Richmond Hill: not yet out of the grave, but this pending sale indicates that it may at least have one foot outside it

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85 Richmond Hill Road is reported as pending after just 32 days on the market at $6.795 million. That has to come as encouraging news to other homeowners on this benighted street that saw a mini-boom of mansion construction in 2003-2006 and a subsequent collapse of prices in the two decades that followed. This home’s sales history offers a good illustration of that tale of woe.

  • Built in 2004-2005, it sold for $7.1 million in 2006 — $11.427 in current dollars

  • Placed back on the market in 2007 at $8.9 million. it lingered for 1,027 days before finally selling for $4.825 in 2013.

  • Once again put up for sale in 2016 at $5.250 million, it took four years for these current owners to appear, and they were only willing to pay $3.550.

It’s nice to see that someone is finally making money on this street way out in nowhere.

Modern Journalism: Monkey See, Monkey Do

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(Yes, I know that baboons aren’t technically monkeys, but I decided that they made for a more dramatic picture — deal with it)

PJ Media’s Scott Pinsker offers a spot-on précis of how, and the why, of the media’s coverage of news events:

SHAMEFUL: Media Attacks Republican Women as Ugly — and Why It’s About to Get So Much Worse

…. Divining the mainstream media’s tea leaves is about 25% understanding human nature, and 75% knowing how the media works. The media might be monstrous, vain, and partisan, but they’re still comprised of flesh-and-blood human beings. They’re members of a very specific tribe, and within that tribe, there’s groupthink, social expectations, a code of conduct, and shared values. 

More often than not, the real story isn’t what they published — but why they published it. Once you figure that part out, it’s easy to stay ahead of ‘em.

I’ll show you how it works:

The first telltale sign is when the media outlets at the top of the hierarchy all begin publishing the same stories.

The media industry is a top-down ecosystem; the minnows take their cues from the whales. Even today, you’d be surprised how many small market news directors will religiously tear through The New York Times before assigning any stories.

Why?

Because that’s how they were trained. 

As a practical matter, it empowers the larger media outlets to set the national agenda, because this ecosystem gives their stories legs: First The New York Times will report on it; then the mid-tier and low-tier ones echo it; then The Times will circle back with a follow-up story about how this is a huge deal in the heartland — citing those mid- and low-tier outlets’ stories a few days later.

It’s incestuous, self-serving, and won’t work indefinitely, but it guarantees a story will stay in circulation for at least a week — and with just a little luck, much longer than that. 

Either way, in today’s 24/7 media culture, a week is an eternity. You can do a lot of damage in a week.

The second sign is when the same stories all echo the same themes.

When a mainstream media thought leader, like The New York Times, NBC News, or The Atlantic gives a story their “seal of approval,” it’s kind of like the phenomenon with the ugly dude and the hot girlfriend: That editorial “spin” has already won the support of their industry’s A-Listers.

If you’re a low-rung journalist with ambition, it’s awfully tempting to hop aboard that bandwagon and cry “One of us!” — and so, lots of ‘em do. (Hey, they wanna work at The New York Times one day, too.)

When three or more A-Listers in the mainstream media release the same story with the same theme, it means you’ll be hearing about it for no less than a week. If the story fails, it’ll go away.

But conservatives don’t get to decide if a story fails! 

That takes us to the third sign: Stories that animate liberals will always be elevated.

This usually means that liberal causes, politicians, and policies will be promoted and conservative ones trashed, but not always. Sometimes, liberals like to read about doom-and-gloom — that “The End Is Nigh!” (They’re pessimistic by nature and enjoy doom-scrolling.)

But no matter what, the stories and spin will always reflect a VERY leftwing worldview.

Why?

Because the media is VERY liberal and they’re primarily concerned with impressing each other. 

Between 95% and 97% of all journalists’ donations go to Democrats. If you’re a journalist, your next job will be in a liberal office. Whoever hires you will be liberal; your new colleagues will be liberal. Your professional success (mostly) depends on being well-liked by liberal gatekeepers.

