Tag Archives: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Why We Need To Protect Property Rights

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In 2010, I posted an article about the relationship between property ownership and the wealth of a country. The article essentially said that countries that supported private property ownership tended to be more wealthy than countries that did not. People who own things take better care of them, and property ownership is a way to pass wealth down to the next generation. As someone said–“You don’t wash a rented car.” Unfortunately, Mayor Mamdani of New York City is not aware of the relationship between property ownership and wealth.

On Wednesday, Hot Air posted an article about Mayor Mamdani’s quest to end private property. The post includes the following X post:

?ABSOLUTELY HISTORIC: 

Mayor Mamdani just unveiled his “Block by Block” housing plan to build and preserve HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of affordable homes across New York City.

The plan includes 200,000 new affordable rent-stabilized homes, billions for NYCHA repairs, stronger tenant protections, and a massive crackdown on slumlords.

“When New Yorkers can afford a home, they can afford to dream.”

This is the LARGEST municipal housing transformation proposal in modern NYC history.

Sounds good, but let’s look at the details. Notice that the homes he is talking about are rent-stabilized–not privately owned!

The article notes:

His headline program will be the new public housing projects, which everybody knows will be models of cleanliness, civility, and livability. 

Right? 

But those are just the tip of the iceberg, and not remotely the point of his program. More city-run housing units, in a city where the government is already the biggest slumlord and abuser of tenants in the country, are just more of the same failed welfare-state policies that have been around for decades. 

Mamdani has bigger plans, as he hinted at in his campaign, and confirmed with his appointment of communist nepo-baby Cea Weaver. 

Cea Weaver doesn’t believe in private property and wants homeownership eliminated, and Mamdani has a plan to begin this path through increased regulation of “slumlords.”

A “slumlord” is basically anybody who gets complaints from tenants, and it is mighty easy to organize tenants to complain about their landlords, especially when you create NGOs to organize them to do so.

The goal is to rack up complaints, charge huge fines, and foreclose on landlords who cannot afford to pay for all the fines.

…You see the strategy? It’s actually quite genius, if you want to implement communism in a society where doing so is especially difficult. Rather than putting everybody you dislike against the wall, you pile up the regulations, selectively enforce them against chosen targets, seize the property, and hand it over to government-approved groups and individuals. 

Hopefully this plan will be before a court soon and will make its way to the Supreme Court. This is a direct attack on private property ownership.

About That New York City Budget Deficit…

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New York City Mayor Mamdani has claimed that he has solved New York City’s budget problem without raising taxes. Great! But let’s look at the small print.

On May 15th, Townhall reported:

Being a socialist means never having to understand how things in the real world work. That includes math, apparently, as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrated yesterday. He announced he’d managed to miraculously close the city’s gaping budget deficit simply by “taxing the rich” and not cutting services.

That’s a lie, of course. The deficit was closed by delaying city contributions to the pension fun (good luck in retirement, city workers!) and a massive taxpayer bailout from Albany. That means Mamdani got the money from working class New Yorkers, and not “the rich.”

But his socialist supporters fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

On May 12th, The New York Post posted a list of the increased charges to average New Yorkers to help balance the budget:

As every parent of a teenager has stated at least once, “Money does not grow on trees.” Socialism is expensive.

The New York Post notes:

The Department of Veterans’ Services is also ready to slash unspecified veteran events to save a measly $60,000, and Sanitation is expecting to cancel a battery disposal program to the tune of $353,000.

Under the “savings” plan, officials merely re-estimated revenue they believed would be more accurate, including counting on millions of dollars more for handgun licenses, permit applications to the Landmark Preservation Commission and Taxi and Limousine Commission license renewal fees.

The lion’s share of savings stems from the Department of Education, leaning heavily on vaguely defined “cost containment.”

About $149.5 million this fiscal year is expected to be saved from “improved financial controls,” while an eye-popping $922 million would be saved next year, which would be driven by “improved financial control,” including $30.3 million in procurement “reform.”

