A national (okay, personal) nightmare may be ending: 8 Old Mill Lane has a contract

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8 Old Mill Lane, priced at $8.995 million (the long-since divorced couple bought it for $10.1 million 18 years ago in 2008), has finally reported a contract: apparently the ex-wife, who refused to sign several contracts offered by purchasers before, has relented, or the court has ordered her to. I’ve written about this property many times over the years, including most recently this past September, when an order of foreclosure was entered, and earlier, in May of ‘25.

The court docket can be found here, and it’s fun reading.

The listed price may be $8.995 million, but I suspect it will be selling for less: if the ex-husband’s allegations in the pleadings are accurate, it’s a wreck.

I may have posted on this in January, including Noisome's response, but anti-disirregardless, here's more on (one of) the California frauds

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“that’s racist!”

CBS News Uncovers More Hospice Fraud in LA

John Sexton, HotAir:

Last week, CBS News put out a solid report identifying Los Angeles County as "ground zero" for hospice fraud. The numbers really speak for themselves.

Three years ago, California’s state auditor sounded the alarm that Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010 – more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.

Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbilled Medicare by $105 million in a single year.

The county went from 109 hospice agencies to 1,841 in just over a decade. Another 2,600 such companies were still applying for licenses in LA County alone. There's no possible explanation for this other than fraud. CBS News then visited a cluster of these offices and found empty offices and people unwilling to talk.

Today, CBS has a follow up in which it visits one building in Van Nuys that is home to 89 hospice companies.

The building is among the most extreme cases of what's known as "clustering" to turn up in a sweeping CBS News investigation — a grouping of large numbers of hospice offices that state auditors consider a major red flag for potential fraud. 

The Van Nuys address for Merabi Plaza appears dozens of times in state records for licensed hospice companies. Inside the building's entry hall, a directory lists numerous  hospice agencies that line the long tiled hallways, although the building's owner claims many are no longer there...

Auditors said the clustering of so many firms raised concerns because it suggests that "the number of agencies in these areas likely exceeds the number of patients who need services."

On a 2nd visit to the building, CBS spoke to the owner who says he rents to anyone who presents as a legitimate business.

On a recent visit to the building, CBS News encountered the building's owner, Kambiz Merabi. He said officials from Medicare came to his building two years ago specifically looking for hospice agencies, and he allowed them to conduct their inspections...

Merabi said the numbers that appear in government records differ from those on his tenant list. He shows only 12 hospice companies operating in his building. He explained that a number of the agencies had recently moved out of the building, though public records don't yet reflect that, and hospices are required to notify authorities if they move.

Advocates say the discrepancy raises questions about what they call "ghost hospices."

>>>>

Another interesting story here is the way in which this story had developed in the media. It's amazing to see a major news outlet like CBS News essentially tag teaming this story with Nick Shirley. Normally, stories in which Democratic AGs are put on the spot and made to look bad don't seem to get much traction with the national news. In fact, even after last week's report, no other major national outlet seems to be digging into this. A search for "LA hospice fraud" under Google News turns up some local news reports, the CBS reports and one report from Fox News back in January.

From what I can tell, what really kicked this story off was a video which Dr. Oz, the administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posted on Jan. 27. In the video, he is being driven through LA and points out all of the hospices clustered in a given area. He suggests there are signs of fraud. He specifically said it was being run "by the Russian, Armenian mafia."

L.A. County has become an epicenter for health care fraud in America. Criminals have corrupted the system so much that fraud is now almost expected. President Trump has made it clear: we will not tolerate the patient harm or taxpayer funded theft any longer. More to come. pic.twitter.com/JOp8ltimq8

Gov. Newsom responded to that video by filing a civil rights complaint against Dr. Oz just a day or two later, essentially claiming his mention of the Armenian mafia was racist. You really can't make this stuff up:

Dr. Oz travels to L.A. seeking fraud. Newsom says his findings are ‘baseless and racist allegations’

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday filed a civil rights complaint against Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, after Oz posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread healthcare fraud in Los Angeles...

In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, Newsom called on the agency to investigate “Dr. Oz’s baseless and racist allegations against Armenian Americans in California.”

“Such racially charged and false public statements by anyone involved in administering these critical federal healthcare programs seriously risks chilling participation in those programs by individuals targeted by the statements,” Newsom wrote in the complaint.

I'm sure the Armenian mafia appreciates having the governor protect them from mean Dr. Oz. Honestly, Newsom's response is enough to make you wonder why he's so eager to protect them. My guess is he's just looking for any weapon close at hand to knock down reports about rampant fraud in California. That wouldn't look good on his resume when he runs for president.

Here's the latest CBS News report. Again, what's most striking is that no one else in the national media seems interested in touching this.

Knickers, twisted

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The Guardian:

Trump mocks Japan about Pearl Harbor in response to question about Iran war

To be fair to the Post, the article itself was calmer than the headline, but come on. As for the Guardian well, it’s the Guardian.

Following up on yesterday's report of Governor Hochul and her begging bowl

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oops! Never mind.

