AUGUST 8, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2014, 12:31 AM BY LAURA HERZOG STAFF WRITER
“I’m tired…”
“No, you’re not,” said my patient Graydon Pool swim instructor Ryan Martin. “It’s all in your head.”
I tried to calm down, but my facial muscles were tense, and my treading arms were moving in frantic circles. As the water moved closer to my mouth, an irrational thought started to circle through my head.
I’m going to drown. I’m going to drown.
I’m not one to give up on things, but put me in a body of water over 6 feet and watch me freak out in five minutes.
I’m 24 years old, and I can’t really swim – but thanks to my recent adult swim lessons at Graydon Pool, at least I’m now on the right track.
So, how did I get to this point?
I took lessons at the YMCA as a kid, but I abruptly stopped, for unknown reasons, after mastering “airplane, chicken, soldier” floating. I’ve since mostly avoided swimming. Thanks to friends, I learned the basics of freestyle, but I never became skilled enough to truly enjoy swimming.
I know I’m not alone, but it often feels like it: In my experience, people who can’t swim generally are too embarrassed to liberally share that information, even if, like me, they want to swim.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/community-news/lessons-go-beyond-swimming-1.1064506#sthash.f1bFQztT.dpuf
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 more information in advance of the letter, please click here for the press release.
8.06.14: Back-To-School Night Schedule SCHOOL DATE GRADES TIME
Hawes September 11
September 18K-2
3-57 p.m.
7 p.m.
Orchard September 11 All 6:30 p.m.
Ridge September 16
September 23K-2
3-57:30 p.m.
7:30 p.m.
Somerville September 11All7 p.m.
Travell September 10All6 p.m.
WillardSeptember 16
September 183-5
K-26:45 p.m.
6:45 p.m.
BFMS September 9 All 7 p.m.
GWMS September 18 All 7:30 p.m.
RHS September 17 All 7:30 p.m.
CNN Poll: Trust in government at all-time low Posted by CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser
Washington (CNN) – Four decades after President Richard Nixon resigned, a slight majority of Americans still consider Watergate a very serious matter, a new national survey shows. But how serious depends on when you were born.
The CNN/ORC International poll’s release comes one day before the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974. With the Watergate scandal escalating, the second-term Republican president had lost much of his political backing, and he faced almost certain impeachment and the prospects of being removed from office by a Democratic-dominated House and Senate.
There’s a big generational divide over the significance of the scandal, with a majority of those older than 40 describing Watergate as a very serious problem and those under 40 saying it was just politics.
The poll also indicates that the public’s trust in government is at an all-time low.
Just 13% of Americans say the government can be trusted to do what is right always or most of the time, with just over three-quarters saying only some of the time and one in 10 saying they never trust the government, according to the poll.
“The number who trust the government all or most of the time has sunk so low that it is hard to remember that there was ever a time when Americans routinely trusted the government,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said
Issa: More Than 20 Obama Officials ‘Lost or Destroyed’ E-mails After House Launched Probes By Joel Gehrke August 7, 2014 5:27 PM
The revelation that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Marilynn Tavenner did not retain her e-mails means that more than 20 witness in the Obama administration to lose or delete e-mails without notifying Congress, according to the top House investigator.
“The Obama administration has lost or destroyed e-mails for more than 20 witnesses, and in each case, the loss wasn’t disclosed to the National Archives or Congress for months or years, in violation of federal law,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said ofTavenner’s lost e-mails.
“It defies logic that so many senior Administration officials were found to have ignored federal recordkeeping requirements only after Congress asked to see their e-mails,” he continued. “Just this week, my staff followed up with HHS, who has failed to comply with a subpoena from ten months ago. Even at that point, the administration did not inform us that there was a problem with Ms. Tavenner’s e-mail history. Yet again, we discover that this administration will not be forthright with the American people unless cornered.”
Think the Supreme Court protected your cellphone from warrantless searches? Think again.
By Brian Fung July 30
It was supposed to be a simple day trip to Niagara Falls. Little did he know the visit might land him in prison for the next 100 years.
Ali Saboonchi was returning from the Canadian side of the falls with his wife in 2012 when he was detained by customs agents at the U.S. border. The agents eventually let the Maryland man go, but not before seizing his electronic devices: an iPhone, an Android phone and a USB flash drive.
