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Millennials aren’t listening to you. That’s a good thing.

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Generation Independent

Millennials aren’t listening to you. That’s a good thing.

Nick Gillespie & Emily Ekins from the October 2014 issue

There was a moment at the 2013 Grammy Awards that captured how millennials are different than Gen Xers and baby boomers, and what it all means for the future of America. After the traditional parade of side-boob-flashing songstresses and tonsorially wackadoo manchildren allegedly flouting convention in utterly predictable ways, the hipster band fun. (whose name is uncapitalized and over-punctuated) was honored with a richly deserved statuette for the catchy generational anthem “We Are Young.”

The song broke big after being featured on the hit series Glee, itself a touchstone of the millennial generation, roughly defined as those born between the beginning of the 1980s and the early ’00s. Glee is set in the sort of high school unimaginable to Americans raised on older coming-of-age fare such asHappy Days, Rock and Roll High School, or even the ultra-G-rated Saved by the Bell. OnGlee, even (especially!) the football players sing in a music club that features a paraplegic guitarist, a Down Syndrome cheerleader, and a lesbian Latina, an ensemble that would have been a punchline just a few decades ago. (As recently as 1983, U.S. Interior Secretary James Watt made headlines for joking that an advisory panel he appointed consisted of “a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple,” a comment that led to his resignation.)

fun.’s “We Are Young” is a smart variation on that enduring theme of pop music, the booty call. “We are young,” croons the singer to a lost or near-lost love, “So let’s set the world on fire/We can burn brighter/than the sun.” But then comes the generational twist: After vaguely alluding to “scarring” his lover through some unspecified failure, the protagonist sings: “If by the time the bar closes/And you feel like falling down/I’ll carry you home./I know that I’m not/All that you got.”

What matter of musical strangeness is this, actually acknowledging that your drunken, staggering bedmate could do better than you? “We Are Young” is a song in which the singer is a decent human being and penitent lover, an emotional designated driver rather than the standard-issue letch that has dominated the charts from your grandparents’ “Baby It’s Cold Outside” to your parents’ “Under My Thumb” to the entire hair-metal genre of the ’80s.

The 2013 Grammys, in contrast, were a millennial coming-out party for a different kind of POV. The post-racial, post-ethnic, post-American, post-heteronormative, post-everythinglikes of Rihanna and Bruno Mars and Frank Ocean and Janelle Monae and Skrillex took center stage, and the winningly metrosexual fun. took home top honors for its kinder, gentler love song.

Then came the real intergenerational shocker­, when one of the members of the group thanked his parents for letting him live at home “for a very long time.” Did Mick Jagger even have parents? Would Axl Rose have been able to pronounce the word mother, let alone thank her for letting him couch-surf? You could feel a half-century of rebellious rockers, from Jim Morrison to Joey Ramone, groaning in their graves.

Millennials, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s rich, are different than you and me. For one thing, at around 80 million strong, they’re as big as or bigger than the baby boom—and far more populous than both Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980) and the Silent Generation (1929-1945). They are filled with what at first glance looks like contradictions: More Democratic in their voting behavior than previous generations, and yet more politically independent than any cohort in history. Worryingly unafraid of the word socialism, and yet full-bore in favor of the free market.

https://reason.com/archives/2014/08/26/generation-independent

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Ridgewood Back to School Updates : School starts on September 4!

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Ridgewood Back to School Updates : School starts on September 4!


8.26.14: The Back-to-School issue of Newsline is out. Click here to view  the newsletter as a PDF. Please note that this version has the corrected Back-To-School Night schedule.

NEW! 8.26.14: REVISED Back-To-School Night Schedule: Travell School’s Back-To-School Night begins at 6:30 p.m. rather than 6 p.m. The Willard School Back-To-School Night for Grades K-2 has been changed from September 18 to September 23. Please click here  for the newly revised schedule. Please note that this change is an update from that which is printed in the Newsline newsletter sent to Ridgewood homes last week.

8.13.14: Click here to read an opinion piece co-authored by Dr. Fishbein and River Dell Superintendent Patrick Fletcher on unfunded mandates, posted on NJ.com on August 8.

