Tag: free stuff

The great affordability hoax

Many politicians are so superficial that they’re inclined to latch on to a popular buzzword — in droves — to sustain their power over the masses.  “Affordability” is now filling that need.  Ignorance of economic reality is sustaining this process.

There are two significant concepts that pull the rug out from under this pathetic hoax: consumer sovereignty and the principle of substitution.  Consumer sovereignty simply means that free people get to choose how they spend their money.  Necessities such as food and shelter tend to dominate these choices, but Americans, being the beneficiaries of the prosperity that comes with freedom, have room for other items in their budgets.  The principle of substitution means that a consumer gets to choose from a multiplicity of similarly priced options — that they will ultimately spend their money on.

All of this freedom, for the political world, is the problem.  People still get to live their own lives.  How anti-progressive can this be?

Harping on “affordability” is intended to lead to adopting the long worn out means for suppressing market forces known as “price controls.”  The folly of this form of demagoguery was showcased in Studs Terkel’s The Good War.  First, he provides a statement from John Kenneth Galbraith, breathlessly extolling the virtues of government-imposed price controls during the days of rationing caused by a profound national emergency.  After all, the American people still managed to survive during such trying times.

Immediately after Galbraith’s presentation, Terkel posted a statement from the humble owner of a neighborhood grocery store.  In it, he first tells of what happened to a can of pork and beans: Yes, the price of the can didn’t change.  But in the can was less pork and fewer beans, and a lot more water.  Also, since his store was closed on Sunday, black marketeers took it over to sell otherwise rationed meat.  And the line of eager customers stretched around the block.  Talk about consumer sovereignty.

To further deceive the public about affordability, the “news” media make no distinction between true inflation due to government carelessly increasing the money supply and price increases caused by shortages resulting from various causes.  The bottleneck at the Strait of Hormuz has nothing to do with public debt and deficit spending.  And yes, the bump up in petroleum has increased the cost of all forms of transportation, including produce and many other commodities being delivered to retail stores.

Now back to my original point: Leftists are confined to a pre-determined position.  This can easily be described as conformity.  Rather than be confined by the “arbitrary” dictates of reality, leftists close ranks and join in with mutual agreement.  They have become carbon copies of one another.  Their policy positions are pretty much pre-packaged — so they all seem to agree with one another on everything.  The package includes opposition to white supremacy, corporate greed, and global warming, while strenuously extolling the benefits of “affordability.”

Instead of offering commonsense solutions to obvious problems, they keep pushing free stuff and victimhood.  And guess what: It’s not working.  Beyond the devoted automatons, sentient beings are abandoning the deranged demagoguery of what used to be a sort of credible major party: the Democrats.

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Dem L.A. Mayor Karen Bass Proposes Free Teeth for Meth Addicts

Failed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has proposed a new government program for her failed city: free teeth for meth addicts, paid for by taxpayers.

Speaking at an event this week, Bass floated her latest idea to further destroy and bankrupt what was once a great city…

How many people who are unhoused that you meet have no teeth at all?” she asked. “They don’t have teeth, why? Because meth rots your teeth. You can’t succeed without teeth! So there needs to be comprehensive healthcare provided to people.”

This is like refurnishing a house that’s still on fire.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous ideas anyone has ever come up with, and she actually uses the retarded term “unhoused.”

What good does it do to fix the teeth of a meth head? Who’s going to look at a meth head’s smile and say, Please work my cash register.

And we’re not talking about a cleaning here. We’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars in dental care. Implants cost about $6000 per tooth. Extractions run around $300 per tooth. Meth heads will almost certainly require bone grafts, sinus lifts, and maybe even sedation. Are we going to trust meth heads with dentures, which are cheaper at around $5000, but likely to end up in a pawn shop or left behind in a crack house?

In my experience, you’re looking at a total cost in the range of $30,000 to $80,000, and that’s if the city pays the dentist directly, which it won’t. The whole program will be funneled through a non-profit or NGO, which will double or triple the cost to taxpayers (with sweet kickbacks to Democrats), just like Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) “free” diaper program tripled the cost of the diapers the government (i.e. taxpayers) bought.

As for “my experience,” it’s been two years and counting of paying massive dental bills out of my own pocket, just like every other law-abiding taxpayer in America.

You mean, all I have to do to get my dental bills paid is smoke meth?

Medicare doesn’t even cover dental, which means people who have worked all their lives and paid into the system do not have government help paying their dental bills. Ah, but the government will assist degenerate meth addicts.

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Gavin Newsom’s ‘Free’ Diapers Cost More Than 3 Times Costco Diapers

The “free” diapers that failed Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is handing out will cost taxpayers more than three times as much as Costco diapers.

One person who deals in baby products says it could be as high as eight to ten times as much.

Why?

Because this isn’t about giving new mothers 400 free diapers. Rather, it is about Newsom using a government program to funnel millions of taxpayer dollars to the nonprofit organization Baby2Baby, which is led by an executive who sits on the board of California Partners Project, which was co-founded by Newsom’s insufferable wife, Jennifer Siebel-Ocasio-Rodham Newsom.

As a not-so great American once said, the math ain’t mathing…

According the far-left Los Angeles Times, in its first year, the “state plans to distribute 40 million diapers.”

We also know that the cost of this program in year one is $20 million.

So, the state will pay 50 cents per diaper.

And yet, California is lousy with Costco stores, where you can buy diapers for 16 cents each.

If that’s the case, why is Gavin Newsom forcing taxpayers to pay 50 cents per diaper for Baby2Baby to distribute them when he could simply have maternity wards hand these 100,000 new mothers a Costco coupon for 400 free diapers, which would cost the taxpayers about a third as much?

Did I mention that the top executive at Baby2Baby is pals with Newsom’s insufferable wife?

You see, that’s how the government grift works. That’s how corrupt politicians pay off their pals. It’s all hidden in a compassionate-sounding government program when it’s really a taxpayer-funded payoff.

Allow me to speculate for a moment…

Baby2Baby probably pays a wholesale price for diapers that is much less than 16 cents each. Sure, there’s staff salaries and delivery costs, but come on… 50 cents each? Amazon can deliver them for half that. That leaves a lot of money left over for, say, massive presidential 2028 campaign contributions or direct kickbacks to Mr. and Mrs. Governor.

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Gavin Newsom Launches ‘Free Diapers’ Program That Has a Curious Connection to His Wife’s Pet Project

California Governor Gavin Newsom is launching a new project in his state that will give new parents hundreds of free diapers. Sounds great, doesn’t it? New parents need diapers. Lots of them. Win win, right?

ABC 7 reports:

California families welcoming newborns will soon receive hundreds of free diapers before leaving the hospital under a first-in-the-nation program announced Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

During the program’s first year, it will be offered at about 65 to 75 hospitals that handle about a quarter of births in the state and largely serve low-income patients, Newsom’s office said. The initiative will expand to more hospitals statewide, though the governor’s office did not say how many. The state has partnered with nonprofit Baby2Baby to manufacture the diapers under the label “Golden State Start.”…

The state set aside $7.4 million in last year’s budget to roll out the initiative, and this year’s budget proposal includes an additional $12.5 million to implement the program for the upcoming fiscal year ending in June 2027.

Do you like this idea? Well, like all things Democrats offer for free, there is a catch.

As Kevin Dalton pointed out on Twitter/X, this program has a direct connection to Newsom’s wife and a charity she runs:

Gavin Newsom just announced a shiny new taxpayer funded program giving free diapers to newborns leaving California hospitals and his administration is partnering with Baby2Baby with almost $20 MILLION in state funds to manufacture them.

I’m sure it’s a total coincidence that one of Baby2Baby’s Co-CEOs, Norah Weinstein, sits on the board of Gavin Newsom’s wife’s California Partners Project.

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SURPRISE! Zohran Mamdani’s New ‘Free’ Childcare Program is Going to Cost $60,000 Per Child

Are you sitting down? This is shocking news.

It turns out that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new ‘free’ childcare program isn’t free at all. In fact, it’s going to cost $60,000 – Per child. Of course, it’ll be free for the people who get the service, but not for the taxpayers who are funding it.

This is the shell game that is always played by leftists. Nothing is free and they know it. Someone always pays.

Oh and by the way, this is just the rollout of the program. You know it will cost more down the road.

The New York Post reports:

Mamdani rolls out $2.3M day care pilot for NYC workers with hefty $60K cost per kid

The cost of “free” child care is soaring.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the opening of a new daycare center for municipal workers Monday that will cost more than double the average price of child care — to a tune of nearly $60,000 per kid.

The pilot program will start this fall on the first floor of David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Lower Manhattan after a multi-million-dollar renovation of a room for just 40 children, ages six weeks to 3 years old.

The childcare center co-ops an initiative of Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, that was announced in October.

