Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
In fact, Pal Nancy and I did; when the world first closed and hair salons were shuttered, we joked that we’d find out in a few weeks who among our friends has been delaying their signs of mortality.
Walmart executive: hair dye, clippers are the new panic shopping items
Home at last
Recycling is vital to solving current pandemic shortages? I think not.
In the week after Gov. Janet Mills issued a stay-at-home order to help reduce the spread of coronavirus infection, the amount of garbage collected in Portland rose roughly 25 percent from the average of the previous four weeks.
One key reason Mainers are producing more garbage is that many are eating all their meals at home from packaged food items purchased at the grocery store. Demand for paper products and certain canned and frozen food products [which, as of this writing, are not made from paper — ED] has spiked, leaving suppliers unable to replenish those products fast enough to keep store shelves stocked consistently.
…..
That’s important, [A]ccording to ecomaine, because recycled materials are a vital link in the supply chain for producers of toilet paper, paper towels and the corrugated cardboard boxes used to ship groceries and medical supplies. Kevin Roche, chief executive of the recycling and waste-to-energy nonprofit based in Portland, said ecomaine is providing an essential service.
“It’s critical that facilities such as ours stay operational to help meet the needs of the mills that need our fiber material, (which), in turn, fulfill the needs of American consumers,” he said in a statement. “Ecomaine is taking precautions so that we can remain active, and we urge our member communities, essential businesses and residents to continue recycling.”
In fact, toilet paper is not made from recycled paper, and cardboard is made from clean recycled cardboard and waste wood, not your dirty pizza box, egg carton or frozen pea carton, and certainly not your old envelopes, junk mail and stationery. Truth: according to the NYT, just about everything you’re throwing in that blue bin is mere “aspirational recycling” garbage, and is destined for the landfill.
It’s understandable that a business owner would pull whatever specious claim he can dream up to justify why his operation should continue during the shutdown, but we don’t necessarily have to listen to him. Here’s one person who isn’t:
Not all communities in Maine view recycling as essential. The city of Augusta, for example, recently suspended its recycling operation both at curbside and at the Hatch Hill landfill. In a letter to the city manager dated April 5, Director of Public Works Lesley Jones wrote:
“I, myself, am throwing my recycling in with my rubbish and will continue to do this until we are able to return to normal operations. We are suggesting to residents who call that they do the same. My concern is that we will not be physically able to manage everyone’s recycling once we open back up if everyone saves it and will likely have to landfill the surplus that we cannot handle.”
Chairman XI will approve
Pope sees this disaster as an opportunity to reshape the world into a socialist paradise
On Easter Sunday, Pope Francis sent a letter to leaders of social movements promoting "structural changes" to the "economy of exclusion and inequality." Among other things, he encouraged these activists to use the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to spur radical change and launch a "humanistic and ecological conversion." He also endorsed the idea of a universal basic income (UBI), championed by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
Pope Francis addressed his letter to the World Meeting of Popular Movements(WMPM), an alliance of Roman Catholic Church leadership and "grassroots organizations working to address the 'economy of exclusion and inequality' by working for structural changes that promote social, economic and racial justice."
In the letter, the pope argues that these activists are "invisible to the system. Market solutions do not reach the peripheries, and State protection is hardly visible there." Rather than encouraging philanthropy to reach these peripheries, Francis writes to encourage "you who are looked upon with suspicion when through community organization you try to move beyond philanthropy or when, instead of resigning and hoping to catch some crumbs that fall from the table of economic power, you claim your rights."
In this context, Francis endorses a UBI. "I know that you have been excluded from the benefits of globalization. You do not enjoy the superficial pleasures that anesthetize so many consciences, yet you always suffer from the harm they produce," he argues. "Street vendors, recyclers, carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time ... and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable. This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out. It would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights."
I predict that the same crowd that rejects his Holiness’s teachings on abortion will now recognize his keen insight and moral authority to guide us in worldly affairs.
Global warmists and PETA join in celebration
Smithfield shuts one of its processing plants, warns of meat shortage to come
CHICAGO, April 12 — Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was moving “perilously close to the edge” in supplies for grocers.
Slaughterhouse shutdowns are disrupting the U.S. food supply chain, crimping availability of meat at retail stores and leaving farmers without outlets for their livestock.
