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MDM

Re: 2017 Reval ~ Property Inspections

Home away from home

This is one of the more egregious examples of a building being under assessed:

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Posted on: 5/22 15:30

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MDM

Re: Journal Squared Project to Begin

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Money is flowing out of China into the USA. The wealthy Chinese are "getting out of Dodge" before the Chinese economy implodes:

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Posted on: 5/21 9:47

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MDM

Re: HC proposes $538 million budget with tax increases for 6 towns

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Maybe NJ should do like CT and get rid of county government?

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/ ... _nj_bergen_county_la.html

How many are on the County payroll? 20,000?

Posted on: 5/19 11:47

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MDM

Re: Dear Person Stealing Tiny Flower Pots from Our Stoop...

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My tenant used to put out big tropical plants in pots during the summer. Someone came by once and smashed the pots.

Posted on: 5/16 9:05

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MDM

Re: Kushner family in Beijing: 'Invest $500,000 and immigrate' to US

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China has massive capital outflows right now. A lot of that money is going into real estate. The goal is not to make a good return but to avoid losing everything (which will happen if the money stays in China).

Posted on: 5/6 21:12

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MDM

Re: Pulaski Skyway to close for 2 years after Super Bowl:

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If you are planning on driving today, it is traffic Armageddon out there right now. In particular, around JFK and rt. 139. Took me nearly 30 minutes just to get from JSQ to past rt. 139.

Posted on: 5/6 14:22

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MDM

Re: PATH (pathetic attempt at transporting humans)

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Quote:

Annod wrote:
World Trade Center’s $4 billion Oculus springs leak as water drips on commuters' heads

So when I head into the office on Monday, maybe I will see the Oculus draped with a giant blue tarp...

Posted on: 5/5 17:31

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MDM

Re: PATH (pathetic attempt at transporting humans)

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Quote:

JCMan8 wrote:
Quote:

MDM wrote:
PATH to 33rd still shutdown. My wife is trying to find another way home via by bus or van. NJ Transit is cross honoring.. but I suspect the buses will be mobbed..

Should probably hang out in a bar or something, otherwise take an uber.

She's Ubering it.. the line looks like something out of a refugee queue of people escaping the zombie apocalypse.

Posted on: 5/5 17:25

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MDM

Re: PATH (pathetic attempt at transporting humans)

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PATH to 33rd still shutdown. My wife is trying to find another way home via by bus or van. NJ Transit is cross honoring.. but I suspect the buses will be mobbed..

Posted on: 5/5 17:20

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MDM

Re: Flooding in Jersey City

#10

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Quote:

brewster wrote:
Quote:

MDM wrote:
I think part of the problem is the EPA making Jersey City to stop dumping untreated waste water into Newark bay and the Hudson. I know the JCMUA was blocking up the overflow pipes a while back.

We are incapable of doing that in a major storm, so the issue is can we keep our streets and basements from flooding by not using them as a holding tank?

$8billion estimated cost in 2011 (not just Jersey City).

This link shows the sandbags blocking the outflow pipe.

Posted on: 5/5 16:18

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MDM

Re: Flooding in Jersey City

#11

Home away from home

Quote:

brewster wrote:

The system is quite capable of handling the flow of normal sewage, even post development. What it can't handle is rainfall in the same system. Development is a red herring as far as sewers. We need more pumps to drain the system into the river like Hoboken has done. As is, Downtown's entire sewer system fills to the street level and beyond to act as a holding tank.

I think part of the problem is the EPA making Jersey City to stop dumping untreated waste water into Newark bay and the Hudson. I know the JCMUA was blocking up the overflow pipes a while back.

I think JC will have to separate storm water / sewer or do what Atlanta is doing: build flood tunnels to hold the storm surge.

Btw: Just measured the water level in a bucket I left outside to check the rain amount... just a hair under 4 inches.

Posted on: 5/5 16:04

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MDM

Re: Flooding in Jersey City

#12

Home away from home

Quote:

dr_nick_riviera wrote:
[quote]

MDM, can you see what the current water table levels were at? I've been through torrential rainstorms before and this has never happened. I wonder if the ground already had limited ability to absorb more water because it's been raining so much the last few weeks.

The only recent water table info I found from USGS is for Atlantic City.

Posted on: 5/5 15:18

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MDM

Re: Flooding in Jersey City

#13

Home away from home

Quote:

brewster wrote:
Low at 11:15 AM, high at 5:14 PM. So this was despite low tide.

Per NOAA the Battery gauge was about 2 ft above normal from noon time on.

Posted on: 5/5 15:13

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MDM

Re: Flooding in Jersey City

#14

Home away from home

My old neighborhood in Hoboken went under water. Have the check if the heaviest rain came during high tide.

Posted on: 5/5 14:51

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MDM

Re: Flooding in Jersey City

#15

Home away from home

Quote:

brewster wrote:

Please no. It was looking like I'd get some figs and peaches this year.

I think my Dad may lose his apple and pie cherry crop again this year (in Vermont). Warm weather followed by these cold snaps is hell on fruit trees.

