Author: James

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Ridgewood school district seeks business administrator

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Ridgewood school district seeks business administrator

JULY 26, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

RIDGEWOOD — The school board has begun interviewing candidates to replace the district’s business administrator, whose one-year tenure will expire at the end of August.

Sheila Brogan, the president of Ridgewood’s school board, said this week that Michael Falkowski — who started with the district a little more than a year ago — tendered his resignation in late June.

The board formally accepted Falkowski’s resignation during its Monday meeting.

According to Brogan, Falkowski “lives some distance” from Ridgewood “and apparently, the commute was getting to him.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/school-district-seeks-business-administrator-1.1057692#sthash.sSpHwiXc.dpuf

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Tuesday, July 29th 5 to 8pm – Meet the Village Manager

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file photo Boyd Loving

Tuesday, July 29th 5 to 8pm – Meet the Manager

Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld will hold office hours for Ridgewood residents and business owners on Tuesday, July 29th between the hours of 5 to 8pm. This is an opportunity to share your thoughts and provide input to Roberta. These sessions will be scheduled at 15 minute intervals and will be held in the Council Chambers on the 4th Floor of Ridgewood Village Hall. Please contact Beth Spinato at 201-670-5500, ext. 203 to make an appointment. Walk-ins are welcome but should realize that the schedule may already be booked. We will announce the schedule for these meetings on a monthly basis.

Esurance

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North Jersey empty-nesters move downtown

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North Jersey empty-nesters move downtown

JULY 27, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY KATHLEEN LYNN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Since she moved from a single-family home to an apartment in downtown Englewood, Linda Kourakos has been able to spend less time in the car and more time on foot.

“You walk out the door, you have shops and restaurants, you have the Bergen Performing Arts Center,” said Kourakos, 62, a retired interior designer who moved from East Brunswick to be closer to her daughters in Bergen County. “I felt if I was downsizing, it would be nice not to have to get into a car all the time.”

Her neighbor, Andrea Diamond, also moved from a single-family house to the Towne Centre apartments in Englewood.

“You can walk to everything, the supermarket, the post office, the library, restaurants,” said Diamond, 65, who has children and grandchildren nearby.

As Diamond and Kourakos found, a pedestrian-friendly lifestyle can be a good fit for people who want to drive less (or not at all) as they age. And North Jersey was highlighted in a recent report by New Jersey Future for having towns that can work for seniors because they offer walkable neighborhoods, downtown shopping areas and good access to public transportation.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/empty-nesters-move-downtown-1.1057914#sthash.fRPrD96c.dpuf

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Federal report on Newark police department may come back to haunt Cory Booker

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file Photo by Boyd Loving

Federal report on Newark police department may come back to haunt Cory Booker

JULY 28, 2014    LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, JULY 28, 2014, 1:40 AM
BY HERB JACKSON
RECORD COLUMNIST
NORTHJERSEY.COM

When the U.S. Justice Department issued a damning report last week about civil-rights abuses by the Newark Police Department, Sen. Cory Booker — who served as the high-profile mayor of the city while the abuses were piling up — said the federal involvement was a positive step.

As mayor, Booker recalled, he had worked with the American Civil Liberties Union — which first requested the federal investigation — to improve procedures and “even ended up calling for the federal assistance being announced today.”

What Booker didn’t say was that he had tried to stop the investigation back in 2010, before it ever began.

Or that he said in 2011 that it would be “ridiculous” to hire a federal monitor to oversee the department — a step that the city agreed to take last week.

Booker’s shifting reaction to federal oversight of the 1,000-member police force has had little immediate impact on his rising national reputation, even though similar issues have become major liabilities for other elected officials.

But they could be damaging in the future.

“For somebody who built his career around turning Newark around, a Justice Department finding is a very clear 
statement that, well, you didn’t turn this part around,” said University of Nebraska-Omaha Professor Samuel Walker, who has written a book about police practices and was familiar with the ACLU’s efforts in Newark.

Though best known for his openness with strangers on Twitter to the point of inviting people to shower at his apartment during the post-Superstorm Sandy blackout, Booker has tightly controlled press access since becoming a senator. For example, he generally ¬declines requests for comment from reporters who swarm around senators heading to and from votes and has turned down invitations to appear on network news shows.

And last week, after the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the scathing findings from a three-year investigation of the Newark police, he declined to discuss the police misconduct and instead only issued statements through his Senate office.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/jackson-federal-report-on-newark-police-department-may-come-back-to-haunt-cory-booker-1.1058139#sthash.hPRkDl6o.dpuf

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Is the Fed fueling a giant stock market bubble?

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Is the Fed fueling a giant stock market bubble?

John Maxfield , The Motley Fool12:25 p.m. EDT July 27, 2014

Take a good look at the chart below and you’d be excused for concluding that we’re in the midst of the greatest stock market bubble of all time. Not only has the S&P 500 fully recovered from the financial crisis, it’s a staggering 30% higher than the peaks of the Internet and housing bull markets.

