New York Times Reporters Are Out Hitting The Bricks ..... In Greenwich
THE NEW YORK TIMES KEEPS EATING THE GREENWICH TIME"S LUNCHFor Wine Lovers, News Is Good on Corkage Fees
EVEN before the recession, restaurants that allowed you to bring your own bottle of wine were beloved, not just by penny pinchers, but by wealthy patrons who liked to show off and share rare vintages from their own impressive cellars.....
....Little Thai Kitchen in Greenwich is a tiny BYOB that has become especially popular since last fall when the economy crashed, said Shiva Natarajan, the owner. Its two sister restaurants, Little Thai Kitchen in Darien and Thai Spice in Norwalk, have liquor licenses, but have allowed BYOB for a $4.50 corkage fee.
“It’s funny you should call, because we just decided last week to lower the corkage fee to $3,” Mr. Natarajan said in late February. He is also planning to open a Thai/Hakka restaurant called Little Buddha in Stamford this month that will be BYOB with no corkage fee. “I knew we could get a liquor license in Stamford,” he said, “but I decided against it because people really love the BYOB thing.”.....
....Osteria Applausi in Old Greenwich has also taken a weekday approach: on Monday nights, every wine on their wine list is 50 percent off, and the restaurant is allowing BYOB with no corkage fees on Tuesdays through Thursdays. “People are asking for this, so we said, ‘O.K., we have to stay afloat,’ ” said Beppe Cornacchia, the manager.
Although a BYOB policy seems to be gaining momentum around the state, some restaurants, like Restaurant Jean-Louis in Greenwich, are holding tight to their corkage rules.
“We do not encourage you to bring wine from your cellar, simply because we continuously buy large amounts of wine and store them with great care,” its Web site says. It does state, though, that the restaurant “will in some cases accept an amazing bottle of wine from your cellar.” The corkage fee is $38.
When asked if that was still the case in light of the economy, Jean-Louis Gerin, the owner, replied, “The economy is fine, let’s not worry about that. Yes, you may bring one bottle if it’s something I do not have in my cellar.” Then he added with a hearty laugh, “Just be prepared to pour me a glass.”.....
MORE GREENWICH NEWS
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
.....Connecticut is an example of how quickly political fortunes can change, especially in a mid-term election. As recently as 2006, Republicans held three of Connecticut’s five House of Representatives seats.
In 2006, when President George W. Bush’s approval rating fell below 40 percent, Democrats picked up 30 House seats, including 2 in Connecticut. Mr. Murphy unseated Nancy L. Johnson, a Republican, despite being outspent two to one. Joseph D. Courtney, a Democrat, defeated Rob Simmons, a Republican, in the Second Congressional District.
Jim Himes completed the Democratic sweep last year, defeating Christopher Shays, a 21-year Republican incumbent, in the Fourth Congressional District, leaving New England without a Republican in the House of Representatives .
Mr. Himes, 42, of Greenwich, the first Democrat to hold the seat in 40 years, was helped by the huge turnout that Barack Obama generated in heavily Democratic Bridgeport.
Bridgeport gave Mr. Himes 28,678 votes, about twice what the congressman can expect in a mid-term election, when turnouts are much lower. His margin of victory was 2,791 votes.
Republicans already have singled out Mr. Himes, and he is expected to face a challenge from the State Senate minority leader, John McKinney of Fairfield, whose father, Stewart, held the seat before Mr. Shays....
EVEN MORE GREENWICH NEWS
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Who Gets Hit When the Wealthy Cut Back
THE first stirrings of spring in Fairfield County, Conn., have sounded: the whine of the leaf blowers and the beep of dump trucks full of mulch.....
THE first stirrings of spring in Fairfield County, Conn., have sounded: the whine of the leaf blowers and the beep of dump trucks full of mulch.....
....To get a sense of the wealth in the county, consider these figures from Connecticut Expos, which organizes a high-end home show in the county. The average price of a home in Darien was $1.165 million in 2008 and in New Canaan, $1.455 million. Greenwich topped the list, with an average home price of just under $2 million.
And the people who buy that average house — 6,500 square feet on an acre or two — rely on landscapers, gardeners, pool guys and all manner of tradesmen to keep everything in shape. But many of those homeowners were Wall Street’s top earners, and their incomes and investments are down in the troubled economy. So now, they are cutting back. And when they do, the people who maintain their homes feel the brunt of it....
.....“You’re seeing the Wall Street guys suffer, but it’s a trickle-down effect,” said Tony Femia, who owns Femia Landscaping and Site Development.
“I have clients who are billionaires, clients who are famous, and the small guy, too — they’re all cutting back.”...
Mr. Femia said he lost only two of his 80 lawn maintenance clients this season. But he said each of those clients told him they were cutting back on lawn services. As a result, he laid off half of his 30-person staff and planned to take some of his 15 trucks off the road..
.....There is another, less tangible cost to both negotiating prices and changing providers in a recession: the value of loyalty. The people who maintain your house are probably being hit as hard as you, if not harder than you, by the downturn.
Mr. Femia, the landscaper, said a client whose estate he has maintained for 15 years asked him to lower his hourly rate. Instead, Mr. Femia said he showed him how he could save double that on a landscaping bill that was well into the six figures.
“Once I said I couldn’t lower my hourly rate, he put it out to bid,” Mr. Femia said. “That $4 to $5 an hour means a lot to me. I’ve got guys who have been with me 20 years and make good money. Is that five bucks an hour really that much to a billionaire?”
STILL MORE GREENWICH NEWS
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Hermes Mallea and Carey Chambers Maloney were married by Elizabeth Bonsal, a Connecticut justice of the peace, on Friday in Ms. Bonsal’s home in Greenwich, Conn.
Mr. Mallea, 53, and Mr. Maloney, 55, founded M (Group), an architecture and interior design firm in New York. Mr. Mallea is an architect and Mr. Maloney an interior designer.....
THE NEW YORK TIMES ALSO COVERED
THESE GREENWICH NEWS STORIES:
Funds Tied to Madoff in Legal Vise
As Bernard L. Madoff waits in jail to be sentenced, legal problems are accumulating for some of the hedge fund managers who helped him raise billions of dollars from around the world for what he now admits was a vast Ponzi scheme.
As Bernard L. Madoff waits in jail to be sentenced, legal problems are accumulating for some of the hedge fund managers who helped him raise billions of dollars from around the world for what he now admits was a vast Ponzi scheme.
Massachusetts regulators have sued the Fairfield Greenwich Group, one of the earliest of these so-called feeder fund managers, for fraud, saying it had repeatedly misled investors about how diligently it checked out Mr. Madoff’s operations over the years.
“Fairfield’s complete disregard of its fiduciary duties to its investors and its flagrant and recurring misrepresentations to its investors rises to the level of fraud,” said lawyers for William F. Galvin, secretary of state for Massachusetts and its top securities regulator, in an administrative complaint filed Wednesday.
Walter M. Noel Jr., a founder of the Fairfield Greenwich Group, his partner Jeffrey H. Tucker and his son-in-law Andres Piedrahita were also among the fund managers hit with a temporary asset freeze imposed on Tuesday by a state judge in Connecticut.
The freeze was ordered by Judge Arthur Hiller of Connecticut Superior Court in response to a civil lawsuit filed on Monday by the town of Fairfield and two of its pension plans, which lost money in several feeder-fund investments. That lawsuit claims that Fairfield Greenwich and two other feeder fund managers had long been aware that Mr. Madoff was enhancing his track record through illegal activity — although they mistakenly thought he was front-running, a form of insider trading, not that he was operating a Ponzi scheme.
......Tom Mulligan, a spokesman for Fairfield Greenwich, said that the firm had no dealings with the Fairfield pension funds. The funds claim in their lawsuit that the firm is nevertheless responsible because its failure to scrutinize Mr. Madoff carefully allowed him to continue the fraud in which they lost money.
Seth Faison, another Fairfield Greenwich spokesman, called the complaint by Mr. Galvin “false and misleading” and said it would be fought vigorously by the firm.
The complaint, he added, “is based on nothing more than 20-20 hindsight that supposes that anyone familiar with Madoff’s operations should have determined that it was a Ponzi scheme.”
Taken together, though, the new complaints spotlight how Fairfield Greenwich helped expand Mr. Madoff’s reach and enhance his credibility.
Mr. Noel had a gilded résumé and a family linked by marriage to wealthy investors in Europe and Latin America, and his partner Mr. Tucker had been a respected regulator with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
By contrast, Mr. Madoff built his reputation in the scrappy world of wholesale stock trading and had never worked for anyone more prominent than himself.
Yet the documents Mr. Galvin obtained reveal how highly Fairfield Greenwich prized its Madoff connection, a link, Mr. Galvin said, that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for the firm over the years.
In a letter hand-delivered to Mr. Madoff on Dec. 10, the day before his arrest brought the Ponzi scheme crashing down, Mr. Tucker referred to a telephone conversation the two men had two days earlier about the rising volume of redemptions by Fairfield Greenwich investors and apologized for “failing to keep you informed of pending redemptions in a timely fashion.”
Mr. Tucker said, “Our firm is very dependent on its relationship with your firm. You are our most important business partner and an immensely respected friend.” He added a few lines later, “Our mission is to remain in business with you and to keep your trust.”
Documents released by Mr. Galvin included e-mail messages indicating that Fairfield Greenwich had relied on reassurances provided by Frank DiPascali, who worked for Mr. Madoff, rather than checking with outside sources. ......
After Attacks, Supporters Rally Around Choice for Top Administration Legal Job
WASHINGTON — The controversy began with a short article in The New York Post and soon mushroomed into an all-out attack by conservative commentators. The charge was that Harold Hongju Koh, the outspoken Yale Law School dean now tapped for a top legal slot in the Obama administration, was ready to put international law on a pedestal above American justice.
WASHINGTON — The controversy began with a short article in The New York Post and soon mushroomed into an all-out attack by conservative commentators. The charge was that Harold Hongju Koh, the outspoken Yale Law School dean now tapped for a top legal slot in the Obama administration, was ready to put international law on a pedestal above American justice.
“Once we sign our rights over to international law, the Constitution is officially dead,” the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck bemoaned Monday in a scathing critique of Mr. Koh.
Unfortunately for Mr. Koh’s critics, his academic record does not fit into quite so neat a sound bite, and his supporters have been quick to rally to his defense. ...
....At the center of the dispute is a statement that Mr. Koh was said to have made in 2007 at a Yale alumni event in Greenwich, Conn. One guest at the event wrote in a blog item on a conservative Web site at the time that Mr. Koh had made a “favorable reference” to Shariah, or Islamic law, and had said it could be used to “govern a controversy” in an American court.
Conservative commentators like Mr. Beck and Web sites like Jihad Watch quickly focused on the alleged statement after The New York Post carried an article featuring it.
But Robin Reeves Zorthian, who organized the Yale event in Greenwich, said Mr. Stein “was totally mischaracterizing what Dean Koh said.” Ms. Zorthian said Mr. Stein had initiated an animated series of questions with Mr. Koh about international law and raised the issue of Shariah and its place in American law. She said Mr. Koh had said that there were “common underlying concepts” in many legal systems around the world but that he never voiced support for allowing Shariah to be used in American courts.....
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