>Expert: Expand sales, cut income tax
New Jersey’s sales tax should be expanded in order to reduce other taxes, an expert from a conservative think tank told top members of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration Thursday. (Method, Gannett)
https://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20110519/NJNEWS/305190031/Expert-Expand-sales-cut-income-tax
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photo courtesy of preserve Graydon.org
May 18, 2011
Summer’s coming…and the clock is ticking
Only 3 more days to take advantage of Early Bird prices for season badges
As Saturday rolls into Sunday, badge prices for Ridgewood residents will increase.
What’s the Early Bird?
$5 off new prices for age 62+; $10 off for other adults and kids (under age 2: free)
Last time for discount in person: This Saturday, May 21, 10 AM to noon, Graydon Badge Office
How to get to the Graydon badge office: Park at Graydon North lot, northwest corner of Linwood Avenue and Northern Parkway. Walk over bridge to Graydon grounds. First building on the right.
Take an umbrella—the line forms outside. Look for the 1936 cornerstone in the lower right corner of the building.
Online, 24/7: The transaction takes a few minutes; start well before 11:59 PM Saturday or you’ll miss the boat!
https://ridgewoodnj.net/communitypass
Parks & Rec Graydon information:
http://ridgewoodnj.net/graydon
Till soon,
Marcia Ringel and Alan Seiden
Co-Chairs, The Preserve Graydon Coalition, Inc., a nonprofit corporation
“It’s clear—we love Graydon!”
i[email protected] www.PreserveGraydon.org
>State Treasurer recommends boosting Homestead credits with income tax windfall
Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff gave a hint into the thinking of the Christie administration Tuesday when he told the Assembly Budget committee that a boost in projected income tax revenue is not a license to begin spending. (Hassan, State Street Wire)
>LED bulbs hit 100 watts as federal ban looms
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer – Mon May 16, 6:05 pm ET
NEW YORK – Two leading makers of lighting products are showcasing LED bulbs that are bright enough to replace energy-guzzling 100-watt light bulbs set to disappear from stores in January.
Their demonstrations at the LightFair trade show in Philadelphia this week mean that brighter LED bulbs will likely go on sale next year, but after a government ban takes effect.
The new bulbs will also be expensive — about $50 each — so the development may not prevent consumers from hoarding traditional bulbs.
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>Scientists Cast Doubt on TSA Tests of Full-Body Scanners
by Michael Grabell
ProPublica, May 16, 2011, 2:11 p.m.
A sign at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint instructs passengers about the use of the full-body scanner at O’Hare International Airport on March 15, 2010 in Chicago, Ill. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The Transportation Security Administration says its full-body X-ray scanners are safe and that radiation from a scan is equivalent to what’s received in about two minutes of flying. The company that makes them says it’s safer than eating a banana.
But some scientists with expertise in imaging and cancer say the evidence made public to support those claims is unreliable. And in a new letter sent to White House science adviser John Holdren, they question why the TSA won’t make the scanners available for independent testing by outside scientists.
https://www.propublica.org/article/scientists-cast-doubt-on-tsa-tests-of-full-body-scanners
>Obamacare : HHS approves 200 more new healthcare reform waivers
By Julian Pecquet- 05/13/11 04:52 PM ET
The Obama administration approved 204 new waivers to Democrats’ healthcare reform law over the past month, bringing the total to 1,372.
The waivers are temporary and only apply to one provision of the law, which requires health plans to offer at least $750,000 worth of annual medical benefits before leaving patients to fend for themselves. Still, Republicans have assailed the waivers as a sign of both favoritism and of major problems with the law.
“The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in March. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers.
>PSE&G Helps UMDNJ Cut Its Energy Bill
Hospital expects to reduce utility bill by about $1.3 million annually through utility’s Energy Efficiency Program
(May 12, 2011 – Newark, NJ) – Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) today joined with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) for the installation of a 2,700-ton chiller as part of their $11.4 million effort to bring energy efficiency improvements to University Hospital and four buildings on its Newark campus.
These improvements will help reduce UMDNJ’s energy consumption. The improvements are made possible through PSE&G’s $79 million Hospital Efficiency Program, which will benefit 19 hospitals across the utility’s service territory. In total, the utility is investing $240 million through 11 initiatives that help fund energy efficiency investments targeted at populations and entities with the greatest need and also stimulate economic activity.
