trust us, we’re experts, we don’t need data or a study, full speed ahead.
In a heated Village Hall meeting Tuesday night with at least 30 residents in attendance, Ridgewood officials including the mayor did little to allay concerns about the outcome of the construction at the Franklin Ave. underpass. Mayor Paul Aronsohn vowed the project would go on as planned despite repeated requests to stop and study possible solutions. While vowing to make changes to the project, the mayor did not give any detail what the changes would be. The often loud and contentious meeting saw village engineer Chris Rutishauser under constant questioning to reveal facts and studies that led to the redesign of the heavily traveled east/west artery. Rutishauser admitted there had been no study, no hard count this year of the number of cars that travel the road, no estimation of the number of bikes and no counter to residents’ concerns that removing lanes would add to traffic congestion and therefore reduce overall pedestrian safety. Rutishauser was often combative with residents and seemed ill prepared for the onslaught of doubt and skepticism over the project. The best traffic data Rutishauser could offer was 7,000 cars traveled that area a day but he did not know how many years old that data was. Left unsaid by Rutishauser was the increase over the years in traffic at the underpass. While Police Chief Ward had the lone hard fact and data point of the night: 86 accidents at the trestle since 2008, he gave no context to the data point and did not say how that number compared to other high traffic areas of the village. Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld called the project “a leap of faith”.
Other key revelations at the meeting:
No study of existing traffic patterns No facts to support the road changes No immediate change to traffic lights, changes that officials admitted would help facilitate left turns at the West side intersection. No timetable was given for acquiring those much needed newer lights. The project was designed with bike lanes to draw federal tax dollars under the complete streets planning doctrine. The theory behind the project is to “calm traffic”, a planning concept used overseas that involves narrowing roads and other measures designed to actively slow cars. No clear answers why the village failed to seek public input on the changes to the main artery.
A limit to pension investing oversight as political donations from executives can go unchecked
MAY 27, 2014, 11:10 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, MAY 27, 2014, 11:11 PM BY MELISSA HAYES AND JOHN REITMEYER STATE HO– USE BUREAU THE RECORD
Last year, nearly 2,000 businesses doing $6.4 billion in public work reported — as required by state law — that they made $10.1 million in contributions to New Jersey’s various political parties and candidates.
But when it comes to New Jersey’s pension fund — and the increasing share of the nearly $77 billion in assets going to hedge funds, private equity and venture capital funds — such disclosures aren’t so clear-cut.
The pay-to-play law makes it clear that executives and their employees working on the state’s pension fund investments cannot make political contributions to New Jersey candidates and political committees. But those venture capital firms and hedge funds often take the state pension dollars and invest them in other companies whose executives do not have to disclose their political donations.
Now the pension fund’s directors are putting more money into those alternative investments. The complex nature of those investments, the inability of the pay-to-play law to cover all their financial relationships and the lack of any accompanying public database like the one for state contractors make tracking political connections difficult. That comes as Governor Christie has built a national fundraising network that includes donors with backgrounds in the finance industry.
And the state Department of Treasury relies on the investment firms themselves to determine which employees are covered by the law, and to disclose any political contributions made by them. The Election Law Enforcement Commission, which regulates other businesses with state contracts, also relies on companies to self-report contributions. But the commission also maintains a public database of campaign donations and state contractors that allows for increased scrutiny of the donors doing public business.
The council that oversees the state’s investments will meet today for the first time since Christie announced last week that he would cut nearly $900 million from this year’s pension payment to close a budget gap.
The New Jersey State Investment Council, which manages the $76.76 billion pension system, is set to discuss three alternative investment proposals and get an update on its plan for the coming fiscal year. The meeting comes as questions have been raised over the legality of Christie’s scaled-back pension payments and amid claims that the state awarded investments to campaign contributors who support the governor.
