Americans between the ages of 16 and 34 fared poorly on tests designed to measure their grasp of the literacy, numeracy, and computer-age problem-solving skills needed to compete in the international labor market. Even the youngest of U.S. millenials lag behind peers in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
U.S. Millennials Come Up Short in Global Skills Study
Shortfalls affect all segments of American society
By Sarah D. Sparks
America’s wealthiest and best-educated young adults still lag behind their peers in other countries in the literacy, numeracy, and computer-age problem-solving skills needed to compete in the global labor market.
That, coupled with yawning racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps and even grimmer skills levels for students with less than a college degree, could lead to long-term difficulty for the country, according to a new study by the Education Testing ServiceCenter for Research on Human Capital and Education in Lawrenceville, N.J.
It’s far from the first study to suggest American students are falling behind their international peers. But the analysis of U.S. millennials—those born after 1980, ages 16 to 34 during the study—specifically highlights that the skills gap goes beyond young people who are typically seen as more “at-risk,” like immigrants and high school dropouts.
“We’ve often looked at these as disconnected, only looking at the problems of individual parts,” said Martha J. Kanter, a visiting professor of higher education at New York University and former assistant education secretary under President Barack Obama. She was not associated with the study.
Readers voice concern over weakening of residency requirements
I think they are looking to hire more Hudson county partisan people to work in Ridgewood by ditching the residency rules.
The previous Village Manager is referred to as a “carpet bagger,” but yet this VC plans to do away with the residency requirement for all employees except police & fire? Do as we say and not as we do.
While other readers insist , ” We should be hiring for police & fire from the surrounding communities Paramus, Glen Rock, Midland Park, Waldwick and Ho-Ho-Kus, as well as Ridgewood. This would give the Village access to a wider pool of applicants and might stop us from hiring a majority of legacy candidates.”
The Mayor wrote in a PolitickerNJ Editorial on 03/04/11 , “my Party has largely stood on the sidelines as union workers were vilified and scapegoated. Silent and passive, many Democrats did nothing as others attacked the very people at the center of our Party. No defense. No counteroffensive. No nothing. During the past year’s great debate over worker’s rights and responsibilities, the Democrats – by and large – refused to show up.”
The Mayor received massive campaign contributions from unions :
Paul Aronsohn (D)Political Action Committee Total ContributedTeamsters Union $10,000.00 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $10,000.00 United Auto Workers $6,500.00 Carpenters & Joiners Union $5,000.00 American Fedn of St/Cnty/Munic Employees $5,000.00 National Air Traffic Controllers Assn $5,000.00 Sheet Metal Workers Union $5,000.00 Laborers Union $3,500.00 AFL-CIO $2,661.00 American Federation of Teachers $2,500.00 Operating Engineers Local 825 $2,500.00 Plumbers/Pipefitters Union Local 475 $1,000.00 Service Employees International Union $1,000.00 Plumbers/Pipefitters Union Local 274 $1,000.00 Plumbers/Pipefitters Union Local 9 $500.00
Not Only do Dead People Vote but many collect Social Security
IG Audit: 6.5 Million People With Active Social Security Numbers Are 112 or Older
March 9, 2015 – 10:39 AM
By Susan Jones
An IG audit of the Social Security Administration found that the nation’s database of active Social Security numbers includes more than six and a half million people who are older than 112 years of age.
(CNSNews.com) – Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond — except in the records of the Social Security Administration.
The SSA’s inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 — or older — for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident.
The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed “maximum reasonable life expectancies.”
“We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a date of death on their record,” the report states.
Some of the numbers assigned to long-dead people were used fraudulently to open bank accounts.
And thousands of those numbers apparently were used by illegal immigrants to apply for work:
“During Calendar Years 2008 through 2011, SSA received 4,024 E-Verify inquiries using the SSNs of 3,873 numberholders born before June 16, 1901,” the report said. “These inquiries indicate individuals’ attempts to use the SSNs to apply for work.”
“It is incredible that the Social Security Administration in 2015 does not have the technical sophistication to ensure that people they know to be deceased are actually noted as dead,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Emails May Be a Key to Addressing ‘Pay-to-Play’ Whispers at Clinton Foundation
There are not two Clinton controversies. There is one big, hairy deal.
