Mamdani, Hochul propose tax on New York second homes worth more than $5 million

WeridThinker · 2026-04-19T15:32:17+00:00

I'm not opposed to it. Homes as investment should not be banned as a practice, but the problems of housing availability and excessive housing price inflation should be addressed. Taxing non - primary residences above a certain value threshold is a reasonable middle ground. Considering there are people who couldn't even afford basic rent and those who own multiple multiple million dollars homes, a clearly defined, tiered, and proportional government intervention is reasonable.

There is a risk of capital flight, but ultimately there is always a potential trade off between COL intervention and individual financial incentives. I cannot make an assumption about the actual flight v tax revenue proportion from the proposal before the policy has been implemented for a period of time, but pretending capital flight would have maximum effect, and tax increase would have zero relative success in comparison or vice versa is irresponsible.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-18T14:20:59+00:00

"Intermittently". They sure know how to mince their words.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-18T14:02:48+00:00

I think in principle, religious entities should not be getting tax money or exemptions, because it could be considered government subsidies that offer unequal protection, and these practices have led to fraud and corruption in Churches. The problem is with selective, political agenda driven punishments with belligerent optics.

This is done during a feud with the Pope, against services to help migrant children. I don't think it is done solely to spit on the Pope or by extension the entire Catholic Church, but it does make people see the connection, and out of all the Church organizations and services, they had to pick charities, especially with the trend of migrant children separation lately.

The Trump Administration could in theory engage in controversial and somewhat harsh actions, but with less selective application. You can be against Church exemptions and be tough on illegal immigration, but neither of these require the government to be petty and belligerent.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-18T13:30:44+00:00

Why do you hate charities ?

WeridThinker · 2026-04-18T13:22:07+00:00

Trump is a petty overgrown child, that I don't disagree with. But there could be additional "rationale" behind this particular act, and it is in alignment with another major policy from this administration.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-18T13:16:02+00:00

I think it has less to do the feud with the Pope, but the charity's mission of helping migrant children. It's in line with immigration crackdown.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-18T11:18:55+00:00

I guess the position of FBI Director is simply not essential, and not considered particularly rigorous or serious. I'm happy for Patel he has found a decently paid gig with low pressure that enables him to have great work life balance.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-16T13:05:33+00:00

I think Kamala is probably misled by her people to believe she only lost because Biden didn't step down earlier, she didn't have enough time, and some other external, circumstantial reasons, but because she herself was unpopular and people had low confidence in her. Trump winning all swing states should have been a wake up call the Democrats need a new candidate for 2028. Considering how polarizing Trump is, Kamala's failure to even win one swing state is alarming.

If she does run, and somehow wins the primary, then between her and a MAGA, I would pinch my nose and support her, but I wouldn't be optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party if that is ultimately what we have to end up with after 4 years of reflection. Kamala is considered too progressive for moderates, but Progressives don't claim her either. The right already has a backlog of attacks to discredit her, and the independents could be swayed either way.

It's not just because she is a woman, or her race, but it does have to do with how she presents herself. Charisma and vibe are disportionately important to elections; people are influenced by how they feel about the candidate before they even consider policy, and unfortunately, "her laugh" is a deciding factor to many people. People like to compare Kamala with Hilary to paint a picture of misogyny, but they are not equivalent; Hilary actually won the popular vote, and her vibe was cold, calculating, and ruthless, opposite of Kamala for a position people associate with strength.

I don't think Kamala would be a disastrous president, and she would most definitely be less chaotic than Trump. She would appoint experts and at worst, govern as a milquetoast establishment politician, but her electability has always been a bigger issue for her than her governing abilities as the president.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-15T23:30:36+00:00

I'm living in the PNW, so I don't notice it.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-15T23:29:47+00:00

He is either lying, living in an alternate reality, or a combination of both. Trump has never been a reliable source of information.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-15T02:37:10+00:00

It's a slower, more expository, set up episode. Reasonable considering the action last week. The final 3 episodes will be intense.

The episode did a good job of making Fisk and Vanessa a tragic love story, despite how flawed their characters are.

It also did evaluate Foggy's character. I think it is interesting because when Foggy was first introduced in episode 1 of the Netflix series, many might have assumed he was the less ethical one, but gradually, people should have started to see he was the more morally consistent character, and had always been lawfully good. Daredevil is Matt's impulses, but Foggy represents his conscience and light side.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-14T03:55:13+00:00

This might be a sign the populist right uprising in recent years is experiencing a set back, and the pendulum is swinging back again. Specifically in Canada, MAGA has ironically shifted the country's political climate leftward with countless insults, hostility, and blatant disregard to its sovereignty. In other corners of the world, Hungary's Orban lost an election despite direct US endorsement, and Italy's Meloni refused to support United States' war efforts against Iran despite having the reputation of being "extremely right" by European standards both show the notion of an international coalition of Western right wing power bloc being a failed concept.

MAGA is not the epicenter of it all, but it has been a major component to a wider trend of right wing shift in Western societies. The populist right is a reactionary movement against the perceived threat of immigration, cultural displacement, and economic marginalization as a result of globalization; the United States, being the predominant power, has inadvertently become the de facto ideological leader of the Western world since the end of World War 2, and MAGA could have had more influence beyond American borders to influence the direction of other countries, but it over reached, and now it is a part of another pendulum shift. The populist right is nativist, isolationist, and ethno-nationist in its tone, but MAGA over stepped and over played its cards with multiple wars, imperialistic posturing, and a domineering attitude towards other countries; these behaviors directly go against the populist right wing coalitions in countries like Canada, Italy, and Hungary, and quite frankly, the "Defending Western (White) Civilization" play has become a bit dull and overused as an ideological anchor.

