Tag: new-york

Justice Clarence Thomas’s Ominous Warning

Recently, as Americans were busily filing their taxes, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was hard at work on an ad campaign, which was about to launch on social media.

The self-described democratic socialist soon let loose with an off-the-wall video ad, titled “Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich.”

In the clip, he lauded the passage of the city’s first-ever pied-à-terre tax,which is an annual levy on luxury second homes that are valued at $5 million or more and are not considered primary residences.

Mamdani framed the bill’s passage as a big victory, carrying on about “taxing the rich” and the “fairness” of it all, while claiming that the revenue raised would fund numerous so-called progressive priorities.

At the same time any concerns about wealthy residents fleeing the city were quickly dismissed as “imagined.”

In the real world, such a confiscatory tax drives out investment, crushes the real estate industry, and decimates the city’s already beleaguered economy.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had previously resisted broad tax hikes on the wealthy, has done a massive turnaround and is now totally on board with Mayor Mamdani.

The theatrical Marxism of Gotham’s mayor affects more than just the city of New York. His video ad is a textbook exhibit of the very leftism that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently warned against in a powerful speech, which was delivered at University of Texas’s Austin campus.

Speaking on the 250th anniversary of The Declaration of Independence, Justice Thomas described the code word that radicals prefer these days; i.e., “progressivism,” as an “existential threat” to America’s founding principles.

“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government,” the justice said. “It holds that our rights and dignities come not from God, but from government.”

In other words, so-called progressivism, or what increasingly appears to be communism in disguise, has nothing to do with progress.

Instead the implementation of the ideology turns back the clock on limited government, individual liberty, and the self-evident truths that built the most prosperous nation in the annals of history.

Mayor Mamdani’s video ad embodies the insidious slide toward tyranny to which far too many unfortunate countries before us have succumbed.

It’s a kind of trickle down ideology that celebrates a forced redistribution of wealth that is camouflaged as moral virtue.

A smidgen of real history is helpful in aiding our understanding of what is going on.

The United States of America did not have a permanent federal income tax for the first 137 years of its existence.

From our nation’s founding until the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the federal government operated without routinely confiscating a portion of every citizen’s earnings.

In fact, America grew into an economic powerhouse precisely because individuals and businesses were free to create, invest, and retain the fruits of their personal labor.

The free market, rooted in property rights, voluntary exchange, and limited government interference, is what drove innovation, lifted millions out of poverty, and rewarded those who were willing to take a risk.

Much like humanity itself, the capitalist system is not perfect. However, it is far better than any alternative that has been tried.

Economic freedom has unleashed human potential and achieved greater success than the best of central planners ever could.

Like Mayor Mamdani, the Marxist-minded among us are aggressively dismantling our freedoms.

For every fiscal shortfall, their solution is never to place a cap on spending. Rather, it is to foment more class envy and/or assign additional victim status to those who are vulnerable.

New York’s fancy sounding pied-à-terre tax is simply being sold as the pinpointed targeting of luxury homeowners and global elites.

But like a freight train with no brakes, history has demonstrated that policies such as these have no stopping point. Instead they cavalierly race forward, smashing into things, distorting markets, squelching investments, and sending wealth sailing off to better shores.

When those in power punish success and fund their agenda on the backs of producers, an erosion of the incentives that make the free market work begins to feed upon itself.

Slower growth sets in. Fewer jobs are created. Opportunities for everyone diminish at an accelerated rate. And the collapse of a once-solid system begins to look inevitable.

Justice Thomas is correct. This malignant ideology doesn’t improve on the Founders’ vision. It wholeheartedly rejects it.

The Declaration’s promise of unalienable rights, endowed by our Creator, stands in direct contrast to the non-progressive notion that rights are doled out by politicians, are revocable at the ballot box, and are able to be axed at any local budget hearing.

Mayor Mamdani’s smirk says it all.

Look at it as a cultural signal that the deconstruction of free-market principles is marching on, that government gets to be the one that picks winners and losers, and that wealth is a public resource available to be harvested on a Marxist’s whim.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, may we take heed of Justice Thomas’s call to reject cynicism and stand firmly for first principles.

And may more and more of us help Lady Liberty hold up the torch.

The Threat Posed by the Democratic Socialists of America

For decades many of us were warning that socialism (a.k.a., communism lite) was slowly creeping onto the American stage, largely due to an organization called the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Now, following Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City’s November 5, 2025 mayoral election, things have become crystal clear. Overt socialism has gotten a major foothold in the largest and most iconic city in America.

