>Gov. Chris Christie pushes powerful NJEA teachers union into corner
Some of the state’s more powerful leaders have privately complained for years about the power of the state’s teachers union. Yet virtually none would voice those issues in public or even respond to reporters’ questions. (Method, Asbury Park Press)
Gov. Chris Christie pits teachers against one another with wage freeze offer
When the Hackettstown School District presented its $28.5 million 2010-11 budget April 1, the document lacked 18 full-time positions — seven of them classroom teachers — who are working this year. (Novak, Express Times)
The Hackensack Green – Corner of Main and Court Streets, Hackensack, NJ
Please call the Governor’s office today and insist that New Jersey join the 18 other States (so far) that are filing lawsuits against the Federal Government declaring the Health Care reform unconstitutional.
Believe it or not, the Governor still can’t decide whether or not to join in the lawsuit!
Call the Governor at 609-292-6000. If you are more comfortable faxing a written letter, you can fax your remarks to 609-292-3454. Get your family and friends to do so as well.
A new brochure provides residents and the public with general information about the Village Council and their meeting schedule. It explains the procedure for addressing the Council at meetings. It provides contact information for elected officials. Click Here for more information.
the History of the Ridgewood blog Monday, October 26, 2009
The Ridgewood blog ( https://theridgewoodblog.blogspot.com/ ) was founded in March of 2006 by James J Foytlin aka PJ Blogger .[1] Mr. Foytlin was born and raised in Ridgewood ,New Jersey and is a graduate of Ridgewood High School .[2] [3]
After many years living in New York City[4] Mr Foytlin returned to Ridgewood after a divorce and the tragic events of 9/11 . Once he settled in he noticed a lack of sufficient news coverage of local events . One day a friend from Brazil[5] showed him her home town on the internet and to Mr. Foytlin’s great surprise when he tried to reciprocate he was utterly dismayed at the absolute lack of coverage of his home town. After all Ridgewood is only 18 miles from midtown Manhattan[6] the media capital of world and there was not a single picture of Ridgewood to be found . How could this be? Ridgewood is a picturesque upper middle class village of around 25,000 located in Bergen county in northern New Jersey[7] . Founded by Dutch settlers before it became an English colony[8] . The town or village as its called is steeped in rich history and tradition .Known for a large amount of Victorian era housing , a quality school system and a family friendly atmosphere.
Though busy getting reacquainted with his home town the fact that the Village of Ridgewood was so under represented on the internet continued to disturb Mr. Foytlin. Mr. Foytlin had been writing news letters for his job in financial services since the mid 1990’s . The popular flip, off beat investment strategy news letters had become email blasts with the advent of readily accessible internet.[9] By 2004 the email blasts were converted into blog format for the One Small Voice blog ( https://onesmallvoice.blogspot.com/ ). [10]
Around that time the Village of Ridgewood had finally completed it’s much anticipated and long delayed renovation of the Village hall which has been flooded out due to Hurricane Floyd.[11] The renovation was marred by huge cost over runs and lengthy delays. In 2005 it opened with great fan fare , was once again flooded with the very first rain . Mr. Foytlin was more shocked by the abject lack of responsibility taken by elected officials than the fact that the $9 million dollar renovation had to some extent been a failure . That was the breaking point and Mr. Foytlin had had enough so he decided to give , citizen journalism a go and created the Ridgewood blog in March of 2006. [12]
The birth of PJ Blogger .By this time Blogging its seems had become quite the rage and mainstream news anchors such as Dan Rather had questioned the validity of information from non professionals sitting around in their Pajama’s blogging.[13] Mr. Foytlin not a fan of Dan Rather or any of the mainstream media decided to blog under the name PJ Blogger as a play on words and to plant himself firmly in the camp of the new digital media.
Innovations by the Ridgewood blog to citizen journalism.
