Tag: New York City

Snow and Sales and the Death of Cities

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A very interesting day.  We got about a foot of snow and the wind has been pretty wild so I decided to wait until Tuesday to move the white stuff.  Wednesday I’ve got to bring Camera Girl’s car to a new mechanic and then go to work so it’ll be a quiet day on the site.  The price reduction on the e-book of “The Sniper” is starting to have an effect.  I reached 500 on the techno-thriller list and got below 100,000 on the Amazon overall book sales list.  I know it’s not something to write home about but it was a big jump.

Hans G. Schantz, a science fiction author I correspond with kindly reposted my announcement on X about the e-book price drop on his X feed.  And since he has orders of magnitude more readers that I do I got hundreds of people looking in and one fellow not only reposted but also bought a copy of the book.  So that was fun.

I was looking around on YouTube and my feed included a video from someone called Sophia Miller entitled “Mayor Mamdani ERUPTS After BlackRock OFFICIALLY Exits New York For Good!”  Well, I watched that video and then I watched one about Chicago and then one about Illinois and two about California.

And you know, it occurred to me that the blue states are getting ready to either implode financially or confiscate the value of the homes of their citizens to pay off the public sector pension plans they’ve underfunded.

That’s a remarkable situation.  The blue states have driven away all of the corporations that used to pay the taxes that allowed them to buy the votes of municipal and state employees who now are ready to retire on gold-plated pension plans.  Things are about to get very, very ugly.  Chicago doubled the property taxes on some working-class Chicagoans.  Mamdani is talking about raiding the New York City workers pension plans and raising property taxes by 10%.  But along with that increase will come extremely frightening revaluations of homes.  Couple this with the flight out of the city of many of the Wall Street banks and financial companies like Black Rock and JP Morgan and what is coming up is a New York City budget gap in the billions of dollars.  And that will begin the death spiral for New York as the financial capitol of the world.  Without Wall Street, New York is a basket case with eight million people living in a crime ridden environment that suffers from expensive, crumbling infrastructure that it can no longer afford to maintain.

Well, maybe that’s why Mamdani is mayor.  Maybe they needed a stooge to absorb the punishment.  This will be an awful crash for the people living there and horrible for the people who didn’t vote for this idiot.  But it has to be done.  My only worry is that Trump will try to step in and save the idiots from themselves.  This needs to be allowed to play out to the final iteration.  Because the sinking of New York City will also sink New York State, Kathy Hochul needs to be destroyed in this disaster too.  All of them deserve it and their downfall will provide a powerful lesson for idiots all across the country.  Stupid kills.

 

 

 

 

 

Lost World

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The “Age of Mamdani” is upon New York City.  And anyone who frequently reads this site knows that I expect the bottom to drop out of the city in a way that will make the previous Democrat mayors’ terms look positively idyllic by comparison.

But as much as I indulge in seeming schadenfreude, it’s gallows humor.  New York City used to be a world-class city.  Even in its ruins there still exist some absolutely astonishing resources hidden among the squalor.

I’ll say something.  When I lived in New York my favorite indoor space was the American Museum of Natural History.  Ever since I was a kid barely old enough to walk I would wander around mesmerized by the dinosaurs and all the other creatures to be found in that magical place.

American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens

And almost as fascinating was the Hall of African Mammals.  With the huge exhibit of a small herd of African Elephants and the other monumental creatures like the rhinoceroses a small boy could be transported to another world.

American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens

But now this incomparable citadel of knowledge and wonder will be held hostage by people who hate the culture that produced it and made it into a legacy for all New Yorkers.  Already they removed the statue of Teddy Roosevelt that had stood for a century in front of the entrance.  Its motif with the “great white hunter” on horseback walking with the third world natives in their primitive costumes enraged the George Floyd crowd.  So it had to go.

Next thing you know some exhibit of primitive aborigines will outrage some woke group and that exhibit will be banned.

American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens

And after that someone will decide that there just aren’t enough Palestinian exhibits or somewhere on a sign there is some vestigial reference to Christianity.  Probably someone will be triggered by a date still using B.C. or A.D. and more scrubbing will be needed or some other facet of third world life will need to be reinforced for the good of the public.

I guess I don’t anticipate dinosaurs becoming controversial but I guarantee something in the African exhibits will offend someone in the New York African American community and the wholesale purge will begin.

And when push comes to shove, I think I will feel worse about the loss of the American Museum of Natural History than about the whole rest of the city and its inhabitants put together.  I know that’s an awful thing to say.  But it’s true.  I guess murdering magic is a terrible thing to the little kid that’s still inside of me.

