Author: James

Visit Santa and Take Trolley Ride
Chamber of Commerce

Saturday December 15th and 22nd, 2012 *12Noon-4pm Santa @ his house in Memorial Park @ Van Neste Park *12Noon-4pm FREE Trolley rides for the entire family *same hours For Holiday shopping and dining, the Village of Ridgewood is giving … FREE PARKING ON SATURDAYS’ from Thanksgiving until Christmas November 24, 2012 – December 22, 2012. Enjoy Ridgewood! For more details, call 201-445-2600 www.experienceridgewood.com info@ridgewoodchamber facebook.com

Tony Bennett Bookends This Friday

Tony Bennett Bookends This Friday, November 23rd @ 4:00pm
Seventeen-time Grammy Winner, Tony Bennett, will sign his new book: Life is a Gift Books available November 20th. We Take Phone Orders if you can’t make the event!

Appearing authors will only autograph books purchased at Bookends and must have valid Bookends Receipt.Availability & pricing for all autographed books subject to change. Bookends cannot guarantee that the books that are Autographed will always be First Printings. Autographed books purchased at Bookends are non-returnable.

While we try to insure that all customers coming to Bookends’ signings will meet authors and get their books signed, we cannot guarantee that all attendees will meet the author or that all books will be signed.  We cannot control inclement weather, author travel schedules or authors who leave prematurely.

Bookends, 211 E. Ridgewood Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ   07450   201-445-0726

Race to the top returns, this time for school districts

Twenty-one New Jersey school districts are among more than 370 nationwide to apply for $400 million in federal Race to the Top funds, as the sweeping and sometimes controversial competition goes local with a push into specific instruction models and technology.

Due last week, the applications came from a wide range of districts in New Jersey, from Newark and Paterson to three different consortia of suburban districts. Winners will be announced by the end of the year. (Mooney/NJSpotlight)

https://www.njspotlight.com/stories/12/11/21/race-to-the-top-returns-this-time-for-school-districts/

Winterfest Horse Drawn Hay Rides and Music December 8th and December 15th
Sponsored by Ridgewood Guild

This fun filled event created by The Ridgewood Guild has been enjoyed by people of all ages and is becoming a Ridgewood tradition! We are very excited to have The Ridgewood Symphony return for the second year, along with many more musical groups. For the third year, we will have our horse drawn hay ride, complimentary hot chocolate provided by Chestnut Deli, and ice sculpting for the kids. Our holiday elves will be on hand with free candy canes and a handout offering specials throughout town. So stop by to help celebrate the season and support our downtown by taking part in our third annual Winterfest!

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Recognizes Valley’s Intensive Care Units with Beacon Awards for Excellence

November 19, 2012 – The Valley Hospital is proud to announce that all four adult critical care units – Intensive Care, Coronary Care, Cardiac Surgery, and Intermediate Care – have once again received the Beacon Award for Excellence.

The Beacon Award for Excellence — a significant milestone on the path to exceptional patient care and a healthy work environment — recognizes unit caregivers who successfully improve patient outcomes and align practices with AACN’s six standards for a healthy work environment. Units that achieve this three-year designation meet national criteria consistent with Magnet Recognition, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the National Quality Healthcare Award.

AACN President Kathryn E. Roberts, RN, MSN, CNS, CCRN, CCNS, applauds the commitment of the caregivers at the four adult critical care units at The Valley Hospital for working together to meet and exceed the high standards set forth by the Beacon Award for Excellence.

“The Beacon Award for Excellence recognizes caregivers in stellar units whose consistent and systematic approach to evidence-based care optimizes patient outcomes.  Units that receive this national recognition serve as a role model to others on their journey to excellent patient and family care,” she explained.

About the Beacon Award for Excellence: Established in 2003, the Beacon Award for Excellence offers a road map to help guide exceptional care through improved outcomes and greater overall patient satisfaction. U.S. or Canadian units where patients receive their principal nursing care after hospital admission qualify for this excellence award.  Units that receive the Beacon Award for Excellence meet criteria in six categories: leadership structures and systems; appropriate staffing and staff engagement; effective communication, knowledge management, learning and development and best practices; evidence-based practice and processes; and patient outcomes.  To learn more, visit www.aacn.org/beacon or call (800) 899-2226.

About the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses: Founded in 1969 and based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) is the largest specialty nursing organization in the world. AACN joins together the interests of more than

500,000 acute and critical care nurses and claims more than 240 chapters worldwide.  The organization’s vision is to create a healthcare system driven by the needs of patients and their families in which acute and critical care nurses make their optimal contribution.  To learn more about AACN, visit www.aacn.org, connect with the organization on Facebook at www.facebook.com/aacnface or follow AACN on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aacnme.

President Obama, Clinton Prosperity Requires Clinton-Sized Government

There is a way for Congressional Republicans to reach an accord with Democrats that would enable the nation to avoid falling off “the fiscal cliff” into a searing recession.

Obama Democrats argue that the President only wants to restore the top rates that reigned during the Clinton presidency, which was a prosperous time. We should say: Absolutely, let’s do it. But in order to achieve a Clinton economy, you also must enact the other Clinton policies critical to the prosperity of those years: They include:

The oppressive  ObamaCare of that time was HillaryCare, which was never enacted. If we want to re-create the Clinton economy, then we have to repeal ObamaCare. Are Democrats willing to do that?

The federal-regulation regime was also much easier then than it is now. Will the White House become serious about genuine deregulation?

II. Clinton-era Federal Spending Levels

Federal spending as a proportion of the economy was smaller in those days. That would mean budget cuts now of around $500 billion – not spread over ten years, but right now. How likely is that?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2012/11/20/president-obama-clinton-prosperity-requires-clinton-sized-government/

Democrats push to redeploy Obama’s voter database
By Craig Timberg and Amy Gardner, Updated: Tuesday, November 20, 7:22 AM

If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you. His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection.

And though the election is over, Obama’s database is just getting started.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/democrats-push-to-redeploy-obamas-voter-database/2012/11/20/d14793a4-2e83-11e2-89d4-040c9330702a_story.html

Senate bill rewrite lets feds read your e-mail without warrants

Proposed law scheduled for a vote next week originally increased Americans’ e-mail privacy. Then law enforcement complained. Now it increases government access to e-mail and other digital files.

Declan McCullagh
by Declan McCullagh
November 20, 2012 4:00 AM PS

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans’ e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans’ e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Leahy’s rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans’ e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge. (CNET obtained the revised draft from a source involved in the negotiations with Leahy.)

It’s an abrupt departure from Leahy’s earlier approach, which required police to obtain a search warrant backed by probable cause before they could read the contents of e-mail or other communications. The Vermont Democrat boasted last year that his bill “provides enhanced privacy protections for American consumers by… requiring that the government obtain a search warrant.”

https://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-rewrite-lets-feds-read-your-e-mail-without-warrants/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

Is Disgraced Former Governor Jim Mc Greevey making a Political comeback?

A tipster said Jim McGreevey is telling people he’s interested in running for U.S. Senate, but the former governor denied it.
“It’s not zero — it’s negative on my meter in life,” McGreevey said. (NJBIZ)

https://www.njbiz.com/article/20121119/NJBIZ01/121119876/Grapevine:-A-McGreevey-comeback?

Governor’s Office – After Registering with FEMA then Letter from FEMA Starts Process

LETTER FROM FEMA IS THE STARTING POINT

The Governor’s Office has provided the following important information.

After registering with FEMA, disaster survivors receive a letter from FEMA concerning the status of their application. The letter is a starting point about whether or not the applicant will receive disaster assistance.

Applicants should read the letter carefully. Even if the letter says that you are ineligible, the reason might simply be that you have not provided all the information or documentation required. It does not necessarily mean “case closed.” When applicable, the letter explains what additional information is needed or how to appeal a decision that you do not qualify for assistance.

Ask for help if you don’t understand the letter. Call the helpline at 800-621-FEMA (3362) or TTY 800¬-462¬-7585 or visit a Disaster Recovery Center where you can talk with a FEMA representative about your particular situation. To find the nearest center, log on to www.fema.gov/drclocator. You may not have qualified for financial help right away, but that decision may change if you submit additional documents. Some of the reasons for an initial ineligible decision can be that you:

* Have not submitted a settlement or denial determination from your insurance company.

* Did not provide FEMA with all the information needed to process your application.

* Have not provided proof of ownership or occupancy.

* Did not provide records that showed the damaged property was your primary residence at the time of the disaster.

* Did not sign essential documents.

FEMA can never duplicate assistance from insurance or other government sources, but FEMA may be able to cover some of your uninsured losses. Providing the requested information or taking the required actions outlined in the letter might change FEMA’s determination. The letter also explains how to appeal a determination. Appeals must be filed within 60 days of the date of the ineligible decision.

Remember: the letter from FEMA is a starting point. You should:

* Read the letter carefully.

* Ask questions and ask for help.

* Tell FEMA if you think the decision is incorrect. You have the right to ask FEMA to reconsider the decision.

Republican governors hold keys to Obamacare

Why ObamaCare Is Still No Sure Thing

The majority of state governors are Republicans, and they have the power to disarm the health-care law
November 20 ,2012
Capretta and Levin

Champions of ObamaCare want Americans to believe that the president’s re-election ended the battle over the law. It did no such thing. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act won’t be fully repealed while Barack Obama is in office, but the administration is heavily dependent on the states for its implementation.

Republicans will hold 30 governorships starting in January, and at last week’s meeting of the Republican Governors Association they made it clear that they remain highly critical of the health law. Some Republican governors-including incoming RGA Chairman Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Ohio’s John Kasich, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Maine’s Paul LePage-have already said they won’t do the federal government’s bidding. Several Democratic governors, including Missouri’s Jay Nixon and West Virginia’s Earl Ray Tomblin, have also expressed serious concerns.

