Mayor Mamdani, Sounds Good

At his inauguration, he sets the right tone, promising higher taxes on multi-millionaires and stating that they are the reason that the city is too expensive for ordinary people.

As I have stated before, Mamdani's first step shjould be to go after moles who will act against him in the party establishment and city bureaucracy, who will continually try to subvert him and his agenda.

This doesn't mean firing necessarily, a public close watch will do.

Still this is a good day for New York City. 

Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, is pressing ahead with plans for higher taxes on millionaires, brushing off warnings they will trigger an exodus of the wealthy from America’s financial capital.

Dean Fuleihan, incoming deputy mayor, acknowledged “new revenues” would be required to balance New York’s budget and deliver on Mamdani’s expensive election promises. But he dismissed fears that rich people would turn their backs on the city in protest at a potentially higher tax burden.

“The people who are leaving are those who can’t afford New York, not the millionaire class,” Fuleihan told the Financial Times. Most people understood that addressing its affordability crisis was “necessary for the business and the success of New York”, he added.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, was sworn in as New York’s first Muslim mayor at a closed-door ceremony in a disused subway station just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, marking the climax of a stunning rise to power that has dumbfounded America’s political establishment.

………

He has pledged to raise the city’s personal income tax rate on annual earnings greater than $1mn by 2 percentage points to about 5.9 per cent and increase the top corporate tax from 7.25 per cent to 11.5 per cent — matching the rate in neighbouring New Jersey.

The extra revenues would pay for an ambitious social programme that includes free universal child care — expected to cost $6bn a year — as well as free buses, state-owned grocery stores and the construction of 200,000 affordable housing units over the next 10 years.

However, any revenue-raising proposals will encounter resistance in the New York assembly in Albany. Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who is up for re-election this year, has said she is opposed to raising personal income taxes.

Hochul is, as always, full of crap.

Her concerns about winning conservative suburban voters is bullshit.

These are tax increases on people who live in the city.  Suburban voters do not care about this shit.

Today in Socialism

When your water company is unable and unwilling to provide drinkable water to your community, it's time to make the water system publicly owned.

At least that's the solution that they came up with in Texas.

Wut?  In Texas?

I am sure that somewhere Marx is smiling.  If not Karl, then definitely Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo:

The Beastie Boys said it. “You gotta fight for your right to party.” And in the U.S. in 2023, many communities have to fight for their right to clean water.

Meet the South Plains Water Supply Corporation. A project created by the people for the people.

“No Texan should pay for water they can’t drink,” their website states.

The water in four unincorporated communities near Lubbock, Texas, has been undrinkable for years, according to residents, who have relied on bottled water.

Instead of waiting for someone to come save them, they decided to create their own water utility with the hopes that it can help them apply for more than $3 million in state grants to improve their water infrastructure.

I did not expect an outbreak of public ownership of utilities in Texas, though it is more likely in West Texas than it would be elsewhere.