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Fourteen people died in New York over this past weekend amid an Arctic air chill that has sent low temperatures into single digits since mid-January, marking the longest deep freeze the city has seen in 65 years. The deaths come after Mayor Zohran Mamdani instructed the New York City Police Department and social workers not to break up homeless encampments and move those living in them into shelters.
“For the New Yorkers who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or to others, there is a process of involuntary confinement which is a last resort,” Mamdani declared last month.
“Involuntary confinement,” as the mayor puts it, could prevent fatal circumstances, like, you know, hypothermia. But Mamdani, since his flashy social media-driven campaign wowed left-wing and uber-woke voters in the Big Apple, is holding firm on his policy. Because politics and virtue signaling trump pragmatism and, in this case, emergency preparedness every time.
“I don’t care what your ideology is,” former city Comptroller Scott Stringer argued. “When it’s 7 degrees, you get everyone in a safe place.”
Coalition For The Homeless executive director Dave Giffen said the death toll was nearly unprecedented.
“I’ve lived in New York City all my life and I can’t remember a time when so many people have died from a winter storm in such a short period of time, it’s absolutely tragic,” Giffen noted recently.
The death toll continues to pile up, as does garbage and snow along city streets. I can attest to this personally during one trip to Fox News headquarters this week that involved traveling 20 miles in from New Jersey in approximately 30 minutes into Manhattan, and another 25 minutes to travel exactly 1 mile to 48th Street and 6th Avenue.
Simply put, several streets were blocked off, and those that were open were gridlocked due to the inability of livery trucks to transfer their cargo because there were no loading and unloading zones available. And because Mamdani is always about performance art, he sent out a video of himself shoveling snow after a storm hit more than a week ago to show he’s a hands-on guy. Because if anyone knows how to shovel snow, it’s a rich kid from Uganda.
Actress Debra Messing, who once said she hoped President Donald Trump gets “raped in prison,” shared her experience attempting to travel across New York in an X post that has since gone viral.
“Sitting in a taxi trying to get to an appointment. Should take 20 minutes, we are at an hour and ten minutes and counting. The streets are a disaster,” the former Will & Grace star wrote. “It hasn’t snowed in 5 days and the streets still haven’t been cleared. [A] poor ambulance is sitting in essentially a parking lot with sirens going. I’m praying for the person needing emergency care.
“I’ve lived here for 15 years and this has never happened. The plows have always worked around the clock to get the city back to working. I wonder what happened?” she asked sarcastically regarding Mamdani’s election.
Actor Michael Rapaport also voiced his disdain with a video of snow and garbage on the streets in an X video that has since gone viral.
“A week after the snowstorm and this is what we got Zoran the Shoveler!” Rapaport wrote. “Filthy black snow, garbage soup, ice rinks on every corner, cars buried like fossils. People slipping, breaking ankles, nobody shoveling, nobody salting, nobody doing SH*T. This is New York City. Three minutes from the mayor’s house. Start spreading the news… this place is a dirty snow covered dump. Clean it the f*** up Mayor!”
As for Mamdani’s vow to raise taxes to pay for his socialism-on-steroids programs, including a $30 minimum wage, free buses for all, free child care for all, and government-run grocery stores, he’s already running into a big problem with lawmakers in on the state level, including Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who essentially wants to know what Mamdani’s plan is outside of spending a lot of money to provide free stuff and drastically raising taxes to pay for it all.
“I met with the mayor and his budget team in my office just days ago, talking about what we can do to help,” Hochul told NBC 4 in New York this week. “But also, show us where you’re making adjustments. You’re finally now getting under the hood. So, where can adjustments be made? Do you really have a full picture right now of all the revenues coming in?”
“Cuts could be on the table as a last resort,” insisted Mamdani, who has never held anything resembling a real job and has never budgeted anything in his professional life. Conversely, the mayor wants Hochul to also raise taxes on the state level to help pay for his programs.
“The answer is still ‘no,’” Hochul responded when asked about Mamdani’s demand. “I don’t believe in taxing for the sake of taxing. Never have, never will.”
Whoops. This could be a big problem for the rookie mayor when a fellow Democrat is rejecting his plea for even more money from taxpayers.
For now, Mamdani is staying on script as fawning press members seem happy for the access and the clicks that follow. On Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he sounds no different than Mayors Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, Brandon Johnson of Chicago, or Michelle Wu of Boston: ICE is not welcome, they say, and should be abolished altogether. For his part, Mamdani will do everything in his power to ensure his police force doesn’t assist federal operations in any form.
“I am in support of abolishing ICE, and I’ll tell you why: because what we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist,” he recently told ABC’s The View, where he certainly fit right in.
So in other words, Mamdani and other mayors in deep-blue cities want a return to open borders and the massive budget shortfalls that follow in taking care of any and all illegal immigrants who come to their cities. Unbelievable.
We’re still only five weeks into Mamdani’s first term and, to be accurate, the first job in his adult life of actually running anything on any level.
But as things continue to deteriorate in this once-great city, that honeymoon will quickly become a nightmare as all the mythical promises he made continue to go unfulfilled. Ask the aforementioned Johnson, who sits at 6% approval.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
TRUMP IS WRONG ABOUT ‘LIBERATION DAY’
The ultimate capitalist, Ronald Reagan, once famously said that.
Unfortunately, the ultimate socialist and new mayor of New York never got the memo.