8.05.14: Back-To-School Information: Parents and guardians are asked to update emergency contact information and also are required to review various district policies and grant certain permissions. This Mandatory Annual Online Re-registration process takes place through Skyward Family Access between August 11 and September 12. Detailed instructions will be mailed to homes on or about August 11. For details and links, please click here.

8.12.14: The Ridgewood YWCA offers before and after school programs in the Ridgewood elementary schools. Pleaseclick here for information and registration forms.

 

The next Regular Public Meeting of the Ridgewood Board of Education will be held on Monday, September 8, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. 
 
The public is invited to attend the meeting at the Ed Center, 49 Cottage Place, Floor 3. The meeting will be aired live on FiOS channel 33 and Optimum channel 77. Or it may be viewed live via the district website atwww.ridgewood.k12.nj.us using the “Link in Live” tab.

Click here to view the agenda for the August 25, 2014 Regular Public Meeting.

Click here to view the webcast of the August 25, 2014 Regular Public Meeting.

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FBI Examining Whether Russia Is Tied to JPMorgan Hacking

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FBI Examining Whether Russia Is Tied to JPMorgan Hacking

By Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson  Aug 27, 2014 5:04 PM ET

Russian hackers attacked the U.S. financial system in mid-August, infiltrating and stealing data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and at least one other bank, an incident the FBI is investigating as a possible retaliation for government-sponsored sanctions, according to two people familiar with the probe.

The attack resulted in the loss of gigabytes of sensitive data, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the probe is still preliminary. Authorities are investigating whether recent infiltrations of major European banks using a similar vulnerability are also linked to the attack, one of the people said.

In one case, the hackers used a software flaw known as a zero-day vulnerability in one of the banks’ websites. They then plowed through layers of elaborate security to steal the data, a feat security experts said appeared far beyond the capability of ordinary criminal hackers. The incidents occurred at a low point in relations between Russia and the West. Russian troops continue to mass on the Ukrainian border and the West tightens sanctions aimed at crippling Russian companies, including some of the country’s most important banks.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-27/fbi-said-to-be-probing-whether-russia-tied-to-jpmorgan-hacking.html

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Reader says Don’t blame the State Workers on Pensions

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Reader says Don’t blame the State Workers on Pensions 

NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s pension moves cost taxpayers and retirees billions
Aug 25th 2014 3:05PM

By RYAN GORMAN

Embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie faces another possible scandal – this time for possibly costing tax payers nearly $4 billion after diverting state pension funds to Wall Street firms.

Wall Street mega firms Blackstone, Third Point, Omega Advisors, Elliot Associates and The Carlyle Group have reportedly pocketed $3.8 billion dollars in fees since 2010 at a rate triple what was paid to pension fund managers prior to Christie assuming office.

Christie advisor Robert Grady notably had a long career at The Carlyle Group prior to joining the government, according to the International Business Times.

The switch was made in 2010 to give the state “diversified portfolio and maximize returns while appropriately managing risk,” Grady told the trade publication Institutional Investor in a report headlined “New Jersey ups the ante.”

The Carlyle Group has received $450 million in state pension funds while ranking among the top fee earners on Wall Street, according to state disclosure documents.

All management fees paid to firms by the pension have skyrocketed from only $125.1 million in 2009 to nearly $400 million in 2013, according to the New Jersey State Investment Council, which oversees the pension.

Those higher fees coupled with underperforming assets have left the pension with a benefits gap bigger than the state’s entire education budget.

This while the pension eked out a return of only 11.8 percent last year while similar funds average nearly a full percent higher, according to the IB Times.

Both pension funds used by teachers in California saw returns well over 18 percent in June alone, the Associated Press reported. They had expected returns of only 7.5 percent for the whole year.

New Jersey’s fund is also invested at a rate of just over 25 percent in financial firms, according to the NJSIC, more than double any other sector.

At least one person voted against Christie’s diversion plan, and he told the IB Times this outcome was inevitable.

“All the leading players on the [New Jersey State Investment Council] were from the alternative universe and all of their decisions were driven by a political agenda and an investment ideology which had no relationship to facts on the ground,” said Jim Marketti.

“And the facts were that you simply couldn’t justify these investments on the basis of what they cost in fees to generate a dollar of new returns.”

A New Jersey official defended the moves, saying that the state’s pension has earned a return this year of 15.9 percent.