Mamdani said the Adams administration didn’t allocate operating funds for the center, which Hizzoner said would have a $2.3 million price tag and will be included in the city’s upcoming executive budget.

That works out to $57,500 per child to attend the day care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

On average, day care costs in the city for infants come in at $26,000 and $23,400 for toddlers, according to the city comptroller’s office.

City Hall didn’t respond to questions about the soaring cost to the city compared to private center-based programs.

That’s strange. Why do you suppose Mamdani’s city hall didn’t respond to questions?

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Radical Socialists AOC and Zohran Mamdani Team Up to Promote FREE DAYCARE for Illegal Aliens in All-Spanish Video — ‘America Last’ Agenda on Full Display!

Outrageous! Just when you thought the radical left couldn’t spit in the face of hard-working American citizens any harder, they find a new way to prioritize lawbreakers over taxpayers.

Radical socialists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have teamed up to push free daycare for illegal aliens, using American taxpayer dollars.

The duo released a video entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles, shamelessly instructing illegal immigrants on how to enroll their kids in NYC’s 3-K and Pre-K programs, regardless of immigration status.

The video, posted by the NYC Mayor’s Office, features Mamdani admitting his Spanish “isn’t the best” before handing off to AOC to deliver the sales pitch.

With American and NYC flags in the background, as if to mock our sovereignty, they emphasize that “any parent in New York City, regardless of occupation, income, or immigration status, is eligible to register their children.”

Mamdani goes on to highlight how families have been ‘suffering deep financial ruin’ from childcare costs up to $26,000 per year, but conveniently forgets that these programs are bankrolled by citizens who follow the law.

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New York’s First Free Grocery Store Shows Yet Again That Socialism Doesn’t Work

Comrade Zohran Kwame Mamdani has been mayor of New York City for nearly eight weeks now, and he has not yet delivered on any of his lofty promises; instead, all New Yorkers have gotten out of his tenure so far is a lot of garbage in the streets. The cryptocurrency outfit Polymarket even beat the boy mayor to the punch on one of his campaign promises, opening up what it billed as “New York’s First Free Grocery Store.” The store was privately funded, not city-run, and only operated for five days, but that was plenty of time to demonstrate yet again that socialism, like Mamdani itself, doesn’t deliver on its promises, and only leaves people angry and disappointed.

Enthusiasm was initially high. Fox News reported Thursday that “in a busy stretch of restaurants and boutiques in the West Village, hundreds of New Yorkers queued up outside a pop-up shop offering free groceries.”

The people in the long queue, however, for the most part went away disappointed. New York’s First Free Grocery Store hit the wall of reality quite early in the day. One woman recounted: “I literally got here at 9:00 … and basically what they said is that they ran out of tickets.” The tickets were necessary to gain entry into the store, and just as grocery store shelves were so often empty in the old Soviet Union, New York’s First Free Grocery Store quickly ran out of tickets.

One man commented bitterly: “They told me that they ran out of tickets. I couldn’t get no more food.… I couldn’t get access to the store.” A security guard, clearly already weary with the charade only an hour after it started, shouted just after 9 a.m.: “Let’s go people, let’s go. Go home. Do not linger, do not look, do not watch. Please go home.”

It was a scene that could have unfolded in Moscow in 1980 or Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. Aside from the gulags, the line is the most distinguishing feature of socialist life. Even the New York Times wrote about it in 1985: “So common and pervasive are the lines that they have evolved their own etiquette, even their own slang. Shoppers in a busy store can have their place held in one line while they stand in another. Women with small children pass freely to the front. Other privileged people, ranging from disabled war veterans to recipients of the title ‘Hero of Socialist Labor,’ are also allowed to go to the head of the line. Goods, in this world, are ‘handed out,’ not sold, as if to underline that the issue is not one of cost or choice, but simply one of finding the stuff.”

One principal reason why this is so is that socialism, by confiscating the worker’s wealth and making it useless for him to try to work harder to get ahead, removes all incentive to do anything more than the minimum that will keep him out of the gulag. A grocer in a capitalist society can get rich by providing cheap and plentiful foodstuffs for the masses. In a socialist society, the groceries are even cheaper: they’re free. But there is no incentive for the worker to ensure their supply, as there is no reward for him in doing so. And so in the land where groceries are free, going without basic foodstuffs becomes a fact of life. 