From the council’s agenda, it’s unclear whether it will discuss Christie’s reductions or the pay-to-play allegations. A spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The New Jersey Education Association and the Communications Workers of America, which represents state employees, are already threatening to sue Christie after he signed an executive order last week setting the pension payment for this year at $696 million, down from $1.58 billion. The governor is also calling on lawmakers to approve a $681 million payment for the fiscal year beginning July 1, down from the $2.25 billion the state was supposed to contribute under phased-in payments Christie signed into law in 2010.
The governor said the state cannot afford to pay for the “sins of the past” and acknowledged that the contributions he agreed to are too burdensome. Christie said he plans to announce additional changes to public employee pensions next month.
The Intellectual Dishonesty of Obama and Other False Purists By Ron Fournier
Yes, the GOP is obstinate. We get it. But assigning the White House some blame is no false equivalence.
To voters angry at Washington, President Obama has an explanation for the deepening of gridlock, incompetence, and zero-sum gain thinking during his five-plus years in office: It’s not his fault.
Not that finger-pointing solves anything, but Obama wants you to know that it was Republicans and the media who put his presidency on ice. At a fundraiser in Chicago on Thursday night, Obama said:
“You’ll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there’s gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible. And there’s a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific. We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well; who deny the science of climate change; who don’t think making investments in early-childhood education makes sense; who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you’re not living in poverty; who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing.
“They, so far, at least, have refused to budge on bipartisan legislation to fix our immigration system, despite the fact that every economist who’s looked at it says it’s going to improve our economy, cut our deficits, help spawn entrepreneurship, and alleviate great pain from millions of families all across the country.
The next Regular Public Meeting of the Ridgewood Board of Education will be held on Monday, June 2, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend the meeting at the Ed Center, 49 Cottage Place, Floor 3. The meeting will be aired live on FiOS channel 33 and Optimum channel 77. Or it may be viewed live via the district website atwww.ridgewood.k12.nj.us using the “Link in Live” tab.
Click here to view the agenda for the May 19, 2014 Regular Public Meeting.
Click here to view the webcast of the May 19, 2014 Regular Public Meeting.
2014-2015 Budget Information Taking effect this year, the Ridgewood Board of Education has opted to move the annual school board elections from April to November, thereby eliminating the public vote on the proposed general tax levy if it is at or below the statutory tax levy cap. Since next year’s proposed budget falls within the mandated cap, it will not be put to public vote. The Board approved the 2014-2015 budget at its April 28 Regular Public meeting.
Click here to view the Budget edition of Newsline, sent to Ridgewood residents in May. The newsletter provides information about next year’s school budget.
Click here to view the Fiscal Year 2015 User Friendly Budget.
Click here to view the Fiscal Year 2015 full budget.
Click here to view the 2014-2015 Budget Presentation.
To send a question or comment about the 2014-2015 school budget, please email the superintendent at[email protected].
The Village Council introduced the 2014 Village of Ridgewood Budget on April 23rd. The Public Hearing of the Budget will be May 28 at 7:30PM in the Sydney V. Stoldt, Jr. Court Room at Village Hall.
Click Here for Budget Newsletter
Click Here to view the budget details as required by the State of New Jersey.
Kids Reject Michelle Obama’s “Healthy” School Lunches Tiffiny Ruegner May 24, 2014
Michelle Obama’s new dietary restrictions is so bad that they can’t even GIVE the food away. A million kids have turned away from Obama’s school lunch and schools are feeling the huge hit.
Via The Hill:
More than a million kids confronted by healthier school lunches are turning up their noses, leaving the cafeteria and heading out to get a burger instead.
The difficulty in getting students to eat lower-fat, lower-sodium meals is at the center of a food fight between House Republicans and first lady Michelle Obama that erupted this week.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, supported by President Obama, requires lunch programs that receive federal dollars to provide healthier meals. The new standards began to go into effect in 2012. Childhood obesity has spiraled in recent decades, and the first lady has made the fight against it a signature issue. Democrats say stemming the epidemic will cut healthcare costs and keep the armed forces functioning.
But Agriculture Department statistics show the number of school children in the National School Lunch Program dropped from 31.8 million in 2011 to 30.7 million in 2013. School boards are asking Congress to allow schools to opt out. Some schools are raiding their teaching budgets to cover the costs of mounds of wasted fruits and vegetables, Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association said.