Mamdani, during a Tuesday press conference announcing his first budget, insisted his team searched “for every efficiency and savings we can find.”

“It is evidence of a new era of government in our city, one that can balance both ambition and fiscal responsibility, one that can invest in housing, child care, libraries, parks, schools and climate resiliency, while also cutting waste and finding efficiencies,” he said.

I just hope that when Mayor Mamdani goes to President Trump for a bailout, President Trump reacts the same way President Ford did when New York City asked for a bailout in 1975. President Ford said that while there might be risk and some temporary fluctuations in the financial markets, the greater risk to the American people was “provid[ing] a Federal blank check for the leaders of New York City” and not pushing for a “long-run solution to the city’s problems.”

I guess New York City is still looking for that long-run solution.

The Staggering Cost Of Free Stuff

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On Monday, The New York Post posted an article about New York City’s first city-owned grocery store.

The article reports:

Zo’s cheap groceries will cost taxpayers a pretty penny.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first-unveiled city-owned grocery store will cost a staggering $30 million to build from the ground up at East Harlem’s longstanding La Marqueta, officials confirmed – as local grocers worried it’d gobble up their business.

The new grocery at the  longstanding city-owned La Marqueta marketplace will run with a yet-to-be-picked operator reaping the benefits of a rent- and tax-free deal, City Hall officials told The Post on Monday.

Mamdani envisions that the low-cost deal — which he anounced during a Sunday celebration of his first 100 days in office -– will allow the grocery’s operator to pass on savings to hardscrabble New Yorkers reeling from foodstuff sticker shock, but neighboring grocer Abdul Shaher had doubts about its efficiency based on the exorbitant $30 million upfront cost.

“How can they manage something like that? A small supermarket?” said Shaher, who owns and manages Healthy Choice near La Marqueta, laughing with disbelief.

The article notes:

Opening five city-owned grocery stores in each borough was one of Mamdani’s marquee affordability promises during his successful run for mayor.

His proposal drew dire warnings of “Soviet”-style markets forcing private businesses to shutter, with billionaire owner John Catsimatidis threatening to close or sell his Gristedes chain if Mamdani was elected.

Other critics argued that municipal markets in other places – notably a barren city-owned grocery in Kansas City, Missouri – had struggled and closed.

An undaunted Mamdani pointed to toward several successful government-owned groceries, such as one in St. Paul, Kansas, a community of roughly 600 people.

New York City arguably has a similar effort already in effect: six public retail markets, including La Marqueta.

When the privately-owned grocery stores and markets leave New York City because they can’t compete with the city-owned grocery, that will be one more section of the tax base that New York City loses. At one point all businesses will leave the city due to the cost of doing business. How long will it take for the voters to wake up? Will they wake up before the city fails?

The Bloom Is Off The Rose

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What approval ratings indicate is subject to debate, but it’s interesting to see how some elected officials’ poll numbers have changed since they were elected. Zohran Mandani was elected with about 50 percent of the vote. He currently has a 47-35% favorability rating. It should also be noted that New York voters support raising personal income taxes on New York City residents who make at least $1 million by a 54-29% margin. (source here). The favorability ratings for Abigail Spanberger have also dropped.

On Tuesday, Townhall reported:

Well… well… well, Abigail Spanberger lied. She’s a Democrat. You don’t need to convince me that she was bad news. I didn’t vote for her, but many Virginians did. She won by a 15-point landslide in the 2025 elections, which also saw a total lunatic, who wishes death upon his political rivals and their families, rise to the attorney general’s office. People in this state are idiots.

So, she campaigned as a centrist when we all knew she was a radical leftist, and then her party introduced an avalanche of tax hikes and other nonsense. The result: a landslide win turned into an approval rating that’s in the 40s a few months into her term (via WaPo): 

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s approval rating stands at 47 percent two months into the Democrat’s term, with 46 percent of voters disapproving and 7 percent expressing no opinion in a Washington Post-Schar School poll.

