All in the Same Boat

Rain on Window Pane (Bergeron Image)

I was about to write on politics, but today I just don’t have the heart for it. 
 
With Hurricane Sandy about to blast into Central New Jersey, all of our attention should be focused on surviving this once-in-a-lifetime storm.  It will surely will disrupt millions of lives along the Eastern Seaboard and bring misery to those who will be unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of luck.
 
So be safe and stay close to those you love.  We are all in the same boat on this one.  We will survive -- reminds me of the song that my granddaughter Margot belted out in one of her school performances.

Union Membership Votes to Ratify Labor Contract.

A bright autumn scene in my backyard this afternoon
may herald a deal this evening at the JFK Primary
School.  (Bergeron Image.)
 

In a conversation with Mr. Steve Beatty, President of the Bridgewater-Raritan Education Association shortly before 2:30 pm this afternoon, he advised me that the membership of the Bridgewater-Raritan Education Association was in the process of voting to ratify its Memorandum of Understanding with the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education.
 
Beatty further confirmed that the particulars of the proposed agreement currently before the BREA membership for acceptance are the same as those revealed to the public on this web site on Friday, October 12, in specific detail.
 
In support of that assessment, Beatty confirmed that all salary guides are now adjusted and that all contract language is in place, assuming their acceptance by the union membership.

She Became Known to the World as Malala Yousufzai . . .

Malala Yousufzai at her PC. (TV Screenshot/R.Bergeron)

. . . and for the misfortune of being born as a female in Pakistan, this 14-year-old schoolgirl was shot in the head by radical Islamist members of the Taliban because, as they framed it, she was “promoting Western Culture.”
 
The killers intercepted and boarded a school bus, asked the other children to identify her, drove a bullet into her brain, and injured two other students.

Bridgewater-Raritan Schools & Union Work towards Ratifying Labor Agreement

Information obtained on condition of anonymity from sources with knowledge of the labor negotiations between the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education (BR-BOE) and the Bridgewater-Raritan Education Association (BREA) indicates that the agreement in progress consists of two contracts covering a period of four years. 

Union President Steve Beatty at the  10/09/12 BR-BOE Mtg.

The first-year agreement is “comprised of a one-year contract covering July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012 with a 0% increase and no change in language.” 

(Readers of The View from Bridgewater may recall that 2011-2012 represents the year in which the BR-BOE and the Administration in their budget presentations to the public at the time cited that they were “Coping with a massive decrease in state aid,” and that the budget “assumes no salary increases.”)

The second agreement calls for “A three-year contract covering July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2015 with increases of 2.9%, 2.9% and 2.9% and language changes and additions.”

Stop-18-Homes Expert Challenges Development Plans

Mr. Vaucher of Stop-18-Homes testifies at 9/11/2012 meeting..

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, at 7:00 p.m., the Bridgewater Township Planning Board will continue with its series of public meetings consisting of presentations, testimony from experts, and comments from the public about the now-controversial plan to develop land on the side of the First Watchung Mountain Range north of Foothill Road in Bridgewater Township.

What appeared at first to be a slam-dunk proposal to significantly alter the topography of a 37-acre parcel of land bounded by Foothill Road to the south, Twin Oaks Road to the west, and Steele Gap Road to the east, has met with organized citizens’ opposition represented by legal counsel, Jeffrey J. Brookner, Esq., and Thonet Associates Inc., an environmental planning and engineering design consultant firm. 

Both have been retained by Stop-18-Homes, a group of residents living either nearby or contiguous to the planned development site.

It Wasn’t Merely the Video . . .

Ambassador Susan Rice addresses the U.N. on Benghazi killings.

. . . which precipitated the assassination of United States Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, together with three other Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, the 11^th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers in New York City.  Not at all.

Yet, that is precisely what we were told by Obama Administration spokespersons – even, it seems, by President Barack Obama himself. 

During an appearance before the United Nations – an event transmitted to the world – U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice declared that the sordid video disparaging Islam and its Prophet Mohammed was the motivation that instigated a gathering of demonstrators which – in a spontaneous uprising – moved violently against Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans.