AAA Reports NJ gas prices drop slightly
December 22, 2013
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ,According to AAA this holiday season motorists are seeing slightly lower prices at the pumps throughout New Jersey.
AAA Mid-Atlantic reports the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the state on Friday was $3.28, down a penny from last week. That’s also slightly lower than the price from a year ago of $3.32.
Analysts are predicting pump prices should remain somewhat stable and may even go lower in the coming weeks, citing limited seasonal demand and resolved production concerns at refineries in the Gulf Coast region.
Geek Oil: Scientists Manufacture Biofuel from Algae in Minutes
A new scientific discovery that takes algae and turns it into crude oil in minutes rather than millions of years could be the end of constant worries over “peak oil.”
Engineers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) announced that they have created a process that takes an enriched stew of algae and turns it into crude oil which, in turn, can be made into a usable bio-fuel. The development was announced in a recent issue of the journal Algal Research.
Genifuel Corp., a biofuels company from Utah, has licensed the technology and is attempting to utilize the process on a larger, industrial scale.
In a press release, PNNL described, “In the PNNL process, a slurry of wet algae is pumped into the front end of a chemical reactor. Once the system is up and running, out comes crude oil in less than an hour, along with water and a byproduct stream of material containing phosphorus that can be recycled to grow more algae.”
Ridgewood Veterinary Hospital offers Pet Safety Tips
December 21,2013
Ridgewood NJ, Candles can be dangerous for your furry kids. Never leave candles unattended if you have pets. A slight nudge from a dog or curious kitty can cause disaster, not only for your pet, but for the entire family.
Space heaters can also be unsafe just like candles. They can burn a pet that gets too close, and if knocked over, can cause house fires. We want you to enjoy the holiday season with your whole family, so please be careful!
If you have a pet that likes to chew electrical cords, please call our office for some suggestions to avoid shock, injury, and possible death. Celebrate the holidays with your pet, and stay safe!
Tinsel is a holiday decoration that is very attractive to animals, especially cats. It sparkles when it moves and can lure an otherwise well behaved pet. Once a cat starts swallowing, its anatomy makes it difficult to stop, and it can cut through the intestines.
In addition, bright and colorful tree ornaments can attract your pet’s curiosity. Pets can chew and swallow these fragile objects and they may lacerate your pet’s mouth, throat, or intestines. They can also create a choking hazard. Please have a safe, happy holiday.
Outdoor and feral cats face health and safety challenges during the winter months. You can help by keeping your cats indoors. Cats’ fur doesn’t protect them from extremely cold temperatures. When their fur gets wet from walking through snow or being outdoors in the cold rain, they actually become more susceptible to hypothermia and frostbite; their fur chills them instead of keeping them warm. If you let your cats outside, start getting them acquainted with spending time indoors until they get used to not going outside at all. It’s safer and healthier!
If you take them out for a walk in the snow , when you return home, rinse and dry their feet thoroughly to help prevent dermatitis. Stay warm and stay safe!
Ridgewood Veterinary Hospital
320 E. Ridgewood Avenue Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450
Since the passage of Obamacare in 2010, many of the President’s famous promises have been routinely broken. As he so ironically threatened in 2009, “If you misrepresent what’s in this plan, we will call you out.”[1] To that end, here are 10 promises of Obamacare that have already proved to be broken.
Promise #1: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”[2]
Reality: Millions of Americans have lost and will lose their coverage due to Obamacare.
Obamacare has significantly disrupted the market for those who buy coverage on their own by imposing new coverage and benefit mandates, causing a reported 4.7 million health insurance cancelations of an existing policy in 32 states.[3]
For those with employer-sponsored insurance in the group market, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that 7 million fewer people will have employment-based insurance by 2018.[4]
Moreover, the Administration itself has admitted that employers would not keep their existing health plans. Federal regulations written in 2010 estimated that 51 percent of small and large employers would lose their “grandfathered status” by 2013—meaning a majority of employers would not keep their existing health plans.[5]
Promise #2: “[T]hat means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period.”[6]
Reality: Many Americans might not be able to keep their current doctor without paying extra.
Many plans offered on Obamacare’s exchanges have very limited provider networks, decreasing the chances consumers will be able to keep their current doctor without paying more money.[7] Furthermore, many Americans who purchase coverage on their own have had their existing health plans changed or canceled due to Obamacare, resulting in some people being unable to keep their current doctors without paying additional money to do so.
Due to the significant payment reductions included in Obamacare, seniors with Medicare Advantage plans may be forced to find new doctors. The largest provider of these plans, UnitedHealth, has recently reduced its provider networks in several states.[8]
Promise #3: “In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.”[9]
Reality: Premiums for people purchasing coverage in the individual market have significantly increased in a majority of states.
