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Good riddance to bad rubbish…
Tag: socialism
Incremental Socialism
Imagine you own an apartment building and need to sell it. The mortgage comes due, insurance premiums keep climbing, repairs cannot wait, and you have found a willing buyer. You have negotiated a price and are ready to close. Then New York City tells you to wait.
Your financial obligations do not wait. Your buyer may not wait. But under New York City’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as COPA, the government can insert a lengthy process between you and the sale of your own property. What should be a private transaction becomes subject to a timetable designed to give selected organizations an opportunity to purchase the building first.
This is the kind of incremental change worth examining. Socialism does not always announce its arrival with bullets and revolution. Sometimes it arrives as a statute that sounds reasonable, addresses a genuine concern, and changes the rules one transaction at a time.
On October 22, the New York City Council passed COPA by a vote of 38 to 9, with two members abstaining. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has championed the measure. The revised bill is narrower than earlier proposals and is expected to cover roughly 2,100 multifamily buildings meeting specified conditions involving serious housing violations, city enforcement programs, or affordability restrictions. Qualifying owner-occupied buildings with five or fewer units are exempt. The law is scheduled to take effect one year after enactment.
Under COPA, owners of covered properties are mandated by to inform the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development when they intend to sell. Qualified nonprofit organizations have 20 days to express interest and another 70 days to submit an initial offer. Additional procedures can give a qualified organization the right to match an outside buyer’s offer. A legal analysis by Cullen and Dykman estimates that the process can delay a transaction by approximately 130 days when the applicable stages are triggered. The final timetable depends on the transaction and the rights exercised. Owners may apply for an exemption based on undue financial hardship, but that exception does not eliminate the underlying process.
For an owner facing mounting expenses, those delays are not abstractions. Mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, and repairs continue regardless of what the city requires. A willing buyer may move on. A deal that could have helped an owner meet financial obligations may disappear while the government process runs its course. Ann Korchak, president of Small Property Owners of New York, has warned that COPA could contribute to the extinction of small property owners. Her concern deserves attention. A policy intended to preserve affordable housing can impose new costs and risks on the people responsible for maintaining the buildings in the first place.
Hours After Re-Election, Socialist Lula’s First Move: “We’re Going to Have to Regulate the Social Media Platforms”
Barely hours after Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court declared him the winner of a historic fourth term, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wasted no time revealing his priorities.
Standing before supporters in São Paulo on the night of October 25, the 80-year-old Workers’ Party leader declared that his campaign had been forced to overcome “interference coming from outside to inside through digital platforms” and that “we’re going to have to regulate them.”
According to Brazilian reporting citing CNN Brasil, Lula said:
“This was an election in which we had to overcome interference from outside, through digital platforms, which we will have to regulate.”
He continued:
“It is not possible that we are not aware that crime in the digital world must be treated like crime in the real world.”
He attacked “monstrous companies” that “earn millions and billions, pay no taxes in this country, and try to direct the electoral result.”
This Won’t End Well… Seattle Becomes First City To Price-Fix Your Groceries
This week the Seattle City Council passed Mayor Katie Wilson’s “Fair Pricing and Transparency” ordinance in a 7-2 vote, a first-in-the-nation ban on so-called surveillance pricing.
The ordinance takes effect in 2027. The Washington Retail Association warned for months that the bill was rushed, would have significant and negative impact on prices, and that nearly all suggested fixes were ignored.
As approved, retailers must decide whether they can keep offering the tailored discounts and loyalty programs that Seattle families actually use or cancel all the programs and charge more for groceries.
Government should not be price-fixing consumer products.
Banning the use of loyalty cards and programs, fuel rewards, and targeted coupons hurts businesses and consumers alike.
Price controls do not make groceries cheaper. They flatten the tools stores use to compete for customers. When discounts vanish, the shelf price becomes the only price. That is how an “affordability” law raises a customer’s grocery bill. A Greater Seattle Business Association and Seattle Latino Metropolitan Chamber guest column put it plainly: trying to control prices through experimental regulation has never worked, and this ordinance will make an already expensive city more unaffordable.