The First Fruits of Mamdani

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Less than a week after New York City elected Zohran Mamdani mayor, his first reality check surfaces.  New York State Governess Kathy Hochul declared that she has no intention of funding free busses in New York City.

https://x.com/libbyemmons/status/1987532950284451991?s=20

While herself running for reelection and under pressure to avoid any new taxes the laundry list of freebies that Mamdani has promised represents a death sentence for her chances to win the election.

So, let’s think of how all of this will play out.  Well, one thing, I’m pretty sure of is that Zohran will be a one term mayor.  When Albany refuses to pay for all of his gimmees and the middle class flees his sabotage of the public schools and destruction of the police and emptying of the prisons I can see some really bad things going down in the “Big Apple.”

What I’m not sure of is what will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  If I were to guess I think it’ll be the city-owned grocery stores.  I think however he gets involved in that ridiculous idea it’s going to create actual chaos.  And that includes the scenario where he does nothing at all.  Just claiming that he’s working on it will cause enormous anger in the indigent population when it never occurs.  Probably he’ll open up a couple of storefronts where homeless people will be handed free food and riots will break out when the supply of food runs out.  After that the cold hard truth will become clear even to an idealistic moron such as himself.

I’ve heard that a substantial portion of the New York Police Department is planning to retire once Zohran is sworn in.  I think this will accelerate the breakdown in law and order and that will increase the white flight from the city.  How quickly all of this will spiral out of control is hard to say.  But I’m pretty confident that four years is not the amount of time it will take.  I’m guessing next summer is going to be a hot one in New York and bad things will begin to happen then.

But then again maybe I’m just indulging in some early schadenfreude at Zohran’s expense.  Maybe when it becomes apparent that all the things he promised are ridiculous impossibilities he’ll snap out of his adolescent fantasy and turn into a brilliant realistic urban leader ushering New York City into a new golden age with rich and poor coming together into a united coalition that provides inclusion, equity and diversity for all New Yorkers and without any necessity for jails, SAT exams, police or ICE agents.  And this will catapult Zohran Mamdani into the spotlight in a way that will galvanize the American people into amending the Constitution to allow a foreign-born president and this will allow him to win the Democratic nomination for president of the United States and bring him to the White House as our first Muslim, immigrant, communist president.

Yeah right.  If you believe all that then I have a bridge that goes to Brooklyn that I’d like to you to take a look at.

Mamdani and the Midterms

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It looks like the next wave of Democrat politicians, the ones that will displace Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and even Kamala Harris are much more openly radical.  The more mainstream edge of this new wave are people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.  They are communists but they are too stupid to actually figure out a strategy to put their absurd theories into practice.

The new wave is like Zohran Mamdani.  They unapologetically want to set up soviet style demand economies by expropriating money and property and giving it to the people who don’t work but will vote for him.  This is a major change.  And there are more of these people out there.  Omar Fateh is the Minneapolis version of Mamdani.  He’s challenging the already incredibly left-wing mayor Jacob Frey.  Both of these men plan to turn large cities (well Minneapolis is large, New York is gargantuan) into socialist experiments complete with real property seizure and redistribution, municipal grocery stores (that we assume would allow you to pay according to your means and take according to your needs) and mental health agents replacing police to move away from that whole crime and jail thing.

You have to ask yourself, “How can any of this possibly go wrong?”  Alright, stop laughing.

I think the timing of this is almost perfect.  It’ll be about a year after Mamdani’s election that the Congressional midterms will occur.  I’m guessing a year should be enough for total chaos to envelope Gotham City.  I won’t guess at how Minneapolis will fare.  It’s a very odd place and I don’t think the mayor is actually in charge the way he is in New York.  But New York’s fate should be enough to clue in the rest of the country about how well the Stalinists are able to handle large scale American government.

What I’m guessing is that the break down in law and order will be instructive.  I assume Trump won’t make anything easy for Mamdani.  He’s already threatening to cut off social funding for things like Medicaid and Medicare where he can show that illegal aliens are receiving benefits from the local and state governments.  Letting Mamdani’s administration sink under the weight of its own excess welfare benefits would prove the point that quixotic socialist boondoggles are a recipe for disaster in a megalopolis like New York with an enormous poor population that can’t be fed through taxing the rich and middle class.

