Common Sense with Paul Jacob

“Mamdani’s City Run Grocery Stores And Their Potential Market Impact” — Nathan Goldman | Forbes | July 28, 2026 11:00 AM

As part of Mamdani’s $124.7 billion budget, starting this year, New York City will build and open five stores, one per borough. The first will open in the Bronx by the end of 2027, and a second is planned for East Harlem’s La Marqueta market by 2029.

The main feature of these stores is that a core basket of goods — including produce, dairy, bread, select meat and seafood products and about 20 other staples — will be priced 30% below typical retail values. According to The New York Times, these prices will stay locked in for a month, and non-core items will sell at a designated fair market value.

These stores can offer prices at this level because they operate with a lower cost structure. Unlike bodegas, the city-run grocery stores will not pay rent or property taxes. Government-owned property is typically tax-exempt in the same way libraries, courthouses and DMVs do not pay property tax.

This foregone tax revenue creates an inherent cost advantage relative to other grocery providers. Still, the effect on the city’s bottom line is real: The city must make up forgone revenue elsewhere or absorbed it as a cost.

“Mamdani announces 30% discount on core set of goods at NYC-owned grocery stores” — Jen Maxfield and NBC New York TV Staff | NBC New York | July 27, 2026 8:32 PM

The first NYC-owned grocery store will be open by the end of 2027. Opening stores owned by the city was one of the mayor’s signature campaign pledges. The goal is to have at least one of these city-owned grocery stores in each borough.

The city also announced they are issuing an Request for Proposal as they look for third-party grocery store operators to manage the five city-run supermarkets.

“Our vision of affordable, well-run, city-owned grocery stores can only be accomplished with experienced operators who know how to source products, stock the shelves and help answer shoppers’ questions,” Mamdani said. “Today, we are also issuing an RFP for private operators to help us with the day-to-day management of the five city-run grocery stores.”

Some local politicians say the city’s $70 million project doesn’t address the root cause of higher food prices.

“I can tell you that I could give somebody $1,000 and that’ll change them being broke for the day, but it’s not gonna change how they got broke,” said Paul Muhammad, of Community Board Five.

“Who’s Paying for the Discounts in Mamdani’s City-Run Grocery Stores?” — Meagan O’Rourke | Reason | 7.28.2026 5:27 PM

Mamdani has said that government intervention for food distribution is nothing new. On Monday, he explained that former New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was inspired to create municipally owned markets after witnessing food riots several years earlier.

“He did so because he believed in a simple definition of the task of government to make people’s lives better,” Mamdani said.

La Guardia may have been partially motivated to create municipally owned markets to make goods affordable, but Mamdani conveniently left out another part of the story. La Guardia wanted to create municipal markets (like Essex Market in the Lower East Side) to get pushcarts off the streets.

“What Mamdani Can Learn From Hugo Chávez’s Government-Run Grocery Store Debacle” — César Báez | Reason | 7.31.2026 1:40 PM

[L]ike Chávez, Mamdani will find that he can’t escape the laws of supply and demand. His evasive response to the reporter’s question suggests that he hasn’t given much thought to how the city would manage high demand for cheap groceries. One way or another, the program will require quotas. The alternative is to tolerate price-sensitive shoppers lining up outside stores to buy discount plantains.

“Zohran Mamdani Tells Jon Stewart Socialism Is Just Having a Library” — Robby Soave | Reason | 7.23.2026 4:15 PM

Now that democratic socialism is having a moment, political figures who adhere to the ideology or belong to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are fielding questions about it. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who self-identifies as a socialist, is a savvy politician, and so he quite deliberately misrepresents the definition of socialism in order to make it seem benign and unobjectionable. He is doing this frequently enough — and consistently enough — that he may be succeeding in tricking a great number of people into accepting a nonsensical, discredited, and dangerous ideology.

The revelations of the Fauci Diaries, and the non-revelations of the Senate grilling of Anthony Fauci, continue to receive commentary and reaction.

“Senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the journals this weekend, days before Fauci is scheduled to testify under subpoena,” wrote Connor Boyack on Substack. “Fauci’s vanity is going viral on 𝕏 because vanity is easily observable, a little funny, and confirms what half the country already suspected about him.”

So why wouldn’t Fauci answer even technical questions? Medical YouTuber John Campbell expressed more than just wonder. His video includes segments from Rand Paul worth watching:

“Let the record show,” says the senator, “that the witness has refused to answer whether there is a folder in front of him. . . .” That was after the mere second time Fauci responded with his pleading the Fifth Amendment.

For analysis of the hearing, you may not be able to find better commentary than from Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein on the Dark Horse podcast — where they explain precisely what kind of monster Fauci is:

But not everyone is on board with the criticism of the former bureaucrat. Consider this discussion on the Rising program, between libertarian Robby Soave and Democrat Lindsey Granger:

Soave begins by noting Fauci’s private recognition, prior to March 2020, that the infamous “wet market” was not the source of the coronavirus, but the amplifier. Fauci is thus clearly revealed as a liar and conspirator against the truth of the Lab Leak Hypothesis. Soave’s interlocutor, however, gamely-if-absurdly tries to defend the Fauc, minimizing the insider’s lies as non-crimes.

Meanwhile, at NPR, we can see subsidized media still pushing the zoonotic (“wet market”) explanation, as in Rachel Carlson’s “Animal spillover? Lab leak? What the science says about the origins of COVID-19” — this July 29, 2026, article is an embarrassment.

NPR is still pushing a lie. Astounding? Or just doing what insider and wannabe-insider Democrats (and other proponents of uniting big government with big business) must believe, to maintain their discredited ideology?

Boyack reminds us of the context not only of the diaries, but of the day-earlier revelation that Fauci had set up a network to give his own self awards and money. “Something clarifying happens as you read through these documents. They stop being a story about one man’s (deficient) character and become a story about a system doing exactly what it was built to do. Institutions produce whatever they pay for, and this one paid for prestige. Prestige requires certainty; certainty cannot survive open questions; therefore open questions had to be reclassified as threats. (Remember what Fauci said in November 2021? “They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.”)”

The problem is the system itself. And it is not science. It is bureaucracy, and more than that: a scam. Fauci represents, but is not, that system. How many Americans will come to their senses about it?

NOTE: Paul Jacob wrote about the Fauci hearing on Thursday.