There is talk of a major frost in the apple growing regions of PA over the next few days.

Then June looks to be above normal in temperature.

Posted on: 5/5 14:11

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MDM

Re: Flooding in Jersey City

#16

Home away from home

Looks like about 2 more hours of heavy rain before we get a break.

Then it looks like we are going to have near freezing temperatures for a few days a bit north and west of here.

Posted on: 5/5 12:54

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MDM

Re: DOB: Fire Sub Code Division

#17

Home away from home

Quote:

brewster wrote:
Go forbid they use the inflow of all that permit money from the boom to expand the office and be citizen friendly. Call your councilperson, this "leave a message but we'll never call you back" stuff is bullshit.

The city actually doesn't have that much influence. The Building Dept. is under the watch of the State Dept. of Community Affairs.

After the J.C. BD got raided by the police some years back, I was hoping the State would 'nuke it', take it over (they have done this in other cities), and then rebuild it from scratch.

No luck though...

Posted on: 5/1 17:48

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MDM

Re: Leak in siding/windows

#18

Home away from home

I had that problem in one building years ago. Horizontal rain came through the walls. It was fixed by repointing the brick, covering it in a synthetic stucco, and completely rebuilding the wood work around the windows (which was capped in aluminum but badly rotted underneath). The replacement material used around the windows was water proof on the exterior.

It was a major pain of a project, but it fixed the issues.

Posted on: 5/1 17:40

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MDM

Hudson Markets not closing?

#19

Home away from home

Referring to the place that sells veggies and garden plants on JFK BLvd in the Heights. I was there late last year and was told by an employee, the place was shutting down as the ower sold the property to a developer. Later I saw the place was closed and was being cleaned out.

Today I drive by and it looks open for business selling the typical garden stuff. Did the sale of the property fall through?

Posted on: 4/30 14:18

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MDM

Re: Landlords: You Cannot Say "NO SECTION 8" in Your Rental Ads

#20

Home away from home

Quote:

brewster wrote:
However, as I understand it, there's nothing to stop a landlord from requiring application qualifications like a 700 FICO score, as long as you state it clearly and enforce it equally. I've heard that you must include the the voucher as income in an income based qualification.

Running a criminal background check on applicants is also a good idea.

Posted on: 4/27 12:58

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MDM

Re: Renters and Auto Insurance

#21

Home away from home

I have everything through NJ Manufacturer's. You have to work for a company that belongs to the NJ Business & Industry Association to qualify though.

The savings were so huge that I wished years ago, I formed an LLC and joined NJBIA just to get the insurance.

Posted on: 4/26 13:19

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MDM

Palisade Lumber shutting down in Mid to late May

#22

Home away from home

For those of you who liked being able to buy building supplies with a crew to help you load your vehicle... your choices get smaller next month.

Palisade Lumber is shutting down. I talked to the owner... he hasn't decided what he is going to do with the lumber yard property yet.

Posted on: 4/24 9:40

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MDM

Re: h1b racket in jersey city about to crash

#23

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Trump can't take away the program, that would take an act of Congress. He is slowing it down though via his executive powers. Last month, the program where an employer pays extra $$$ to get faster approvals was suspended.

Open borders has supports from both parties. The Democrats expand the welfare rolls and therefore over time, gain new voters. The Republican big donors gain cheap labor.. meat packing employees to discount STEM people. The latter has become a huge racket, turning America's tech employers into a modern version of a Roman Latifundium.

Open borders had a lot of support early last century as well, for similar reasons as above (though no welfare state yet). Eventually though, immigration was controlled via a series of acts of Congress post WWI, with immigration being severely limited by 1924 until 1965. The percent foreign born dropped from near 40% of the population to about 4%. The break allowed for generational assimilation and gradually end a host of immigration induced problems.

Posted on: 4/21 8:35

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MDM

Re: h1b racket in jersey city about to crash

#24

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Quote:

fat-ass-bike wrote:
It's all smoke and mirrors about this topic.
The MAIN reason that we don't have enough blue and white collar jobs throughout the US has nothing to do with H1B visa's . Trump is diverting the true problem with this crap - see attached about the cause and effect ... basically corporations have invested their manufacturing and infrastructure in China and other 'cheap' labor countries that don't have the same labor and environmental laws as we do here ...

We actually been getting a lot of manufacturing returning to the USA in large part because we have some of the cheapest energy in the world , places like China aren't that cheap anymore, and a need to reduce transit costs associated with the supply chain.

However, the assembly line, low to moderate skill jobs aren't coming back with the manufacturing. I'll link to a case in point:

Textile (yarn) manufacturer headed for China in the '90s for the cheap labor. In 2010, the US plant was re-opened. In its previous peak during the 1980s, it employed over 2,000 people. Today: about 140 workers due to automation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/bus ... .html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Posted on: 4/19 17:13

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MDM

Re: h1b racket in jersey city about to crash

#25

Home away from home

I Cringely has been covering the H1B Visa issues for a long time. A tidbit:

Now to the H-1B observations of my old friend and longtime reader who has been a CTO at several companies:

My first exposure to H1B was when I was consulting to multiple VC’s back in the dot-com era. Several VC’s I did work for, the portfolio managers would instruct/demand their portfolio companies hire H1B’s instead of Americans for ‘common’ jobs such as programmers, DBA’s (database administrators), network admins and even IT help desk people.

