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property rights tax policy thoughtNew

Two Horrors Don’t Make It Right

Zohran Mamdani, socialism, communism, New York City

The mayor of New York City, commie Mamdani, is trying to raise more money to pay for his socialism.

One scheme is to punish owners of a second home by imposing a so-called “pied-à-terre tax,” a tax on the second residence of wealthy New Yorkers above and beyond regular property taxes.

Now, the assumption that anybody with a second home, or an expensive second home in an expensive property market, must be rolling in liquid funds is faulty. The notion that if you have more wealth than somebody else it should be taken from you? Also faulty.

The new tax bill is going to many New Yorkers with only one home. And the website set up (speaking loosely) to permit challenges of the designation of one’s home as a pied-à-terre is proving nightmarish to navigate.

One recipient of an extra-tax bill, for $43,000, is Karen Young, who has lived in her brownstone with her husband for thirty years. Two minutes of research would have prevented the mistake, she observes. “Is this a witch hunt?”

New assaults on our rights often have two parts. One part is really horrific. The other part is even more horrific in some other way. The greedy government may eventually withdraw or correct the even more horrific form of the assault; at which point everybody is relieved . . . except anyone noticing that the first form, also horrific, and serving as precedent, is still ongoing.

Was that the game plan here?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

F. Hopkinson Smith

I believe that there is something fine, some spark of good, in the lowest human being, and I want to bring out that sort of thing.

Francis Hopkinson Smith, discussing his goal in fiction writing in a New York Times interview, January 29, 1905. Smith, in addition to writing novels such as Col. Carter of Cartersville (1891) and Peter: A Novel of Which He Is Not the Hero (1908), designed the base of the Statue of Liberty, among other public projects.
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Today

A Cornerstone for a Statue

On August 5, 1884, Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor received the foundation stone for the Statue of Liberty.

One hundred years later, New York’s Masons put up a commemorative plaque that read, in part:

At this site on August 5, 1884, the cornerstone of the pedestal of the Statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” was laid with ceremony by William A. Brodie, Grand Master of Masons in the State of New York. Grand lodge members, representatives of the United States and French governments, Army and Navy officers, members of foreign legations, and distinguished citizens were present. This plaque is dedicated by the Masons of New York in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of that historic event.

The island was renamed Liberty Island, in 1956.

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Internet controversy media and media people

Zero-Evidence Zeroes

Dana Bash, RFK Jr. , Covid

“A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China,” @NPR tweeted on Friday. 

“There is zero evidence for this,” declared the radio network. “Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.”

Some scientists say this. Others — along with several U.S. intel agencies — do not. 

What does not exist? A consensus on a zoonotic origin. What we knew early on and what we learned from the Fauci diary last week demonstrates that the wet market was not the origination point, and that Fauci had to convince consulting scientists to go against the Lab Leak hypothesis.

Sad that NPR would still be cherry-picking scientists — and flat-out fibbing — to buttress the political narrative it favors.

But unsurprising.

CNN is no better. On Sunday, the egregious Dana Bash interviewed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in an utterly disgraceful way, repeatedly contradicting him with vague claims of “study after study after study” while unable to cite any specific published research. 

When RFK pointed out that the U.S. had the highest death rate from COVID, Bash claimed, “That’s not accurate because” — awkwardly long pause — “public health experts say that there is a combination of factors that went into that.”

Went into what? Oh, yes, the U.S. having the highest death rate from COVID . . . just like RFK said.

Too many journalists see themselves as defenders of some Official Story. Dana Bash is a perfect example, doing the job of factless fact-checker, Overton Window Shrinker, and censuring censor.

These days, when you hear someone say that there exists “zero evidence” for something — or imply unanimity among experts — we know they possess zero credibility.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bob Murphy

Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.

Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D., Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action (2015).
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Today

A Great Peace

On August 4, 1701, the Great Peace of Montreal was signed. The dispute was between the French and their native allies, on the one side, and the Iroquois Confederacy on the other. Well over a thousand representatives of forty nations from the Great Lakes to the Maritimes and from southern Illinois to James Bay gathered to meet the French at Montreal. Month-long ceremonies concluded with the signing of the treaty, putting an end to the Iroquois Wars.

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crime and punishment ideological culture partisanship

The Violence Is Inclusive

worried democrat, radicals, leftists, progressivism, socialism, communism

“I don’t feel safe going,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently shared about her decision to skip the Michigan Democratic Party state convention later this month. 

“I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at.”

It’s a gathering of her own political party! 

“This cannot continue, and the fact of the matter is, we have to be able to be a society where we can have intelligent discourse and debate about ideas without people being threatened,” the attorney general implored, “and certainly without people carrying out those threats.”

When people don’t feel safe, that indicates a failure of our criminal justice system. The attorney general is each state’s highest law enforcement official. So, what does it say when a state AG feels threatened? Afraid to venture out in public?

“Nessel’s declaration,” explains The Times of Israel, “comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel.”

Still, even bitter policy disagreements do not have to metastasize into hate-filled harassment . . . threats of violence . . . or worse.

“Former Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow has also acknowledged antisemitism within the Democratic Party,” the Daily Wire reports, “recounting an incident at the Democratic National Convention in which, she said, an attendee shouted an antisemitic slur at her Jewish husband while he was walking with their five-year-old daughter.”

Michigan’s hotly contested U.S. Senate Primary will end tomorrow. The fear of political violence will not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pareto

Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason. And so they look for, and always find, some theory which, a posteriori, makes their actions appear to be logical.

Vilfredo Pareto, Manual of Political Economy: A Critical and Variorum Edition (), p. 95.
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Today

Hiss, Boo

On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, testifying under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee, accused United Nations bigwig Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union.  

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Update

Zohran Mamdani, Government Grocer

“Mamdani’s City Run Grocery Stores And Their Potential Market Impact” — Nathan Goldman | Forbes | July 28, 2026 11:00 AM

As part of Mamdani’s $124.7 billion budget, starting this year, New York City will build and open five stores, one per borough. The first will open in the Bronx by the end of 2027, and a second is planned for East Harlem’s La Marqueta market by 2029.

The main feature of these stores is that a core basket of goods — including produce, dairy, bread, select meat and seafood products and about 20 other staples — will be priced 30% below typical retail values. According to The New York Times, these prices will stay locked in for a month, and non-core items will sell at a designated fair market value.

These stores can offer prices at this level because they operate with a lower cost structure. Unlike bodegas, the city-run grocery stores will not pay rent or property taxes. Government-owned property is typically tax-exempt in the same way libraries, courthouses and DMVs do not pay property tax.

This foregone tax revenue creates an inherent cost advantage relative to other grocery providers. Still, the effect on the city’s bottom line is real: The city must make up forgone revenue elsewhere or absorbed it as a cost.

“Mamdani announces 30% discount on core set of goods at NYC-owned grocery stores” — Jen Maxfield and NBC New York TV Staff | NBC New York | July 27, 2026 8:32 PM

The first NYC-owned grocery store will be open by the end of 2027. Opening stores owned by the city was one of the mayor’s signature campaign pledges. The goal is to have at least one of these city-owned grocery stores in each borough.

The city also announced they are issuing an Request for Proposal as they look for third-party grocery store operators to manage the five city-run supermarkets.

“Our vision of affordable, well-run, city-owned grocery stores can only be accomplished with experienced operators who know how to source products, stock the shelves and help answer shoppers’ questions,” Mamdani said. “Today, we are also issuing an RFP for private operators to help us with the day-to-day management of the five city-run grocery stores.”

Some local politicians say the city’s $70 million project doesn’t address the root cause of higher food prices.

“I can tell you that I could give somebody $1,000 and that’ll change them being broke for the day, but it’s not gonna change how they got broke,” said Paul Muhammad, of Community Board Five.

“Who’s Paying for the Discounts in Mamdani’s City-Run Grocery Stores?” — Meagan O’Rourke | Reason | 7.28.2026 5:27 PM

Mamdani has said that government intervention for food distribution is nothing new. On Monday, he explained that former New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was inspired to create municipally owned markets after witnessing food riots several years earlier.

“He did so because he believed in a simple definition of the task of government to make people’s lives better,” Mamdani said.

La Guardia may have been partially motivated to create municipally owned markets to make goods affordable, but Mamdani conveniently left out another part of the story. La Guardia wanted to create municipal markets (like Essex Market in the Lower East Side) to get pushcarts off the streets.

“What Mamdani Can Learn From Hugo Chávez’s Government-Run Grocery Store Debacle” — César Báez | Reason | 7.31.2026 1:40 PM

[L]ike Chávez, Mamdani will find that he can’t escape the laws of supply and demand. His evasive response to the reporter’s question suggests that he hasn’t given much thought to how the city would manage high demand for cheap groceries. One way or another, the program will require quotas. The alternative is to tolerate price-sensitive shoppers lining up outside stores to buy discount plantains.

“Zohran Mamdani Tells Jon Stewart Socialism Is Just Having a Library” — Robby Soave | Reason | 7.23.2026 4:15 PM

Now that democratic socialism is having a moment, political figures who adhere to the ideology or belong to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are fielding questions about it. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who self-identifies as a socialist, is a savvy politician, and so he quite deliberately misrepresents the definition of socialism in order to make it seem benign and unobjectionable. He is doing this frequently enough — and consistently enough — that he may be succeeding in tricking a great number of people into accepting a nonsensical, discredited, and dangerous ideology.