Smithfield extended the closure of its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, plant after initially saying it would idle temporarily for cleaning. The facility is one of the nation’s largest pork processing facilities, representing 4% to 5% of U.S. pork production, according to the company.
Maybe grocery stores can stock their empty meat shelves with surplus toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
Ukraine, 1930: Stalin shuts down the Kulaks
Why is it that the leftist solution to every problem is always an oppressive central authority dictating to its serfs? That’s a rhetorical question, because leftism, by its very nature, demands that there be a dictat of the proletariat running things as they should be run.
The Democrat goverbor of Pennsylvania banned all alcohol sales
Not to be outdone, Michigan’s Democrat governor has not only banned the sale of seeds, she’s banned almost everything else, including baby car seats, travel of residents to their northern vacation homes, motor boating (but not paddling — go figure) and all manufacturing, except for products she and her crowd deem “essential”. In a nod to her Green contingent, she includes the manufacture of plastic products as “non-essential”, unless she decides otherwise
Ignorance of how free markets work is a hallmark of Liberals, matched only by their arrogance. Does Michigan’s governess really believe that she can decide, for instance, which plastic parts are essential for medical care? Are plastic heart valves essential? How about the plastic film that will be used to wrap those valves to keep them sterile, or the plastic used for truck wiring to power the trucks that will deliver those valves? The plastic rollers that enable a conveyor line used in the manufacture of plastic gloves and N95 face masks? She and her friends might benefit from reading, surely for the first time, Leonard Read’s brilliant expository article “I, Pencil” first published in 1958, that illustrates the millions of activities necessary for the manufacture of as “simple”, mundane and plebian as a graphite/wood pencil.
But these silly, stupid people won’t do that, of course, and will instead emerge from their storm cellars after this hurricane has passed and exclaim in bewilderment, “where did our economy go?”
Related, in a sad way, the Democrat mayor and City Council in Greenville, Mississippi banned and fined, to the tune of $500, parishioners who’d gathered in a parking lot, windows up, to listen to their preacher over their car radios.
There is one god, and His name is government.
While I was away, the Greenwich Time seems to have gone big-lingual. At least I think this is a new development, but perhaps not; certainly it’s the first time I’ve noticed Spanish articles in the paper.
Nothing wrong with trying desperate methods to keep a floundering business model alive, and I wish GT well in its efforts, but it’s an interesting development, and I’d be curious to know whether the publisher actually thinks there’s an untapped readership pool out there or if this is just an exercise in wokeness, imposed from above.
Hope and change
China reclassifies dogs as pets instead of livestock
No shih tzu for you!
Outreach workers in San Diego are calling the city’s plan to bring more than 800 homeless individuals into a temporary shelter in the San Diego Convention Center amid the coronavirus outbreak “a powder keg” that could permit the contagion to rapidly spread among one of the most vulnerable segments of the population.
City officials in San Diego on Wednesday opened the doors of the convention center to 829 homeless people who previously had been staying in shelters, and the city could eventually have up to 1,500 people living there. While living conditions at the center will be less cramped than in shelters, some homeless outreach workers say even one positive case of COVID-19 could wreak havoc on the people staying on the convention center’s floor.
“Bewildering is just one adjective to use to describe putting a thousand souls in an open congregate shelter like this during a public health crisis,” Chris Megison, the founder of the homeless outreach organization Solutions for Change, told Fox News. “It’s a powder keg in there.”
Megison added: “We are all are hoping and praying that nobody dies, but if somebody does die its involuntary manslaughter as far as we’re concerned because this is irresponsible.”
There’s been some interest expressed in why the flu has, so far, not hit the squatter camps especially hard, given that populations already weakened state of health. Maybe this petri dish experiment will shed some light on the mystery.
24 Sylvan Lane, Old Greenwich, listed at $3.749 million, contract reported after three days.
Why rent wen you can buy?
29 Glen Avon Drive in Riverside has dropped its price again and is now asking $4.895 million, down from its original March 2018 price of $6.5. It’s a fine old home, built in 1896 as a pair: two Japanese brothers, silk importers, built here side by side. Nicely updated since, of course.
But no, the sun still doesn’t set in the east, as this photoshop would have you believe.
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