FCC Chair Refuses to Testify before Congress ahead of Net Neutrality Vote
by ANDREW JOHNSON
February 25, 2015 10:19 AM
Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Internet regulations pertaining to net neutrality.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) criticized Wheeler and the administration for lacking transparency on the issue.
A Letter from Dr. Fishbein on PARCC, Policies and Procedures
February 24, 2015
Dear Parent or Guardian:
Next week, we will begin the implementation of the New Jersey state-mandated PARCC assessments in our schools. Although we have been administering state-mandated assessments for decades, these particular required assessments have been subject to much debate and controversy.
Simply, all New Jersey public school districts are mandated by the State of New Jersey to administer these assessments and students are required to participate. On Monday, February 23, 2015, the Ridgewood Board of Education updated Policy #2622 – Student Assessment. (A link to the policy is provided below.)
The State of New Jersey does not recognize parents who do not permit their children to take the PARCC assessments. However, in preparation for the administration of PARCC in the Ridgewood Public Schools, we have developed an administrative process we will follow under Procedure #2622 – Student Assessment. Because this is a procedure, it is not subject to Board of Education approval. (A link to this procedure is provided below.)
Below are links to relevant FAQ information from the New Jersey School Boards Association (NJSBA) and from the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE). In addition, significant PARCC information may be found on the Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment page of our district website at www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us. The link to the PARCC information is located on the right side of the page.
17,000 Federal Employees Earned More Than $200K Last Year
See which agencies employ the federal workforce’s highest earners.
BY ERIC KATZ, GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE
February 24, 2015 More than 16,900 federal employees took home in excess of $200,000 in base salary in 2014, according to a partial database of federal salary data.
The information, compiled by FedSmith.com using data from the Office of Personnel Management and other agencies, shows the annual compensation for every civilian federal worker, save those at the Defense Department. The number of workers earning more than $200,000 represented about 1.6 percent of employees on the list and is up from about 15,000 who cleared that salary in 2013. It also makes up a slightly higher percentage of the employees on this list.
Most of the high earners worked as medical officers at the Veterans Affairs Department. Other agencies that require a highly specialized workforce paid several employees at least $200,000; these included the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
More than 1,600 federal employees cleared $300,000 in base salary last year. Just two—VA doctors in Palo Alto, Calif., and Pittsburgh—took in more than $400,000.
All of these employees are paid on systems specific to their agency or occupation. Some of these systems have much higher pay caps than the General Schedule, which sets the salaries for the vast majority of federal employees and capped annual pay—before adjusting for locality—at just less than $130,000 last year.
‘Shocked’ by budget address, Sweeney and Senate Dems upbraid Christie’s pension plans
TRENTON — Senate Democrats, calling the Republican’s new proposal to overhaul the pension and benefit system a “some roadmap written on a cocktail napkin,” roundly condemned Gov. Chris Christie’s budget address today for failing to lay out a vision for the state’s economy and finances in 2016. (Brush/PolitickerNJ)
Assembly Dems question administration budget big on pension fixes but short on other issues
TRENTON — Assembly Democrats bashed Gov. Chris Christie’s budget address today for being heavy on talk about fixing a broken public pension and benefit system — but virtually nonexistent on anything else. (Brush/PolitickerNJ)
PBA head challenges Christie to ‘look beyond presidential ambitions’ on pension front
Following up on an earlier statement clarifying that his organization would “never support freezing pensions for our members who have continued paying their required pension contributions while government has skipped their legal responsibility to do so,” the president of a major public sector union in New Jersey further distanced himself from Gov. Chris Christie’s new proposal to overhaul the state’s pension and benefit system. (Brush/PolitickerNJ)
Firefighter Rep Donnelly goes after NJEA leadership after Christie budget speech
TRENTON – Gov. Chris Christie won the support of key Building Trades unions’ reps in his first term by seizing on fractures between those private sector unions and public sector labor.
This afternoon, his budget address sparked a fight among public sector reps, as New Jersey State Firefighters Mutual Benevolent Association (NJFMBA) President Eddie Donnelly trained his immediate sights on the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA). (Pizarro/PolitickerNJ)
What Patricia Arquette Got Wrong About the Founders and Women
David Azerrad / February 23, 2015
In a harried Oscar acceptance speech which culminated in a hackneyed call for wage equality, actress Patricia Arquette blamed the Founders for the so-called gender pay gap.
“It’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries when we don’t have equal rights for women in America,” Arquette, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, said. “And we don’t because when they wrote the Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women.”