At a special facility in Baltimore nearly 400 miles away, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement made a copy of the drives and performed what a judge later called an invasive forensic search using “specialized software.”
In the devices’ storage was what U.S. officials say is evidence of a plot to violate U.S.-Iranian trade restrictions, according to federal court documents. Now Saboonchi, who was allegedly involved in the plot, faces four counts of illegal export and one count of conspiracy.
Join the celebration of Kilwins Grand Opening of Kilwins Chocolate, Fudge and Ice Cream Shop located across from Memorial Park at Van Neste Square,
121 E. Ridgewood Ave.,
Ridgewood, NJ 07450.
201-445-4837
Try the world’s best Mackinac Island fudge, original recipe ice cream lots of fresh caramel and chocolate treats and caramel
apples…”Sweet in every Sense since 1947.
Bring the kids and meet…KILWIN the MO– USE.
Philip and Mary Davis and the entire Kilwins
Ridgewood team.
BACK-TO-SCHOOL INFO: Parents and guardians will be receiving a detailed letter on or about August 11 about updating emergency contact information, reviewing various district policies and granting certain permissions. This Mandatory Annual Online Re-registration process takes place through Skyward Family Access between August 11 and September 12
August 5, 2014 –In preparation for the start of the 2014-2015 school year, all parents and guardians of students in the Ridgewood Public Schools must complete the Mandatory Annual Online Re-registration process through Skyward Family Access between August 11 and September 12.
New this year is a section on the 1:1 Chromebook initiative, in which parents and guardians of high school students will be required to review the new Chromebook policy and procedures, complete the agreement form and fund the annual insurance fees.
Re-registration also involves updating emergency contact information; completing the All-Media Permission Form; reviewing district policies and codes; authorizing food service accounts and administration of over-the-counter medications; and applying for the optional NJ FamilyCare insurance program.
Detailed instructions on Mandatory Annual Online Re-registration will be mailed to homes on or about August 11. To re-register, parents and guardians should go to the district website at www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us, choose Skyward Family Access under the Parents tab, log in with their username and password and select Mandatory Annual Online Re-
Registration under Home. Anyone who has forgotten their login and/or password information may request a password reset by selecting the Forgot Login/Password link on the log-on page. Further assistance may be requested by sending an email to [email protected].
AUGUST 7, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2014, 1:21 AM BY CHRIS HARRIS STAFF WRITER THE RECORD Print
RIDGEWOOD — Traffic in the village will likely increase with the development of three multifamily housing projects downtown, the Planning Board’s traffic expert testified this week.
Jahr testified at the Planning Board’s meeting Tuesday night that zoning regulations permit a myriad of commercial uses at the three properties being eyed by developers for high-density housing.
Jahr’s findings align with those presented previously by the developers’ traffic experts.
Jahr’s analysis on Tuesday will play into the board’s consideration of a master plan amendment that would potentially permit such developments in Ridgewood.
News outlets are running stories about the rise in corporate tax inversions. Inversions are financial reorganizations that place U.S. firms under foreign parent corporations. They are one of the many ways that companies are responding to America’s uniquely high corporate tax rate.
Liberal policymakers and pundits are outraged by inversions because they fear that the government will be starved of revenues. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has demanded new rules to stop inversions because “allowing these transactions to continue, we run the risk of eroding our corporate tax base and undoing the progress we have made to reduce our budget deficits.”
However, it is our high 40 percent tax rate that is eroding our corporate tax base. If we chopped the rate substantially, tax avoidance would fall and U.S. investment would rise. Over time, more income would be reported to the government, with the result that the government would probably not lose any money, and it could even gain some. Governments, businesses, and workers would all win from a corporate tax rate cut.
Here is some evidence that the government would win. For 19 OECD countries for which there is good data back to the 1960s, I plotted the average corporate tax rates and average corporate tax revenues. The chart illustrates the Laffer effect of cutting high statutory tax rates on a very mobile tax base.
1,000-member secretive progressive journalist group uncovered
August 6, 2014 MEDIA TRACKERS
Media Trackers is dedicated to media accountability, government transparency, and quality fact-based journalism. Archive »
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon.
Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.
The group’s existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.
Sally Kohn, formerly a Fox News contributor, now works for CNNreliably echoing pro-Obama Administration talking points and championing leftwing ideas as a network commentator. Kohn is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and e-mails show that she occasionally approached the group’s membership and asked them to promote her television appearances.