In this ecosystem, conservatives just don’t matter. (And, when you read their work, it certainly shows.)

I’ll give you a quick example: Yesterday, three mainstream media heavyweights — The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Independent — all released stories with the exact same theme: The Trump administration is filled with virtue-signaling, cosplaying, unmanly and/or wrongly-gendered phonies who are ugly-looking.

Pinsker proceeds to show this process by citing three articles on exactly the same theme: “Republican women are ugly and fake” by the NYT. the Atlantic, and the Independent, all published within 24 hours of each other, and he predicts that Jimmy Kimmel and other late night “comics” will have picked it up and run with it by tonight. That, in turn, will spur more coverage by more “journalists”, and it will be the hot theme; until the monkeys are steered to a new one by their betters.

Oh, the HORROR! (Updated)

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Trump should raze HUD headquarters to drain DC swamp

Gross negligence has always been HUD’s standard operating procedure

Jim Bovard, Fox News

The Trump administration just announced plans to sell the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a brutalist architectural monstrosity. Secretary Scott Turner admits that HUD headquarters is "known as the ugliest building in D.C." 

The Trump administration is also seeking to terminate half of HUD’s staff and defund programs that have vexed America since the launch of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.  

  • Andrew Cuomo, former New York governor and Bill Clinton’s last HUD secretary, admitted in 1998 that HUD had been "the poster child for failed government." In 1976, Detroit City Council president (and future U.S. senator) Carl Levin denounced the agency as "Hurricane HUD" for ravaging the Motor City with reckless subsidized mortgages with stratospheric default rates. 

  • Vice President Al Gore denounced HUD-financed public housing projects in 1996: "These crime-infested monuments to a failed policy are killing the neighborhoods around them." In 2006, the leftist Village Voice labeled HUD as America’s worst landlord. 

Gross negligence has always been HUD’s standard operating procedure. In 2011, the Washington Post compiled hundreds of satellite images to prove that HUD’s largest homebuilding program was a "dysfunctional system that delivers billions of dollars to local housing agencies with few rules, safeguards or even a reliable way to track projects." 

HUD claimed to have no idea that billions of dollars of its grants had been misused or plundered and ignored a barrage of complaints from individuals whose neighborhoods were ravaged. HUD left a "trail of failed developments in every corner of the country. Fields where apartment complexes were promised are empty and neglected," the Post noted. 

  • Andrew Cuomo, Bill Clinton’s last HUD secretary, admitted in 1998 that HUD had been "the poster child for failed government."

During the 1990s, I spent many days at HUD headquarters investigating boondoggles. HUD was overstocked with the most depressed employees you would ever meet outside of a group therapy session in a city jail. After I wrote a Wall Street Journal piece headlined "Clinton’s Wrecking Ball for Suburbs," HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros denounced me for "unfortunate stereotyping of assisted-housing residents."

But not nearly as unfortunate as subsequent HUD-financed violent crime waves across the nation. In the first half of 2016, at least 30 people were killed at Section 8 residences in Chicago - along with 7,000 other reported crimes. 

In Houston, male Section 8 recipients are twice as likely to commit violent crimes as people with similar backgrounds and incomes who did not receive housing vouchers, according to a Texas A&M University study. A HUD-financed study found that Section 8 relocations "tripled the rate of arrests for property crimes" among boys who moved to new locales.

  • Vice President Al Gore denounced HUD-financed public housing projects in 1996: "These crime-infested monuments to a failed policy are killing the neighborhoods around them." (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

…. When Congress created HUD in 1965, it was supposed to bring social justice to American cities. But Sandra Thompson, Biden’s Federal Housing Finance Agency chief, testified to Congress in 2022 that the racial homeownership gap "is higher today than when the Fair Housing Act [of 1968] was passed." 

The Biden administration sought to "fix" that problem with a new mandate to punish mortgage borrowers with good credit ratings by forcing them to subsidize borrowers with shaky records of paying their bills. But "No Deadbeats Left Behind" is a poor maxim for mortgage policies. 