Jan Himebaugh of the Washington Retail Association offered a household example, nearly $1,000 in grocer loyalty savings this year for her family, the equivalent of more than 185 gallons of gas in a state where fuel is among the nation’s most expensive. Those are not corporate talking points. They are the coupons that keep a cart full.
Thin-margin stores close. When they close, the result is the very “food deserts” Mayor Wilson has spent a campaign and a mayoralty promising to fight. Wilson has said Seattle will not accept food deserts as the cost of doing business, but the “Fair Pricing” policy creates a retail environment that does exactly the opposite.
A pricing ordinance that chases discounts out of the city works against that goal. You cannot subsidize corner markets on Sunday and make their discount model legally hazardous on Tuesday.
If Wilson wants more grocery access, the path is not to micromanage how a retailer prices a gallon of milk. It is to stop piling first-in-the-nation experiments onto businesses already carrying Seattle’s tax and regulatory load.
Personalized discounts are not surveillance. They are how competitive stores keep prices down and stay open. Kill those discounts, and the desert grows.
Agenda of Seattle’s Socialist Mayor Crashes Into the Reality of Crime and Homelessness
Seattle’s new socialist Mayor Katie Wilson entered office with a grand, left wing agenda, but it is stalling out because of a little thing called reality.
It turns out that creating a progressive utopia takes a back seat to dealing with the very real problems of crime and homelessness, and Seattle has plenty of those things.
Maybe the city should have elected someone with a little more real job experience.
FOX News reports:
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s socialist agenda stalls amid homelessness and public safety concerns
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist, has run into major roadblocks while trying to enact her agenda in the city as she grapples with public safety concerns and homelessness.
Wilson campaigned on adding 1,000 homeless shelter units in each year of her term, despite concerns from some advisors about the feasibility of the goal, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, her administration’s current plan calls for adding nearly 1,000 shelter beds by the end of 2027, the Journal reported.
The mayor told The Seattle Times in September that her original goal was a way to get people talking about the crisis…
Wilson surprised her supporters with a proposed budget released in September that included no new taxes and more funding for police, the Journal reported.
“I have made the difficult decision to transmit a budget without major new revenue,” Wilson said in a speech in September, according to KOMO News. “Right now, we don’t have good options to raise more progressive revenue that don’t also come with great risks. Our economy and especially our downtown are fragile. In that context, raising additional revenue through JumpStart is not the right move.”
Welcome to the real world, Madam Mayor.
The Socialist Indoctrination Machine: Schools Are Teaching Young People To Embrace Big Government, Hate Capitalism
A recent headline from a well-respected news outlet caught my attention: “Could socialism make America happy again?“
Surely, the article must be satirical, I thought. Who in their right mind would believe that the most oppressive form of government, responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths, horrific living conditions, and the elimination of personal freedoms, would make anyone “happier”?
It wasn’t a joke. Nor are the slew of articles these days proclaiming that “Socialism’s moment is here” and similar findings that show socialism’s popularity is quickly climbing, especially among young people.
America has a socialism problem – or a socialism perception problem. A great swath of our country has bought into the lie that socialism can somehow provide a better quality of life, and it owes largely to progressives’ success transforming our education system into an indoctrination machine.
It’s no secret that higher education has long been a bastion of liberalism. In one recent poll, half of college professors at four-year schools self-identified as liberal, compared to only a quarter who identified as conservative. Conservative faculty were considerably more likely to hide their political affiliations for fear of being fired or retaliated against.
Likewise, a survey in 2020 found that nearly 40 percent of conservative college students did not feel comfortable expressing their political views because they worried their peers might file a complaint against them.
One might think that our country’s institutions of learnings would actively seek to educate young people about the dangers of socialism. There are, after all, numerous examples from recent history. Instead, they preach the evils of free-market competition, which has made the United States a global beacon of hope and freedom for over 250 years.
