Ex-CTLawyer

No special license plates.
BTW…The US State Department does not issue Diplomatic license plates in the assorted states. You register your car and get a plate issued by the Motor Vehicle Dept in your own state. No special designation. No ability to be a scofflaw and not pay parking tickets.
No tax breaks, etc.
Being the Consular representative cost me out of pocket money. I operated out of my office and a secretary on my staff handled calls and took messages. I had open office hours one afternoon each week from 2-4 when I assisted with travel visas, those nationals who had stayed long and needed to renew passports, etc. All I did was collect the documents and send them on to the embassy in Washington for processing via a weekly courier.
There was a large immigrant community from this country and I was the ‘polished’ local face of authority. Appearing at cultural events, speaking at Chamber of Commerce and Business Industry association meetings trying to facilitate trade. I was not responsible for stimulating the leisure tourist trade, that was handled by regional sales reps from the national airline.

There are some small countries who do not maintain embassies in all countries with which they have diplomatic relations. It is just too expensive Sometimes they appoint an ambassador to serve several countries and he is based ion a physical embassy in one of them. He occasionally travels to the others as needed, but a consulate handles every day needs. When my cousin was the Consul for the Central American country they did not maintain an embassy in Israel. When they finally established one it is in an office in Herzylia Pituach and is not staffed by a resident ambassador.

Actually,
A country can’t move its embassy without the permission of the host country. The embassy and its grounds function as quasi-sovereign territory of the host country. Over the years we have seen examples of asylum seekers spending years living in an embassy compound unmolested by the host country. Each existing embassy in Washington DC and to the UN in NYC were approved by the US government before the property was purchased and the foreign flag hoisted. The embassy property often has foreign military with arms, something a host country would not allow to be placed willy nilly around the country. This is why countries establish consulates outside capital cities. The Consul is generally a citizen of the host country with limited Diplomatic Authority granted by the foreign country to serve visiting nationals and stimulate business and cultural/travel exchanges.

Joseph………..
I can’t speak for Yehudayona,
BUT
Mrs. CTL and I have 7 children. We are the birth parents to 5 and adoptive parents to 2.
They were NOT adopted at the same time. They are about 9 years apart in age. One was a domestic adoption. We were approached by the doctor. We never met the birth mother, but had her name and date/place of our daughter’s birth.
Our daughter knew she was our child by choice from the time she was old enough to comprehend what adoption mean.
When she became engaged, she sought ut her birth mother for the sole reason of getting medical history that might affect future offspring. The talked on the phone and by email a few times. Neither had a desire for a continuing relationship.

Our younger adopted daughter was adopted by us in China. She knew she was adopted as soon as she could did differences in skin color and racial/facial features. There are no records of who her birth parents are. During the time she was born China had a one child law. Women giving birth to a second child would leave it outside the orphanage during the dark of night so as to not be discovered by the authorities and be fined and/or imprisoned.
In our town of 35,000 we know more than30 girls adopted in Chin during that time period. None will ever find their birth parents…unless there is universal DNA registry for 8 billion people on this earth.

Is a Rolex really overpriced?

I wear a Rolex ss/18K YG Rolex Oyster as my everyday watch. I paid $1600 for it in 1983. I’ve had 34 trouble free years for about $47 per year. I don’t think that’s overpriced. Chances are I’ll continue to wear it for at least another 20 years (hopefully 40). After that it will go to my eldest son.

Yehudayona>
“Unfortunately, there’s still a stigma attached to birth mothers who give up their children. People notice when a woman is very pregnant one week, not pregnant the next, and there’s no baby around.”

This is why in the time before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand in t he US there were homes for unwed mothers where single pregnant females spent most of their pregnancy, gave birth and the adoptive parents picked up the baby.
Neighbors and friends would be told that the young woman was traveling or visiting relatives for an extended period.

lesschrumras……………….
My mother was born and raised in the Bronx…guess things were different there.

Avram,
” if Democrats really see themselves as pro-woman, they should spend at least as much breath advocating for universal access to and improvements of prenatal care in the U.S. …”
They do. It’s called the Affordable Care Act, which Trump and Congressional Republicans are trying to Repeal.
ALSO social benefit and educational programs such as WIC and SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps).
Even if one does not approve of pregnancy termination performed under the auspices of Planned Parenthood, they also provide prenatal care and pregnancy education.