Secretary Turner is ready to abandon HUD headquarters, declaring that that agency’s focus is on "creating a workplace that reflects the values of efficiency, accountability and purpose." That 12-story building needs a half billion dollars in "deferred maintenance and modernization" expenses and costs more than $50 million a year to operate – despite being perennially half empty even before Trump’s mass firings. The maintenance and modernization costs far exceed the original cost of the building in inflation-adjusted dollars. 

UP DATE

A reader supplies an insider’s perspective:

On HUD, when I was a Counsel to the Crime and Criminal Justice Subcommittee, Cisneros testified before us. I told my boss (Jim Sensenbrener) to ask Cisneros if families that included convicted drug dealers and other felons were being evicted from HUD housing. Cisneros twice evaded the question, and then admitted that, no, they weren't being evicted bcs it would be unfair to the drug dealer's, murderer's, whatever's, other family members. 

Also, NYCHA was actually quite good and also proud of how it maintained public housing, that is, until Federal regs forced them to allow unsavory elements to remain.

Finally, Fannie and Freddie weren't really responsible for the GFC. Much more responsible were the Basel III banking regs which allowed banks to determine -- on their own -- what counted as Tier 1 capital.  They decided to count Fannie and Freddie debt as the equivalent of cash. My brother had been the Chief Compliance Officer at Bear Stearns. He told me that a five bps (0.05bps) decline in the value of Freddie and Fannie bonds would put every Wall St institution out of business.

He was right.

And I’ll add this: Back in the 80s and 90s, the Greenwich Housing Authority was incredible strict about drug dealers in our housing projects, and would evict entire families, including grandparents, if any member was dealing drugs. I was in Norwalk Housing Court on another matter one day, waiting for my own case to be called, and saw exactly such an eviction in process: a grandmother had let her grandson live with her in Armstrong Court, and he used her apartment to stash the drugs he was dealing. That bad move led to another move that was even worse: she was kicked out.

That was the, but the reader says that HUD regs put an end to such evictions in New York, and I assume that means Greenwich is also barred from carrying them out. Which, of course, harms the other, law-abiding tenants in these projects, who now have to live with criminals in their midst.

This who they are, this is what they do

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Matt Margolis:

Once again, the failing New York Times [unfortunately, the Times is prospering, much to the country’s loss — Ed] is running interference and burying the real story to protect their preferred narrative. An article headlined "Missteps, Equipment Problems and a Common but Risky Practice Led to a Fatal Crash," which is about January's devastating crash at Reagan National Airport, is a textbook example of mainstream media malpractice.

An honest headline would have read, "Helicopter Pilot Ignored Multiple Safety Warnings Before Fatal Crash."

The liberal paper of record spent roughly a thousand words dancing around the obvious truth: a helicopter pilot directly caused this tragedy by ignoring multiple explicit warnings. But that wouldn't fit their preferred story about "systemic failures," would it?

Let me spell out what the Times buried deep in their article: The Black Hawk pilot received clear, explicit warnings about altitude from their co-pilot. The co-pilot explicitly instructed them to turn away from the passenger jet. And what did they do? They ignored those warnings and flew straight into the path of an American Airlines flight carrying 64 innocent people.

The Black Hawk was 15 seconds away from crossing paths with the jet. Warrant Officer Eaves then turned his attention to Captain Lobach.

He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank.

Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at an altitude of roughly 300 feet.

She did not turn left.

But instead of leading with these crucial facts, the Times gives us a meandering story about "visual separation procedures" and "aviation practices." Classic mainstream media sleight-of-hand — when the facts don't fit your preferred narrative, bury them under a mountain of context and systemic analysis.

Here's what the Times doesn't want you to focus on: This wasn't some complex system failure that Democrats can use to blame the Trump administration for. This wasn't about equipment problems or procedural issues. This was about a pilot who ignored basic safety protocols and clear warnings from their co-pilot. Full stop.

As we know, the liberal media and the Democratic Party immediately sought to blame the Trump administration for the crash, claiming that FAA cuts created the environment for the crash to happen. 