“I’m guest co-hosting CNN’s Crossfire tonight at 6:30pm EST, with fellow co-host Newt Gingrich. I would be grateful for folks (a) helping spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc to encourage people to tune in; and (b) tuning in and live tweeting during the show,” Kohn wrote to the group on January 14 of this year.
In another e-mail, Kohn pitched her TED talk about working as a liberal at Fox News. “I would be grateful for any shares and reactions. Here is a straightforward, sample tweet[:] Watch @sallykohn’s amazing TED talk on emotional correctness: on.ted.com/Kohn” she wrote. “Thanks for everything all of you do every day to make the world a better place!” she signed off.
Amanda Terkel, the “Senior Political Reporter and Politics Managing Editor at The Huffington Post,” is a member of Gamechanger Salon along with The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim.
New Evidence Exposes Hamas Passing Off Terrorist Deaths As Civilian Deaths
IN NEWS, POLITICS, WORLD NEWS / BY SEAN BROWN / ON AUGUST 5, 2014 AT 2:49 PM /
It’s been widely reported that the majority of the deaths in the Gaza Strip have been civilians, with figures from Palestinian officials saying that 80% of the roughly 2,000 deaths during Operation Protective Edge have been non-combatants. However, Israel is now claiming they have proof that at least half of the people who have died were militants.
“There is research being done in the military, very professionally and reliably, (whose) conclusion is that at least 47% of the fatalities are terrorists, with photographs and names,” prominent former politician Tzachi Hanegbi said.
Hanegbi was speaking on Israel’s Channel Two Television about how their analysis of the death toll is far different from what the UN is reporting. He explained that Hamas fails to differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
An analyst for the pro-Israel group The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Steven Sotsky, backed that claim, pointing out that there’s a disproportionate amount of Palestinian deaths with men aged 17-30. Sotsky said that while that age range for men only accounts for 10% of the total Palestinian population, it accounts for 44% of the fatalities thus far.
According to Sotsky, that trend wouldn’t exist if Israel were indiscriminately bombing civilians:
“Analyses of the casualties listed in the daily reports published by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, a Gaza-based organization operating under Hamas rule, indicate that young males ages 17 to 30 make up a large portion of the fatalities, and a particularly noticeable spike occurs between males ages 21 to 27, a pattern consistent with the age distribution typically found among combatants and military conscripts.”
He details his analysis further by saying, “Data gleaned from the daily reports of the PCHR show that from July 8, the start of Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge,’ through July 26, 404 out of 915 fatalities tallied from daily reports in which the ages were identified occurred among males ages 17 to 30, comprising 44% of all fatalities among a group representing about 10% of Gazans.”
Sotsky then notes that while females make up 25% of the population they only account for 10% of the casualties, and children make up 50% of the population but only account for 20% of the casualties.
Ridgewood teen says California swim ‘very lonely’ and required another gear
AUGUST 5, 2014, 8:26 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014, 8:39 PM BY ABBOTT KOLOFF STAFF WRITER THE RECORD
She saw the sun going down, and worried she might be pulled from the water because she was out of glow sticks and would be invisible to her father and companions in nearby boats guiding her in inky darkness across the Catalina Channel. The previous night of swimming, she said, felt like a dream, and she experienced an emotion that she never before felt while in the water.
“It was very lonely,” she said.
Charlotte Samuels, a 16-year-old open-water swimmer from Ridgewood, said she found another gear near the end of her 20.2-mile swim from Catalina Island to the Southern California coast almost as if she was able to “turn on a switch.” Her legs quivering, she stumbled over rocks and onto the shore after spending 20 hours, 20 minutes and 44 seconds in the water, taking a giant step toward becoming the youngest person ever to swim what is known as the Triple Crown of open-water swimming. The youngest to date was 20 years old.
One day later, as she rested Tuesday at a California house rented by her parents, she reflected on her accomplishment during a telephone interview. She described some of the anguish she felt, the taunting California coast that was farther away than it looked, the unexpected three-foot swells and currents that pushed her off course, and her determination to swim through feelings of uncertainty and the sharp pain of jellyfish stings that felt like electric shocks to her face, arms and legs.
She said she was sore and “mentally” exhausted after completing a swim that took about eight hours longer than she anticipated, and has decided to put off the third leg of the Triple Crown, a 21-mile swim across the English Channel, until next year because “I want to rest.”
