Voters loved the socialist slogans. Now comes the fine print.



Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory over Andrew Cuomo in last week’s New York City Democratic mayoral primary catapulted a full-bodied Democratic Socialist program onto the national marquee. In his midnight speech, he claimed, “A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few.” His win marks Gotham’s sharpest left turn in a generation — and that’s saying something.

The recipients of his promise are slated to receive an economic makeover that treats prices as political failures. His platform freezes rents on more than 1 million apartments, builds 200,000 publicly financed “social housing” units, rolls out city-owned grocery stores, makes buses fare-free, and lifts the minimum wage to $30 by 2030, all bankrolled by roughly $10 billion in new corporate and millionaire taxes.

If Mamdani’s program collapses under its own weight, the case for limited government will write itself in boarded-up windows and outbound moving vans.

A week later, reality is beginning to set in.

Mamdani means what he says. On his watch, public safety would become a piggy bank. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Mamdani posted, “No, we want to defund the police.” He wasn’t being metaphorical. His current blueprint would shift billions from the NYPD into a new “Department of Community Safety” — even as felony assaults on seniors have doubled since 2019.

Mamdani’s program may feel aspirational to affluent progressives, yet to many New Yorkers it lands like an ultimatum.

Forty-two percent of renter households already spend more than 30% of their income on shelter; now they are told higher business taxes and a slimmer police presence are the price of utopia, which helps explain why tens of thousands of households making between $32,000 and $65,000 — the city’s economic backbone — have left for other states in just the past few years.

Picture a deli cashier in the Bronx. She’s not reading City Hall memos, but she feels the squeeze when rent rises and her boss mutters about new taxes. She doesn’t frame her frustration as a debate about “big government” — but she knows when it’s harder to get by and when it’s less safe walking home. The politics of the city aren’t abstract to her. They’re personal.

Adding insult to injury, the job Mamdani wants comes with a salary of roughly $258,750 a year — more than three times the median city household income — plus the chauffeurs, security details, and gilt-edged benefits package that accompany the office. Telling overtaxed commuters that their groceries will now be “public options” while banking a quarter-million dollars in guaranteed pay is the policy equivalent of riding past them in a limousine and rolling down the window just long enough to raise their rent.

Layer onto that record a set of statements many Jewish New Yorkers regard as outright hostility. Mamdani is one of the loudest champions of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement; last year he pushed a bill to bar certain New York charities from sending money to Israeli causes and defended the chant “globalize the intifada,” drawing sharp rebukes from city rabbis. The day after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, he blamed the bloodshed on “apartheid” and “occupation.”

All this lands in a metropolis with the world’s largest Jewish community outside Israel — about 1.4 million residents — whose synagogues, schools, and small businesses have weathered a steady rise in hate crimes. For them, a would-be mayor who treats Israel as a pariah and shrugs at chants of intifada isn’t dabbling in foreign policy; he’s telegraphing contempt for their safety and identity at home.

Republicans see an inadvertent gift. Mamdani’s New York will soon be measured against the lower-tax, police-friendly model many red states — especially my home, Florida — have advertised for years.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Law Enforcement Recruitment Bonus Program has mailed more than 7,800 after-tax checks of $5,000 to officers relocating from 49 states, including hundreds from New York precincts, while Florida touts a 50-year low in index-crime reports and unemployment below the national average. IRS data shows Florida netted 33,019 New York households in the latest year, with average adjusted gross income near $185,000.

Project those trend lines a few years and Mamdani’s New York grows grim: a shrunken police force responding to more 911 calls; fare-free buses draining MTA dollars and stranding riders; municipal groceries undercutting bodegas until subsidies vanish; office-tower vacancies sapping property tax receipts just as social housing bills come due. The skyline still gleams, but plywood fronts and “For Lease” placards scar street level. Meanwhile states that fund cops, respect paychecks, and let entrepreneurs stock the shelves siphon away residents and revenue.

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  Terraxplorer via iStock/Getty Images

Republicans running in 2026 scarcely need to draft the attack ads, yet they must pair fiscal sobriety with moral urgency — protecting the vulnerable, rewarding work, and defending faith. Mamdani’s primary victory shows romantic egalitarianism still electrifies young voters; statistics alone won’t counter a pledge of universal child care and rent freezes. This indeed won’t be a case of “promises made, promises kept.”

If his program collapses under its own weight, the case for limited government will write itself in boarded-up windows and outbound moving vans.