Similar funds are averaging returns of well over 17 percent, according to the IB Times.

This is just the latest in a series of bizarre scandals for Christie that have included the “Bridgegate” traffic tie-up at the George Washington Bridge, the possible bullying of at least one high-profile mayor (Hoboken’s Dawn Zimmer) over Superstorm Sandy recovery funds and scrutiny of real estate deals around the state.

The questionable quandries have put a dent in his reported presidential ambitions as Christie defends the pension problems by saying they are proof retirement benefits to retirees – earned through decades of service to the Garden State – need to be cut.

There’s no word on whether “The Governor” would also demand fees paid to Wall Street also be cut.

https://www.aol.com/article/2014/08/25/nj-gov-chris-christies-pension-moves-cost-taxpayers-and-retire/20952169/

 

The problem with this article is it fails to mention all the graft of prior administrations , looking to blame only Christie while both Corzine and Mac Creepy ( and most of them since Whitman)  have far worse records managing the state pension funds ,Mac Creepy even hired non wall street totally unqualified advisors to manage money . 

Remember large returns come at a price and you get what you pay for . If they are over charging  well that typical politicians ,but the real issue is simple math , while you cant blame most of the workers for taking the checks , you can blame politicians looking for those union contributions to their political campaigns ,while the taxpayer has no representation  at the bargaining table ,its a very significant conflict of interest. 
The crux of the issues is with all pension systems is that it takes 10 or more  workers paying in to take care of every retiree, but productivity and technology continue to shrink the work force  .Less workers equal less money being paid in . To make up we increase salaries and hire more people than we should .
Thus a lot of unproductive dead wood . The private sector found this out a long time ago with US Steal, Bethlehem Steal and the auto industry .

After a certain point you read the law of diminishing returns  and for the tax base it becomes totally unsustainable ,.

For example in 1900 it took 5000 people to make 1 ton of steal , in 1980 it took 50 , so now the 50 were paying the pensions for 4950 people…ouch .

States like New Jersey are well past the breaking point  ,with companies and taxpayers high tailing it out of here , leaving fewer and fewer people to pick up the tab .

Depending on huge returns on wall street for prolonged periods of time is foolish and very dangerous  as the article points out fees need to be cut , money borrowed needs to be returned with interest,and retirees living out of state need to be taxed on their pension at a higher rate  as well as current state employees need to pay a far
larger share for their benefits.
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Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty

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Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty

By CORAL DAVENPORTAUG. 26, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.

In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.

To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.

“If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters, including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton administration who works closely with the Obama White House on international climate change policy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/us/politics/obama-pursuing-climate-accord-in-lieu-of-treaty.html?_r=0

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The Italian Job: How Borrowing And Printing Lead To An Economic Dead End

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The Italian Job: How Borrowing And Printing Lead To An Economic Dead End

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/21/2014 12:33 -0400

Earlier this week Bloomberg published a devastating chart showing real hourly wage growth for the first 60 months of every cycle going back to 1949.  The 11 cycle average gain was 9% and the largest was 19% a half century back.

Fast forward to the 60 months of ZIRP and QE since the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, however, and you get a drastically different picture: Real hourly wages have risen by just 0.5%, and in the great scheme of things that’s a rounding error.

Surely the above chart is also flat-out proof that massive money printing doesn’t work. After all, reflating wages, jobs and incomes is what the monetary politburo claims it’s all about. Indeed, the Fed has insouciantly cast a blind eye to the massive bubbles building everywhere in the financial system, and has kept money market rates relentlessly at zero for six years running on the grounds that it is not yet done “stimulating” the labor market.

So why does this abysmally failed and dangerous experiment continue unabated—as Yellen will undoubtedly confirm at Jackson Hole?  Self-evidently, it is irresistibly convenient to both Wall Street and Washington. The former gorges on a massive diet of carry trade gambling windfalls thanks to ZIRP and the Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen “put”; and the latter gets a fiscal get-out-of-jail-free card owing to the Fed’s massive repression of interest rates. Indeed, with the public debt now topping $17.7 trillion, the implicit (and fraudulent) debt service relief from current ultra-low interest rates amounts to upwards of $500 billion per year.

