister, stated in remarks before the country’s powerful Assembly of Experts, which recently installed a hardline new cleric as its leader, that the nuclear negotiations have established Tehran as a global power broker.
“We are the winner whether the [nuclear] negotiations yield results or not,” Zarif was quoted as saying before the assembly by the Tasnim News Agency. “The capital we have obtained over the years is dignity and self-esteem, a capital that could not be retaken.”
Zarif’s comments were accompanied by a host of bold military displays by Tehran in recent weeks, including the announcement of one new weapon that Iranian military leaders have described as a “very special” missile.
Readers voice concern over weakening of residency requirements
I think they are looking to hire more Hudson county partisan people to work in Ridgewood by ditching the residency rules.
The previous Village Manager is referred to as a “carpet bagger,” but yet this VC plans to do away with the residency requirement for all employees except police & fire? Do as we say and not as we do.
While other readers insist , ” We should be hiring for police & fire from the surrounding communities Paramus, Glen Rock, Midland Park, Waldwick and Ho-Ho-Kus, as well as Ridgewood. This would give the Village access to a wider pool of applicants and might stop us from hiring a majority of legacy candidates.”
The Mayor wrote in a PolitickerNJ Editorial on 03/04/11 , “my Party has largely stood on the sidelines as union workers were vilified and scapegoated. Silent and passive, many Democrats did nothing as others attacked the very people at the center of our Party. No defense. No counteroffensive. No nothing. During the past year’s great debate over worker’s rights and responsibilities, the Democrats – by and large – refused to show up.”
The Mayor received massive campaign contributions from unions :
Paul Aronsohn (D)Political Action Committee Total ContributedTeamsters Union $10,000.00 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $10,000.00 United Auto Workers $6,500.00 Carpenters & Joiners Union $5,000.00 American Fedn of St/Cnty/Munic Employees $5,000.00 National Air Traffic Controllers Assn $5,000.00 Sheet Metal Workers Union $5,000.00 Laborers Union $3,500.00 AFL-CIO $2,661.00 American Federation of Teachers $2,500.00 Operating Engineers Local 825 $2,500.00 Plumbers/Pipefitters Union Local 475 $1,000.00 Service Employees International Union $1,000.00 Plumbers/Pipefitters Union Local 274 $1,000.00 Plumbers/Pipefitters Union Local 9 $500.00
Governor Scott Walker (R., Wis.) wasted no time in mocking President Obama’s performance with respect to the economy after the president picked a fight with him for signing a right-to-work bill into law.
“On the heels of vetoing Keystone Pipeline legislation, which would have paved the way to create thousands of quality, middle-class jobs, the President should be looking to states, like Wisconsin, as an example for how to grow our economy,” Walker said in a statement to National Review Online. “Despite a stagnant national economy and a lack of leadership in Washington, since we took office, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is down to 5.0 percent, and more than 100,000 jobs and 30,000 businesses have been created.”
Village of Ridgewood ,Rear Yard Pick Up, Springing Ahead , Pothole Repair
E Notice – Resuming Rear Yard Pick Up and Springing Ahead to Pothole Repair
Dear E Notice Residents,
Beginning Thursday, March 12th, we will resume rear yard garbage pick-up. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that there will be no more snow and icy conditions this season.
We are turning our attention and our resources to fixing potholes. Please report potholes to us either using our online application on our website or by phoning 201/670-5585.
As always, thanks for your patience during this challenging winter and thanks for your feedback and suggestions to make things better – it takes a Village!
Sen. Robert Menendez, comes out swinging against Obama Administration Foreign Policy
Amid Looming Federal Corruption Charges, N.J. Democrat Pushes Back Against Obama Administration Policy to Counter Russia
Melissa Quinn / @MelissaQuinn97 / March 09, 2015
Amid whisperings that the Justice Department will file criminal corruption charges against Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the long-time senator today spoke about the importance of the U.S. standing strong against Russia and warned that inaction could embolden countries with nuclear capabilities.
