Contract on Rogues Hill

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Raj Rajaratnum’s property up at 577 Round Hill Road, listed at $7.9 million, is under contract (I wrote about the place back in September when it first hit the market). He paid $7.5 million for it in May 2020, so not such a good buy, but, assuming the feds didn’t get all his money, Raj can probably afford to take the hit.

My favorite Raj story, told to me by someone who was in a position to know, was the time he offered Kenny Rogers $1,000,000 to come up here and sing Raj’s favorite song “The Gambler”, and only The Gambler, during his (40th?) birthday party. Rogers agreed and showed up with his band and began playing. I’m told that he actually got through about 12 repetitions before he said “fuck this”, and quit. Raj must have been tired of the song by then too, because he let Rogers keep the money and join in the party.

That was then ...

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Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Dana Williamson

BY Capitol Weekly POSTED 08.13.2015

1. Dana Williamson

Let’s start with the basics – the chief of staff to the governor usually tops this list because there isn’t a tougher job out there. ….
It all blends into a stew that requires a chief who can multitask as well as he can, who knows Sacramento politics inside and out, who has their own gravitas baked in, and who is not afraid to plant a boot into the appropriate backside when needed. And folks, Dana Williamson is that person. … She is loyal without being overly deferential, highly strategic and absolutely unafraid to go heads up with anyone. And as protective as she might be of him and his agenda, she has the thing every great chief of staff has – the willingness to tell the boss things he doesn’t want to hear. … But she has clearly earned his trust and his ear, and in an environment as fluid and occasionally chaotic as this one, her ability to keep everything calm, in order and moving forward is invaluable. She is the obvious choice for this spot, and picking anyone else would have been just plain dumb. 

And This is Now

FBI Arrests California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Former Chief Of Staff

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff Dana Williamson was arrested Wednesday and charged with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, among other crimes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.

In a press statement, the office announced that a 23-count indictment was unsealed Wednesday morning following Williamson’s arrest. A federal grand jury charged her with filing false tax returns, making false statements and participating in conspiracies to commit bank and wire fraud, defraud the United States and obstruct justice.

Between February 2022 and September 2024, Williamson allegedly conspired with others to divert about $225,000 from a dormant political campaign to an associate’s personal use, according to court documents. Prosecutors claim Williamson and her associates funneled the money through multiple business entities, disguising it as payment for “what was, in reality, a no-show job.

Officials also allege the 53-year-old political consultant worked with a business associate to create false, backdated contracts after she was subpoenaed in January 2024 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office over Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans tied to her business.

Additionally, Williamson is accused of filing false tax returns, claiming more than $1 million in business deductions for “what were actually personal and nondeductible expenditures,” including luxury hotel stays, home furnishings and private jet travel, according to prosecutors.

The Gov himself wasn’t around to witness his former chief’s perp walk because he’d jetted off to the global warming party in Brazil, where he allied himself with Nigeria, a country that earns 90% of its foreign export revenues from oil sales and one that has ranked among the top 3% on corruption indexes for decades. Oh! It’s also busy slaughtering its Christian population, but that’s a mere quibble, no?

Newsom Partners With Nigeria on Climate as Genocide Rages

It's no wonder federal government employees are fighting so hard to destroy the DOGE effort, but I wonder whether the useless idiots in the street know who they're fighting for?

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cheering the 26-hour workday

Such a surprise

Watchdog group reveals that the swamp continues to grow

Open The Books, a project of American Transparency, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan charitable organization, closely tracks government spending and released an expansive report Wednesday ahead of a looming agreement between Republicans and Democrats to reopen the government, showing the swamp has gotten bigger, richer and more secretive since 2020. 

The report, which analyzed all publicly disclosed federal salaries for fiscal year 2024, found a total of 2.9 million civil service employees with a total payroll of $270 billion, plus an additional 30% for benefits. While the total number of employees rose by 5% since 2020, payroll grew nearly five times as much. 

DEPT OF ED SPENDING SOARED 749% DESPITE DOWNSIZING, NEW DOGE-INSPIRED INITIATIVE REVEALS

The current federal workforce is costing American taxpayers $673,000 per minute, $40.4 million per hour and just under $1 billion per day, according to Open The Books. This includes almost 1,000 workers who are making more than the president's $400,000 per year salary, 31,452 non-War Department federal employees who made more than every governor of all 50 states and 793,537 people making $100,000 or more. Those making $300,000 or more have seen an 84% increase since 2020, while there has similarly been an 82% increase in those earning $200,000 or more, the report points out. 

During Open The Book's investigation, the fiscal watchdog group also found that the names of 383,000 federal workers across 56 different agencies were redacted, amounting to a total of $38.3 billion in pay. According to Open The Books CEO John Hart, "You can't have accountability without visibility."  

….

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, has been working with Open The Books to fight for greater transparency. In a letter sent in September to Scott Kupor, the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Ernst said she had identified "numerous examples" of full-time federal employees earning two salaries while moonlighting for other agencies or government contractors, something typically prohibited under the law. Ernst pointed out that this was being done without the approval or knowledge of these workers' managers. 

"From 2021 to 2024, a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) employee held multiple other full-time government contractor jobs, frequently billing taxpayers for more than 24 hours of work in a single day," Ernst chronicled in her letter. "In addition to HUD, she was paid by AmeriCorps and the National Institutes of Health. Since she teleworked in all three positions, she was able to hide her overlapping jobs and get away with billing taxpayers $225,866 for hours she never worked. She claimed she worked 26 hours on 13 of the 21 workdays in a single month."