Stated differently, where there should be extreme caution on Wall Street, there is actually irrational exuberance beyond Alan Greenspan’s wildest imagination back in December 1996. And where there should be fiscal panic in Washington owing to prospective red ink of another $15 trillion over the next decade (under “un-rosy scenario”), there is unmitigated and universal complacency.

The evil of monetary central planning, of course, is exactly what is unfolding: it drastically distorts pricing signals and thereby sows the seeds of eventual financial correction shocks and the consequent economic disorder. But there is something else, and its worse. Namely, the addiction to money printing and artificial debt fueled stimulus has become so deeply entrenched in the Wall Street-Washington corridor that the mainstream narrative has lost any semblance of historical perspective and realistic appreciation of the dead-end path on which the system is now embarked.

The monumental extent of monetary expansion and debt accretion since the turn of the 21st Century, for example, goes unrecognized, and is assumed to be merely a permanent and sustainable feature of the financial landscape. And that blindness might even be understandable had it been accompanied by an unusual surge of prosperity of the “party now, pay later” variety.  In fact, however, the core metrics of prosperity——real GDP growth, breadwinner employment, investment in productive assets and real household incomes—-have all gone in the opposite direction, having fallen drastically below all historical norms.

The contrasts below are dispositive. Real GDP growth during the last 14 years has averaged only 1.8%—-barely half the average rate during the prior 50 years. Likewise, breadwinner jobs are still 5% below their turn of the century level; real net investment in plant and equipment is 20% below its late 1990s levels; and real median household income is down by 5%.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-21/italian-job-how-borrowing-and-printing-lead-economic-dead-end

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Judicial Watch: Lerner emails aren’t missing

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Judicial Watch: Lerner emails aren’t missing
By Bernie Becker – 08/25/14 08:32 PM EDT

A conservative group suing the IRS said Monday that the Obama administration has acknowledged that former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails are recoverable.

Judicial Watch, which says it was among the groups that the IRS improperly scrutinized, said that Justice Department attorneys told the group late last week that the government backed up all emails in case of catastrophe.

The government lawyers added that the problem was not that the emails couldn’t be found, but that the back-up system was too onerous to search, Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch’s president, said Monday.

“This is a jaw-dropping revelation. The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails,” Fitton said in a statement, adding that the group would bring the government’s statements up with Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is presiding over the group’s lawsuit.

But an administration official with knowledge of Friday’s conversation said Judicial Watch’s statement, which runs counter to months of statements from a variety of administration and IRS higher-ups, was off-base.

The administration official said Justice Department lawyers had dropped no bombshells last week, and that Judicial Watch was mischaracterizing what the government had said.

The official said that Justice lawyers were only referring to tapes backing up IRS emails that were routinely recycled twice a year before 2013, when the investigation into the Tea Party controversy began.

The IRS has acknowledged those procedures were in place since it told lawmakers in June that Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, leaving the agency unable to recover many of her emails over a two-year span.

John Koskinen, the IRS commissioner, has testified before Congress several times over the last two months that the tapes backing up Lerner’s emails were recycled.

“There is no newly divulged back-up system that was not previously known about,” the official said. “Government lawyers were simply referring to the back-up system at the IRS that Commissioner Koskinen had already disclosed.”

Lerner has been a central figure in the IRS investigation since May 2013, when she became the first agency official to acknowledge and apologize for the improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups.

She has since retired from the IRS, been found in contempt of Congress by the House and been referred to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges.

Judicial Watch’s Monday statement noted that Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, which outlined the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups, is investigating the back-up system for e-mails.

The administration official said that the inspector general is examining whether any data can be recovered from the previously recycled back-up tapes and suggested that could be the cause of the confusion between the government and Judicial Watch.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/finance/215940-conservative-group-lerner-emails-arent-missing#ixzz3BUyOnWql
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4 Charts Every Mom With Kids Going Back to School Should See

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4 Charts Every Mom With Kids Going Back to School Should See

Kelsey Harris / @KelsRenHar / August 25, 2014

Many kids are heading back to public school this week, and so begins fall and spring semesters. You have entrusted the government to give your child a good curriculum and a teaching staff you can count on. But what happens when the school staff is equipped with a big list of employees, but not necessarily a big crop of teachers focused on your child?

Tax dollars in places you don’t know about.

