Tag: food

“Mamdani Mart” Exposes The Inefficiency Of Socialism In One Chart

Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z New Media published the most popular charts of the week on financial markets, but the most revealing one came at the end of the note: a comparison suggesting that New York City’s first grocery store, which will soon be run by unhinged socialists, will be structurally less efficient than private-sector supermarkets.

But who cares when it’s not taxpayer monies?

According to the New York Post, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed city-owned grocery store in East Harlem would require roughly $30 million in taxpayer funding.

At just 9,000 square feet, the project implies a construction cost of about $3,000 per square foot – an exceptionally and alarmingly high number by grocery industry standards. 

From an economic standpoint, the “Mamdani Mart” underscores a familiar pattern: state-directed supermarkets often fail to achieve the cost discipline, operational efficiency, and scale seen in private-sector chains.

This story has played out time and again in the U.S., as unhinged left-wingers have experimented with socialism:

The end result is Cuba.

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Calls for Reparations and Claims Restaurants Are Tied to Slavery in Bizarre Rant 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is currently embroiled in some sort of feud with the city council over a raise for tipped workers and it’s not going the way he wants so he is lashing out.

This week, while he was remarking on the situation, he suddenly veered into the topic of reparations and then claimed that the restaurant industry has ties to slavery.

How was this man elected mayor of a major city? It really seems like there’s something wrong with him.

FOX News reports:

Chicago mayor links restaurant industry to ‘slavery’ as tipped wage fight intensifies

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson linked the restaurant industry to “slavery” Wednesday as he defended his push to eliminate the tipped wage, doubling down after surviving a City Council effort to block the policy.

Johnson’s remarks came after the Chicago City Council failed to override his veto of a measure that would have halted the city’s phaseout of the subminimum wage for tipped workers — a policy set to raise base pay to the full minimum wage by 2028 that is opposed by restaurant owners who warn it could drive up prices and cut jobs.

He called on Chicagoans to “challenge city council not to do stuff like take wages away from Black and Brown people,” saying that most workers in the service industry who rely on tips are minorities.

“You just watched the entire city council, in transparency, try to take wages away from the very people who are part of an industry that has its ties to slavery is hiding from that,” Johnson said. “I am boldly declaring that we need reparations in this city, and that’s why I’m funding it.”

What is he even talking about?

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UNHINGED: Purple-Haired Radical Rosa DeLauro Has Total MELTDOWN Over Raw Milk

Far-left Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the same purple-haired radical we’ve repeatedly exposed for her unhinged public meltdowns, completely lost it Thursday during a House hearing while grilling HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over Americans’ right to drink raw milk.

DeLauro demanded that RFK Jr. publicly condemn raw milk as “dangerous” and essentially toe the corporate line pushed by Big Pharma and pasteurized milk lobbyists. When Kennedy refused to play along with the fearmongering, the 83-year-old Connecticut congresswoman went full meltdown mode.

“You are the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Is there not some moral responsibility or compunction to say, ‘Don’t drink raw milk, don’t do that, because it’s unpasteurized and can cause serious harm to your health?’ Is that not something you view as your responsibility?

“If I were the head of HHS, I would by God say don’t take raw milk! It is dangerous to your health and if you can’t say that well maybe there are some other conclusions that can be drawn!” DeLauro said.

Kennedy told lawmakers that agencies should “inform the public” and “let people make a choice,” rather than dictate behavior outright.

This is the same Rosa DeLauro whom The Gateway Pundit previously reported on when RFK Jr. absolutely buried the purple-haired Democrat back in May 2025 during his first major HHS hearing. She tried to lecture him then too, and got completely owned.

The radical left, Big Pharma, and the corporate food cartel hate raw milk because it represents everything they despise: freedom, tradition, local farms, and real nutrition that doesn’t come in a plastic-wrapped, government-approved package.

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NYC Mayor Mamdani’s City-Run Grocery Plan Is Revealed, and the Receipts Already Make No Sense

The old maxim when pointing out failed Marxism attempts is the wan excuse that “True Socialism has not been tried yet!” Somehow, over the generations, every attempt at implementing Socialist/Marxist/Communist policy managed to get it wrong. In those cases where countries retain this leadership for decades (we are looking at you, Cuba), they never make the adjustments to “proper” socialism to fix things, remaining in their economic quagmire.

Yet we still get these insistent attempts at foisting this doomed leadership on a populace, because those were incorrect applications, according to the studied eggheads promoting the political system, while comfortably ensconced in capitalist countries. It seems revealing that these experts never make the trek to these nations to fix the problem, despite professing to have all the answers, like they will translate the cartoon instructions on an IKEA bookshelf that is listing like the Living Room Library of Pisa.

And this brings us to The Stale Apple, as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced his plan to fulfill his campaign promise to open a collection of city-run grocery stores. This alone is a surprise, after he tossed aside his other pledged Utopian solutions, like the mobile homeless shelters – wait, sorry: “Free public transportation”. 