Talk of the law’s inevitability is intended to pressure these governors into implementing it on the administration’s behalf. But states still have two key choices to make that together will put them in the driver’s seat: whether to create state health-insurance exchanges, and whether to expand Medicaid. They should say “no” to both.

At its core, ObamaCare is a massive entitlement expansion. Between vastly increased Medicaid eligibility and new premium subsidies, it is expected to bring 30 million more people onto the federal government’s entitlement rolls. The law anticipates that the states will take on the burden of implementing the expansions, but states can opt out of both.

Running the exchanges would be an administrative nightmare for states, requiring a complicated set of rules, mandates, databases and interfaces to establish eligibility, funnel subsidies, and facilitate purchases. All of this would have to take place under broad and often incoherent statutory requirements and federal regulations that have yet to be written.

They are on opposite sides of ObamaCare, but President Obama and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal met in September in LaPlace, La., for a briefing regarding Hurricane Isaac.

The exchanges would create unsustainable pressures on each state’s insurance market, treating similarly situated people differently by providing far greater subsidies for those in the exchanges than those in employer plans-yielding perverse incentives that distort consumer and employer decisions and increase costs.

States would endure all this simply to become functionaries of the federal government. The idea that creating state exchanges would give states control over their insurance markets is a fantasy. The states would be enforcing a federal law and federal regulations, with very little room for independent judgment.

Governors know this. A group of them has already indicated that they will not build the exchanges, and several more seemed ready to opt out as the administration’s deadline for state decisions approached on Nov. 16. Predictably, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to head them off by extending the deadline to Dec. 14. She will try to use the extra month to twist governors’ arms. They should resist.

By declining to build exchanges, the states would pass the burden and costs of the exchanges to the administration that sought this law. And it is far from clear that the administration could operate the exchanges on its own.

Congress didn’t allocate money for administering federal exchanges, and the law as written seems to prohibit federally run exchanges from providing subsidies to individuals. The administration insists that it can provide those subsidies anyway. But if the courts read the plain words of the statute, then federal exchanges couldn’t really function.

Thus states that refuse to create their own exchanges would effectively be repealing a large part of the law-sparing their citizens from the job-killing employer mandate and from assaults on their religious liberty. In some cases people would even be spared from the individual mandate to buy coverage, since in the absence of exchange subsidies more families would qualify for exemptions from the mandate.

The Medicaid expansion, meanwhile, would throw millions of additional Americans into a system that is already bankrupting state governments and increasing costs in the private-insurance market. Medicaid’s payments for services are so low that many existing beneficiaries have trouble finding physicians and other health-care providers who will accept them as patients. Enrolling more people without reform will push the system to the point of collapse.

In refusing the Medicaid expansion, governors should notify Washington that doing so means freeing themselves of ObamaCare’s “Maintenance of Effort” requirements. These would prohibit states participating in the Medicaid expansion from reforming their Medicaid systems to reduce costs.

Instead of following the Obama administration’s plan, states should seek real reform. For example, they should demand that Washington transform the federal portion of Medicaid for non-disabled and non-elderly beneficiaries into a uniform block grant, with state discretion over eligibility and benefits. The goal should be to turn Medicaid into a premium-assistance program rather than government-run insurance. Medicaid could then be used to help people enroll in mainstream insurance plans. This is the way to help the low-income uninsured get the same kind of coverage as other Americans.

President Obama won re-election and Democrats maintained control of the Senate this month, but the states hold the future of ObamaCare in their hands. Knowing the harm the law would do to their citizens, to the economy and to American health care, governors should refuse to become its enablers.

Mr. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Levin is a fellow at the EPPC and editor of National Affairs.

Call/ Contact Governor Christie and tell him to say NO to creating state health-insurance exchanges and to expand Medicaid.
He should say “no” to both.
Office of the Governor
PO Box 001
Trenton, NJ 08625
609-292-6000 OR

https://www.state.nj.us/governor/contact/

GLEE Star Chris Colfer at Bookends Tonight

GLEE Star Chris Colfer at Bookends Tuesday, November 20th @ 7:00pm.
The New York Times Bestselling Author and Star of GLEE will sign his new book: Struck by  Lightning. Books available Nov. 20th.  We Take Phone Orders if you can’t make the event!

Appearing authors will only autograph books purchased at Bookends and must have valid Bookends Receipt.Availability & pricing for all autographed books subject to change.Bookends cannot guarantee that the books that are Autographed will always be First Printings.Autographed books purchased at Bookends are non-returnable.

While we try to insure that all customers coming to Bookends’ signings will meet authors and get their books signed, we cannot guarantee that all attendees will meet the author or that all books will be signed.  We cannot control inclement weather, author travel schedules or authors who leave prematurely.

Bookends, 211 E. Ridgewood Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ   07450   201-445-0726