Category: New York

Confusing news from the Mamdani Caliphate… “Mamdani Presses for Tax Hike on New York’s Wealthiest as Budget Deficit Looms” (Wall Street Journal):

Mamdani also wants Albany lawmakers to increase the amount of state funding the city receives. Hochul has boosted state funding to the city since she took office, according to a spokeswoman for the governor.

The governor and the mayor said earlier this month the state would fund a rollout of free child care for 2-year-olds in the city—another major policy proposal of Mamdani’s campaign.

New York City is wealthier than the rest of New York State. Why would people who say that they’re against inequality want to see money funneled from the Rust Belt cities of Upstate to Manhattan? As a parent myself, I’m a huge supporter of any government program that forces the childless to work extra hours and gives the resulting money earned to Americans who are blessed with and can enjoy children. However, how is it fair for a parent of a 2-year-old in NYC to get free child care while the parent of a 2-year-old in Syracuse or Buffalo gets nothing?

If NYC wants to add services for its residents why wouldn’t NYC fund that with city taxes, e.g., on the Wall Street heroes, owners of skyscrapers, etc.?

(The median income in NYC, of course, isn’t high, but rich people in NYC are stratospherically rich.)

Happy New Year to those who celebrate and, of course, Happy Last Day of Kwanzaa to everyone.

Today is the day that Ayatollah Mamdani takes over control of New York City. Folks have made dire predictions about what might happen under a Mamdani Caliphate, but I find it tough to believe that he could do a worse job than his predecessors. Here’s a calculation of what’s been happening in NYC public schools, for example:

Source for the above:

I share some goals with the new mayor, actually. I’m an enthusiast for free public transit, which is fairly common in Florida (trolleys along tourist routes in Miami Beach, Uber-style Teslas zipping people around Coral Gables). I suppose sufficiently high congestion prices for driving around NYC that there aren’t any traffic jams and the money used to make the buses and subways (1) free, (2) frequent, and (3) comfortable. Mobility that doesn’t cause time-wasting traffic is something that New York is rich enough to afford and 98 percent of the infrastructure is already paid for (subway tracks, roads, buses). As a resident of Palm Beach County, I’m a huge fan of massive tax increases on the NYC rich. Every successful New Yorker who moves to Palm Beach from NY lowers our property tax bill (where “success” = rich enough to buy a $10 million house).

For readers who are celebrating Kwanzaa, a golden retriever busting into the Kwanzaa bush:

Last night: “Mamdani repeatedly accuses Israel of genocide in NYC mayoral debate”

Also last night: Mayor Mamdani picks FDR as his “favorite modern-day president”.

This is a curious choice given that FDR was an enthusiastic proponent of killing as many Japanese and German civilians as technology allowed, e.g., 100,000 in just one night in Tokyo in March 1945, in order to force Japan and Germany into unconditional surrender (both nations repeatedly expressed willingness to negotiate mutually acceptable peace treaties, but the U.S. rejected the idea in favor of killing more Japanese and Germans). I can’t think of any American president who has been responsible for killing more civilians than FDR directed to be killed. If the Israelis followed FDR’s example, they would have shelled and bombed the Gazans, without texting/phoning warnings in advance, until the Gazans decided to surrender. Instead of sending food, water, and other supplies to the Gazans, the Israelis would have implemented something like Operation Starvation, the U.S. operation intended to prevent food from reaching Japan via ship (begun under FDR and continued under President Truman).

FDR is also a curious choice because he’s responsible for putting Japanese Americans into concentration camps during WWII (blessed by the Supreme Court) out of mere suspicion that they might try to work against the U.S. government’s program of killing as many Japanese soldiers and civilians as quickly as possible. Zohran Mamdani explicitly says that he wants to fight against the federal government (example below). If Trump followed FDR’s example, Zohran Mamdani would be interned for the duration of the federal effort to arrest and deport undocumented migrants with criminal records (“New Yorkers”, in Mayor Mamdani’s parlance).

(Omar Fateh, the next mayor of Minneapolis, would also be interned because he has also pledged to work against the federal government’s goals.)

Maybe FDR is celebrated by Mamdani because he gave Americans free cash? Ida May Fuller, for example, got paid nearly 1000X what she’d contributed to Social Security. Who wouldn’t love that?

