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Let me introduce you to Jay Lazerowitz, a lawyer... https://www.nj.com/bergen/inde...
Ethics my arse. (Allegedly) stole over $4 million from folks that entrusted him to watch over their savings.

It actually happened. CNN aired footage of people in Palestine celebrating as well.

Seniority pay is what most other people call "cost of living adjustments".

If it's cost of living, then why should new teachers be excluded from it? If anything, they should be paid more since they probably have college debt and no savings.

The best thing that could happen to teachers is to bring back the respect people had for them back in the old days. None of this "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" crap. But that change isn't going to happen if the system keeps promoting mediocrity.

I've encountered more than a few who can be replaced by a cassette tape. It doesn't diminish my respect for my better teachers, but for the occupation as a whole, it really drags down the average.

Should performance be a factor? Probably. Should it be the only factor? No. In fact, there's a good argument to be made that in the often highly political world of academia, a pure seniority pay scheme without any adjustment for performance other than firing people who severely under-perform produces better outcomes by reducing salary biases that otherwise would favor the teachers who suck up over the ones who actually do a better job.

Being bad at measuring performance is not a valid reason to avoid measuring performance. It's a reason to find better performance metrics. Also, if you have district or intra-district level evaluators who's only visiting the school once a month or so, they're not going to be so easily convinced by teachers sucking up to them.

At a bare minimum, a performance-based scheme requires independent evaluators, which means more administration, whereas you want less.

I want less overall, not necessarily less in every category. You can cut a lot in other places and add a few for evaluation. I mean, how many do you really need? A team of 5 can probably serve half a dozen districts.

Multi-million-dollar classrooms is almost always an exaggeration.

No, it's not an exaggeration.

Realistically, schools build buildings because they have exceeded the capacity of the old ones or because the cost of maintaining the old buildings has gotten so high that it is cheaper to build a new one and pay for it over thirty years than to maintain the existing one over that same time period. Cost-cutting on construction inevitably leads to higher maintenance costs in the long run, which over the life of the building ends up cutting into funds that could have been used to pay more teachers.

Do you have a source on the maintenance costs of older buildings? I don't remember seeing any work being done on them when I was in school, and we had some pretty old buildings.

What we need to cut down on are the people who work outside the schools at the district level (except teacher evaluators). To the maximum extent possible, we need to replace them with automation. Hire computer programmers to write tools that can handle those administrative duties automatically. Hire temp workers for short-term data entry tasks like keying in student enrollment forms at the start of each school year, or outsource it to a call center in India

That would be nice. I'd also like to ask what exactly are they administrating and whether that work needs to be done at all.

Most of the disparity in public school quality comes not from how well the system is run, but from how high the average property taxes are in the areas that feed those schools.

We don't actually know that. Property taxes in the area also strongly correlates with education level of the parents, which is by far the biggest predictor of scholastic success.

...passing a law making it illegal for cities to provide additional funds for their schools, and req

Which brings up my only concern. About 5 years ago a Dietz & Watson warehouse in our area caught fire and they couldn't do much about it, so it burnt to the ground. We know one of the firemen and he corroborated the story here. The solar panels interfered with their ability to get on the roof and suppress the flames.
If not for that being an issue, I'd love to go solar.
http://www.nj.com/burlington/i...

Yeah, no way anyone could beat a cop unconscious with their bare hands.

Fake News at its best. The linked OPINION PIECE over at The Hill starts with a false premise -- that companies run by Elon Musk have gotten approximately $5 billion in taxpayer funds -- and runs blindly with it.

Click thru to the original LA Times from May 2015 and you get this bit of clarity:

The figure compiled by The Times comprises a variety of government incentives, including grants, tax breaks, factory construction, discounted loans and environmental credits that Tesla can sell. It also includes tax credits and rebates to buyers of solar panels and electric cars.

Let's take that apart one piece at a time, starting with the easy ones: discounted loans, factory construction, and end-user rebates.

Tesla's discounted loans were loans that were made by the Dept. of Energy only if Tesla could get matching funding from the private sector. They did. And then paid the loans back, plus interest, a full nine years before they were due.