This pie-in-the-sky (but not on the shelves) idea is meant to supply city denizens with affordable and plentiful grocery items, all under the benevolent supply of the city government. Already you see the issue when applying the professionalism and efficiency of the DMV offices to the food supply, but Mamdani came out Sunday to boast about his achievements after 100 days in office, and he announced his plan for the NYC grocery project.

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Europe vs. Russia in a War: Food, Energy, and Logistics Favor Russia

A companion analysis I conducted for The Gateway Pundit examined European versus Russian military capabilities without U.S. support, focusing on direct military hardware such as tanks, aircraft, carriers, submarines, and nuclear weapons.

It found that Russia holds decisive advantages in ground-force experience, armored production, submarine power, Arctic dominance, and tactical nuclear weapons. Europe’s theoretical hardware advantages are undermined by readiness failures, fragmented command, and a complete lack of peer-level conventional warfare experience.

Raw firepower is only part of the equation. Wars are won or lost on the ability to sustain operations over time. That means keeping weapons factories running, fuel flowing, soldiers fed, and supply lines open under fire. On every one of those dimensions, Russia’s position is stronger than Europe’s. In some cases, the gap is not even close.

European defense spending has risen sharply since 2022, but remains structurally insufficient for a peer conflict. At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, allies committed to investing 5 percent of GDP by 2035, with at least 3.5 percent on core defense. Commitments and current reality remain far apart, however. Sixteen European allies barely exceed the 2 percent threshold, spending between 2 and 2.1 percent of GDP in 2025, and only Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are projected to reach 3.5 percent this year.

By contrast, Russia’s total defense spending reached RUB 6.3 percent of GDP and 32.5 percent of the federal budget.

Putin claimed in December 2025 that since February 2022, Russia increased tank production by 2.2 times, aircraft by 4.6 times, strike weapons and ammunition by 22 times, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers by 3.7 times, electronic warfare and communications equipment by 12.5 times, and rocket artillery by 9.6 times, with the defense sector now employing approximately 4.5 million people and accounting for 20 percent of all manufacturing jobs.

General Christopher Cavoli told the US Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2025 that Russia is replacing battlefield losses at an unprecedented rate due to industrial expansion and full transition to a war economy.

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Shoppers face surge in ‘dynamic pricing’ as supermarkets adopt digital technology to change grocery prices based on demand

Shoppers may face higher prices as retailers look set to use digital labels that could change the cost of products based on demand.

The Bank of England warned that these ‘market-responsive pricing tools’ will be adopted by one in three companies in the coming year, up from one in five in the year before.

These ‘dynamic prices’ will change based on algorithms and AI, with the labels adjusting to ‘demand, capacity or competitors’ prices’, according to a business survey commissioned by the Bank.

Factors that could affect these prices may take into account the weather, the time of day, and how busy the shop is. For example, if it is a hot day, then the price of sunglasses may be increased.

This is something that online retailers, like Amazon, have already adopted. Hospitality and travel businesses do much the same, with prices changing based on popularity or times of the year. 

The study then suggests that electronic labels in supermarkets could be the next frontier – something which is ‘already widespread in Europe’.

UK retail food prices are already 38 per cent higher than pre-Covid levels and experts fear further significant increases if disruption caused by the war in Iran continues.

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Soon after massive honeybee deaths, Trump moves to close the nation’s premier bee lab

Mark Welsch is no stranger to the difficulties of beekeeping.

The Omaha beekeeper has been caring for hives for the last nine years — and he understands that not every colony makes it through the cold winter months. But the winter of 2024-2025 was particularly brutal for him.

“I had 12 hives going into the winter,” Welsch said. “I lost nine of them.”

He wasn’t the only one. About 1.6 million colonies died across the U.S. between June 2024 and March 2025, according to surveys from bee research nonprofit Project Apis m.

The losses hit commercial beekeepers as well as backyard honey producers, with many losing 60% to 80% of their colonies.

“Last year there was a really swift and sudden cry for help from beekeepers,” said Danielle Downey, executive director of Project Apis m.

For decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center has been the one to answer such cries for help — a place where beekeepers turn when major disasters happen. Six months after the massive die-off, scientists from the USDA facility identified a likely cause: viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites. But now, the Trump administration plans to close the research lab, leaving beekeepers to question the future of federal research.

‘A really deep history’

The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center has been the site of major developments in food and farm research in its 100-plus-year history. The Thanksgiving turkey was developed at Beltsville, as well as the first methods used to keep butter cold and fresh. Researchers there linked trans fat consumption to increased cholesterol and uncovered the smallest known plant disease agent.

The facility opened in 1910 as the “Government Farm,” but the history of its bee research laboratory begins earlier. Federal honeybee research in the Washington, D.C. area started in 1891, and the lab was relocated multiple times before permanently landing at Beltsville in 1939.

