Another “of course” – just as liberals can’t be racists, they can’t be misogynists, so there must be “some other factor” at work

Honey, I need a woman like you helping me ’bout as much as a fish needs a bicycle

Clinton Foundation pays females 38% less than males.

CLINTON FOUNDATION PAYS ITS TOP MALE EXECS 38 PERCENT MORE THAN ITS WOMEN EXECS: Here’s what Hillary Clinton said today on the issue: “Last time I checked, there is no discount for being a woman. Groceries don’t cost us less, rent doesn’t cost us less, so why should we be paid less?”

Well, the former Secretary of State might want to have a chat with the former president in her family about the family foundation. Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group checked the latest available tax return for the William, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and found this:

“The foundation’s 2013 IRS form 990 reveals that nearly three times as many men as women occupy the executive suites at the Little Rock, Arkansas-based foundation.  On average, top male executives at the foundation earn $109,000 more than the top female executives with positions in the C-suite.” Overall, the men make 38 percent more than the women in the C Suite.

Over at the White House, they’re celebrating “Equal Pay Day” because, as White House spokescis Bull Connor said, “the pay gap here’s less than 16%; pretty damn good, considering the girls are out of action with PMS and all that other crap one week a month. We’re giving ’em equal pay for equal work, but hey – they don’t work as much.”

Well of course: conservatives have a sense of humor, liberals don’t

Sales of “Caucasians” mascot shirt soar after liberal sportscaster wears one to show whites what it would feel like.

Hint: those sales aren’t being made to angry Injuns, or whiny sportscasters. I know I want one.

Sale in NoPo Riverside

6 Elizabeth Lane

6 Elizabeth Lane, $2.2 million on an ask of $2.575. Buyers were represented by Michael Dineen and myself and I’ll tell you this: the buyers didn’t want the in-ground pool the sellers had installed and wouldn’t pay a dime extra for it. In fact, I suggested we demand $50,000 off just to cover the expense of burying it (that was a negotiating tactic : )  ).

The question of whether a pool adds value to a property often comes up here, and I’ve always said it’s a neutral at best and a negative at worst. This deal illustrated that.

Westchester County meets Greenwich

7 Carpenters Brook

7 Carpenters Brook, way up yonder in Indian Nation – that would be King Street – hit the market today at $4.650 million. There were two 2014 sales in this general price range, #8 for $3.250 and #20 for $3.3 (which sort of astonished me – I thought I’d find none), so it’s conceivable this will find a buyer, at some price.

Not a Greenwich buyer, I doubt: purple wall paper is the least of this house’s decorating and design woes, but to a wealthy Westchesterite, flush with money and sick of county taxes, this just might shriek “home!”

Guess we’ll see.

It’ll feel like you never left Mamaroneck Avenue

Friends don’t let friends hire drunk decorators

And maybe someday this Stanwich home will be a bargain too

311 Stanwich R

The spec house at 311 Stanwich Road took its first price cut today, from $5.495 million to $4.995. To my eye, one ugly house, built on a back lot comprised of an ugly mound of piled-up dirt that falls off a cliff to swampland below it.

But that’s just one man’s opinion, and just like facts in today’s universities, everyone’s entitled to their own.

Back to the beginning and for someone, this is a steal

400 Stanwich Road

400 Stanwich Road ,$3.395 million, finally has a buyer. Our local Realtor Association will show it as a house sale with just one day on the market, but in fact, the owners bought this new in 1999 for $2.825 million, put more money into it in a 2007 renovation and have been trying to sell it for 609 days, beginning in 2014, when it was priced at $4.495.

It’s a fine house, reasonably sized (6,200 s. ft,), with the only drawback, if any, being its assignment to the Parkway School district; that’s a long way from this location. That said, if you can get this house for about what it was worth in 1999, using 2016 dollars*, a bus ride for Precious until she’s old enough to attend Central Middle doesn’t seem that bad a bargain.

*according to this inflation calculator, the same $2.825 1999 price would be $4,066,744 today or, alternatively, had you bought it then using today’s dollar, you’d have paid $1.959 million.