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/ridgewood-teen-says-california-swim-very-lonely-and-required-another-gear-1.1062642#sthash.xg73t2mF.dpuf
Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.
The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up.
“We’re in the summer of our discontent,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “Americans are cranky, unhappy… It is with everything going on the world.”
Yet because this discontent differs – among Democrats, Republicans, and independents – Hart cautions that Americans still aren’t likely to be storming the polls on Election Day in November.
“We’re unhappy, but we aren’t coalescing around an issue,” he said.
Indeed, 57 percent of respondents told pollsters that something upsets them enough to carry a protest sign for a day.
“The public seems have moved beyond the plaintive cry of ‘Feel our pain!’ to the more angry pronouncement of ‘You are causing our pain!’”
New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes By Evan Perez, CNN updated 5:16 PM EDT, Tue August 5, 2014
(CNN) — The federal government has concluded there’s a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN.
Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden’s leaks.
The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration.
The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges.
Greenwald has suggested there was another leaker. In July, he said on Twitter “it seems clear at this point” that there was another.
Government officials have been investigating to find out that identity.
In a February interview with CNN’s Reliable Sources, Greenwald said: “I definitely think it’s fair to say that there are people who have been inspired by Edward Snowden’s courage and by the great good and virtue that it has achieved.”
He added, “I have no doubt there will be other sources inside the government who see extreme wrongdoing who are inspired by Edward Snowden.”
No matter how you feel about Halbig vs. Sebelius—the recent decision that said it was illegal for the government to funnel subsidies to the 36 states that declined to build health care exchanges—the odds that this legal challenge to Obamacare will ultimately prevail in the courts are not that high. But the law’s supporters should brace themselves for even fiercer future battles: Their folly was to pass a complicated and flawed law with zero Republican support, and now they have to contend with full-bore Republican opposition as they try to make it work.
Halbig’s odds of being upheld are low, not because its legal argument is “stupid” or “criminal,” as its opponents claim, but because of courtroom politics. Halbig was issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the full court tilts heavily liberal, and it is likely to reverse the decision.
Opponents of the law petitioned the Supreme Court last week to rule on the legality of the subsidies while the lower courts are still split. But the politically squeamish Chief Justice John Roberts might prefer to let matters play out at that level rather than jump into a partisan mud fight. (Theoretically, the four conservative justices would be enough to grant certiorari, but unless they know that Roberts will rule with them eventually, they wouldn’t risk egg on their face.)
But that doesn’t mean that Obamacare supporters can take a victory lap. The program’s biggest vulnerabilities are still down the road. And that’s no accident.
The administration postponed implementation of the more painful aspects of the program till after the president is safely out of office—partly through the original law and partly by altering the law through executive fiat.
Thanks to lobbying by labor, the law delayed taxing so-called Cadillac Plans, which benefit union households, till 2018. Likewise, it doesn’t require states participating in the Medicaid expansion to pick up any of the tab for their added costs till 2016.
The penalty for the individual mandate, which starts at $95 per individual and $285 per household, will soar to $695 and $2,085, respectively, by 2016.
But the real danger is the “risk corridor” provision that was meant to backstop the losses of insurance companies so that they don’t pull out, prompting Obamacare’s collapse.
“Risk corridors” essentially cap both the profits and losses that insurance companies can make. A company whose profits are higher than the capped amount has to fork over the excess to one that incurs losses.
In theory, this program, which is also due to expire around 2017, is supposed to be financed by the insurance industry. But the problem is that if the industry as a whole doesn’t make enough profits to offset its losses, then a federal bailout may be necessary when these programs are phased out and their final bill comes due.
The likelihood of a bailout is not as remote as liberals claim, given that 71 percent of the exchange enrollees are older and not as healthy, about 11 points more than optimal according to the administration’s own projections. Indeed, even before many insurersreported lower-than-expected earnings this week, Moody’s had downgraded its outlook for the industry to “negative.”
But the insurer bailout is not the only appropriation battle brewing. In the fairytale that the president told the public, Obamacare wasn’t going to cost taxpayers a “dime” because all of the necessary funds would be obtained from drastic Medicare reimbursement cuts to doctors and hospitals. How drastic? So drastic, notes Forbes analyst Chris Conover, that by 2030 Medicare would be paying providers 60 percent less than what private plans do.
