I don't begrudge the $30,000 — as taxpayers' money goes, this hardly signifies — but why'd they hire a hot dog vendor outside the Capitol to try his hand at art for the first time?

Outgoing (thank God) Governor Malloy has unveiled his official portrait, when he should probably have kept it hidden under its blanket, and it’s a doozy. The viewer is left uncertain what he’s seeing: Dannel being fitted for a funeral suit? A stiff, immobile cast on the man’s right arm, the unfortunate result of a skiing accident? The mind boggles.

Connecticut has suffered under a continuous chain of poor governors since at least Lowell Weicker’s tenure, so Malloy’s coming and going isn’t a moment of much importance, but it’s a shame he’s leaving this cartoon behind.

On the other hand, I suppose it’s fitting.

Price it and sell it

26 Forest Avenue, on a back lot in Old Greenwich, has sold for $2.380, million, quite a drop from its original price 660 days ago of $3.295. I understand the sellers’ impulse to price this house above $3 million, because they paid $2.850 when it was new back in 2007, and made some improvements over the years of their ownership. but I think they grossly overpaid for it back then, thereby creating a false standard of value.

To my knowledge, there’s never been a $3 million sale on Forest; in fact, until this sale, there’s been nothing higher than $2 million, so going for $3.295 was … er … overly ambitious. Don’t believe me? Ask the market.

At long last, this Taconic Road listing has found a buyer

221 Taconic, to be specific, at the intersection of the northern terminus of Stanwich Road and currently asking $3.590 million. It’s a great, antique house, beautifully restored, and on a really nice five-acre lot, but, I think it needs a new wing on the right for balance and to add a bit more space. I had clients who were willing to do that work once, and we pitched an offer at around this last asking price, but the house had started in 2008 at $8.2 million in 2008, and the sellers weren’t receptive.

Which is too bad. I didn’t know the owner, but I do know that he was an exceptional man who had a very successful career on Wall Street and was a well-regarded philanthropist, but he died, tragically, of cancer at an early age, and the estate was tied up in confusion for some years; we could probably have had a deal back then, had he been around to negotiate.

But it’s going now, and I’m sure that will come as relief to the heirs. I think the buyers are doing well here.

Unconstitutional, yes, but California now demands it

Corporations must now have an equal number of women and men on their board of directors.

Now, there’s a simple way around this: the new law will count “self-identifying women” in the girl’s column, so the male board members can just slap on some lipstick and slip into frocks and the requirement will be met, but the fact remains that states have no right to dictate private behavior like this.

What strikes me as odd is that feminists insist that women are superior to men, and claim that adding their hormones and feminine instincts to corporate governance will make those business better and more profitable than companies with fewer females — why, then don’t these wily women start their own businesses and wipe out the competition? Steve Job’s garage is still available, and Jeff Bezo’s car trunk can surely be duplicated, if the original car he drove to Seattle to start Amazon has been junked.

My own daughter Sarah’s self-started internet company is thriving, a feat that she’s achieved without help from the state government or special laws discriminating against men, and I imagine even whining, self-pitying women could do the same, if they quit lobbying and went to work.

You go, girls!

Fake news, fake news, fake news. This piece of garbage is from NBC, which older readers may remember as a once-reputable news organization

Pre-Trump

No, you idiots, America is not the fifth most dangerous country in the world for journalists.

Second (and I don’t want to come across as glib here, because even one death is a tragedy), the grand total of journalists killed in the U.S. this year was six. The global total was sixty-three. The death of a journalist is a very, very rare event, rare enough that even a small number of unlikely incidents is enough to catapult a nation into the ranks of the “most dangerous.”

Of course, that’s exactly what happened. On June 28th, a deranged man with a vendetta against local Maryland newspaper Capital Gazette walked in and killed four employees in the single worst attack on journalists in modern U.S. history. The other two deaths were journalists covering Tropical Storm Alberto in North Carolina, killed when a tree fell on the highway. Both tragedies, but clearly outliers rather than barometers for the level of danger faced daily by American journalists.

Here we hit upon the third point; the number of journalists “killed” was compiled regardless of the manner of their death or the perpetrators. When it comes to calculating threats to journalism, no one would say that a freak accident like a tree falling should be treated like an ISIS execution, or that a local crazy is like a Saudi prince. But that’s the result if you use the raw number of deaths as a stand-in for “danger.”

Exit quote from Twitchy’s take on the above (non) story: “Obama spied on and tried to jail journalists: meh. Trump says mean things on Twitter about biased American media: ‘add the US to the list!’”

Unsolicited advice for Peter Tesei: never, ever respond to critical letters to the editor.

Greenwich’s own, jerry dumas, had our local cops pegged (apologies and exception to GPD Folk)

Especially when it’s to the editor of a marginal publication. Tesei has taken to the digital pages of Greenwich Free Press to defend himself against a critic, and that’s just dumb: it lends an air of credibility to the original letter writer, and only strengthens his criticism, because why respond, unless it stings?

Many years ago, when printed letters to the editor of newspapers were the standard form of communication, I wrote one to Greenwich Time, poking fun at our local police force for letting one of our notorious Chimblo boys escape from a dozen officers who’d arrived at his house to arrest him. I suggested that twelve cops could have been posted, four each, to each side of the house, and prevented his escape, rather than pile the whole dozen of them on his front porch and ring the doorbell.

Imagine my surprise and delight to see a letter from a lieutenant of our GPD a few days later that started off, “we never respond to criticism from civilians but …” — I’d hit them! Hooray!

The Chimblo was apprehended a few days later, so case closed, but surely the image of Sam and Silo, looking stupid, persisted, thanks to the police department’s support.

So Peter, just ignore him.

By the skin of her teeth

The owner of 1044 North Street paid $1.050 in 2013 and managed to sell it today for $950,000. Not a huge victory, certainly, especially after deducting transaction costs, but she avoided disaster for a house she overpaid for originally.

I love this almost-abandoned section of north Greenwich, but it’s on the Banksville border, far from town, and not popular. Hell, it probably takes almost as long to reach central Greenwich by car today as it did in horse and buggy days, and that’s not a selling point.

Still, if you work in Banksville and want to escape, temporarily at least, exorbitant property taxes, this is the place to be.

Are there no poor houses? No casting couches? How about empty beds on stars's private planes and yachts?

FWIW continues to hear from its far-flung reporter pool: this one’s from LA

Actors, film workers can’t afford housing, living on the street.

I don't think he meant the "Merry Christmas" part seriously

Yet another FWIW reporter, the one our paid staffer in Old Greenwich, submits this:

CT state crew assembles to remove 70 foot pine tree on Laddins Rock Road, with eleven workers, one cherry picker, one large front loader and four dump trucks. I had a larger lightning damaged tree removed, right next to my home, with two guys from a local tree service in one day, including stump grinding.  I can't wait until the government runs health care.

Merry Christmas. 

Police conduct gun swap-meet, (don’t) get what they pay for

FWIW’s New Mexico correspondent sends along this story from Baltimore, where the residents took advantage of a police “buy-back” program to get the funds to buy better guns.

Over 500 guns were surrendered to Baltimore police within the first hour and a half of a citywide gun buyback program this week. Participants received anywhere from $25 to $500 for their unwanted firearms.

Mayor Catherine Pugh and Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle announced a gun buyback program—the first in six years—last week. Pugh said that the program was intended to "get the guns off of our streets."

The program reportedly cost the city $250,000, but there is little evidence that buyback programs are effective in reducing violence, or even in reducing the number of firearms in circulation—as one woman ably demonstrated.

Kathleen Cairns, a WBFF Baltimore journalist, tweeted a picture of a woman who was surrendering a 9mm. She hoped to use the money from the program to buy an even bigger gun.

The cops paid $25 for high-capacity magazines, which are available on E Bay for twelve bucks. Buy a couple of dozen, and the arbitrage is great. I myself have a Mossberg .22, purchased for me at Abercrombie and Smith fifty-five years ago by my father. It always had a lousy trigger pull, but I learned to hunt with it, Sadly neglected over the years, it’s now pitted with rust and essentially worthless, but I’m waiting for the next GPD buy back, in the hope of getting fifty bucks for it.