Tag: New York

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

Served and Disserved, New York Style

Pizza, DeBlasio, New York, New Year,

“Jacking up your prices on people trying to celebrate the holidays? Classy, @dominos,” tweeted former presidential aspirant and current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“To the thousands who came to Times Square last night to ring in 2020,” continued  Hizzoner’s New Year’s Day message from his official city Twitter account, “I’m sorry this corporate chain exploited you — stick it to them by patronizing one of our fantastic LOCAL pizzerias.”

Were you standing there in the Big Apple on New Year’s Eve getting “exploited”?

For the last 15 years, a Midtown Manhattan Domino’s franchise has been delivering hot pepperoni, cheese and onion pizzas for $30 each — “more than twice the regular $14.49 price of a large cheese pie” — to the “hungry tourists waiting in holding pens for the ball drop,” The New York Post reported.

“I have a lot of orders. I’m very busy,” remarked Ratan Banik, the Domino’s delivery man. The paper explained that he was “mobbed by starving tourists . . . many having camped out overnight.”

“He is our Santa,” offered one New Jersey man, who had not thought to bring any food with him into the city. “It’s absolutely worth it. It was hot. It seems like it just came out of the oven.

“If he comes back,” he added. “I will buy some more.”

“How is this different to a million other things? Airlines, Uber, property,” noted one of many tweets mocking the mayor’s. “It’s called supply and demand.”

If this be exploitation, make the most of it — with or without the extra toppings. 

Just hold the snipes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pizza, DeBlasio, New York, New Year,

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general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Today’s Trifecta

vote, election, initiative, referendum, Washington, New York,

Three measures on ballots today are particularly worth watching.

Two issues in Washington State represent the only citizen-initiated measures out of 32 propositions voters will see in eight states: Washington Referendum 88 allows voters to re-decide the issue of racial and gender preferences, so-called “affirmative action,” while Washington Initiative 976 offers voters a chance to cap their vehicle taxes.

More than two decades ago, in 1998, Washingtonians passed Initiative 200 to end racial and gender preferences in state employment and education. This year, the state legislature enacted a virtual repeal of I-200, by allowing the state to employ such a preference provided it was not the “only factor” used. 

Washington’s vibrant Asian-American community, which stands to be discriminated against should affirmative action return, rose up to petition Referendum 88 onto the ballot. A “yes” vote upholds the legislature’s new pro-preference policy; a “no” vote restores the prior voter-enacted policy prohibiting such preferences.  

Initiative 976 is yet another effort from Tim Eyman, the state’s most prolific initiative practitioner. “This measure,” as the official summary states, “would repeal or remove authority to impose certain vehicle taxes and fees; limit state and local license fees to $30 for motor vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or less, except charges approved by voters . . .”

Like virtually every Eyman initiative, powerful opponents have dramatically outspent supporters — by greater than a 6-to-1 margin — funding ads that have been less than truthful. Additionally, government officials have broken campaign laws in pushing a “no” vote.

Nonetheless, a mid-October poll showed 48 percent of voters support I-976 against 37 percent who oppose it. Could Eyman again thwart the state’s behemoth Blue Establishment?

Lastly, New York City voters will decide a ballot question on whether to use ranked choice voting in future primary and special elections for mayor, city council and other offices. It would mark a major victory for a reform growing in popularity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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vote, election, initiative, referendum, Washington, New York,

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general freedom too much government

New York, Pre Scission

New York, Five Boroughs, split, division,

What might be the pluses and minuses to splitting New York State in two? 

“Let’s look at it, get definitive figures,” says a first-term state senator, Daphne Jordan.

Sen. Jordan serves a region in the eastern part of the state. Her proposal for an official study, as yet unsponsored in the Assembly, focuses on splitting the downstate region (all five New York City boroughs, Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties) from the 53 upstate counties.

The U.S. Congress would have to approve the creation of a new state, of course, and a split would almost certainly be tricky, requiring the geographically larger portion to reconfigure governance completely.

Which is the point. 

Downstate politicians and voters have placed a lot of alien and debilitating rules, taxes and (worse yet) subsidies upon the increasingly malfunctional upstate, rural region. Sen. Jordan responded to a charge from a spokesman for Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo that her proposal is “the Godzilla of Pandering” in horror-movie form: the governor’s policies are, she says, “the curse of Dr. Cuomostein.”

In Cities and the Wealth of Nations, New York urban analyst Jane Jacobs noted a historical pattern: cities together with their regions constitute the salient macro-economic entities, not “nations.” Trouble is, big cities like New York no longer treat their rural areas as partners — in today’s globalist environment, the whole world serves as a major city’s “region.” 

Rural areas have become mere playthings, whipping boys and dumping grounds for out-of-control urban nightmare politics.

Hence the divorce talk.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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New York, Five Boroughs, split, division,

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free trade & free markets

Towards a Genealogy of Policy

tenement, rent control, New York, de Blasio

If it seems like each new government program is more intrusive than the last, there’s a reason. That last one did not work as planned. So a new one gets concocted to fix its mess. 

The latest? New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has established a new enforcement bureau, the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, to sic a “new sheriff” on property owners.

“When a landlord tries to push out a tenant by making their home unlivable, a team of inspectors and law enforcement agents will be on the ground in time to stop it,” the mayor explained last week in his latest State of the City Address. 

And he means business, er, government: “we will seize their buildings, and we will put them in the hands of a community nonprofit that will treat tenants with the respect they deserve.”

Well, that cannot possibly go wrong!

But what was the earlier program that put New York in its current situation?

Look to a very old government program, rent control, which New York has suffered under since World War II. 

Rent control protects current renters from rate hikes and the like, sure. But it discourages the production as well as the maintenance of rental properties, which in turn limits supply and ultimately hikes rents for future tenants.

Perhaps even worse, it incentivizes the landlords to boot out tenants while it more than nudges tenants to dig in . . .  even when moving would otherwise make more sense. 

The market thus thwarted, the de Blasios then set up more laws and more policing . . . and antagonism ramps up another notch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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tenement, rent control, New York, deBlasio

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general freedom ideological culture Popular Second Amendment rights too much government

Il Duce Cuomo

Cuomo, Mayor, New York

A federal judge has ruled that the National Rifle Association has a plausible case against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; the NRA’s lawsuit, alleging that the organization’s rights have been violated by the governor, is going ahead.

As related by Jacob Sullum in two pieces over at Reason, Cuomo sure looks guilty. 

Indeed, the governor’s own words convict him: “If the @NRA goes bankrupt because of the State of New York, they’ll be in my thoughts and prayers. I’ll see you in court.” 

Precisely.

What has Cuomo done? “I am directing the Department of Financial Services,” he commanded, “to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities.”

Is this just regulatory business as usual, as defenders of Cuomo harrumph? Or is it a real violation of rights?

It can be both. 

This is more than “bully pulpit” power, it is actual, gun-under-the-table power — the kind you give to regulators when you set up regulatory bodies rather than establish general principles under a rule of law.

It is a problem on every level of our society, especially the federal government. But states like New York are obviously not immune.

And it reminds me of Mussolini’s method, of The Leader taking control and bullying businesses and groups to do his bidding. (For the “public safety” and to “end violence” — of course.) The essence of fascism.

It’s good to see Il Duce Cuomo get some legal pushback. 

In this Land of the Allegedly Free.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies

Include/Exclude

Milo Yiannopoulis, Democratic Socialists of America, Churchill Tavern, New York, Nazi

The right of free assembly is central to a free society. Not everyone understands this.

Last week, conservative/“cultural libertarian” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulis went into the Churchill Tavern in New York to dine with fellow gay journalist Chadwick Moore.

Also in the establishment? The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. When the socialists noticed Milo they stood up, faced him, and shouted at him, chanting “Nazi scum, get out!”

Milo is not a Nazi, but his past gentle treatment of the alt-right counts as “Nazi” on the left.*

The left has been pushing for an inclusivist** reading of the right of free assembly for decades. You see, state laws in the South, prior to 1964’s Civil Rights Act, allowed and enforced white business discrimination against African-Americans, such as refusing service and accommodations. Leftists argue that there is no right to refuse service or exclude customers; they strenuously criticize those libertarians and conservatives who argue that a right to associate implies a right not to associate . . . giving them no credit for long opposing laws requiring discrimination.

Yet now we see many on the left banding together to deny others their free association rights by exclusionary tactics.

This was a group of customers, of course, so this is more similar to antifa violence than business discrimination. But Brooklyn politicians echo the logic, now proudly denying free assembly rights to NRA members — on ideological grounds.

Mob action for exclusion? Politicians siding with the mob?

There’s a word for this — fascismo.

Or, in the vulgar tongue, “Nazi scum.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks articulates this point — Milo’s insistence that he is not alt-right carrying no weight, apparently.

** Rather than rule-of-law liberal, or libertarian.

 

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