But is this really the case? With unemployment still above 6%, how could we find ourselves in the throes of yet another brewing catastrophe? Didn’t investors and analysts learn anything from the past decade and a half?

While it requires some explanation, the answer is that we’re most likely not experiencing another irrational inflation of stock prices. The market’s record level is instead a predictable response to the Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping interest rates at historically low levels.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2014/07/27/is-the-fed-fueling-a-giant-stock-market-bubble/13172261/

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Trump protégé’s 100 Mile Fund assists two North Bergen businesses

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Trump protégé’s 100 Mile Fund assists two North Bergen businesses

JULY 27, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014, 9:54 AM
BY LINDA MOSS
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Developer and Donald Trump protégé William “Billy” Procida has for the past few years been mainly focused on financing real estate ventures not far from his home turf. Procida, born and bred in Bergen County, is involved in projects as varied as the rehabbing of apartment buildings in Paterson’s worst neighborhood, redeveloping a landmark hotel in Philadelphia and building hundreds of town houses at the Jersey Shore.

The 52-year-old founder and president of Procida Funding & Advisors LLC in Englewood Cliffs has owned several companies during his career and estimates that he’s been involved in $2 billion worth of projects. He’s now managing the 100 Mile Fund, which lends to middle-market real estate ventures.

The Divine Lorraine Hotel in Philadelphia. A developer is seeking a $31 million loan from Procida to redevelop the hotel, which has been vacant since 1999.

Procida has done well for the fund’s 58 investors — many from Bergen County and even a former Grateful Dead member — and he personally has the biggest chunk of money in the pot. Last week, the fund, which he started in 2011, said second-quarter earnings, which are not audited, rose 16.5 percent on an annualized basis. The fund has lent $51.5 million in the first half of this year. That rate of return and lending to date already surpasses the 100 Mile Fund’s performance for all of last year.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/lender-thinks-like-builder-1.1057808#sthash.GpR9bgzW.dpuf

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Fast-food workers prepare to escalate wage demands

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Fast-food workers prepare to escalate wage demands

JULY 26, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2014, 1:21 AM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE RECORD

* Fast-food workers will be asked do “whatever it takes” to win $15 an hour and a union

CHICAGO — Fast-food employees say they’re prepared to escalate their campaign for higher wages and union representation, starting with a national convention in suburban Chicago, where more than 1,000 workers are expected to discuss the future of the effort that has spread to dozens of cities in less than two years.

About 1,300 workers were to attend sessions Friday and today at an expo center in Villa Park, Illinois, where they’ll be asked to do “whatever it takes” to win $15-an-hour wages and a union, said Kendall Fells, organizing director of the national effort and a representative of the Service Employees International Union.

The union has been providing financial and organizational support to the fast-food protests that began in late 2012 in New York City and have included daylong strikes and a protest outside this year’s McDonald’s Corp. shareholder meeting that resulted in more than 130 arrests.

“We want to talk about building leadership, power and doing whatever it takes, depending on what city they’re in and what the moment calls for,” said Fells, adding that the ramped-up actions will be “more high profile” and could include everything from civil disobedience to intensified efforts to organize workers.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/wage-battle-heating-up-1.1057683#sthash.MNFW2WJf.dpuf

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1,504 immigrant children placed in New Jersey

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1,504 immigrant children placed in New Jersey

JULY 24, 2014, 5:48 PM    LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2014, 5:45 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — More than 1,500 unaccompanied children who entered the U.S. illegally have been placed with sponsors in New Jersey this year, federal officials announced Thursday.

New statistics released by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families show 1,504 unaccompanied children were placed in the state from Jan. 1 through July 7. A total of 30,340 were placed nationwide.

The announcement did not indicate where in the state the children have been placed or what country they came from.

The U.S. is battling a surge in the number of children who have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone, fleeing violence in Central America, thinking they will be allowed to stay. Most have come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The number of immigrant children placed with sponsors in New jersey is among the highest in the nation but far below Texas, which had 4,280 placements this year, and less than California, Florida, Maryland, New York and Virginia.

During a town hall meeting this week, Republican Gov. Chris Christie said he had not received any notice from federal officials about children being placed in the state.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/1-504-immigrant-children-placed-in-new-jersey-1.1057038#sthash.oLVKRPDY.dpuf

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Barack Obama has already checked out of his job

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Barack Obama has already checked out of his job

The degree to which Barack Obama is now phoning it in – sleepwalking perfunctorily through his second term, amid golf rounds and dinner parties – is astonishing

By Matt K Lewis

12:04PM BST 26 Jul 2014

President Obama has emotionally checked out of his job a couple of years early, it seems. How can one tell?

Candidates for president who brazenly assume they are the inevitable victor are sometimes accused of “measuring the drapes” for the White House.

Obama, conversely, seems to be prematurely packing his bags in hopes for an early departure.

