Category: Update

The rise of “democratic socialism” in these United States has been of some concern here at ThisIsCommonSense.org. But it is not just in New York where this is happening. In Washington State, the socialists are on a legislative march, aiming to hobble markets with the ostensible goal of helping low-wage workers — but as noted by Paul Jacob last month, things are not going well.

That is, workers are taking the hit.

In addition to minimum wage hikes, there has been the imposition of a seemingly unconstitutional (or somewhat disguised) income tax.

Washington’s constitution, amended in 1930, requires that property be taxed uniformly and at no more than 1 percent of value. In 1933’s Culliton v. Chase, the Washington Supreme Court held that “income is property” under this provision — meaning any income tax is treated as a property tax and must be flat (uniform rate), not graduated. This effectively made a progressive income tax unconstitutional. 

So a legislature-introduced graduated income tax has long been considered unconstitutional. Even when 70 percent of voters approved one in a 1932 referendum, the court struck it down in 1933.

The Democrats’ first major crack at the barrier was a 7 percent capital gains tax on profits over $262,000 (later indexed), enacted in 2021. Critics argued it was just an income tax by another name. But in March 2023, the Washington Supreme Court upheld it 7–2, ruling it was an excise tax (a tax on the transaction of selling), not a property tax. This opened a narrow door: certain taxes on income could survive if framed as excise taxes.

On March 30, 2026, Governor Bob Ferguson signed into law a 9.9 percent personal income tax on household earnings above $1 million per year. Since it leaves the first $1 million untouched, only earnings beyond that threshold would be taxed. Projected to raise over $3 billion annually, it is set to take effect January 1, 2028, first payments due in 2029.

Democrats argue that the 2023 capital gains ruling shows the current state Supreme Court is willing to revisit — and potentially overturn — the 1933 Culliton precedent. Their hope? The court will either distinguish the millionaires’ tax as an excise tax (like the capital gains tax) or simply overturn Culliton outright and allow a graduated income tax.

A lawsuit was filed almost immediately after the law was signed, led by former state Attorney General Rob McKenna, arguing the tax “flies in the face of the constitution, of precedent and of voter will.” Opponents also point out that Washington voters have repeatedly rejected income tax ballot measures.

Constitutional or not, the predictable capital flight is now well under way:

Washington’s anti-wealth, anti-capitalist resurgence is almost certainly going to receive further coverage in these pages. Just as it continues to destroy the prosperity of the state’s citizens. Socialism is a destroyer. It doesn’t work doing anything else.

“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.

“Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, was the face and voice of the COVID pandemic response from 2020 to 2022 until his retirement from his position as the highest-paid federal official.” A good summation of the broad facts of the case by Jeffrey Tucker, to start out his recent op-ed in The Epoch Times.

“He was valorized as the science itself.” A good reminder . . . of Fauci’s cringiest claim.

Not the worst lie of Dr. Evil, but the most embarrassing.

You might be surprised to learn that he was never appointed the official spokesman or even the head of the COVID pandemic response. He was one of many members of the Coronavirus Task Force but it was he who nonetheless took the lead on public messaging for those critical two and a half years.

Though he had never been formally accused, much less convicted, of any crime, Fauci received a preemptive full and unconditional pardon from President Joe Biden on Jan. 19, 2025. It was one of Biden’s final acts before leaving office. The pardon covers “any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon.”

This pardon sets Fauci free from the long arm of the law. But there’s a hitch in this arm-shortening move by lame duck Biden: perjury. Senator Rand Paul interrogated Fauci in congressional hearings, and one of those interrogations occurred after Biden’s pardon date. The Kentucky senator believes he has the goods on Fauci.

Fauci lied. To Congress. And Rand Paul thinks he can prove it.

Will he succeed?

Well, the title of Jeff Tucker’s op-ed is “What to Expect at the Anthony Fauci Senate Hearing,” so it is well worth a careful read. Tucker explains the key biological feature of the virus, and its mysterious (or not-so-mysterious) “furin cleavage site,” a functionality that allowed a virus transfered among bats to go big-time in human populations. 

Among the many revelations in Paul’s files are that Fauci’s aide David Morens used personal email for “damage control” with Daszak. We now have evidence that Fauci directed Andersen to report [furin cleavage site] concerns to FBI/MI5 while shaping public messaging. We have records of Fauci’s long ties to intelligence (back to 2003), including briefings, which Paul says influenced origins assessments.

Paul Jacob covered the Lab Leak Hypothesis in general, and Peter Daszak and Anthony Fauci in particular, in these pages in multiple columns, and discussed the key gain-of-function feature of the virus in March and October of 2022. 

Discovering and publicly proving who inserted a “furin cleavage site” into a bat coronavirus to cause the late pandemic is a worthy endeavor. Fauci appears to be the main suspect; evidence shows him above the body with a smoking gun — or at least with receipts for buying the gun and hiring the gunman. Can Rand Paul convince the public, though?

It was, the president said, “the largest group of Trump Derangement Syndrome people ever put together at one time.” 

Donald J. Trump dominated the night at 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. An event known for its roasts of politicians and media figures, this year was not an exception save for one thing: this time the chief comedian appeared to be the president himself.