“New Jersey hospitals are really struggling financially and nearly a third are operating in the red,” said Al Matos, vice president-renewables and energy solutions, PSE&G. “They find it nearly impossible to budget for infrastructure upgrades, no matter how much they’re needed. This accelerated efficiency program for hospitals has been extremely successful because it meets the needs of a severely stressed business sector. It provides money upfront and permits savings benefits to be realized quickly so that medical centers can focus on their mission-critical function of saving lives.”
Through the Hospital Efficiency Program, PSE&G will provide the $11.4 million investment, with UMDNJ repaying $2.7 million over three years, interest free. The Hospital Efficiency Program covers the $8.7 million investment difference. These investments are expected to reduce UMDNJ’s annual utility bill by about $1.3 million.
“It is a wonderful opportunity for UMDNJ, and we are pleased to be able to participate in PSE&G’s program,” says Christopher Kosseff, senior vice president for administration at UMDNJ. “The economics make sense, and we embrace this opportunity both to improve the efficiency of our operations and make a strong contribution to improving the environment.”
Following an extensive, investment-grade audit, improvements at UMDNJ will focus on improved cooling capabilities and include installation of a sophisticated control system and two new energy-efficient chillers. The control system will regulate the chilled water distribution pressure to each building and each air handler within, using monitoring sensors to adjust flow rates instantly to maximize efficiency. This automated system will replace the manually operated system that currently exists. The automatic monitoring will reduce the chilled water demands, thereby reducing the energy needed to produce the chilled water and the energy needed to pump the chilled water throughout the system. The project is expected to be complete by the end of 2011.
Of 52 eligible hospital facilities in PSE&G’s service territory, 40 applied to participate in the program. The PSE&G Hospital Efficiency Program has funded 19 of the applications and work is in various stages at each of them. The remaining applications remain pending available funding.
“The program has limited funding, but its success so far should prove a catalyst for additional investment for those eligible hospitals that currently are not to participate in the program,” Matos said.
The PSE&G Hospital Efficiency Program is a $79 million initiative that will fund the installation of energy conservation measures at 19 hospitals in the utility’s service territory. Through the program, PSE&G provides an investment-grade audit at no cost to the customer, then proposes various cost-effective energy conservation measures that make a substantial impact on the hospital’s energy efficiency and meet other program criteria such as having a simple payback of less than 15 years. The program greatly reduces the financial burden on a hospital by providing up-front funding for the total cost of a project. The hospital then pays back a portion of the total project cost after the project is complete on the PSE&G utility bill at zero percent interest over 36 months.
>RGGI on the Ropes All Across New Jersey
(Burlington County -NJ) Sen. Diane Allen (R-07) and Sen. Mike Doherty (R-23), primary sponsor of the Senate repeal bill (S2250), held a press conference to announce the District 7 lawmakers’ decision to support the repeal effort.
The conference took place on the steps of one of Burlington’s abandoned businesses an old building that once was a bank and a restaurant. All around Burlington City you could see a multitude of shops with ‘closed’ signs on them signaling the poor economic circumstances of this community.
Sen. Allen, in her statement, explained that those closed businesses were the reason she decided to support the end of the RGGI Cap & Trade scheme.
“The real issue today,” said Sen. Allen, “is looking at all these empty storefronts down here on High Street in Burlington and wondering how much did the extra tax cause them to close; how much did this extra tax mean in determining if others didn’t fill in these buildings.”
The RGGI Cap & Trade tax will cost our state thousands of jobs in the future.The consequences for New Jersey became abundantly clear over the weekend when the Ocean Spray company announced that it would be relocating its plant in Burlington County right across the border in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
The RGGI Cap & Trade scheme and increasing utility costs were a major consideration for Ocean Spray in the company’s decision to leave New Jersey. Now, some 250 jobs will be leaving New Jersey for neighboring Pennsylvania which is not a participating state in the RGGI Cap & Trade scheme.
>Many of my readers have asked me to look into Jon Corzines days at Goldman and this is what I found:
Corzine Goldman ,the Man,the Myth and the Goldman Sachs Years
In 1975, Jon Corzine moved to New Jersey, having taken a job as a securities trader at Goldman Sachs in New York. By 1980 he became a partner at Goldman. Jon Corzine rose rapidly through the ranks, to become chairman and CEO in 1994.
