The government they deserve.

AP Photo/Andres Kudacki

We get the government we deserve, they say. If that’s true, the citizens of New York City are about to get the government they deserve – right between the eyes.

Not that long ago the election of a radical, avowed socialist like Zohran Mamdani to the mayoralty of the nation’s largest city was unthinkable. That it actually happened in the financial capital of the world is simply astounding.

Far left politics aside, it is simultaneously astonishing and horrifying that a person with a resume that will fit comfortably on one side of a cocktail napkin is now in charge of a city of 300,000 employees, a budget of $120 billion and responsibility for the safety and welfare of more than eight million souls.

And when I say “far-left politics,” I’m not talking about him being incrementally to the left of a traditional liberal Democrat. It’s much bigger than that. Zohran Mamdani openly and proudly rejects the very core principles of the most successful nation in history.

He wants to abolish private property, calling it an instrument of white supremacy.” Toward that end, he wants to “decommodify” housing. That’s radical politician speak for “make all housing public housing.” On the way to doing that he intends to freeze rents on about half the rental units in the city. With landlords thus deprived of the cash flow they need to maintain their buildings, New York’s already strained housing market will become orders of magnitude worse.

He wants free public transportation, free universal childcare, and free universal health care. If he gets his wish, childcare, health care and room on the bus – already in short supply – will all become even more out of reach for the poor people that Mamdani purports to help.

He’s also – in keeping with the great traditions of leftism – a raging hypocrite. Though he attended an elite, private university, he wants to abolish the talented and gifted programs in New York public schools in the name of “equity.” Though he believes that healthcare, childcare, education and transportation should all be free, his Tuesday night victory party featured a cash bar.

Mamdani is a card-carrying police hater. He is on record calling them “racist” and “anti-queer.” Among his police “reforms” are plans to order the NYPD to stop answering domestic disturbance calls and to stop arresting shoplifters. So much for the single mother beset by a drunken, abusive boyfriend or the minority-owned businesses that once thrived at street level all over the city.

He wants to thin the ranks and slash the budget of the NYPD, even as he is protected by a personal security detail. Safety for me, but not for thee.

Steeped as he is in his faculty lounge-inspired world view, Mamdani takes for granted the free-market plenitude that affords him his economic and social conceits. He acts as if New York City’s prior economic successes – the very successes that provide a thin veneer of plausibility to his fantasies – are guaranteed by nature.

He and those who voted for him are about to come to the bitter realization that they’re not.

Paul Gleiser

Paul L. Gleiser is president of ATW Media, LLC, licensee of radio stations KTBB 97.5 FM/AM600, 92.1 The TEAM FM in Tyler-Longview, Texas.

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4 Responses

  1. Mike says:

    Everyone needs to read this little book on Marxism and revolution called, “The Coming Insurrection” if they really want to know what is happening in America. We are under siege by forces that we are the average citizen; especially the really ignorant ones, cannot comprehend. We are in a war with a cancer that hides behind the Constitution while doing all in their power to destroy it.
    ISIS used this books’ strategy when they took over that huge chunk of Syria and Iraq. On page 110 the title of the chapter is, “Remove All Obstacles, One by One”. This is exactly their goal. Take over one neighborhood, one town, one county or parish, and eventually, one state. They talk about rage and politics being inseparable. These people are dangerous and a cancer on our way of life. They hate MAGA and anyone associated with it and they hate the USA as it stands today. This last election WAS the most important temporarily. The Mid-terms will be just as important if not more if the Republicans lose the House. We are at war folks; with a cancer so evil it cares not about us or anything remotely about our way of life. These people are determined to destroy America, one neighborhood, one city, one county, one State at a time. They are well underway.

  2. Pete Faz says:

    So happy I don’t live in the northest “Commie corridor “

  3. richard kaufman says:

    “New York, New York, a helluva town!…”

    When Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the lyrics for the Broadway musical, “On the Town”, I don’t think they ever would have imagined that the word “hell” would someday actually apply to their beloved city. With the new mayor, this is about to become a tragic reality. The despots, tyrants, and Socialist maniacs of history are looking up (yes, not down) from their eternal homes, and are grinning and wringing their hands with despicable joy as they celebrate a victory for the “dark side”, aka the new mayor of New York. It is, indeed, about to become one hell of a town.

  4. One year is a long way off. If he is planning to write his memoirs, he should get a contract as soon as possible.

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