Just last week, for example, the Los Angeles Times reported that “The First Family is believed to be in escrow on a contemporary home in a gated community where entertainers Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby once maintained estates”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10992654/Barack-Obama-has-already-checked-out-of-his-job.html

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St. Cory’s Stunningly Shallow Worldview

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St. Cory’s Stunningly Shallow Worldview

Jul. 27 Cory Booker

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

There are three dominant camps in the modern Democrat Party when it comes to the plight of Israel, Save Jerseyans:

1 – Those who straight-up hate Jews;

2 – Those who are so ideologically liberal and morally relativistic that they’re also reflexively anti-war/colonialism/military; the end result is unthinking, unsubstantiated and automatic opposition to the militarily-superior participant in any conflict regardless of any other considerations; and

3 – Those who, frankly, are naive and dumb enough in equal measure to believe that humanity can “Care Bear stare” its way out of any conflict with sufficiently positive social media activism.

I’ve seen no evidence that Cory Booker (D-Twitter) shares anything other than a party registration (which is bad enough) with group #1; as for camps #2 and #3, however, it’s obvious enough to anyone paying attention that our state’s celebrity junior center is living in a different reality from the rest of us (and certainly the poor citizens of Israel who weather a daily barrage of rocket fire).

This is the MOST substantive quote I could find from him on the subject tangentially related to Gaza:

 @CoryBooker 

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” ― Jonathan Swift



Wow. Thanks for that, Senator.

– See more at: https://savejersey.com/2014/07/cory-booker-israel-gaza/#sthash.KcrbPXwW.dpuf

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Ridgewood Guild Presents Movies in the Park

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Ridgewood Guild Presents Movies in the Park

Join us Wednesday Nights for Movies in the Park!

Updated Schedule (due to weather):

JULY 30: THE WIZARD OF OZ (festivities starting at 7pm, movie at 8:45pm)

AUGUST 6: FINDING NEMO

AUGUST 13: THE BIRDS

AUGUST 20: LIFE OF PI

We look forward to seeing you there!


Join us in Van Neste Park for family fun and entertainment. We show films great for the whole family on a 20+ foot screen and professional sound system. Bring snacks, a picnic blanket, and get ready for a great evening with your community.

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2014 Kasschau Memorial Shell Entertainment Schedule

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2014 Kasschau Memorial Shell Entertainment Schedule

Free Summer Entertainment Under the Stars

2014 Summer Schedule Click Here for details

July 29, 2014  Mack Brandon & the Connection – Pop Gospel
Kasschau Memorial Shell
Fifty six years of Free Summer Entertainment – 8:30pm at Vet’s Field (behind the Library). Bring a chair or blanket and enjoy the show! Rain Info: 201/444-1776

July 31, 2014 Group Therapy Band – Best of Rock & Soul
Kasschu Memorial Shell
Fifty six years of Free Summer Entertainment – 8:30pm at Vet’s Field (behind the Library). Bring a chair or blanket and enjoy the show! Rain Info: 201/444-1776

You may contact the Kasschau Shell Memorial Committee by email at [email protected]
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Country Pancake House

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Country Pancake House

Back in the late sixties, owner Milan looked for places to eat but, was not satisfied by the undeserved and overpriced options available to him. He worked hard to create his own restaurant with hearty portions to satisfy any appetite. Our large portions have fresh ingredients at reasonable prices for everyone to enjoy. We are happy to say that we purchase fresh food locally from different farms and markets.

There is always a family member on location whether in the front of house or in the back cooking. It is a family affair.  As a family run business we are proud to welcome your family to our restaurant. It is frequently said that if customers leave this restaurant hungry it is their own fault!

Fans of our restaurant can also now join our Facebook and Twitter pages to keep with the latest news and happenings about the entire restaurant family!! We appreciate your customer loyalty over the years, for our wonderful Zagat Survey Reviews which landed us in multiple categories including, “Best Breakfast” and “Best Bang for your Dining Buck.” Click around our site and don’t forget to study up on the menu. Thank you for letting us serve you hearty meals for over 20 years. We look forward to another great 20!!

Coming from Bergen County in New Jersey, they now are located at San Marco Plaza in Lakewood Ranch, FL. Take out is available at both locations and addresses can be found below for easier directions!

140 East Ridgewood Avenue
Ridgewood, NJ 07450

Take Out: 201.444.8395

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War on Women : ISIS orders female genital mutilation in Iraq

A family fleeing the violence in Mosul waits at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Arbil

U.N.: ISIS orders female genital mutilation in Iraq

Staff Writer, Al Arabiya News
Thursday, 24 July 2014

The al-Qaeda-Inspired Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has ordered all girls and women between the ages of 11 and 46 in and around Iraq’s northern city of Mosul to undergo female genital mutilation, the United Nations said on Thursday.

“It is a fatwa (or religious edict) of ISIS, we learnt this this morning,” said Jacqueline Badcock, the number two U.N. official in Iraq.

Read the latest on this story: Iraq NGO: ISIS likely to implement FGM fatwa

The “fatwa” would potentially affect 4 million women and girls, Badcock told reporters in Geneva by videolink from Arbil.

“This is something very new for Iraq, particularly in this area, and is of grave concern and does need to be addressed,” she said, according to Reuters.

https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/24/-ISIS-order-female-genital-mutilation-in-Iraq.html