Ernst also described a second example of a human resources official at the Peace Corps who was caught falsifying time cards submitted to different agencies, which led to the employee double-billing taxpayers for tens of thousands of dollars. She laid out several other examples in the letter as well.

It probably couldn't be any worse than what corporate Nashville's been spewing out but still ... disconcerting (or should that be de-concerting?)

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The Top Country Song on the Charts Was Written and Performed by AI

This was inevitable and now it's here. The top song on the country charts right now is a song written and sung by artificial intelligence. The "artists" name is Breaking Rust and the song is called "Walk My Walk."

It's official: "Chartificial intelligence" is here.

Breaking Rust, a new artist on the scene, is topping charts ... but he's not a real person. He's a computer-generated outlaw blues-country singer.

"Walk My Walk," a song from Breaking Rust's October EP "Resilient," is the No. 1 song on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales Chart, a list of the most-downloaded tracks in the U.S.

Breaking Rust isn't the only AI artist in the charts at the moment.

Following Rust's song on the chart is Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas," and coming in third is "Don't Tread On Me" by Cain Walker, another AI artist.

…. Still, significant proportions of US music consumers don’t seem to mind. Breaking Rust already has 2 million monthly Spotify listeners. And just look at the YouTube comments on the above video and weep – ‘masterpiece’, ‘My god, his voice is awesome. Beautiful yet heartbreaking’, ‘The greatest song ever!!!’

Here it is — I lasted 15 seconds. There is still good country music being written and performed, as well as new bluegrass, but it’s not being produced by the Nashville suits, and definitely not by AI, if this sample is typical.

What, was the buyer disappointed to find no tipis?

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65 John Street, 9.3 acres and an $8.45 million price tag, was reported under contract just last week, and I reported that here. Today, the contract is busted and it’s back on the market. I hope the buyer wasn’t mislead by my enhanced photograph of the property.

In fairness, anyone that determined to have Indians on his meadows should have known that tipis were used by the Plains Indians, not Woodland savages like our native Siwanoys, who, when they weren’t beating their squaws or scalping and raping settler children, loafed idly in cardboard shipping boxes and wigwams behind the Riverside Caldors, subsisting on a diet of sticks, gravel and ditchwater.

It took some digging, but Brown Harris's Brian Tunney unearthed this gem and even dug up a buyer for it

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The old Parsonage at, coincidentally, 33 Parsonage Road, sold for $2 million, asked for $1.995. A stone-faced Tunney declined comment on the sale, stating that it was much too grave a matter, to be flippant about, although he did concede that buyer’s agent Charles Magyar left no stone unturned in his search for the perfect property for his client — or he would have, not doubt, had we asked.

By the way, a search for the history of the Parsonage using Google’s vaunted AI tool produced this gem of misinformation, completely wrong — it conflated this house with the history of the Elizabeth Feake House in Old Greenwich; if they still teach the history of Greenwich in 3rd Grade and require students to write reports or be tested on what they’ve they’ve learned, warn your children to use an alternatives source of information.

AI Overview

The house at 33 Parsonage Road in Greenwich, CT, is known as the Old Parsonage or Feake-Ferris House, and is

considered the oldest house in Greenwich, dating back to the colonial era. It is historically significant as the first house in the town and is also one of the oldest houses in America still located on its original site. The Greenwich Point Conservancy is currently restoring the building, which is a project to preserve a unique piece of American history. 

  • Historical Significance: The Feake-Ferris House is historically important as the oldest house in Greenwich and the first house built in the town.

  • Age: It is among the oldest houses in the United States that remains on its original site.

  • Preservation: It was saved from demolition and is undergoing restoration by the Greenwich Point Conservancy.

  • Location: The house is situated in a historically significant area, and its preservation is a key project for the Greenwich Point Conservancy. 

What price, safety?

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,The beauty of new england’s fall foliage, or the deadly hazard of florida’s falling iguana’s? will you risk the lives of your grandchildren?

New Report: NY, NJ Lose $690B As Residents Flee High Taxes

Sounds bad, but Mamdani and his fellow NJ socialist governor have a plan, one that began election night, to keep the golden geese on the butcher’s table: “Danger, Will Robinson! Shelter in place!”

These reptilian missiles rain down every year, but is this sudden media attention to the phenomenon coincidental with news that those states’ productive citizens are fleeing the soon-to-be-released army of tax collectors and heading south to a more hospitable sanctuary?

Arctic Blast: Iguanas Raining Down In Florida Thanks To Record-Breaking Temperatures

So they folded up their tents and left the stage

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Felicity Hayward, a model and activist, thinks 2023 was a turning point. “Ozempic arrived into our industry, and there was a definite change,” she says. Hayward, who has modelled for Mac and appeared on the cover of i-D magazine, monitors the number of designers using curve models across the fashion weeks in London, Paris, New York and Milan for her report Inside the Curve. At first the drop was slow, but this season, she says, “we’ve started to see a huge decline. New York, which had 70 plus-size models in 2023, had 23 earlier this year. At the September 2024 London fashion week, 80 plus-size models were on the runway, but just 26 this year.”