Should the city somehow thrive — safer streets, balanced books, real wage gains — progressives will demand that Congress replicate Mamdani’s policies nationwide. That is federalism at its most honest: two competing philosophies running side by side under the same national sky, with citizens free to relocate from one laboratory to the other.

For now, the lab results favor the model that backs the blue, protects the paycheck, and keeps the ladder of opportunity in good repair. Voters — and U-Hauls — are already keeping score. By decade’s end, the scoreboard will show which vision truly loved New York’s working families and which merely loved the sound of its own ideals.

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When did America's public libraries become homeless encampments?



What happened to libraries?

No, I’m not talking about school libraries being turned into propaganda factories, shelving what amounts to textual pornography for middle school students, all justified under the guise of “inclusivity.” That’s a discussion for another time.

One December, as my wife left the library, a homeless man spit across the stairs onto the back of her dress. She turned around to find him quite satisfied with himself.

I am talking about the fact that across the United States, a tragic number of public libraries have turned into daytime homeless shelters and temporary asylums for the mentally ill, the insane, and generally disturbed.

Furious George

Go to any public library in any big city, and you will see a security guard slowly patrolling the quiet floor. Every once in a while he wakes up a bum up who’s sleeping on a bench behind the periodicals.

“No sleeping,” he mumbles as he nudges the drowsy man. Unkempt and disturbed homeless men in their 50s hunch over the computers while mothers pull their 3-year-olds close, hurrying past on their way to the children’s section.

Hanging around, right inside the lobby in the winter, the insane argue as a fight is about to break out. You walk by, head lowered, hoping to get inside without attracting any attention.

Great expectorations

Years ago my wife and I lived in Milwaukee. The library there was like any city’s library. A big, beautiful building right downtown full of books — and vagrants. So many of these old city libraries are so structurally stunning, and there is something darkly poetic in this. These grand buildings, built at a different time, a higher time, now lower than ever.

The bricks are the same, but their purpose has been degraded. One December, as my wife was leaving, a homeless man spit across the stairs onto the back of her dress. She turned around to find him quite satisfied with himself. This is the current state of these once-great testaments to literacy.

There may be no greater metaphor for our collapsing society than the demise of the library. Before everyone had money to buy the books they want, the library was a lifeline. Before the internet and before everyone had a telephone in their homes, the library was an oasis of knowledge. In the desert of the new world, the library was a miraculous thing. It was a symbol of civilization itself.

Goodnight, literacy

Today, however, people don’t read. They can, I think. But they don’t, that’s for sure.

They watch TikTok and rot their brains consuming gutter slop content. The majority of the population no longer desire the library like they once did. They, of course, still need the library, but they don’t want the library. This is another part of the story that is the demise of the library. The people are degenerating.

Of course, some people still read. I read, you read, we all read here. What are you doing right now, after all? But many of us buy our books. Personally, I end up buying books so I can support the author and own the book myself.

Often the books that I end up buying are a little off the beaten path, so they won’t be found in the library. Though I do use the library for a host of more general research purposes. Nevertheless, I know I am not the norm and neither are you. People don’t read.

Do people refrain from reading because of the homeless in the library? Probably not. People don’t read because people are getting dumber and their attention spans are fried.

Crime and... crime

But there is a certain percentage of people who visit the library less because of the general anarcho-tyranny of the situation inside. My wife stopped visiting the library after she got spit on. I stopped after being worn down by the generally depressing scene of disheveled men sleeping next to the nonfiction.

The homeless invasion of the library is a tragic example of a society that no longer has the will to keep order as it ought to be kept. The reason vagrants populate the library is the same reason cities tolerate shoplifting and general disorder. The institutions responsible for keeping order and maintaining a decent public space are too cowardly to do so. They sacrifice the rights of the upstanding citizen for the sake of the dysfunctional and disturbed.

You might think that this all sounds too harsh. One might protest, “Homeless people have a right to be at the library too!” Well, to a degree, they do. But vagrancy is a thing, and we all know what it is.

A farewell to harms

There was a time when our public spaces were kept more orderly. When those disturbing the peace were told to move along and if they didn’t go on their own, they were made to go. The homeless have rights, but so does everyone else. Public spaces deserve to be orderly, and if our government and institutions can’t ensure that, then they are failing.

There is a bigger question running like a thread through all this. Is it humane to turn the insane loose on the streets? For a while people were institutionalized; that was our solution. But then we stopped, and for the past few decades or so we’ve thought the best option was letting people go free, even if they end up harming themselves or others.

Which way is the right way? That’s a big question. I don’t know what the exact answer is. I’m not sure there’s a solution that makes us all feel good. But what I do know is that the scene of mentally ill homeless people disturbing everyone else and turning the public library into a homeless shelter is an acute example of societal dysfunction and degeneration.

