In New York, The Democrats Go Completely Crazy

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In New York, The Democrats Go Completely Crazy

  • Yesterday was primary election day in New York. I previewed it in my prior post, “Socialism: On The March, Or Not So Much?” There were no Republican primaries in New York City, and very few statewide. This was almost entirely a day for intramural contests among the Democrats.

  • It was the Far Left versus the Crazy Insane Left. In almost every race, Crazy Insane prevailed.

  • The most important races involved federal congressional seats within the City — Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America had endorsed candidates in three of the races: Brad Lander over incumbent Dan Goldman in NY-10 (my district), Darializa Avila Chevalier over incumbent Adriano Espaillat in NY-13 (uptown Manhattan and West Bronx), and Claire Valdez over Antonio Reynoso for an open seat in NY-7 (Northern Brooklyn and Southwest Queens).

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Socialism: On The March, Or Not So Much?

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  • The famous quote from Winston Churchill about Socialism is as apt today as when first uttered in 1948: "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."

  • Forty-three years later in 1991, Churchill stood fully vindicated, as the Soviet Union fell, following decades of not just stagnation and decline, but immense human suffering and death. At the time I thought, no one could ever possibly again take this ideology seriously.

  • Well, here we are in the United States of 2026, and you could easily get the impression that Socialism is on the march. Politicians proudly claiming the Socialist (or even Communist) brand hold the mayoralties of all the largest cities, and their movement is the source of all the energy in today’s Democratic Party.

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Can You See The Climate Scare Slowly Fading Away?

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  • I have often noted that the climate scam and the associated forced energy transition would of necessity go away at some point because the proposals being advocated to “save the planet” could never possibly work.

  • But the open question has always been, when that happens, what will it look like? Would all the big enviro groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club all go on national TV one night and admit that the whole thing was a fake scare from the beginning? In the real world, that’s not how these things happen. People who have staked out absurd positions somehow need to save face. So there would have to be some sort of gradual process of backing down.

  • And thus we come to the key role of the New York Times for the Left, which is to mold and convey the official talking points to the team’s candidates and influencers. How about sharing some instruction on how to quietly back away from the Green New Deal?

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There Are No Budget Constraints In New York City: "Coastal Resiliency" Edition

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  • I often make fun of the federal government as operating with what it thinks is an “infinite credit card,” outside and beyond any budget restraints. And thus all problems, real or imaginary, can be solved by dispensing some of the infinite federal loot. In its partial defense, the federal government does have the ability to print money, although that ability too eventually runs into limits.

  • And then we have New York City. The City has no ability to print money, but nevertheless operates as if there are no constraints on spending. The sky is the limit! Recently I wrote about how the City spends about triple the national average per student on preK-12 education, and more than double the national average per capita on Medicaid. Those are crazy excessive amounts, but at least education and healthcare are bona fide purposes for the spending of resources.

  • But how about spending huge amounts of money on pure fantasies that accomplish absolutely nothing?

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"Affordability" Should Be A Winning Issue For Republicans

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  • In a post back in January, commenting on the November 2025 off-year elections, I remarked that the buzz-word of the moment for the Democrats appeared to be “affordability.” Many credited that theme as being the winning issue that took the Virginia and New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidates (Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill) over the top.

  • And yet the policies that Spanberger and Sherrill had advocated as the centerpieces of their “affordability” agendas were taken from the playbooks of California and New York, otherwise known as the leading states for intentionally driving up costs for their residents.

  • Anybody could see that California and New York were among the most expensive states for the biggest items on the “affordability” list, particularly energy and housing. And yet Spanberger and Sherrill had succeeded by endless repetition of the bare word “affordability,” without any coherent explanation of how following California’s policies would somehow lead to a different result than what had befallen California.

  • So now we are in the long run-up to the 2026 midterms. From what I can observe in races near me, it looks like the “affordability” mantra is the central plank of all the candidates of the Democratic Party.

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What's Up With The Endangerment Finding Litigation?

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  • Have you heard of the “Endangerment Finding” (EF)? You have if you have been reading this blog for any period of time.

  • The 2009 EF is likely the most consequential, expensive and destructive regulatory action ever put in place by the federal bureaucracy. In that action, EPA claimed to find that carbon dioxide and several other so-called “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. Using the EF as the predicate, the administrative state under the Obama and Biden presidencies implemented dozens of major regulations intended to transform the entire energy sector of the U.S. economy. Obama/Biden regulations based on the EF sought, for example, to force the closure of all fossil-fuel based power plants; to end the production of internal-combustion-based cars in favor of electric cars; to restrict drilling for oil and for natural gas; to halt construction of pipelines; and many, many other such things.

  • The total cost was heading well into the trillions when President Trump returned to office in 2025. One of Trump’s first day Executive Orders in his second term directed all agencies to “review” and then begin to “suspend, revise, or rescind” all agency actions “identified as unduly burdensome” to U.S. energy production. EPA promptly began a lengthy regulatory process to rescind the EF. The final rule doing away with the EF became final on February 13, 2026. I had a post reporting on the rescission on February 15.

  • If it withstands court challenges, the rescission of the EF is a death blow against the entire and vast climate grift industry. Obviously the rescission was going to unleash a tsunami of litigation.

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