I had forgotten, and I’m sure she wishes we all had, but Gov Botox was singing a different tune not so very long ago:


If the staff was "uncomfortable", I think I know a kitchen where a productive ICE raid could be accomplished

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or maybe its just that woke lesbians are sensitive

“allowing her to stay "risked being perceived as a lack of support for the community that makes up our staff, but also asking her to leave "could be viewed as denying service based on differing beliefs."

Sarah Sanders flipped off, kicked out of restaurant that claims employees were 'uncomfortable'

Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is speaking out over an incident in a restaurant in her home state where she says she was treated rudely and asked to leave by staff while having lunch. 

"Last week I was having lunch with two other moms at a restaurant when the owner approached a member of the State Police Executive Protection Detail and said my presence made their employees feel threatened and told us to leave," Sanders said in a statement Thursday about her recent dining experience at The Croissanterie restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

"Arkansans are known for their warm hospitality, and while that restaurant certainly doesn't meet that standard, my administration will continue to focus on lifting Arkansans up, not tearing others down with discrimination and hate."

Pending in Old Greenwich

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30 Park Avenue, guide price of $4.5 million and certainly selling for more. The house has been left much as it was since constructed in 2011, so its price history offers a good look at what’s been going on in our market in recent years.

  • 2011: List price $2.945 million, selling price $2.500 Days on Market (DOM) 142

  • 2019: List price $2.795 million, selling price $2.850 DOM 7

  • 2021: List price $2.995 million, selling price $3.295 DOM 10

  • 2026: List price $4.5 million, selling price ? DOM 15

Working exactly as intended

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Ed Driscoll on Instapundit:

California’s unfinished wildlife ‘bridge to nowhere’ tops $100M.

In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC), a project featuring an overpass for animals atop ten lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California.

At the ceremony, Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to “complete the job within another $10 million,” before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick.

Officials projected a 2025 completion date for the overpass, and estimated that the entire project — which includes the bridge and other ancillary developments — would cost $92 million, some of it coming from private philanthropists.

Nearly four years after the ceremony, the bridge is past due and the project some $21 million over budget. What was supposed to be the world’s largest wildlife crossing has become a jobs program for environmentalists, with taxpayers on the hook for what WAWC leader Beth Pratt told us is an overpass “for everything from monarch butterflies to mountain lions.”

Pratt, a cougar-sweater-wearing environmental activist who serves on WAWC’s Partner Leadership Team, is the program’s public face. She is also a regional executive director of the national Wildlife Federation. In 2021, the group received a $25 million grant from “Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation” for the bridge that bears the late philanthropist’s name.

I found more on this, which just demonstrates, yet again, why these projects are so beloved.

Why has a project primarily consisting of a bridge for animals cost over $100 million? One reason is that Newsom and WAWC’s philanthropic supporters apparently don’t mind it becoming a patronage program. As the WAWC-endorsing Wildlife Crossing Fund notes, citing the California Department of Transportation’s estimate, “for every $1 billion spent” on wildlife crossings, “13,000 jobs are created.”

Some of these jobs are absurd. The National Wildlife Federation’s WAWC website claims that “[o]ur Native Plant Nursery”—apparently funded by the nonprofit SAMO Fund and other “partners”—“has prioritized hiring Indigenous team members to help steward the plants that will vegetate the bridge.” The nursery’s co-manager said she makes an “offering” after collecting seeds, sometimes including pieces of her hair.

Or consider the ways one of the nursery workers and her associates have spent their time. The nursery’s founding manager worked with “helpers and volunteers” to “seed scout[]” across the Santa Monica Mountains. Her associates on the “design team” received “feedback from all the various project partners”—including state and federal bureaucrats—for their plant list.

A group of experts apparently adds to the operation’s expense. A fungi whiz, Pratt says, worked as a WAWC habitat designer, periodically scrutinizing root samples under a microscope. A contracted soil scientist said his process involves assessing local dirt to “rebuild it . . . as close to nature as possible.”

One reason California supposedly needs this overpass is to ensure the safety and genetic diversity of mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, where only about a dozen non-kitten cougars live at any given time. While bridge proponents claim that the local mountain lion population could otherwise face extinction, researchers suggest the bridge is not the only solution to ensure their survival.

$100,000,000 is chump change for California’s socialists, who have, the the state accounting office, spent $37 billion dollars on “solving” the homeless situation — $160,000 per bum — since 2019, and accomplished nothing.

In New York City, the Second Avenue subway extension project is years behind schedule, already $2 billion over budget. and costing $2.6 billion per mile “which is 8 to 12 times higher than similar projects in Europe.” (This past Tuesday the city filed suit against the federal government for its withholding $60 million of the promised loot.)

The public makes a lot of noise about government waste, but love the individual pork barrel projects that come its way, so politicians; federal, state and local, keep getting reelected. I’ve mentioned before that I served on the RTM Cost Containment Committee back in the late 80s, a temporary committee created to examine the town’s spendimg and find things to cut: a mini-DOGE, if you will. We found dozens of wasteful programs and services, but each one had a small group of partisans who benefitted from it, and their voices were far louder than those taxpayers who might see a one or two dollar reduction in their taxes for each service that was terminated. We brought the final report back to the RTM, and not a single cut was made.

That’s government spending: everyone hates it in general, and fights tooth and claw to keep their share.