By Ron Fournier
March 8, 2015 “Follow the money.” That apocryphal phrase, attributed to Watergate whistle-blower “Deep Throat,” explains why the biggest threat to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential dreams is not her emails. It’s her family foundation. That’s where the money is: corporate money, foreign money, gobs of money sloshing around a vanity charity that could be renamed “Clinton Conflicts of Interest Foundation.”
What about the emails? Hillary Clinton’s secret communications cache is a bombshell deserving of full disclosure because of her assault on government transparency and electronic security. But its greatest relevancy is what the emails might reveal about any nexus between Clinton’s work at State and donations to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation from U.S. corporations and foreign nations.
Menendez, majority of US Senate on same page over Iran: Analyst
Most members of the US Senate share Democratic Senator Robert Menendez’s opinion on Iran’s nuclear energy program and sanctions, an American foreign policy analyst says.
“Senator Menendez is a very powerful member of the Senate, especially in the area of foreign affairs, and his opinion on Iran carries great weight inside the US Senate,” said James George Jatras, a former US diplomat and adviser to the Senate Republican leadership.
The Department of Justice has reportedly decided to bring criminal corruption charges against Menendez, who is involved in congressional efforts to pass anti-Iran legislation.
“As far as the pending charges against him from the Justice Department, I think… you have to presume that he is innocent until the government shows that they have proof of criminal wrongdoing,” Jatras told Press TV on Saturday.
“But I do not think that charges will really do much to change the direction of the Senate on the question of Iran, and the nuclear program and sanctions because Senator Menendez’s opinions are widely shared by other senators of both parties,” he noted.
Menendez, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been one of the detractors of President Barack Obama’s administration.
Reader quipped, “I’am shocked just shocked that there is corruption going on.”
Seems kind of coincidental- menendez has been screaming about not giving in to Iranian demands regarding their nuke program and going against party dogma- i’m no fan of the guy but the timing is very odd- holder’s last scalp- boxer’s hubby is becoming a billionaire based on insider govt contracts and they’re going after this guy-
One can just picture Mayor A. seething at the choice made from among the all of the available photographs of Senator Menendez.
However uncivil it may sound, most people know that if you lay down with dogs, it’s flea city when you get up.
More significantly for the Mayor, does the Obama administration’s decision to throw Menendez under the bus indicate that the Chicago syndicate no longer has any use for the NNJ syndicate as a whole? Or is Obama’s ire being directed solely and simply toward the ‘top dog’?
I’am shocked just shocked that there is corruption going on.
Yes, this is so out of character for NJ. In all seriousness, this will probably not even make the national news, being that it’s such a regular occurrence.
INGLE: What’s gone wrong with Chris Christie?
Bob Ingle 6:31 p.m. EST March 6, 2015
TRENTON — Would the real Chris Christie please stand up? New Jerseyans who voted for a straight-shooting reformer and untypical politician are wondering if the guy they once loved was replaced by an imposter pod, like in the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” movie.
One of the hotter topics around Trenton is a proposed Christie administration pollution settlement disclosed by The New York Times. Administrations going back to Jim McGreevey’s sought $8.9 billion from ExxonMobil. The Times reported the proposed settlement is a mere fraction of that, $250 million. It actually was only $225 million. A judge already has ruled the giant oil company is liable for pollution from refineries it once owned in Linden and Bayonne.
A former state Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, Brad Campbell, wrote in The Times that Christie’s chief counsel, Christopher Porrino, allegedly intervened to get a better deal for ExxonMobil, which was a big donor to the Republican Governors Association when Christie chaired it.
Speculation under the Gold Dome is Christie sold out the people of New Jersey for the equivalent of three cents on the dollar to balance his budget.
Alleged red-wigged Glen Rock bank robber has checkered past, records show
March 5, 2015, 9:23 PM Last updated: Friday, March 6, 2015, 7:15 PM
By CHRIS HARRIS
staff writer |
The Record
GLEN ROCK — The wig-wearing woman who authorities say robbed the Glen Rock Savings Bank last month and took the proceeds to a casino has a checkered criminal past that includes jail stints in both Florida and New York, where she was convicted for robbery, burglary and theft.
Michelle Cantatore, 51, of White Plains, N.Y., was detained Thursday in Atlantic City by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation on a single bank robbery charge.
But before walking into the Glen Rock bank three weeks ago brandishing a paintball gun, arrest records indicate Cantatore spent more than three years behind bars in a Florida prison following a 1982 conviction on three counts of grand theft and one count of burglary.