“The Fly” is a column on the Ridgewood blog the originates from the expression ,”I’d like to be a fly on the wall “ . The idea is that every citizen has both a unique perspective and experience and these two factors can be used to gather news and opinions about local issues. Originally only of handful of people in town participated but with time the Ridgewood blog can now count on 20–40 semi regular contributors. These post are both anonymous and signed and are largely opinion as well a breaking news.[14]
The Ridgewood blog brings a free market lassie fare point of view to local issues . Mr. Foytlin aka PJ Blogger has stated that for local issues there are only two kinds of people ;the ones who say spend what every you want because I will not be around to pay the bill and the second group which are more focused on the ,”be careful this is my money your spending” . The Ridgewood blog is dedicated to the interplay of there two groups.[15]
[1][12] the Ridgewood blog website https://theridgewoodblog.blogspot.com/ [2] Birth Certificate born in Valley Hospital , Ridgewood 04/09/1962 [3] Ridgewood High School Class 1980 [4] 444 East 86th street ,530 East 72nd [5] Monica Rocha [6] Mapquest [7] United States 2000 Census, the village population was 24,936. [8] https://www.americantowns.com/nj/ridgewood/organization/village-of-ridgewood [9] Fahnestock & Co. now Oppenheimer & Co. [10] https://onesmallvoice.blogspot.com/ [11] https://www.ridgewoodlibrary.org/localhistory/lh_vh_pease.htm [13] https://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110005611 [14] [15] James J Foytlin
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie might have to sharpen his budget ax. A nonpartisan projection of the state’s revenue outlook shows tax collections could be slightly weaker than the governor’s office anticipated. The Office of Legislative Service is presenting the analysis to the Assembly Budget Committee on Wednesday. (Delli Santi, AP) https://www.app.com/article/20100407/NEWS03/100407045/1007/NJ-revenue-outlook-bleak
>Higher Taxes – Lower Tax Revenue – The Laffer Curve
In economics, the Laffer curve is a theoretical representation of the relationship between government revenue raised by taxation and all possible rates of taxation. It is used to illustrate the concept of Taxable Income Elasticity (that taxable income will change in response to changes in the rate of taxation). The curve is constructed by thought experiment. First, the amount of tax revenue raised at the extreme tax rates of 0% and 100% is considered. It is clear that a 0% tax rate raises no revenue, but the Laffer curve hypothesis is that a 100% tax rate will also generate no revenue because at such a rate there is no longer any incentive for a rational taxpayer to earn any income, thus the revenue raised will be 100% of nothing. If both a 0% rate and 100% rate of taxation generate no revenue, it follows that there must exist a rate in between where tax revenue would be a maximum . The Laffer curve is typically represented as a stylized graph which starts at 0% tax, zero revenue, rises to a maximum rate of revenue raised at an intermediate rate of taxation and then falls again to zero revenue at a 100% tax rate.
One potential result of the Laffer curve is that increasing tax rates beyond a certain point will become counterproductive for raising further tax revenue because of diminishing returns. A hypothetical Laffer curve for any given economy can only be estimated and such estimates are sometimes controversial. The Laffer curve is associated with supply side economics, where its use in debates over rates of taxation has also been controversial.
>April 6, 2010 8:15 AM PDT Court: FCC has no power to regulate Net neutrality by Declan McCullagh https://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html?tag=mncol;title
The Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to slap Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously tossed out the FCC’s August 2008 cease and desist order against Comcast, which had taken measures to slow BitTorrent transfers and had voluntarily ended them earlier that year.
Because the FCC “has failed to tie its assertion” of regulatory authority to any actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the authority to regulate an Internet provider’s network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Tuesday’s decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat. Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of Net neutrality rules–even though Congress has not given the agency permission to begin. (Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg has said that new regulations would stifle innovative technologies like telemedicine.)
Even though liberal advocacy groups had urged the FCC to take action against Comcast, the agency’s vote to proceed was a narrow 3-2, with the dissenting commissioners predicting at the time that it would not hold up in court. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, said at the time that the FCC’s ruling was unlawful and the lack of legal authority “is sure to doom this order on appeal.”
Net neutrality proponents responded on Tuesday by saying the FCC should slap landline-style regulations on Internet providers, which could involve price regulation, service quality controls, and technological mandates. The agency “should immediately start a proceeding bringing Internet access service back under some common carrier regulation,” Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn said. The Media Access Project said, without mentioning common carrier regulations directly, that the FCC must have the “ability to protect the rights of Internet users to access lawful content and services of their choice.”
The ruling also is likely to shift the debate to whether Congress will choose to explicitly grant the FCC the authority to regulate companies’ network management practices. It will also likely revive lobbying coalitions that have been defunct for the last few years.
In 2006, Congress rejected five bills, backed by groups including Google, Amazon.com, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, that would have handed the FCC the power to police Net neutrality violations. Even though the Democrats have enjoyed a majority on Capitol Hill since 2007, the political leadership has shown little interest in resuscitating those proposals.
