The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
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Ridgewood NJ, The state of Oregon has eliminated requirements that students demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing and math before graduating high school, and an overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want such a policy in their schools.
file photo by Boyd Loving
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Ridgewood NJ, even the liberal fact-checking site Politifact admits that one of the three female Black Lives Matter co-founders have declared that she and another co-founder “are trained Marxists.” But they quickly add that “the movement has grown and broadened dramatically” since then. Many youths in upper middle class Ridgewood bought into this group with parental encouragement hook line and sinker .
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Ridgewood NJ, oil price surged to $75 a barrel this week under Biden’s green energy policies. The price was as low as $35 a barrel under President Trump, because Trump promoted a policy of more oil meant lower prices at the pump. This was effectively a massive multi-billion dollar tax cut for lower and middle incomes.
Continue reading Big Oil Loves Green Energy Policies
photo by Boyd Loving
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Ridgewood NJ, the stock market had been predicting that the Biden Administration would call for a 28% capital gains tax, so when the word came out last week that he wants a 43% capital gains tax, it triggered a stock sell off. A share of stock is simply worth its after-tax and after-inflation rate of return, so a higher capital gains tax (combined with and a higher corporate tax) translates into lower stock values, by definition.
Continue reading Biden Administration Declares War on Capital
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Trenton NJ, Senator Declan O’Scanlon pointed to the Murphy Administration’s dismal COVID case and hospitalization prediction record and called on the Governor to cease making predictions that prove to be consistently, wildly pessimistic.
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Newark NJ, Governor Phil Murphy this morning unveiled what he described as the most significant “gun violence prevention package in the history of the nation.”
Continue reading Governor Phil Murphy “Gun Violence Prevention” Fail
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Trenton NJ, apparently the media is caught in another big lie , after weeks of non stop hyperbolic propaganda about supposed “pro-trump protests ” at the states capitol, all is quiet .
A heavy police presence guarded Trenton’s downtown , with state troopers wearing body shields stationed inside and outside of the Statehouse with Department of Corrections buses parked nearby.
Police, community leaders and many others spent the last week or so preparing for possible protests, as the “FBI warned” of possible assaults on all state capitols nationwide.
Aside from law enforcement a clueless cadre of reporters and photographers assembled to document the “planned protest”.
The fact is there was no plan by pro-Trump supporters to march on capitol buildings nationwide, the whole thing was and is media hype. Anyone could have Googled it or looked it up on Facebook.
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Trenton NJ. New Jersey Republican Chairman Doug Steinhardt called out Governor Phil Murphy once again on his comments to Florida representative Mat Gaetz :
Continue reading GOP Chairman Calls Out Governor Murphy on “knucklehead” Tweet
If you are close to a young person caught in the grips of a dangerous ideology, you may feel a moral responsibility to show that young person a way out. Here are some tips based on experience teaching young adults and research into the subject.
First, resist the temptation to reason. It is not an inability to reason that leads people to these positions. They are motivated instead by deep, often latent psychological drives, such as the desire to belong or be part of what has been portrayed as an important crusade.
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Albany NY, Governor Andrew Cuomo made at the end of his daily COVID-19 press briefing on Thursday ruffled so many feathers. Saying chicken wings do not count as “food”. The lowest level of substantive food is “sandwiches”. Soup is mentioned as real food, and chicken wings are not.
Continue reading NY Governor Cuomo says “Let them eat sandwiches”
“We’ve imbibed so much fear-mongering propaganda, and done so in such a docile, unquestioning manner, that we have suffered psychological damage. Six months of psyops has produced a great deal of mental and emotional scar tissue. We’ve impaired our ability to think, not only as individuals, but also collectively at every level–local, county, state, as a country, and as a species (globally). Groupthink is putting us in a deeper and deeper rut of stupid every day now. The bad decisions we are making now will have untoward ramifications for years or even decades unless sanity somehow re-emerges and is allowed to prevail. The problem is, intelligence will be mistakenly perceived by the deranged mob as intransigence, and the people who express it attacked and “canceled”.
The dynamic of Groupthink is now kicking into higher gear. Demented minds are collectively producing poorer and poorer decisions. If we don’t soon get a hold of ourselves as a society, the edifice of reasoned self-government we’ve been building for the past few centuries here on this side of the Atlantic will continue to weaken. It might even collapse.”
“The thing that scares me more than the high number of imbeciles in this country who wake up one morning and feel like they don’t like a statue or a word or parts of history and decide to start a war through social media or in the street is the lack of law and order. Police can barely defend a statue or a public institution being attacked by a bunch of kids, most of the time the small crowds have no problem toppling anything they want, nobody gets punished in the name of law after causing damage to public property, politicians inciting hate against institutions, police being seen as the enemy, schools changing long held names, corporations changing product names overnight, the opposition by either politicians or population against the extreme ideas and actions is very weak or non existent, people are scared to voice opposition because the slightest disapproval in social media will surely get them fired from work and ruin their lives. The level of madness is incredible and most of it is triggered by the extreme hate toward their own president. I immigrated here more than 25 yrs ago from Europe to the land of the free. I wish I never did. There is no difference between the persecution during communism in eastern Europe and what’s happening here. In fact here it is much worse because your life can instantly get ruined by the wrong post on social media. Your colleagues and “friends” can instantly hate you with no mercy you for the “wrong” opinion or expression. Terrible and tragic.”
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Ridgewood NJ, New Jersey officials are warning the state’s students about the “Skull Breaker Challenge” on TikTok.The challenge involves two people tripping a third person as he or she jumps in the air, causing the person in the middle to fall hard on the ground. A student from Cherry Hill Middle School in Westfield was hospitalized last week from the challenge.
N.J. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Bracken
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Ridgewood NJ, N.J. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Bracken pointed out facts on Phil Murphy’s catastrophic budget . In making this proposal, the Governor said there is no proof New Jersey’s highest bracket taxpayers are leaving the state. The study by Wealth X in 2019 showed very clearly that more than 5,000 residents with net worth over $1 million had fled New York and New Jersey in 2018.
N.J. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Bracken’s Statement on Governor Murphy’s Budget Address :