Time to take a more in-depth look at DSA.

With over 80,000 dues-paying members, including 11 sitting members of Congress and over 200 state and local officials, DSA has been able to wrestle control of the levers of power in a number of key places in the U.S.

In New York City, the group controls key committees, and in Chicago, 6 DSA members have a seat at the city council’s table.

DSA presents itself as a champion of compassion. However, beneath rhetoric such as “medicare for all” and “affordable housing” lies a radical agenda rooted in Marxist ideology.

The organization has been following the communist playbook to a T, seeking to obtain power through infiltration. It has made insidious steady progress toward this goal.

Unfortunately, it is currently the central focal point of energy for the Democratic Party, a party that appears to have so lost its way it is difficult to imagine any kind of return to sensibility.

Now let’s look at DSA’s core ideology.

Founded in 1982, its ideology is firmly rooted in Marxism, advocating for the end to all capitalism in favor of governmental control of industry.

The organization explicitly calls for the abolition of private property, the nationalization of enterprise, and the replacement of the free market system.

Most of the sustained attempts at the implementation of its ideology have ultimately arrived at communism’s doorstep. Communism’s legacy is one of economic decay, governmental ruin, and social collapse, a distinct pattern that is historically consistent across time, place, and events.

DSA’s own platform, updated in 2023, demands “public ownership of utilities, housing, and finance,” “decommodifying healthcare and education,” and “seizing the means of production,” all prequels to the imposition of totalitarianism and freedom’s ultimate demise.

The reality is DSA is a political insurgency with a proven playbook: Infiltrate, normalize, and dismantle.

Its youth wing, Young Democratic Socialists, is in favor of “abolishing prisons,” a prescription for crime and chaos that disproportionately harms the very vulnerable communities the group professes that it is seeking to protect.

DSA’s 2024 platform calls for nationalizing key sectors of the economy, such as energy and housing.

Its working group, “Ecosocialism,” advocates for “planned degrowth,” deliberately working to shrink the economy in order to meet specified climate goals.

The organization’s 2024 convention passed a resolution that called for “expropriating fossil fuel companies” and “banning private real estate development,” resolutions that translate into a form of national self-destruction.

DSA’s policies reflect a visceral hatred for the free market, and conversely, a worship of government. This inevitably leads to food shortages, black markets, and Soviet-style oppression.

The tenets of its foreign policy are equally atrocious. DSA’s “International Committee” has called for cutting all aid to Israel. It has hosted events with activists that are linked to terrorist groups. And it has refused to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

A document from the NYC-DSA’s Anti-War Working Group (AWWG), which was recently obtained by the Just The News website, shows AWWG has been plotting ways to pressure newly-elected New York mayor Mamdani to comply with its “demands.”

Demands include arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and active IDF soldiers, divesting city pension funds from Israeli securities, withdrawing city funds from banks that do business with Israel, ending city contracts with companies that do business with Israel, operating city-run grocery stores free from Israeli products, and evicting weapons manufacturers and transporters from New York City.

Mamdani is a longtime DSA member and leader. He is listed as one of the group’s “New York State Socialists in Office.”

When DSA-aligned officials are in power, “defund the police” efforts are typically underway as well, leading to skyrocketing crime rates.

Homicides were already up 30% in NYC post-2020, according to FBI data. Now with Mamdani’s victory secured, the trend is unlikely to be NYC’s friend.

Those who are DSA-aligned have also pushed for open borders and sanctuary policies, which have fueled a host of crises, including fentanyl overdoses, human trafficking, surging crime rates, and wage suppression for working-class Americans.

DSA’s own rhetoric betrays itself. Co-chairperson Ari Rabin-Havt recently tweeted about “seizing the means of production” as essential to combating climate change, ignoring how such seizures in Cuba and Nicaragua have led to corruption and poverty.

The communism that DSA is peddling has a 100% failure rate. This is because, among other irrefutable things, it violates human nature and defies economic realities.

We ignore this group at our peril.

It may be that many who subscribe to socialist ideology have never had to work to protect their rights. Someone else has always done that for them.

As one who with wholehearted rejection of communism and its socialism offspring has battled across decades to preserve our God-given rights, I speak for those of us who are still willing to continue to do so.

Just praying that it’s not too late.