Spanberger won in a 15-point landslide last year after touting her reputation for bipartisanship built on three terms representing a conservative-leaning district in Congress. But her current ratings reflect sharp polarization among Virginia voters in their views of the state’s first female governor.

Nothing she has done should come as a surprise. In the past ten years, Democrats have made no secret of who they are–open borders, higher taxes, political redistricting, ignoring the Second Amendment, etc. I just hope Virginia can survive four years of Governor Spanberger. It is good news that in Virginia Governors cannot serve consecutive terms, so even if the voters love her, she cannot run for re-election in 2029.

When Things Aren’t Going Your Way, Just Change The Way You Report Them

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On Sunday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about a change in the way New York City reports hate crime data.

The article reports:

Hateful antisemitic incidents skyrocketed 182% across the Big Apple in January compared to a year ago, even as other crimes such as murders and shootings reached record lows, according to NYPD data.

There were 31 hate crimes against Jewish people reported in the first month of 2026, which is 20 more than the same time last year, the startling stats show.

…The number of bias incidents investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force increased by 152% (58 vs. 23). Specifically, anti-Jewish hate crimes increased by 182% (31 vs. 11), which accounted for more than half of all the hate crime incidents in January.

So what is the city’s response? They are changing the way they report the crimes.

The article reports:

It was yet more proof that Mamdani’s anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, antisemitic rhetoric from his days as a New York Assemblyman and then candidate for mayor had emboldened like-minded individuals in the city at a time tensions between Jewish critics and the Democratic Socialist mayor were already rising.

Fast forward a month, and the NYPD has conveniently announced that they are now going to report on hate crime stats differently:

Previously, the department reported alleged hate crimes that were still under review. The NYPD will now report hate crimes that have been investigated and officially confirmed as such by the Hate Crimes Task Force. This updated methodology will provide a more accurate representation of confirmed hate crimes in the city. For the month of February, the NYPD recorded 38 hate crimes.

It’s a move that was immediately criticized by hate crime experts who say the new way of reporting the data could skew the true picture:

“It would be erroneous to consider that’s a drop in hate crimes,” said Frank Pezzella, a professor at John Jay College and author of the book “The Measurement of Hate Crimes in America.”

When you don’t like the numbers, change the way you report them!

The Camel’s Nose Is Under The Tent

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about some of the changes Mayor Mamdani is making to New York City law.

The article reports:

At New York City’s Interfaith Breakfast last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not merely criticize federal immigration enforcement — he reframed it as a religious and moral transgression. Invoking the Islamic doctrine of hijra, he urged New Yorkers to “stand alongside the stranger” in permanent, unqualified solidarity, elevating prophetic example above constitutional sovereignty. 

“Islam [is] a religion built upon a narrative of migration,” Mamdani declared. “The story of the Hijra reminds us that Prophet Muhammad … was a stranger too, who fled Mecca and was welcomed in Medina.” He then universalized the narrative into a binding civic command: “The obligation is upon us all … to look out for the stranger.” 

I have no problem looking out for the stranger who came to America legally and has committed any crimes.

The article notes:

In this framework, federal enforcement is not lawful authority but cruelty. Immigration officers become “masked agents, paid by our own tax dollars,” who “violate the Constitution and visit terror upon our neighbors.”  

“If these are not attacks upon the stranger among us, what is?” Mamdani asked. “There is no reforming something so rotten and base.” 

This is an inversion of moral authority. 

Mass migration is framed as a moral and civilizational imperative, demanding compassion and openness, while serious pushback on enforcement is recast as intolerant, unjust, or even xenophobic. This framing mirrors elements of the Muslim Brotherhood’s doctrine of tamkeen (institutional entrenchment) outlined in strategic writings such as the 1991 Explanatory Memorandum and the 1982 Project, which describe a phased civilizational strategy built on population presence, parallel institutions, resistance to full assimilation, and long-term influence over policy, law, and public narrative.  

