Mamdani ran explicitly on freezing rents. He knew the statutory requirement, stacked the RGB with sympathetic appointees, stepped back, and let the predetermined outcome unfold. The result was a 7-1 vote for 0% increases on both one- and two-year leases. This is regulatory extortion and potential criminality dressed up as tenant relief.

The real criminals here are the board members on the RGB who betrayed their duty.

These board members on the RGB did not get dragged into their seats — they actively agreed to serve and undertook a legal obligation to follow the law and the evidence on costs. They reviewed the data showing operating expenses rising over 5%, then deliberately voted to impose a total freeze anyway. This confiscates legitimate returns on property, discourages maintenance on aging buildings, and accelerates housing deterioration across the city. Small landlords will cut corners or exit. Supply will shrink. Unregulated rents will rise. The behavioral responses to these perverse incentives are entirely predictable.

Their names must be called out:

• Chantella Mitchell, Chair

• Sina Sinai

• Lauren Melodia

• Brandon Mancilla

• Maksim Wynn (owner representative who went along)

• Adán Soltren

• Sagar Sharma

These people undertook a legal obligation which they are now violating. They have demonstrated they have no integrity and should not be employed in any position of responsibility anywhere — and perhaps shouldn’t be employed by any responsible employer at all. Their actions harm property rights, individual landlords trying to stay solvent, and ultimately the tenants who will live with worse housing conditions in the years ahead.

This rent freeze exemplifies government overreach at its most destructive: short-term political pandering that creates long-term economic pain. Property rights aren’t optional — they align incentives for investment, upkeep, and new supply. Violating them through regulatory fiat doesn’t solve affordability; it guarantees scarcity and decay.

The lawsuits coming will test whether the law still means anything in New York. In the meantime, these RGB board members should face relentless public scrutiny for agreeing to serve and then deliberately undermining the rules. The public has a right to know exactly who sold out economic reality and their sworn obligations for applause.

The principle is straightforward and non-negotiable: public officials and board members who take an oath have a duty to uphold the law and follow the evidence — not deliver campaign promises at the expense of property rights and sound policy. Those who refuse belong out of office.

Section 338 lets the President hammer countries up to 50% tariffs for discriminating against U.S. commerce. Trump is using it not against genuine adversaries, but to punish Canada for the predictable retaliation against his own 25% duties on motor vehicles and parts. Canadian counter-tariffs, provincial restrictions on U.S. alcohol, and adjustments favoring other nations have already cut U.S. auto exports by 22% and spirits flows dramatically. According to a March 2026 study by economists André Kurmann, Étienne Lalé, and Julien Martin published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the resulting decline in Canadian tourism has cost between 14,000 and 42,000 jobs in exposed U.S. border markets. Cross-border supply chains are fracturing, American businesses—from auto makers to hospitality—are paying the price in higher costs and uncertainty. The White House complains about dairy and cheese access while American consumers and producers foot the bill for this escalating madness.

This tariff addiction reveals a deeper flaw in treating trade like a zero-sum game where the President plays king. Trump’s crowd will claim this is tough negotiation, but the reality is, this is economically illiterate policy that violates every lesson from the last century. Governments don’t create wealth by erecting barriers and then punishing partners for mirroring the folly—they destroy it through distorted incentives, disruption of supply chains, crony favoritism for protected industries, and violation of the property rights that underpin genuine commerce. Americans are already feeling the pain in jobs, prices, and disrupted supply chains. The only sane path is mutual reduction of barriers, not endless escalation.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), co-founded by Trump family members and associates, has directed more than $1.4 billion to the family from governance token sales, with the family entitled to 75% of net proceeds according to company disclosures. This leaves only 25% of those proceeds remaining as substance for WLFI. It is no surprise that those token sales seriously underperform.

Governance tokens like WLFI typically give holders limited voting rights on platform decisions but no claim on profits. In this case, however, Trump has taken a big claim on profits. The Trump-linked entity benefits heavily from initial sales and allocations common in crypto launches, where founders and sponsors receive large portions of the supply at low or zero cost before public promotion drives up early prices.