UPDATE: Just to clarify my use of the term “steal”, there’s really no such thing in a free, open market; a buyer’s bidding on what every other buyer is free to do himself. “Solid value” is more apt and in my opinion, that’s what the buyer’s getting here.

The back country still sells, albeit with time, patience and price cuts

42 John Street- probably not a good sign when there’s no picture of the front of the house

42 John Street, 8 acres on a back lot with beautiful views, reports a contract – last asking price was $5.2 million, original price in 2014 was $7.250.

I was surprised to learn that the late owner was a daughter of Howard Johnson, the founder of the restaurant and motel chain . I was also a bit surprised to note that, while her children are all named in her obituary, no mention is made of the fellow who gave her her married name.  No ice cream for him, apparently.

The original, back before it expanded to 28

More contracts in the $1.5 – $2 (ish) range

29 Barton Lane

29 Barton Lane, which I wrote (very positively) about just last month, has a contract. Asking price $1.625 million.

63 Indian Field Road

A house I did not write about when it came on the market 28 days ago was 63 Indian Field Road, asking $2.2 million, because, while it’s a beautiful home, I personally am not wild about Indian Field Road traffic, and didn’t want to expose the sellers to what might have been a ton of comments agreeing with my opinion.

Or maybe there aren’t any people who also dislike Indian Field – either way, it found a buyer, and very quickly. What I will say in defense of houses on this road, and I’ve sold a couple, is that they’re on deep lots, and the rear yards are quiet and peaceful.

Just don’t try to get out of the driveway during rush hour.

 

145 down, 44,855 to go

And after you all worked so hard to elect me

State lays off 145 employees (calling them “workers” would be unduly kind).

Obama fail

Say goodbye to all that (money)

GM cancels plans to build new Cadillac model in Michigan 

General Motors Co. has scrapped a plan to invest an additional $245 million in a factory north of Detroit to build a small Cadillac, with management deciding instead to build the future product in Kansas to contain costs.

The move, communicated to employees earlier in the year, threatens the security of workers at GM’s Orion assembly who have long dealt with uncertainty due to product mix. The plant, left open as a condition of 2009 federal auto bailouts, is working on one shift and logging overtime as the company plans to start producing the Chevrolet Bolt electric car in the facility later this year.

“This move is part of our ongoing product allocation process to build vehicles as cost-effectively as possible to benefit our customers and the business,” GM spokeswoman Dayna Hart said in an email.

The company hasn’t confirmed the brand of the new product it plans to build, but multiple people familiar with the plans say it is a Cadillac luxury product designed to compete with other premium small cars. The vehicle will be built at the Fairfax facility in Kansas City, Kan., a 3,200-worker factory that builds the Chevrolet Malibu sedan.

The $245 million investment was to be a lifeline for the suburban-Detroit plant after suffering through recent shift reductions. Announced in June, the investment was planned in addition to a separate $100 million spent for Bolt production upgrades.

Seven years ago, the 33-year-old plant was the recipient of $1 billion in promised tax incentives and government grants. Had it not been for the Obama administration’s demand that it stay open as a condition of billions of dollars in funding, Orion Township’s factory would have been shut down to help shrink GM’s capacity in the U.S.

This is good news for the Kansas plant, but bad news for us taxpayers, who’ve witnessed a billion dollars of ObamaCare go up in smoke as the government attempted to allocate capital for political, rather than economic reasons. Can Bernie Sanders do worse?

Probably.

Busman’s holiday, or just honing their day job skills?

Mayflower Madam’s lawyer reveals list of her clients, including the IRS

The lawyer who represented the ‘DC Madam’ has released the names of 174 groups whose employees allegedly called her escort service.

Montgomery Blair Sibley listed the entities that include government agencies, embassies and huge companies that he says phoned Deborah Jeane Palfrey for call girls between 2000 and 2006.