The article concludes:

Mamdani’s speech illustrates that process in motion. The same pattern produced Europe’s parallel societies and no-go zones, where enforcement became politically untouchable. It is now visible in American cities, where sanctuary expansion renders borders symbolic and law selectively optional.

This is not compassion. It is the systematic replacement of citizenship with dependency, sovereignty with moral coercion, and a nation bound by law with tribes bound by grievance — abandoning the Naturalization Oath’s demand for “true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution.

Someone who supports Sharia Law cannot have an allegiance to the U.S. Constitution–the two legal codes conflict. There is also the issue of taqiyya which essentially says that is is permissible under Islam to lie to an infidel in order to advance the cause of Islam.

Wake up, America!

It Will Be Interesting To See The Consequences Of This

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about one aspect of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordability agenda.

The article reports:

The “affordability” agenda of New York City’s new mayor apparently includes nurses getting paid more than $200,000 a year.

Mamdani showed up this week at an event to support striking members of the New York State Nurses Association, who are participating in what the union characterizes as “the largest nurse strike” in the history of New York City. The union says nearly 15,000 nurses have gone out at Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian, and Montefiore hospitals. Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), a frequent Mamdani wingman, also turned up; the Associated Press quoted Sanders as saying, “The people of this country are sick and tired of the greed in this health care industry.”

This is what happens when you elect someone with no business experience or knowledge of economics. The greed in the health care industry is not going to be helped by paying nurses $200,000 a year. In fact, paying nurses $200,000 a year is only going to make healthcare more expensive. If you want to bring down the cost of healthcare, the first think you need to do is get the government out of it. Other than licensing hospitals and health care workers, they need to stay away. It has been government subsides to health insurance companies and frivolous lawsuits that have caused to price of healthcare and health insurance to skyrocket.

According to health system tracker:

Since 2000, the price of medical care, including services provided as well as insurance, drugs, and medical equipment, has increased by 121.3%. In contrast, prices for all consumer goods and services rose by 86.1% in the same period. 

The article at The Washington Free Beacon concludes:

One irony is that if the nurses get what they are asking for, they eventually may qualify as “rich” for the purposes of New York taxing them to oblivion. The New York City top marginal income tax rate of 3.876 percent kicks in for married-filing-jointly filers at $90,000, and the New York State individual income tax rate for single filers in 2025 has an increase at the $215,400 a year mark to 6.85% from 6 percent. As Hammond drily observed, eventually nurses, or two-nurse households, might find themselves hit by New York’s millionaires tax. That is, if they don’t join some of the hospital trustees and decamp to lower-tax, lower-health-care-cost destinations, such as Florida.

New York City is going to have an interesting year.

An Indication Of Things To Come?

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Elections have consequences. Unfortunately, not all of those consequences are good. New York City is experiencing some of the consequences of electing a Mayor with little business experience or understanding of economics.

On Monday, The Epoch Times reported:

President Donald Trump said on Jan. 19 that building a New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Dallas would be detrimental to New York and pose a big test for newly elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the NYSE, announced in February 2025 that it would launch NYSE Texas, a fully electronic equities exchange based in Dallas, pending regulatory filings. As part of the move, NYSE Chicago was reincorporated in Texas and renamed as NYSE Texas, allowing companies to list their securities on NYSE Texas.

NYSE Texas began operations in March 2025, and Trump Media & Technology Group was the first company to list on the Dallas-based exchange and hold a dual listing, according to a company statement.

“Building a ‘New York Stock Exchange’ in Dallas is an unbelievably bad thing for New York,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “I can’t believe they would let this happen.”

What would be the economic impact on New York City if the stock exchange moved to Dallas? I have no idea, but it wouldn’t be good. How much money flows into the city from people who work for the stock exchange through property rentals, lunches, etc.?