Separate and aside from WLFI, the Trump Organization has issued the $TRUMP meme coin, launched days before the inauguration, which added hundreds of millions more for Trump entities. While many crypto projects follow similar structures—founders and promoters securing early allocations that allow them to profit from hype-driven pops—the difference here is the implication of presidential backing and support.

Investors knew crypto carries risk, but the high-profile promotion from the president suggested substance and potential official favor that never materialized, leading to steep declines of over 95% from peaks and heavy losses for retail buyers. Top holders gained exclusive perks like Mar-a-Lago dinners and access; average participants faced wipeouts.

As we have highlighted, Trump’s opportunistic actions are pure cronyism that distort markets, erodes trust in institutions, and profits at the expense of the ordinary guy. It’s appalling that a president would monetize his office in this way; it violates every standard of fiduciary duty and respect for the office of the presidency that limited government demands. Instead of draining the swamp like he promised, President Trump is bathing in it for personal gain.

Only after Canada bent would he allow the project to proceed. The result? Canada got strong-armed into redirecting a chunk of future toll revenues into a U.S. government fund for 15 years, plus giving Uncle Sam veto power over major toll changes. This after Canada already footed the entire construction bill. Michigan was supposed to share revenues post-construction. Instead, Trump turned a bilateral infrastructure project into a federal cash grab and political trophy. This isn’t smart deal-making. It’s the predictable behavior of a politician who views every interaction as a zero-sum power play.

The Real Costs of Bully Tactics

• Economic distortion: Delaying a critical trade link hurts auto manufacturing, supply chains, and workers on both sides of the border. Commerce doesn’t wait for photo-ops.

• Crony undertones: Reports of Ambassador Bridge interests (the existing private crossing) hovering in the mix raise the familiar stench of protecting entrenched players at the expense of new competition and efficiency.

• Precedent for more waste: Once government inserts itself this way, expect endless fights over tolls, “funds,” and who gets the skim. Taxpayers and businesses pay either way—through higher costs, delays, diverted revenues, and the inability to plan for the future with any certainty.

The deeper damage from Trump’s approach is far more insidious. Everybody knows that dealing with him is so impossibly unfair, laced with bully tactics, that the vast majority of positive deals that could be done never see the light of day. Only the most compelling opportunities proceed despite the nonsense he injects into negotiations. In the free market and world of business, no CEO with executive responsibility would operate this way, because they know it ultimately hurts their own constituents. Rational actors understand that deals must be win-win; if a deal is not win-win, it is a bad deal. When Trump boasts that he “wins” his deals, by definition he reveals ignorance—such outcomes mean the overall pie is smaller than it should be, possible only because one side wields overwhelming power to force suboptimal terms on the other. Property rights and voluntary agreements built this bridge. Political bullying undermines them. Free markets and clear contracts, not threats from Washington, should govern cross-border infrastructure.

Trump’s approach here exemplifies the worst of government overreach: using regulatory leverage as a club instead of letting projects serve their purpose. America doesn’t need more strongman theater that raises costs and breeds resentment with trading partners. We need policies rooted in economic reality, respect for agreements, and restraint on federal power. The Gordie Howe saga is a textbook case.

They don’t even hide the sleight of hand. The Genocide Convention demands specific intent to destroy a group “as such.” Israel warns civilians, facilitates aid, and targets Hamas terrorists — the exact opposite of genocidal policy. Amnesty understands full well that there is nothing even remotely recognizable as genocide occurring, yet they make these inflammatory claims anyway. So they simply changed the definition and lowered the evidentiary bar, a move legal observers slammed as moving the goalposts away from ICJ standards to reach their predetermined verdict. As the American Jewish Committee noted right after the report dropped, Amnesty “distorts the definition of the constituent acts of genocide and the legal standard for establishing genocidal intent to avoid... inconvenient facts.” This is part of a “troubling pattern of distortion and bias,” building on their flawed 2022 apartheid smear that delegitimized Israel’s very founding. David Adesnik of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies rightly calls the use of the term “genocide” “an extension of [Amnesty International’s] bias” and a glaring “double standard.”