An annual study this year found that nearly 40 percent of students said that their college classes and activities negatively affected their views of capitalism, compared to less than 10 percent who said their experience improved it. That shouldn’t be a surprise. The same report two years earlier found that faculty were “more often positive toward socialism and negative toward capitalism.”
Today, 46 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have a favorable opinion of socialism – more than twice as many compared to those who had a negative opinion of it.
Sadly, the left’s indoctrination program now starts well before college. Students are steeped in the immorality of capitalism and the romanticization of socialism beginning as early as primary grades.
In 2016, a now-often-cited survey found that one-third of millennial and Gen Z students believed more people were killed under former President George W. Bush than by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Almost one in five students did not know who Stalin was.
U.S. civics education hardly seems to be trending in a better direction. A poll by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in 2019 found more than seven in 10 Gen Z students and over six in 10 Millennials said they did not learn about communist regimes throughout their K-12 careers.
In 2022, our country’s National Assessment of Educational Progress scores in U.S. History, which measure students’ knowledge of the subject “in the context of democracy, culture, technological and economic changes,” fell five points from 2018, and 14 points below 2014 averages.
In 1997, following the publication of “The Black Book of Communism” – which estimated that nearly 100 million people died under communist and socialist regimes in the 20th century alone – the late historian and political commentator Tony Judt, himself a staunch liberal, wrote in The New York Times:
“No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of communism, and those who had begun to forget will be forced to remember anew.“
SOCIALIST GRIFT: Spanish Judge Sends PM Pedro Sánchez’s Wife Begoña Gomes To Trial Over Influence Peddling and Misappropriation of Public Funds
It’s reckoning time in Madrid.
Few heads of government anywhere in the world are so surrounded by corruption scandals, investigations, and prosecutions as Spain’s Pedro Sánchez.
By now, his brother, many of his top aides, his predecessor, and even his wife are all allegedly involved in wrongdoing.
Yesterday (21), it arose that the Spanish Prime Minister’s wife, Begoña Gómez, will have to stand trial on charges of influence peddling and embezzlement.
Politico reported:
“Investigating Judge Juan Carlos Peinado on Monday ordered Gómez and Cristina Álvarez, her aide at La Moncloa, the prime minister’s office, to face trial after Madrid’s Provincial Court cleared the way in July, Spanish media reported.
The case centers on accusations that Gómez used her relationship to advance her career and co-direct a program at Madrid’s Complutense University, while also using public resources and government staff for private interests. Gómez denies wrongdoing.”
Denver Socialist Mayoral Candidate Says Prior Arrest for Theft of Food Stamp Benefits ‘Actually Qualifies’ Her to Hold Office
Shontel Lewis, a Democratic Socialist running in the Denver mayoral election, has a unique spin on her prior arrest for the theft of food stamps. She says it makes her more qualified to hold office.
In 2008, while she worked at the Department of Human Services East Food Stamp Office, Lewis used that job to take public benefit money that belonged to other people.
According to the police affidavit reported by the Denver Post, she searched EBT systems for inactive accounts that still had money and reissued benefit cards from those accounts.
She then gave cards to a roommate to use for food and cash benefits.
Investigators tied her to at least five to seven cases accessed over about five months starting in March 2008.
Although she initially denied wrongdoing, she later admitted it and said she was struggling financially. Initially, she was charged with more serious counts, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft. A felony theft count was deferred and later dismissed in 2011.
She served 18 months of probation and was ordered to pay more than $6,000 in restitution.
Former DSA Insider Sounds Alarm on Group’s Rabid Anti-Americanism
In June, The Gateway Pundit reported that former Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) organizer Jake Altman shared warnings about the organization with the Free Press. According to Altman, the DSA does not tolerate dissent among its ranks and works to get rid of its critics. Everyone has to be with the program to be in good standing.