Even though the Obama Administration proposes spending $25 billion specifically to “provide support for hundreds of thousands of education jobs” in order to “keep teachers in the classroom,” research by both Heritage and The Fordham Institute reveal alarming numbers: only half of education jobs belong to teachers.

Heritage’s education policy expert Lindsey Burke says “school districts should trim bureaucracy and work on long-term reform options for better targeting taxpayer resources,” instead of putting taxpayers on the hook for more federal spending.

Check out the numbers in the four charts below.

1. The charts proving only half of education jobs are teachers:
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https://dailysignal.com/2014/08/25/4-charts-every-mom-kids-going-back-school-see/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonvqvIZKXonjHpfsX56eUoX6C0lMI%2F0E

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No one to blame but ourselves

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No one to blame but ourselves

AUGUST 24, 2014    LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2014, 12:16 AM
SUBURBAN TRENDS

Lee Hamilton, director of Indiana University’s Center on Congress, recently sent us a missive about why government fails all too often.

“There’s ample cause for concern,” Hamilton notes. “The VA appointments scandal; the botched launch of the Affordable Care Act; the 28 years of missed inspections that led to the explosion of the fertilizer plant in West, Texas; scandals at the General Services Administration and the Secret Service … There’s a long and dispiriting list of occasions when the federal government has fallen short.”

The bad news is there are no quick fixes. It begins but doesn’t end at the ballot box. We also have to let our political leaders know what we are thinking, and that’s not just those elected to high office but our local leaders. Look around at local politics and you might be surprised about who has influence. Perhaps not surprisingly those who have more of say in what gets done are the very same people who are out in the community volunteering both civically and politically. As important is that they are involved and they stay informed.

People bad mouth the Tea Party and while we disagree with their positions on many issues, it should be noted that they show up, push their agenda and have been effective in pushing the political scrum in the direction they favor.

Contrast this with a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll, which found that a majority of Americans are feeling gloomy. The poll found that 71 percent say the U.S. is “on the wrong track,” and 60 percent say it’s in a “state of decline.” Only 2 percent are “very satisfied” with the political system, while 79 percent are “very” or “somewhat” dissatisfied. Only 3 percent are “very satisfied” with the economy, while 64 percent are “somewhat” or “very” dissatisfied.

We have to wonder how many of the gloomy bothered to vote in the recent primary elections or how many will even vote in November’s elections. If you want the people who are pulling the strings, setting tax policies, funding key programs, and passing out pork to tackle the myriad of problems facing this nation, this state or your community, you have to vote and you have to participate.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/politics/no-one-to-blame-but-ourselves-1.1075226#sthash.Yy8Qy2EQ.dpuf

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Politico Reports MSNBC Host Al Sharpton Was Obama’s Eyes and Ears In Ferguson

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Politico Reports MSNBC Host Al Sharpton Was Obama’s Eyes and Ears In Ferguson
By Tim Graham | August 22, 2014 | 09:53

In yet more proof that MSNBC has absolutely no sense of journalistic detachment from the Obama White House or political activism in the streets, Politico’s Glenn Thrush is reporting that Team Obama was plumbing Sharpton for information he gleaned on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.

“Sharpton—so often criticized for being a self-promoter—finds himself in the unusual position of being too close to a White House that seems to be losing power by the day, ” Thrush wrote. But Sharpton is still boasting that it was his sincerity that bonded him with the president: 

Over the years, the 59-year-old former Brooklyn protest leader turned MSNBC talk-show host has embraced a new identity, one that reflects his evolution from agitator to insider with all that implies. In Ferguson, Sharpton established himself as a de facto contact and conduit for a jittery White House seeking to negotiate a middle ground between meddling and disengagement.

“There’s a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down,” a White House official familiar with their dealings told me. “He gets it, and he’s got credibility in the community that nobody else has got. There’s really no one else out there who does what he does.”

And the White House, as the crisis following Brown’s death seemed to flare out of control, worked extensively behind the scenes to maximize The Rev’s doing what he does, using him as both a source of information and a go-between. After huddling with Brown’s family and local community leaders, Sharpton connected directly with White House adviser and First Friend Valerie Jarrett, vacationing in her condo in the exclusive Oak Bluffs section of Martha’s Vineyard, not far from where President Obama and his family were staying. Obama was “horrified” by the images he was seeing on TV, Jarrett told Sharpton, and proceeded to pepper him with questions as she collected information for the president: How bad was the violence? Was it being fueled by outside groups—and could Sharpton do anything to talk them down? What did the Brown family want the White House to do? [Italics in the original.]