It’s not a one-off. Amnesty has long singled out Israel with disproportionate reports compared to true horrors in North Korea or Venezuela. They’ve downplayed antisemitism as a priority while pushing narratives that fuel real-world Jew-hatred. Continuing to support them doesn’t make you compassionate — it makes you complicit in their moral bankruptcy and antisemitic double standards. Real charity demands integrity, not funding organizations that punish the victim and reward the aggressor.

Yet this impressive record is badly tainted by Trump’s eagerness to substitute one form of intervention for another:

• He has implemented a substantial and broad array of tariffs, which function as hidden taxes on American importers and, by extension, American consumers and businesses. These taxes raise costs across supply chains and act as rule-equivalents that never even appear in the Federal Register.

• Industrial policy—government using subsidies, priorities, and directives to favor certain industries over others—represents a misguided effort to override the free market and steer capital where political calculations, not productivity, dictate.

• Demands for government equity stakes in private companies amount to outright cronyism and partial nationalization, the very antithesis of free markets, limited government, and property rights. Once the government owns a piece of Intel or U.S. Steel, the distortions multiply. Why would competitors invest or expand when they know a favored rival enjoys the full weight of federal power behind it? Customers, especially business customers, will naturally gravitate toward the government-backed player—either to curry favor with the administration or out of fear that buying from the “wrong” supplier could invite regulatory disadvantage or retaliation. The result is a tilted playing field that punishes innovation, entrenches inefficiency, and signals that private enterprise now serves at the pleasure of the executive branch. Given that zero-government ownership is free market, and 100%-ownership is communism, why would Trump want to slide down that slippery slope?

The lesson is clear and timeless. True economic freedom requires consistent principle, not selective restraint paired with authoritarian impulses in trade and industrial planning. Partial victories on regulation are welcome, but they cannot excuse a broader disregard for individual rights and sound economics. Americans deserve leaders who cut red tape and then step back—not ones who tear it up only to weave new ropes of their own design.

These DSA socialists promise “solutions” that are guaranteed to make problems worse:

• Rent caps and rent freezes reduce landlords’ willingness to maintain or upgrade properties and kneecap new construction, shrinking supply and driving existing rents higher through scarcity. When landlords cannot recover costs, they skip improvements. This often results in pulling units off the market, as they cannot charge sufficient rents to recover the cost of the improvements. History proves that rent controls destroy real estate markets, raise rents long-term (being forced to pull units off the market reduces supply while demand remains the same), and devastate property values. As the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck famously asserted “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”

• Government takeover of rental property via massive new public housing and community land trusts leads to disrepair and decay because there’s no market discipline or personal stake in keeping buildings livable, while funding limitations and wasteful spending driven by political considerations assure failure. The city already owns a large number of properties because rent controls have made them so unprofitable that the city had to take them over for nonpayment of taxes. And since the city also lacks the money and incentive to make investments, these properties are horribly neglected themselves.

• Confiscatory taxation to fund expansive entitlements treats productive citizens as milk cows and accelerates the flight of businesses and families already fleeing high taxes and regulation. History proves what should be obvious: high earners invest in businesses and assets that provide jobs and economic growth for all. Targeting these high earners with punitive taxation is therefore a detriment to job creation and economic growth for everyone.

• Education monopoly is controlled by teachers unions and the political class. Mamdani and his allies return the favor by protecting failing public schools and opposing charter and private options. The statistics are irrefutable: union-controlled public schools produce horrible levels of competency in math and English. In contrast, the charter and private schools they fight deliver far better results for kids.

• Anti-Israel extremism and grievance politics signal deeper moral confusion. It is the height of immorality that when Hezbollah attacks, Israel responds, and Israel is portrayed as the bad guy.