Yes, they paid them back with interest. That isn't "taking taxpayer money". They got it all back plus some. You know, like capitalism.

How about "end user rebates"? Musk doesn't get those, they go to the person -- taxpayer -- purchasing the electric vehicle. You get them on Nissan Leafs and Chevy Volts as well. And they're only around until the manufacturer sells a certain number of vehicles. Claiming them as a "subsidy" for Musk is dishonest.

Factory construction and tax breaks? State-level incentives made by California, New York, and Nevada because factories bring jobs and other revenue. This isn't unique to Musk or any of his companies. States, Counties, and Cities use tax incentives -- rebates, discounts, and waivers -- in order to lure all sorts of businesses, from Walmart to automotive manufacturers. Trying to call out Musk for this as if it is something special given to his companies, again, dishonest.

Environmental tax credits and grants in general are because the pollution created by the fossil fuel industry is horrendous, and isn't something that individuals can deal with on their own. Large companies get their own subsidies by externalizing the environmental costs -- that is, sweeping the filth under the run and not paying to clean up.

Corporations will shit all over everything if it can make them a buck. Individual who need jobs to survive aren't in a position to fight for even the basics -- that is one of the reasons we have governments.

The environmental benefits of switching to electric vehicles and solar/wind power are massive, and greatly outweigh the downsides (when measured against the coal/oil yardstick).

Yes, the government needs to actively encourage clean technologies. Yes, it is in the tax payers best interest to support these sorts of things. There are always people who will value short term profits over long term benefits, so no, the unregulated free market will not handle this better.

Been there (Love Canal, NY & New Jersey in the 1970s), done that (tetra-ethyl lead, freon, asbestos), not going back for some Ayn Rand-worshiping fanatic who failed to study history or learn anything useful from it.

This is an interesting read, though it is only about public roads, but clearly, in the public sector, there are a lot of costs that the private sector would not tolerate.

http://www.nj.com/traffic/inde...

Though I agree with the court, that recording anything one can legally observe should itself be legal, I do not understand, what the First Amendment has to do with this right. What is the connection between such recording — which can (and often is) done silently — and Free Speech?

If it is the plans to later publish the recordings, that place their preparation legal, then a lot of other activity may fall under the Amendment's protection — such as leaking state secrets or "entering federal property under false pretenses.

Also, are the First Amendment protections lost if the person recording never ends up publishing anything within "reasonable" time — can he then be charged under lesser local laws for things like "intimidation" or "refusing police orders"?

Meanwhile, the Second Amendment gets trampled every day — forget "assault" weapons, mere knives are illegal in many places and in New Jersey you can be arrested for possession of a slingshot "without explainable legal purpose"...

Not only Edison. New Jersey is the place where Curtis-Wright (the manufacturer of Lindberg trans-Atlantic flight airplane engine), this is biopharmaceutical hub and the place of one of the largest ports in the worlds. AT&T and its offspring Verizon have/had headquarters here. The departure of the cinema business to Los Angeles has always been attributed to the availability of sun. I will take a great risk of being downvoted, but I have to bring what is obvious: 1. The unions. 2. Property taxes. Probably one of the most expensive property taxes in the middle-class communities. 3. NJ income taxes. One of the highest state income taxes, while deductions and exemptions are not significant. As an additional evidence serves the fact that solidly blue state has been electing Republican governors who only promise lower taxes. Even with the highest property taxes and income taxes, the state is technically bankrupt, yet cops routinely make $130K and more. http://www.nj.com/bergen/index... 4. Congested road and bad commutes. 5. Corruption, in the form of regulation, sweet deals to certain service providers. Locally the euphemism of "cost of doing business" is used. All of the above require high and higher salaries to compensate high-cost living expenses. At the same time, high salaries become a low hanging fruit to relocate job to lower jurisdiction (such as Florida, or India). Here comes the answer: NJ is bleeding mid-level jobs from all the high-tech industries, while at the same time serving as a suburb for those commuting to the New York City.