Like many Americans, actress Patricia Arquette doesn’t understand the Constitution (she also doesn’t understand basic economics as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway pointed out).
If the Framers didn’t intend the Constitution for women, they sure did a fine job of concealing their intention. Nowhere in the original Constitution are citizens classified according to sex. As Tiffany Jones Miller explains in the “Heritage Guide to The Constitution” essay on the 19th Amendment:
Contrary to popular belief, the United States Constitution of 1787 is a gender-neutral document. Throughout the original text, the Framers refer to “persons”—as opposed to “male persons”—and use the pronoun “he” only in the generic sense. The word “male” did not even appear in the Constitution until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868.
While we’re at it, it’s worth pointing out that the Declaration of Independence also doesn’t take into account sex in proclaiming that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. The Declaration speaks of “all men” and not “all human beings” because the former is a more rhetorically powerful way to describe mankind.
Neither one of our founding documents classifies people according to sex—or according to race or religion for that matter. Therefore, contrary to what many civics textbooks incorrectly teach, the original Constitution did not restrict the right to vote to white, property-owning males aged 21 or older.
Women were voting in New Jersey at the time of the Founding! For the first time in recorded history, women voted alongside men in elections
The Constitution defers to the states on voting eligibility in federal elections. As is plainly written in Article I, Section 2: “the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”
As a result, voting eligibility varied by state. Certain states denied blacks the right to vote—but a majority did not. And—here comes the whopper—women were voting in New Jersey at the time of the Founding! For the first time in recorded history, women voted alongside men in elections. And it happened right here in America—the first country in the world dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal.
The 19th Amendment, therefore, did not give women the right to vote. It guaranteed women the right to vote. By the time it was ratified in 1920, more than three-fourths of the states already allowed women to vote in some or all elections. Ultimately, the seeds of women’s suffrage were sown in the Declaration of Independence’s dedication to equality.
Whatever the state of remuneration in the workplace may be today, Patricia Arquette and others should leave the Founders out of it.
Commodore John Barry, Hero of the American Revolution
Programs at the Ridgewood Public Library
Irish in the American Revolution Discussion
Irish in the American Revolution, Monday, March 2, 7pm.
Todd Braisted shares his research about the Irish who fought with the Patriots, the British, the Hessians and the French during the American Revolution.
Ridgewood Library Offers Knit One Read Too
Tue, March 03, 2015
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Ridgewood Public Library, 125 N Maple Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
NEW* Knit One Read Too, instructional session, Tuesday, March 3, 7pm.
Learn or help others to knit, crochet, embroider, stitch as we preview best of new books. Group size limited, registration required. Please visit Reference desk, www.ridgewoodlibrary.org or contact Victoria at 201-612-5600, ext. 133.
Reading Marathon Closing Celebration
Mon, March 02, 2015
Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 AM
Location: Ridgewood Public Library, 125 N. Maple Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Reading Marathon Closing Celebration: Bash the Trash, Monday, March 2, 4-5pm.
“Serious” musicians find a melody in their trash. Register now.
*Note: this is a rescheduled performance from a snow day.
Unbroken: The Great Zamperini Disscussion at the Ridgewood Library
Unbroken: The Great Zamperini
Wednesday, March 11, 6:30pm. Documentary screening and discussion about Louis Zamperini’s WWII crash and POW experience.
Speaker: Rick Feingold. Free, all welcome. Light refreshments.
Gruber billing referred to Vermont attorney general
APRIL BURBANK, Free Press Staff Writer 4:26 p.m. EST February 23, 2015
Vermont officials ignored “obvious signs” of problematic billing by health care economist Jonathan Gruber, the state auditor said in a memo released Monday.
Gruber’s invoices lacked important details and claimed dubious numbers of work hours as he prepared economic models for a single-payer health care system — but state officials failed to scrutinize the invoices, Auditor Doug Hoffer wrote.
Hoffer said he was referring the matter to Attorney General William Sorrell.
Gruber said Monday he had no comment. Gov. Peter Shumlin’s spokesman, Scott Coriell, referred a request for comment to Administration Secretary Justin Johnson.
“We don’t believe that the work was overstated, in part because we were dealing with Dr. Gruber on a daily basis, and he was doing the work that we asked him to do,” Johnson said.