There is something dark, depressing, and poignant about the scene of the city library today. This place where people used to learn before they fried their brains is now a homeless shelter.

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Charles Barkley trashes San Francisco as 'rat infested' ahead of city hosting 2025 NBA All-Star Game



Hall of Fame basketball player Charles Barkley once again criticized San Francisco as a dirty city, much to the dismay of his co-hosts.

While covering highlights of an Indiana Pacers versus Detroit Pistons game, TNT host Ernie Johnson spoke specifically about the great season Pistons player Cade Cunningham is having.

Cunningham is averaging a career-high 24.3 points per game through 38 games and is also putting up his best numbers for rebounds and assists per game.

As the broadcast team was discussing if Cunningham was going to be selected for the 2025 NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco, Barkley let it be known — once again — that he isn't a fan of the city.

"Hey listen, [if] he doesn't make the team, I'm not going. I'm not going to that rat-infested place out in San Francisco."

"Stop, man!" host Johnson pleaded.

As the highlights continued, Barkley squabbled with co-host Shaquille O'Neal as another former NBA great and co-host Kenny Smith was heard laughing at the exchange.

"Y'all are not gonna make me like San Francisco," Barkley reiterated.

"We're not, I know! Just keep it to yourself," Johnson enforced.

Barkley, still asserting his opinion, added, "No, no, no, no, nope."

'We love San Francisco!'

The exchange wasn't the first time Barkley had harsh realities to promote about the city by the bay.

In fact, Barkley made similar remarks during a live broadcast of the 2024 NBA All-Star Game in Indiana.

Barkley described the city as being filled with "homeless crooks," but this time, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green was there to take offense.

Barkley had asked Hall of Famer Reggie Miller about having the choice of "being cold or being around a bunch of homeless crooks in San Francisco"; this caused Green to immediately interrupt.

"That's crazy!" Green said.

Reporter Taylor Rooks then replied, "We love San Francisco!"

"No, we don't!" Barkley insisted.

"Yes, we do!" Green came back.

Barkley then argued that residents "can't even walk around" in the city, causing Green to insist that they can.

Barkley declared, "Yeah, with a bulletproof vest and security!"

The 2025 NBA All-Star Game airs on February 16 on TNT and will feature four teams, with Barkley, O'Neal, and Smith selecting the players for three of them.

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Father-daughter duo brings hope to Western North Carolina, one RV at a time



As Woody Faircloth found out, sometimes the smallest things have the biggest impact in storm-ravaged Western North Carolina.

Faircloth’s charity, EmergencyRV.org, has delivered nearly 60 campers and larger recreational vehicles to shelter families made homeless by the unprecedented flooding and mudslides caused by Hurricane Helene.

A curly-fur puppy small enough to curl up in one of Faircloth’s knit winter caps might well have had the biggest emotional impact on the storm victims he helped over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The pup, which rode along with Faircloth and his daughter Luna from Colorado, was just the prescription for the Phillips family in Burnsville, N.C. The family lost multiple homes during the floods and mudslides that rocketed down the mountains in late September.

'We’re going to give this to a family who needs some kind of a little light.'

Faircloth earlier arranged for an RV to be delivered to Makisha Phillips and her children. In addition to stress from the storm damage, Phillips is mourning the death of her sister, Madison County Sheriff’s Deputy Michelle Quintero, who was swept away in the floods on Sept. 27.

“We met her father and cried and prayed with him in the parking lot,” Faircloth said. “Her oldest daughter was in the truck, and I took [the puppy] over and handed it to her and then went and talked to the father.

“When I came back, the puppy was sitting on her shoulder like a parrot,” Faircloth said. “She had the biggest smile on her face. And I said, ‘That's your puppy now.’ And she said, ‘My mom told me. I can't believe y’all are doing this.’”

Faircloth had not planned to buy a puppy or bring it along on the Thanksgiving mission of mercy. But when he drove by a flea market north of Denver, something made him stop and look at a car full of puppies for sale.

“I walked over there, and there was this little puppy, the one we ended up getting, sitting in the back of the crate and had dog poop all over it,” he said. “They were all scrambling. I just picked it up, and I held it up to the lady and I said, ‘Tell me about this puppy.’”

 Luna Faircloth, 12, cares for a puppy on an EmergencyRV.org trip to deliver donated RVs to Western North Carolina storm victims.Photos courtesy of Woody Faircloth

The owner said the dog was born on Sept. 25, the day the pre-hurricane rains began soaking Western North Carolina.