A Heritage analysis shows that, on average, consumers in 42 states will see their premiums in the exchanges increase, many by over 100 percent.[10]
For people with employer-sponsored coverage, costs also continue to increase. For families, premiums from 2009 to 2013 have increased by an average of $2,976.[11]
Promise #4: “[F]or the 85 and 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, this thing’s already happened. And their only impact is that their insurance is stronger, better and more secure than it was before. Full stop. That’s it. They don’t have to worry about anything else.”[12]
Reality: Obamacare imposes certain new benefit mandates on those with employer-sponsored coverage—a majority of Americans.
These mandates increase the cost of coverage. In fact, federal regulations written in 2010 assumed “that the increases in insurance benefits will be directly passed on to the consumer in the form of higher premiums. These assumptions bias the estimates of premium changes upward.”[13]
But higher premiums not only cost people more money; they have other impacts on coverage as well. For instance, as a response to the direct cost increases associated with Obamacare, UPS dropped coverage for spouses of employees if they are offered coverage through their own employers.[14]
Promise #5: “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”[15]
Reality: Obamacare contains 18 separate tax hikes, fees, and penalties, many of which heavily impact the middle class.
Altogether, Obamacare’s taxes and penalties will accumulate over $770 billion in new revenue over a 10-year period.[16] Among the taxes that will hit the middle class are the individual mandate tax, the medical device tax, and new penalties and limits on health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts.[17]
Promise #6: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future.”[18]
Reality: Obamacare’s new spending is unsustainable.
Obamacare was passed into law relying on a wide variety of unrealistic budget projections. A more realistic assessment reveals that it will be a multi-trillion-dollar budget buster. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated the cost of Obamacare over the long term if certain cost-containment measures were overridden. Under that alternative scenario, which assumes that “historical trends and policy preferences continue,” the GAO found that Obamacare would increase the primary deficit by 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).[19]
Senator Jeff Sessions (R–AL) and the Senate Budget Committee staff, who commissioned the GAO report, translated the 75-year percentage estimate into today’s dollar amount, which would be $6.2 trillion over the next 75 years.[20]
Promise #7: “[W]hatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.”[21]
Reality: Health spending is still rising and is projected to grow at an average rate of 5.8 percent from 2012 to 2022.[22]
While growth in health spending has been slower recently compared to the past, that is largely due to the sluggish economic recovery. Indeed, Obamacare’s new entitlements will help drive greater health spending in 2014 and beyond.[23]
Promise #8: “I will protect Medicare.”[24]
Reality: Obamacare cuts Medicare spending.
Obamacare makes unprecedented and unrealistic payment reductions to Medicare providers and Medicare Advantage plans in order to finance the new spending in the law. The cuts amount to over $700 billion from 2013 to 2022.[25] If Congress allows these draconian reductions to take place, it will significantly impact seniors’ ability to access care.[26]
Promise #9: “I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American.”[27]
Reality: Millions of Americans will remain uninsured.
Despite spending nearly $1.8 trillion in new spending from 2014 to 2023, the law falls far short of universal coverage. Indeed, Obamacare is projected by the CBO to leave 31 million uninsured after a decade of full implementation.[28]
Promise #10: “So this law means more choice, more competition, lower costs for millions of Americans.”[29]
Reality: Obamacare has not increased insurer competition or consumer choice.
In the vast majority of states, the number of insurers competing in the state’s exchange is actually less than the number of carriers that previously sold individual market policies in the state.[30] And at the local level, for 35 percent of the nation’s counties, exchange enrollees will have a choice of plans from only two insurers—a duopoly. In 17 percent of counties, consumers will have no choice—a monopoly—as only one carrier is offering coverage in the exchange.[31]
—Alyene Senger is a Research Associate in the Center for Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Ridgewood Art Institute Holiday Show ends December 24th.
The Ridgewood Art Institute Holiday Show and Sale Featuring a live performance from Jazz Legend Bucky Pizzarelli at our Open Reception November 24th from 1-4pm Exhibit ends December 24th. Paintings from Local Artists in a Festive Holiday Setting. The Ridgewood Art Institute is a non profit organization. 12 East Glen Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ visit ridgewoodartinstitute.org or call 201-652-9615
Seniors scrambling after United Healthcare drops doctors from Medicare Advantage
Friday December 20, 2013, 10:23 PM
BY COLLEEN DISKIN
STAFF WRITER
The Record
A popular, AARP-endorsed Medicare plan is dropping a large number of doctors from its network, generating cries of outrage nationwide from older patients and medical groups who say the seniors were not given enough time to shop for new insurance.
Betty Baker, 70, of Wyckoff, said she was notified in late November that the Medicare Advantage plan operated by United Healthcare would be dropping four of her longtime doctors on Feb. 1, including the eye doctor who recently performed her cataract surgery.