“There’s a really deep history of that station for supporting U.S. agriculture that’s unique,” Downey said.

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Iran War Hikes Fertilizer Prices, Squeezing Farmers in Planting Season

Much of the economic focus during the war in Iran has been on oil and gas supplies, but the interruption of an essential byproduct, fertilizer, may soon affect farmers as planting season begins.

Fertilizer that farmers use in crop production is derived from natural gas or is processed using natural gas.

About 30 percent of the world’s fertilizer product passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has constricted, according to an April 1 report by the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The United Nations reports that the rate of shipping through the strait has fallen to fewer than 10 ships daily from an average of more than 100.

Consequently, over the past month, prices rose sharply for five of the eight major fertilizer types, according to DTN, an agriculture data analytics firm. Prices for urea were up by 35 percent over the past month, jumping from $677 per ton to $826 per ton in the past week alone, and anhydrous ammonia and UAN32 fertilizers were both up by 20 percent over the previous month.

“The world is now learning just how important the Strait of Hormuz is,” Caleb Jasso, a policy expert at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Epoch Times. “A great deal of trade of all kinds goes through that choke point, including a very sizable portion of the fertilizer market for the world.”

Gulf States a Critical Source

The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that 36 percent of all global urea exports and about 29 percent of global ammonia exports are shipped through the strait, as well as 26 percent of diammonium phosphate fertilizer and 13 percent of monoammonium phosphate fertilizer.

“A large share of globally traded urea, ammonia, sulfur, and [liquefied natural gas-linked] feedstock moves through the Gulf, so the war’s effect is being felt primarily through shipping disruption, marine insurance costs, and vessel delays, rather than outright destruction of production facilities,” Peter Earle, senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

“The conflict is coming at nearly the worst possible time, the spring planting season, when Corn Belt growers are locking in nitrogen purchases for the highest-input crop in the U.S. agricultural system. If the bottleneck were to persist for several months, a likely outcome would include renewed food inflation pressure in the second half of the year, especially in protein-heavy and grain-based categories.”

Cyndie Shearing, American Farm Bureau Federation communications director, warned that “unless the delivery of critical farm inputs such as urea, ammonia, nitrogen, phosphate, and sulfur-based products is strategically prioritized, the U.S. risks a shortfall in crops.” She called the supply interruptions “a threat to [U.S.] food security—and by extension … national security.”

American farmers are struggling with shrinking margins and say that fertilizer prices were already rising before the Iran war started, with many blaming what they say is a “duopoly” in the fertilizer supply market.

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Maine Lobsterman Asks the Supreme Court To Strike Down a Rule Allowing the Government To Track His Boat 24/7

In March 2022, a rule was finalized requiring all federally permitted lobster vessels in 10 East Coast states to install GPS tracking. Now one lobsterman is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the regulation.

Last week, Frank Thompson, a fifth-generation Maine lobsterman, filed a petition to the Supreme Court challenging a rule set by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). This rule required lobstermen to install a GPS device on their boats, which tracks and sends locations on a minute-by-minute basis to government agencies—even when the boat is being used recreationally. The systems—which are Bluetooth compatible and can collect audio—also record and update the boat’s location every six hours when it is docked or moored. Failing to comply with the rule could lead to fines, forfeiture of fishing licenses, jail time, and even a federal moratorium on lobstering in noncompliant states.

The rule was pitched as a way to save lobstermen time. Rather than using written logs, the GPS device would automatically track their day. It was also proposed to better track and reduce the environmental impact of the industry. However, these fishermen are already ecologically conscious because their livelihood depends on it. The industry has received praise from the state’s fishing commissioner for being a “model of conservation.”

Whatever the motivation, fishermen say the rule violates their constitutional rights. In 2024, Thompson challenged the regulation in federal court, arguing that it violated his Fourth Amendment right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Both the district court and appeals court sided with the government, saying that since lobstering was considered a “closely regulated” industry, it did not enjoy the same constitutional protections from warrantless searches that less-regulated businesses enjoy.

But “digital surveillance without a warrant is unconstitutional—regardless of industry,” says the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public-interest law firm that is representing Thompson. “The government cannot exclude licensed professions from the Fourth Amendment’s protections and compel lobstermen to submit to government trespass and around-the-clock” federal surveillance.

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Minnesota Judge Hands Somali Fraudster Just 6 Months After $500K Theft in Child Food Scam

A fraudster in the massive “Feeding Our Future” scandal has received just six months in jail after stealing nearly half a million dollars in taxpayer money meant for children.

Zamzam Jama was sentenced to six months behind bars and ordered to repay $491,000 for her role in the scheme.

The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel, who was somehow appointed by President Trump back in 2018, one day after a co-conspirator received only a one-year term.

Brasel has previously ruled in favor of mail-in voting and counting ballots days or even weeks after an election has concluded. Mail-in ballots are the most common method that Democrats use to cheat.

The case involves one of the largest fraud operations in recent U.S. history.

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