The dietary restrictions have not actually made the food healthier. They have cut down the amount of food to cut calories which has also cut nutrients to the growing generation. When a body doesn’t have enough nutrients… it craves food more. Give us 10 years and you will see this denying kids food will have exacerbated the obesity problem. What they really needed to do was increase the amount of fresh non packaged food and either increased the food cost or encouraged volunteers over paid employees in the cafeterias for food prep to balance the extra cost for quality food.
Net Neutrality: Don’t Let the FCC Control the Internet!
Nick Gillespie | May 26, 2014
By the time you read this, the Internet—that glorious system of tubes that brings us everything from cat videos to free amateur porn to (trigger warning! NSFW!)free amateur cat porn—might already be dead.
That’s the consensus from proponents of so-called net neutrality, who are alarmed and dismayed by a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal that might eventually allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to charge users different rates to transmit data across their networks.
The result could be that big companies with a lot of cash could use “fast lanes” to deliver content, while smaller, poorer outfits might be stuck in “slow lanes” that would turn off potential users and customers (who wants to wait for a site to load or a video to buffer?). Such “paid prioritization” would, we’re warned, violate cyberspace’s bedrock principle of digital non-discrimination, lead to the “death of the democratic Internet”, and even kill “the dreams of young entrepreneurs.”
Yeah, not so much. Reports of the imminent death of the Internet’s freewheeling ways and utopian possibilities are more wildly exaggerated and full of spam than those emails from Mrs. Mobotu Sese-Seko.
In fact, the real problem isn’t that the FCC hasn’t shown the cyber-cojones to regulate ISPs like an old-school telephone company or “common carrier,” but that it’s trying to increase its regulatory control of the Internet in the first place.
Under the proposal currently in play, the FCC assumes an increased ability to review ISP offerings on a “case-by-case basis” and kill any plan it doesn’t believe is “commercially reasonable.” Goodbye fast-moving innovation and adjustment to changing technology on the part of companies, hello regulatory morass and long, drawn-out bureaucratic hassles.
Reader says How do they undertake a project of this magnitude in the dark?
How do they undertake a project of this magnitude in the dark? The Village Manager has so far been unimpressive as Paul’s unqualified appointee and the Village Engineer proves once again he should be replaced.
The Honeymoon must be over. Dam the torpedoes full speed ahead. The Three Amigos and their hand pick spokes person don’t have a clue. Just remember the majority of the West side resident voted for them.
“Ill-concieved” is a kind way to describe a totally idiotic idea. And to think this was approved by the Village Council in the dark and with no hearing. We should all do what we can to stop this.
LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. – On Tuesday, May 13, the Northern Illinois Patriots , President Greg Clements, sponsored Dr. Duke Pesta, Freedom Project Education Academy Director — an online school offering a complete classical education for students from Kindergarten through High School, free from public school spin and Common Core indoctrination — as its featured speaker at Austin’s Saloon and Eatery, 481 Peterson Road in Libertyville. Dr. Pesta’s topic: “Common Core: Dangers and Threats.”
As a teacher himself, Dr. Pesta is not anti-teacher despite his negative opinion of Common Core. If truth be told, many teachers oppose Common Core but are told to keep quiet or lose their jobs. Pesta received his MA in Renaissance literature from John Carroll University and his Ph.D. in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature from Purdue University.
He has taught at major research institutions and small liberal arts colleges, and has been active in education reform, developing and implementing an elective Bible course that is currently available for public high school students in Texas. Currently he is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh in addition to his role as Academic Director of Freedom Project Education.
The chilling truth behind the new national standards are sure to terrify you, as they did to those who attended the Northern Illinois Patriots event. A question Dr Pesta asks at the beginning of each of his events is how many are familiar with Common Core? As is the case most often, 90 to 95% are still foggy about the nature of Common Core.