Requiring that a private security company carry appropriate licenses

What "appropriate licenses"?. For those posing under the "SLOW CHILDREN" sign. The very fact, that activities like surveillance and research of online posts by others require a license is an outrage.

These weren't uniformed guards — armed or not — who may be mistaken for official law-enforcement and for that reason can be subjected to licensing requirements. They served no warrants or documents — it was research and connecting the dots. This should not require a license.

Any attempts to limit research of anything online would be for EFF's to fight. The rest — for ACLU, if the two organizations really stood for liberty, rather than Left "progressivism".

not a violation of the Constitution, so the ACLU doesn't care

ACLU are full of shit — if they cared about the Constitution, they would've fought anti-weapon laws nation-wide. Forget "assault weapons" — you can't even possess a knife or a slingshot in some parts of the country. Pompous hypocritical assholes...

Nope, the other AC has it right. I saw it live on TV on CNN. They were claiming she was upset because they used the song, and were trying to stir up some ballyhoo about it. THEN she came out with the "Why do you lie, CNN?" tweet.

.

CNN's interpretation is hardly a lie, the tweet was real. Let's see, asking people to remember the first line of the song, does indeed come across as a sardonic remark to me, and fits well enough with CNN's interpretation of unhappiness. To me, it's Nancy Sinatra whose accusation was off-base. Probably why she deleted it.

Sorry, but if this is the kind of thing produced, it's going to be unpersuasive in terms of skewering CNN. Rather the opposite effect.

Here's one of the more interesting ones from an earlier time he said it.
http://www.nj.com/politics/ind...
According to the article he said he'd file a legal challenge to the 14th Amendment in an effort to revoke citizenship from millions of people born in the U.S. to mothers who arrived in the nation without documentation.
So it's not just flag burners he's threatening with exile for defying a wannabe King.

No, the oIL platform next to them is significantly uglier, imho.

And neither is quite as ugly as your mentioned oil refineries in NJ.

For comparison, here is an authentic NJ refinery.
http://media.nj.com/business_i...

go tell that to the Chinese who manipulated their currency to flood the market and drive out American competition like Solyndra

Trump will :-) Some people disagree with him (and you), but he'll tell them nonetheless.

Assemblywoman Pamela R. Lampitt (D., Camden)

An earlier proposal — from Ms. Lampitt's fellow female Democrat from Essex — would've made it mandatory for bicycles to be registered in the State.

Kinda reflects badly on the national Party trying to portray itself as the defender of personal freedoms and individual rights.

Agreed. Here we would never want people to die because they are overworked:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/greyhound-bus-crash-kills-2-injures-18-article-1.2501658
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/48bb2x/nyc_uber_driver_fell_asleep_at_the_wheel_and/
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/05/garbage_truck_crashes_into_west_new_york_building.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/nyc-engineer-apologizes-train-derailment

Normally, I'd say "Only in Chicago," but apparently you weren't kidding about New Jersey.

SMH.

Smart meters are coming to PSEG territory "soon" based on what I've heard. They have already deployed them in Long Island shortly after taking over LIPA's grid. Maybe the NJBPU should get around to dealing with all the scammy alternative energy re-sellers that flooded the marketplace after deregulation. http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2014/06/nj_third-party_energy_provider_charges_overcharging_consumers.html

I find swatting ... Endlessly amusing. I find it amusing because it exposes a fundamental flaw in telecom systems.

You're quite mistaken there. It isn't a "fundamental flaw in telecom systems," it is a flaw in the social system. Fortunately there is an excellent patch for this issue. The problem is that it isn't used enough. If the patch was applied more regularly the problem would be likely to pretty much disappear. Will you be volunteering to demonstrate?

And the data - is it in question? It comes from the IRS data itself, and has been published by the Tax Foundation for years and years. If it was in error, wouldn't someone have caught it by now?

Yes, it's in error, and yes, the Tax Foundation has been "caught" more than once.

http://economistsview.typepad....

http://www.cbpp.org/archives/t...

http://www.nj.com/opinion/inde...

http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/14...

http://angrybearblog.com/2012/...

http://www.citizensforethics.o...

