Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
We can all resume our war on Wednesday; until then, I’ll try to be a better person than the one who attacked that young fool mentioned in the post below.
Here’s The Band’s Robbie Robertson’s own Christmas Carol — in deference to my Calvanist, beloved, younger brother Anthony, no dancing!
Earth, Wind and Fire
Over one million citizens of Congo are fleeing their country, both to escape from the EBOLA outbreak and the Islamic forces forcibly preventing the vaccination campaign to fight the epidemic. Shouldn’t we be flying charter planes over there and bringing these migrants back here, no questions asked?
If not, why not?
And that doesn’t include $26 million in the capital improvement pot. “Our school system will be ruined!”.
I know little to nothing about our school budget but I do know numbers, and when someone says they can’t possibly shave a million bucks from a $164-million budget, I say they aren’t looking very hard.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!’”
Be notified of new posts! Sign-up here:
Want to comment without registering?
