Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
55 Stag Lane is reported under contract. Asking price was $2.695 million. I’ve always liked this house because it’s got a very usable 4-acre lot perched high above the road and distant enough from the Merritt that, to my ear, there’s no objectionable traffic noise. That it took 91 days to find a buyer in this market is probably attributable to its opening price of $3.250.
The findings were presented by the House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in documents that show Amazon reduced the visibility of titles that the government deemed overly critical of big pharma shots.
The documents show that some books were simply generally critical of vaccines, with several written by medical professionals. Some were even just reviews of scientific studies.
The Federal government compiled a “Do Not Promote” list, to which more than 40 titles were added.
In a series of X posts, Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan explained how internal emails from Amazon contain employees revealed that “the impetus for this request is criticism from the Biden Administration.
Stephen Green: “There’s a word for Big Government and Big Business colluding to silence speech and stifle opposition — it starts with an F and it’s one the Left always accuses the Right of being, even as they act increasingly fascist themselves.”
Parents objecting to distributing coloring books depicting anal sex to 4th graders? Censorship! Suppressing criticism of our public health officials? Why, that’s for the good of the republic.
22 Stanwich Lane, $2.150 million, 20 days on the market. Stanwich Lane is a sweet little street, and it’s no surprise that, especially in this price range, the house found a buyer. Still, I’d credit the listing agent for the quick sale: her deft weaving together the Zebra and Orange motifs, so popular with buyers and even, possibly, essential to their decision, must have made this irresistible to all but the colorblind and the zoophobic.
the zebra
the orange
the combo, employing an ironic reference to the zebra
the zebra, self-identifying as the tiger
President Joe Biden’s top commander said Monday that the U.S. may be unable to defend Israel in the event of a war with Hezbollah, The Jerusalem Post reported Monday.
The Biden administration has become increasingly concerned that existing tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a massive Iranian-backed terrorist organization, will break into a full-scale war that could send shockwaves throughout the entire Middle East, according to Axios. C.Q. Brown, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that the U.S. would have limited abilities to come to Israel’s defense if such a war occurred, warning that it would put U.S. troops stationed in the region in heightened danger, per the Post.
and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men ….
The Biden administration's agendas may have fundamentally changed the country for decades, if not longer—and will require tough remedies that may be almost as unpopular as the wreckage they wrought.
Most Americans believe it is unhinged to deliberately destroy the border and allow 10 million illegal aliens to enter the country without background audits, means of support, any claims to legal residency, and definable skills. And worse still, why would federal authorities be ordered to release repeat violent felons who have gone on to commit horrendous crimes against American citizens?
Equally perplexing to most Americans is borrowing $1 trillion every 90 days and paying 5-5.5% interest on the near $36 trillion in ballooning national debt. Serving that debt at current interest exceeds the size of the annual defense budget and may soon top $1 trillion in interest costs, or more than 13% of the budget.
Why would the United States suspend military aid to Israel as it tries to destroy the Hamas architects of the October 7 massacres? Why would it lift sanctions on a terrorist Iran? Why would it suppress Israel’s response to Iran’s missile attack on the Jewish homeland? Why would it prevent Israel from stockpiling key munitions as it prepares to deal with the existential threats posed by Hezbollah?
Why would the Biden administration cancel key pipeline projects and put vast swaths of federal lands rich in oil and gas off limits to production, even as it further drains the strategic petroleum reserve? Why not pump rather than drain our own oil from strategic stockpiles?
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Nihilism only explains so much. A better explanation is that the Biden administration and its handlers knew that there was a good chance that most of their policies would prove unpopular and might even jeopardize Biden’s reelection.
But they also were confident the changes were of such magnitude that the United States would either become—in the infamous phrase of Barack Obama—“fundamentally transformed” or force the next Republican administration to adopt such tough medicine that it would prove untenable politically and the malady would still prove mostly impossible to undo.
After all, how would a Trump administration deal with 10 million illegal aliens who entered the US without audit or legality? Where are they? How would they be found and deported? How many court suits in blue-jurisdictions before blue judges would have to be overcome?
The country has become accultured to a nonexistent border. And so, the left assumes, it would be expensive and difficult to finish the wall, to stop catch and release, to insist refugee status must be obtained before entry, and to deport what is likely now 20-30 million illegal aliens in toto. In other words, the Biden administration may sigh, “Our work is done. Whatever you think about our illegal methods, we forever changed the idea of immigration and the demographics of the country.”
All presidents—Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden—have run deficits and vastly increased the debt since the Bill Clinton-Newt Gingrich compromises that resulted in a temporary period of balanced budgets. But in the case of Biden, there was no need to keep up the multitrillion-dollar deficits, especially as interest rates on the national debt tripled and the service costs now approach $1 trillion per year.
Biden, after all, inherited a recovering economy, flush with post-COVID-19 lockdown stimulatory dollars, pent-up consumer demand, and ossified supply chains. And then he stupidly poured gasoline on the explosive mix by dousing the country with even more federal spending. Now we have the worst of both worlds: high interest rates and nearly $36 trillion to service.