New Yorkers who voted for these candidates acted directly against their own interests and those of their children and grandchildren. Decades of one-party rule, failing schools, and normalized economic illiteracy produced voters unable to see that socialism doesn’t work—it just gives bureaucrats and politicians more power over your life and wallet, as it has failed everywhere it’s been tried. Taxpayers and families deserve better than these experiments in economic punishment and cultural division. People are already packing up for greener pastures, and the exodus will only accelerate. The principles of individual liberty, property rights, limited government, and personal responsibility remain the only foundation for real opportunity and progress.

By contrast, Israel goes out of its way to target only the terrorists while warning civilians and allowing aid. There is not one scintilla of evidence that Israel has any policy, either by words or action, to exterminate Palestinians as a people. This leads to the inescapable conclusion about the bad faith and intentions of those making the claim.

This isn’t a close call or a matter of opinion. Hamas embeds itself in hospitals and schools, uses civilians as shields, and sacrifice and exploit the lives of its own people for propaganda value. Israel faces an enemy that wants to finish what Hitler started. Yet the same voices who ignore Hamas’s explicit genocidal program slap the label on the Jewish state defending itself. This inversion doesn’t just distort facts. It gives moral cover to the actual proponents of genocide and strips the word "genocide" of any credibility. Once someone abuses it this badly, nobody should listen to anything else they say on the subject.

This linguistic fraud is dangerous. It erodes honest debate, fuels real antisemitism, and weakens our ability to call out genuine atrocities in the future. We must insist on precise language and basic moral clarity. Israel has every right to destroy the terrorists trying to murder its citizens. Pretending otherwise is complicity in the next massacre.

Key moment around 5:20–5:50) where Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks with total conviction about climate change as an existential threat. He warned that without drastic action in roughly five years, the world would essentially end up underwater. The furthest thing from careful analysis grounded in data or peer-reviewed models, this was pure alarmism delivered as gospel truth by a guy who has shown zero interest in doing his own homework on the actual science, economics, or engineering realities. Sanders routinely pushes massive government spending plans like his $16 trillion Green New Deal proposal without explaining trade-offs, costs to working families, or proven results from similar top-down schemes tried elsewhere.

His approach ignores basic economic reasoning: heavy-handed central planning distorts markets, raises energy prices, and hurts the very people he claims to help. Real progress on environmental issues has come more from innovation, technology, and market incentives than from sweeping mandates and trillion-dollar bureaucracies. Sanders' track record shows he prefers government overreach over individual liberty and fiscal responsibility every single time. The clip reveals not just factual overreach but a deeper problem—politicians who lecture with absolute authority while skipping basic research and honest debate.

Senator Sanders deserves to be ignored at all costs. His brand of socialist nonsense threatens limited government, separation of powers, and sound policy by replacing facts with hysteria. It’s absolutely cringeworthy that a senior member of our Senate regurgitates this doomsday rhetoric designed to justify bigger government and less freedom.

Although they are considered by some to be serious academic economists, everything they write shows a basic lack of understanding of basic economics — plus a habit of misstating their numeric analysis of economic results. For years they have pushed wealth taxes and massive redistribution. Now they have gone further with their Global Justice Report. They want to cap U.S. GDP per capita at about $69,000 — below current levels — while limiting annual growth in rich nations to roughly 0.1 percent. Their scheme includes pushing average working hours down toward 1,000 per year (a three-day work week equivalent), big cuts in construction and manufacturing output, and a new Global Justice Fund run by an international bureaucracy. This fund would spend more than 10 percent of world GDP every year, paid for by global wealth taxes as high as 20 percent on billionaires and top income tax rates up to 90 percent.

It is very clear — and agreed upon by mainstream economists — that economic growth is what pulls people out of poverty. Free markets have done exactly that, lifting billions and driving global between-country inequality to near 150-year lows. Yet Piketty and Saez ignore this reality. They confuse inequality with poverty and prescribe making everyone poorer to close the gap. Their data work routinely looks at gross pre-tax numbers without subtracting taxes the rich actually pay, making it appear that they have more income than they actually have. They also do not include transfer payments to lower income individuals that make them much better off than Piketty and Saez indicate. This approach intentionally distorts economic reality.

It is also clear that inequality is not a bad thing. Consider a simple example: a low income person earning $10,000 a year and one wealthy innovator earning $100,000. If growth and innovation triple everyone’s income, the lower earner now makes $30,000 and the top earner $300,000. Inequality increased, but the poor are far better off. Piketty and Saez’s method would make everyone poorer to reduce the gap — a disastrous trade-off nobody wants. Their punitive global levies would trigger capital flight and destroy the investment that creates real opportunity.

History shows enforced equality always requires coercion on a massive scale. Free people naturally create different outcomes through talent, effort, and risk-taking. Reagan-era tax cuts proved the right approach: lower marginal rates, stronger growth, and rising living standards across income groups. Recent analyses show the U.S. middle class has shrunk largely because many families moved into the upper-middle class thanks to innovation and wealth created at the top.

Piketty and Saez focus on top income shares but refuse to acknowledge how those high earners have driven broad progress. Their ideas treat individual liberty and private property as obstacles instead of the foundations of progress. Economic freedom is a core constitutional protection that should never be sacrificed to socialist fantasies. The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality should stop giving these flawed notions any prestige. Platforming such economically unsound work is indefensible.

Policymakers and serious institutions must reject this managed decline. Americans need to demand real growth policies based on free markets, fiscal responsibility, and limited government. Equality of outcome always comes at the deadly cost of freedom. Shared prosperity comes through liberty, not through levelers and their global bureaucracies.

Salazar negotiated across the aisle, secured 20 Republican and 20 Democratic co-sponsors, and produced actual legislation with actual enforcement mechanisms. Some of her Republican colleagues responded with a super PAC, a pile-on, and not a single idea of their own.

What is happening to Salazar is a disgrace. Rep. Brandon Gill called this bill an “unforgivable political betrayal.” Laura Ingraham ambushed her on air. A brand-new PAC called Homeland launched with the sole purpose of ending the career of every Republican who dares cosponsor it. These are not serious people raising serious objections. They are cowards from blood-red districts who have decided that savaging a Cuban-American congresswoman is easier than doing their jobs. Rep. Brandon Gill called the bill “mass amnesty” and an “unforgivable political betrayal.” Gov. Ron DeSantis echoed him.

The “amnesty” smear is an absolutely disingenuous and actually a deliberate lie. Amnesty means a free pass. As outlined above, this bill is the opposite of that. As Salazar put it, the real amnesty is the current system, where nobody registers, nobody is accountable, and Washington has punted for thirty years.

Here is the question none of them even attempt to answer: What is your plan? What do you do with 11 to 12 million people who are not going anywhere? These critics are not interested in solutions. For them, immigration is not a problem to fix, it is a wound to keep open. Open wounds bleed votes and donations.

When Gill called her a traitor on social media, Salazar’s response was not a polished press release. It was: “READ. THE. BILL. BEFORE. YOU. OPEN. YOUR. MOUTH.” That is someone who has done the work and has zero patience for cheap shots from people who have not.

And the mass deportation alternative? Deporting 11 million people is not a policy, it is a bumper sticker. The logistics alone would break the federal government. The politicians screaming for it know it is never going to happen. It is a pose, a very profitable, politically convenient pose.

Salazar is not perfect. This bill is not perfect. But she showed up, did the work, and is now standing in the fire while many in her own party try to burn her down. Her critics have produced nothing, risked nothing, and offered nothing. America has had thirty years of the performance. It is time for someone who actually shows up.

Trump received far more. Incredibly, in addition to this fund, the agreement included a sweeping order that forever bars the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and his businesses on already-filed returns. It is clear the settlement had nothing to do with legitimate damages. It was pure personal self-serving power abuse. Just consider the absurdity: if all 405,400 affected taxpayers received the same $1.8 billion payout Trump demanded, the total would reach nearly $730 trillion. That is more than seven times the entire global money supply. Republican senators pushed back hard. A court paused the fund, and the administration has retreated from it. But the audit immunity remains in place.