If anything, the Ferguson crisis has underscored Sharpton’s role as the national black leader Obama leans on most, a remarkable personal and political transformation for a man once regarded with suspicion and disdain by many in his own party. It’s a status made all the more surprising given that Obama, America’s first black president, ran on a platform of moving beyond the country’s painful racial divisions while Sharpton is the man who once defined those divisions for many Americans.

What brought them together, according to numerous sources I’ve spoken with about this over the years, is a shared commitment to racial justice, and a hardheaded pragmatism that has fueled their success. “He realized I wasn’t as irrational or as crazy as people thought,” Sharpton told me in an interview this week, and indeed Sharpton not only visits the White House frequently, he often texts or emails with senior Obama officials such as Jarrett and Attorney General Eric Holder, the first African American to hold that job and who, like Sharpton, views the Ferguson crisis as a pivotal one in Obama’s presidency.

“I’ve known Al since he was 12 years old, and he’s arrived at the level he always wanted to arrive at, which is gratifying,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a colleague and sometimes rival, told me. “He’s the man who’s the liaison to the White House, he’s the one who’s talking to the Justice Department….”

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“He’s calculating … he gets the game,” Sharpton recently told an associate when asked about why he’s bonded with Obama.

“The relationship evolved over time,” Sharpton explained to me. “I realized he was just a different kind of guy. … He wasn’t going to be guided by emotions. He was not intimidated. There was no game you could play [with him]. The key for him was seeing that I wasn’t insincere, that I actually believed in the stuff I was talking about.”

Read more: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2014/08/22/politico-reports-msnbc-host-al-sharpton-was-obama-s-eyes-and-ears-fergus#ixzz3BJWNaFqP

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As investors buy struggling hospitals, big change comes to New Jersey health care

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As investors buy struggling hospitals, big change comes to New Jersey health care

AUGUST 23, 2014, 8:38 PM    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, AUGUST 24, 2014, 7:05 AM
BY LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Bayonne Medical Center wasn’t just bragging about efficiency when it posted a big digital clock on a highway billboard a few years ago to show the real-time waits in its emergency room. It wanted patients to come to its ER. Lots of patients.

Big change comes to New Jersey health care

It didn’t matter if the hospital was in the patient’s insurance network. On the contrary, to the businessmen who had recently purchased the medical center, those “out-of-network” patients held the key to reversing Bayonne’s fortunes.

These owners, who bought the hospital in bankruptcy, had found an unintended — and very profitable — consequence to a state regulation that was designed to protect patients with urgent medical needs. While the regulation required insurance companies to pay for emergency treatment at hospitals where their coverage wasn’t normally accepted, it did nothing to control the size of the bills the hospitals could submit to those insurers.

And that loophole enabled Bayonne, which had ended its contracts with some of the state’s largest insurers, to charge those higher out-of-network rates. The result was striking: The strategy contributed to a $17 million operational profit within two years of its 2008 takeover.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/as-investors-buy-struggling-hospitals-big-change-comes-to-new-jersey-health-care-1.1072639#sthash.PllalMQW.dpuf

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Girls Soccer: Ridgewood does ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in memory of coach Jack Elwood

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COACH JACK ELWOOD JAN 6,1951 TO MAY 2, 2010. RHS GIRLS SOCCER

Girls Soccer: Ridgewood does ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in memory of coach Jack Elwood

High school athletes throughout New Jersey are taking the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. But the cause has a special meaning for Ridgewood.

The Ridgewood High School girls soccer team took the challenge recently in memory of their former coach, Jack Elwood. Elwood, who coached the team for 15 years, died of ALS in 2010. He donated his body to science and took part in a longitudinal study at Columbia University to help find a curse for the disease.

The team challenged the rest of the Big North girls soccer teams to take the challenge, as well as the Ridgewood boys soccer team.