Dr. Duke Pesta, using research done by others, presented Common Core as the drive it is toward complete government control of our children’s education through a series a slides and commentary titled, “Common Core: Dangers and Threats.” Dr. Pesta considers Common Core a hugely bi-partisan problem. In Wisconsin Republicans refused to allow a vote to be held on Common Core legislation. Nationally, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie are in total support of Common Core, as is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Duke Pesta divided his presentation into three parts
Part 1: How did Common Core come about? a Research Fellow in Education at the Heartland Institute
Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implies that that all states were consulted before they signed on to Common Core, as though it were a democratic thing instead of Banana Republic tactics. Not so! Joy Pullman, a Research Fellow in Education at the Heartland Institute, traces the writing of Common Core back to five individuals. One of its writers, David Coleman is considered the chief architect of Common Core. According to Dr. Pesta, Coleman is not qualified to write on any subject. Worrisome is that Coleman has since moved on to become president of the College Board where he will integrate the AP assessments with Common Core standards.
Hence, the curriculum was written by a small group of individuals and then copyrighted by two Washington lobbyist groups, making it devoid of any government ownership. This is important because the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Acts was the first federal attempt to regulate and finance schools. In 1979 the law that created the Department of Education forbids it to exercise “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” or “program of instruction” of any school system. The mechanism of control were the tests all students had to take to be written by the people who created Common Core. To pass the tests, the Common Core curriculum had to be taught. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $170 million to support the creation and implementation of Common Core State Standards. To date they have contributed $2.5 billion.
But there is no way Common Core could have been brought into the nation’s schools given that it was the product of a small group of activists supported by billionaire Bill Gates. As background, in 2001, President G.W. Bush came up with “No Child Left Behind” which he gave over to Senator Ted Kennedy to write. “No Child Left Behind” was a disaster from the beginning as it was based on “outcome” education, which is akin to socialism. Every single child was expected to meet the same arbitrary standard through high stakes testing.
Fast forward to 2009. President Obama is now in office. It was in 2009 that President Obama took $5.1 billion of taxpayer money and offered it to states to sign on to his “Race to the Top” program. The catch: If states accepted “Race to the Top” money they had to accept Common Core State Standards (CSSS) sight unseen. Additionally, a waiver was granted to states so they could opt out of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program if they signed on to Obama’s” Race to the Top” program.
Forty-four states agreed to trade their K-12 math and English targets and tests for those of the Common Core’s State Standards yet to be written. Now that CC is in place, in some states longer than others, Dr. Pesta looks upon Common Core as “No Child Left Behind of steroids.” He also refers to Common Core as a social justice curriculum that comes before the ABC’s. Remaining at its core is a one-size fits all definition of education. But what if the high standards can’t be met? It becomes obvious that the only way to get more children to the same place is in time to lower standards.
Part 2: Nature of Common Core Curriculum
Although it is often said that Common Core is not a curriculum but a set of standards, Common Core standards are being put into textbooks which then become curriculum. Pierson, as the largest education product sales company on earth, has a monopoly on education products, including textbooks. This month Bill Gates — the second richest man on earth who almost single-handedly funded and marketed the entire Common Core movement going back to UNESCO and its goal to bring a master curriculum worldwide – has joined forces with Pearson to create a one size fits all curriculum. Although it is claimed that states can deviate 15% from what is being taught in other states, if this were true there would have to be a different test for each state.
Dr. James Milgram, professor of mathematics at Stanford University, and Dr. Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita at the University of Arkansas and former Senior Associate Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, as members of the Common Core Validation Review Panel were the only experts on the panel in their subject area. Both Milgram a math expert and Stotsky an English expert refused to give Common Core Math and English standards, respectively, a good recommendation as did the rest of the panel. Both have gone on to testify with a warning voice to state legislatures and school boards about the inadequacy of the standards.
Hear Dr. Milgram talk about “What happened to Math education and why Common Core won’t help.”
