George Soros :Germany’s Resistance May Prove ‘Fatal’ to Europe
Published: Monday, 25 Jun 2012 | 12:38 AM ET Text Size
By: Jean Chua
Writer for CNBC.com
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has so far rebuffed all proposals to help relieve Spain and Italy from the jump in their borrowing costs and has resisted allowing the European Central Bank (ECB) to step up buying of peripheral sovereign debt. That poses a threat to the region’s stability, Soros said in an editorial in the Financial Times on Monday.
“This threatens to turn the June (28) summit into a fiasco which may well prove fatal because it will leave the rest of the euro zone without a strong enough firewall to protect it against the possibility of a Greek exit,” Soros wrote.
GRAND OPENING: Red Mango of Ridgewood Sat, June 30, 2012
Time: 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Red Mango of Ridgewood,
43 E. Ridgewood Ave.
(201) 857-5151
www.redmangousa.com
Just in time for the hot summer days!
Frozen yogurt and smoothies
Ribbon cutting at 1:00pm
Free t-shirts to the first 150 people in the door
Free frisbees and balloons for the kids
Registration and drawing for an iPad3
Sweet inspiration.
You don’t see red mangoes often in stores – but once you’ve tasted one, you’ll never settle for anything less. Mangoes only turn red when they reach the peak of ripeness. That’s when they are the most delicious, and nutritious. Our name, Red Mango, is a symbol of our commitment to using only the best all-natural ingredients for our frozen yogurt, smoothies and parfaits.
Many, many spoons ago.
You know that frozen yogurt mania sweeping the nation? Yeah, we started it. We opened our first Red Mango over 5 years ago. Today, there are over 180 locations nationwide and yes, every spoonful is still as good as the first.
Zagat ranked us #1. Twice.
Not just in one category, but two: “Best Smoothie/Frozen Yogurt” and “Top Healthy Options within the Quick Refreshments Chains” for 2011. How cool is that?
Ridgewood NJ, Mrs. Maria Bombace, a Ridgewood resident and Blue Star mom and the American Legion, Ridgewood wants to invite you to a meeting to be held on Saturday, June 30th at the firehouse located at Maple Ave and E. Glen Ave. ( the recycle center ) at 9 a.m. We will discuss an event that takes place on the last Sunday of September every year.
This Sunday has been designated as Gold Star Mothers day by Presidntial Proclamation. We want to encourage the community to display a luminary on the evening of Sunday, Setember 30th 2012. We need volunteers to help us in this endeavor.
We have 30 potential Gold Star Mothers in our community and we need to support them and their families as their sons and daughters are carrying out their duties to keep us safe and secure. Please join us at the firehouse at 9 a.m on Saturday, June 30th for more detailed information.
June 26th BUDGET HEARING on 2012 Introduced Village of Ridgewood Budget
The Village of Ridgewood is pleased to present the introduced 2012 Municipal Budget. A Public Hearing has been scheduled to solicit comment on the 2012 budget on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 7PM in the Village Hall Court Room, 131 N. Maple Avenue, Ridgewood.
Click Here : https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/finance/2012MDSVOR.pdf for the state-submitted budget document. This document is also available at the Ridgewood Public Library. A summary of the budget will be printed in the June 8, 2012 Ridgewood News.
Posting Views on Facebook as gratifying as Sex and Food
June 25.2012
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The gratification given by a person’s brain when their Facebook post is viewed, liked and commented on has proven to be comparable in pleasure to the response from food and sex, according to a recent Harvard University study.
According to the Harvard research study published last month in an edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study found that social media outlets give way to an increased rate of “self-disclosure.” The increase in “self-disclosure” leads to a spike in the amount of dopamine produced based on the pleasure or anticipation of a reward as a result of a social-media post being viewed, according to the research.
The research study, which never directly sites Facebook directly , discovered “that humans so willingly self-disclose because doing so represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way as with primary rewards such as food and sex.”
Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell of Harvard’s Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab studied how people would react when given the choice between a small cash reward for answering factual questions and a lesser reward for giving their own views and opinions on a subject. According to the study, a majority of the participants decided they’d rather talk about themselves.
“Just as monkeys are willing to forgo juicy rewards to view dominant groupmates and college students are willing to give up money to view attractive members of the opposite sex, our participants were willing to forgo money to think and talk about themselves,” the researchers wrote.
Mahwah Police asked anyone with information about the man to call them ASAP at 201-529-1000
Mahwah Police are requesting the public’s help identifying a naked man they found
June 25,2012
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Mahwah Police are requesting the public’s help identifying a man found naked in a wooded area off Route 202 and 17 south on Sunday.
Police responded to a 911 call and found the man wondering, and covered in mud around noon in the woods near the Route 17 southbound ramp.
