Polls should just be closing in New York City for the mayoral election (this is the Democrat primary, but no Republican could possibly win).
It seems that elites don’t like the idea of Zohran Mamdani leading his promised peasant uprising.
Here’s a typical elite:
We need more worker power and less inequality. What happens when there is a candidate who promises to empower workers and reduce inequality (maybe by driving some rich people to lower-tax parts of the U.S., but isn’t that good if you truly hate inequality?)? “[Mamdani and] the Democratic Socialist program would be profound and dangerous for NYC, for the Democratic Party, and for the USA.”
We are all New Yorkers, it seems, and we all need New York City to stay unequal with disempowered peasants. Maybe Prof. Summers is channeling Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves everywhere except in all of the states that Lincoln controlled. Elite Democrats want workers empowered and inequality reduced in every city and state that isn’t currently run by elite Democrats?
Loosely related (to “every American is a citizen of New York City”), Michael Moore’s assertion that “We are all Muslim”:
Readers: What’s your prediction about who wins?
It would be fantastic for Palm Beach County if Mamdani wins. On the grounds that a Mamdani victory would be too good to be true, my prediction is that Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 and 2021 Andrew Cuomo wins.
What happens with Andrew Cuomo, though, once he is surrounded by all of the model-grade females of Manhattan? He apparently had some challenges with the young females of Albany, as noted in “These are the women who were sexually harassed by Andrew Cuomo: AG report” (New York Post):
How many New Yorkers would actually move if subjected to a combination of sharia law and higher taxes? My prediction: very few. Hardly any of them moved when Covidcrats locked them down, closed their kids’ schools, forced them to wear masks, forced healthy young people to accept an injection of an experimental vaccine against a disease that mostly kills those aged 80 and over, etc. If New Yorkers cared about personal freedom and lower tax rates they would already have moved. Americans in general lack the gumption to move, according to the NYT (some of this may simply be because a record high percentage of us are on means-tested public assistance programs; it is tough to get established on what was formerly called “welfare” in a new state):
That said, if only a handful of billionaires set up shop in Palm Beach it will result in lower property tax bills for us here in the peasant neighborhoods of Jupiter (we’re part of the same county, if not part of the same world). Just how much can the tax base grow when one rich douche moves to Florida? “The Secret to Building a $100 Million Megamansion” (Wall Street Journal):
It used to be that 20,000 square feet was big. We are currently in development on single-family houses that are over 50,000 square feet. That’s because they’re adding all these amenities. … We did a shark aquarium for a Grammy Award-winning artist. There was a glass elevator and it landed on a nurse shark pond. That was over $1 million to do. We’re currently doing a $20 million remodel for a house owned by rapper Rick Ross. We’re doing a 2,000-gallon Japanese koi fish pond—that’s also about $1 million. It will go through the entire foyer. … BURRAGE: I had a client who would say, “What’s the question? The answer is money.” … GLASER: Even in my house—it’s 17,000-square-feet—our chef does a group text to tell us that dinner will be ready in 20 minutes. … KARP: It’s like, “What if, God forbid, I can’t get to my plane fast enough and go someplace else? I have to have a safe room.” They are standard in every home, both for violence and natural events. They have to have everything—a place to eat, a place to drink, a place to poop. They also can’t be disconnected from communication; you need to continue to work. These houses have backup generators that are connected to solar panels and glass designed to sustain Category 5 winds. The idea is that after a direct hit by a hurricane you come out of the safe room and your house is still air-conditioned, the art is untouched on the walls and everything is protected. … Kobi Karp’s firm recently designed a home for a New York developer in Miami. ‘The home is designed like a luxury resort where the family never crosses paths with the staff. These clients want an environment where people bring them their shoes and their newspaper and take care of their dry cleaning but they never have to see them,’ Karp said
The article shows $150 million in new tax base that is a 30-minute drive from our house:
(Florida has something similar to California’s Proposition 13, but only for a primary residence (“homestead”). A homestead can’t be reassessed at market value unless it is sold or is transformed via renovation. It’s not as crazy as California in that commercial property isn’t included, but a regular result is that a new arrival may pay 2-3X what his/her/zir/their long-term-resident neighbor pays for an identical house.)
Candidate quality in NYC is atrocious. Everyone competent leaves on does something else and the worldview is depraved.
I predict Islam over #MeToo especially given the prevalence of #QueersForPalestine in left wing populism.
#QueersForPalestine is like #turkeysForThanksgiving!
