Drops from the bucket, but we'll take it

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And another win:

Trump admin pulls plug on $4B for California's 'train to nowhere' project

President Trump calls Newsom-backed initiative a 'boondoggle' with zero miles of track completed after a decade

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., author of H.R. 213, legislation to prohibit further federal funding for High-Speed Rail, applauded the move.

"California High-Speed Rail is the worst public infrastructure disaster in U.S. history," Kiley said. 

"A project that was supposed to be finished five years ago at a cost of $33 billion is now projected to take until the end of the century at a cost of $130 billion. I am grateful that President Trump and Secretary Duffy are sparing our taxpayers by cutting off federal funding. The state must now follow suit, wind this disastrous project down, and spend our transportation dollars where they are needed: our roads."

Trump Ends Boondoggle on Rails

505 North Street a/k/a 8 Lindsay Drive is off the government rolls and back to productive use

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8 Lindsay Drive has sold for $7.350 million; bidding started at $7.,150. I wrote about this property back when it hit the market in February:

From debtor, to deadbeat, to the deficit reduction program

You can read the official federal complaint detailing what former owner Iftikar Amed got himself up to while he was here in the Land of Opportunity, but a far more entertaining recounting can be found this Aixio’s article published just last month:

The Circle IPO's strangest winner

Oak Investment Partners is one of the biggest winners from the IPO of stablecoin issuer Circle, with shares worth in excess of $3 billion.

  • It has a convicted crook to thank. Except that he might be dead.

Catch up quick: Oak first backed Circle in 2014, as part of a $17 million Series B round. Overall, it appears to have invested less than $30 million — which means the current value more than repays the $2.5 billion fund out of which it invested.

Zoom in: Oak's deal lead was Iftikar Ahmed, a general partner who'd come to the Connecticut-based firm more than a decade earlier after stints with Goldman Sachs and Fidelity.

  • One year later, Ahmed was charged by the SEC with insider trading after being tipped off about a potential merger.

  • But the big bombshell came soon after when Oak learned that Ahmed was robbing the firm itself — via a scheme whereby he directed Oak investments into accounts that he controlled.

  • He also convinced his partners to invest in a company without disclosing that he already had a personal stake in the business.

  • Oak fired Ahmed, who ultimately would face federal fraud and state embezzlement charges.

Behind the scenes: Ahmed fled the country, even though the feds were in possession of his passport, leaving behind his wife and three kids.

  • Eventually came word that Ahmed had been detained in India and was allegedly unable to return to the U.S., where he was nonetheless convicted.

  • His wife, Shalini, who also had been a Goldman Sachs banker, has continued fighting in court to recover some of the family's frozen assets.

  • In a brief filed last month, Shalini claims that she and the government were notified in January of Ifty's passing, and received a copy of the death certificate.

  • She adds: "The government has questioned the validity of the certificate. Shalini understands there is an ongoing investigation."

Zoom out: Oak would never raise another fund, with the Ahmed saga having wrecked LP confidence, although some of its partners would successfully launch a new firm called Oak HC/FT.

  • Circle founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire declined to discuss how he was first introduced to Ahmed, with a company spokesperson citing IPO quiet period restrictions.

The bottom line: Ifty Ahmed was a very good venture capitalist, albeit a corrupt one.

  • In addition to Circle, his deals include Airespace (acquired by Cisco), GMarket (acquired by eBay), and Kayak (acquired by Priceline).

  • What's always been confounding is why someone so wealthy would risk it all for just a bit more, particularly if he believed in the startups he was backing. The Circle deal ultimately might have paid him hundreds of millions of dollars.

  • Now we'll never know. Maybe.

From the linked-to Federal judgement:

Units of that former King Street nursing home have hit the market as rentals

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Greenwich Free Press has its history, and there’s also this Google summary:

Search Labs | AI Overview

Laurelton Residences, a residential community, is planned for the former RegalCare at Greenwich nursing home site at 1188 King Street in Greenwich. The Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission approved the conversion of the vacant nursing home into 17 apartments with a total of 26 bedrooms. The facility had been damaged by Hurricane Ida in 2021 and subsequently closed. 

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

  • Location: 1188 King Street, Greenwich. 