We have different opinions of his actions that can be considered impeachable offenses.

I believe he is in violation of Article I Section 9 of the US Constitution, specifically the “emoluments” clause. He is being enriched by foreign government spending at his properties.

In the early 20th century there were a number of Orthodox Jewish farming communities in Connecticut (Colchester area), NY (Catskills) and New Jersey.
My BIL of 45 years comes form one of those Colchester, CT Orthodox chicken farming families. went away for high school and yeshiva and just retired from his career as a pulpit rabbi. His eldest sister’s grandchildren are still running the egg farm

BenK…Let me put responses to your questions/statements/plight together in a cohesive answer<

There is no such thing as a FREE lunch. Schools not charging students for lunch receive some USDA surplus food at no charge to use in making the meals, BUT the school (if private) or school system and taxpayers pay the rest of cost of cooking and serving those lunches. Ingredients, labor, equipment, utilities.

Yeshivos and Day Schools cannot allow students to bring lunch from home (imagine the politics and insults in allowing food from one house and not another). It may be cheaper to use an outside vendor (caterer) than to make lunch in the school (economy of scale). Would it make you feel better if the annual school fee was $500 higher instead of seeing a bill for lunches $500?
Don’t equate ‘caterer’ school lunches with the $150 per plate meal at a chasunah.

Field trips and high costs. NO, the schools don’t ask parents. Get involved in the parents association and offer to help plan these things. It may be that the current group of parents helping to plan are those who can easily afford ‘high’ priced trips and a different point of view is needed. The school authorities will not buck their biggest donors, the other parents must join in the planning and be represented.
Our grandson’s school sponsored a trip to Great Adventure last Friday. They were charging $100. Because CT state law does not allow school trips in ‘yellow’ school buses to out of state locations, they had the high cost of chartered coaches. My daughter and son-in-law, said no, they got other parents together to also say no. The trip was cancelled for lack of response. Instead, there is an instate trip to a go-kart track and sports venue this Sunday. Cost $20. Mrs. CTL and I are providing coolers full of cold drinks and bagged snacks for less than the cost for 2 students to have gone to Great Adventure.

Unfortunately, marrying a close relative greatly raises the chance of offspring with mental and/or physical defects.

Joseph………………..
There are many reasons why this may occur in some families. it leaves the mother free to attend to the needs of small children in the car.
I think that you will find this more common in ONE car families.
Those living OOT or the suburbs where the norm is that there is a car for each driver, may fit the CTL family pattern. If we are in Reb CTL’s vehicle, I drive. If we are in Mrs. CTL’s vehicle she drives. This past Thursday, last single Miss CTL asked me to to the shopping mall with her. It was a 90 degree, sunny day. We went in her convertible with the top down, she drove, I was the passenger.
BTW>>>she told me that as she is getting married this summer she wants to enjoy the feeling of the sun and wind in her hair while she can. She’ll be trading in the convertible for a married lady’s car suitable for hauling groceries, etc. before the chasunah this summer.

You can not work with a megalomaniac. He only gives orders.
The sooner he is forced from office, the better off this country will be.
His entire administration including the freeloading family members and in-laws have to go….possibly to prison

Politics is not bad, but some politicians are

Chochom……………..
Trump is NOT my President, he is the country’s President.
I don’t have to root for him to fail, he is a failure.
I’m desirous that he depart, I’m tired of that laughing stock embarrassing us.

“Are life insurance companies non-profits, with their clients the primary intended beneficiaries of their company?”

They are if they are “MUTUAL” insurance companies which are owned by the policy holders.
In Connecticut we also have Mutual Savings Banks, owned by the depositors.

In our public school district they use 90% chocolate 10% White milk.
Our biggest problem is that food is packaged at the central commissary, sent to the schools in individual serving plastic trays with polyfilm and heated at the schools. Thus a 3 year old in Pre-K and a high school senior all get the same size lunch portion. The little kids can’t finish and the teens are hungry.
Back when food was actually cooked in each school and ladeled out as the kids went through the line, the cafeteria ladies could adjust the size of the portion by age and appetite. A first grader might get 2 fishsticks and a 8th grader 5. No more.

Impeachment is not enough. The Senate must also convict him.