The Army Black Hawk was flying well above its approved altitude. The co-pilot knew it. Air traffic control knew it. The families of the 64 people who lost their lives in this entirely preventable tragedy deserve better than the Times' narrative manipulation. They deserve the truth, plainly stated: Their loved ones died because a pilot ignored multiple explicit warnings and violated basic safety protocols. They don’t want us focusing on the pilot because then some uncomfortable questions have to be asked.

(FWIW) Flashback: Remember these, from the NYT’s collaborators and echo machines?

And this one, blaming Trump and Elon for a crash that occurred in Canada?

Government title insurance: a solution looking for a problem

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Sorry, Fannie Mae: We Won't Get Fooled Again

Stephen Moore:

        Anyone remember back in 2008 when the housing market collapsed and the stock market crashed, with many tens of millions of Americans seeing their lifetime savings nearly wiped out?

Apparently the politicians in Washington are suffering amnesia -- even though it was the worst crash since the Great Depression.

        What else has been conveniently forgotten inside the swamp is that the institution that lost the most money and required the biggest tax bailout wasn't any of the major banks that teetered on the verge of bankruptcy but Fannie Mae -- the government-guaranteed enterprise that insures federal mortgages and was supposed to NEVER fail. Fanny received nearly $200 billion of taxpayer rescue funds.

        Fannie Mae, which now resides in one of the glitziest nearly 1 million-square-foot high-story office buildings in the Washington, D.C., area, is still in conservatorship. Hopefully, the Trump administration will move toward setting it free and severing all its federal strings.

        Instead, Fannie and the housing lobby wants to expand its power by forcing taxpayers to take on tens of billions of dollars of new risk by effectively eliminating title insurance on federally backed loans and replacing it with ... ta da: Fannie Mae as the de facto insurance provider on hundreds of billions of dollars of homes. What could possibly go wrong?

        Title insurance ensures that when you pay $100,000 or $1 million for a new home, you are not the victim of a fraudster, and you have rightful ownership. Private title insurance typically costs a one-time fee of 0.5% to 1% of the purchase price -- which is hardly price gouging.

        In the last months of the Biden administration, Fannie Mae proposed a federal takeover scheme under the guise of bringing down the price of buying a home. It should have received a ceremonial burial when Kamala Harris lost the election, but Fannie and the housing lobby are powerful and relentless. They say it won't cost the taxpayer a dime.

        Uh-huh. This is what Fannie and the Federal Housing Administration said when it facilitated the low down payment loans in the early 2000s that enticed Americans into homes they couldn't afford. Shortly before the 2008 crash, Fannie was even touting studies that concluded the possibility that Fannie would go bankrupt was one in a million. Whoops!

        Make no mistake: This Fannie Mae scheme is privatization in reverse. It runs a well-functioning private insurance market out of business, replacing it with government subsidized insurance coverage.

        Not only would this greatly expand Fannie Mae's charter, but it intrudes on the traditional state oversight that ensures safety and soundness of the industry. The Trump administration is about turning power back to the states, not seizing power from them.

        Congress and the Trump administration, with oversight of federal housing policy, should end this sham. Taxpayers have already been taken to the cleaners by Fannie Mae, and to quote the rock band The Who, we won't get fooled again.

(FWIW): Title insurance is pretty cheap, compared to the cost of a defect in title (it happens: in my time practicing real estate law, I encountered a defective deed — a property owner three transactions down the chain had died intestate, and and two elderly nieces still had an inchoate interest — fences and driveways built on neighbors’ property; even a forged deed in the chain of title. The insurance, though rarely needed, is great to have if a need arises.The systems not broken, so don’t fix it.

Tesla Justice

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Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty recently gained notoriety for not prosecuting a Minnesota government employee for committing a series of felonies for keying Teslas. It was a travesty, one made even more blatant by the fact that her office is prosecuting a woman for causing much less damage, vandalizing one car instead of six Teslas.

Moriarty is, of course, a Soros prosecutor in the mold of Chesa Boudin. And, as a Soros prosecutor, her veneration for the law is about as great as Joe Biden's or Nancy Pelosi's veneration for Catholic doctrine on abortion and family life. 

Fresh off her farcical application of the law in Dylan Adams' case, she is implementing a policy--starting tomorrow--that requires prosecutors in her office to use race as a consideration when pursuing and resolving cases. 

Don't blame this one on DOGE — it's been in the works for a while — but WTF?

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“morons”

Coast Guard proposes removing navigation buoys from Maine waters — the entire east coast, in fact

The U.S. Coast Guard has proposed to remove navigation aids from up and down the East Coast, including more than 100 in Maine waters.

A notice issued on April 15 listing the locations of buoys that would be discontinued, includes more than 40 in Penobscot Bay and a dozen from around Mount Desert Island.

The buoys targeted for removal mark harbor entrances, ledges, and other routes and hazards. Some are lighted, while others have gongs, bells or whistles, according to detailed descriptions in the notice.

According to the Coast Guard, most, if not all would be removed to modernize a constellation of navigation aids “whose designs mostly predate global navigation satellite systems, electronic navigation charts, and electronic charting systems.”

The intention, the Coast Guard says, is to “support the navigational needs of the 21st century prudent mariner … Deliver effective, economical service — manage vessel transit risk to acceptable levels at acceptable cost.” 

Admittedly, (most) everyone’s happy to see government spending slashed, until their own ox shows up on the chopping block, but ensuring the safety of and making possible coastal navigation has been one of the federal government’s responsibilities since the founding of the nation*, and that need still exists, especially for recreational vessels, many of which, like my own small sailboats and runabouts in the past, lack electronic navigation equipment, but even commercial vessels can have electronic failures, and the ubiquitous cell phones “everyone” carries can fail. In short, this is not a Peruvian transgender dance group.

Furthermore, it’s not all that difficult to imagine a cyberattack or an EMP, natural or deliberate, disabling the entire electronic navigation system. In that event, good luck entering a harbor or navigating shoals in fog or on a dark and stormy night.

For some reason, this bit of idiocy is being reported on mostly in Maine, but it will affect boaters from Florida to the Canadian border (and the Great Lakes are bound to be next).

The Coast Guard is accepting public comment until June 13.

Interested Mariners are strongly encouraged to comment on this in writing, either personally or through their organization. All comments will be carefully considered and are requested prior to 13 June 2025 to complete the process. To most effectively consider your feedback and improve the data collection, when responding to this proposal, please include size and type of vessel, recreational or commercial, and distance from aid that you start looking for it, and if and how you use the signal. Please do not call the Coast Guard via telephone or other means, only written responses to this proposal will be accepted. Refer to Project No. 01-25-015. E-mail can be sent to: D01-SMBDPWPublicComments@uscg.mil .

Seems like something that local yacht clubs might want to bring to the attention of their members, and act on.

*History

The Lighthouse Act of 1789, also known as "An Act for the Establishment and Support of Light-Houses, Beacons, Buoys, and Public Piers," was a significant piece of early federal legislation. It established the federal government's authority over lighthouses and other navigational aids, shifting responsibility from individual states. This act was the first federal public works program, and it was passed early in the new nation's history, even before Congress established salaries for itself. 

Gates and other megalomaniacs have been proposing this plan since at least 2010, but now a Britain set on self-destruction is coming closer to implementing it

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Goodbye to all that

(Instapundit)

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? ‘Sun-Dimming’ Aerosol Injections Into Atmosphere For Climate Change.

“Experiments to dim sunlight to fight global warming will be given the green light by the Government within weeks,” British outlet The Telegraph reports. “Outdoor field trials which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, are being considered by scientists as a way to prevent runaway climate change.”

Don’t worry about the potential devastating and irreversible effects of blocking out the literal singular object that provides the basis for all life on Earth; the agency launching the project — the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) — assures the public its project will be “rigorously assessed.”