The reason of course was $$$. The H1B’s cost approx. 1/3rd or 1/4th the cost of the comparable American in same job.

I remember this one VC board meeting where the CEO of a portfolio company said the H1B’s in his company were complaining about their sub-standard pay, and one of the VC partners said, “Fuck them. Tell them if they don’t like it, we’ll toss their ass out, get another H1B to replace you and you’ll be on your way back to India.”

Fast forward to mid- to late-2000s:

I learned (while working) at (an unnamed public technology company) a LOT about H1B. We had contracted with several of the Indian firms such as Infosys, Wipro, Tata, Impetus, TechMahindra for ‘outsourcing’ and ‘offshoring’ ordinary tech work like programming, dba’s, documentation, etc.

The rates were very enticing to any corporation: we were paying anywhere from $15/hour to a *max* of $28/hour for H1B folks from those Indian firms (which btw, had set up US subsidiaries as ‘consulting/contractor firms’ so that American companies were hiring “American workers”).

The jobs we were hiring from TechMahindra, Wipro, etc., were jobs that American workers of same skillset and experience would be paid in the range of $80k-$170k (annual, which translates to $52-110/hour when you factor in benefits, medical, etc.). Quite a considerable difference in cost to the corporation.

At one point we had ~800 staff in India that worked for Infosys/Wipro/etc.) but had H1B ‘project managers’ onsite in the US from Infosys/Wipro/etc. to manage those armies of people in India (i.e. – deal with language issues, scheduling, etc.).

I got to know some of the H1B’s that were in the US working for us. I asked them, “How can you afford to live here on $15/hour?” The answer was they were living in group homes (e.g. – 8 guys would rent a townhouse and pool their money for food, etc.), plus had “no life” outside of work.

To which I’d ask, “why are you doing this?”. The answer was “it’s better than what we can get at home (India)” and they would manage to save some money. But more importantly, they were getting valuable experience for when they would return to India, they were highly sought after due to their experience in the US.

Posted on: 4/19 17:01

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MDM

Re: h1b racket in jersey city about to crash

#26

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H1-B maps

https://www.numbersusa.com/news/cis-releases-h-1b-employer-maps

Posted on: 4/19 14:42

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MDM

Re: h1b racket in jersey city about to crash

#27

Home away from home

How to go about NOT hiring Americans so you can instead hiring lower salaried and indentured H1Bs.

https://youtu.be/TCbFEgFajGU

Posted on: 4/19 12:28

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MDM

Re: Anyone know of a peditrician who is anti-vaccine or vaccine neutral in JC?

#28

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Quote:

ladybert wrote:
Quote:
If you are healthy and develop a strong immune system, you should not be afraid.

the reality is not everyone has a healthy immune system. not only does it place your child at risk, but without "herd immunity", those who are ineligible to receive vaccines due to weakened immune systems (transplants, etc) are also at risk. this is how outbreaks happen.

Some viruses actually are more deadly for those with healthy immune systems (i.e. Spanish flu, SARS). People die from the immune reaction (drowning in their own mucus). SARS was treated with immune suppressants, which then destroyed the bones of some of the patients.

Posted on: 4/19 9:57

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MDM

Re: Anyone know of a peditrician who is anti-vaccine or vaccine neutral in JC?

#29

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Quote:

TheBigGuy wrote:

Just to followup on your post... I was a recent JC meeting and a Hudson County Health speaker said the polio vaccinations (scar on shoulder) we received as kids is no longer good. I had no idea about shelf life for that... but it makes sense thinking about redoing Tetanus shots. Polio has been eradicated so there need to get that shot anymore. Vaccinations played a key role in that demise.

Since I have a kid incoming I got my antibodies tested to see which vaccinations were still good. Not sure if polio was checked. Have to email my doc and confirm. I found out my Rubella and Whooping Cough immunization was gone or severely weakened. Not long after me getting the blood work there was that guy with German Measles who was all over JSQ, possibly exposing thousands to the disease.

Getting an MMR booster left me the next day with the dry heaves (typical side effect in adults).

Posted on: 4/18 9:04

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MDM

Re: Hey Hipster Bikers (& Kids) - Wear Your Helmets!

#30

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Quote:

sullyx wrote:
helmets are hardly the problem in this town compared to all the guys biking around breaking the rules of the road, biking the wrong way against traffic, using bike lanes that only go one way, etc.

I have come within inches of running over bike riders a few times in the past couple years. All because they ran a light, a stop sign, or did something else stupid. The last one ran a red light, riding at a high rate of speed, while going the wrong way down a one way street.

Posted on: 4/17 18:56

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