But in the leftist mind, it was worth it, given that left-wing constituencies received vast expansions of entitlements that will be hard to prune back. And unprecedentedly vast debt at levels like our current burden of 123% of annual GDP prove unsustainable. And the historic correctives are brutal: 1) major cuts in entitlements and redistributive spending programs; 2) tax hikes at a time when state, local, federal, and gas, sales, and property taxes—and other “fees”—already take over half the income of most middle-class Americans; 3) hyper-inflation to pay back what is owed with cheap funny money, with the added leftist fillip that those who have dollars lose wealth and those who don’t gain greater access to them; 4) renunciation of debt. We already saw in the Obama era that liberal bureaucrats and courts often reversed the orders of creditors in bankruptcy hearings. When debt becomes unsustainable, historically arise cries of “Why should the poor suffer more when the rich already have enough money and don’t really need to be paid back?”; and 5) efforts to “confiscate” private wealth by giving, in exchange, government “credits.” For example, there have already been floated ideas that 401Ks could be absorbed into the insolvent Social Security system for credit in government benefits.
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The Biden administration sought to curb oil and gas production—save for brief periods before the midterm and reelection campaigns, when it drained the strategic petroleum reserve. The point was to acculturate the public to high gasoline prices, to make inefficient solar/wind/EVs projects competitive against artificially costly fossil fuels, and to institutionalize policies that will make it difficult to reopen closed fields, to reboot federal oilfield leasing, and to dismantle costly subsidies for inefficient green fuels.
That Americans paid hundreds of billions of dollars more for their fuels under Biden, that the auto industry is stuck with vast inventories of money-losing electric vehicles that the public does not want, and that the entire economy has been shackled by counterproductive green mandates were considered worth the cost of alienating the public.
The left knows that neither Alvin Bragg, E. Jean Carroll, Letitia James, Jack Smith, nor Fani Willis would have gone to court against Donald Trump if he was either a leftist or had bowed out of the 2024 presidential race. They know no one has been tried on such pseudo-charges, and no one will again be so charged after Trump. And they accept that no republic can long survive if the opposition party seeks to remove the names of its political opponents from the ballot.
But they also know that the left has now established a valuable precedent: oppose woke progressivism, and one will either become bankrupted by indictments or land before a blue-city jury eager to nullify evidence to ensure the accused is jailed and broke.
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The Biden years did the country great damage and rendered Biden himself one of the most unpopular incumbent presidents in American history. But his agendas may have fundamentally changed the country for decades, if not longer—and will require tough remedies that may be almost as unpopular as the wreckage they wrought.
When 822 North Street hit the market at $7.495 million 12 days ago, I pointed out that it had sold new in 2002 for $7.5 million and at auction for $4 million in 2017, and suggested that times may have improved enough to allow the owners to get back to that 2002 price. They have, and then some: it’s reported pending today.
114 Overlook Drive, a redone 1963er, priced at $3.850 million, which a few years ago would have seemed more than enough. Times change.
The property is “in the Milbrook area” but not, I believe, in Milbrook itself, so no club, no golf. On the other hand, no association fees, either.
When bank-owned property at 3 Finney Knoll (link goes to original bank listing) was put on the market in January ‘23 its listing agent set the price of the half-finished project at a very low $725,000 in the hope of stirring up interest and triggering a price war.
That number did generate interest among potential buyers, and two of my own readers were among them. We came, we looked, and with brother Gideon concurring, I advised them against making an offer (advice neither needed; these were experienced people) because there were sure to be higher bids, and the property wasn’t worth more than its asking price, given its history: A local neer-do-well builder had purchased the old 1840 wreck on the parcel in 2006, and attempted to tack on an entirely new house to the existing structure. Money and will ran out before the job was half-done, and, eventually title passed to the lender. There could be no assurance that what had been done had been done properly and well, and a buyer could find himself mired in a money pit with no bottom. Danger, Will Robinson!
I estimated that the top dollar for a finished home here, jammed up against Balducci’s parking lot, was probably around $2.9 to, maybe, $3 million. Gideon was more optimistic, but I think even his number topped out at $3.2. So our buyers passed, and the listing agent sold the place to his own client for $1.125.
Fast forward to this past March, when the same agent listed the now-finished project for $3.999 million with the bold admonition, “Do not let this one get away!” and offered no — zero — commission to cooperating agents. Gideon and I shared a quiet chuckle — nay, a hearty guffaw — at the temerity of an agent grossly overpricing his listing and asking other agents to sell it for him, not for anything as louche as merenbmonetary compensation, but for the challenge of it all, and the experience to be gained in the process.
As it turned out, no buyer’s agent accepted that challenge, so the agent eventually shaved a bit off the price — still above market — and grudgingly offered a 2% commission; that hasn’t worked either, and Friday the listing was cancelled. It will surely be back, but will it return with a different broker, or at least a more realistic price? Stay tuned.
The most recent listing has been removed from the Internet, but here’s it’s MLS data sheet:
home delivery? the balducci deli clerk will just toss your cold cuts over the hedge
Give them credit: they name themselves Extinction Now”, which is exactly what would happen if their demand to stop burning all fossil fuels by 2030 were met. I just hope they’ll be the first to go, and leave me time to enjoy their demise.
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