James Milgram points out these flaws of the new Core Curriculum math standards:
By the end of fifth grade the material being covered in arithmetic and algebra in Core Standards is more than a year behind the early grade expectations in most high achieving countries. By the end of seventh grade Core Standards are roughly two years behind. Core Mathematics Standards are written to reflect very low expectations and do not reflect the mathematics education that underlie the results in the high achieving countries. The explicitly stated objective is to prepare students not to have to take remedial mathematics courses at a typical community college.
Common Core applies a never before seen methodology in the way common math problems are solved. Parents can no longer help their children with simple addition and subtraction not understanding the system. Staking of numbers is no longer permitted, instead children must draw dots, circles, squares, etc., to come up with the answer.
Dr. Pesta used as a demonstration a Champion News video of a Grayslake D46 Curriculum Coordinator relating how under the new Common Core math system if a child determines that 3 + 4 is 11, that’s perfectly fine if the child is able to explain how he arrived at the answer. Even if a child can do math beyond his grade level, he must stay put and not try to move to a higher level.
Dr. Sandra Stotsky has come to refer to Common Core standards as propaganda. Hear Dr. Sandra Stotsky describe “What are the major problems with Common Core English Standards?”
Dr. Stotsky’s concerns about Common Core can be read here.
Common Core is a step backwards for English Standards. The architects of Common Core’s English Language Arts standards never claimed that their standards would do so; rather, they claimed the standards would make all students “college-ready,” Common Core English standards require English teachers to emphasize skills, not literary or cultural knowledge, such as how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text at all grade levels, which may lead to a decreased capacity for analytical thinking. Common Core standards require English teachers to teach “informational” texts over 50% of their reading instructional time rather than literary texts. There are, however, 30 books sexually unfit for high school kids to read on the Common Core approved reading list, one such book for the 11th grade: The Bluest Eye. Writing is emphasized more than reading, but kids only learn to write well after they can read well. When writing they will most likely write what they read in their textbooks such as the global warming, threat, ways to save the planet, or a denial of American exceptionalism.
Here is Dr. Pesta’s anti-Common Core Speech similar to the one he presented at Austin’s on Tuesday, May 13.
Article 2: “Shocking Far Reaching Tentacles of Common Core” as referenced in 3rd part of Dr. Peta’s presentation on Common Core sponsored by Northern Illinois Patriots Tuesday, May 13.
Authored by Nancy Thorner at Illinois Review https://eagnews.org/thorner-chilling-truth-behind-common-core-state-standards/
ILLINOIS REVIEW
Founded in 2005, Illinois Review is a digital media site, providing an alternative perspective and source of Illinois news and information.
Readers say Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld really overstepped her bounds .
The capital budget had called for $1.5 million for paving, but Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld pulled it from the annual spending plan, opting instead to introduce it for separate consideration by the council.
Readers says she is not an elected official.Who does Sonenfeld think she is? She can’t unilaterally decide what items have to be individually voted on.
Reader says I am all for the current construction change the current two-lane layout gets too crowded
I am all for the current construction change. The current two-lane layout gets too crowded . People currently switch lanes right now in a moments of indecision or to try and overtake. The new layout will lead to a more orderly flow of traffic, with one good lane in each direction, instead of the two narrow lanes that currently exist.
Through-town traffic can only flow as fast as its narrowest or most congested point. This short stretch, either as it was, or as it will be, is not that point. My conclusion is that this work will have a positive effect. Now, whether the work itself is being done cost-effectively, that’s an entirely separate debate. I suspect, being that public funds at being spent, there will be the usual waste and borderline corruption that always takes place.
Asking people to take alternative routes while the construction is going on, I put that down to Government in action. It’s the standard advice they give out in every road maintenance project. I do, however, think that once all the work is finished, the workers and the equipment is gone, the lanes are nice and smooth, etc., that flow will not really be the same as it is right now.
My only real concern here is the usual banditry that takes place with public works projects. Take for instance the recent paint job at the pedestrian underpass. I forget the sum, but I think it ran into the $200,000 level. It was nothing more than rolling paint over the surface. It is already peeling.