Among those named were the FBI, IRS, the State Department, the Department of Commerce, the Embassy of Japan, Lockheed Martin and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

In an email to Daily Mail Online, Sibley said he obtained the information from cell phone numbers dug up in a subpoena conducted by Verizon.

 

Then we should be able to sue Connecticut’s legislature for threatening our own future

Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh sets his sights on Hartford?

Federal judge rules that climate activists have standing to sue the government for failing to eliminate CO2 emissions.

Environmentalists argue carbon dioxide emissions “are infringing the plaintiffs’ right to life and liberty in violation of their substantive due process rights,” Coffin, who is a federal magistrate in Oregon, wrote in his Friday ruling.

“Plaintiffs also allege defendants have violated plaintiffs’ equal protection rights embedded in the Fifth Amendment by denying them protections afforded to previous generations and by favoring short term economic interests of certain citizens,” he wrote.

“Plaintiffs further allege defendants’ acts and omissions violate the implicit right, via the Ninth Amendment, to a stable climate and an ocean and atmosphere free from dangerous levels of C02,” Coffin wrote. “Finally, plaintiffs allege defendants have violated a public trust doctrine, secured by the Ninth Amendment, by denying future generations essential natural resources.

“Accordingly, the court should decline to dismiss the complaint for failure to allege a substantive due process claim.”

One plaintiff, 15-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh, argues he’s “suffered harm to his spiritual and cultural practices from” fossil fuel use.

“Xiuhtezcatl’s home, including the forests that he relies upon for his spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing, will continue to die and burn as climate change worsens,” the lawsuit, filed in federal court last year, reads. “Water will become increasingly scarce, adversely impacting every aspect of his life.”

While this is a federal case, the 14th amendment will convey the same rights to sue state government, so why not pursue our legislature for nonfeasance? “Favoring short term economic interests of certain citizens” ? What is our Hartford Democrats’ pandering to state employee unions but exactly that?

Bring on the lawyers.

 

The most depressing news of the day (bit it’s early)

No to history – Stanford students stand firmly for their right to remain ignorant, stupid savages

Daily Caller: Death of the West – Stanford students reject Western Civilization by a 6:1 margin.

An effort by a group of Stanford University students to restore a Western civilization class requirement has been decisively rejected by the student body, with voting results released Monday showing it mustering less than 15 percent support.

The ballot initiative was promoted by members of the school’s conservative-leaning Stanford Review. If passed, it would have called for Stanford to require that all freshmen complete a two-quarter course covering “the politics, history, philosophy, and culture of the Western world.” Stanford once possessed a similar requirement, but eliminated it after a student campaign in the 1980s that denounced it as fostering racism, sexism, and other perfidious -isms.

[I]t turns out Stanford has no enthusiasm for requiring the study of Western civilization. In election results released Monday, the proposal failed by an overwhelming margin, with 342 votes in favor and a whopping 1992 votes against.

The mere suggestion that Stanford require studying Western civilization had generated immense outrage among certain Stanford communities. A low-income advocacy group at the school suspended a member based on the suspicion that he wrote an anonymous piece supporting the proposal. A hostile column in The Stanford Daily warned that accepting the proposal would mean centering Stanford education on “upholding white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, and all other oppressive systems that flow from Western civilizations.”

But there’s a glimmer of good news, thank heavens:

In contrast, over 90 percent of students voted in favor of an initiative requiring the school to administer a new campus climate survey designed to find the rate of sexual assault on campus. The school already administered such a survey in 2015, but it outraged activists by finding a sexual assault rate of just 1.9%, which they deemed far too low.

Stanford was once considered a fine school.

 

They’d better earn their money and get out before they hit 45

Wall Street class of 2016, circa 2026

The “young” tigers on Wall Street are eschewing steak and wine and opting for sweat, instead.

These days, if you want to find Wall Street’s savvy deal-makers mingling and bro-ing it up, skip the steakhouses and booze dens: They’re more likely to sweat it out on treadmills and rowing machines than to guzzle Moët.