Altman spoke with Fox News to sound the alarm on the radical group and their efforts to “force their agenda down other people’s throats.”
Altman told Fox News Digital, “I had been involved in my local union and met some people who were far, far to the left, in like, a frightening way. I was looking for a more pragmatic and thoughtful option on the left that was focused on economic policy.”
“One of the concerns I had very quickly was that [the] DSA was beginning to sound more and more like those extreme groups on the left that I, you know, certainly didn’t want anything to do with.”
More from Fox:
The former DSA leader recalled voicing concern in 2019 after the DSA issued a statement that he characterized as “defending or apologizing for the Maduro regime.”
“I raised a concern about that … and I said, DSA should be denouncing Maduro … the Democratic socialists and social Democrats in Venezuela are in the opposition — there should be free and fair elections,” he continued.
“The person disagreed with me and defended, you know, essentially defended the Maduro regime,” Altman revealed.
Altman noted that the organization holds view that “America is a unique evil in the world and that its enemies have a point.”
And as for dissent? Altman does not believe it is tolerated.
“You Better Get Ready For… War”: Socialists Call For “War In The Streets” & The End Of Capitalism
“You better get ready for … war.”
Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans.
Despite the talk of a “Big Tent Party,” socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution.
In Chicago, radicals gathered for a conference on Marxism during what many view as the heyday of socialism in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history. Socialist candidates are winning elections across the country as Democratic establishment figures from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to Gov. Gavin Newsom pander to the movement.
Speakers in Chicago used the conference to push supporters to the next stage in the movement, including some openly calling for violence and the end to capitalism.
University of California Santa Barbara History Professor Butch Ware said Democrats “must be destroyed” and urged attendees to be ready for “war in the streets.” Notably, in postings on X, Ware has said that candidates such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed are too restrained and are being pushed by the establishment “to contain radicalism.”
The professor “of Africa and Islam” whose faculty page is appropriately found under “bware” is the latest radical to dismiss the “Big Tent Party” rhetoric of establishment figures like Schumer. He declared, “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed.” There is little subtlety in the message, Ware has explained: “You cannot call yourself a revolutionary and not be talking about training with weapons.”
It is another example of the delusion that establishment Democrats have that they will be able to use these radicals to destroy their political enemies but not themselves.
After one election victory, socialists chanted “You’re Next!” when House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s image came on big-screen televisions.
Hasan Piker has called for a purging of moderates from the Democratic Party.
Just last week, Darializa Avila Chevalier declared, “A big tent doesn’t pay your rent, lower your grocery bill, or take on the corporations bleeding our country dry. Democratic socialism does.”
In a video posted to X, Professor Ware called for violence, warning followers that “some of these clickety-clack revolutionaries have never been in a f*cking gunfight.” He menacingly added, “Y’all ain’t nowhere near ready for a war in the streets. You better get ready for both kinds of war if you stay ready, you ain’t got to get ready.”
This is just the latest example of the type of hate-spewing radical that university departments want to teach in higher education. While purging virtually all Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians from departments, faculty candidates cannot be too radical enough to secure positions on colleges and universities. UCSB pays Professor Ware over $211k to spread this type of lunacy.
Notably, this is the same university that saw a professor lead her students in physically assaulting pro-life advocates on campus years ago. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and later honored by the University of Oregon for her inspiring leadership.
In other events around the country such as “Socialism 2026 Conference,” City University of New York Professor Ruth Gilmore said in a video, “It’s capitalism we’re after,…There isn’t a capitalism that is somehow not racial. There isn’t a capitalism that does not produce and reproduce all kinds of sexual and gender boundaries.”
At my alma mater, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, the half-sister of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, has denounced the university and explained that she is only teaching there to bring down the system.
One year after the massacre, Professor Abdelhadi offered an “October 7th blessing” over an attack that murdered, raped, and tortured innocent men, women, and children. She was previously arrested for spitting on officers.
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