This settlement violates basic constitutional principles. No president in history has used the Department of Justice he controls to grant himself and his family lifetime protection from normal tax enforcement. It creates one set of rules for Trump and another for the other 405,400 similarly situated taxpayers.

This is more of the same pattern and follows a growing list of perverse self-aggrandizing pursuits:

• Forcing his name ahead of John F. Kennedy on the Kennedy Center in an ego-driven overriding of a Congressional directive.

• Demanding his face adorn a $250 bill — an act of ego so absurd no prior president has ever attempted it.

• Appointing Bill Pulte, a man with zero national security credentials, as Acting Director of National Intelligence.

• Insisting on unconstitutional layered tariffs (and asserting new unconstitutional tariffs after his earlier one have been declared unconstitutional) while doling out billions in socialist-style bailouts to farmers crippled by his own policies.

• Ruthless revenge campaigns against fellow Republicans such as Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie who dared to cross him, knowing full well that this severely damaged the Republican brand and its chances to succeed in the midterms.

• Endorsing Ken Paxton over the far more qualified John Cornyn, in a blatant display of cronyism with absolute disregard of how it may have handed a safe Republican seat to the Democrats.

• Launching vindictive perjury investigations against political enemies like Letitia James, E. Jean Carroll, and Jim Comey.

And this only scratches the surface.

Defenders who wave away every Trump action as necessary toughness need to face facts. When a president settles with himself for billions in taxpayer money, demands audit immunity his own DOJ cannot legally promise, and faces backlash even from his own party, it is not fighting the deep state — it is becoming it. True fiscal responsibility and equal treatment under the law demand we call this out. No leader gets a pass on undermining separation of powers. Americans who believe in limited government must insist on better from everyone who holds power.

Tier 6 reforms became law in 2012 because pension costs were already exploding. Because New York courts had previously ruled that pension benefits for existing employees could not be diminished or impaired — even for future years of service — the state could only apply meaningful changes to new hires. The benefits already earned (and those that would accrue under the prior overly generous formulas) were locked in, making it impossible to negotiate reductions for the current workforce even for future services, despite the clear long-term threat of bankruptcy-level costs.

To control those unsustainable costs for future employees, the state created a more modest Tier 6 that applied only to new hires. Ideally, this should have shifted new employees to a defined-contribution plan similar to 401(k)s common in the private sector, where costs are predictable and transparent. Instead, due to the unions’ collusive power, lawmakers settled for a less expensive but still defined-benefit plan. They slightly raised retirement ages, increased employee contribution rates, and used a longer salary averaging formula to reduce pension “spiking” through overtime manipulation. These reforms still left new public employees with benefits far in excess of what is available in the private sector. Virtually no private-sector workers receive guaranteed defined-benefit pensions at all. Instead, they now rely on defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s.

But now Albany is doing the unthinkable: rolling back even these mild reforms. Governor Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers recently approved major “Fix Tier 6” changes. These changes effectively negate the fiscal discipline introduced in 2012 by giving the then-new hires the richer, more expensive benefits previously reserved for earlier tiers. The package lowers contribution rates and lets teachers retire as early as age 58! In the real world, outside government, that sounds almost fantasy-level generous. It is projected to cost taxpayers roughly $557 million annually while affecting more than 830,000 public employees. What was sold as necessary “fixes” is really handing a windfall to employees who were already more than happy to work under the more restrained Tier 6 terms.

Incredibly, recipients of these outsized pension benefits also enjoy a significant additional perk: their pensions are completely exempt from New York State and local income taxes. This tax-free treatment is a vestige from decades ago when public-sector salaries were lower and such enhancements were used to attract workers. In today’s environment of already extremely generous benefits, this exemption is particularly egregious.