The Tax Foundation is as phony as a three dollar bill.

Yes, totally. That's why the box changed the world. Break bulk, even on pallets was a bear to unload, and a ship would be in port a LONG time, and the ships were relatively small. Today, the 10000 TEU sip I quoted at 100 tons fuel/day is actually small. You are seeing ships up at 18000 TEU and 125 tons/day. These ship are the reason the Panama canal is being rebuilt, NY Harbor has been dredged deeper, the Bayone bridge in NJ is being raised (to get to the slips in NJ)
One of the real ISSUES they don't bring up, with the trade imbalance, many more containers come INTO the US than go out. What do you do with the empties? In general, what happens is the best are reused to ship stuff out, Some are sold (there are a reason you see the ads for buying containers) and the rest? Cut up for scrap, and shipped back to China as scrap steel!
BTW - this is the place I had applied and didn't get the gig back, oh 3-4 years ago - read about the automation
http://www.nj.com/business/ind...

Buy some real helicopters, then you can get humans there to do something about the problem. You could probably get about 5 well equipped medevac equipped helicopters on the used market for $5.7 million.

5.7 million wouldn't buy you ONE reasonable sized, used, helicopter that was airworthy, much less a medevac equipped one.

You are apparently severely misguided about the prices of used helicopters. The most expensive one on this page is $1.195 million, and happens to be a Medevac equipped helicopter, and all of them are absolutely airworthy.
Here is another article in which the NJ police department tried and failed to sell their old Medevac helicopters for $3.3 million each. The NJ Port Authority did manage to sell a 2004 model for $3.3 million and a 1984 model for $1 million. The NJ Police craft we 20 years old (in 2010) and obviously weren't going to sell for what a 6 year old one sold for, but the NJ Police budgeted for $6.6 million in sales anyway and spent the money. They did end up selling an old Bell for $645,000.

Swatting is nothing less than attempted murder. People have been killed in "wrong address" SWAT raids in the past which is effectively what this is to the people being targeted. Having armed people hyped up on adrenaline (and roided up in many cases - http://www.nj.com/news/index.s...) and expecting trouble force their way into someone's house can go badly in many obvious ways, a lot of which end up with the someone dead.

Now this particular kid seems to have some large mental problems and years in prison is unlikely to help him a lot (though it will prevent him from killing someone via a SWAT raid because they didn't friend him on facebook for a those years).

I'm so glad you cleared that up for us.

"An earlier version of this general effort used language that would forbid reference to models in policy making."

Hi. Math major here. Let me explain something about models.

They are a mathematical simulation of a natural phenomenon.

The test of a model is how well it tracks reality. If if predicts behaviour correctly we can have some confidence in the model.

The error bars of the climate models are 75%. That means a chimp tossing a coin could guess better. You can't make public policy from that.

75% error looks like this: 2 + 2 = 7

The climate models are 25 years old now and with refinements over the years should be pretty good. But they're not, they're so bad you can pretty much throw them out.

Freeman Dyson warned about this:
"Their computer models are full of fudge factors."
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mu...

NASA pointed out they were wrong (and confirnmed Dyson) in 2010.
8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Here's a graph of all the climate models compared to actual temperature measurements. See the divergence?
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

"When your hypothesis doesn't agree with nature, it's wrong" - Richard Feynman.

I realize that it is difficult to achieve a balance in fairness in sentencing but here we have an example of a court getting whacked out. Try and find a single case in which a drunk driver or hit and run driver who has killed someone gets 18 years in jail.

Ah, but this wasn't a single case with a single victim. This was 27 separate charges with literally thousands of victims. It shouldn't be surprising that someone who commits a crime 27 times serves more time than someone who commits it just once, and that yes, even though it may be only a couple of years of time for a single charge, when you aggregate more than two dozen charges, the time starts approaching that served for a more heinous crime.

For comparison, would you say that it was an example of a court getting whacked out that this guy got 20 years in prison even though he didn't kill anyone, unlike your hypothetical drunk driver (his 11 armed robberies notwithstanding)?