New Jersey Tries to Make Excuses for Expensive State Highways in Poor Condition
Taxpayers get traffic congestion, poor pavement conditions, deficient bridges and a big bill for state roads
David T. Hartgen and Baruch Feigenbaum
February 23, 2015
Reason Foundation’s Annual Highway Report, which found New Jersey’s state-controlled highway system ranks 48th out 50 states in cost-effectiveness and performance, has resonated with New Jersey’s taxpayers who have long complained of bumpy pavement and gridlocked roads and highways.
The Annual Highway Report measures the condition and cost-effectiveness of state-owned roads in numerous categories, including pavement condition on urban and rural Interstates, urban traffic congestion, deficient bridges, unsafe narrow lanes, traffic fatalities, total spending and administrative costs.
With a proposed increase to the state gas tax putting New Jersey’s roads under new scrutiny, Jamie Fox, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation, recently commented on the Annual Highway Report. Mr. Fox wrote, “Without the benefit of having the numbers the Reason Foundation used to base its calculations, there is no way to independently review its findings.”
That’s strange. Our Annual Highway Report is based on data that New Jersey, and other states, provide themselves to the federal government. And we’ve readily shared the report’s data with state transportation departments and members of the media across the country. The full Annual Highway Report is here (.pdf). Many of the tables we used are publicly available on the Federal Highway Administration’s website. Some of the key tables are HM-10 (mileage), SF-3 (Revenues for State-Administered Highways) and SF-4 (Disbursements for State-Administered Highways).
Mr. Fox also wrote, “NJDOT has jurisdiction over only 6 percent of the entire roadway network in the state.” That’s right, and the Reason Foundation’s Annual Highway Report ranks New Jersey based only on the roads the state actually controls. And that should be even more worrying New Jersey’s taxpayers: Despite the small size of the state-controlled highway system, New Jersey still has big trouble taking care of it. The state ranks near the bottom in poor pavement condition — 46th in urban Interstate pavement condition, 46th in rural primary road pavement condition—and 36th in deficient bridges.
New Jersey’s state government controls just over 3,300 miles of highway. Texas and North Carolina, for comparison, each control more than 20 times as much — over 80,000 miles of highway each. Texas ranks 11th in overall highway performance and cost-effectiveness, while North Carolina ranks 20th, and New Jersey ranks 48th.
Mr. Fox takes issue with how the state’s transportation spending is reported:
New Jersey gives out nearly $330 million a year in local transportation aid to counties and municipalities. This helps local government take care of local roads without having to raise property taxes. The Reason Foundation counts the spending we give to local government but doesn’t count all the miles of local roads that are repaired or built.
Like it does for county and municipal aid, the Reason Foundation also counts the investments made to maintain and run New Jersey Transit as part of our highway spending but gives the state no benefit for that spending. New Jersey is the only state that operates a statewide transit system, so including transit expenditures into highway construction costs is both inaccurate and unfair.
The report’s spending totals are pulled directly from numbers the state of New Jersey provided to the Federal Highway Administration under the category of “Disbursements For State-Administered Highways – 2012.” This federal table, used in our report, shows the breakdown that New Jersey provided for its spending on “capital outlays for roads and bridges; maintenance and highway services; administration research and planning; highway law enforcement and safety; interest; bond retirement; reserves for highway work; and reserves for debt service.”
None of those categories include “local transportation aid” or “statewide transit system.” If the state is claiming it mistakenly included local aid and mass transit spending in clearly defined state highway categories, New Jersey should correct the data it provided to FHWA.
Mr. Fox makes another claim:
The Reason Foundation uses a centerline mile as its denominator. A centerline mile measures the total length of a given road from Point A to Point B, but it doesn’t measure how many actual lanes of highway are going from Point A to Point B.
When was the last time you were on a single-lane highway in New Jersey? There are some, but not many. When we spend money to maintain or build a multiple lane highway, the Reason Foundation acts as if all that spending is to construct a single lane of highway, not the multiple lanes that are actually built.
Lane-miles are part of the report’s calculations. In fact, lane miles are inherent in calculating many of the report’s rankings, including traffic congestion and pavement condition. The Annual Highway Report clearly states: “The average number of lanes per mile is 2.40 lanes, but a few states (New Jersey, Florida, California and Massachusetts) manage significantly wider roads, averaging more than 3.0 lanes per mile.” The report goes on to detail the miles, lane miles and the average number of lanes for all 50 states. These factors are then used to adjust our figures to account for wider roads in some states, like New Jersey. So if New Jersey’s big spending were resulting in smoother pavement and less traffic congestion across many lanes, the state’s overall ranking and its rankings in those individual categories would be better. Instead, New Jersey ranks 31st or worse in nine of the 11 categories, and 41st or worse in seven of 11 categories.