Supporters claim richer pensions are needed for recruitment and retention. That argument does not hold up at all. Public employees in New York already receive total compensation packages — including salaries, pensions, health benefits, overtime protections, and job security — that are well in excess of the private sector. Many workers also boost pensions through overtime-heavy final working years. Meanwhile, taxpayers funding these benefits have far less generous retirement plans themselves. Even worse, New York’s Constitution makes pension benefits nearly untouchable. Article V, Section 7 states that pension benefits “shall not be diminished or impaired.” The New York Court of Appeals has gone further, opining that these protections not only prevent reductions but effectively require preserving (and in practice expanding) benefits attributable to future earnings. That means politicians can promise massive long-term benefits today while pushing much of the financial burden onto future taxpayers who had no say in the deal.

The long-term consequences are obvious. Rising pension costs squeeze infrastructure spending, pressure local governments, and fuel higher taxes. New York is already struggling with outmigration, slow growth, and one of the heaviest tax burdens in the country. Yet Albany continues acting as though taxpayers have unlimited money. They do not. New hires should move to defined-contribution retirement plans similar to what exists throughout most of the private sector. Without serious reform, pension obligations will continue driving New York deeper into the same fiscal hole politicians claim they are trying to escape.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this problem almost 90 years ago. In 1937, Roosevelt wrote to the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) warning that collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.” He called public-sector strikes “unthinkable and intolerable.” Why? Because government workers are not bargaining against private owners risking their own money. They are bargaining against taxpayers. New York ignored that warning completely. Today, unions spend heavily on elections and lobbying to help elect friendly politicians. In 1975, Victor Gotbaum of District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) admitted the reality out loud: “We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.” At least he was honest about the racket.

The costs are enormous. Public sector contracts in New York include expensive overtime rules, almost impenetrable job protections that make it nearly impossible to fire anyone, and pension benefits that are many times greater than anything seen — or even negotiable — in the private sector.

When negotiations break down, disputes go to compulsory arbitration. Supposedly this process protects the public interest. In reality, these arbitrators are selected by the same partisan interests that negotiated the unfair settlement in the first place. Therefore, arbitrators approve compensation increases far above what comparable workers receive in the private sector.

This entire system is rigged against the taxpayer. The fix is obvious. Collective bargaining for public employees should be sharply limited so that compensation, benefits, and work rules do not exceed what is available in the private sector. In addition, the arbitration process should be reformed with truly impartial arbitrators who are required to focus on private-sector comparisons.

The tipping point is here. Honest leaders must name the collusion, confront the racket, and restore accountability. Taxpayers have paid enough.

And then came Zohran Mamdani’s justification for this nonsense. On Tax Day, standing outside Kenneth Griffin’s $238 million Manhattan penthouse as part of a campaign-style video rollout for the proposal, Mamdani declared that the tax was aimed at people “who store their wealth in New York City real estate” even though the residences “sit empty most of the time.” I will get to the economic stupidity of this in the following paragraph. But think about how dangerous, abusive, and economically illiterate that mindset really is. Since when does government get to decide whether you are using your own lawful property often enough to avoid punishment? A second home is not tax evasion. An empty apartment is not a public emergency. If someone buys property legally, pays every existing tax legally owed, and follows every law on the books, government has no moral claim to confiscate more simply because politicians dislike how the owner uses the property. That is not taxation based on neutral principles. It is ideological punishment disguised as fiscal policy.

The economic stupidity here is remarkable even by Mamdani standards. High-end property owners already subsidize an enormous share of local government spending. As even the New York City Comptroller’s own report on the pied-à-terre proposal acknowledges, high-value property owners already contribute heavily to New York City’s tax base, yet politicians still insist on treating them like undertaxed villains. Many pied-à-terre owners do not even consume large amounts of city services. They are part-time residents paying full freight into the system. Yet politicians want to squeeze them harder because the money has to come from somewhere, and frankly class warfare polls well. We have already watched wealthy residents and businesses flee high-tax states for greener pastures. Punitive taxation accelerates capital flight, depresses property values, weakens construction incentives, and ultimately shrinks the tax base. Worse still, this proposal is built on the poisonous assumption that government has first claim on private property and citizens merely rent what they “deserve” to keep.

