April 25, 2026

So How Is Zohran Mamdani's New Pied-à-Terre Tax Supposed To Work?

April 25, 2026/ Francis Menton

Here in New York, we continue to wait for the announcement of the annual budget that was due on April 1. Negotiations among the Governor and legislative leaders continue, with one big open issue being the potential extension of the “net zero” deadlines of the Climate Act.
While many issues may remain open, one thing on which there appears to be agreement is what they are calling the “pied-à-terre” tax — a real estate tax surcharge on New York City apartments valued at $5 million and up that are owned by people who are not permanent residents of New York. We know that that tax is an agreed part of the budget package because Mayor Mamdani bragged about it in his cringey video of April 15, which I covered (and linked) in my April 17 post.
Both Mamdani and Governor Hochul have asserted that the new tax will raise approximately $500 million per year in new revenue for the City. However, neither Mamdani’s video nor anything else has disclosed the details of how this new tax will be implemented.
At first glance, implementation might seem easy.

April 23, 2026

Update On New York Climate Act Negotiations: Details Starting To Emerge

April 23, 2026/ Francis Menton

We’re now more than three weeks past the mandatory April 1 deadline for New York’s annual state budget. So far, few details have emerged about the reasons for the delay. Negotiations are supposedly taking place among the Governor and the leaders of the two houses of the State Legislature. But what are the sticking points?
It is likely that by far the biggest, if not the only significant sticking point is what to do about the impending deadlines of the troublesome Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, or CLCPA. This Act sets required “renewable” energy and emissions reductions targets, with the earliest deadlines for those things in 2030. The Act also set a separate deadline in 2024 for issuing certain regulations. The latter deadline has been completely blown off.
Emissions reduction deadlines and related regulations may seem non-germane to the budget, but then this is New York. The budget process gives the politicians a way to conclude a must-pass deal behind closed doors without having to hold annoying public hearings that would be flooded by angry activists.
With the regulations long overdue, and an impossibly short four years to go to meet the first emissions reduction targets, one might think we are at a dead end.

April 20, 2026

April 20, 2026/ Francis Menton

When I consider our new Mayor Mamdani and his legions of committed followers, the thought I can’t get away from is “How is it possible to be this ignorant?”
Right now here in New York, Mamdani is moving forward with his plan to open a chain of government-owned grocery stores, at least one for each of our five boroughs.
The underlying concept is that groceries have become too expensive for low income people to buy, undoubtedly due to evil capitalists siphoning off vast profits somewhere in the system. In the latest iteration of his proposal, Mamdani has said that the government stores will sell “basic” products like bread, milk and eggs at “guaranteed cheaper” prices.

April 17, 2026

April 17, 2026/ Francis Menton

Here in New York, our new Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of “taxing the rich.”
But that leaves a question to which the answer up to now has not been completely clear: Does Mamdani advocate taxing the rich because he thinks it is good tax policy, or does he advocate taxing the rich as a way to take revenge and punish a group he thinks of as predators and oppressors?
Currently the New York Legislature and Governor are in the midst of their annual budget negotiations, in which one of the issues is whether Mamdani will be granted any of his “tax the rich” wishes. Word so far had been that the Governor has resisted those wishes, particularly the wish to increase the rates of income tax on high earners.
However, on tax day (April 15) news emerged that there is some kind of an agreement on one piece of Mamdani’s tax agenda, namely a proposal to impose a special tax or fee of some kind on expensive New York properties used by non-residents as second homes or “pieds-à-terre.”

April 15, 2026

April 15, 2026/ Francis Menton

It’s the feel-good story of the week, if you don’t mind taking joy from others’ misfortunes. When it comes to the wind and solar energy grifters, I don’t mind a bit taking joy from their misfortunes.
The last few days bring the news that apparently the majority of the remaining wind and solar electricity projects still in development in New York State are under imminent threat of cancelation.
At this point the details are sketchy, and nobody is attributing the news to any named source as far as I can find. Nevertheless, the story is sufficiently widely-reported from normally reliable sources that I’m ready to give it credit.
The Albany Times-Union appears to have been the first with the story in a piece from April 12. . . .

April 12, 2026

April 12, 2026/ Francis Menton

In his April 9 address to the Heartland Climate Conference, physicist John Clauser devoted the first quarter of his time to the issue of extreme weather events, and the remainder to something called the Earth’s Energy Imbalance, or EEI. On April 10, I summarized the portion of the presentation relating to extreme weather events in my prior post here. Today I will discuss Clauser’s presentation on EEI.
Before hearing Clauser’s presentation, I had heard of the EEI metric, but I had not studied it in depth. Nor had I realized the extent to which the IPCC and the climate cabal have embraced this metric as providing the preferred proof of impending dangerous global warming.
The metric that has previously been most used as the supposed proof of dangerous atmospheric warming generally goes by the name Global Average Surface Temperature, or GAST.