NJ (#2 in solar in the US) has a subsidy scheme with "Solar Renewable Energy Credits". Many local governments bet on that subsidy to pay off solar panel installs with these SRECs, only for the market to crash (a victim of its own success) : http://www.nj.com/morris/index...

Note the collapse in prices: http://www.srectrade.com/srec_...

Crap incest between blood relatives is legal in NJ at the moment
http://www.nj.com/news/index.s...

How about this one? 77% in favor of abolishing it. I believe that constitutes a majority.

http://www.nj.com/essex/index....

Oh no! Bad news is that speeding cameras are increasing. Now we'll actually catch people who are breaking the law. What will they do. Those poor souls.

It's the speeding cameras that are breaking the law. They bypass all manner of due process, by eliminating the process service, and implement a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach. The fines are excessively punitive because of the fees added on - calling them "service fees" while claiming the "fine" is within reason is just a rhetorical trick, because you can't avoid the fees, which are often upwards of 70-80% of the punishment. The camera companies also typically refuse to release details about the operation of their cameras (claiming "trade secrets"), meaning you are denied the right to face your accuser.

It's one of the few 100% voluntary taxes.

I guess you didn't notice that the majority of the money collected is paid to a private corporation, usually an out of state company, or even one from outside the company (the largest market share for red light cameras in the US is Redflex, an Australian company.)

Perhaps worst of all, you're advocating a system that is plagued with corruption - if you don't like crime, you should really hate the camera ticketing systems.

I'm sorry, you're full of shit and don't have a clue what you're talking about. When you disagree with NASA and CERN and the fossil record you better be able to also drop an SUV on mars from a rocket powered skycrane and hold all the worlds antimatter.

The IPCC has not been right about anything, ever, and if you don't think 75% error is meaningful then 2+2=7 is for you.

You wouldn't happen to be the recipient of a climate grant would you?

"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.
"'I made a mistake'

As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding."

Oh fuck. The F word. F-f-f-f-f-uding.

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

"Warming" -> http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://www.climate.gov/news-fe...
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mu...
http://opinion.financialpost.c...
http://www.populartechnology.n...
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/...
http://www.climatechangedispat...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...

If you have some other explanations of all these or proof of a warming world this might be a good time to drag it out.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/...

Every dollar taken away from a citizen to be spent by the lawmakers and bureaucrats, robs the citizen of his freedom to spend that money the way he would have chosen.

Illiberals, of course, love that. Statists, as somebody put it, gonna state. Their sheep are bleating, that they "love" paying taxes because with them, you see, they are "buying civilization" — the irony of using the term referring to a volitional act to describe a mandatory wealth-transfer escaping them...

Why do the rest of us even listen to these types — instead of running them out tarred and feathered?

The current 18.4 cent per gallon gas tax has not been raised since 1993, making it about 11 cents per gallon today, in constant dollars. Plus, as fuel efficiency has gotten better and Americans have started driving less, the tax has naturally raised less revenue anyway. And that's a problem because the tax fills the Highway Trust Fund, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, broke

Yeah, and so is the Postal Service — despite raising its prices several-fold — and so is, pretty much, everything the government runs. What tax-increase would Pat Garofalo propose, to compensate the USPS for people sending fewer things by mail?

To enter (or leave) New York by car, one has many options — most of them involving a toll of $10+ (in addition to the fuel-taxes). Why can't those bridges and tunnels be privately owned and compete with each other? Maybe then they'll start treating drivers as a profit opportunity, rather than a nuisance... And fight back the toll-collectors' union thugs — those aren't exactly demanding jobs, but they pay over $30/hour, because the money does not currently come from the pockets of the people approving pay-increases.

Trenton council rejects expansion of 'ShotSpotter' gunshot detection system
“That body was shot there in the head and it stayed there for five hours with ShotSpotter being only a few blocks away. This product does not work, at least not for Trenton.”
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index...

Shotspotter gun sensor technology halted in Birmingham after failed trial
http://www.birminghammail.co.u...

Gunshot detection system in Delaware comes up blank
600 reports of shots fired, 175 actual shootings, shots detected only five or six times, a camera only turned toward the shooting once and it was unable to see anything due to foliage in the way.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Broward sheriff dropping gunshot detection system
"the system was picking up noises such as firecrackers or a backfiring car and registering those sounds as gunfire. The sensors were also triggered by helicopters and the roar of downshifting trucks from nearby Interstate 95...the problems at BSO with the gunshot detection system mirror findings of a 2008 report...called the system useful but took issue with an apparent high rate of false calls."
http://articles.sun-sentinel.c...

By that theory, you should be able to hop into a plane without any training and just fly wherever you want, too.

As a matter of fact, yes, that is true. If you have a plane, you can fly it. Wright brothers didn't have a pilot license...

You have the right to travel: on foot.

So, not even on a bicycle, huh? BTW, did you know, walking on a highway is illegal today — as is hitchhiking? And, of course, you are simply wrong...

"The use of the highway for the purpose of travel and transportation is not a mere privilege, but a common fundamental right of which the public and individuals cannot rightfully be deprived." Chicago Motor Coach v. Chicago, 169 NE 221.

"The right to travel is a part of the liberty of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment." Kent v. Dulles, 357 US 116, 125.

There are more citations, where the above came from...

She is following standard Ebola protocol. It's the people calling for quarantine that aren't. She knows the protocol better than the governor who is (in my opinion) threatening her.

Sorry, but that's not her call to make. If a state wants to specify stricter protocols than the standard policies call for, that is well within their rights to do, so long as it is not overly burdensome. And in her state, they have done so, which means that no, she is not following standard Ebola protocol as defined in her state. You can't just allow people to ignore a quarantine order simply because they think they know better.

And it isn't just the governor who thinks that a 21-day quarantine period is reasonable. Lots of medical professionals and Nobel-winning immune system researchers do, too. In fact, it seems to be mostly politicians who are arguing against the quarantine.

Then again, there are also studies that suggest that 21 days may not be long enough. But I digress.

BTW, that second article from nj.com is worth reading, because the doctor/researcher in the article pretty much echoes what I've been saying—that Ebola may be transmissible even from asymptomatic patients in rare situations.

Christie's controversial Ebola quarantine now embraced by Nobel Prize-winning doctor

Dr. Beutler, an American medical doctor and researcher, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2011 for his work researching the cellular subsystem of the body’s overall immune system — the part of it that defends the body from infection by other organisms, like Ebola.

...

Beutler reviewed Christie’s new policy of mandatory quarantine for all health care workers exposed to Ebola, and declared: “I favor it.”

Unfortunately, while the doctor’s support might provide much-needed credibility for Christie as he threatens to quarantine ever more healthcare workers returning from the Ebola fight in West Africa, it also comes with some chilling words.

“I favor it, because it’s not entirely clear that they can’t transmit the disease,” Beutler said, referring to asymptomatic healthcare workers like Kaci Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders nurse returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone who was quarantined in New Jersey for 65 hours before being transported to her home state of Maine on Monday afternoon.

“It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” said Beutler, “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.”

Meanwhile, Obama hires a political hack as "Ebola Czar".

This is a view that has come into vogue fairly recently, but in terms of practical impact it is generally considered unfounded. Johnson & Johnson has a long demonstrated history of massive spending on advertising and lobbying efforts promoting the safety of Tylenol, while working to suppress and discredit evidence of harm wherever possible. This has also extended into legal efforts such as this example from 1988 and large volumes of new litigation in 2013.

While I fully acknowledge the existence of people (who are in fact scum) who would prefer to see addicts die, their actual influence is minimal compared to the billions spent by companies like Johnson & Johnson. However, I do suspect there exists some overlap between the two groups.

Try an experiment: go the speed limit in the center lane of the highway and see how many furious drivers pound their horns and flash their headlights.