“My husband and I knew this has always been considered one of the best plans, so we didn’t know if it made sense to switch,” said Baker, who ended up reenrolling even though her husband also had his primary care doctor dropped. “We didn’t have a whole lot of time to decide what to do.”
4 arrested on murder charges in Short Hills mall carjacking, officials say
Saturday, December 21, 2013 Last updated: Saturday December 21, 2013, 10:41 AM
BY PATRICIA ALEX
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Four men have been arrested in connection with the deadly carjacking of 30-year old attorney at the Short Hills Mall last week, police announced Saturday.
Dustin Friedland, of Hoboken, was reportedly shot in the head as he and his wife were getting into their car in a parking deck of the upscale mall. The couple’s 2012 Range Rover was found abandoned in Newark the next day
Spend Saturday Morning with Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe Talking College Debt, Work Ethic, and Blue Collar Jobs
Nick Gillespie & Meredith Bragg|Dec. 15, 2013 9:30 am
If it’s Sunday morning, it’s Reason’s deliberate counter-programming to the boring, Team Red/Team Blue yak shows. Here’s a 40-minute-long conversation with Mike Rowe, popular host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs show. Originally released on Friday, here’s the writeup:
“If we are lending money that ostensibly we don’t have to kids who have no hope of making it back in order to train them for jobs that clearly don’t exist, I might suggest that we’ve gone around the bend a little bit,” says TV personality Mike Rowe, best known as the longtime host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs.
“There is a real disconnect in the way that we educate vis-a-vis the opportunities that are available. You have – right now – about 3 million jobs that can’t be filled,” he says, talking about openings in traditional trades ranging from construction to welding to plumbing. “Jobs that typically parents’ don’t sit down with their kids and say, ‘Look, if all goes well, this is what you are going to do.'”
Ridgewood Police Remind You Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over
If your attending Holiday celebrations this week think twice before getting behind the wheel if you have been drinking.
In New Jersey, a person is guilty of drunk driving if he or she operates a motor vehicle with a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of 0.08 percent or greater. Although the law refers to a 0.08 percent BAC, you can be convicted of driving while under the influence of intoxicating liquor even when your BAC is below 0.08 percent. Consuming even small amounts of alcohol dulls the senses, decreases reaction time, and hampers judgment, vision and alertness. If you consume any amount of alcohol and your driving is negatively impacted, you can be convicted of drunk driving.
The Ridgewood Police Department offers the following advice to ensure a safe holiday travel season for those who choose to drink alcohol:
Take mass transit, a taxi or ask a sober friend to drive you home.
Spend the night rather than get behind the wheel.
Report impaired drivers to law enforcement. In New Jersey, drivers may dial #77 to report a drunk or aggressive driver.
Always buckle up, every ride, regardless of your seating position in the vehicle. It’s your best defense against an impaired driver.
If you’re intoxicated and traveling on foot, the safest way to get home is to take a cab or have a sober friend or family member drive or escort you to your doorstep.
I’m writing this letter in the hopes of capturing the attention of the residents of Ridgewood who cherish and love this beautiful town as much as I do. We are so lucky to have such a gorgeous downtown business area with such a nice assortment of specialty shops and restaurants. However, I’m not sure if people realize that, under the surface, many of these very businesses are desperately struggling to survive.
It saddens me to see the hopes and dreams, creativity, hard work and money of the owners of so many stores and restaurants, go down the tubes! The vacant, boarded-up storefronts scattered around town are now becoming a very sad reality in our beautiful town. But my plea to you is that it doesn’t have to be that way!
High security risk found after HealthCare.gov launch
A top HealthCare.gov security officer told Congress there have been two, serious high-risk findings since the website’s launch, including one on Monday of this week, CBS News has learned.
Teresa Fryer, the chief information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), revealed the findings when she was interviewed Tuesday behind closed doors by House Oversight Committee officials. The security risks were not previously disclosed to members of Congress or the public. Obama administration officials have firmly insisted there’s no reason for any concern regarding the website’s security.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded to questions about the security findings in a statement that said, “in one case, what was initially flagged as a high finding was proven to be false. In the other case, we identified a piece of software code that needed to be fixed and that fix is now in place. Since that time, the feature has been fully mitigated and verified by an independent security assessment, per standard practice.”
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According to federal standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the potential impact of a high finding is “the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect on organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals.”
Details are not being made public for security reasons but Fryer testified that one vulnerability in the system was discovered during testing last week related to an incident reported in November. She says that as a result, the government has shut down functionality in the vulnerable part of the system. Fryer said the other high-risk finding was discovered Monday.