White House staff tried to ‘un-ring the bell’ after revealing CIA chief’s identity
• White House press office unaware it had circulated name • Washington Post journalist sounded alert after filing report
The White House blew the cover of the top CIA agent in Afghanistan on Sunday, when the person’s name was included on a list given to reporters during a visit to the country by President Barack Obama.
The name was then emailed by the White House press office to a distribution list of more than 6,000 recipients, mostly members of the US media.
The agent in question, listed as chief of station, would be a top manager of CIA activity in Afghanistan, including intelligence collection and a drone-warfare programme under which unmanned aerial vehicles mount cross-border attacks into Pakistan.
The name appeared on a list of attendees requested by White House officials for the president’s visit to Bagram air base to mark Memorial Day, the national day of tribute to fallen service members. The list of 15 people was drawn up by the military, written into a routine press report and sent to Washington. The Obama press office then sent the list, unredacted, to the larger group.
The mistake did not come to light until the reporter who had filed from Afghanistan, the veteran Washington Post correspondent Scott Wilson, looked more closely at what he had sent and noticed the name and title.
“I drew it to their attention before they had noticed what had happened,” Wilson said on Monday, hours after returning from the 33-hour trip overseas.
Hospitals Look to Health Law, Cutting Charity By ABBY GOODNOUGHMAY 25, 2014
Hospital systems around the country have started scaling back financial assistance for lower- and middle-income people without health insurance, hoping to push them into signing up for coverage through the new online marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.
The trend is troubling to advocates for the uninsured, who say raising fees will inevitably cause some to skip care rather than buy insurance that they consider unaffordable. Though the number of hospitals tightening access to free or discounted care appears limited so far, many say they are considering doing so, and experts predict that stricter policies will become increasingly common.
Driving the new policies is the cost of charity care, which is partly covered by government but remains a burden for many hospitals. The new law also reduces federal aid to hospitals that treat large numbers of poor and uninsured people, creating an additional pressure on some to restrict charity care.
Today Ridgewood became the first Bergen town to fly the Honor and Remember flag.
May 26th 2014 Freeholder Maura DeNicola
Ridgewood NJ, American Legion Post 53 in Ridgewood’s Memorial Day Ceremony. Today Ridgewood became the first Bergen town to fly the Honor and Remember flag. photo by Freeholder Maura DeNicola
The Honor & Remember flag was developed by the Honor and Remember organization. The goal of this organization is to promote broad national awareness of the flag, so that military, government and educational facilities as well as households throughout the country world begin flying the Honor and Remember flag to promote recognition of our nation’s fallen warriors. A flag that is a visible reminder to all Americans of the lives lost in defense of our national freedoms. Annin & Co. gives back a portion of the proceeds from the sale of these flags to the Honor and Remember organization. They, in turn, use these funds to support the effort of donating an Honor and Remember flag to those families who have lost a loved one in military service to America.
A Heated Debate: Are Climate Scientists Being Forced to Toe the Line?
By Axel Bojanowski
News that Lennart Bengtsson, the respected former director of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, had joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), sent shockwaves through the climate research community. GWPF is most notable for its skepticism about climate change and its efforts to undermine the position of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The tremors his decision sent through the scientific community shocked Bengtsson.
The scientist said colleagues placed so much pressure on him after joining GWPF that he withdrew from the group out of fear for his own health. Bengtsson added that his treatment had been reminiscent of the persecution of suspected Communists in the United States during the era of McCarthyism in the 1950s.
Not all of his fellow climatologists agree. Gavin Schmidt a climatologist and climate modeler at NASA described the “alleged connection to McCarthy” as “ridiculous.” “As someone who has actually been threatened with criminal sanctions by a United States Senator only because of published science, I don’t quite see why Bengtsson’s total freedom to associate with anyone he wants — and let me be clear, he has this freedom — has in any way been compromised,” he said.
But Bengtsson insists that even close colleagues shunned him. He says that one research partner, apparently fearing damage to his reputation, withdrew from a study they had been conducting together. Bengtsson added no further details other than to state that the incident had been hurtful.