“We must decide whether the Federal Communications Commission has authority to regulate an Internet service provider’s network management practices,” Tatel wrote in his 36-page opinion. “The Commission may exercise this ‘ancillary’ authority only if it demonstrates that its action–here barring Comcast from interfering with its customers’ use of peer-to-peer networking applications–is ‘reasonably ancillary to the…effective performance of its statutorily mandated responsibilities.'”
In August 2005, the FCC adopted a set of principles saying “consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice.” But the principles also permit providers’ “reasonable network management” and, confusingly, the FCC admitted on the day of their adoption that the guidelines “are not enforceable.”
The FCC’s 2008 vote to punish Comcast stems from a request from Free Press and its political allies, including some Yale, Harvard, and Stanford law school faculty.
This is not the first time that the FCC has been rebuked for enacting regulations without any actual legal authority to do so. In 2005, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled the agency did not have the authority to draft its so-called broadcast flag rule. And a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania ruled in the Janet Jackson nipple exposure incident that the FCC’s sanctions against CBS–which publishes CNET News–amounted to an “arbitrary and capricious change of policy.” Update at 9:15 a.m. PDT: History and more details added.
CNET’s Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report https://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html?tag=mncol;title
>There is a difference between EARNING money and living off someone else’s money. We all need to live within our means. We are not yet a socialist country, but a lot of good Americans are starting to talk like socialists.
If you have 4 kids then you should have a plan to send them to college. Stop applying to private schools and then complaining that the financial aid is not enough. There are a lot of good state schools that a person can go to. Live within your means and send them to one. I pay full freight so that your kids can get a “package”.
I have a family that I take care of and I should not be asked to support yours. The state has no business trying to level the playing field. They will destroy incentives to work hard.
James Simpson, the new commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation, inherits plenty of problems as he takes over the sprawling agency. The state Transportation Trust Fund is running dry. The condition of New Jersey’s crowded highways is the worst in the nation, according to federal data. NJ Transit ridership is down and fares are slated to increase 25 percent. The state’s toll collectors recently drew unwanted attention for hundreds of complaints by motorists about nasty behavior. (Nussbaum, Inquirer)
>Examining IRS tax return data by state, E.J. McMahon, a fiscal expert at the Manhattan Institute, measured the impact of large income-tax rate increases on the rich ($200,000 income or more) in Connecticut, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 5% from 4.5%; in New Jersey, which raised its rate in 2004 to 8.97% from 6.35%; and in New York, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 7.7% from 6.85%. Over the period 2002-2005, in each of these states the “soak the rich” tax hike was followed by a significant reduction in the number of rich people paying taxes in these states relative to the national average. Amazingly, these three states ranked 46th, 49th and 50th among all states in the percentage increase in wealthy tax filers in the years after they tried to soak the rich.
This result was all the more remarkable given that these were years when the stock market boomed and Wall Street gains were in the trillions of dollars. Examining data from a 2008 Princeton study on the New Jersey tax hike on the wealthy, we found that there were 4,000 missing half-millionaires in New Jersey after that tax took effect. New Jersey now has one of the largest budget deficits in the nation.
However, history hasn’t stopped the anti-Christie crowd from demanding the restoration of the “millionaire surcharge” on individuals earning $400,000 or more annually. I’ll be generous and attribute it to short memories. If they got their way, more business owners, investors, and other high-end taxpayers will quit the fight and head for the state line. New Jersey would experience another collapse in its revenue base and, ironically, school aid reductions for the following fiscal year would assuredly prove even more dramatic than what’s currently on the table. An utter and complete disaster of epic proportions! blog.savejersey.com/2010/04/06/remember-how-we-got-here.aspx
>I have news for the average taxpayer. Section 9002 of the healthcare bill requires your employer to add the cost of your medical insurance premiums to the gross income reported on your W2. In plain english what this is is a huge tax increase.
For example if your employers pays $5,000 per year for your medical insurance you will see a $5,000 increase in your gross income. If your income is subject to 25% taxes which is about average you will pay an extra $1,250 per year in federal income taxes.
How do you feel about a tax increase of this magnitude? How do you feel about the fact that this was not disclosed to you? Are you going to vote for the people who caused this to happen? Do you think change is in order?
>If your looking to run ads or get in touch with the Ridgewood Blog please send all correspondence to [email protected]
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