“Five years ago, I would have taken colleagues out for big lunches or dinners,” says Maximilian Roos, 30, CIO of the hedge fund Sixty Capital, and a Midtown resident, who favors Pilates-style studio SLT. “Now it’s more likely to be a workout class.”

Millennials’ obsession with health is helping drive the trend. According to a 2014 study by Allidura Consumer, GSW and Harris Poll, 95 percent of millennials say “health is paramount,” and 49 percent participate in “intense exercise regimens.” But the phenomenon doesn’t stop with 20-somethings.

When it comes to schmoozing with clients, Erik Castro, a sales trader at a European bank in Midtown, began migrating seven years ago from meat meccas like Sparks to twice-weekly sessions at fat-shedding palaces….

“When I started pitching clients on working out with me, the universal thing that came [back] was, ‘Sure, I’ve got to do something for my health anyway,’” recalls Castro, a 40-year-old Upper East Sider. “I get face-time with them and we both stay in shape. How many steak dinners can we do?”

Plus, for those who track their BMIs as closely as the S&P, bonding results from huffing and puffing. “Misery loves company!” says Charles Caffray, 39, of Greenwich [Riverside, naturally], Conn., the managing director in cross-asset sales at the financial-services firm BTIG. “There are times in CrossFit when you’re lying on the floor, praying to get through the session, and your client is going through the same thing right alongside you.”

For all I know, our fellow townie Mr. Caffray may prove to be another Jack LaLane, who, to celebrate his 70th birthday, towed a flotilla of 70 boats one full mile  across Long Beach Harbor, and God bless him; but most of his peers will have abandoned the gyms in favor of the gin mills by then, and there’s nothing lonelier than the long distance runner.

Make those deals while you can.

Obama and the progressives vs poor students

Indiana: 6th Grader Gregory Oden is escorted from BLM Elementary School after fighting with classmates

Last week we noted the law suit brought by parents against NYC, seeking damages for the city’s failure to provide a safe learning environment in public schools. While city schools have long been a hellhole of wild, brutish misbehavior, that sorry state of affairs was only   exacerbated by Obama rules forbidding the discipline of students if doing so would exceed a race quota. Yesterday, the NY Post ran this opinion piece, discussing the Obama no-dicipline rule as it’s applied nationwide:  “You’re now a racist if you say schools should be safer”

Under pressure from Obama educrats, public school districts are no longer suspending even violent students; but now, under pressure from Black Lives Matter, they are suspending teachers who complain about not suspending bad kids.

In St. Paul, Minn., a high school teacher was put on administrative leave last month after Black Lives Matter threatened to shut down the school because the teacher complained about lenient discipline policies that have led to a string of assaults on fellow teachers.

Last month, two students at Como Park Senior High School punched and body slammed a business teacher unconscious, opening a head wound that required staples. And earlier in the year, another student choked a science teacher into a partial coma that left him hospitalized for several days

In both cases, the teachers were white and the students black.

Theo Olson, a teacher at the school complained on Facebook about new district policies that fail to punish kids for fighting and drug-dealing. Like dozens of cities across the country — including New York — St. Paul adopted the policies in compliance with new discipline guidelines issued by the Obama administration. The Education Department has threatened school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds racial “disparities” in suspensions and expulsions, arguing such disparities have created a “school-to-prison pipeline” for African-Americans children. The agency claims such disparities are the product of racism in schools.

“Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt?” Olson wrote. “Because if you can’t prove it, the campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology.”

Complained Olson: “Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who won’t quit gaming, setting up fights, selling drugs, whoring trains, or cyber bullying, we’re screwed, just designing our own classroom rules.”

For these mild opinions, Black Lives Matter called Olson “a white supremacist” even though he had once marched with the group. Two days after Black Lives Matter met with the St. Paul school superintendent — and agreed to call off its protest — the 10-year veteran teacher was put on leave.

The world has gone mad.

But wait, there’s more!

[E]ven as Obama’s national school discipline policy turns classrooms into war zones, 22 Democrat senators last week asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to increase the budget of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights by almost 30% so it can better enforce this insane policy.