APRIL 30, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY REBECCA GREENE
CORRESPONDENT |
WYCKOFF SUBURBAN NEWS
Wyckoff — Two mayors having difficulty getting hold of each other has resulted in a stalemate when it comes to solving issues residents are having with their Ridgewood Water bills.
Wyckoff Mayor Kevin Rooney and Ridgewood Mayor Paul Aronsohn say they have made attempts to speak to each other and both are expressing frustration about the time between returned phone calls and emails.
The Village of Ridgewood operates Ridgewood Water, a utility that serves Wyckoff, Midland Park, Glen Rock and Ridgewood. Wyckoff residents have been complaining about large bills they have recently received that reflect actual use versus estimated use going back several years.
When one resident complained at a recent Township Committee meeting about the $1,071 “surcharge” bill he received, Rooney told the resident he has tried several times to contact Aronsohn to resolve the issue. He said his attempts prior to the committee meeting were unsuccessful.
The Homeland Security Department is a bloated bureaucracy, too large and disparate to effectively manage as one entity.
Such was the takeaway from a report on 60 Minutes, the famed news magazine program on CBS. The report focused on a series of interviews with DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who defended the department and the progress it has made to better coordinate its 240,000-person workforce and its array of components.
“Johnson’s department has never been more central to the War on Terror,” 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl said. “But it has come under almost constant criticism for, over the years, weak management and low morale.”
She added Johnson faces a “management nightmare,” as DHS agencies and sub-agencies have no clear common functionality binding them together.
“This department is a disparate amalgam of things that don’t fit together very well,” said Clark Ervin, the former DHS inspector general. “Making the department work, making it more effective and efficient, economical, is a security issue. To the extent the department isn’t optimally performing, that is a security deficiency.”
The report spent little time explaining how DHS came together in its current form. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, the George W. Bush administration and lawmakers determined domestic security efforts were spread too far apart in the sprawling federal bureaucracy, and bringing them together would improve coordination of protection efforts. No matter the origins, 60 Minutespostulated DHS’ structure was unsustainable.
Please visit the Graydon Pool homepage at www.ridgewoodnj.net/graydon to learn about membership rates, program offerings and pool amenities. Be sure to bookmark our Graydon homepage on your computer for future special events and program offerings. Opening day for Graydon Pool is Saturday, June 6th.
2015 season memberships may now be purchased online via Community Pass at www.ridgewoodnj.net/communitypass. Be sure to refer to your online confirmation when purchase is complete for detailed information on how to obtain your photo identification badge. Preseason in-person assistance will be available at the Graydon Pool Badge Office (on-site at the pool) on Saturday, May 9 and Saturday, May 16, 10 am to 12 noon each date.
Aquatic programs, including the Graydon Swim Team and instructional and recreational swim, are also available online at Community Pass, or you may review levels and print program registration forms from our Graydon homepage referenced above. Meet the Aquatic Staff and learn more on the following dates at the pool: Saturday, June 6th, 10 am to 1 pm, and Saturday, June 20th, 10 am to 1 pm.
American Red Cross Waterfront Lifeguard Training (recertification/bridging and new) is available through Ridgewood Parks and Recreation. Details/registration are also available on the Graydon Pool homepage.
Summer is fast approaching, so sign up now. For more information please call 201-670-5560.
Only one-in-three Americans knows how many women serve on the Supreme Court, but 91 percent can identify Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years after his assassination.
That’s according to the latest Pew Research Center News IQ survey released Tuesday, which tests how well the American public knows the world in words, maps and pictures.
Almost all millennials surveyed — 96 percent — could pick out King from a list of names that included Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Thurgood Marshall. Older generations could mostly identify the slain civil-rights leader, as 89 percent of Gen Xers, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation did.
But millennials apparently aren’t so great at identifying the current party makeup of the Senate. Only 47 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 were able to do so, compared to 52 percent overall. Those who described themselves as more politically engaged were more likely to know the upper chamber’s composition. (For the record, Republicans hold 54 seats; Democrats 44 seats; and Independents two seats.)
Mon, May 04, 2015
Time: 7:00 PM
Ridgewood YMCA, 112 Oak St., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
The Ridgewood YMCA / YWCA Bergen County, in cooperation with Bookends Bookstore, is proud to welcome Taya Kyle, widow of US Navy Seal and “American Sniper”, Chris Kyle, to the Y to discuss her new book, American Wife: Love, War, Faith and Renewal.
This seated event will begin at 7pm on Monday, May 4 and will include a talk by Taya followed by a question and answer session. Tickets are $35 each and include a signed copy of American Wife.
Limited space is available for this event. To purchase tickets, please visit Bookends Bookstore at 211 E Ridgewood Ave in Ridgewood or call (201) 445-0726.
On Friday, an administrative law judge in Oregon recommended a $135,000 fine for the bakery company Sweet Cakes by Melissa.
The owners, Aaron and Melissa Klein, refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. They are Christians who do not believe in same-sex marriage.
The lesbian couple claimed they had justification for “damages” against the Kleins:
In their lawsuit, the two women claimed they felt “mentally raped,” as part of a list of 88 symptoms of emotional distress they experienced at being refused a cake.
The long list of symptoms included “acute loss of confidence,” “doubt,” “excessive sleep,” “felt mentally raped, dirty and shameful,” “high blood pressure,” “impaired digestion,” “loss of appetite,” “migraine headaches,” “pale and sick at home after work,” “resumption of smoking habit,” “shock,” “stunned,” “surprise,” “uncertainty,” “weight gain” and “worry.”
This comes in the wake of controversies over religious freedom legislation in Indiana and Arkansas. A more narrow measure that deals exclusively with marriage is under consideration in Louisiana. In all three states, gay rights groups strongly oppose these laws.
The question has to be asked: At this point can gay marriage co-exist with religious freedom?
More and more conservatives are coming out for gay marriage. The Supreme Court will likely rule in favor of same-sex marriage in all 50 states this summer. Polls show that an increasing majority of Americans favor same-sex marriage. The battle is all but over nationwide.
The real test for those who support freedom is whether they uphold it for people who are unpopular, such as opponents of same-sex marriage. In a free society, there should be protections for mom and pop wedding service providers who cannot in good conscience service same-sex weddings. Those businesses are an extension of their owners, who should not be asked to check their beliefs at the door.
Many orthodox Christian sects, among other religions, continue to view same-sex marriage as sacrilege. What right does the state have to force these people to think differently?
Read more at https://rare.us/story/can-gay-marriage-and-religious-freedom-co-exist/#1aGc2zCobmFpTuEJ.99
Earth Day provided a fresh opening for Obama to raise alarms about global warming based on beliefs, not science.
By
LAMAR SMITH
April 23, 2015 7:35 p.m. ET
‘Today, our planet faces new challenges, but none pose a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” President Obamawrote in his proclamation for Earth Day on Wednesday. “As a Nation, we must act before it is too late.”
Secretary of State John Kerry, in an Earth Day op-ed for USA Today, declared that climate change has put America “on a dangerous path—along with the rest of the world.”
Both the president and Mr. Kerry cited rapidly warming global temperatures and ever-more-severe storms caused by climate change as reasons for urgent action.
Given that for the past decade and a half global-temperature increases have been negligible, and that the worsening-storms scenario has been widely debunked, the pronouncements from the Obama administration sound more like scare tactics than fact-based declarations.
APRIL 26, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 2015, 10:17 AM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — A final vote on a proposed amendment to the master plan that would clear the way for the development of high-density, multifamily housing downtown is approaching.
After five years of consideration, Ridgewood’s Planning Board could move to decide the long-simmering matter at a public hearing that has been set for May 5.
At the board’s meeting last week, village planner Blais Brancheau outlined several recent changes he had made to the master plan amendment’s draft language — modifications prompted by ideas from board members and the public.
In the revised amendment, Brancheau lowered the permitted height of high-density, multifamily housing complexes to 50 feet from 55. He also decreased the number of units allowed by acre, dropping it to 30 to 35, from 40 to 50.
Brancheau tweaked the sizes of some of the four zones, reducing the total acreage that would be affected by the proposed master plan changes by a fifth, thus reducing the maximum build-out for those four zones to 253, from 326.
APRIL 26, 2015, 10:58 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 2015, 11:02 PM
BY HERB JACKSON
RECORD COLUMNIST |
THE RECORD
With New Jersey’s stubbornly high unemployment rate ranked seventh highest in the country, Governor Christie’s aspirations for higher office were always going to be weighed down by the state economy.
Though down sharply from the high point he hit in national polls after his reelection with 61 percent of the vote in 2013, Christie has not been counted out by presidential campaign veterans such as Arizona’s Sen. John McCain because of his ability to connect personally with voters, especially in early primary states where that kind of touch really matters.
But a report released last week by Congress’s Joint Economic Committee shows just how bad things are in the Garden State, compared with other states whose governors, or former governors, are also considering bids for the Republican presidential nomination.
New Jersey has logged a 5.6 percent increase in private-sector jobs since the economic low point of February 2010, but the increase has been 7.8 percent in Gov. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, 9.7 percent in Gov. John Kasich’s Ohio, and a whopping 18 percent in Texas, where Rick Perry just left the governor’s mansion.
As for gross domestic product, New Jersey’s has grown by an average of 1 percent a year since 2009, compared with 1.8 percent in Wisconsin, 2.5 percent in Ohio and 4.4 percent in Texas. New Jersey’s recovery also trails Florida’s and Arkansas’, but Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee had already left the governors’ offices for the time periods being compared.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry
By Christopher Booker
8:14PM BST 25 Apr 2015
Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed “its hottest March since records began in 1880”. This year, according to “US government scientists”, already bids to outrank 2014 as “the hottest ever”. The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world’s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).