Mayor Mamdani attacked Cuomo for his failure to visit mosques. I wonder what would have happened if Cuomo had talked about visiting Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn where some of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers met. See “Brooklyn Mosque Becomes Terror Icon, but Federal Case Is Unclear” (NYT, 2003):

Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, a six-story converted factory trimmed in orange and gold, has been many things to many people during its life: a mystery, a noisy neighbor, a source of suspicion, and, for thousands of Muslims who live or work along Atlantic Avenue, the main street of Arab Brooklyn, a place of worship.

Last week, the mosque became, not for the first time, a symbol of terror. A federal affidavit unsealed on Tuesday describes links between the mosque, several Brooklyn businessmen and a cleric in Yemen who, prosecutors say, claims to have funneled more than $20 million to Al Qaeda. ”They did their fund-raising right here in our own backyard,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.

But while Al Farooq has been the spiritual home of some infamous men — including, briefly, the blind Egyptian sheik eventually convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the man who killed Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990 — the role of the mosque and its members in supporting more recent terrorist activity remains unclear.

(New Yorkers responded to the 1993 jihad, which killed 6, including a pregnant woman, and injured more than 1,000, by advocating for increased levels of Islamic immigration and then responded to the 2001 jihad against the World Trade Center by advocating for completely open borders to Muslims.)

Who watched the debate? I saw a few snippets on X. I was, of course, happy to see Florida Realtor of the Year 2020/2021 (Andrew Cuomo) and Florida Realtor of the Year 2026 (Ayatollah Mamdani) on stage at the same time. Mostly, however, I’m amazed that these are the three ablest humans among the 8.5 million (or 9 million if we count the uncountable undocumented?) residents of New York City.

Separately, I’m close to 100,000 views on this X reply:

It is unfair to paint Mr. Mamdani as a Hamas supporter. Based on his public statements, he is equally aligned with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

New York has been substantially enriched by migrants in recent decades, especially from 2021-2024. After careful analysis, however, it seems that “New York Needs More Millionaires” (New York Times, August 28, 2025):

The rate at which New York State has been adding millionaires to its population in recent years has fallen below that of other large states, potentially costing the state billions in unrealized tax revenue, according to a new report from a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.

At the same time, California, Florida and Texas had large increases in the number of people with annual incomes of at least $1 million residing in their states, all adding them at a faster rate than New York did from 2010 to 2022. The millionaire population in New York nearly doubled over that same time period, but it more than tripled in those other states.

Note that “millionaire” is not a peasant who owns a $1 million house outright, but rather someone who earns at least $1 million every year. The word has been updated for inflation, apparently!

There were about 70,000 people earning $1 million in New York State in 2022, with half of them living in New York City, according to the report.

Also, Ms. Eisner said the latest migration trends showed that millionaires were not leaving New York City and that, according to her research, they do not move in response to tax increases. Middle- and upper-middle class families — those in the $200,000 to $300,000 income range — are departing at the fastest rate, she said.

New York State added millionaire earners at a consistent rate from 2010 to 2022, when it had 69,780 tax filers with incomes greater than $1 million and about half lived in New York City. There were 35,802 millionaire filers in 2010 in New York State.

California stayed the top home for millionaires every year over that period, with an acceleration of top earners in recent years. It had 42,090 such earners in 2010 and 128,900 in 2022.

New York State had more top earners than Florida and Texas over that period until 2022, when those states jumped ahead. Florida had 19,450 people with $1 million incomes in 2010 and 77,670 in 2022. Texas had 23,859 in 2010 and 73,930 in 2022.

Considering that Florida has no Wall Street and is famous as a retirement destination (people tend not to earn as much in retirement as when they were working full time), it’s a remarkable failure that New York State now has fewer people who earn more than $1 million/year than Florida does. Does that mean California is the most successful? The New York Times seems to be unable to adjust numbers for population. Florida had a population of approximately 22 million in 2022 while California boasted 39 million humans (plus or minus 5 million depending on how the undocumented are counted?). Florida thus had a higher prevalence of earners over the $1 million threshold (1 in 283 for FL vs. 1 in 303 for CA).

A photo from my Lower East Side-through Chinatown-to Wall St walk, August 19, 2025:

On the Upper East Side, on the other hand, a diverse crowd in a rainbow of skin colors waits in line to get into the renovated Frick:

Speaking of the Upper East Side, across the street from the north side of the Frick is Emmanuel Goldstein’s former townhouse at 9 East 71st Street: