Why do I ask? I'm a 49 year old married father of five. I have a good job with what most consider excellent benefits. Just over $100 out of my weekly paycheck goes towards my health insurance and a little over $28 goes towards my dental insurance. Up until recently I never really thought about just how different these two insurances work.

With my medical insurance, as a family we have a small deductible of $250 dollars after which I am responsible for a copay with every doctors visit or procedure. There is a maximum to the coverage but its a very high number, in fact I had gallbladder surgery two years ago where insurance laid out over $20k and I spent about $100 out of pocket.

Dental insurance? Not so simple. In fact, unless you're a dentist it's very difficult to figure out what you pay for every visit. There's this whole schedule of fees which tells you what they pay for any given procedure and what you are responsible for. The problem is they don't always use the same language as the dentist and the dentist doesn't always agree with their fee! So I usually ask the dentist to check with my insurance and give me a price. Once I get the price from the dentist, I decide whether I can afford to do this now or of I should wait. BIG MISTAKE.

Detroit is bankrupt. Government employees may lose millions in pensions. Utilities and services may be suspended in parts of the city. A call to police can take over an hour for a response.
Overlooking all of These problems, the Motor City is moving ahead with building a $450 million hockey stadium for the Detroit Red Hooks.

Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder touted the plan as an investment in Detroit's future, saying the arena "should increase the tax base of the city longer term, and should increase the employment opportunities for Detroiters." But if that's what Detroit and Michigan lawmakers are banking on, they are setting themselves up to be sorely disappointed.

"Sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross and an expert in sports economics, told Travis Waldron and me last year. As Matheson wrote in a study with economist Robert Baade, "Researchers who have gone back and looked at economic data for localities that have hosted mega-events, attracted new franchises, or built new sports facilities have almost invariably found little or no economic benefits from spectator sports." This is particularly true of a hockey arena that is only in use 41 dates a year (unless the arena's calendar is filled up with concerts or other events, and assuming there is not another lockout).


Adding insult to injury, the bankrupt city is going to be spending money to build a new arena for a bonafide billionaire. Mike Ilitch – who founded the Little Caesar's pizza chain and owns both the Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers – and his family have a net worth of $2.7 billion, according to Forbes. The Red Wings are the sixth most valuable NHL franchise. Yet public money is being ponied up to give them a new home.

This certainly isn't a problem that is unique to Detroit. The city of Glendale, Ariz., recently decided to give a huge package of subsidies to the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes, despite the fact that no one goes to see the team and the city is slashing public services. Washington, D.C., is about to spend public money building a new stadium for Major League Soccer's D.C. United. American taxpayers are actually paying some $4 billion to municipal bondholders for costs associated with stadiums, while Harvard professor Judith Grant Long has found another $10 billion in hidden costs to taxpayers for professional sports facilities. There are very few instances in which any of those "investments" are going to pay off in any meaningful way.

But Detroit's decision is even more ridiculous given its bankruptcy. On one hand are pensioners making $19,000 per year for their work for the city; on the other is a billionaire who owns an immensely successful restaurant franchise and two professional sports team. Thus far, the city has only ensured that it will be taking care of the latter.

A study in Traffic Injury Prevention says that digital billboards hold the gaze of drivers longer than two seconds. Many studies have shown that anything that takes a driver's eyes off the road for longer than two seconds increases the risks of a crash.

"This study validates what is common sense when it comes to digital billboards," said Mary Tracy, president of Scenic America, a national nonprofit group that seeks to limit billboards. "Bright, constantly changing signs on the side of the road are meant to attract and keep the attention of drivers, and this study confirms that is exactly what they do."

The report was presented to a national transportation conference in Washington, D.C. Last month a three-judge panel ordered the removal of 100 digital billboards in Los Angeles, and Denver has banned them. Currently 39 states allow digital billboards.

"We would need to review more research, so it's premature to call for a ban," said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "There is a role for digital messaging such as that employed by states to convey Amber Alerts and other safety messages."

There are more than 1,800 digital billboards nationwide, more than double the number in 2007. While there is no solid data that indicates an increase in accidents caused by the Bay Area signs, many drivers are opposed to them.

"The brightness is by far too bright for at night," says insurance agent David Whitlock. "When the advertisement switches from a brighter color to a darker color, your eyes cannot adjust fast enough and you end up losing vision of the roadway."

A Concerned Yid

A Concerned Yid, its what sets us apart.
While there may be some areas in which we are lax,
A concerned yid always has his fellow yid׳s back.

A prostitution ring was arrested today in Lakewood, once again bringing a bad image to our town. The good news? There will be many more cleaning ladies Availble.

From NJ.com

The women left Mexico and put their lives in the hands of shifty border smugglers just so they could be baby sitters or house cleaners, anything that would pay enough for a nice apartment, a good meal and perhaps some money to send home.

It was a simple dream.

But it soon became a living American nightmare.

State authorities today announced the arrests of six people charged with running several brothels in Lakewood that were part of a human trafficking and sex slave network spanning New Jersey, New York and surrounding states.

Lured into the U.S. by smugglers working for the brothels, authorities said, the women were forced to become prostitutes, swapped between pimps like trading cards and sold to as many as 100 men per week for as a little as $30 each.

“It is hard to comprehend the state of subjugation and degradation in which these victims submitted to such ridiculous and heinous demands,” acting state Attorney General John Hoffman said at a news conference in Trenton.

Hoffman said the Lakewood brothels were run by Jose Cruz Romero-Flores, 38, also known as “Chato,” who made thousands of dollars off the operation and wired much of the profits back to Mexico, where he owned a number of properties.

The women were paid a pittance, he said, and trapped by the fear that they would be arrested for being in the country illegally. Women were also pressured to keep quiet through intimidation or threats of violence, Hoffman said.

“For too long, human trafficking victims have suffered out of sight on the fringes of society,” he said. “It is the antithesis of what we as a society stand for: hope, optimism, self determination and freedom.”

Authorities arrested Romero-Flores on July 11 at his apartment in Lakewood. Four of his associates were arrested the same day, and his girlfriend, Odulia Bedran Trejo, 22, was arrested three days later, authorities said.

Romero-Flores allegedly operated at least three brothels in the town, including one that was active at the time of the arrests, authorities said.

Hoffman said several victims of the sex-slave network were rescued at the time of the arrests and would be provided help through the state, but he declined to say precisely how many were involved or what would happen to them, citing an active and continuing investigation.

The Lakewood brothels were part of a series of loosely linked operations along the East Coast, authorities said, which constituted the “circuit,” where women would be moved from time to time to provide fresh faces for clients.

Sex was offered at the brothels, authorities said, or women could be ordered to go and delivered to a client’s location.

Authorities said they believe several dozen women worked in the Lakewood brothels and estimated hundreds could be part of the entire network. The women would see as many as 100 clients per week, authorities said, and 40 in a single day.

In addition to the sex work, the women were often forced to pay as much as $5,000 to the very smugglers who tricked them.

The state’s investigation, dubbed “Operation No Boundaries,” began in March 2012 and was merged with a similar federal investigation undertaken by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after the two cases crossed paths.

It began under former state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, who created a new Human Trafficking Unit within the state Division of Criminal Justice and ordered law enforcement across the state to bolster trafficking investigations. The charges in this case were the first to be filed by the new unit, Hoffman said.

Romero-Flores was charged with first-degree human trafficking, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. But Hoffman said he was not sure if any of the defendants would serve in prison before being deported if they are convicted.

Romero-Flores also faces charges of second-degree promoting organized street crime and third-degree promoting prostitution. He was being held in Ocean County jail on $1 million bail, and the other five were being held on $100,000 bail.

All six defendants are illegal immigrants and were also being held on federal detainers by immigration authorities. Attorneys for the defendants could not be reached.

