That’s Retaliation? Sign Me Up! The Hoboken Shuffle . . .

Hoboken’s Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s claimed that the Lt Governor told her to push forward with the Rockefeller project if she wanted to receive more Sandy aid.

Could it be that Zimmer’s claims are her way of gaining attention, either for political gain or, as the Lt. Governor suggested, to coerce more Sandy money than other municipalities?

She’s avoiding hard questions like the plague but the math invites troubling questions with potentially unflattering conclusions. Greed for starters? Or at least very unrealistic expectations…


Break it down: Mayor Zimmer requested $127 million in relief aid and received $142,000 to cover the cost of a backup generator in addition to $200,000 in recovery grants from a $1.8 million fund.

Grants of $30,000 were allotted to individual homeowners who wanted to elevate their homes, amounting to $100 million. The Christie Administration reports that Hoboken received over $70 million in direct aid overall, to date, not including funds for public projects to mitigate future issues.

Another $100 million went through the state’s existing Blue Acres program to buy out homes in flood-prone regions, primarily in Sayreville and South River. $25 million was set aside by the Christie Administration to provide small grants to municipalities and sewer authorities to ensure their essential buildings retain power even during a power failure.

Overall, the state received only $300 million from the federal government to hand out; Zimmer requested $100 million of those monies for Hoboken. “Obviously $300 million versus $14 billion, that’s a big delta,” noted Marc Ferzan, the executive director of the Governor’s Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, during a recent press call.

None of the other towns received the full amount of what they requested either. We all would like to get what we ask for, I’m sure, but life has its way of reminding us that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist.

No one can blame a mayor for zealously advocating her city’s interests. I still can’t help but think that if 70 million bucks is “retaliation,” then maybe we should all try to anger the Christie Administration for a major pay day?

A War Versus a Website

 

I am not 100% sure of the accuracy of the following figures but it's a safe a bet that even if it's 25% of the amounts claimed . . . the point of the comparison still stands.

During the 3-1/2 years of World War II that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945.

The U.S. produced 22 aircraft carriers, 8 battleships: 48 cruisers: 349 destroyers: 420 destroyer escorts: 203 submarines; 34 million tons of merchant ships; 100,000 fighter aircraft; 98,000 bombers; 24,000 transport aircraft; 58,000 training aircraft, 93,000 tanks; 257,000 artillery pieces; 105,000 mortars; 3,000,000 machine guns; and 2,500,000 military trucks.

We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services; invaded Africa; invaded Sicily and Italy, won the battle for the Atlantic; planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe; developed the atomic bomb and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.

For what it is worth . . . during the almost exact amount of time, the entire Obama administration couldn't build a functioning web site. 

The Real Hunger Games

 

Let’s hope 2014 turns out better for the U.S.A. than 2013; an estimated 14.5 million American households had difficulty providing enough food for their families over the last year.

In seven million of those homes, at least one member of the family had to skip meals or eat less because of a stretched budget. These numbers are more or less unchanged since 2008!


In the richest country on earth, 50 million of us, one in six Americans . . . goes hungry. More than a third of them are children.

The media has, for the most part, ignored the fact that national poverty rates have been rising under the Obama Administration over the last four years at least.

Last year’s national poverty rate of 15% is still near the Great Recession’s high of 15.1% according to U.S. Census figures.

Although the regular jobless rate is at its lowest level in five years and the stock market has surpassed its pre-recession high, the economic gains have not reached many poor urban residents.

The Census Bureau reported in 2012 that 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty, as full-time jobs became increasingly harder to find and the median income — the midpoint in household income — was 1.5 percent lower than it was in 2010. 20.5 million Americans live in extreme poverty. That means their family’s cash income is less than half of the poverty line, or about $10,000 a year for a family of four.

While President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Debby Wasserman Schultz and the rest of the transparent administration insist that our economy is improving as they live in their beltway Shangri la, there are growing reports of economic suffering across the country.

Catholic charities’ food banks said they were seeing many more people in need of food and other assistance in December 2013 alone.

The Bronx Spanish Evangelical Church is feeding more people than ever, too, with its food pantry giving out the equivalent of over 29,000 meals in November, up from 10,000 in March of this year.

Children, men and women wait hours for a bag of groceries at a food pantry. Many of the hungriest are children and the elderly. Many have jobs whose hours and salaries have been cut particularly in the wake of Obamacare’s implementation.

Poor people tend to go where there are higher paying jobs, another factor that contributes to the increase in illegal immigration. Are you seeing how all of the pieces fit together?

Most Americans, however, do not see these food lines because they’re working and the media does little to provide a window into a trend that’s not flattering for the incumbent Democrat establishment. But reality is what it is, and people who need food are lining up every day in cities and towns across the country.

Increasing the minimum wage does not do much to reduce inequality significantly either. It can’t, because as I mentioned above, the minimum wage actually bars the most unskilled labor market participants from working at all.

Under Obama, wages are flat, jobs are scarce, incomes are dropping like a stone, everyone’s broke and 76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

“Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com last week.

Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults.

Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all….

Last week, online lender CashNetUSA said 22% of the 1,000 people it recently surveyed had less than $100 in savings to cover an emergency, while 46% had less than $800. After paying debts and taking care of housing, car and child care-related expenses, the respondents said there just isn’t enough money left over for saving more.

According to Gallup, 20.0% of all Americans did not have enough money to buy the food that they or their families needed at some point over the past year.