“This year the association decided not to have a comedian, so they considered using Jimmy Kimmel,” Donald Trump quipped. Earlier, he had declared that this second attempt at the event — the April date having been scuttled by an assassination attempt — would be better than the first, just as his second administration was better than his first. “The second time is always better,” he said, and then pushed the wry statement into a joke: “And the third time will be better yet.”

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage attempted to give contrast: “‘I gave up on traditional press,’ he said, boasting about how popular he is on TikTok.”

His jokes about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have been funnier, if more awkward. Like in most of politics, opinions differ.

But can we all agree that the Babylon Bee’s story was far, far funnier?

President Donald Trump’s big speech on Thursday focused on election integrity. The gist? Elections are severely compromised in these United States. Highlights included his

• contention that China tried to influence the 2020 presidential elections;
• blaming the “Deep State” for deliberately keeping this information from him during his first administration;
• declaring that electronic ballot technology and “voting machines” are insecure, and that Maduro’s Venezuela government worked secretly to affect outcomes in 2024;
• insisting that over 250,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in federal elections.

The president disclosed reports and information that he said backed up his main points.

“Trump closed by once again pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “which would restrict mail-in ballots and require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. 

“‘Every American, whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, independent or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest and fair election system,’ Trump said.”

Press reports on the president’s speech tend to run strongly negative, as in this U.S. News and World Report headline: “Trump Says These Documents Prove His False Claims of Election Fraud. Here’s What They Really Say.”

The latest batch of disclosed UFO documents has been released on war dot gov. In the first SIGN report, one hundred sightings were recorded and appraised, from July 1947 to January 1948. The persistent data of the most peculiar incidents were not easily explained:

This report from Air Materiel Command HQ, dated “23 APR 1948,” shows that eight decades ago the American military was taking the UFO subject seriously. The report shows military personnel and hired academics debating and tabulating witnesses’ reports and puzzling over the mysterious data with no small amount of seriousness.

On the Fourth of July a dozen UFO sightings were reported in the Pacific Northwest, and duly tabulated. Here are three from Oregon:

Note that these were reported 20 days before the “flying saucer” craze began further north, near Mount Rainier, in the most famous UFO sighting of all time (because much was made of it at the time; because we got the term “flying saucer” from a misunderstanding in the reportage; and because the event is often cited). Nineteen forty-seven was a busy year for UFO sightings, and the Kenneth Arnold observation and report of nine wobbly-but-super-fast craft while flying over the Cascades in Washington State made the national new. Here it is reported merely as sighting no. 17:

Towards the end of the report a determination on one incident was made that it was, indeed, a hoax. Appended to the report is a long article on “The Biology of the Flying Saucer,” which is not what you might suspect from the title.

There is a great deal more of interest in this fourth “tranche” of de-classified UFO documents, as well as a lot of dubious minor stuff that does not bear very much attention.

This is how governments disclose secrets?

Apparently.

“America appears to be in the midst of an outbreak of — I’m sorry, but there’s no better way to say this — explosive diarrhea.”

That was not the first sentence of Nicholas Florko’s July 11, 2026, reportage in The Atlantic. But perhaps should have been.

The article is titled “America’s Home-grown Parasite Problem.”

And no, it is not about the politics of the transfer state. You may have heard that The Atlantic has lately been turning away from its decade-long bout of woke diarrhea, but analysis of parasitism and subversion in a sociological sense — say, along the lines of Herbert Spencer, Franz Oppenheimer, or Stanislav Andreski — is too much to hope for.

The article is about something more, uh, down-to-earth: the parasite known as Cyclospora cayetanensis. Which can cause an illness, cyclosporiasis. It is all gruesome stuff, and can be read about in The Atlantic.

On Tuesday last week, Paul Jacob discussed the phenomenon of Europeans and other soccer — er, football — fans attending the World Cup games and getting to know Americans during and between gams, which occurred all over the states.

They were enthusiastic.

Like many other commentators, Paul quoted FreddyLA7, a Deutschländer who microblogged his American odyssey on X and became famous.

No sooner said than an emendation became necessary, for Freddy closed up his X account.

FreddyLA7 stated on Instagram Stories that he had planned to delete his X account at some point. His account’s deletion occurred shortly after Germany’s elimination from the World Cup, following a penalty shootout loss to Paraguay on June 29 (when Paul’s commentary was being prepped).

But there is more to the story: FreddyLA7 stated that the online response to his posts became “too toxic” and was “ruining the fun” of his travels, citing the platform’s toxicity and intense online backlash from the comment sections as reasons for deactivating his account.

All sorts of people — such as actor-author Stephen Fry — talk about how toxic X has become. They usually blame it on Elon Musk. Or, as in Fry’s case, “capitalism.” That is because it is leftists who make this complaint.

But it was not right-wing trolls who discouraged FreddyLA7. Everyone knows that. X may be toxic in varying ways, but the idea that the blame squarely falls upon conservatives and “reactionaries” and anti-leftists is preposterous. Freddy bugged the left because he was enthusing about America. And the left, today, tends to hate America . . . as well as the very kinds of Americans Freddy found charming.

“Too many people seem to have a problem with us having a genuinely good time here in the country,” said Freddy.