“The simple fact is we all want a diplomatic solution to this problem. But I believe this can only come about when Putin believes that the cost of continuing to ravage Ukraine is simply too high,” he said. “We have a responsibility to increase that cost.”
Menendez, speaking alongside former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, addressed a full house at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., on how the U.S. should respond to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
“It has never been in our nature to simply observe,” he said of the United States. “In my view, it is in our strategic interest to be an active participant in leading any effort to counter Russia.”
Don’t have time to read the Washington Post or New York Times?Then get The Morning Bell, an early morning edition of the day’s most important political news, conservative commentary and original reporting from a team committed to following the truth no matter where it leads.
Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been a leading voice in calling for additional sanctions against Russia and advocated for the U.S. to arm Ukrainians as the neighboring country continues to make territorial gains.
The U.S. has sent nonlethal military aid to Ukraine, including blankets and night vision goggles, but Menendez joined a chorus of Republican and Democratic lawmakers pushing for lethal aid.
“That’s all well and good if I can see the enemy, but I have no wherewithal to stop them. It really is not responding to the fundamental challenge,” he said.
Specifically, the New Jersey senator called on the president to provide the country with equipment like counter-artillery radar, surveillance drones, anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, and ammunition.
Military leaders including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter back calls to arm Ukrainians. The president hasn’t yet said whether he will approve lethal aid to the country, but hasn’t ruled it out either.
“We need to send a very clear global message: If you violate and upend the international order, there will be consequences,” the New Jersey Democrat said. “And we have to mean it when we say it, and we have to back up our words with a menu of agreed upon actions that will follow. There should be no ambiguity about either our resolve or what actions we would consider.”
Menendez warned that the country’s response to Russia is being looked at by other global actors—particularly those with nuclear capabilities.
“Whether it’s China in the South China Sea that has territorial disputes with our allies, South Korea and Japan, or the challenge we face with a nuclear-armed North Korea, or the challenge of [President Nicolás] Maduro in Venezuela oppressing his people—I could go through a long list of global actors who, in the absence of assured consequence for violating the international order, will be emboldened,” he said. “That is an incredibly risky world to live in.”
The senator’s speech on Russia came just days after CNN reported that the Justice Department will file criminal corruption charges against the long-time senator. The charges center around his relationship with friend and political donor Salomon Melgen and are the culmination of a two-year investigation into the duo’s ties.
Menendez hasn’t been indicted yet, and the looming threat of the charges hasn’t stopped him from speaking out against the president’s policies.
“The United States must lead,” he said in closing today. “American leadership counts.”
Hillary Clinton Says She Used One Phone and Private Email While Secretary of State for ‘Convenience’
Yet just a few weeks ago, she said she used two different phones.
Peter Suderman|Mar. 10, 2015 4:38
In a press conference at the United Nations today, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded for the first time to questions about her decision to conduct all of her email business from a single, privately run account during her tenure at State. The heated session, which lasted roughly twenty minutes before coming to an abrupt end, left more questions than answers.
First, Clinton claimed that her decision to rely on a single email account was so that she could carry a single phone. This, she said repeatedly, was for “convenience.” Many of her emails, she noted, were sent to government employees at government addresses and recorded that way. At the time the decision was made, it “didn’t seem like an issue.”
At best this excuse suggests that Clinton is willing to prioritize personal convenience over transparency and accountability, which is probably not a great look for someone who is expected to announce a presidential campaign in the near future.
March 9, 2015 Last updated: Monday, March 9, 2015, 5:32 PM
By HUGH R. MORLEY
Tesla Motors moved a step closer Monday to resuming selling its electric cars in New Jersey when a Senate committee backed a bill that would allow the car company to operate four outlets in the state.
Tesla’s three existing showrooms, at Garden State Plaza and on Route 17 West in Paramus, and in Short Hills, have been prohibited from selling cars directly to consumers since last spring, when the state motor vehicle commission enacted rules requiring all new vehicle sales to be completed through a franchise dealership.
Tesla has no franchises, and so customers can see the vehicles in the New Jersey outlets – called “galleries” – but purchase them only either online or in another state.
The bill approved by the Senate committee does not mention Tesla by name, but would allow a maker of so called “zero emissions vehicles” to open four outlets and a retail service center in the state.
In December, the company opened a 25,000-square-foot Paramus center, in a former Sixth Avenue Electronics store, with room to display about a half-dozen cars, and operate a service center.
The committee voted unanimously for the bill after a brief hearing with no opposition.
Once again she is the ‘inevitable nominee’, with the inflated expectations that brings
For a while — four years in fact — it looked as though Hillary Clinton had put the past behind her. As America’s top diplomat, she enjoyed by far the highest ratings of any US figure. Her popularity abroad was matched by appreciation at home for the grace with which she buried the hatchet with Barack Obama. Americans most admire politicians who seem to be above politics. Mrs Clinton had a taste of that. Then she quit as secretary of state (to prepare for her second White House bid). She has been losing altitude ever since. The worry among Democrats is her woes are only a foretaste of what is to come. They are probably right.
Like almost every Clinton “scandal”, there is less than meets the eye to revelations that Mrs Clinton used a private account for her official emails. The discovery that she routed her government correspondence through a “homebrew” server is the kind of exposé that sends Washington into a tailspin but barely registers beyond. From the Whitewater investigations during Bill Clinton’s presidency in the 1990s to the ructions over the 2012 Benghazi murders of four US diplomats, the smoking gun is always just beyond reach. Failure to find one is why Whitewater prosecutors were sidetracked into Mr Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. It is also the path by which the Benghazi probes stumbled on Mrs Clinton’s home server.
ISIS, Communism, and the Lure of Violent Utopianism
Jihadi John is nothing new.
A. Barton Hinkle | March 9, 2015
“Nihilists! . . . I mean, say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” So proclaimed Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski, and Americans stunned by the horror of the Islamic State’s barbarity could be tempted to think the same. The Nazis were totalitarian monsters, but at least they believed in something, no matter how evil. Whereas ISIS is simply—in Secretary of State John Kerry’s words—“inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless.” Particularly mystifying to some is how people such as Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State butcher known as Jihadi John, could join such a movement despite growing up in comfortable circumstances in London and getting a university degree in computer programming. Nor is he alone. Many of those drawn to ISIS are intelligent, educated and economically well-off. What drives them to chop off people’s heads?
The horrible truth is that ISIS and its converts, such as Jihadi John, represent nothing new in the modern era. The movement is not inexplicable—a recent essay in The Atlantic explicated it well, albeit controversially. It is not valueless; it champions the values of one very strict reading of Islam. And it is not nihilistic. A nihilist is someone who believes there is nothing to believe in. The fanatics of the Islamic State, however, believe very strongly in the absolute rightness of their own Utopian vision for the world.
Absolute belief renders ISIS’ atrocities not only explicable but seemingly almost mandatory. After all, if you hold the keys to the perfection of life on Earth, then anyone who stands in your way is actively depriving everyone else of that outcome and thereby ensuring the continued suffering of millions. Eliminating such people therefore serves the good of all mankind. (And the grisly beheadings, crucifixions, immolations? They can be justified on the same grounds as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: They will shock and awe the enemy into an earlier surrender, and thus save lives in the end. Mercy becomes a justification for cruelty.)
None of this is new. A century ago another Utopian movement behaved very much the same.
James Sherk / @JamesBSherk / Alex Belica / March 09, 2015
Today Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed legislation making Wisconsin the nation’s 25th right-to-work state.
The victory is a historic moment for the growing right-to-work movement. Workers in half the country are now free to stop paying dues to a union they feel is not representing their interests.
Despite vehement pushback from union officials, Walker stood with the majority of voters nationwide and in Wisconsin who support workplace freedom. Without right-to-work, workers have little protection from their own union, which can seize part of their paycheck without their consent. Right-to-work lets workers decide whether or not their union has earned their support.
Even some union officials recognize this makes sense. Gary Casteel, now the secretary-treasurer for the United Auto Workers, told the press last year:
This is something I’ve never understood, that people think right to work hurts unions. To me, it helps them. You don’t have to belong if you don’t want to. So if I go to an organizing drive, I can tell these workers, ‘If you don’t like this arrangement, you don’t have to belong’ versus ‘If we get 50 percent of you, then all of you have to belong, whether you like to or not.’ I don’t even like the way that sounds, because it’s a voluntary system, and if you don’t think the system’s earning its keep, then you don’t have to pay.
Perhaps unsurprisingly union officials pay themselves less in states with right-to-work laws.
The new law will also mean more jobs for Wisconsinites. Unions organize aggressively in non-right-to-work states. Convincing 51 percent of employees to unionize means all of them must pay dues in perpetuity (unions do not generally have to run for re-election). Right-to-work reduces the financial incentive for unions to target companies with satisfied workers, which makes businesses more likely to locate there.
Wisconsin joins its Midwestern neighbors Indiana and Michigan, which both passed right-to-work in 2012. Many counties across Kentucky have enacted similar provisions at the local level.
Unions protested vehemently against right-to-work in all these jurisdictions. One high-profile union supporter in Michigan even vowed “there will be blood.” It never happened. Instead many workers opted out, while many more kept paying dues for union representation they liked. And almost every politician who supported the policy got re-elected.
In face of protests from the left Walker did the right thing. Unions do not like voluntary dues, but workers and voters do.
Learn More about Summer Camp YWCA Bergen County is hosting a series of Open Houses for families interested in finding out “Y the W Makes a Difference” in summer camps. The YWCA’s Camp Ma-Kee-Ya, located at Darlington County Park in Mahwah, NJ, will host a series of onsite Open Houses on Saturday March 14, Saturday April 11 and Saturday May 16, from 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm. Parents and kids can enjoy refreshments and activities, meet camp staff and get answers to all of their questions. The camp is located in the Upper Lake Area of the park at 600 Darlington Avenue.
The YWCA runs four fun and affordable day camps for children ages 5 to 12: Camp Orinda in Dumont; Camp Y-Oak-A in Saddle River; and Camp Ma-Kee-Ya. All YW camps offer American Red Cross Swim lessons, sports, arts and crafts, nature activities, and more. CIT programs for boys and girls ages 13 to 16 are also available. For more information call 201-444-5600, ext. 352 or visit www.ywcabergencounty.org.
A quick history lesson from my friend Janice Gilmore Ponds.
by Michael Harris
One of the participants in the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” stated today that he “Has to understand the past to know what to do in the future.” On this day in 1965, state police under the command of the Democrat Governor, George Wallace, attacked black Americans who were demonstrating for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.
Their voting rights had been stripped by the Democrats repealing almost two dozen civil rights bills put in place by the Republican Party during Reconstruction. The rampaging Democrats used billy clubs and tear gas and dogs in their “Bloody Sunday” assault, subsequent to over 90 years of racial suppression by the Democratic Party. This lines up with the Democrats starting the KKK with the expressed purpose of intimidating, flogging, and lynching black Americans who were former slaves; and had become voting citizens which was granted through efforts of the Republican Party.
A Republican-appointed federal judge, Frank Johnson, soon ruled in favor of the demonstrators, enabling them to complete their march two weeks later in Selma in 1965. When the legislation came up for a vote that the marchers were taking a stand for, President Johnson could not garner sufficient votes from within his own party to pass the bill. Johnson needed 269 votes from his own party to achieve the passage, but could only garner 198 of the 315 of the Democrats in Congress to vote for the bill. Johnson therefore worked with the Republicans to achieve the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, followed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
This lines right up with the historical pattern established in 1870 where not one single Democrat voted for the right of blacks to vote through the 15th Amendment. In 1870, 1964, and 1965 we can thank the Republican Party for their hard work to pass the Civil Rights legislation that gave black Americans the right to vote. For the record Mr. Obama; the march in Selma was about the right of black Americans to vote and NOTHING ELSE.
How to Free-Range Your Kids (And Not Get Arrested)
Flood the streets with kids.
Lenore Skenazy|Mar. 9, 2015 3:47 pm
How do we fight back against cops and child protection workers who think parents that let their kids walk outside are negligent?