How about you keep your butt over in the right lane if you are not passing anybody like the law says? I see that you are one of those douchebags who thinks it's his personal responsibility to make sure nobody is speeding. You seem all to eager to bitch about how bad others drive but maybe you should look a little closer in the mirror. You're kind is a reason New Jersey decided to up the cost of the fines for such douchebaggery.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.s... Lane hogs who clog the left or center lanes instead of using them to pass another vehicle will see fines increase from between $50 and $200 now, to between $100 and $300. The measure calls for $50 from each violation going toward signs reminding motorists who enter New Jersey about the state’s keep-right law.

Better yet, try driving in the left lane on a road that isnt limited access, a speed limit something around 35mph, and see how many people completely lose their minds despite the fact that what youre doing is entirely legal.

And no doubt the speed limit will actually be 45. I get stuck behind douchebags like you every morning on my commute to work. They will drive 35 MPH in the left lane in a 45 zone all the way. Invariably. Every... single... day... They will continue this UNTIL the speed limit changes to 35 and then they suddenly will speed up to 45 because there are no more traffic lights. Lucky for me that the road has traffic light coordination so I get to stop at most of the traffic lights, unless I pass them early on.

And WTF is up with idiots that slow down 10 - 20 MPH at every green light?

What's really going on is that pro-gun groups are pretty certain (with good reason!) that these smart guns don't work reliably, and likely never will. Plus there's some concern about backdoors that might allow the guns to be deliberately disabled, which could enable smart gun mandates to easily turn into forcible disarmament.

One concern that I have is regarding Copyright/patents on this smart gun. Considering it is a new direction in firearms it would be naive to assume this weapon does not have any intellectual property restrictions regarding the technology. Coupling the smart gun mandates already proposed in places like California and New Jersey with the defacto monopoly on smart guns that the patent/copyright provides would mean that where the mandate is in place the smart gun manufacturer would have total monopoly on new weapons sales for at least 20 years. Unless of course they chose to license the technology, but they may not as is their right. Still one easily see how IP law and knee jerk feel good legislation can combine to create market monopolies or even destroy potential markets.

It should be the same for police officers: Sure, there are times they may need to turn the camera's off, but the reason should be clear and should itself be recorded. In the absence of a justification, the camera should always run.

The problem with that is that cops are not only trained to manipulate people into agreeing to searches without warrants or interviews without lawyers, but they are free to lie to you in the process. So Detective Mackey stops by your house to ask you about xyz and assures you that you are not at all a suspect. After he talks you into turning off his camera, because you're both reasonable fellows, he beats the shit out of you after claiming you tried to hit him or shoots you after claiming you "reached for your waistband".

Your suggestion seems more appropriate for Scalia's Utopia, where cops aren't corrupt, all citizens are well versed on their rights, encounters between civilians and heavily armed law enforcement agents are on equal ground, and duress whether subtle or blatant does not exist.

" All of the "gas" (actually mostly diesel) stations rely on the grid to pump fuel from their below-ground tanks. I'll wager you that the percentage of fueling stations with backup generators installed which would last more than a few hours is a fraction of one percent approaching zero."
exactly how long do you think it will be before people start hand pumping?
for example:
http://www.nj.com/monmouth/ind...

" Water in the cities isn't much better. "
most water is gravity fed.

It is in every part of the world.

http://blog.nj.com/perspective/2011/07/crime_and_punishment_in_norway.html

... make it connect to a fake tower instead?

It isn't the cell tower. It is the camera/mic.

Scenario: Cops are abusing people, violently.

A cop calls headquarters and says, "Report of a phone stolen at Trucker and 4th; shut down everything in the neighborhood!"

Suddenly, any witnesses to the police abuse find they cannot record either video or audio.

Abuse gets verbally reported, but without any 'evidence', is dismissed and quickly forgotten.

As someone that lives (and grew up in) NJ, I can only say that you're misattributing the cause of this situation.

