Tag: Ridgewood Schools

>EDITORIAL: At the president’s pleasure

‘Safe school czar’ encouraged child sex with an older man

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/28/at-the-presidents-pleasure/

A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an “older man.” At the very least, statutory rape occurred. Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse. That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama’s “safe school czar.” It’s getting hard to keep track of all of this president’s problematic appointments. Clearly, the process for vetting White House employees has broken down.

In this one case in which Mr. Jennings had a real chance to protect a young boy from a sexual predator, he not only failed to do what the law required but actually encouraged the relationship.

According to Mr. Jennings’ own description in a new audiotape discovered by Fox News, the 15-year-old boy met the “older man” in a “bus station bathroom” and was taken to the older man’s home that night. When some details about the case became public, Mr. Jennings threatened to sue another teacher who called his failure to report the statutory rape “unethical.” Mr. Jennings’ defenders asserted that there was no evidence that he was aware the student had sex with the older man.

However, the new audiotape contradicts this claim. In 2000, Mr. Jennings gave a talk to the Iowa chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an advocacy group that promotes homosexuality in schools. On the tape, Mr. Jennings recollected that he told the student to make sure “to use a condom” when he was with the older man. That he actively encouraged the relationship is reinforced by Mr. Jennings’ own description in his 1994 book, “One Teacher in 10.” In that account, the teacher boasts how he allayed the student’s concerns about the relationship to such a degree that the 15-year-old “left my office with a smile on his face that I would see every time I saw him on the campus for the next two years, until he graduated.”

Mr. Jennings’ denials about these events reveal a lack of remorse. He has not admitted that he made mistakes in this case, and he now refuses to answer any questions about the scandal. Don’t forget, this is a presidential appointee we’re talking about. Mr. Obama should make clear what his standards are for public servants serving at the pleasure of the president. Encouraging and covering up man-boy sexual activity are serious offenses. The White House should force Mr. Jennings to come clean.

Mr. Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools and about his utter contempt for religion that render him unsuitable for a prestigious White House appointment. His job in the Obama administration is to ensure student safety, and this scandal directly calls into question his ability to perform that job. Mr. Jennings and Obama administration officials refuse to answer any questions about this newly discovered evidence. A lot of Americans want answers about this guy and how he was approved for a job in the White House.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/28/at-the-presidents-pleasure/

>Monday, September 28, 2009

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform

Just 41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform proposed by
President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down two points from a week ago and the lowest level of support yet measured.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% are opposed to the plan.

Senior citizens are less supportive of the plan than younger voters. In the latest survey, just 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed. The intensity gap among seniors is significant. Only 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed.

For the first time ever, a slight plurality of voters now express doubt that the legislation will become law this year. Forty-six percent (46%) say passage is likely while 47% say it is not. Those figures include 18% who say passage is Very Likely and 15% who say it is Not at All Likely. Sixty percent (60%) are less certain.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Democrats say the plan is at least somewhat likely to become law. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans disagree. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 34% say passage is at least somewhat likely while 58% say it is not.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform

>By Stephen Dinan

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/28/liberals-seek-health-care-access-for-illegals/

Fearful that they’re losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.

The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party’s spines on the contentious issue, say it’s unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they’ve been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.

“Legal permanent residents should be able to purchase their plans, and they should also be eligible for subsidies if they need it. Undocumented, if they can afford it, should be able to buy their own private plans. It keeps them out of the emergency room,” said Rep. Michael M. Honda, California Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Mr. Honda was joined by more than 20 of his colleagues in two letters laying out the demands.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/28/liberals-seek-health-care-access-for-illegals/

>Part Time Bus Driver
On September 1st, the Village of Ridgewood will start a new Senior Citizen Bus Service. The 11 seat bus (with a lift) will operate on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30AM to 2:30PM. We will need 2 part time drivers. Each driver must have a NJ Driver’s License and a CDL with passenger endorsement. The hourly rate is $17.50

Please Call 201-670-5500 x204 for further details.

Chief Financial Officer
Village of Ridgewood, Bergen County, position available January 1, 2010. Population 24,936, Council – Manager Faulkner Act Plan B, Budget $42.1 Million, Water Utility, Parking Utility. Department consists of Division of Budget and Accounts, Division of Treasury and Division of Collections. State certification as CMFO required; State certification as Tax Collector and QPA is desired. Responsibilities include the contrl of the financial resources of the Village, coordinating and synthesizing f …more

Supervisor – Water Distribution
Reports to & coordinates with the General Supervisor on all Distribution System matters.
EXAMPLES OF WORK:Reviews daily and weekly work assignments with General Supervisor.
– Assigns daily work to Distribution System Maintenance Crews.
– Assigns vehicles, equipment, and inventory stock.
– Monitors hourly progress of Maintenance Crews.
– Periodically monitors job site conditions.
– Oversees safe working conditions and procedures of Maintenance Crews.
– Reviews/corrects …more

https://www.ridgewoodnj.net/EmploymentOp.cfm

>Haley Tyrell is a 5th grade student at Travell School. She has been diagnosed with bone cancer and is currently receiving chemotherapy at Sloan- Kettering in NYC. She is in need of blood and platelets.