Now maybe I’ll be proven wrong.  Maybe Mamdani is the future.  Possibly all along we’ve missed out on how giving away free stuff to anyone who doesn’t want to work is really the optimal strategy for running a society.  And in addition, getting rid of the police and the courts and the prisons will seamlessly transition us from a human society with crime suppressed by these listed means, into a utopia where everyone is good and just and crime doesn’t exist.  Well, I’m willing to take a bet on it.  If Mamdani is elected and doesn’t back out of his current positions I’d bet a hundred bucks that things will explode into chaos in less than a year.  And by chaos, I mean the Democratic party in New York will be screaming to impeach Mamdani and crime will become completely unmanageable.  Only time will tell but I’m feeling confident.

Mamdani; Wake-Up Call or Extinction Event

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I was reading an article, Rise of Zohran Mamdani has Wall Street giving up on Gotham about how the CEOs of some of the largest financial corporations in New York (and by extension in the world) were invited to meet with Zohran Mamdani by the influential NYC Partnership.

“The list of New York City-based CEOs that declined the Partnership’s invitation includes Jamie Dimon, the nation’s top banker and chief of JP Morgan, the nation’s largest bank; Steve Schwarzman, the CEO of private equity powerhouse Blackstone; Brian Moynihan, the head of Bank of America, the nation’s second largest bank; Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager; and David Solomon, the CEO of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.

Most publicly pleaded “scheduling conflicts.”

But “what is this guy going to tell us that we don’t already know?” is how someone close to Solomon described the situation.”

At the end of the article the writer sums up why the big banks don’t need to make nice with the upcoming communist mayor of New York.

“And that gets us to why there were so many no shows Tuesday: the city’s business community doesn’t have to stay.

If you follow these big firms, as I do, you know they employ hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers — but fewer and fewer in recent years.

The harsh COVID lockdowns here gave them the excuse to move operations to places with lower taxes and regulations, mainly Florida and Texas, but also Utah and even Tennessee.

Mamdani will be another reason for the big banks to finally say goodbye to Gotham.”

And that brings me back to my title question; how much damage will Mamdani do?  Will four years of communism spark a repeat of how the David Dinkins administration ushered in the Giuliani renaissance or will it result in something similar to what happened to Detroit?

Now history doesn’t repeat itself but if I were asked to guess which of these two historical examples will be closer to the result of a Mamdani administration I’d say without much hesitation Detroit.  Now don’t get me wrong, New York City is remarkably different from Detroit but the ingredients for a staggering decline in the economic vitality of New York City are all on view to see.

Mamdani wants to re-ignite the welfare state as it’s never been imagined before.  He even wants the city to open grocery stores to battle the high cost of eggs.  The cost of such a program is frightening to even consider.  Add in the waste and incompetence of all city run enterprises and catastrophic failure is almost an immediate certainty for this awful idea.

Then there’s Mamdani’s plan to neuter the NYPD and make them some kind of hall monitors for the city’s gang members.  Basically, he will replay the 2020 George Floyd riots on an endless loop for his four years in office.

And finally, he’s on record as saying billionaires shouldn’t exist so imagine how he plans to usher in his redistribution of wealth in the Big Apple.

Probably the first nail in the coffin for the city will be the job losses when the big banks and other financial institutions head down to Texas, I’m guessing the losses will be staggering.  It will turn downtown Manhattan into a ghost town.  After that the tanking of commercial and residential real estate in Manhattan will evaporate trillions of dollars of value.  And the shockwaves from these disasters will echo through the outer boroughs and the suburbs where the financial sector workers lived.  It will be very ugly for the whole region.

And yet, it’s the best result in the long run.  Crashing the largest city in the country will be an object lesson for every woke moron who ever decided that democracy means voting for endless free stuff and eliminating the police is the solution to crime.

Okay New York.  Vote in Mamdani.  Prove just how suicidally stupid you really are.

We Have Some Good News and Some Bad News

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It’s very rare that New York City newspapers can trumpet good news about crime in the city.  But last week they could:

“Major crimes in the subways, including robberies and felony assaults, declined 18 percent from Jan. 1 through March 31, to the second-lowest level in nearly three decades, police officials said at a news conference last week. There were no murders during the same period for the first time in seven years, the officials said.”

Unfortunately, this good news was nestled near the end of a crime story that was entitled:

“Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”

For the non-New Yorker, the R Train (or RR as it used to be known in my day) is a local subway line that plies the underground between Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan.  The details were sparse but sufficient:

“The police were searching on Thursday for a man investigators believed violated a dead man Wednesday night on a train in a Manhattan subway station, according to an internal police document.