“Jack was one of the most courageous and inspirational people I have ever known. Jack chose to life his life fully,” Ridgewood coach Jeff Yearing said in the video. “Today we’re trying to live up to Jack’s standard and hopefully this helps. …Jack, we remember you. We do this for you, my friend.”

https://highschoolsports.nj.com/news/article/-6413850446166406816/girls-soccer-ridgewood-does-als-ice-bucket-challenge-in-memory-of-coach-jack-elwood/

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Senator Inhofe warns of potential terrorist attacks on U.S. soil

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Senator Inhofe warns of potential terrorist attacks on U.S. soil

Posted: Aug 20, 2014 7:52 PM EDTUpdated: Aug 20, 2014 7:57 PM EDTBy: Phil Cross, Investigative Reporter

OKLAHOMA CITY -It is a serious warning coming from Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe as he warns of the potential of another attack on American soil. The senator sat down with Fox 25 to talk about a variety of topics, but as ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the top issue was national security.“We’re in the most dangerous position we’ve ever been in as a nation,” Senator Inhofe told Fox 25’s Phil Cross.

“ISIS, they are really bad terrorists, they’re so bad even Al Qaida is afraid of them,” Inhofe said reflecting on the recent beheading of American journalist James Foley. Beyond the beheading, Inhofe said the current terror organizations are not going to stay contained to the Middle East. “They’re crazy out there and they’re rapidly developing a method of blowing up a major U.S. city and people just can’t believe that’s happening.”

Inhofe blames policy decisions from the Obama administration and cuts in defense spending for putting the country in what he calls a dangerous situation.

https://www.okcfox.com/story/26331734/senator-inhofe-warns-of-potential-terrorist-attacks-on-us-soil

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Ridgewood firefighters cook up camaraderie

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file photo of Ridgewood Fire department in action Boyd Loving

Ridgewood firefighters cook up camaraderie

AUGUST 19, 2014    LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2014, 10:43 AM
BY JODI WEINBERGER
STAFF WRITER

Firefighters are notoriously resistant to change, according to Ridgewood Fire Capt. Christopher DuFlocq.

He gives a few historical anecdotes to back up that claim: “The horses don’t know where they’re going,” the men protested when animals were brought in to replace carrying gear on foot.

It was another battle when automobiles took over. “We can depend on the horses to start up every time,” they balked.

Now younger generations of firefighters are attempting to cross another frontier of doubt with the older crowd: healthier food for dinner. Yet somewhat surprisingly, most say the shift is easier to swallow.

“I eat dinner here that I normally wouldn’t eat at home,” admits DuFlocq, a 28-year career firefighter. “They’re always trying something new and most of the time I like it.”

He gives examples, “turkey burgers, different kinds of rice…”

From the kitchen of the East Glen Avenue firehouse, Firefighter Tom Shortway rolls his eyes. They can’t tell the difference, he insists, on whether beef or the lower-fat turkey goes into the meatloaf that he makes.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/ridgewood-firefighters-cook-up-camaraderie-1.1069497#sthash.8FtDo2Px.dpuf

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James and Jane Clementi received the Pride Award

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Tyler Clementi

James and Jane Clementi received the Pride Award

Tyler Clementi’s family ‘validated’ by LGBTQ Pride Award
By Jessica Mazzola | NJ Advance Media, for NJ.com 

on August 19, 2014 at 2:03 PM, updated August 19, 2014 at 2:14 PMNEWARK — A few weeks before the fourth anniversary of his younger brother’s suicide, James Clementi called today a “validating” day.

James and his mother Jane were in Newark this afternoon to accept the annual Pride Award from the Essex County LGBTQ Pride Month Celebration. The Clementi family, who started a foundation in the wake of 18-year-old Tyler’s very publicized suicide weeks after starting his freshman year at Rutgers in 2010, was nominated to receive this year’s award by the county’s LGBTQ Advisory Board.

“I wish Tyler could have had the acceptance that he craved so much,” James Clementi said of his brother, who jumped off the George Washington Bridge days after his college roommate recorded and tweeted about Clementi’s sexual relationship with another man.

James and his parents said they started the Tyler Clementi Foundation in an attempt to work with struggling LGBTQ youths and their families, and to advocate for equality and against bullying.

“I wish [Tyler] could be here today,” James, who came out publicly himself in a People Magazine article after his brother’s suicide, said at the ceremony.

https://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2014/08/tyler_clementis_family_validated_by_lgbtq_pride_award.html