UPDATE (From Ed): That excess of sunlight could be put to great use in England. But to paraphrase the Gipper, sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing:

(Link to X isn’t working as I post, so I’m going with just a picture)

More here: ‘Sun-Dimming’ Aerosol Injections Into Atmosphere for Climate Change

Related: Dimming the sun might in fact be a good thing for the environment if it makes solar farms inpractical, because they’re gobbling up open land and farms, with disastrous effects:

Land Needs for Wind, Solar Dwarf Nuclear Plant’s Footprint

Wind farms require up to 360 times as much land area to produce the same amount of electricity as a nuclear energy facility, a Nuclear Energy Institute analysis has found. Solar photovoltaic (PV) facilities require up to 75 times the land area.

A nuclear energy facility has a small area footprint, requiring about 1.3 square miles per 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity. This figure is based on the median land area of the 59 nuclear plant sites in the United States. In addition, nuclear energy facilities have an average capacity factor of 90 percent, much higher than intermittent sources like wind and solar.

By contrast, wind farm capacity factors range from 32 to 47 percent, depending on differences in wind resources in a given area and improvements in turbine technology. Solar PV capacity factors also vary based on location and technology, from 17 to 28 percent.

Taking these factors into account, a wind farm would need an installed capacity between 1,900 megawatts and 2,800 MW to generate the same amount of electricity in a year as a 1,000-MW nuclear energy facility. Such a facility would require between 260 square miles and 360 square miles of land.

A solar PV facility must have an installed capacity of 3,300 MW and 5,400 MW to match a 1,000-MW nuclear facility’s output, requiring between 45 and 75 square miles.

For comparison, the District of Columbia’s total land area is 68 square miles. The island of Manhattan is 34 square miles, and New York City’s five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx) take up 305 square miles.

No wind or solar facility currently operating in the United States is large enough to match the output of a 1,000-MW nuclear reactor. The country’s largest wind farm, Alta Wind Energy Center in California, has an installed capacity of 1,548 MW. The largest solar PV plants are the 550-MW Topaz Solar Farm and Desert Sunlight Solar Farm, both in California. Between six and 10 of these facilities would be needed to equal the annual output of the average nuclear reactor.

And:

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I'd say we've hit peak hypocrisy , but the day and the year are both still young

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In case you don’t care to go back two posts to refresh your memory about the actions of Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan and her actions assisting defendant Eduardo Flores Ruiz escape arrest by ICE agents, here’s the relevant summary:

“This guy was in court being prosecuted by a state prosecutor for domestic violence battery. He had beat up two people, a guy and a girl, beat the guy, hit the guy 30 times, knocked him to the ground, choked him, beat up a woman so badly, they both had to go to the hospital.” 

The victims “were sitting in the courtroom with the state prosecutor, the judge learns that ICE was outside to get the guy because he had been deported in 2013, came back in our country, commits these crimes and is charged with committing these crimes. Victims are in court, the judge finds out” ICE is there to arrest him, “she goes out in the hallway, screams at the immigration officers, she's furious, visibly shaken upset, sends them off to talk to the chief judge. She comes back in the courtroom, takes the defendant and the defense attorney back in her chambers, takes them out the private exit and tells them to leave, while a state prosecutor and victims of domestic violence are sitting in the court room.”

That’s not a good story line for Democrats to use in their “Constitutional Crisis” schtick, just as “Maryland Man’s” history of wife beating, human trafficking and drug dealing proved so uncomfortable, so they ignore it completely and simply stick with the Trump is a Nazi theme that’s so popular among their illiterate subjects.

Do you remember when the Leftists spent their time shrieking that “No one is above the law”? They hope you don’t, because their concern was never genuine, and served merely as a tool to bash Trump. They care no more about that moral position than they did about “due process of law” while Obama was deporting 3 million illegal aliens during his watch — without individual hearings for all three million, as is now being demanded by the Democrats and their judges.

Just because it’s fun to detour down Memory Lane, here’s a clip of The Light Bringer from back during his reign, boasting about his accomplishment, and the importance of protecting our borders:

Even pipsqueak Congressmen chimed in,

And washed-up old movie actors. Will we hear from Neil Notsoyoung next?