The person who died boarded an R train at around 8 p.m., according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter and the internal document. It was unclear on Thursday when or how the person died.

A man entered the same train car at around 11 p.m. at the Whitehall Street-South Ferry station in the Financial District, according to the official.

Within 45 minutes, the man saw the dead man and began to rummage through his pockets, the official said. The man then began to have sex with the body, according to the official and the document.

The sexual acts were captured on surveillance cameras inside the train car, the official said.

Soon after, the man got off the train and fled, the police said.”

Well, at least it’s good to know that the surveillance cameras were doing their job even if no one else was.  So, a man can drop dead and be lying there for three hours in a subway train without anyone including the crew aware of the fact and in fact another patron can take the opportunity to bugger the departed at his leisure without fear of interruption.

So, this 18% reduction in subway crime is being touted as a great success by the Mayor and the Police Commissioner’s offices but the fact that corpses are being sodomized on the R Train is to be taken in stride.  Call me a glass half empty kind of guy but somehow the 18% crime reduction rings a little hollow when necrophilia has surfaced in Gotham City.

I used to live in New York City during the time when crime was considered at its worst.  I can remember several gruesome murders and some aberrant behavior but I will say I’ve never heard that anything like this ever happened on the subway.  And the fact that the New York Times is trying to paint this “reduction in crime” as a triumph in law enforcement can only be described as Kafkaesque.

I like how the New York Times article describes the crime, “Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”  “Who they say” as if it’s in dispute.  What else could it be?  Could he have had prior consent from the deceased in the event his corpse happened to be found on the train?

I have friends and relatives who still live in the city.  I can only assume it would be too expensive for them to relocate.  Otherwise, I cannot imagine anyone who can get out, not doing so.  The public schools have become a sad joke.  The streets are covered with filth and the homeless and crime is at the point that you probably have to fear for your life on a regular basis.

But up until now you never had to consider that after you were murdered your corpse might be sexually abused by your attacker.  This does seem like an inflection point.  Or am I being oversensitive?

An Object Lesson in Civics

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I was getting together with some New York City friends.  We were at a local Chinese restaurant that we have been known to frequent.  Full disclosure, I had the chicken chop suey because the kung pao chicken is too spicy so soon after my Christmas gorge fest.

We eventually got around to talking about Daniel Penny and his surprise acquittal by a New York City jury.  And then we talked about mayor Eric Adams and his trouble with the FBI.  It was agreed that he was being targeted not because he was guilty of the crimes he probably did commit but because he had complained about the outrageous scourge of illegal aliens that the city was being forced to house and feed.

I said I thought that maybe after Trump takes office, he might cut a deal with Adams to have pressure put on the judges and prosecutors persecuting Trump in exchange for a pardon on the charges the FBI has brought against Adams.  Of course, I said this tongue in cheek.  New York Democrats will never stop attacking Trump until he cuts off federal funds to New York.  So, if he helps Adams, it will only be because he wants to make a deal with Adams to deport the New York illegals.

And then we talked about New York City’s future.  Basically, the crime and dysfunction has gotten so bad that even “safe” neighborhoods like Shore Road in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn were experiencing levels of violent crime never seen before, even in the 1990s.  And outrages like the illegal alien who set a female subway rider on fire and watched impassively as she burned to death.

I asked whether it seemed likely that the disastrous conditions would elicit a powerful reaction to restore law and order and save the city.  The answer I got was no.  They felt there wasn’t the will to fix things.  The elites who sponsored Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams as mayors wouldn’t change course no matter the consequences.  The were intent on enforcing progressive policies regardless of the consequences.  Of course, my friends freely admit that these elites will eventually abandon New York City for safer suburbs once their families are at risk in the city.  And once the people with the money abandon New York City it will begin to look like Philadelphia and Newark and eventually Detroit.  So that was their take.  New York City is in its death spiral.  The crime that the Democrats unleashed after the summer of George Floyd will be the cancer that kills Gotham by the sea.

It’s a funny thing.  Several years ago, I returned home to my old neighborhood.  And it was basically unrecognizable.  The new immigrants there had taken over and made the place their own.  Well, even if it made me a little sad to see my childhood memories thoroughly erased, I could understand that it was the nature of cities like New York.  But knowing that the city would be utterly destroyed is different.  It’s completely unnecessary.  A city full of immigrants from all corners of the earth needs law and order even more than some homogeneous ethnic enclave.  Everyone needs to feel like the law is there to protect them from chaos.  The fact that the progressives have declared law and order racist is proof that they don’t deserve to govern.  But it may take the destruction of every blue city to prove to everyone in this country that fact.  Oh well.

