First of all, my intensely Grandmotherish Spirit wants that young man to take a nap! The whole campaign was very much giving Lady Gaga No Sleep Bus Club Another Club. He has until January 1st to recover and build his vitamins back up because he’s no good to me or anyone else if strolls into Gracie Mansion too exhausted for a fight.
And he will be fighting every step of the way because most, if not all, of his plans involve cooperation from the state or federal government, both of which have said they will either not work with him or actively work against him. The three that I paid the most attention to…
Buses
Mamdani wants to make the city buses free and expand our system of bus lanes. New York City itself doesn’t have enough money to pay for free buses, even if you restrict the free fare to just low-income residents. In order to pay for it, he will need to raise taxes on the city’s wealthiest citizens and corporations, but he can’t do that without the State of New York. Kathy Hochul already said she won’t be raising taxes on the elite because she’s afraid that they will leave the state, taking their businesses and their money elsewhere.
In short, there will be no free buses.
As for the express bus lanes…he doesn’t need Kathy’s help, but he needs Donald Trump to mind his business. The proposed expansion of the bus lanes on 34th Street were the most recent iteration of Diaper Booty Don sticking his big fat orange fingers into other people’s business. The city was ready to go. Plans were approved. Budgets were secured. Work was set to begin. And then, the Federal Highway Administration raised some bullshit concerns about freight traffic and emergency vehicles.
The city has halted work on the 34th Street busway project, at least for now, the Federal Highway Administration said Friday, raising new questions about the future of one of the city’s most ambitious transit projects.
In a letter made public Friday, the Federal Highway Administration said it had asked the city’s Department of Transportation to suspend construction on the car-free corridor until officials address federal concerns about how the redesign would affect freight traffic and emergency vehicles, and until city and state Department of Transportation officials meet with the FHWA to discuss the project.
(cont. NY 1)
Mind you, studies have already proven that bus lanes actually increase emergency and freight access to an area because those bus lanes that were formerly taken up by cars and parking are now clear for more specialized traffic.
I do generally think this is a fight that the city and Mamdani can win as long as they’re prepared for more hurdles thrown at them from DC.
Free Childcare
A great plan — offer free childcare for kids under 5 years old. It seems a no brainer especially since we live in an economy where the vast majority of people cannot afford to simply be out of work to take care of their children before they’re old enough to go to school. We don’t even pay people a livable wage let alone pay them enough to set some money aside to leave the workplace when they have a kid. In NYC, the average cost of childcare annually is $18K to $26K (x). Don & His Dummies want to offer women a $5,000 Birthing Bonus to increase the falling birth rate (x), but clearly that is a drop in the bucket for how much it actually costs to raise a kid.
So this is a much-needed plan, but a very expensive plan, and just like with the buses, Mamdani is counting on additional taxes to be able to pay for it. Kathy already said that money was not coming, so this is another fight that Mamdani likely won’t win.
City Run Grocery Stores
This is a new idea for NYC, but it’s not a novel idea overall…and it has some high profile failures. I was curious about the state of our grocery stores in general and I found some info from NYC.gov. There’s a lot to sift through but this slide in particular would be most impacted by city run grocery stores.
I live off Wall Street and there are five grocery stores that I regularly walk to, including a Whole Foods and the gourmet shop in the Jean Georges Tin Building. There’s no shortage of fresh, healthy food near me, so I assume this neighborhood wouldn’t need to participate in the FRESH program. From the way I’m reading this, if you are in a food desert or an area with low access to nutritional grocery options, FRESH provides incentives and benefits for property owners to support grocery stores with higher quality foods on offer. So by that reading, when the graphic says 1.35 million New Yorkers live within a half mile radius of a FRESH supermarket, I’m understanding this to mean 1.35 million people who previously did not have access to nutritious food now have that access thanks to the FRESH program. I might do some digging this weekend but I’m curious to find out how many people are still in food deserts.
Regardless of the number, they need a solution, and Mamdani is proposing city run grocery stores. The pilot would start with five stores, one in each borough, selling quality food at below-market prices partly subsidized by taxpayer money that currently gives tax breaks to big corporate grocery stores. Basically, you take $140 million that you were giving to folks like the dickhead who runs Gristedes and promises to leave the city so he won’t have to live under Mamdani, and you give it to these social experiments. This has failed a few times with Kansas City being the most recent American city to make a run at it and flop. Naysayers also like to reference the long lines and empty shelves in the Soviet Union or Venezuela as evidence that this would not work (x).
But for every flop, there is a success somewhere. In Istanbul, the government’s groceries have remained popular through changing leadership, providing a safety net for the poor and a reliable chain of commerce for small or independent producers who aren’t big enough to secure contracts with large, corporate grocery chains. Mom & Pop providers make money selling their food to the government and the people get food at a discount so they can feed their families. (x)
Mamdani will have to convince the city that we will be Istanbul and not Kansas City, which is already a tough bridge to cross. In the richest city in the country, he will have to continue to persuade everyone that rich people already have too much money. That’s the basic fight for his entire stay in Gracie Mansion — poor people need help and rich people have too much money.
I don’t expect Mamdani to be super effective because he has big dreams up against an even bigger bureaucracy. We just have to start somewhere. I’d rather shoot for the moon and get a few feet off the ground than to continue settling for a bar that descends farther into hell every year.
At any rate, those are some of the issues I’m looking forward to seeing him work through, but we’ll see what kind of retaliation comes out of Agent Orange’s administration. Republicans do a great job of convincing the rest of the country that NYC is a lawless hellhole where homeless people throw shit at you and the subway is unusable because crazed madmen will stab you and throw you in front of the train. If you thought the Fox News propaganda against NYC was bad before, I fear every other clip will have some bobblehead telling flyover states that New Yorkers have to pray to the east five times a day or they will be drowned in the Hudson.
But honestly, I could not care less what some fool in Kanssouribraskahomakota thinks about Shariah Law in NYC. Jimothy and Methenny saying they’ll never come here again is so laughable anyway because the flight cost more than the monthly installment on their doublewide. They were never going farther than the nearest Applebee’s.
I’m much more watchful of whatever evil is being cooked up by that petulant toddler and his roving band of racist neanderthals because that big, greasy, bored ass baby just wants to break all the toys of anyone who doesn’t wanna play with him. Last night after Americans from NYC to California to Virginia to BRIGHT RED MISSISSIPPI rebuked Trump and his policies, he put down his chicken nuggets for long enough to threaten the country once again.
I expected nothing less. One thing miserable people hate is to see other people living their best life while simultaneously not giving a shit about them or including them. So, the only option is to make those happy people as miserable as possible, and that’s the unknown here.
How far will the Tangerine Tyrant go to exact revenge upon cities and states that are being run better than the toilet bowl he’s sending the federal government swirling into? We’ve already seen him weaponize the National Guard against cities he doesn’t like. We’ve seen him massively increase ICE presence in those same cities. I assume both of those options are coming to NYC, but in what numbers and what will their orders look like? The NYPD has the largest police force in the country, but would the NYPD side with Mamdani over Trump if we ever found ourselves in a spot where we needed to protect NYC from its own country? What kind of false flag operations are we in for? Will domestic terrorism spike in the hopes of pinning it on Muslims? Is there another Oklahoma City Bombing around the corner? Has Fox News brainwashed and radicalized its viewership to the point where those angry white boys with guns start coming here to Save America by shooting up NYC?
Perhaps nothing will happen to NYC at all. Perhaps Trump has mentally moved on to plan his next grift since he’s already going on record about not being able to run again in 2028. Perhaps he will simply [censored] and we never hear from him again. Perhaps no one will leave the city, Kathy will have a change of heart to raise taxes, the city embraces socialist policies, and the standard of living raises for everyone. Nobody can predict anything with any level of certainty, but we do know that the rest of the country was watching, not just NYC but other states as well. The fact that record turnout turned into progressive movement in every race has provided a burst of much-needed hope into a hopeless cycle of ineffective Democrats up against a wall of corruption and bigotry with a total disregard for the humanity of all people.
If you were following Mamdani and his win has made you more hopeful about the direction of the country, just allow yourself to sit in that for as long as you can. Take your wins when you can and then start looking around for More Mamdanis in races close to you. Midterms will be here before you know it, and after the showing Democrats put up last night, you can bet there is an endless supply of money from Republicans to make sure that it doesn’t happen again next year.
Take the win…and then get back to work.
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