As CEO, Jon Corzine has been credited with engineering the transformation of Goldman Sachs from a private partnership to a public company. Smoothing out the volatility of Goldman’s earnings and producing a “kinder and gentler” company . Corzine had worked for nearly two years to transform the legendary partnership into a public company. Fighting significant resistance from many of the skeptical partners. Finally he succeeded in secret ballot,
However, Corzine was not universally popular as CEO, and was forced out in 1999
With the IPO approved Corzine took his family on a vacation. While he was away, three members of Goldman’s five-member executive committee, led by, Hank Paulson (the man he appointed ), staged a palace coup, stripping him of his CEO title and his power. The initial public offering (IPO) of Goldman went forward with out a hitch ,the stock created a huge windfall for the partners, including Corzine and made him a very wealthy man.
Mounting evidence has come to light that during Corzine’s reign the firm may have manipulated the market and inflated stock prices through a controversial practice know as “laddering”,which was investigated by the SEC .Mr. Corzine is also considered by many the “architect” of ENRON. And the Center of the ENRON scandal and the Wall Street practices that led to the NASDAQ meltdown at the beginning of this decade
The two big issues that occurred on Corzines watch were the perceived facilitation of the ENRON debacle and the IPO bubble machine using a hybrid of “pump and dump” called“laddering” .
ENRON
In 1993, Goldman Sachs “invented” a security called MIPS that offered ENRON Corp. and other companies an irresistible combination. It was designed in such a way that it could be called debt or equity, as needed. It resembled a loan, so that interest payments could be deducted from taxable income. For shareholders and rating agencies, who look askance at over leveraged companies, it resembled equity.
Officials at the Clinton Treasury Department, were skeptical of the so-called Monthly Income Preferred Shares, or MIPS. To them the MIPS looked like a charade ,a way for companies to hide the size of their debt while cutting their federal tax bill. CEO Corzine lobbied the treasury and eventually, the regulators acquiesced and Goldman and MIPS were off to the races. It has been alleged that Corzine’s used his lobbying activities, during that time , “benefitted him personally as an executive at Goldman Sachs.” It is claimed that Hybrid preferred shares helped mask the huge debt burden carried by companies like ENRON.
Goldman creates a new type of “Pump and Dump” called laddering.
According to Nicholas Maier, who was syndicate manager of the Wall Street firm Cramer & Co. from 1996 to 1998, Goldman Sachs routinely forced him to buy stocks at inflated prices if he wanted to purchase shares of an initial public offering (IPO). “Goldman, from what I witnessed, they were the worst perpetrator,” Maier said. “They totally fueled the [market] bubble. And it’s specifically that kind of behavior that has caused the market crash.
Maier told the SEC that Goldman Sachs would offer him shares of a new company’s IPO at the initial, low price of $20 per share only if he agreed to purchase “aftermarket” shares of the same company at $100 each. In turn, he would unload the shares of the higher-priced stock on small investors. Maier said. “Goldman created the convincing appearance of a winner, and the trick worked so well that many speculators were seduced into participating in this gold rush. The general public had no idea that these stocks were actually brought into the world at unnaturally high levels through illegal manipulation.”
In August 2000, the SEC issued a warning against aftermarket sales, also known as “laddering.” While Jon Corzine said ,“I’ve never even heard the term ‘laddering’ before”.Maier said it happened on Corzine’s watch. “For Corzine not to know of a common practice being utilized to generate and manipulate stock prices would be surprising,” Mr. Maier said. “He was obviously there during this time.
Trading profits are just too good
For some time Goldman Sachs has been accused by Wall Street insiders of employing sophisticated high speed computer programs to siphon of illegitimate profits from the New York Stock Exchange under the radar of regulators. Recently a former Goldman computer programer was arrested for allegedly stealing software codes used in the firms electronic trading operations .Federal prosecutors claim the codes were used to”manipulate the market in unfair ways”.
Government Sachs
Goldman has also been accused by many of taking advantage of so many X Goldman employees working in high level government positions. These allegations can also be traced back to the Corzine days ,more recently however the focus has been on alleged favoritism during the Wall Street and banking bailout as well as the TARP funding. Its hard to imagine with so many high profile former executives that Goldman hasn’t received preferential treatment and information exchanges.
This is not to claim that Jon Corzine was directly involved or that there is some vast Goldman conspiracy at work but the fact of the matter is that he was there in there in the thick of it and that if you know anything about Wall Street you know that investment banks are one organization were the people at the top are directly involved in the most intimate details of day to day operations of their firms.
James Foytlin
Monday, October 05, 2009
https://onesmallvoice.blogspot.com/2009/10/jon-corzine-goldman-sachs-years.html
>Valley to take over blood donor site
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
BY MARY JO LAYTON
THE RECORD
STAFF WRITER
The Valley Hospital is in the process of acquiring the Community Blood Services building in Paramus, where it plans to provide treatment and cardiac rehab as well as conduct research, hospital officials confirmed.
The hospital is seeking a zoning variance to operate a medical facility at the Linwood Avenue property and a hearing is scheduled before the Board of Adjustment in Paramus on Thursday, Paramus officials said.
Community Blood Services, which has been at the site for more than 40 years, is consolidating its operations in Bergen County. It will maintain a donation site at the Paramus location for several months, officials said.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/121548124_Valley_to_take_over_blood_donor_site.html
>Double-dippers boost salaries
74 paid more than gov; fewer multiple job-holders in 2010
5:16 PM, May. 8, 2011
Hundreds of so-called “double-dippers” — employees with two or more public jobs — received sizable raises last year even as governments at all levels scaled back operations and reduced staff.
The good news for New Jersey’s taxpayers is that the number of double-dippers declined by about one-third from 2009 through 2010, according to an Asbury Park Press review of government pension and payroll data.
The top raise went to a lawyer and human resources director who holds two school jobs in northern New Jersey. Her public income rose by $160,787 in one year for a total of $275,404 — $100,000 more than what the governor is paid, according to public records. Other raises given to multiple job-holders ranged from less than $1,000 to $62,000.
>Pay per mile: A timely tax idea, or a privacy threat?
Once again the Obama administration draft proposal for study of mileage fee spurs interest.
msnbc.com updated 5/5/2011 5:36:53 PM ET
As transportation officials struggle to raise enough tax dollars to maintain the nation’s highway and transit systems, a tentative new proposal could put Americans on the hook for every mile they drive.
Department of Transportation officials have drafted legislation that would study a vehicle tax to track how far drivers travel and charge them by the mile. The proposal would create a “Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office” to conduct trials of the concept.
The draft proposal was first reported this week in Transportation Weekly, a trade publication. A White House spokeswoman told The Hill newspaper that the draft “does not represent the views of the president” and is in no way an administration proposal.
The White House put the brakes on a similar proposal floated early in Obama’s presidency, with then-spokesman Robert Gibbs said that a mileage tax “is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration.”
>Happy Mother’s Day
The celebrations of mothers and motherhood occur throughout the world and can often be traced back to ancient festivals .One of the earliest historical records of a society celebrating a Mother deity or Mothers Day can be found among the ancient Egyptians, who held an annual festival to honor the goddess Isis, who was commonly regarded as the Mother of the pharaohs. The ancient Greek cult to Cybele or the Roman festival of Hilaria are also examples. The modern US-celebration of Mother’s Day is not directly related to any of these.
Julia Ward Howe lead the early call to celebrate Mother’s Day in the United States in the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” Written in 1870, The proclamation was reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Proclamation was tied to Howe’s belief that mothers had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.
International Women’s Day was celebrated originally on 28 February 1909, in the US, by which time Anna Jarvis had already begun her national campaign in the US. It is now celebrated in many countries on March 8.
more:
https://www.manhattanstyle.com/events/happy-mothers-day/
>National History Day (NHD): students who participate in NHD far outperform their peers on state standardized tests
National History Day (NHD). : the results of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) ‘Civics Report Card’ were just released.
Executive director of NHD, Cathy Gorn, released the following statement:
“These latest results are further proof that Congress and the Administration need to focus on history education. Simply put history education matters. It is nothing short of a threat to our participatory democracy when our students do not know the purpose of the Bill of Rights or how our government works. We need to put history and civics back into their rightful place in the curriculum through quality, evidence-based teaching and learning fostered by programs that work.”
A recent study shows that students who participate in NHD far outperform their peers on state standardized tests and are better prepared for college and the workplace. NHD is working hard to ensure American students receive a well rounded education. We would love to continue to share their efforts with you moving forward. If you have any questions, please just let me know.
