Tag Archives: Curtis Sliwa

Destroying Equal Opportunity

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On Thursday, The New York Post reported that Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has said that he will phase out the gifted and talented programs in the New York City schools.

The article reports:

Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said Thursday he would eliminate the accelerated learning program at the kindergarten level, something that’s likely to anger parents, who have been passionately divided on the issue.

The gifted classes would remain active through the school year, but would no longer be available next fall, he said.

Critics have attacked the coveted learning model as racist due to the higher number of white and Asian students that gain entry through the exam.

Maybe it’s time to examine the cultural factors behind the fact that white and Asian students do better on the exam. Let’s look at family structure, family discipline, parental involvement in a child’s education, etc. I remember one of my daughter’s classmates in Massachusetts who began preparing for the SAT’s in seventh or eighth grade. I think that’s a bit excessive, but the child did very well.

The article notes:

Danyela Souza, vice president of Community Education Council 2 in Manhattan, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank who tracks education, flunked the plan, saying it could spark an exodus from the city public school system.

“Mamdani is eliminating opportunities for low and middle income students to access an advanced education,” Souza, a public school parent, told The Post.

The article concludes:

“Parents are going to look to private schools or charter schools as an option or they’re going to move out of the city. You have one chance to educate your child.”

Mamdani’s two general election opponents — independent candidate Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, also slammed his plan.

“Eliminating opportunities for excellence doesn’t help underserved kids, it perpetuates the problem. It creates a false equality, by eliminating any opportunity to excel,” Cuomo said.

“The Democratic ideal has always been about providing more opportunities for historically marginalized students to access these programs—not eliminating academic excellence altogether.”

Sliwas, during a press event Thursday, said, “I would not only maintain the gifted and talented as I saw up close and personal, I would expand it.”

He noted that Mamdani did “outstandingly well” at Bronx HS of Science, where students need strong scores on a single-test exam to get in.

“So he benefited from all that, but he wants to deprive young children who need advanced courses,” Sliwa said.

Great schools for me, but not for thee.

Did He Really Say That?

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On Monday, The Daily Caller posted an article about some of the recent comments made by New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

The article reports:

Republican strategist Scott Jennings showed receipts after calling out CNN host Omar Jiminez and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona on Sunday, saying they were ignoring the race-based tax plan that Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani of New York City placed in his platform.

Mamdani called for increasing taxes on predominantly white neighborhoods of New York during his campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Democratic Mayor Eric Adams of New York City. Jennings accused Jiminez, who described the 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as “mostly peaceful,” of using a “playbook” similar to that of former Vice President Kamala Harris while later dropping receipts to disprove his claim.

…Cardona chimed in as Jiminez was disputing Jennings’ statements during the exchange.

“He literally wrote it in a statement, Omar! He literally wrote it down! Are you letting him get off the hook? Why?” an incredulous Jennings asked Jiminez, who responded, “No, I’m saying I am saying that he said that, but not on the basis of race specifically. I’m not saying he didn’t say that.”

“He did say that!” Jennings shot back.

The article concludes:

Jennings posted a screenshot from Mamdani’s campaign site targeting “whiter neighborhoods” on X Sunday after the exchange with Jiminez.

“Feel the need to show the receipts here,” Jennings said, adding screenshots of headlines from the Jerusalem Post and New York Post about Mamdani’s desire to target certain neighborhoods.

It is going to be interesting to see if the people of New York City elect him. If former governor Cuomo, Eric Adams, and Curtis Sliwa all stay in the race, there is a good chance that Mamdani will win.

New York City’s Future Depends On The Mayoral Election

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On Saturday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about the recent Democrat primary election in New York City. New York City at various times has been a wonderful city to visit. I went to school there back in the age of dinosaurs, and I really enjoyed the art, the museums, the concerts, and the great places to eat. It was a wonderful place in the 1960’s and the late 1990’s. Right now the city is headed in a really scary direction.

New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has won the Democrat primary in the Mayor’s race. He is a socialist calling for a global intifada.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines intifada as follows:

A protracted grassroots campaign of protest and sometimes violent resistance against perceived oppression or military occupation, especially either of two uprisings among Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the first beginning in 1987 and the second in 2000, in protest against Israeli occupation of these territories.

Is that really what New Yorkers want?

The election was held using ranked-choice voting, which may be part of the problem.

The article notes that former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has decided to stay in the race. Eric Adams has also decided to stay in the race. Obviously, both of these men staying in the race will split the opposition against Zohran Mamdani. Curtis Sliwa is running for Mayor on the Republican ticket, but New York City has not had a Republican Mayor since Rudy Giuliani was elected in 1994.

The article at Legal Insurrection concludes:

While it’s hard to predict with any degree of certainty how this ultimately will play out, the first post-mayoral primary poll is out and shows Cuomo and Mamdani both with equal levels of support, and Adams trailing badly:

As speculation swirls over whether former [governor] Cuomo will continue his campaign as an independent after conceding the Democratic primary to Mamdani, a new poll shows the two candidates in a statistical tie heading into November’s general election.

The polling, conducted independently by the Honan Strategy Group 48 hours after Mamdani’s stunning victory, showed both Mamdani and Cuomo garnering 39% support among likely general election voters in a five-way race between them, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, independent candidate Jim Walden and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who trailed at 13%.

…In the scenario that Cuomo does not appear on the ballot, pollsters found that Mamdani would lead Adams by 15 points.

But if Adams were to drop out, Cuomo appears to pick up the support of likely Adams voters and gains a slight edge, leading Mamdani by 4 points — just outside the poll’s margin of error of ±3.4%.

Adams officially kicked off his general election campaign Thursday.

Meanwhile–posted on Facebook by a friend:

One Possible Solution To Rising Crime On The New York City Subways

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article citing one possible solution to the increasing level of crime on the New York City Subways.

The article reports:

The Guardian Angels are resuming their patrols of the Big Apple’s subways as if it were crime-riddled Gotham in 1979, after the horrifying arson murder of a sleeping straphanger on a train last week, founder Curtis Sliwa said Sunday.

The red-beret-wearing volunteer vigilante squad is beefing up its ranks to its level 45 years ago, Sliwa said.

“We’re going to have to increase our numbers, increase the training and increase our presence as we did back in 1979,” Sliwa said at the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station in Brooklyn where the woman was killed.

Curtis Sliwa is now 70, but  he still loves his city as much as he did then. He has been a fighter for the city for a long time.

In August of 2005, The New York Times reported:

Testifying in the federal racketeering trial of John A. Gotti, Mr. Sliwa said he thought he had “hit the lottery” when he climbed into the back of the cab he had hailed near his apartment in the East Village before dawn on June 19, 1992. The driver recognized him and seemed to know that he was going to the WABC radio studios near Madison Square Garden, where he was host of a morning show. Within moments, Mr. Sliwa said, a second man popped up from under the dashboard “like a jack-in-the-box,” pointing a silver-plated pistol at his belly.

“Take this, you son of a bitch,” Mr. Sliwa recalled the gunman saying. He said he heard at least three shots, and felt blood spurting under his shirt and then searing pain in his legs, “like a knife through hot butter.”

Mr. Sliwa managed to escape the taxi and survived. Now he is back to help again.

In 1994, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton instituted what is called the Broken Windows Theory which resulted in a decrease in crime in New York City. One of my daughters was a freshman at Cooper Union in New York in 1992. The difference in the city the year she began her education there and the year she ended it was noticeable. New York City needs a mayor like Rudy Giuliani again (and the help of the Guardian Angels).