NYC "Assembly School for Wildlife" witnesses fatal stabbing

Calling Betsy DeVos

From FWIW's NY correspondent comes this depressing story of one high school student stabbing another to death.

A Bronx student stabbed a classmate to death with a switchblade and seriously injured another in front of more than a dozen classmates inside their high school Wednesday morning.

Investigators believe Abel Cedeno, 18, plunged the tool into a Matthew McCree, 15, and Ariane LaBoy, 16, around 10:50 a.m. on the fifth floor of the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation on Mohegan Avenue in East Tremont, sources said.

One of the victims was throwing pens across the room in the middle of a third-period U.S. history class when Cedeno was hit, according to witness Jomarlyn Colon, 16, who was in the classroom at the time.

Cedeno demanded to know who did it, and when the McCree stepped forward to tell him it was an accident, Cedeno pulled a knife out of his front pocket, she said. It was a three-inch switchblade, Police Chief Robert Boyce said during a press conference later in the day.

McCree moved in to strike Cedeno, and Cedeno plunged the blade into the young man’s chest, Colon said.

Then LaBoy confronted the crazed classmate, and Cedeno stabbed him in the chest too, according to Colon.

“He went crazy,” Colon said.

After the melee, Cedeno walked out into the hallway, where he handed the knife to a school counselor — then calmly strolled into an assistant principal’s office and sat in a chair while police were called, Boyce said.

The school serves sixth through 12th grades and is co-located with elementary school PS 67. It’s also a low performer, and kids have told the city they do not feel safe there.

Just 5 percent of pupils there are proficient in math and 13 percent in English, according to last year’s state exam results. And less than half of students polled at the school last year — 47 percent — said they felt safe on campus, well below the city average.

[Speaking from the steps of the NYC Police stables and behind a barn door]  Mayor de Blasio pledged Wednesday to tighten security at the school, which does not have scanners, and implement scanning tomorrow.

My favorite building site in Riverside hits the market

Courtesy of brother Gideon, 122 Cedar Cliff Road, $4.5 million.

Home of my late friend Dick Roberts and his widow Jane (yes, we've done the "Dick and Jane" routine by now, thank you), this is a spectacular piece of land overlooking Old Greenwich Harbor. I spent many happy months house sitting here while my friends toured France and lands further east: one month, 3 months, even 6, and it's just a wonderful place to live. 

While I love the house, it's too funky and unique to stand any chance of surviving the wrecker's ball; not at this price, but what a place to build a home.

But not, please God, another pseudo-Colonial-Victorian-Nantucket bucket: this site cries for a contemporary, one that perches on its cliffs and lets the light from the water pour in. Someone with deep pockets and a line on a gifted architect could build a spectacular home here.

He's all the way In!

Released on bail, Selectman drew marzullo is given a police escort from headquarters

Drew Marzullo announces that he's sticking it out. "Okay, so I'm a bit of a crook," he admitted to FWIW just minutes ago, "but how does that separate me from Tesi or the other boys? I just got caught, that's all; you can't blame a guy for trying".

Reached for comment, Greenwich Democratic party spokesman Chuck Yeager was ecstatic: "Drew exemplifies everything our party stands for, and with this little embarrassment behind us, so to speak, we know that he'll continue to represent us, and all town residents, at exactly the standards we expect."

Reaction at the Democrat's official house organ, Greenwich Supressed, where word of the official party line had not yet been transmitted, was more ambivalent: "Of course we're all happy to see an oppressed gay man given another opportunity to succeed after being so wrongfully treated by the police" Yeager's daughter Leslie said, "butt ... butt...  we were hoping that our friend Donald would be sending us a stronger candidate." Knocked in the ribs by her life-partner, Sarah Rosanna Danna Littman, Yeager recovered her poise. "Oh well," she said, "never mind.."

Donald trump accepts appreciation banner from greenwich free press

You see? You see? They're selling like hotcakes!

615 Lake Avenue has sold for $7.650 million. That's a huge sale, and congratulations to Joe Barbieri and Jeff Jackson for putting together the deal. But, while the GMLS is recording it as a sale after just 93 days on the market, and selling for "just" 19% off its last asking price of $8.950, it was actually put-up for sale in February, 2016, at $10.9 million. Using the FWIW calculator, that's a little more than a year-and-a-half on the market, and a sale price a little under 70% of asking.