Red Bank's Two River Theater will be the host of the all new documentary about the homeless of Lakewood's Tent City. On August 7th at 7 pm Destinys Bridge will make its big screen debut.
The following is a basic overview of the film:
A homeless minister leads a community living in the woods who are demanding fair housing from a New Jersey town that filed a lawsuit to evict them. When the Judge rules in favor of the homeless, a temporary stay gives the visionary preacher time to present his ideas on a shelter that instills dignity and self-worth to the homeless as they try to put their lives back together.

Dynamics shift when police raid the wooded area known as Tent City and take the camp’s leader out in handcuffs. After posting bail, the minister claims harassment against the township, suggesting the false charges are in retaliation for his outspoken views against unfair housing in the town. New concepts in housing the homeless are explored in the film while learning that homeless people are very much like ourselves, maybe even too close to home for some.

The film is directed by Jack Ballo who has been filming the homeless camp saga for the past few years.

Forward

Six more people have come forward with accusations against Yeshiva University, days after 19 former high school students filed a $380 million suit charging that Y.U. covered up decades of physical and sexual abuse.

Mike Reck, an attorney representing the six, said his clients are disappointed they have been unable to reach a settlement with Y.U. and are poised to file lawsuits.

If the impasse continues, “the survivors have no choice but to avail themselves of the court system,” said Reck, an attorney with the New York office of Jeff Anderson and Associates, a Minnesota firm that specializes in abuse cases.


So far, two former Y.U. high school staff members and a former Y.U. student have been accused of abuse in the lawsuit already filed. Reck says his clients’ suit could reveal three additional people as accused molesters.

His clients, the attorney said, include people who were abused by Rabbi George Finkelstein, a former principal of Y.U.’s Manhattan boys high school. Most say they were assaulted between 1969 and the early ’80s. But Reck says he also represents a woman who says she was abused by Finkelstein during the 1990s, when Finkelstein was dean of the Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School, in Florida.

The woman blames Y.U. for failing to warn the Florida school about Finkelstein even though administrators knew he posed a threat to children when he took up the post in North Miami Beach in 1995.

More than a dozen former students at Y.U.’s Manhattan high school have told the Forward that Finkelstein had inappropriate sexual contact with boys under the guise of wrestling.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, who was president of Y.U. from 1976 until 2003 and just retired as chancellor, told the Forward this past December that Finkelstein was forced out of Y.U. because of his wrestling with boys. Lamm said Y.U. did not inform the Florida school about Finkelstein’s wrestling because “the responsibility of a school in hiring someone is to check with the previous job. No one checked with me about George.”

Finkelstein was alleged to have abused 16 of the former students named in the lawsuit filed July 8 in U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y. The suit alleges a “massive cover-up of the sexual abuse of [high school] students… facilitated, for several decades, by various prominent Y.U. and [high school] administrators, trustees, directors and other faculty members.”

The assaults are alleged to have taken place during the 1970s and ’80s, at a time when Y.U. faced severe financial problems.

Y.U. said in a statement that it would not comment on ongoing litigation. A spokesman told The New York Times that Y.U. hoped an investigation it commissioned to look into the abuse allegations would be finalized in the coming weeks. “We will address the findings publicly once the report is issued,” the spokesman said.

Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, principal of the Ramaz School, a respected Orthodox day school in Manhattan, said the abuse allegations had not had “any effect on parents’ decision to send, nor do I think it should have any effect on parents’ decision to send, their children to [Y.U.’s] high school or the college.”

Shmuel Goldin, a leading Modern Orthodox rabbi, said Y.U.’s response to the allegations has been “prompt and thorough.”

Goldin added, “There is a sadness that everyone feels when people have been hurt, and a sense of solidarity with the victims and a hope this will reach a resolution that will bring peace and healing to all involved.”

But one of the survivors, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, does not see it that way. “What’s really crazy about the Jewish community is that nobody cares,” said the survivor, who asked to remain anonymous. “There is a complete lack of interest in this whole thing.”