The man claimed to not have any recollection of who he was ,his name, where he was or where he came from.He was taken to Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus for evaluation.The Bergen record is reporting that there were no signs of head trauma or injuries that could account for his memory loss.
Mahwah Police officers searched the area and found some clothes that could possibly belonged to the man, but no identification or information as to the mans identity. Mahwah Police asked anyone with information about the man to call them ASAP at 201-529-1000.
N.J. Assembly to vote to reduce marijuana penalties
The state Assembly today plans to vote on a bill that would reduce penalties for being caught with less than half an ounce of marijuana, making it akin to getting a traffic ticket.
Gov. Chris Christie, however, said on Friday he would veto the bill.
The measure (A1465), which has bipartisan support, would replace criminal penalties with fines for those caught with fewer than 15 grams of marijuana — or enough for more than 30 joints. (Friedman, The Star-Ledger)
More than 46 million Americans continue to live in poverty despite unprecedented federal welfare spending, the study finds.
Study: More Than Half a Trillion Dollars Spent on Welfare – But Poverty Levels Unaffected
“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable … rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.”
By Matt Cover
June 25, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – The government is not making much headway reducing poverty despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a study by the libertarian Cato Institute.
Despite an unprecedented increase in federal anti-poverty spending the national poverty rate has not declined, it finds.
“[S]ince President Obama took office, federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year.” the study says.
Federal welfare spending this year now totals $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains stubbornly high at nearly 15 percent – roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.
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.
Budget or No Budget NJ still faces fiscal crisis next spring
If the Legislature approves the proposed $31.7 billion FY13 budget and the tax cut that Gov. Chris Christie is demanding, New Jersey will face a built-in $2.5 billion hole in the following year’s FY14 budget – a gap almost twice as large as the combined increase in income, sales, and corporate taxes that Christie is projecting for the year ahead, a NJ Spotlight analysis shows.
Even if the Democratic-controlled Legislature decides next year that the state cannot afford the controversial tax cut, the state would still need to come up with $2 billion in revenue growth in Fiscal Year 2014 just to cover the required increases in pension costs, transportation borrowing and already-approved business tax cuts, and the more than $1 billion in one-shot revenues built into the Fiscal Year 2013 budget. (Magyar, NJ Spotlight)
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.
Congratulations again to the RHS class of 2012
June 24,2012
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ , This past Thursday, June 21, a whole new crop of graduation seniors where launched into adulthood. A procession of 393 Ridgewood High School seniors made the walk from the turret, down the walkway and onto the Ridgewood High School Stadium field to receive their diplomas in the 117th annual RHS graduation ceremony.
According to the Ridgewood BOE website 87.6 % or 339 students will attend a four-year university, and 7.7 % or 30 students will go on to a two-year college.With one student going to trade school, two who joined the US armed forces and 8 graduates will take a year off. Of those attending college 73.1 % or 291 students will go to schools out of state down slightly from last year and only 21.6 percent ,86 students will remain in state , with Bergen Community College in Paramus receiving the largest percentage of graduates with 18 .
When it comes to public school spending, New Jersey’s average of $16,841 per pupil in 2010 ranked it second to the top among states, the U. S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.
The average of $18,618 in New York and $18,667 in Washington, D.C., exceeded New Jersey’s per-pupil spending. All nine states in the Northeast region were ranked among the top 15 in spending in 2010.
In arguing for a new tenure bill and weaker seniority rules, Governor Christie has long argued that money alone does not bring achievement, and that billions poured into the state’s poorest city schools have not brought adequate results. Many educators counter that New Jersey’s schools, in the aggregate, are among the highest-performing in the country, even though there are pockets of chronically troubled schools with dismal test scores and low graduation rates. (Brody, The Record)
Democrats defy Christie by delaying tax cut in $31.7 billion budget
Defying Governor Christie’s veto threats, Senate Democrats took the first steps to approve a $31.7 billion budget that does not include an immediate tax cut and to impose a new millionaire’s tax in order to increase property tax credits for senior citizens and low-to-middle-income homeowners.
The Senate Budget Committee voted 8-5 along party lines to approve the budget bill, which sets aside $183 million in a special property tax relief fund that would be used to enable an additional property tax cut next April, but only if the Christie administration is on track to meeting its projected revenue growth of 7.2 percent, said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen). (Magyar, NJ Spotlight)
Fewer Than Half Now Say Their Home Is Worth More Than What They Paid for It
Friday, June 22, 2012
For the second survey in a row, fewer than half of U.S. homeowners believe their home is worth more than when they bought it.
Forty-eight percent (48%) of homeowners now say their home is worth more now than when they bought it, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s just below April’s finding of 49%, the first time that figure dipped below 50% in over two years of regular surveying. By comparison, in October 2011, 62% reported that their home was worth more than when they bought it, and in June 2008, 80% thought their home was worth more than when they bought it.
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