Still, an impressive testimony to the faith some people continue to place in Connecticut's future.

Related? Yesterday, Standard & Poor's downgraded Hartford's bonds to "junk". "That doesn't bother us at all", Greenwich Association of Realtors spokeswoman Theresa Hatton assured FWIW. "The next step is bankruptcy, and after that, the only direction for Connecticut in general, and Greenwich specifically, is up, up, up!  — we see this as a buying opportunity".

Got a million-dollar house in Riverside? Bob's your uncle

4 Sunshine Avenue, $1.099 million, reports a contract.

These owners renovated it — quite nicely — in 2010, and tried for $1.450 million in 2011, 2012. That was overly ambitious (and if memory serves, I said so at the time), but when they put it back up for sale this time at $1.099, they had a buyer within days. Now that the Kaye boys have moved off it, Sunshine's a nice street, and this house, for what it is, seems to me to be an excellent buy. I think the soon-to-be new owners will be pleased with their purchase.

So can we assume Marzullo's staying in the race?

"Can't we all just  move on? My friend leslie has."

Last heard from, Drew Marzullo was taking the weekend "to consider his options" concerning his continuing in the Selectmens race after being arrested for stealing sneakers and underwear up in Clinton. It's now Wednesday morning and, so far, he's announced nothing. Does that mean he's staying on the ticket?

Look to the Greenwich Democratic Party's house organ, Free Press, to report on this story, probably in December.

Saudis to finally allow women to drive, but there's a catch

The good old days

A scorned woman over at Greenwich Free Press

(As we will no longer use pictures from Free [sic] press, we offer instead a gross approximation of its staff)

 Miss Laslie Yager, owner of Greenwich Free Press, has been filing a series of complaints against me with my hosting service, alleging copyright infringement for posting two pictures she's taken, and published, of her friend Drew Marzullo. No problem, Leslie, there are other pictures available. 

Too bad about this woman, because, when she started her blog she focused on Greenwich news, and offered a real alternative to Greenwich Time. I said as much at the time, and linked to her often. Sadly, a TDS earwig crawled into her brain last November and since then, her website has degenerated into a collection of howling shrieks, comprised mostly of reprints of news releases from her fellow Democrats, and opinion pieces by her friends.

What seems to have set her off now is my reporting on Drew Marzullo's arrest for shoplifting and her own refusal to even mention the incident. It's certainly Miss Yager's right to choose what to report on her blog, but I think she resents having been embarrassed into having to, oh so reluctantly, finally, four days later, post her Democrat organization's mealy-mouthed press release on the incident.

Leslie could have simply dropped me a note, requesting that I not reuse her Drew pictures, and I would have happily  compiled. Instead, she's trying to get my own site shut down. That's not going to happen, girl, but I appreciate your dedication to stifling voices you disagree with — you're a living, breathing example of the intolerance and fascist tendencies of your crowd.

In Venezuela they were teachers and doctors. In order to buy food, they became prostitutes.

Read this Miami Herald article.

Then read this article in Politico:

Nearly six-in-ten Democratic primary voters believe socialism has a 'positive impact on society,' according to polling conducted this month for the right-leaning issue advocacy group American Action Network and provided to POLITICO.

Democratic voters in every age group, every gender, and every race view socialism favorably, according to the early February telephone poll of 1,000 likely Democratic primary voters fielded by Republican firm OnMessage Inc. and commissioned by AAN, which is tied to the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC dedicated to House Republicans. And among people 45 and under — a group that has helped power Sanders’ primary performances — the ideology is preferred to capitalism by a margin of 46 percent to 19 percent.

The polling made a specific point not to mention Sanders or Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, according to AAN president Mike Shields, as part of an effort to avoid findings that simply reflect that race

Our current crop of college students track their elders' approval of socialism, and why shouldn't they? They've been indoctrinated in the lie since kindergarten.

And, naturally the NYT, a paper that still refuses to return its Pulitzer Prize for Walter Duranty's cover-up of Stalin's genocide in Ukraine, is "Working overtime to rehabilitate Communism and Socialism".

THere's a war going on here, and the radicals have been winning it for decades upon decades. Higher pay for teachers/ I think not: fire them all, and start anew.