I’m Shocked, Shocked to Find …

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Eric Adams is a former NYPD officer, former Brooklyn Borough President and the current Mayor of New York City.  He has been a known quantity for decades.  Without a doubt he has been a part of the graft and corruption that is the status quo within the New York political system.  He has flunkies and nepotistic individuals embedded throughout the city government and the odds that he hasn’t been receiving kickbacks and bribes for decades are zero.

But low and behold! The Feds have discovered there are kickbacks and bribery going on in New York City and Eric Adams is involved!  Amazing.

Well maybe not so amazing.  All of this surfaced when Adams started complaining about Washington relocating tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in New York City and it blew up the city budget.  So because he made the Biden administration look bad they’re coming for him with an indictment for doing what he’s always been doing.  It’s like in Casablanca when Claude Raines’ character Captain Louis Renault tells Rick that he’s shocked, shocked to discover that there is gambling going on in Rick’s Cafe just as the croupier hands him his gambling winnings.

Import – Export

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I open up Word and stare at the white space and wonder, “What the hell can I write at midnight?” But there is always something to say (or write, or whatever I do) and I might as well find out what is lurking in my subconscious. The news is all over the place

Today there was a shooting on the NYC subway. Someone was shot in the head. Now this is just days after the wholly useless Governess of New York State Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard into the subway to stop the homeless from assaulting and murdering the straphangers. So, my first thought was, did a National Guardsman shoot a perp? I thought, “Nah. They probably weren’t given bullets.” Then I thought, “Maybe one of the gangbangers shot a Guardsman!” Now that seemed much more likely.
But honestly when all is said and done it was probably just gangs shooting at each other. So, all’s right with the world. Or, mission accomplished or whatever. After all, Haiti has just lowered the bar for everyone in the Western Hemisphere. If your gangsters aren’t butchering, roasting and eating their rivals then all you’re dealing with are “first world problems.” And in fact, just to show Haiti that the challenge has been accepted, Mayor Adams of New York proudly claimed that New York City is considered the Port au Prince of America. Now that’s remarkable. Port au Prince has always been a paragon of dysfunction. Back in Hait’s glory days in the 1970s there were two thriving industries that went on in Port au Prince. They had a brisk export business in medical cadavers and human blood.
Now considering that Haiti had a real problem with AIDS I’m guessing the blood business went bust. I’m guessing the cadavers were also impacted by the AIDS problem. After all, how many future doctors wanting to be dipping their hands in AIDS virus? So that’s probably why things have gone awry down in the New York City of the Caribbean. But now that powerful anti-viral drugs are all the rage, I think it’s time for all this discriminatory behavior by Americans to end and restore the trade lifeline that Haiti needs so badly.
That’s right. Haiti can now offer a new product line. Instead of medical cadavers they can provide a better option for all of those dearly departed that are cluttering up the streets of Port au Prince. Haitian Strongman Jimmy Chérizier, can bring his culinary skills to the fore and share his barbecue recipes with the right businessmen and begin exporting a whole line of smoked and cured Haitians to the US.
I mean can’t you just see it? Of course, everything will be most tastefully and delicately handled. Nothing recognizably human will be seen. No heads or hands or feet. Just meat on the bone or fillet. Why, what a perfect way for Americans to support Haiti in its hour of need. And some entrepreneurial Haitians could even emigrate up to New York and open up some barbecue joints in Manhattan. And if supply of prime Haitian runs low, I’m sure the subway shooters could provide some Northern barbecue meat in the meantime.
I always joked about cannibalism breaking out in America. I guess I was just slightly ahead of my time.
There. There’s my post.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 18FEB2024 – New York Exodus

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How many corporations will look at what happened to Trump, and start making HARD decisions about conducting business in New York City or State? Some truckers are already refusing loads for NYC. How many billions would it cost NY if those companies closed their offices and moved their operations to surrounding states like CT, RI, NJ, or PA. The COVID experience with remote office work proved that large corporate administrative centers are not essential to conducting business. The money saved on real estate costs may well counter the cost of server farms and optical fiber networks. Not to mention relieving workers of having to face long commutes or living in outrageously expensive apartments in the city.

In his zeal to “get” Donald Trump, this idiot DA and his megalomaniac judge may have sown the seeds of New York’s final financial ruin. Remember, if they can do this to a financial powerhouse like Donald Trump, who won’t be targeted?