Tag: Zohran Mamdani

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ideological culture property rights

Hot in New York City

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, property rights

Zohran Mamdani was not yet the new mayor of New York City when the city council signaled that it would serve as willing accomplice in his assault on fundamental property rights.

In December, the city council passed legislation that had been hanging fire for several years, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), to further limit New Yorkers’ right to use and dispose of their own stuff.

COPA would give “give certain nonprofits … an early shot to bid on certain residential properties that go up for sale, before they hit the wider market.” The law pertains to buildings “with poor conditions or where an affordability provision is expiring.”

COPA’s advocates contend, as if this were a response to the objection about how the new law violates property rights, that it gives nonprofits an advantage in the housing market.

What happens if quite wealthy nonprofits with enough political pull make an offer that a property owner declines? Will the property owner have the right to say “I pass” and then make the property available for anybody to bid on?

If COPA is not dead on arrival, it will depress market prices as the city strongarms owners into making deals at lower-​than-​market prices. And I doubt that a Mamdani administration will simply playact at eroding and destroying property rights.

Mayor Mamdani took office yesterday, on January 1, 2026, dedicated to the idea of replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” It doesn’t portend to be a very good year for New Yorkers opposed to the heat of the looters’ madness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture too much government

Memo to Mamdani Voters

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, socialism, communism

New York City is expensive. Housing is expensive, often prohibitively so. The city has crime problems. Other problems.

Answers: Unshackle the housing market? Slash regulations and taxes? Make it easier to catch and punish bad guys? No. Prevent builders from supplying more and cheaper housing. Further hobble the police. Etc. Pro-​Hamas socialist Zohran Mamdani has a slew of such pseudo-solutions. 

And has a large following.

In New York’s mayoral race, decided Tuesday, the Republican candidate was excluded by the city’s heavily Democratic tilt. The incumbent mayor was also nonviable. Scandal-​plagued former Governor Cuomo was the main alternative to a reputedly charming Mamdani now claiming a mandate to rob the rich.

Song Ying is a 72-​year-​old New Yorker who escaped the Chinese communists in 1976. She “swam for eight hours from Shenzhen, then a small fishing village, to Hong Kong,” explains  The New York Times in a report on the growing generational divide among Chinese immigrants regarding the prospect of a socialist city. Song is dismayed by the strong support among young New Yorkers for Mamdani. She says — and knows — that socialism doesn’t work.

The Times belittles her concerns, stressing that Mao’s China is not the vision that Mamdani is selling. Yet upon winning, the mayor-​elect asserted that his administration would prove that “no problem [is] too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.” Sounds like a government without limits.

Mamdani will not fix things. He offers as solutions more of the policies that caused current problems: more regulations; more taxes; more spending; more government in power and scope.

If a boulder is tumbling right toward you, demanding more and heavier boulders won’t stop you from being crushed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly too much government

How Socialists Learn

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, socialism, communism

Not all socialists in mayoral runs won on Tuesday.

Sure, socialist/​communist Zohran Mamdani is now Mayor Elect of New York, but Omar Fateh lost to the incumbent mayor of Minneapolis on a second counting of the city’s ranked choice vote system. The latter is a victory for old-​fashioned city politics, but what is the former?

Mamdani obviously wants to take from the rich and give to the poor, with a lot of government workers shuffling the money in between rich benefactors and poor dependents. Running grocery stores, of all things: Mamdani seeks to bring the efficiency of the DMV to the food industry. 

But just how much harm can he do? 

He still has to balance city budgets, and if he wants to spend billions, he has to “raise” billions in revenue. He cannot simply spend money he’s created — Mamdani doesn’t control the money supply. After all, socialism doesn’t create wealth ex nihilo.

Further, he will face opposition on his many pipe dreams. Since he has almost no work experience, and none managing anything, he may also prove to be way over his head.

Worst case? If he pushes his dream earnestly and effectually in the Big Apple, the rich and industrious will flee. (A possibility so likely that it is worth stating multiple times: when fools vote socialist, the wise vote with their feet.) Mamdani may usher in Atlas Shrugged faster than any pro-capitalist political party ever could.