“I just looked up at the sky, and I went, ‘Okay, I guess we’ll take it.’ So we fell in love with the puppy on the way there, and we’re really struggling with that,” Faircloth said before gifting the dog. “But we had talked about it that we’re going to give this to a family who needs some kind of a little light.”

Tragedy strikes home

Deputy Quintero was in the process of leaving her Burnsville home along Brown Creek to head to the Madison County jail to help in any way she could during the storm.

“She had had her vest on, and she had her backpack and her gun and everything, and her house had started flooding,” Phillips said in a phone call with Faircloth that was posted on YouTube. “So she grabbed the keys. She wasn’t scared, but she grabbed everybody’s keys so that if anybody needed the keys, she would have them.”

When Quintero stepped out the back door, she was struck by a wall of water. It swept her into the raging river. A neighbor threw a rope to her, but then a tree fell, causing them both to submerge.

“By the time she had come up — she was about five [foot] four — he said she was already waist-deep in mud,” Phillips said. “So he grabbed her and was pulling and pulling and he said all of a sudden she stopped.”

Just as Quintero told the neighbor, “It’s all right,” another tree fell and submerged them both. She never re-emerged.

“They found her a little bit ways down the river, and it was too late,” Phillips said. “They couldn’t … there was nothing that they could do. We had to bury her within, I guess, 24 hours of it because we couldn’t embalm her.”

Phillips also told Faircloth about her 3-year-old, who is suffering from retinoblastoma that caused the child to lose an eye. Phillips wanted to get an implant that will match her daughter’s other eye, but she said Medicaid would not cover it. Because so many people in Western North Carolina are hurting from the storm, Phillips didn’t want to do an online fundraiser.

Faircloth stepped in again to help.

“I shared your story with one of our donors,” he told Phillips. “And I said, ‘Hey, I know this is not kind of our normal thing, but we want to help this family.’ We got you covered for that surgery.”

Phillips burst into tears.

“Oh my God,” Phillips said between sobs. “You have no idea the worry, the worry that you have for your children. Oh, Lord."

“You have no idea what you’ve done. You’ll never know the gratitude and the prayers that will go up for y’all,” she said. “You'll never know.”

 Nan Collins (second from right) and family of Burnsville, N.C., next to the donated RV from Woody Faircloth and daughter Luna (first and third from left) from EmergencyRV.org.Photo courtesy of Woody Faircloth

Faircloth and daughter Luna congratulated each other for looking past the love they have for the puppy in order to gift it to a hurting family. Phillips reported back the next day, saying the family decided to name the dog Luna.

“I was crying, and I walked back to the truck. I said, ‘Luna, they just named the puppy Luna,’” Faircloth said. “And she started laughing so hard. And I said, ‘Why are you laughing? I’m over here crying.’ She said, ‘Because it’s a boy.’”

When Faircloth spoke to Makisha’s father, Cash Phillips, he discovered the family patriarch also lost his home in the floods.

“He said, ‘All I want is y’all to pray for us,’” Faircloth said. “‘That's all we need up here.’”

The next day, EmergencyRV.org delivered an RV to Cash Phillips. Makisha texted Faircloth the next day.

“She said, ‘I can’t believe y’all did that for my dad. He’s my hero. He’s the best man I’ve ever met. And you just blessed him in a way that I can’t even … I can’t ever say thanks.’”

Home-state boy helps out

Although Faircloth and his charity have been providing free RVs to disaster victims since the huge California wildfires of November 2018, the storm damage in Western North Carolina was especially personal for him.

Faircloth grew up in Winston-Salem, N.C. His father coached football at Wake Forest University.

“That’s where I went to college and went to high school, in Winston-Salem, which is just a couple hours away from where all this was going on,” he said. “So when this [storm] happened, I just said, ‘Hey, we’re all in on Western North Carolina.’ I know those people. I know their language. I know their customs. These are my people.”

'He said he couldn’t get his tires wet.'

Faircloth has learned many lessons over the years of doing disaster relief work. He makes sure the RVs they provide are in good shape so that the recipient families don’t have to contend with repairs, leaks, or non-functioning appliances. Volunteers stock each RV with food and supplies.

He also learned that the government is not the answer. Local people end up doing the rebuilding, the supporting, and the grieving along with all of their neighbors, he said.

“Amazing that just regular people can do more than the government in this work,” he said.

— (@)  
 

EmergencyRV.org brought an RV to a veteran in Bat Cave, N.C., whose property was devastated by the floods even though it sits high above the creek that turned into a violent river.