  • Previous Use: RegalCare at Greenwich, a nursing home with 75 beds. 

  • Current Status: Vacant since Hurricane Ida in 2021. 

  • New Use: Laurelton Residences, a residential rental community. 

  • Apartment Units: 17 apartments, with 26 bedrooms in total. 

  • Zoning: The site is in the RA-4 zone. 

  • Approval: The Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission approved the conversion. 

  • Reason for Conversion: The building had sustained damage from Hurricane Ida and was no longer in use as a nursing home. 

The units themselves don’t appear to have been posted to their listing broker William Raveis’s website — or I couldn’t find it just now _ but I’m sure they’ll appear soon.

No, not Rhode Island, but that was a good guess

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Trump Admin Deports Barbaric Criminals to a Tiny African Country You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security deported several illegal immigrants, including convicted murderers and a child rapist to “Eswatini” a tiny land-locked nation in southern Africa.

The five highlighted individuals hail from the nations of Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen.

Now, they can enjoy the high crime rate, insular governance, and underdeveloped infrastructure of Eswatini, all of which contribute to limited contact with the outside world. 

Fun fact, per Wikipedia: The rulers of Eswatini changed its name from the former Swaziland because people kept confusing it with Switzerland. An easy mistake to make, but here are a couple of pictures to make it easier for our former residents to avoid such error in the future:

Switzerland:

And Eswatini, nee Swaziland:

Who needs the Left Coast when we have Rhode Island?

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Insane: Rhode Island Politicians Angry Because ICE Arrests MS-13 Fentanyl Dealer

David Strom, HotAir:

You can't make this stuff up. 

ICE apprehended a known MS 13 gang member with a history of trafficking fentanyl, and Rhode Island politicians exploded in rage that they did so. 

The perp, Ivan Rene Mendoza-Meza, had benefited from the catch-and-release policies that are so prevalent these days--after all, you wouldn't want ICE to be able to deport dangerous criminals, right?--so ICE was forced to track him down and apprehend him. 

They did, and all hell broke loose. Providence politicians insanely held a press conference vowing to track down any evidence that Providence police might be involved, and promised to get to the bottom of this potential scandal. 

The last thing you want is the police helping arrest a known gang member who is selling poison to the public. It's Nazism to do that!

The answer is obvious: cut off every penny of federal money presently given to the city: schools, hospitals, roads, food stamps, and they can govern exactly how they wish

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just another evening out in the city of roses

Portland City Council considers how to boot ICE out of city facility

Lawmakers claim detention center undermines sanctuary city policy as agents battle violent anti-ICE protesters

…. City Council Member Steve Novick said the council should take a broader moral stand against the federal deportation machine.

"This is an assault on our democracy as a whole… The assault on immigrants is the tip of the spear," Novick said, per the outlet. "We should not be trying to figure out how to keep our heads low and avoid the attention of this administration."

Defending its base

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Smug, 25-year-old Chairman of the NC Democrat Party; AOC must be feeling decrepit

DNC threatens to sue North Carolina elections board over plan to purge 100,000 voters

The Democratic National Committee is threatening to sue the North Carolinaboard of elections if they go forward with plans to purge almost 100,000 voters from the rolls.

The state elections board – with a new Republican majority – voted at its 24 June meeting to require registered voters to cast provisional ballots if they have not provided their driver’s license number, last four digits of their social security number or an identification number supplied by the state.

…. Democratic leaders claim the order and the board’s response to it is unconstitutional, and argue the change has partisan purposes.

…. “Critically, even if a voter on this list casts a provisional ballot and provides their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number, their ballot will only be counted if the numbers provided are deemed ‘correct’,” the letter states. “By requiring voters to cast provisional ballots that may not be counted, the plan effectively removes registrants from the official list of eligible voters.”

So the Democrats’ complaint is that their voters’ merely supplying a false ID will no longer be sufficient; those pesky Republicans are now demanding that the ID be authentic and actually verified. Oh, the humanity!

One can sympathize with the Democrats; North Carolina is a battle state, and every illegal vote is crucial if they are to regain total control of the political machine, but sympathy does not necessarily mean approval; in fact, thinking on it, screw ‘em.