In another security bombshell, Fryer told congressional interviewers that she explicitly recommended denial of the website’s Authority to Operate (ATO), but was overruled by her superiors. The website was rolled out amid warnings Fryer said she gave both verbally and in a briefing that disclosed “high risks” and possible exposure to “attacks”.
Top 1 Percent Paid 35 Percent of All Income Taxes in 2011
Summary of Latest Federal Income Tax Data
December 18, 2013
By Kyle Pomerleau
Introduction
The Internal Revenue Service has released new data on individual income taxes, reporting on calendar year 2011.[1] The IRS data continues to reflect the fact that half of all taxpayers pay nearly all income taxes. However, the improving economy resulted in a spreading of the tax burden as the number of filers increased along with incomes and taxes paid for all income groups except the top 0.1 percent. The higher incomes pushed taxpayers into higher brackets, resulting in an increase in average income tax rates for all income groups except the top 0.1 percent, whose effective rate remained about the same as in 2010. The income shares of the top 1 and 2 percentiles fell in 2011, as did their shares of taxes paid.
The Top 50 Percent of All Taxpayers Paid 97 Percent of All Income Taxes; the Top 5 Percent Paid 57 Percent of All Income Taxes; and the Top 1 Percent Paid 35 Percent of All Income Taxes in 2011
Table 1 breaks down the latest IRS data on number of returns, adjusted gross income, income taxes paid, and average tax rate by income group. In 2011, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with Adjusted Gross Incomes (AGI) below $34,823) accounted for 11.55 percent of total AGI. This group of taxpayers paid approximately $30 billion in taxes, or 2.89 percent of all income taxes in 2011. In contrast, the top 50 percent of taxpayers (those with AGIs above $34,823) accounted for 88.5 percent of total AGI. The top 50 percent of taxpayers paid $1.01 trillion in income taxes, or 97.1 percent of all income taxes in 2011.
In 2011, the top 10 percent of taxpayers (with AGIs above $120,000) accounted for 45.4 percent of all AGI and 68.3 percent of all income taxes paid. Taxpayers in the top 5 percent accounted for 33.9 percent of all AGI and 56.5 percent of all income taxes paid. The top 1 percent of all taxpayers accounted for 18.7 percent of all AGI and 35.1 percent of all income taxes paid.
Economy Improved, Pushing Incomes and Taxes Paid for all Income Groups Higher, Except for Those in the Top 0.1 Percent
The improving economy added about 1.6 million new filers, from 135 million in 2010 to 136.6 million in 2011. This alone tended to spread the tax burden, as many of these new filers also paid taxes. As well, incomes and taxes paid increased for all income groups except those in the top 0.1 percent (taxpayers making $1,717,675 or more). (See Tables 3 and 4.) Income increased only slightly for the top 1 percent and remains below the levels seen in 2005 through 2008. Likewise, taxes paid for the top 1 percent remains significantly lower than the peak year of 2007. As a result, the income and tax shares for the top percentiles, including the top 1 and 2 percent, fell in 2011.
Average Tax Rate Increased for All Groups and Remained Essentially Flat for the Top 0.1 Percent
Higher AGIs pushed taxpayers into higher tax brackets, resulting in higher average income tax rates for most income groups (Table 8). The average tax rate for the bottom 50 percent of taxpayer increased from 2.37 percent in 2010 to 3.13 percent in 2011, but still remains lower than the average of 3.4 percent since 2001. This increase in tax rate is likely due to the expiration of the Making Work Pay tax credit. The top 50 percent’s average income tax rate increased from 13.05 percent to 13.76 percent.
The average tax rate for taxpayers in the top 1 percent also increased from 23.4 percent to 23.5 percent—the highest average tax rate of any income group. However, the average tax rate for the top 0.1 percent remained essentially flat, changing from 22.84 in 2010 to 22.82 percent in 2011.
For all taxpayers, the average tax rate increased from 11.81 percent to 12.54 percent.
N.J. Democrats want to restrict background, credit checks during hiring process
Democrats look to make the private sector just like congress
Legislation making it easier for people with criminal histories or poor credit to find jobs passed an Assembly committee Monday.
Under one bill, an employer could not ask about an applicant’s criminal history until after the candidate has received a conditional job offer. Only then could the employer conduct a background check or ask whether the person had ever been arrested or convicted of a crime. If the person does have a record, the legislation also restricts what types of crime can warrant an employer rescinding the job offer.
Another bill bars employers from conducting credit checks on current or prospective employees, although it makes exceptions for certain jobs related to finance, management or security.
Both bills passed the Assembly Labor Committee along party lines. While Democrats argued the measures would help people get a leg up, business groups and Republicans said the requirements would bury companies in paperwork and open them up to lawsuits. (Linhorst/The Record)