By flooding the streets with kids.
Busybodies who dial 911 the instant they see an unsupervised child are not going to do that when they pass a park filled with 15 kids. (Well, most aren’t.) And when masses of moppets take to the sidewalks after school, no one is going to call the cops to report, “Tons of children are walking home!”
But how do we get to that point? Today, only about 13 percent of children walk to school. One report I read found that only 6 percent of kids 9-13 play outside on their own. Part of the problem is that parents are scared of predators. But compounding that problem is the fear of the police. The Meitiv family in Maryland faced that fear firsthand when they were investigated for letting their kids, 10 and 6, walk a mile home alone.
But you know what Danielle Meitiv wrote to me, just after CPS declared her and her husband “responsible for unsubstantiated neglect”?
“Allowing kids to be Free-Range is critical for their development. We will continue to let our kids roam. Thankfully, CPS harassment like this is NOT common. The best way to make sure it doesn’t happen is to make Free-Ranging as common as it was when we were kids.”
If you’re ready to give it a try would like a little push, watch this video. Then, do what I do help this nervous family do: Give your kids one little errand that they feel they are ready for that you haven’t let them do yet.
Readers say Tragic Window Jumper give cause for Concern ,but does over protection of kids do more harm than good ?
Is added safety just a distraction from real threats to our childern?Here’s an idea. Let’s have all kids just stay at home in their protective cocoons. The Village will provide private tutors for all of them. That way, they are completely safe. No more snow days. No threat of abduction by pedophiles. Yes, let’s continue to bubble-wrap our kids. I didn’t make the “gender” comment, but I think the writer was of the opinion that it’s another example of the femininization of society, where women have this instinct to protect us.
…..An upstairs window that can easily be flung open is a hazard. Children do not understand all the risks, they see super heroes flying on TV, they are melodramatic. It is the job of adults to protect them in reasonable ways. Making windows difficult to open wide makes complete sense, and it should be done at the schools. This horrible tragedy could have been prevented. This poor child’s impulsive fatal act would never have happened. Let us learn from this . I can guarantee that if this had been a Ridgewood incident, windows would be secured immediately.
When we over-react to incidents we create unexpected harms and we create tax burdens. In fact, were it an event we should react to, it would likely not even be a news story. Suicide, obesity, drug addiction, car accidents. These events really kill kids. Falls from windows?–Not so much. Spend those precious resources where they do the most good, not where the latest news story points.
Readers Say the Mayor and his two Council Comrades (the three Amigos ) have shown nothing but contempt for the Faulkner Act
How much integrity or civility did it take to show up ostensibly as a member of the public at the first “civility forum”, grab the public microphone, p**s all over the sunshine law by blatantly involving himself as the third of three Village Council members (a quorum of the Three Amigos) needed to trigger its provisions, and then later, generously forgive himself for helping to violate both the letter and the spirit of that critical state law?
Here’s another criteria on which to consider the record of each member of the three amigos. How did they react at the time when another amigo behaved badly? Did they express sympathy for or empathize with the non-amigo victim? Did they criticize the fallen amigo, did they support, defend, or praise same, or did they stay silent/keep mum (following the eleventh commandment: thou shalt not speak ill of another amigo)? If not a candidate or officeholder at the time, are they on record with a private opinion, or can they be prevailed upon to express one now? If not, why not?
How about the African Queen Skype call to insure the Paul and Albert remain Mayor and Deputy Mayor and seal the deal on the BLOCK VOTE
If a broken (analog) clock is right twice a day, the Three Amigos can do the right thing, on occasion, and if it serves their collective interests.
Notice how none of the three ever bothers to deny that they are operating in league with each other? This is just another telltale sign of the kind of politically partisan behavior–including specific actions taken in concert in accordance with previously agreed-upon plans–that are not supposed to occur in non-partisan villages like Ridgewood that are organized under the Faulkner Act.
Is it that the Three Amigos despise our form of government, and wish nothing less that to bring about some kind of fundamental transformation? If so, this seems vaguely familiar, like some sort of deja vu…