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NYC Gets a Free Grocery Store, but It’s a Slap in the Face for Mamdani

New York City got its first free grocery store on Thursday, and yet it does more to discredit self-proclaimed democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani than do him any favors. The store wasn’t launched by the city but by Polymarket, a private prediction market where users bet on world events. More than 400 New Yorkers lined up for free groceries, praising the store as a much-needed relief during challenging financial times.

“Times are hard. Things are very expensive, so this helps,” Tori Hall, who was second in line outside the store, said. “It goes a long way.”

The Polymarket “free” grocery store opened Thursday and will operate as a five-day pop-up through Sunday, with the final day dedicated to donations. They added in a statement that the company had donated $1 million to the Food Bank for NYC “to help fight food insecurity across all five boroughs.” 

The initiative follows a similar stunt earlier this month by Kalshi, another prediction-market platform, which offered New Yorkers $50 in free groceries.

Mamdani responded to the latter stunt, posting a headline on X that read: “Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just made a great point.”

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Zohran Mamdani Backtracks on Campaign Promise for Rental Assistance, Claiming it’s too Expensive

New York City’s new socialist mayor is already running out of other people’s money.

In addition to being unable to remove snow or get the trash picked up, Mamdani is now backtracking on a campaign promise to expand the city’s rental assistance program.

He just got grilled by New York lawmakers in Albany who are nervous about his ‘tax the rich’ policies and now this. How long before his base turns on him?

The Post Millennial reports:

Mamdani reverses campaign promise for rental assistance program—turns out it’s too expensive

Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has reversed on one of his campaign promises to expand a rental assistance program in the Big Apple. The expansion has turned out to be too costly.

As the mayor is confronting a steep fiscal situation in managing the city during his second month in office, Mamdani does not intend to back the growth of a $1 billion-plus initiative known as CityFHEPS, per the New York Times. The plan to initiate the expansion of the program was previously upheld in court after being proposed by the city council.

Mamdani, during his campaign, had promised to expand the voucher program, but in a news conference on Wednesday, he suggested that the expansion of the program is too costly as the city is facing a budget deficit over two years that is around $7 billion.

His administration is now negotiating with activists to settle a lawsuit that sought to force the expansion of the program. The move may stir tensions between himself and his base of support from those in the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization he is also a part of.

No one seems very surprised by this news.

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Why Mamdani’s ‘Free Childcare’ Won’t Work

“While families with young children comprise about 14 percent of the city’s population, they comprise about 30 percent of the set of New Yorkers who are leaving the city,” said Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at a visit to a day care center in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he hyped his plans for those families.

Mamdani ran on the most ambitious universal child care proposal in the country: free day care for all kids ages 6 weeks and above. Apparently, this pitch was compelling to the city’s beleaguered parents: The self-styled socialist won by a hefty margin.

New York City already has universal child care guaranteed to 3- and 4-year-olds. When Bill de Blasio ran for mayor in 2013, he aimed to distinguish himself from then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had created 4,000 new free pre-K seats but allocated them only to poor kids. De Blasio universalized the system in 2014.

Mamdani wants to expand to an even younger age group, which would cost an extra $6 billion a year. Those funds aren’t available in city coffers, so Mamdani would need cooperation from the state government to raise the money, likely by taking another leaf from the de Blasio playbook and trying to hike taxes on the very rich.

Mamdani’s political intuition is sound: The affordability issue is salient. The number of New York City families with three kids or more has dropped by nearly 17 percent over the last decade. Families with young children have been self-exiling in droves since the pandemic. The under-20 population has dropped by almost 200,000 over the last few years. The city’s public school system has 915,000 students enrolled, down from 1.1 million a decade ago. New York’s comptroller reports that the average cost of private child care for babies and toddlers now sits at $18,200 annually for family-based care and $26,000 annually for center-based care, shooting up in recent years. It’s no wonder so many parents are clamoring to turn over their kids to the warm embrace of the state. They feel left out in the cold.

But universal 3-K (for 3-year-olds) hasn’t served families as well as its supporters promised it would. It distorted the private market, driving day cares out of business. Rich families have used nifty hacks to get their kids into the best centers, while the poor are left with the rest. The universal nature of it might be politically valuable when you’re currying favor with the tony Park Slope crowd, but it means that child care for rich people is subsidized by the slightly richer, and that day cares serving the poorest neighborhoods don’t get what they need. Parents who choose to stay home with their kids or employ nannies get shafted, and costs for all forms of child care are driven up the more the government intervenes in the market. More government involvement won’t make that better.

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