Had a classmate called Boylen from NJ, 35 years ago. Wonder if they’re related. We need a Greenspun investigation during the next Boston rounds.
look at tobacco tax avoidance. lowering taxes would be revenue neutral or even positive.
the street has no interest beyond seeing their media feeds flooded with anti-mandani ads. These ads were so ubiquitous and heavy-handed that they were ineffectual if not counter-productive.
New Yorkers do not give a sheeyit about politics, particularly us great unwashed. We just try to sutvive the elite schemes to make us better industrial drones and dead souls.
thoughts from a century ago:
when muckers, pimps, and tratesmen
delivered are of vicians.
and all the world howls stadesmen:
beware of politisions.
.
.
beware of folks with missians,
to turn us into rissions,
and blokes with ammunicions,
who tend to make incitions.
.
.
and pity the fool who cright,
god help me. it aint no ews.
eye like the steak all ried,
but eye certainly hate the juse
.
https://archive.org/stream/ee-cummings-complete-poems.com/EE%20Cummings%20Complete%20Poems%20%28%20PDFDrive.com%20%29_djvu.txt
I know I will sound primitive and out of touch, but if you could post screenshots of whatever social media rather than links — I secured my browser and thus (1) I do not see the damn things, and (2) the link are blocked (i.e. I block them out of my free will to avoid being tracked, and provide commercially valuable info for free).
Just a thought. If you are wondering about my Gmail account, it was created for interacting in public.
“We are all Muslim”.
Unfortunately, we are not. Muslims pray five times a day, are expected to read the Quran in Arabic (who cares if you understand the language), and may have more than one wife.
Of course, U.S. law prohibits polygamy [1]. So when will U.S. bring back polygamy?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_polygamy_in_the_United_States
I am really looking forward to the new mayor setting up government run grocery shops. This is going to be fun. “DMV Grocery Warehouse,” has a certain ring to it. Lol.
G C: Most politicians fail to deliver on their promises, with the exception of promises to raise taxes and pay public employees more. Maybe Mayor Intifada won’t actually do anything other than hang some additional Hamas and trans-enhanced rainbow flags around NYC. None of the articles about this guy disclose the process for accomplishing his proposed tax increases. ChatGPT says that the state legislature has to approve personal and corporate income tax rate changes. Maybe the city council can change property tax rates without state approval?
In NYC there is separate city tax in addition to NY state tax. I doubt that NYC tax needs NYS approval.
From https://www.barrons.com/articles/mamdani-new-york-muni-bonds-6ef5bf1d :
For starters, any increase in the city income tax, which now tops out at nearly 4%, would need approval by the state legislature and governor. … “It’s unlikely that the state legislature and governor would get on board” with higher taxes, Close says. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she is against higher city income taxes to prevent what she called an exodus to Palm Beach, Fla.
New York City doesn’t need state approval to boost property taxes, but Mamdani hasn’t talked about raising them. Doing so would be unpopular with the city’s homeowners, many of whom aren’t members of the top 1%
One way that progressives are able to raise taxes without raising taxes is with requirements that private property owners transfer valuable items to city bureaucrats. This is already being done in Cambridge, New York City, and similar jurisdictions. If someone wants to build apartments or condos 10-20 percent of the structure must be given free of charge to the city for allocation by bureaucrats. This percentage could be increased to 30 percent, for example, which would have the effect of raising rents to (the chumps) paying market rates. Maybe each person with a job who pays an electric bill could be assigned to also pay the electric bill of someone who chooses to refrain from work or, if that’s too obvious, a fee of 10 cents/kWh could be added to electric bills within the city with the funds directed toward paying electric bills on public housing apartments.
If we look at Mamdani’s voters they seem to be mostly white and college-educated. So there could be a requirement that commercial landlords give 15 percent of their space, free of charge, to nonprofit orgs. That would create jobs and boost salaries for progressive college graduates within NYC.
One of the interesting comments I saw is that the way Mamdani is planning to save money on grocery stores is by not paying rent.
Which begs the question: Are they planning to seize commercial properties or at least enact rent control on commercial real estate? No wonder NYC exposed REITs plunged on the election news…
Of course it is far more likely they spend a billion dollars on a few never completed stores with kickbacks to supporters along the way.
I wonder how the owners transport themselves through their 50,000 sqft palaces? Golf carts? Moving walkways? Monorails?
Zohran Mamdani is a Shia Muslim, yet it is ironic that many of his political agenda contradict Islamic beliefs and teachings.
His agenda is for American infidels.