The article notes:

NYSE Group President Lynn Martin said in February 2025 that Texas hosts the most NYSE-listed companies, representing more than $3.7 trillion of market value. The exchange views Texas as “a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere,” Martin said.

“We are delighted to expand our presence in the Lone Star State, which plays a key role in driving our U.S. economy forward,” Martin said in a statement at the time.

The article concludes:

The establishment of NYSE Texas coincided with the rise of another major exchange in the state.

TXSE Group said in January 2025 that it had filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) as a national securities exchange. The company has raised $161 million in an initial funding round and plans to begin trading early this year.

Businesses move to places that have policies that are favorable to doing business. Under Mayor Mandani, New York City may no longer fit that description.

This Is Going To Be A Problem

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On Friday, The Center Square reported the following:

New York City lost nearly 5,000 businesses early last year as employers closed their doors or left for other low-tax states, according to a new report.

The analysis comes as newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes to hike business taxes to foot the bill for his agenda.

The report, released Thursday by the Economic Development Corporation, showed more than 3,500 new businesses opened their doors in New York City during the second quarter of the fiscal year but that was offset by a loss of about 8,400 employers. That’s the weakest quarter for business formation since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report’s authors said.

The corporation’s report is the latest to highlight New York City’s shrinking business sector with employers looking to other low-tax states as Albany piles on new regulations and costs.

It also comes as Mamdani seeks to draw up support for higher taxes to pay for plans for universal childcare, tuition free college and free bus service in the city.

Mamdani’s plans call for increasing the state’s top corporate tax rate by about half, up to 11.5% from its current maximum of 7.25%, which has caused concerns among New York City’s business community. If approved, that would match the highest corporate rate in the nation next door in New Jersey. He’s also called for “wealth” tax and a $30 per hour minimum wage for the city.

His ideas will seriously damage the City’s economy.

The article concludes:

In 2023, New York’s effective state business tax rate was 5.9%, making it the ninth-highest in the nation, the report’s authors noted. The state also ranks poorly for individual income, sales, property and unemployment insurance taxes. It has the fourth highest percentage of housing-burdened households in the country, with 38.6% of households spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

Those factors have contributed to outmigration, with New York losing more domestic taxpayers than any other state from 2020 to 2022, according to the report, as residents fled to New Jersey, Florida, and other low-tax states.

The independent businessman is the backbone of the American economy. People who are self-employed don’t work a 40-hour week. People who are self-employed and successful work an 80-hour week. Logically, why would you stay in a state that takes a large percentage of what you work so hard for when you can move to a state with less regulation and lower taxes? That is what has happened in the past, and if Mayor Mamdani implements his policies, we will see more businesses leave New York City.

I’m From The Government, And I’m Here To Help

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This is an excerpt from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s speech after being sworn into office (source here):

Many of these people have been betrayed by the established order. But in our administration, their needs will be met. Their hopes and dreams and interests will be reflected transparently in government. They will shape our future.

And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, how you pray, or where you come from — the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers.

Rugged individualism is what built America. Rugged individualism is what settled and civilized the west. Collectivism almost destroyed America’s original settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth. The original charters of both settlements required collectivism. In both cases, the colonists nearly starved to death. Collectivism does not work as long as human nature exists. In Massachusetts in 1623, a decision was made to do a second planting to avoid starvation. Part of that decision was to parcel out individual lots for the planting. Before this all crops had been communal and the produce given to each according to his needs rather than according to his effort. When the individual parcels were given out, much more corn was planted, and the free market took over. The free market prevented the starvation of the Pilgrims.

In 1905 George Santayana stated, “Those who do not learn from the experience of history are doomed to repeat it.”

Recently I posted an article about the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) passed by the New York City Council (article here). Mayor Adam’s vetoed the bill on New Year’s Eve. It will be interesting to see if the bill is reintroduced, because Mayor Mamdani will sign it. The bill interferes with property owners’ ability to sell their property.

I wish New York City well, but I am seriously concerned about the future of the city.