Which, though disastrous for the poor, might prove educational.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Escape from New York

New York City, Zohran Mamdani, socialism, business, middle class

People in New York City with any money and property are unhappy about the prospect of a communist mayor. They apparently see the potential of the government taking much more of their money less a politician’s promise and more a revolutionary threat.

While Zohran Mamdani might lose, it’s not looking that way. (Note the standing of his chief competitor.) Therefore, many homeowners are fleeing, without waiting for Election Day.

One destination is next-​door Connecticut, site of a failed revolt in 1991 against the enactment of a state income tax. New Yorkers reasonably suppose that the taxes imposed by a Mayor Mamdani would prove worse than that — and worse than New Yorkers’ already-​heavy tax burden.

Escapees are also worried about crime.

Mamdani could do much unilaterally but would need the cooperation of the state legislature and governor or the city council to impose the tax hikes he’s dreaming about. Still, these entities hardly serve as bulwarks of limited government.

We know that New Yorkers are lurching to Connecticut because, as the New York Post reports, a “bidding war frenzy and soaring prices” have hit the state’s housing market.

According to real-​estate agents there, the frenzy resembles that of early pandemic times. Properties are being scooped up within days. Deals are cash on the barrelhead, even for multi-​million-​dollar homes. Sale prices are much higher than expected.

And the bidders are coming “out of New York City,” the agents say. Prospective buyers have been “mentioning concerns about the mayoral election.…”

Good news, for a while, for Connecticut home sellers and their real-​estate agents. Bad news for everybody else, soon enough.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture public opinion

Bad, Worse & Communist

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, corruption, socialism, communism

After four recent commentaries showing, without hyperbole, that Democratic Party mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is a flat-​out seize-​the-​means-​of-​production communist, you might wonder why anyone could possibly vote for him. 

Well, elections are a choice. And New Yorkers have a plethora of lousy choices — especially the best-​known politicians running against Mamdani. 

Take former Governor Andrew Cuomo — puh-​leez! He finished second to Mamdani in last month’s Democratic mayoral primary but has vowed to stay in the race on the ballot line of his recently formed Fight & Deliver Party.

The key reason for Mamdani’s victory? Voter revulsion with Mr. Cuomo. After serving ten years as governor and announcing he would seek a fourth four-​year term, Cuomo was rocked by sexual harassment allegations (including “attempts to silence victims”). Facing “almost certain removal from office” by the state legislature, he resigned in 2021. 

“To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace,” responded Mamdani to Cuomo in a televised debate. “I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority]. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records. And I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo.” 

Mamdani’s other major opponent is the incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last year on five felony counts, including conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals, soliciting and accepting a bribe, and wire fraud. Though Trump’s Department of Justice dropped the prosecution, or maybe partly because of that, Adams is a pariah among the city’s supermajority of Democratic voters.

The problem is staring us in the face: When the choice is between communism and corruption, communism stands a better chance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Socialist Intifada

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, socialism, communism, state planning, equality, equity, taxes

“Do you think that billionaires have a right to exist?” Meet the Press host Kristen Welker asked Zohran Mamdani, the likely winner of last week’s still undecided Democratic Party mayoral primary in New York City. 

“I don’t think that we should have billionaires,” was the democratic socialist’s reply. 

So, his answer to whether they have a “right to exist” was … NO! 

“Because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality,” continued Mamdani, “and ultimately what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.” 

Even equality at lower levels of wealth. By design and decree. 

But don’t worry your pretty little billionaire heads about being pilloried, prohibited, prevented from existing, because Mamdani generously offered: “I look forward to work with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of us.”

Ah, the rest of us … what does it all mean for us? Hmmm, could politicians aiming to tax, exploit, and totally end any such thing as “the rich” ever miss the mark and wind up hitting us of lesser wealth? And what if billionaires’ success is intimately tied to ours?

Still, New York City’s undesirables do not end with billionaires. Zohran Mamdani sees white people. (They’re everywhere.)

Welker confronted the Democrat state rep with a racially charged statement on his website: “Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.”

Why bring up skin color?

The democratic socialist assured his policy is “not driven by race,” adding, “It is not to work backwards from a racial assessment of neighborhoods or our city.”

Of course, that “racial assessment” appears to be precisely what he’s working from.

Mamdani was also questioned about the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which he declined to condemn. It looks like his intifada will be against billionaires and white people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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