Important July 4th Commuter information : Bus Route 163 – Detour in Ridgewood
June 27, 2012
On Wednesday, July 4th from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., Paramus Road and Ridgewood Avenue in Ridgewood will be closed from Paramus Road and Grove Street to the Ridgewood Bus Terminal due to a parade and festival. During this time, Bus Route No. 163 will operate on a detour.
Buses traveling toward Ridgewood will travel from Paramus Road and Grove Street, make a left at Grove Street, right on Prospect Street, right on Dayton Street. Customers will board and discharge at the church across from the terminal.
Buses traveling toward New York will travel from the Ridgewood Terminal , continue on Dayton Street, make a right on Maple Avenue, left on Prospect Street, left on Grove Street, right on Paramus Road and proceed on the regular route.
We regret any inconvenience this may cause. For further information, please call NJ TRANSIT at 1 (973) 275-5555.
Obamacare’s 21 Hidden New Taxes on the Middle Class
Posted 06/28/2012 07:02 PM ET
Taxation: The high bench has confirmed that ObamaCare’s individual mandate is a massive tax on the American middle class. But let’s not forget the 20 other new taxes that are embedded in the law.
Though President Obama never sold it as a tax hike, the Supreme Court ruled the mandate is exactly that. Unfortunately, the majority argued it’s legal under Congress’ taxing authority.
Forcing citizens to buy health insurance “is absolutely not a tax increase,” Obama insisted in 2009. Earlier, he assured the public that raising taxes on the middle class to support his health care plan was “the last thing we need in an economy like this.” “Folks are already having a tough enough time,” Obama added.
• A 3.8% surtax on investment income from capital gains and dividends that applies to single filers earning more than $200,000 and married couples filing jointly earning more than $250,000.
• A $50,000 excise tax on charitable hospitals that fail to meet new “community health assessment needs,” “financial assistance” and other rules set by the Health and Human Services Dept. ( Valley Should Love this)
• A $24 billion tax on the paper industry to control a pollutant known as black liquor.
• A $2.3 billion-a-year tax on drug companies.
• A 10% excise tax on indoor tanning salons.
• An $87 billion hike in Medicare payroll taxes for employees, as well as the self-employed.
Romney: ‘If We Want to Get Rid of Obamacare, We’re Going to Have to Replace President Obama’
12:15 PM, JUN 28, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney reacted to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision by saying that, “if we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.”
“Let’s make clear that we understand what the Court did and did not do,” Romney said today, speaking in Washington, D.C. “What the Court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution. What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it’s good policy.”
Romney added: “Obamacare was bad policy yesterday. It’s bad policy today. Obamacare was bad law yesterday. It’s bad law today.”
This presidential election is “a choice,” Romney said. “You can choose whether you want to have a larger and larger government, more and more intrusive in your life—separating you and your doctor—whether you’re comfortable with more deficits, higher debt that we pass onto the coming generations. Whether you’re willing to have the government put in place a plan that potentially causes you to lose the insurance that you like or whether instead you want to return to a time when the American people will have their own choice in healthcare. Where consumers will be able to make their choices as to what kind of health insurance they want.”
Holder Voted in Contempt of Congress
June 28,2012
the staff of the Riodgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ , The House today cited Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. for contempt of Congress It does little to break the stalemate over his decision to withhold documents over the Justice Department’s actions in a botched gun-walking operation ,called ‘Fast and Furious”
The 256-67 vote amounted to a political spanking for Mr. Holder and President Obama, 17 Democrats joined Republicans in demanding the documents be released. It also marks the first time an attorney general has been held in contempt by a chamber.
Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses
On the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare, taxpayers are reminded that the President’s healthcare law is one of the largest tax increases in American history.
Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses. On Thursday, Americans for Tax Reform will do a full analysis of the tax implications of the Court’s decision.
Arranged by their respective effective dates, below is the total list of all $500 billion-plus in tax hikes (over the next ten years) in Obamacare, where to find them in the bill, and how much your taxes are scheduled to go up as of today:
Fraud Ring In Hacking Attack On 60 European Banks Some 60m euro is stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber raid, after fraudsters raid dozens of banks around the world.
By Pete Norman, Sky News Online
Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world.
According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an “insider level of understanding”.
“The fraudsters’ objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research – Operation High Roller,” the report said.
“If all of the attempted fraud campaigns were as successful as the Netherlands example we describe in this report, the total attempted fraud could be as high as 2bn euro (£1.6bn).”
A2168 is back up for a vote in the full Assembly on Monday, June 25 at 1 PM. This so-named “New Jersey Residential Foreclosure Transformation Act” had been previously pulled due to lack of Democratic votes. Its companion, S1566, is also up for a vote in the full Senate at 12:30 PM. If passed in both, it’s onto the Governor. By now, you know what to do to kill this largest state land grab in history, its growing negative results, upside risk, and a huge, fiscal cost even defined by the Office of Legislative Services as “indeterminate”.