The man told Faircloth that FEMA refused to inspect his property because it required agents to drive a truck through the creek that is barely two feet deep.

“No, they wouldn’t drive through the creek,” the man told Faircloth in a video posted on social media. “I’ll try not to cuss, but I told the dude, I said, ‘What would he do if it was raining? How would you get here?’ He said he couldn’t get his tires wet.”

Faircloth made a video of himself driving a pickup truck across the shallow creek.

“Well, FEMA, here’s how we do it. Watch, watch,” Faircloth said as the truck rolled through the water. “You just crossed the river. It’s a veteran, for God’s sake. Look, actually, it’s two rivers, but it’s actually a creek. Come on, people. It’s not that hard.”

The veteran said he cares for his daughter who has Down syndrome, so the RV shelter would be especially appreciated.

'It was so unbelievably sad seeing people in tents.'

Not far away on the veteran’s property, a farmer from Minnesota and a New York City firefighter worked together to clear debris. Both men said they felt called by God to come to North Carolina and help the storm victims.

Faircloth said he gets frustrated because of the huge demand for shelter at a time when FEMA is scaling back its presence in the devastated region. And he knows of large lots in Florida where hundreds of brand-new FEMA campers have been sitting so long that grass grew up around them.

Before Hurricane Helene, Faircloth said he offered to buy some of the FEMA campers sitting in a Florida Division of Emergency Management lot. He said he would have staged them around the country. The Florida officials refused, he said.

“They had 1,600 up there, and I think they deployed 300 of them during Helene relief, and they denied us,” he said. Denied even when Faircloth asked for a single camper to house a 103-year-old World War II veteran who was living in his truck.

“You deny a guy like that? We were trying to help, and we helped him,” Faircloth said. “We were able to get an RV to that guy the next day from another citizen. It’s just, it’s crazy.”

 Woody Faircloth about to drive across a shallow creek that a storm victim said FEMA officials refused to cross in order to inspect his property. “It’s actually a creek,” he said. “Come on, people.”Photo courtesy of Woody Faircloth

Blaze News asked FEMA about the lots full of campers in Florida and why they are not being used to help in North Carolina. A FEMA official said some of the RVs would be going to North Carolina. “FEMA currently has units staging in Florida that are being readied to deploy to survivors in the state,” the official said in a statement.

EmergencyRV.org has delivered 57 RVs to survivors in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. The charity averages about one new placement per day. Anyone wishing to donate an RV in good condition, support the work financially, or volunteer to drive donated RVs to North Carolina can do so on the EmergencyRV fundraising page.

Faircloth said the work is hard and takes its toll. When he asked Luna if she wanted to take a break from the traveling, there was no hesitation.

“She snapped right up. She said, ‘Dad, don’t you ever say that again. That’s not what this is about. We’re going to keep helping people.’”

So the dynamic duo will again head for Western North Carolina at Christmas. Because the need is only growing.

“We’re going to be there the week of Christmas to New Year’s delivering RVs again,” he said. “I told the people who stepped up and said they would help us that are boots on the ground there early on. I said, ‘Look, guys, I hope you know that this is going to get worse before it gets better, and this is going to be a long, long haul of work that needs to be done. These people are going to need help for a long time.’”

 Hurricane Helene flooding devastated the property of Nan Collins in Burnsville, N.C. She lost five living spaces, a bus, RVs, a barn, and a garden.Photo courtesy of Woody Faircloth

Among the victims assisted by EmergencyRV was a homeless U.S. Navy veteran who was displaced when the Asheville shelter where he lived was destroyed. He and some 200 other vets suddenly needed a place to live.

Faircloth delivered as many RVs as he could to the Statesville RV Park in Statesville, N.C. “I’ve never had nothing like this,” the veteran told Faircloth in a video posted online. “I lived in motels most of my life.”

The man knows all about storms. He worked many of them over the years doing “tree work.” The rescue shelter of an RV was deeply appreciated, he said.

“This is really nice,” he said. “I mean, it’s more than I expect.”

Faircloth and Luna are fueled by the good work they do, but it sometimes exacts an emotional toll.

“We had a big cry together in Swannanoa the other day,” he said. “It was so unbelievably sad seeing people in tents. Seeing some people weren’t in tents but were in substandard shelter and standing around fires, eating the hot dogs off sticks.

“She just started weeping,” Faircloth said. “I was like, ‘Honey, it’s okay. We’re going to help a lot of these people down here.’ She said, ‘Dad, we can’t help them all.’”

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