A Feeding America hunger study found more than 37 million people are now using food pantries and soup kitchens, one out of six Americans is now living in poverty which is the highest level since the 1960s, and that the gap between the rich and poor is greater than any in history.

The D.C. class isn’t suffering. For Thanksgiving Dinner, the Obama’s had Turkey, honey-baked ham., cornbread stuffing, oyster stuffing, greens, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, dinner Rolls, Huckleberry pie, pecan Pie, chocolate cream pie, sweet potato pie, peach pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, banana cream pie, coconut cream pie.

A little excess on a national holiday normally wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for the political class segregating themselves from those subjected to their rules, their mandates, and the dire consequences.

This Christmas season, while Obama and his family enjoy their $5 million, 17 day Hawaiian vacation during the season of charity and good will, food remains a very distant dream for far too many Americans.

Is this how Obama repays the millions of people who supported him, who believed in him, and who voted him into office?

The latest data indicates that many of those same people are beginning to wake up and see what Obama is really all about; unfortunately, it’s empty stomachs rather than open minds driving the change in public opinion.

Happy New Year.

The Real Hunger Games

A Minimum Wage for Minimum Achievement

I am sick and tired of hearing the whiners complain, Save Jerseyans, particularly about how Wal-Mart, McDonalds and the like don’t pay enough.

That is precisely why we supposedly have a free market; if you don’t like the job you are in at the moment, you are “free” to get an education and leave for a better position.
McDonald’s wasn’t meant to be a career choice or your dream job, nor was it designed to pay a livable wage.

It is an entry level job, a job that teaches an unskilled person people skills, the ability to learn how to count, make change, and what it means to be on time for your shift . . . responsibility.

McDonald’s, dishwashers and start up positions like it are jobs for those who have no prior work experience, or to supplement ones income.

It is a proving ground to learn the skills needed in business, a stepping stone to the corporate world.
There are workers who complain they have worked 10 years flipping burgers without a raise. If you are flipping burgers for 10 years and didn’t take the initiative in all those years to educate yourself, it comes down to plain laziness.

These jobs were meant for high school students, college students and people looking for a PT job for a little extra cash. Even now, in the Obama economy, the vast majority of these positions are filled by young kids or folks earning a secondary household income.

Expecting to earn a wage to support a family, pay your rent, groceries, car insurance and medical bills was brought on by many who lacked an education and now expect to survive on the backs of all those who learned the skills needed to better themselves.

Coming here without an education and then complaining you don’t earn enough to get an education is not everyone else’s responsibility. The ineptness and incompetency of those low wage earners is not the obligation of everyone else that worked those jobs to gain the job skills need to move forward and ahead.

It is unfair to those who were employed in those low skilled jobs while working their way through school, to pay more for a product simply because the current crop of low wage earners now feel this is now their permanent job. To add insult to injury, hourly pay for these jobs is now tied-in with the cost of living.

Keep in mind that these are the same minimum wage earners who can’t make change when the power goes out, because the computer isn’t able to tell them how much change you get back, but yet feel that after years of flipping a burger or washing dishes feel they deserve a raise simply because of longevity.

One reason out of many that minimum wage jobs are becoming a scarcity for today’s teenagers is due to a lack of turnover because these are the new full-time jobs for the uneducated or unmotivated.

As minimum wage increases, along with the COLA, increased costs will be passed on to the consumer. The end result is we just created a higher minimum wage without creating any great impetus for social mobility in an American society desperately in need of it!

Tags: career, education, employee, employer, hourly, job, labor, minimum, new jersey, NJ, rate, salary, teenager, unemployment, wage

 

Obama's Absurd Healthcare Fix

Obama is now back tracking saying you can keep your health plan. Well just how do you do that after you received your cancellation notice?

Obama also says most people won’t want to, anyway, and that anyone who’s had an individual policy canceled to look at what’s available at Healthcare.gov before they look to reinstate their old policy.

This guy is a walking book of contradictions.

Roughly 85% of Americans have insurance. Out of a population of approximately 317 million, about 11 million people have policies on the individual market. 

Out of that 11 million, at least 4.2 million Americans have been sent cancellation notices by their insurers.  People, who were kicked off of a plan they liked and could afford that, are now facing higher premiums and deductibles.

Aside from the reason why Obamacare had to be passed for 10% of the nation’s population, insurance companies and commissioners across the country now face the daunting task of deciding how they are going to handle already-cancelled health-care policies under the president’s new administrative ‘fix’ for the Affordable Care Act.

By reinstating cancelled policies, that means that these insurance companies will need to issue coverage that doesn’t meet Affordable Care Act standards.

And it’s not so easy for an insurance company to reinstate a policy, because those companies need to plan premiums and budget for expenses far in advance of issuing a policy.

Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the new law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers, as premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace.

Each state has regulations of its own that a plan needs to comply with before it can be offered. Many of those canceled plans no longer meet state regulations; even ones that do would need to be approved by the responsible state agency and with less than two months to go in the calendar year, it won’t happen.

It’s almost the New Year and a quick fix for this mess won’t be that swift.

The insurance companies better have all hands on deck to prepare for this administration’s 2014 mid-term, because if this so called temporary fix doesn’t work it won’t be Obama’s fault as their ship heads towards Davy Jones Locker.

 

18th District Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan feels that the Assembly position is his job for life.

 

He doesn't believe in the election process and is outraged that someone would dare challenge him for his seat.