It’s Back for a Vote :The Foreclosure Transformation Act or “Neighborhood Destruction Act” ,that your neighborhood in Ridgewood
June 25,2012
by NJ Tea Party Coalition
Ridgewood NJ , The Foreclosure Transformation Act or “Neighborhood Destruction Act” threatens all homeowners in New Jersey with massive wealth destruction. The essence of the Act is that the State needs to sell bonds, create a new bureaucracy, buy homes out of foreclosure and convert or sell them to people who will use them for low-income housing, rehab centers or other social welfare purposes which destroy the character of their neighborhoods they are in. The stated goals of reducing the supply of homes for sale and supporting home prices will fail on both counts.
The uses for these converted properties, as contemplated by this Act, are simply not considered desirable by neighbors even if they are considered otherwise socially beneficial. Location matters and prices reflect that reality. When you put homeless shelters or rehab centers next door homeowners will prefer an abandoned foreclosure every time, because that house will ultimately be bought by someone and recover its value. With this Act and its 30-year deed restriction on converted housing, you will cause the value of all properties to crash, and then to stay down. What happens next is even worse — current homeowners will rush to sell their homes before the value goes to zero. It will be a fire sale environment, as this Act will achieve precisely what it purports to prevent – an oversupply of homes on the market, sharply reduced demand among homebuyers, and a massive housing price drop.
The solution to the so-called lack of affordable housing is to foster a climate where people feel comfortable buying and keeping their homes, it is not to create affordable housing by destroying the value of everyone else’s homes. The solution is to remove all price supports. Prospective buyers know that prices will eventually drop when the supports end, and they won’t buy until that time. There will be a temporary and perhaps sharp price drop, but then prices will recover as demand finally rises at various price points to meet the supply. You fix the housing market by recognizing that a price drop is inevitable, not by trying to prevent the inevitable.
Sizing up Penn State’s liability in abuse scandal
By Andrew Longstreth
NEW YORK | Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:37am EDT
(Reuters) – The was loaded with details of the child sex abuse a jury has now convicted the one-time Penn State assistant football coach of carrying out over 15 years, but it revealed little about the university’s potential liability in the scandal.
That is likely to change in a related prosecution of two former university officials: athletic director Tim Curley and finance official Gary Schultz.
Both have been charged with perjury and failing to alert authorities to one act of sexual abuse by Sandusky in a scandal that tarnished Pennsylvania State University’s name and led to the firing of its president and its head football coach, the late Joe Paterno.
“Their trial will be much more an indictment of Penn State,” said Max Kennerly, a Philadelphia lawyer who is not involved in the case.
Unlike the 2,000-Death Count in Iraq, ABC, NBC, PBS, MSNBC Skip 2,000 Marker in Afghanistan
By Tim Graham | June 21, 2012 | 17:45
On June 13, the CBS Evening News devoted a story by David Martin to the Afghanistan death count reaching 2,000, as Martin interviewed a mother of a fallen Marine. CBS was alone. There was no story last week on the Afghanistan death “milestone” on ABC, NBC, the PBS NewsHour – or even on the MSNBC programs found in Nexis, including Rachel “Our Military’s In a Perilous Drift” Maddow.
But the networks were all more aggressive when the 2,000 mark arrived in Iraq on October 25, 2005. The Big Three networks devoted 14 morning and evening news stories to the death toll from October 24 through the end of October, and another 24 anchor briefs or mentions. They used the number to spell “disaster for this White House.”
Five Devastating Effects Obamacare Will Have on Young Adults
In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision, it is important to remember that the constitutionality of the law’s individual mandate isn’t the only concern. Obamacare will also negatively impact many younger Americans. Here’s a list of five ways young adults will be hurt by the law:
Premium increases. Obamacare imposes age-rating rules that increase premiums for young adults. As Heritage research shows, under Obamacare, young adults will pay artificially high premiums, and older adults will pay artificially low premiums.
Loss of coverage. Obamacare puts in place new rules that prohibit plans with annual limits. While limited health plans may not be a long-term solution, some coverage is still better than none. Several colleges across the country have already stopped offering low-cost plans to students because of the new regulations.
Government takeover of student loans. Obamacare ends government subsidies to private lenders and puts the federal government in charge of originating and servicing federally backed student loans. As almost anyone is eligible for a student loan, Heritage’s Lindsey Burke explains that “these policies only exacerbate the college cost crisis, continuing a vicious cycle whereby college costs rise in tandem with ever-increasing federal subsidies.”
Less money for education. Obamacare’s massive expansion of Medicaid, which will add almost 20 million more Americans to the program, will be difficult to sustain on already strained state budgets. As states are forced to redirect a growing portion of their budgets to Medicaid, less funding will be available for other state priorities, such as education.
Crushing fiscal burden. Younger generations will be left footing the bill for Obamacare and its irresponsible spending. Despite his many lofty promises, President Obama’s law does not reduce health insurance premiums, spending, or the deficit. The latest cost estimate for Obamacare’s insurance provisions is $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, which still doesn’t include a full decade of spending, since the most expensive provisions don’t begin until 2014.
Obamacare’s negative impact on young Americans is just one of many reasons the law should be repealed.
Sorry we missed it , Happy Birthday Lou Gehrig June 19, 1903
Of all the players in baseball history, none possessed as much talent and humility as Lou Gehrig. His accomplishments on the field made him an authentic American hero, and his tragic early death made him a legend.
Even his critics will admit that by all accounts President Obama is a very attentive father
The History of Father’s Day
In June of every year, we honor fathers. The first Mother’s Day was celebrated in 1914, but a holiday honoring fathers did not become official until 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson declared that the third Sunday in June would be Father’s Day. President Richard Nixon made this proclamation permanent in 1972. But this doesn’t mean that the holiday was not celebrated before this time.
The idea for Father’s Day is attributed to Sonora Dodd, who was raised by her father after her mother’s death during childbirth. While listening to a sermon at church on Mother’s Day, she thought about all her father had done for her and her siblings and decided fathers should have a day, too. Because Dodd’s father was born in June, she encouraged churches in her area, Spokane, Wash., to honor fathers that month. The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane in 1910.
Over the years, the idea spread, and people lobbied Congress to establish the holiday. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson, who had signed a proclamation establishing Mother’s Day, approved the idea, but never signed a proclamation for it. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”
Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Native American’ claims: if she was a Republican, the media would call her a racist
By Tim Stanley US politics Last updated: June 14th, 201
Imagine if a Republican candidate claimed, confidently, that she was part Native American. Imagine if she had actually used that identity to have herself listed as a minority at Harvard, qualifying her for special treatment and celebration as proof of how diverse and progressive her department is. Imagine if, many years later, it turned out that her claims to Native heritage were dubious and, when pressed for proof, she offered her “high cheekbones.” Oh, and she once contributed a recipe to a Native American cookbook called “Pow Wow Chow” (that may even have been plagiarised).
Chances are, that Republican candidate would be hounded night and day by the press, branded a racist and probably be winding down her political career. Right now, she’d be sitting by the phone, praying for a call from the producers of Celebrity Apprentice (gotta pay the mortgage on that wigwam somehow).
The incredible thing is that all this has happened to a Democratic senatorial candidate called Elizabeth Warren. And not only has she been given a pass by her party, which normally treats race with the respect it deserves, but also by the mainstream media. Last night she was chatting with Chris Matthews on MSNBC and Matthews failed to mention the scandal once. If there’s any one reason why Democrats and liberals aren’t showing the expected anger about this, it’s because their section of the media has declined to discuss it.
Ridgewood Village Council authorizes another water rate increase
June 15,2912
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewod NJ, Ridgewood’s Village Council on Wednesday authorized a 2 percent rate increase for Ridgewood Water customers, boosting the total hike for this year to 5 percent. Ridgewood Water will now bill its customers in the Village of Ridgewood , Glen Rock, Midland Park and Wyckoff at a rate of $4.42 per 1,000 gallons ,up from the $4.33 per 1,000 gallons assessed since January 2012.
Village Manager Ken Gabbert. told the Ridgewood News that the new rate will go into effect “as rapidly as the billing company can process, anticipate within two weeks,”
Ridgewood officials continue maintain that the village utility’s rates are comparable and even cheaper than charges assessed by other water companies. According to Gabbert only Park Ridge and Hawthorne charge its customers at a rate less than Ridgewood and that operations in those towns are far smaller than Ridgewood’s distribution.
Ramsey Water Company charges a far higher rate for borough residents at $4.95 per 1,000 gallons for consumption more than 6,000 gallons. Ramsey Water provides service to Allendale, Mahwah and Upper Saddle River, charging residents in those towns $5.45 per 1,000 gallons for any use exceeding 6,000 gallons. United Water Resources , one of the largest water service providers in the country, charges its customers $5.30 per 1,000 gallons, according to the comparison chart provided by village officials.
According to Councilman Paul Aronsoh ,”Despite the increase, Ridgewood Water rates remain among the lowest in the state,” Resident of the Village do not feel so blessed , with skepticism over water quality growing and regular summer water restrictions reminding many of living in a third world country.One would wonder who long the Village will continue to play this charade trying to maintain a water utility it is ill equipped to run and unable to make the proper investments in ,the time seems long past for the Village to get out of the water business.
In the last three years, Ridgewood Water has raised its rates to its customers a shocking total of 31 percent. The increases between 2009 and 2011 are now the focus of the class-action lawsuit filed last year by Hackensack-based attorney Joseph Fiorenzo on behalf of Glen Rock, Midland Park and Wyckoff residents.
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