What makes this especially dangerous is how casually politicians now abandon constitutional and economic principles in pursuit of envy-driven politics. Today it is second homes. Tomorrow it will be retirement accounts, investment portfolios, or anyone deemed insufficiently “fair” by activists who have never created wealth in their lives. New York does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending addiction and a political class that treats productive citizens like an ATM. Calling this nonsense a “tax” does not make it legitimate. It just makes the theft sound more polite.

Thomas traced this philosophy directly to Woodrow Wilson and the early progressives. Progressivism was not native to America. Wilson and his allies openly took it from Otto von Bismarck’s state-centric Germany, which they admired. They strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident. To Wilson, inalienable individual rights were “a lot of nonsense.” He redefined liberty as something granted by government rather than a gift from God that precedes government. Thomas noted that since Wilson’s time, progressivism has made many inroads in our system and way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist. Progressives showed contempt for ordinary Americans, preferring rule by experts over self-government. Thomas pointed out that the European ideas they copied helped produce the worst regimes of the 20th century — Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao — all hostile to natural rights.

This fight runs much deeper than the tax and spending battles I usually cover at TaxPolitix.com. Reagan-era principles delivered real results because they limited government, cut taxes, and trusted free markets and individual liberty. Progressivism delivers the opposite: rule by administrative agencies, endless bureaucracy, and political decisions that favor special interests over equal treatment under the law. I have warned for decades that this government-first philosophy crowds out personal freedom and fiscal responsibility. Thomas is right. It was a terrible mistake to adopt progressivism’s rejection of the Declaration’s vision of universal, inalienable natural rights. As Calvin Coolidge said, if all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. No advance can be made beyond these propositions.

Congressional conservatives and libertarians must stop fighting only the symptoms. They must continuously raise the issue that progressivism and our Constitution don’t mix. It is bad enough when Democrats push these ideas. It is worse when others adopt the same top-down mindset. I have often questioned in these pages whether even President Trump has clear constitutional or statutory authority for sweeping actions like widespread tariffs. When any executive claims it alone knows what is best for the country and sidelines Congress, it echoes the progressive belief in government supremacy. Lawmakers must defend natural rights and founding principles now. Anything less risks permanent damage to limited government and individual liberty for all Americans.

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) has qualified the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act for the November ballot. It would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California residents worth more than $1 billion. Proponents claim this will raise roughly $100 billion for healthcare, K-12 education, and food assistance. They ignore the obvious. Wealthy people do not sit still for confiscatory taxes. They react — and California’s high earners have been fleeing for years to no-income-tax states like Florida, Texas, and Nevada, taking their businesses, jobs, and ongoing tax payments with them.

When these billionaires leave, California loses far more than any one-time wealth tax haul. Those individuals pay substantial state income taxes every year, generate sales taxes on major purchases, and drive investment that creates jobs and future taxpayers. New entrepreneurs who might build the next generation of billionaires will simply launch companies elsewhere. Frédéric Bastiat warned us 175 years ago about “that which is seen and that which is not seen.” Politicians see the immediate revenue and spending. They miss the unseen damage to the tax base, economy, and state finances. Even Governor Gavin Newsom has warned this measure will drive people out and damage California — yet union-backed forces push ahead anyway. Elizabeth Warren has an economics degree but still champions similar ideas, showing that credentials do not equal sound thinking. As the old Abbott and Costello skit shows: Abbott says:“How could you say that? Didn’t you go to school, stupid?” Costello replies: “Yes; and I came out the same way.”

Free markets, individual liberty, and fiscal responsibility grow real prosperity — punitive wealth taxes do not. California voters must reject this measure in November. Anything less proves you cannot tax your way to fiscal health and will only accelerate the state’s long-term decline.