But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”.
Back in January and February, two items in this column attracted more than 42,000 comments to the Telegraph website from all over the world. The provocative headings given to them were “Climategate the sequel: how we are still being tricked by flawed data on global warming” and “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest scientific scandal”.
My cue for those pieces was the evidence multiplying from across the world that something very odd has been going on with those official surface temperature records, all of which ultimately rely on data compiled by NOAA’s GHCN. Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been “adjusted”, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified.
So strong is the evidence that all this calls for proper investigation that my articles have now brought a heavyweight response. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures.
(CNN)The FBI is investigating a possible ISIS-inspired terrorist threat in the United States, law enforcement officials said Saturday.
The investigation originated from intercepted chatter and other intelligence information that led officials to believe a possible plot could be in the works, the officials said.
No arrests have been made. It’s not clear whether the threat is real or aspirational.
The exact nature of the threat couldn’t be learned. One official said it focused on parts of California where officials stepped up security, a U.S. official said.
The Transportation Security Administration alerted local law enforcement agencies that are responsible for external security around airports, but officials said the possible threat is not necessarily aviation-related.
Some cities around the United States have increased their security as a precaution.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson declined Saturday to talk about specifics, but spoke about security measures in general.
While I and many of us appreciate all the hard work work state and municipal workers do , the reality is that your union dues fund most of the politicians who mismanage your assets . The tax base has been so depleted in New Jersey by the anti business attitude and high taxes current benefit packages are no longer viable .
New taxes are out of the question , so that leaves only significant budget cuts and changes to new hires contracts in order to preserve promises made to retirees .
“Time to reach deeper into your pocket thanks to the current and past governors and legislatures.” Wow, we have some public pensioners on this blog! How do you guys feel about the Pension Committee’s proposals to reduce the cost of NJ state entitlements without raising state taxes? Would be nice to see an honest debate about this instead of the hysterical rants above. I personally think we’re already taxed enough, state income and local property taxes plus commuting costs are already the highest of any state in the nation. So just raising taxes again without concessions changes nothing of the status quo that has ruined NJ state finances and caused the local economy to lag the national economic recovery. Here’s the plan. Why can’t we debate this?https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pdf/FinalFebruaryCommissionReport.pdf
The proposed Millionaire’s tax won’t raise enough revenue to cover the $4bn required pension payment at the state level. To do that, we’d have raise state income taxes on any household making over $300k a year by +10%, raise NJ sales taxes by 20%, and raise the gas tax by 25c per gallon plus the already planned NJ Transit fare hike of +9%. That’s the Democrat/union plan to pay for the past. None of those tax revenues raised would go towards future investment in education, infrastructure, or economic development. That’s why NJ’s net emigration will continue to accelerate, it’s why businesses are leaving, and it’s why pension hogs like the socialist we’ve got here are willing to tell the rest of us to reach deeper still in our pockets to pay for his $100k pension and free healthcare. He doesn’t care about the future of NJ; he only cares about his pockets. That’s why no part of the status quo in NJ is sustainable.
Bergen County already has the 3rd highest property taxes in the USA, and NJ counties take 7 of the top ten spots nationwide (source: https://onforb.es/1IQKDic ), and yet blog posters here can only see further tax increases as the long term solution? You must be retired public sector workers.
Taxes should be cut, not raised. A new Zillow survey (https://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml) puts Bergen County taxes at #3 in the nation, which means Ridgewood has one of the highest property tax bills in the USA. Surely we can find ways to operate more efficiently and reduce OT and other fixed expenses? Why aren’t higher paid employees in public safety and Village management contributing more (i.e. +50%) for the cost of their health care plans? Why aren’t we moving new Village hires to defined contribution pension plans instead of defined benefit plans like the BoE is doing?
The FACT is the actual cost for a N.J. public employee family plan is $19,488.00. The national average for same health care coverage for public and private health care family plan is $16,351.00 according to the September 25, 2014 – Status Report of the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission which can be found on page 8, (see link below).
– https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pdf/NJPHBSC.pdf
–
You claim N.J. retirees get $100,000.00 annual pensions. Partially correct but only if they are members of the Judicial Retirement System! Here are the average annual pensions for each pension system from page 11 of the same report.
Public Employees Retirement System – State – $30,769
Apr 25, 1:38 PM EDT
BY NEDRA PICKLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans’ calls and emails.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it.
President George W. Bush authorized the “President’s Surveillance Program” in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The review was completed in July 2009 by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers “had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the PSP to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts.”
Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. They also say an intelligence agency has no business possessing the deeply personal records of Americans. Many favor a system under which the NSA can obtain court orders to query records held by the phone companies.
The Patriot Act expires on June 1, and Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow continued collection of call records of nearly every American. The legislation would reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, including the provision under which the NSA requires phone companies to turn over the “to and from” records of most domestic landline calls.
APRIL 24, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
When a handful of residents resurrected the Ridgewood Arts Council (RAC) last year, there was little doubt cast that the group’s members would struggle to make their mark. Now, they’re preparing to leave a lasting legacy.
Members of the RAC along with their friends and other interested residents, some 20 in total, met Tuesday night to discuss the progress of the organization and its current initiatives while rallying support of the abundance of creativity in the village.
“We all know that Ridgewood has a thriving arts community, whether it’s in painting, singing, dancing, and culinary arts. There’s so much here,” Mayor Paul Aronsohn said during the evening’s welcome. “This is a great organization to bring it all together and make it available for everyone to see.”
In an effort to bring various art forms together, the RAC has launched a campaign to create “Ridgewood Art at Village Hall,” a permanent art display that would adorn the interior walls and halls of the municipal building. This week, the first eight art pieces donated for exhibit consideration were presented for viewing.
Ridgewood Police and the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The Ridgewood Police Department has been receiving numerous reports of tax returns being filed fraudulently. The Ridgewood Police will assist the victim with filing documentation of the incident. All incidents should be reported to the Internal Revenue Service Investigation Unit.
STOLEN IDENTITY REFUND FRAUD
ALERT: The IRS does not send unsolicited email, text messages or use social media to discuss your personal tax issue. If you receive a telephone call from someone claiming to be an IRS employee and demanding money, you should consult the IRS Tax Scams/Consumer Alerts webpage: https://www.irs.gov/uac/Tax-Scams-Consumer-Alerts. If you know you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to believe that you do, report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 1.800.366.4484 or at www.tigta.gov.
Stolen Identity Refund Fraud (SIRF) Enforcement
One of the Tax Division’s highest priorities is prosecuting people who use stolen identities to steal money from the United States Treasury by filing fake tax returns that claim tax refunds. Working to stop Stolen Identity Refund Fraud, or SIRF, is vital because these schemes threaten to disrupt the orderly administration of the income tax system for hundreds of thousands of law abiding taxpayers and to cost the United States Treasury billions of dollars.
SIRF crimes are complicated to prosecute because they are often perpetrated by large criminal enterprises with individuals at all stages of the scheme: those who steal the Social Security Numbers (SSN) and personal identifying information, those who file false returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), those who facilitate obtaining the refunds, and the masterminds who promote the schemes. These criminal enterprises are able to exploit the speed and relative anonymity of highly automated systems for storing personal information, preparing and filing tax returns electronically, and generating income tax refunds quickly—often in the form of electronic payments.
Identities used in SIRF crimes may be stolen from anywhere. SIRF criminals have used social security numbers stolen from institutions such as hospitals, nursing homes, and public death lists, thereby exploiting some of the most vulnerable members of our communities—the elderly, the infirm, grieving families. However, everyone with a social security number is potentially vulnerable to having their identity stolen. According to the IRS, from 2008 through May of 2012, the Service has identified more than 550,000 taxpayers who have had their identities stolen for the purpose of claiming false refunds in their names.
Typically SIRF perpetrators file the false returns electronically, early in the tax filing season so that the IRS receives the false SIRF return before the legitimate holder of the social security number has time to file their return. The SIRF perpetrators arrange to have the refunds electronically transferred to debit cards or delivered to addresses where they can steal the refund out of the mail.
SIRF crimes cross state borders, and increasingly, national borders. Successfully prosecuting the wrongdoers requires a national strategy of information sharing and coordinated prosecution. The nation-wide reach of the Tax Division’s centralized criminal tax enforcement and its ability to coordinate closely with every United States Attorney’s Office, and through them local law enforcement and police, makes it possible for the Government to respond efficiently and forcefully to the explosion of SIRF crimes. Moreover, the Tax Division has created expedited procedures for working with the United States Attorneys’ Offices on SIRF crimes to ensure the quickest possible investigation and prosecution of these cases. Additionally, the Division works closely with the Internal Revenue Service to quickly share information obtained from our investigations and prosecutions of SIRF cases that the IRS can use to make it more difficult for the schemes to be successful by blocking the refunds from being paid in the first place.
The Tax Division has had considerable success in SIRF prosecutions, which have generated long sentences for those convicted of SIRF crimes. This page contains links to articles, websites, and press releases with information on how the Justice Department and IRS are dealing with SIRF crimes, guidance for citizens whose identities have been stolen and used to file false tax returns, and efforts of the Justice Department to prosecute these crimes.
– Kathryn Keneally, Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division
Potential class-action lawsuit filed against the maker of TurboTax