Haley’s Story
It started with some pain in my groin during the last week of August. Everyone thought I pulled a muscle, but when the pain didn’t get better my mom called the pediatrician. They sent me to Valley Hospital for a couple of x-rays. The x-rays came back good but they told me to take it easy because I probably pulled a muscle in my groin and to follow up with my orthopedic. This was on Aug. 31st. It was a bummer because on the last day of summer I couldn’t play with my friends. I started 5th grade on Sept. 2nd and that afternoon I went to the orthopedic who checked my leg, confirmed that the x-ray looked good and told me if I wasn’t feeling 100% better in 2 weeks to come back. So, over Labor Day weekend my family and I were at my grandparents lake house in Inlet, NY (Adirondacks). On Saturday Sept. 5th I tripped and fell . My leg was in excruciating pain and I was unable to move. I was taken by ambulance to a hospital 85 miles away in Utica, NY. Every bump we hit along the way made me want to scream. X-rays were taken and showed that I broke my femur bone. I was then transferred by ambulance (4 1/2 hours) to West Chester Medical Center because I needed better care. When I got there on Sunday morning they immediately put my leg in traction. The next day I had a CAT scan and then off to surgery to have a plate put in my leg to fix my broken femur. During the operation they found a tumor in my bone and sent it out for a biopsy. In the meantime I was having other tests done(blood work, bone scans, MRI’s, etc.) On the evening of Sept. 9th the doctors told my parents that the results of my biopsy weren’t good. So, on Thursday, Sept. 10th I took another ambulance ride to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center whereI had many more tests done. After the tests were completed Dr. Meyers and his team explained to us that I had a form of bone cancer called Osteosarcoma. The good news was that the other tests showed that the cancer was localized in my femur and had not spread to any other parts of my body. I start my treatment on Tuesday, Sept. 15th.

Love,
Haley

HALEY TYRELL Needs Blood & Platelets

Haley is currently a patient at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Her treatment for Osteosarcoma requires regular blood and platelet transfusions.

Haley and her family would deeply appreciate your donation of blood and/or platelets and hopes you will ask others you know to donate. Donations not used by Haley will be released for use by other patients many of whom are children.

Designated donations for Haley Tyrell must be made in the Blood Donor Room of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Please visit www.mskcc.org/blooddonations for complete information about donor eligibility and the donation process for blood or platelets.

For answers to questions and to schedule an appointment that is convenient for you please CALL:
Joe Licata @ 212-639-8177
Manager, Blood Donor Program
[email protected]
or
The Blood Donor Room – 212-639-7648

Appointments are necessary- All blood types are acceptable

>

hi- thought all of you would like to see pictures of last nights Ridgewood Car Show. There was a great turn out. Lots of cars, street,rod,custom; music and people enjoying downtown.

P. Goodman

>The Board of Education (BOE) has announced the acceptance of a $2.1 million in grant from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The money will be used toward special education tuition, special programs and new technology purchases..

The grants enable the district to reallocate $580,000 from special education tuition costs in the 2010 budget toward the purchase of items such as three new buses, software and other supplies.

The Ridgewood School district currently has 815 special needs students.

the Ridgewood blog Staff

>Next Month the Ridgewood blog conducts its “best Pizza Poll”

keep sending in your recommendations …..

Pizza Patrol: Bergen County again
the Star-Ledger
By Peter J. Genovese
September 24, 2009, 8:27PM

https://www.nj.com/entertainment/dining/index.ssf/2009/09/pizza_patrol_bergen_county_aga.html
Renato’s (36 S. Maple Ave., Ridgewood; 201-652-3554) makes a modest claim: “New Jersey’s best pizza.’’ The sausage pie is ordinary; the plain features an abundance of cheese, fortunately of the tasty variety. “There was a coup of cheese that kicked out the ruling tomato party,’’ said an apolitical Windrem.

Marty Schneider and Joan Dwyer fans of the grandma pie. “It’s a Metropolitan Opera pie — it sings to me,’’ Schneider said. But others were not so impressed with the drippy pie; good luck keeping the tomatoes moored.

On to the heralded A Mano (24 Franklin Ave., Ridgewood; 201-493-2000), “born from the idea of bringing authentic pizza Napoletana to the USA,” according to the menu. The wood-burning ovens are maintained at a “blistering’’ 1,000 degrees. The A mano pizza — with buffalo mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, prosciutto di parma, arugula and shaved grand cru cheese — divided our pizza jury. Wiener called it “a flavor blast,’’ while Windrem described the too complicated pie as one “best suited for Edward Scissorhands.’’

But the margherita is a winner. Wiener described the tomatoes as “awesome,’’ and Dwyer went the heavy metal route, calling it her “rockin’ like Dokken’’ pie. Bruno admired the “creamy’’ but maintained Queen Margherita in Nutley does this pie better.

https://www.nj.com/entertainment/dining/index.ssf/2009/09/pizza_patrol_bergen_county_aga.html

>Ensign receives handwritten confirmation

This doesn’t happen often enough.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.

Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it “Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold.”

https://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Ensign_receives_handwritten_confirmation_.html?showall

>I believe that modern progagandists for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), like former Ridgewood resident James Hanson, are, at heart, anti-human race. What they are truly interested in is global population control. They care little about the average temperature of the earth, or about CO2 levels in the atmosphere in particular, so much as they care about reducing, eliminating, or reversing the growth of human population on earth.

Every human problem pales before that of overpoplulation, in their view. It has become their life-long obsession.

In citing apparently elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere that they claim cannot be otherwise explained, they believe that they are asserting “smoking gun” evidence of a human “fingerprint” on the earth. Having found this, they labored long and hard to figure out a way to use it to their advantage. Eventually seizing on the arguably ‘thin reed’ argument that CO2 in its gaseous form is bad because it contributes to so-called global warming, they pound away at the lectern, demanding that countries worldwide do what is necessary to do to reduce, eliminate, or reverse the growth of gaseous CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

On the surface of their public argument, they dwell on what they consider to be necessary changes to the global economic world order to achieve at least some measurable impact on CO2 levels (i.e., as compared to what would otherwise have been expected absent such CO2 mitigation efforts). But deep down inside, they know full well that in order to achieve this goal, human population growth on earth will need to be arrested completely, if not reversed.

Hence the near panic-style rhetoric used. They need to get us into such a frenzy about the state of our surroundings and the apparent human impact thereon as to cause us to rein in the most basic human urge–the urge to reproduce. I would not be surprised to learn that every individual currently occupying a leadership role in fomenting a public panic about so-called Anthropogenic Global Warming is a dyed-in-the-wool population control fanatic (much like our current science Czar, and prominent proponent of the ‘science’ of Eugenics, John Holdren), and has been for decades.

>CBO Testimony Echoes Insurers’ Claims About Cuts to Medicare Advantage Program
Thursday, September 24, 2009
By Matt Cover

https://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=54515

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (AP Photo) (CNSNews.com) – Insurance giant Humana, in a letter to members of its Medicare Advantage plans, says the Obama administration’s health care overhaul would cause sweeping cuts in benefits and services for those in the Medicare Advantage program. The director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said something similar when he testified before Congress earlier this week.

The health care bill currently under review in the Senate Finance Committee reportedly would cut payments to Medicare Advantage by more than $100 billion over 10 years. According to CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf, in testimony on Tuesday, those cuts and other changes “would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.”

In its letter to members of Medicare Advantage, Humana said that the proposed health care overhaul included “billions in Medicare Advantage funding cuts,” and that “if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable.”

https://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=54515

>The Other Public Option
September 24, 2009

In 1993, Congressional Democrats worked with newly sworn-in President Bill Clinton to create the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program, a student loan public option meant to compete with private student loan issuers. “We are not taking a free enterprise system and federalizing it,” then-Deputy Education Secretary Madeleine Kunin said. “We are…improving the entrepreneurial and competitive possibilities.” Sound familiar?

Fast forward sixteen years and the new Congressional majority is again working with a newly installed President on a public option, this time a public option for health care insurance. President Obama’s chief ally in the Senate, Dick Durbin, said on Meet The Press last Sunday that this public option is a way to make sure there’s competition for these private health insurance companies. The President himself has said that the public option will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest.

The student loan public option should serve as a cautionary and instructional tale for Congress and the American people as we continue to discuss ways to reform the health care system. Right now, over 80% of student loans issues are federally guaranteed – about two-thirds of those are issued through private lenders, while the remaining third are secured directly through the public option. Though both public lenders and federally guaranteed private lenders offer relatively similar interest rates and payment plans, more than twice as many students and parents choose private options because of universities’ preference and superior customer service.

On Thursday, the House passed a bill (H.R. 3221) that will, if signed into law, eliminate private loans with federal guarantees, replacing such loans entirely with the government’s Direct Loan program – in other words, removing the optionality of the public option – at a cost of $1 trillion over the next ten years. In addition to crowding private capital out of the industry, this bill gives the public student loan programs advantages the private sector will be unable to match. For example, the bill gives federal loans a variable interest rate when rates are on the decline and a cap when rates go back up. The plan also locks in low fixed-interest rates on certain loans. Once the Federal Reserve’s spending spree results in unavoidable inflation, the Treasury will likely be paying to lend this money. All of these provisions lead to an unsustainable plan described by the Wall Street Journal as a kind of heads-borrowers-win, tails-taxpayers-lose offer [that] will be difficult for a private company to match.

Since 1965, private loans carrying a federal guarantee have been the most common means of borrowing to finance a college education. It took less than two decades for the public option to crowd out private student loan providers, leaving students, parents, and universities with an “option” that they have rejected by a two-to-one margin.

The idea that government can compete with private health insurance – while setting its own rules for competition – and remain optional defies both history and basic economic principles. I support real health care reform that is portable, affordable, sustainable, effective, and innovative. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this issue with my office at 202-225-4465.

Sincerely,

Scott Garrett
Member of Congress

>and you still have no problem with Obama Addressing School Children ?

Hitler youth camp