It is incorrect, but let’s test the claim anyway — if the spending per mile metric is punishing New Jersey for having highways that are six or eight lanes wide, as Mr. Fox alleges, then it would make sense that other states with wide highways would suffer too. But that is not the case. California, home to many of the busiest and widest highways in the country, spends $500,000 per mile. New Jersey spends four times that — $2 million per mile. New Jersey spends three times as much as Massachusetts ($675,000 per mile), three-and-a-half times more than Florida ($572,000 per mile), four times as much as New York ($462,000 per mile), and 12 times more than Texas ($157,000 per mile), which is home to six of the 20 most populous cities in America.
If you have a frozen pipe or any condition of a burst pipe, the first thing you have to do is shut off the main water line supply to the house at the main valve in order to stop the leaking water and the home damage.
First, I will advise you to call a NJ Plumber immediately as time is critical and it depends where the leaking is, you might also need to open your kitchen faucet or bathroom faucet so the water in the pipes will empty to a lower place and go to the sink, and if you have a basement with a laundry area or any sink you should release the water out from the lowest water valve that is available.
Sometimes the lowest valve will be the one next to the main water valve so all the water that comes from the piping system will go out onto the ground.
Water becomes ice around 32 degrees Farenheit (0 degrees Celsius), the only thing you need to make sure of is that your water pipe lines are:
Located within an area in which there is heating service and minimum access to open air so warm air can go through any layers of sheet-rock, walls, ceilings, especially around exterior walls where pipes are more likely to get frozen and burst because the temperature is much lower in this area or in an unfinished basement.
Some of the water lines need to be insulated to prevent direct access of cold air and low temperatures on the pipe’s surface, especially pipes that are located underground or next to exterior walls that are exposed to a lower temperature.
In some rare areas you might need to leave some windows, like in the garage and open doors in the basement, furnace room or HVAC system or boiler in order to have the warm air and the heat flow to the rest of the area as in some areas baseboard heaters or vents are not installed because they are unfinished or not a living area.
If you suspect that your pipes are in a low temperature area and might get frozen and burst you must prepare yourself for the worst in order to prevent substantial damage, not only to plumbing but also to your home’s belongings at it might get, floors wet, walls wet from leaking, carpeting or floor damage and electrical damage that will cost you thousands of dollars to fix. The way to do that is to figure out the risk areas, and if you had a burst pipe in the past then you will know.
From our experience a low temperature are will hit again and again at the same spot, so if you had a frozen pipe in the kitchen, or a frozen main line in the basement or an underground pipe that froze and burst those are the areas you need to fix and make sure those pipes are protected from the cold so they do not freeze and burst again.
As part of burst pipe prevention and protecting frozen water lines there are devices that can be used as small heaters for pipes that are at risk of being in a low temperature area.
Those devices range from $20 to no more than $200 so they can surround and be attached to the pipe and that’s an excellent local plumbing repair tool that will prevent a burst or frozen pipe. The other option is to go with heating systems that will maintain a minimum temperature within your living area, basement, etc..
Burst Pipe or Frozen Pipe repair Can Be Avoided
Maintaining your heat temperature to at least 50 degrees in order to be on the safe side, make sure there are openings in the rooms where there are no heating baseboards or hot air and take care of the water lines that are under risk of getting frozen before they get burst.
Posted by Dan Cirucci On February 23, 2015 0 Comment
By Dan Cirucci | Dan Cirucci’s Blogspot
It’s no accident that George Washington was called “the father of our country.”
From the very beginning, American presidents have been somewhat patriarchal — not in the sense of a monarch, of course but more like a strong, caring, reliable dad who sees the best in us, inspires us, rallies us and above all, defends and protects our national family.
That’s what the best dads do. That’s what we’ve come to expect from them.
But what if we had a dad who always noticed our faults? What if he was repeatedly critical? What if he kept pointing it out to others whenever he thought we did something wrong?
Instead of challenging us to aspire to our highest goals, what if he constantly warned us and attempted to lower our aspirations? What if he pushed us to pull back instead of leaping forward?
What would it be like if we had a father who at times appeared to be arrogant and occasionally disdainful toward us?