The fire was a tragedy in 1911. 146 people died, mostly of Jewish and Italian heritage. 146 people is not the vast majority of immigrants.
The level of observance varied in the immigrant community, just as it varies in America today.
Most pre 1924 Jewish immigrants to America were ‘Euro-Traditional observant, not what we call Frum today. Today’s Frum American Jew has a much better Torah education than those raised at the turn of the 20th Century in the US. Most US Torah institutions were in their infancy at that time. Many had only a rudimentary Jewish education in the old country (or in America) they observed rituals in conformity with the community standards. Because they were no longer forced to live in a designated ghetto, shetl, Pale of Settlement, they often made choices to change their level of adherence to halacha.

I’d rather have a Pletzel than a pretzel

No one is talking about 60-80 years ago, we are speaking about current times and the baal batim who build and support our Torah institutions in the late 20th and 21st century CE.

Your comments about the majority of Frum Jews in Europe is laughable because the VAST MAJORITY were barred from higher education by anti-Jew laws.

My paternal side came to the USA in 1872 from the Litivish Heim, my maternal side in 1868 from Bavaria. They were restricted by law to certain trades and barred from the Universities in most cases. By 1880 my great grandfathers were in University in the US. ALL my grandparents attended university in the nineteen teens. The men went on to get medical and legal degrees. The women got degrees in education and licenses.
I grew up on a block of 6 single family houses built in 1951. All were occupied by Frum families. All 6 husbands owned their own businesses, 5 had college degrees. The sixth was trained in electronics by the US Army during WWII and he owned and operated a chain of TV/Appliance stores (his children all went on to college and professional school after yeshiva. 5 of the women has college degrees, in fact my mother had a doctorate in child psychology and was a school principal. The 6th woman was a registered nurse. In those days it was a 3 year post high school program, but offered no Bachelor’s degree.
There were 35 children in those 6 families. We went to day schools, yeshiva high schools of Chabad girls high schools (there was one in town). Every single one of us went on to college and more than 20 to graduate school. Not one married before college graduation. Some like my eldest sister graduated college in May and married the week after Shavous.
Now we are all grandparents, we didn’t let our children marry until they had a proper education and could make their own way in the world. Even my Brother-in-Law, who grew up 2 doors from us and went to Torah Vadaath, also completed a college degree before my father would allow him to marry mys sister. He went on to spend 40 years as a pulpit rabbi, finishing 2 advanced degrees while working.

Back in Europe, you might have been able to find the odd Frum medical doctor, but the open opportunity for higher education was closed to Frum Jews.

Joseph……………….
you have no scientific type data to back up your claim and such a study was ner performed by a group such as the Pew Report.

OOT is a different world. If I look at the communities I’ve lived in, the Stharkers (baal batim) who built and funded the synagogues, day schools, yeshivos going back to my parents’ generation (born 1920 in the US) were men who married after completing their college educations and starting in the work force. Some, like my father, married during WWII and after being disccharged form the armed forces started career and family in 1946.
The vast majority of the pre 1924 Jewish immigrants to the US wanted to live the American dream in harmony with Jewish Observance. That meant college education (my parents like many at CCNY and Hunter) then marriage, jobs, children.
The Kollel phenomenon and early marriage while being supported by parents and in-laws only became common with the arrival of post WWII immigrants and those escaping the Hungarian Revolution.

We both can ONLY present anecdotal evidence on this issue, but I dispute your claim of ‘vast majority.’

Just saw this old thread brought to life and had to make some comments.
My paternal great grandparents moved to Boro Park in 1903.
Both my grandfather and father celebrated their Bar Mitzvah at the Temple Beth El in 1913 and 1935 respectively.
In postwar II America the use of the word ‘Temple’ and a synagogue name usually indicated this was a Reform synagogue, but that was not a universal truth. Here in New England ‘Temple’ XXXX was the name of many Orthodox shuls founded after the Russian pogroms of 1881 and the change of immigration laws in about 1924.
My eldest BIL just retired as the pulpit rabbi of one of these so named shuls near Boston after some 30 years.

Commercially sold chopped liver is NOT chopped, it is put through a meat grinder and has the consistency of a paste. Please don’t call it pate. A good pate will have small chunks of meat in it that you can chew.
We don’t put our chopped liver through the meat grinder, we use a hochmesser (mezzaluna) in a wooden bowl and make a coarse chop. I want to know I’m eating meat, not paste.

The commercial frozen brands mentioned in this thread call themselves ‘spreads’…yukkkk