Cantatore, who was born in New Mexico, also served more than a year in a New York prison when she was convicted in 1996 of third-degree robbery in Westchester, records show.
According to the FBI’s complaint against her, Cantatore fled Glen Rock with $112,900 in cash and was inside Atlantic City’s bustling Borgata casino just seven hours later.
March 6, 2015 Last updated: Friday, March 6, 2015, 12:31 AM
The Ridgewood News
The limits of civility
To the Editor:
Work obligations prevented me from attending the panel on civility, so I offer my observations here.
“Civility” is like “decency,” or “freedom,” or any number of other vague concepts against which no one could sensibly argue. My college professors called such terms “glittering generalities” and warned us to beware of hiding behind them.
“Civility” can enable the sophist to evade challenge by deflecting the emphasis from what is said to how it is said. “What a rude, mean, tactless thing to say” is not a refutation of an underlying argument, only a deflection. Sometimes harsh criticism is deserved and hard words are unavoidable.
I was particularly uncomfortable with the correspondent in last week’s paper who deplored questioning motives. Motives that cannot stand up to questioning are likely to be questionable. For example, “nonprofit” is simply a form of corporate organization in which any excess is ploughed back into the corporation rather than disbursed as dividends to shareholders; there is nothing especially virtuous about it, and though the corporation is nonprofit, individuals who derive their income from it generally are not. Many a scoundrel has cloaked himself in the robes of righteousness, and over the past few years the chorus of voices demanding more accountability for “nonprofits” has grown in both number and volume..
With regard to anonymity, the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms; it is understandable that critics of wealthy and powerful institutions might well want not to risk retaliation.
In sum, critics are well advised to avoid ad hominem arguments, intemperate words, and insults because they undermine your logic and alienate possible allies. But otherwise, as Harry Truman said, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
file photo by Boyd Loving Sen. Robert Menendez swearing in our mayor at Ridgewood REORG
Menendez: White House’s least favorite Dem
“I have to be honest with you, the more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran,” Menendez. “And it feeds to the Iranian narrative of victimization when they are the ones with original sin–an illicit nuclear weapons program, going back over the course of 20 years, that they are unwilling to come clean on.” https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dem-senator-obamas-iran-talking-points-straight-out-tehran_824204.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) —Sen. Robert Menendez might be a senior Democrat but he’s no friend of the White House.
In fact, he’s emerged as one of the most troublesome obstacles to President Barack Obama’s legacy-building effort to end decades of U.S. estrangement with Cuba and Iran. He’s also poked the administration on its troubled relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he shares a hawkish outlook towards Tehran.
But the senior senator from New Jersey, 61, is now in the news for a different reason, after CNN first reported Friday that the Justice Department is preparing to bring criminal charges against him.
People briefed on the case say prosecutors plan to allege that Menendez used his Senate office to push the business interests of a Democratic donor and friend in exchange for gifts. The charges, which are expected to be formally laid within weeks, threaten to seriously imperil Menendez’s political prospects at a time when his influence in Washington has rarely been greater.
Menendez is currently the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after serving briefly as chairman when his predecessor John Kerry left to become Secretary of State and before Democrats lost the Senate majority last year.
But his position in the minority belies his influence.
Dads’ Night performances set for this weekend in Ridgewood
March 5, 2015 Last updated: Thursday, March 5, 2015, 3:10 PM
By By Tiffany Katehakis
Staff Writer |
The Ridgewood News
There aren’t many opportunities to see grown men dress up in the costumes of their children’s favorite character.
But the fathers who are a part of Somerville-Hawes Dads’ Night set the bar pretty high when it comes to doing things for their kids.
The organization, now in its 71st year, has become a brotherhood of sorts, spanning multiple generations.
The event now has more dads participating than ever before.
This year Dads’ Night returns with two performances at the Benjamin Franklin Middle School auditorium at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 6 and 3 p.m. Saturday, March 7. The free show is general admission seating.
Perhaps it is the silliness of it all that these dads embrace that becomes the element that bonds them together.
The show is written, produced, and stars Ridgewood fathers with kids in the elementary schools.
Corzine Huckster Bradley Campbell Leads Charge Against ExxonMobil Deal
“The” Bradley Campbell who as NJDEP commish issued a no-further-action letter on DOW Chemicals Superfund site in Paulsboro for Sweeney and Burzichelli’s crony Pork Paulsboro, where Campbell has a sweetheart consultant job, along with Kolluri, former NJDOT commish??? Pork Paulsboro – No oversight no money for cleanup thanks to Campbell. Perhaps he’s posturing for a position on DumpSweeney’s cabinet with this NY Times article? That Brad Campbell??
NYT ExxonMobil coverage “irresponsible, disingenuous, and baldly political”
Posted by Matt Rooney On March 05, 2015
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Chris Christie told last week’s CPAC gathering that he planned to give up The New York Times for Lent.
I suspect he’s still abstaining after today’s coverage of the ExxonMobil settlement, Save Jerseyans, including a guest op-ed from the former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Bradley Campbell. Alleging that the Governor’s chief counsel, Christopher Porrino, drove the settlement negotiations rather than the Attorney General’s office, Campbell directly accused Porrino of having “inserted himself into the case, elbowed aside the attorney general and career employees who had developed and prosecuted the litigation, and cut the deal favorable to Exxon.”
Press Secretary Kevin Roberts struck back. Hard.
“Baseless allegations concerning the State’s proposed settlement with ExxonMobil were published today in the New York Times based on comments from a known partisan, Bradley Campbell (a many-time Democratic appointee who worked for the Clinton Administration and McGreevey Administration),” Roberts noted in a statement.
Roberts (center) with Governor Christie at Bordentown Regional High School in March 2012. (Governor’s Office/Tim Larsen)
“The notion that this settlement represents something less than what is fair for New Jerseyans is absurd and baseless when you consider the facts of the settlement and Campbell’s prior comments on this case,” he added, pointing out that today’s announced $225 million damages settlement (not pre-announcement, baseless partisan-motivated speculation, a point I made yesterday on WNYC radio) is hardly unreasonably small.
Want proof? Here you go:
In May 2006, after a state judge ruled in New Jersey’s favor against ExxonMobil (remember: this expensive litigation is many, many years old), Bradley Campbell reportedly told the Star Ledger that damages “could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Why does Mr. Campbell think the price tag of the settlement stinks today?
When a 9-figure settlement was perfectly acceptable in 2006?
Reader says Sarcastic Retorts by Deputy Mayor Unwarranted and Unacceptable in the Village of Ridgewood
Can we define how civil it was the way they treated Councilwoman Knudsen last night???? PUCCIARELLI was like a thug with his sarcastic retorts in the face of her comments.
I presume Councilwoman K. said something reasonable or supportive of what the average resident would expect the council to do, Councilman P. disagreed with her because of some personal agenda he’s got going, and, because he’s one of the three amigos, he had license to ridicule her in accordance with the “new normal” of civil discourse in Ridgewood. What got him spun up this time?
You have to watch it on the ustream. The meeting was so long that it is in two separate U-streams. Go to this one first: https://www.ustream.tv/recorded/59529870
Susan’s zinger begins at 2:16:20, but back it up a bit and listen to what Mike Sedon says about the fact that the local hiring law has been broken repeatedly in the past 25 years. Now the three amigos want to change the law to reflect the way it has been followed (illegally). In other words, they have been breaking the law all along, so let’s change the law.
Susan claims that the Open Public Meetings Act was broken last week when they made her leave the closed session and go home. At one point Albert actually got sarcastic about it, and Susan came right back at him for his snotty comment.
Susan and Michael were aces, absolutely on point and the other three were a total train wreck.
Ms. Knudsen appears to have been deceptively advised to recuse herself when the statute required no such thing.
This is uncivil in the extreme.
One’s mind further boggles at the inexplicable statement by Atty. Rogers that although for 25 years the town has been acting ‘inconsistent with the ordinance’ in failing to accord Ridgewood residents hiring preferences when the ordinance required such preference, this does not mean that the village has been ‘breaking the law’. What the heck is the difference between acting inconsistent with an ordinance, and breaking the law, other than using about five extra syllables to say the same darn thing? And the cure for this is to change the ordinance, not fix the hiring practice? You’re right, Mr. Sedon and Ms. Knudson, the real news story here is not a defective ordinance, but a systematic flouting of a law leading to a generation’s worth of Ridgewood-based applicants being improperly snubbed in favor of non-residents.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. The village manager and village attorney sound concerned about improperly snubbed residents potentially seeking to undo some recent hiring decisions.
New Jersey reform plan won’t stop double-dips or $100,000 pensions
By Mark Lagerkvist / March 5, 2015
3 SCOOPS – Sen. Fred Madden is a triple-dipper collecting $248,000 a year from a state pension and two public jobs
By Mark Lagerkvist | New Jersey Watchdog
Double-dipping public officials and retirees collecting $100,000 a year or more from New Jersey state pensions have little to fear from the sweeping reforms proposed by Gov. Chris Christie.
The blueprint drafted by the governor’s Pension and Health Benefit Study Commissionpromises to help the state retirement system escape a $170 billion funding deficit by cutting benefits, freezing existing pension plans and eventually ceding the risks and responsibilities to the labor unions of public employees.
“We will tackle this problem, and we will solve it,” declared Christie last week in his annual budget address. “This is what real leadership produces for our people.”
Yet numerous excesses and abuses will remain – with or without the proposed reforms.
For openers, roughly 2,000 retired public officials would continue to draw six-figure pensions for the rest of their lives. The recommended changes would not affect anyone already retired, including members of the unofficial ‘$100K Club.’
Double-dipping would continue to be legal in New Jersey.
The task force cited New Jersey Watchdog’s investigations of abuses including double-dipping – the common practice of early retirees returning to public payrolls to collect both a salary and pension from government coffers.
“The commission’s sense is that, given the size of the system and the extent of its other problems, the double-dipper issue may not be financially material,” stated the study, which did not offer any data to support that conclusion.
“It has great symbolic importance, however, as the double-dippers have become the ‘face’ of a dysfunctional public pension system,” it continued. “For this reason, the task force should consider ways to further limit this practice.”
The commission suggested that double-dippers should contribute to the cost of their medical coverage just as other public employees do. But such a measure may only amount to a minor disincentive.
Consider the case of Fred Madden, a triple-dipping state senator from Gloucester County.
Madden rakes in $248,082 a year — $85,272 as a State Police retiree, $49,000 as a state legislator and $113,810 as dean of law and justice of Rowan College at Gloucester County. Since he retired at age 48 in 2002, Madden has collected $1 million in pension checks in addition to his public salaries.
“Obviously, I don’t have a problem with people doing it,” Madden told New Jersey Watchdog in 2012. “I don’t have a problem with it at all.”
Under the task force’s proposal, Madden could keep collecting all three paychecks under the task force plan, though he might have to start contributing to the cost of his state medical plan.
Ultimately, Madden and his colleagues in the Democratic-controlled State Legislature will decide whether to adopt any or all of the reforms being proposed by a Republican governor with presidential aspirations.
Meanwhile, New Jersey’s pension dilemma grows bleaker for both pensioners and taxpayers.
The unfunded liability of the state retirement system is $170 billion, according to the most recent official numbers from the state Treasury. That figure includes:
$82.7 billion in unfunded liability for the pension plans of state workers.
A $20.7 billion shortfall for the pensions of local government employees who collect retirement checks from the state.
$53 billion in unfunded health benefits for state retirees.
$13.8 billion to cover the post-employment benefits of local government workers.
“The situation is not only getting worse, it is fast approaching the point at which it will be beyond remedy,” warned the task force study.
Ridgewood Library Offers Organic Farming & Backyard Gardening Class
Mon, March 09, 2015
Time: 7:00 PM
Ridgewood Public Library, 125 N. Maple Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Organic Farming & Backyard Gardening,
Monday, March 9, 7pm.
Natural and sustainable growing methods, safe seed/fertilizer sources, how to compost, natural pesticide control and more.Ridgewood Library Valley Hospital Wellness Partnership
Tue, March 10, 2015
Time: 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Ridgewood Village Hall, 131 N. Maple Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Brain Food and Brain Health
Tuesday, March 10, 7-8:30pm.
Did you know some foods can promote alertness while others keep us calm? Learn to make food choices for your body’s needs. All welcome, registration required.
Please call 1-800-825-5391 or visit www.valleyhealth.com/events. Please note location: Annie Zusy Youth Lounge at the Community Center.
Ridgewood Library 26th Annual Author Luncheon
Wed, March 11, 2015
Time: 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Seasons, Washington Tsp, NJ 07676
26th Annual Author Luncheon
Wednesday, March 11, 11am-3pm.
Featuring Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train,
Seasons, Washington Township, NJ.
Reservation forms available at Ridgewood Library service desks