Fox’s Neil Cavuto Admits Yes Mr President its All Fox News Fault
Fox’s Neil Cavuto breaks out the sarcasm: Yes, it was somehow Fox that caused the IRS to crack down on conservative groups, Fox that told people you could keep your doctor under Obamacare. Calling ISIS the “JV team”? The measles outbreak? Blame Fox.(Brent Bozell)
Saturday Night (Pointed) Humor: Cavuto Admits That It’s All Fox News’s Fault
By Tom Blumer | February 21, 2015 | 11:59 PM EST
Thursday on his Your World show, host Neil Cavuto went after the Obama administration’s near obsession with the coverage it gets on Fox News.
While Team Obama can count on the Big Three triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC to toe the line, promoting its points while generally avoiding damning information, Fox has generally remained fair and balanced, an approach which has clearly gotten under their ultra-thin skins.
The occasion for Cavuto’s rant, which veered into some impressive sarcastic humor, was Eric Holder’s claim that Fox wouldn’t have anything to talk about if it wasn’t noting the failure of the administration to call Islamic terrorism what it is, i.e., Islamic terrorism:
Transcript (bolds are mine):
NEIL CAVUTO: All right, folks. I have a confession to make.
I did it again. Eric Holder caught me.
ERIC HOLDER (taped): We spend more time, more time, talking about “What do you call it?” instead of “What do you do about it?” I mean really, y’know, y’know, if Fox didn’t talk about this, they’d have nothing else to talk about.
CAVUTO: Yeah. If not for us at Fox News making such a big deal out of saying “Islamic extremism,” no one would be making a big deal out of the White House not saying “Islamic extremism.” Not this Democratic congresswoman or this former top Obama intelligence official. They say words matter too, but it’s Fox News making the big stink, so, well that’s all that matters now.
And it got me thinking. You know it happens sometimes. I know, I’ve heard this before, this whole White House mentioning this Fox News thing before.
(shows a series of derisive or negative references to Fox News by Barack Obama and Josh Earnest)
CAVUTO: Well, I am so busted. Pick a crisis, any crisis, you name it. Fox News is behind it. Worse yet, Fox News created it. And I’m here to admit the White House ain’t telling you the half of it. How clever we are, how devious we are. If only I had known that you had known.
If only I had known that Fox News said you could keep your doctor when you couldn’t keep your doctor, and it wasn’t the President saying that.
Or that it was Fox News’s plan to send your health insurance premiums skyrocketing and not the President’s plan.
Or that Fox news dismissed ISIS as “the jayvee team” and not anyone on the President’s team.
Or FOX News was the one spying on our very own James Rosen, and not the Justice Department spying on our very own James Rosen.
That Fox News was the one targeting conservative groups, and not the IRS targeting conservative groups.
Very clever. God knows what other controversies we caused. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before it all comes out.
So let me just fess up now and spill the beans. Everything bad, Every time … Fox!
All this frigid weather? Yeah, Fox News. Don’t ask, we just did it.
This whole measles outbreak thing? Bingo! Fox News!
This tepid economic recovery? Sorry, Fox News.
The housing meltdown that preceded it? You guessed it. Fox News started it.
The Internet bubble? Fox News created it, then we burst it so could keep milking it.
The energy crisis back in the 1970s: Fox News — which is amazing, because we weren’t even around in the 70s!
But that didn’t stop us from having a role in the JFK assassination. Yeah, that was a Fox News guy in the grassy knoll.
The Titanic. Yeah, the captain, see the captain? So Rupert Murdoch wth a beard, don’t you think? And now you know why the movie was so good. We damn near wrote the script!
Pearl Harbor: Fox News knew the Japanese were coming!
The potato famine. Even Fox News’s Irish-American anchors (i.e., Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity — Ed.) did nothing, nothing to stop it from coming. They’re the culprits!
“Tsunamis: Fox News! Earthquakes: Fox News! Tornadoes: Fox News!
That meteor hit in Russia that blasted buildings a couple of years back? Well, (that was) Fox’s little Putin payback.
Oh yeah-yeah-yeah, this goes way back, to the Dinosaurs: Fox News killed them off.
And the Big Bang? Fox News started life itself up, only to toy with all living creatures since, and make a mockery of political leaders today.
Feds sent incorrect tax information to 800,000 people on ObamaCare
By Peter Sullivan and Sarah Ferris – 02/20/15 10:26 AM EST
The administration sent the wrong tax information to 800,000 people who have enrolled in ObamaCare, officials announced Friday.
The information used to calculate subsidies was wrong on about 20 percent of tax forms, an error that could delay tax refunds for thousands of people.
Administration officials stressed that the vast majority of HealthCare.gov customers received the correct forms, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the issue impacted “a very small fraction of people.”
