As for the loss of experience and expertise if there were no career politicians, much — if not most — of that is experience and expertise in the arts of evasion, effrontery, deceit and chicanery. None of that serves the interest of the people.
Thomas Sowell, “A Real Term Limit,” Capitalism Magazine (March 20, 2013).
On February 13, 1633, Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to face charges of heresy for advocating Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. In April, Galileo pled guilty before the Roman Inquisition in exchange for a lighter sentence. Put under house arrest indefinitely by Pope Urban VIII, Galileo spent the rest of his life at his villa in Arcetri, near Florence, dying in 1642.
The new New York mayor has taken city reins and unfurled his first major effort: begging for money.
Begging, that is, for it to be demanded from others.
“New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on state lawmakers Wednesday to approve a 2 percent personal income tax increase on the city’s wealthiest residents,” writes Kimberly Hayek* for The Epoch Times, “as well as a hike in the corporate tax rate in a bid to close a multibillion-dollar budget gap.”
Though Mamdani proclaims a new era of city and state working together, there is nothing new in his pitches for more taxes to redistribute to various voters, rather than attempting to build (or restore) a good foundation for normal social and business life.
Ms. Hayek does her duty, though, telling the old, old story of class-envy politics. “Estimates suggested it” — a 2 percent surtax just for the “very” rich — “could create approximately $4 billion annually to support increased public services and affordability programs, as well as offset costs for broad social investments while not saddling middle- and low-income residents.”
But that’s merely the politician’s “theory.”
In reality, writes Hayek, “France’s experiment with a similar surtax on high incomes underperformed revenue projections. It yielded €400 million in its first year against an expected 1.9 billion euros.”
Same-old story. Zohran Mamdani was never a breath of fresh air.
Just another old-timey demagogue.
Mamdani may never tire of his schtick, but when will New Yorkers wake up … and yawn?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Great name, eh?
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In regione caecorum rex est luscus.
In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Adagia (1500; 1536).
On February 12, 1986, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was released after spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The amnesty deal was arranged at a summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Scharansky had been imprisoned for his campaign to win emigration rights for Russian Jews — who had been forbidden to practice Judaism in the USSR.
On Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.
On Feb. 12, 1593, approximately 3,000 Korean defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repelled more than 30,000 invading Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
The ASPS made its statement on February 3, which the New York Times explained was prompted by “a lack of quality research on the long-term outcomes for young people who had undergone surgical interventions like mastectomies and cited ‘emerging evidence of treatment complications and potential harms.’”
The next day, the AMA, the nation’s largest medical organization, spoke up.
When this issue came to the fore a few years ago, the usual response was “this is only happening to a tiny group of young people, if any.” Now, according to TheTimes, a review of “hospital data from 2016 through 2020 identified about 3,600 patients aged 12 to 18 who had received gender-related surgery. The vast majority were mastectomies.”
The Times references a York University social scientist studying “transgender medicine” who attributes the new positions, in part, to “the growing political backlash over gender-affirming care.” Just as Scott Jennings judges these two big turnarounds as huge blows to “the left,” which has supported those surgical practices in the cause of gender-fluidity and -identity along with inclusion and whatnot.
By advising against major irreversible interventions into the maturation process of young people, ASPS and the AMA have, at the very least, made a long-overdue advance for Common Sense.
I’m Paul Jacob.
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What cannot be cured must be endured.
François Rabelais, Pantagruel: Fifth Book (1564).
On February 11, 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry signed into law a plan to redistrict Massachusetts so that the Federalists would lose votes. The new Republican districts were said to be in the form of a salamander, so Gerry was accused of “gerrymandering” — the epithet deriving from his name and a salamander, which some said was the shape of the districts he had drawn up to favor his party. A cartoon gerrymander map was published in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812, with the salamander more in the mythical draconic form than the natural amphibious form.
I like the bill’s two key provisions: Voter ID and proof of citizenship.
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has already announced the bill “dead on arrival,” even with House passage, as Democrats will filibuster to block a Senate vote.
“According to an August 2025 Pew Poll, 95 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats favor voter ID,” reported CNBC. “A 2024 Gallup poll found that 84 percent of Americans support voter ID and 83 percent support proof of citizenship to register to vote.”
Sunday, on ABC’s This Week with[out] George Stephanopoulos, co-anchor Jonathan Karl detailed the public polling before asking Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.): “What about the idea of voter I.D., a photo I.D. being required to vote?”
“It’s still going to be something that disenfranchises people,” replied Schiff, those “that don’t have the proper real I.D., driver’s license I.D., that don’t have the I.D. necessary to vote, even though they are citizens. This is another way to simply try to suppress the vote.”
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) opposes voter ID, too . . . yet he requires government-issued photo identification to attend his campaign events.
Years back, then-Vice-President Kamala Harris warned that “in some people’s mind [voter ID] means you’re gonna have to Xerox or photocopy your ID to send it in to prove you are who you are. Well, there’re a whole lot of people, especially people who live in rural communities, who don’t — there’s no Kinko’s, there’s no Office Max near them. Of course, people have to prove who they are. But not in a way that makes it almost impossible for them to prove who they are.”
Seems Democrat leaders cannot imagine any possible system of checking ID or determining citizenship. Even though the rest of the democratic world does it without a hitch.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The key action is in the states, as this headline in Michigan last week attests: “While Washington Argues Over Proof-of-Citizenship Voting Rules, Michigan Grabs the Wheel.”
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Since risky investments usually pay more than safer investments, the incentive is for a government-supported enterprise to take bigger risks, since they get more profit if the risks pay off and the taxpayers get stuck with the losses if not.
Thomas Sowell, “Bailout Politics,” September 30, 2008.