Follow the money. In February of 2011, school superintendent salaries were capped (depending on district size) at $125k-$175k, because they were previously in excess of $200k in many instances. These "jobs" are quite awesome. The pay is great (especially compared against other gigs in education). The benefits are great (you get to keep rolling over sick days [because you work from home when you're actually sick], eventually cashing out literally years worth of paid time off when you retire). Many greed-motivated teachers (a minority among teachers) see the position of superintendent as the only way to "win" in their career track. Even now, with the cap in place, the median district superintendent salary is $176,505, with the highest salary being $264,579. This issue was even more ridiculous pre-cap.

But there's only a fixed number of these positions! How terrible! Well, at least there's ~550 of them. Do you think people vying for these truly enviable positions will allow their chances of getting one to be cut? Of course, consolidating districts would mean axing superintendents. While this would be amazing for the education budget in this state, freeing up shitloads of cash to actually, you know, educate kids, there's no way it will happen. There's too many people with a vested interest in having as many districts as possible. You'll see districts being split up even further before you seem them being merged together.

But blame it on racism, in a state where "as of 2011, 56.4% of New Jersey's population younger than age 1 were minorities(note: children born to white hispanics are counted as minority group)", according to Wikipedia. Based on my anecdotal experience, the citizens here have no race-based aversion against merging districts. I'm not sure how being in the same "district" as a poorly performing school (or "blacks", as you suggest) would have any impact on anything. I mean, they're already in the same "state" as these undesirable schools, sometimes in the same "county", and yet things keep chugging along just fine. I'm not sure why people would think that rearranging administrative boundaries would have any actual impact on their own town's schools. If anything, having your district include shittier inner-city schools could be a boon to you, as districts with the poorest-performing schools are the ones that get the lions share of the funding.

Really, you're looking at this from the wrong angle. You're looking at it as an outsider, as a citizen not directly involved in the education industry here. I can tell you that there are only two groups of people that have significant sway when it comes to education-related issues in NJ: the teachers [union], and the old people [that don't want to pay property taxes for education services they don't personally need]. They're the ones that go battle at the polls. They're the ones that actually get policy crafted. They're the reason we spend close to $100M every year on school district superintendents alone. I can assure you, there is no organized racist movement to keep districts from being consolidated.

You obviously live in an economically secure area.

Not only that...It seems copper thieves don't mind digging for copper but climbing for it is less palatable.

You NJ Libertarians should take a close look at what Christie says about legalizing online gambling, and then compare it to what he says about legalizing Cannabis.

As an apartment dewller (2nd floor of a 2 floor building, so I cannot be confused with a basement dweller), I check my mail roughly once a week. I understand that it used to be a primary means of communication, but the casual communication has been shifted to other mechanisms. Since I don't ever have things shipped to my home address, I only find bills, junk mail, and the rare postcard from friend or family who was on vacation a month ago.

If something is urgent, it will be sent some way to account for that, often requiring a signature. If the USPS scaled back deliveries to "once a week or as needed" I expect that few people would even notice. Instead of five deliveries a week, deliver only on Saturday or when a given route has over half a truckful of mail. Or change route definitions, downsize (certain employees first) as needed, sell off excess delivery vehicles (or repurpose them as spare parts), and adapt to the reduced need of a postal service.

The problem I think is that increasing the yellow length plus adding a period where all the lights at the intersection are red also reduces side impact crashes.

This clearly interferes with revenue from the red light cameras.

From a safety point of view we would want both the best light sequence protocol and the red light cameras. But at least here in NJ any attempt to do that falls on deaf ears. Mostly we get bare minimal yellow light periods at intersections with red light cameras.

Not only that, but research shows that the best solution to elimination of the safety hazards of a 4 way intersection is to replace it with a roundabout. While many intersections can't get that treatment, that again interferes with the revenue stream.

It isn't an issue of what the current standards bodies recommend. It's resistance to advancing the current standards to incorporate best practices because this idea puts in place a large revenue stream.

NJ has done a study of the effects of installation of some its red light cameras. While they got the tradeoff of side impact vs rear end collisions, they also found that the overall cost of the collisions increased. It's hard to say on that basis that the benefits of red light cameras are real.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/11/red-light_cameras_lead_to_more.html