But the tax glitch quickly provided new ammunition for Republicans, who continue to argue that the healthcare law is fatally flawed.
“Surprise, surprise, the Obama administration still does not have its act together,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote in a statement.
She said the new problems offer more proof that the IRS should be kept out of healthcare, and pledged to redouble her efforts to repeal the ObamaCare insurance penalty entirety.
“The Obama administration has built a healthcare law so complex, so confusing, and so costly that even they don’t know how to properly administer it,” Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) added in a statement just minutes after the error was disclosed.
ALTAR BOYZ VISIT PORCH LIGHT THEATRE IN GLEN ROCK
Sun, February 22, 2015
Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Porch Light Theater, 555 Broad St., Glen Rock, NJ 07452
Porch Light Productions, an award-winning theatre specializing in live shows and professional performing arts training presents ALTAR BOYZ, as part of it’s 2014/15 Main Stage series, February 20-28. Showtimes are held Fridays and Saturdays at 8PM and Sunday, February 22 at 2PM.
This hip-hoppin’ tuneful musical with book by Kevin Del Aguila, music and lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, conceived by Marc Kessler and Ken Davenport features the brilliant cast: Peter Fournier (Matthew), Nick Riccardi (Mark), Bobby Allan (Luke), John Hannigan (Abraham) and Alexander Rivera (Juan). Porch Light’s production will be directed and choreographed by Alex Perez with musical direction by Charles Santoro.
‘Altar Boyz’ is a foot-stomping, rafter-raising, musical comedy about a fictitious Christian boy-band on the last night of their national ‘Raise the Praise’ tour. The Boyz are five all-singing, all-dancing heartthrobs from Ohio: Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham. The show features tight harmonies and spectacular choreography, performed through the band’s signature hits such as ‘Rhythm In Me,’ ‘The Calling,’ and ‘I Believe,’ the Boyz question their loyalty to each other and ask whether or not faith is really holding them together. They finally deliver a message of unity, that ‘there is no star as bright as its constellation, no harmony in a single voice.’
“This amazingly talented cast will definitely have audiences having a great time. It was important to be faithful to the book while poking fun at the boy band craze and making the show accessible to all generations,” says Perez. “Every generation has a favorite boy-band, so I thought it was important to pay homage to all. From Jackson 5, New Kids on the Block, N’SYNC and One Direction – this show satirizes all the moves – all the swagger and all the winks a musical can embrace.”
Tickets are $25 for adults & 22 for students and seniors (60+). General seating. Advanced ticket purchase recommended. For tickets, visit www.porchlightproductions.org, call (201) 857-3520 or visit the theatre at 555 Broad Street, Glen Rock NJ.
Republican lawmakers investigate White House net neutrality push
Republicans want to know whether the Obama administration influenced the FCC’s proposal
By Grant Gross
Computerworld | Feb 20, 2015 2:18 PM PT
WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans are demanding to know how much the White House influenced the Federal Communications Commission while the agency crafted net neutrality rules.
The FCC has until Monday afternoon to produce unredacted email messages, focused on net neutrality rules, between FCC staff and officials with the Obama administration, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said in a letter to the FCC Friday. The Utah Republican is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Chaffetz’s committee is “investigating the potential involvement of the White House” in the creation of proposed net neutrality rules that the FCC is scheduled to vote on next Thursday, he said in the letter. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will propose regulations that would reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service instead of a lightly regulated information service.
An FCC spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment on Chaffetz’s letter.
The Government’s War on Freedom of the Press
Press freedom has declined in recent years.
Ken Silva | February 21, 2015
The U.S. plummeted to a dismal 49th place on the Reporters Without Borders annual Press Freedom Index, marking the country’s second lowest ranking since the list was created in 2002 and its lowest since 2006. Other countries ranked in the 40s and 50s include Haiti, Mongolia, and Chile .
The index cited “judicial harassment” of New York Times reporter James Risen, the arbitrary arrest of at least 15 journalists during the Ferguson, Missouri clashes, and the fact that U.S. journalists are still not legally entitled to protect sources who reveal confidential information about their work.
The U.S.’s slip in press freedom rankings mirrors its seven-place drop in Freedom House’s Global Press Freedom Index from 2013-2014, though the country still ranks among the 14 percent of countries whose press is classified as “free” in the latter scale.
Reality may be even worse than the rankings suggest. Legal protections for the press have only eroded since the 2006 trough year when the Bush Administration threatened to prosecute Risen for publishing stories chronicling warrantless wiretapping of citizens’ phone calls.