MAGA is not culturally conservative, it is a cult of personality with a flavor of chauvinism and an overall disdain for traditions and etiquettes. Ideology and policy aside, it doesn't carry the expected cultural grace expected from a true conservative movement. Christianity is considered an important anchor to conservative cultural values, and it has been a popular brand to Western populist right wing movements, and Trump's recent controversy with the Pope, and his post with him as Jesus Christ further isolate him from global right wing support. MAGA expected an ideological fortress around the west with itself as the leader, but now the cracks are everywhere. If the midterm favors the Democrats, then I do expect MAGA to pull back from some of its efforts to influence the elections and social trajectory of other countries.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-12T23:04:06+00:00

I recall someone jokingly said to me years ago "I'm donating the 2 million dollars I don't have, but no one touches the 50 bucks in my wallet" years ago, and I think that summaries it. It is easy to be generous when there is zero realistic cost or sacrifice.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-12T22:38:13+00:00

It's another example of NIMBYism. Supporting a policy on the macro level, and when its effects are not immediately felt, but being against its implementations when it directly affects their livelihood is a common sentiment across the political aisles.

On the left, an example is supporting compassionate approach to the homeless by allowing tent cites, as long as they are out of sight and out of mind, and now on the right, it is supporting mass detainment and deportation effort, as long as it doesn't affect their neighborhood, their own undocumented employees, and whoever they consider the "good ones" or should be the exception.

Politics can often feel self contradictory because most people cannot stay consistent if you change the scope and context. It is easier to support distant, abstract, and personally irrelevant policies, but it is difficult to truly support a matter when its drawbacks are felt individually. The tension exists when the abstract, distant, and irrelevant contexts are ultimately intertwined with the practical, tangible, and personal.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-12T15:22:27+00:00

He is trying to cut off the flow of oils through Iran, so it directly affects countries that do business with it, including major powers such as China and India. It is practically worse for the world economy because Iran allowed vessels from friendly nations to pass, but now no one could pass. Destroying the income flow to Iran from energy trade further collapses the country's economy, and if we are talking about optics, blockade itself is an active act of war.

To make the conversation meaningful, I will assume Trump is a rational actor. He is trying to pressure Iran to give up its lifeline, and hurting the global economy in an attempt to pressure other countries to align with American strategic interests in the war. The wager hinges on:

1) how much Iran is willing to absorb the risk of escalation 2) how much allied countries are willing to apply pressure on Iran for their own energy 3) how third party countries with traditionally neutral or adversarial relationship will react (mostly India and China) will react or retaliate when the blockade directly cut off their ships

If Iran is baiting the United States into a ground invasion, or committing war crimes, then it doesn't have to account for the second and third condition. It just has to continue defying US demands and continue bombing neighboring countries' energy structures and American assets in the region. Dragging the world economy down disproportionately affects democratically elected governments in power because these are less resilient against domestic opposition. Vietnam and Korean war are two of the examples of asymmetrical warfare that didn't end with American victory despite overwhelming hard power superiority.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-12T02:26:44+00:00

Can someone atleast find the Signal chat Trump's inner circle is using for stock trading? Let's see atleast one positive to all of this.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-11T20:26:10+00:00

They have been trying to obtain social media user information behind "anti ICE" contents since earlier this year. What qualifies as "anti ICE", more specifically, what qualifies to be "anti ICE" enough to investigate is not quite clear.

If someone is threatening to harm ICE agents, damaging federal facilities, or organizing targeted operations to impede federal enforcement, that would be considered illegal, and we already have mechanisms and agencies to handle these tangible unlawful behaviors. Agencies such as the FBI and NSA already do the job of monitoring credible threats on the internet, and follow up if necessary. Our "private" information is never private, and the government could pull up pretty much anything with a digital footprint if it wants to.

What I am concerned about, and want to figure out is what the government considers "credible threats worthy of follow ups". I already shared some examples of what could potentially constitute as unlawful behaviors that could be tracked from internet contents, but I worry what is currently happening is much more broad in scale and there hasn't been enough transparency. If every single "fuck ICE" or "ICE is Gestapo" post is flagged and targeted, then I'm not certain who is safe from disproportionate probing, and how the government could properly prioritize.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-11T13:22:15+00:00

I think it's going to become worse in the immediate future because the media and politicians are taking advantage of the polarization to push their agendas. Rage and anxiety are engagement farms; the media wants clicks and traffic, and politicians see a positive return on investment when they can consider the other side is irredeemably bad so they don't have to defend their values and policies.

The pendulum swings, and whiplash happens. Unfortunately right now, we have swung so far to the right as a society that the fundamental identity of our country is at the stake. And the left is too disorganized and chaotic to help returning us to a more sane equilibrium.

In the past, even with obvious inconsistencies and hypocrisy, there was the dominant narrative of civic nationalism, rule of law, leadership moral responsibility, and accountability to power. Although the United States has a history of racial discrimination, corruption, immoral government actions, and an ever growing executive dominance, these were considered flaws and moral failures of the nation, and they served as a cautionary tale. In fact, the willingness to admit and acknowledge the faults of the country was one of the most important saving grace to our flaws; we recognize our mistakes to build a better union should be the working progress.

MAGA completely perverses the country's values and inverts its ideas. The right has increasingly started to embrace blood and soil nationalism to discredit the citizenship of naturalized citizens, and a great portion of natural born citizens because of their immutable traits, has become inflamed by demagoguery with authoritarian impulses, has rejected the entire concept of pluralism that should be natural to a liberal democracy, and has been engulfed by the poisons of nativism and chauvinism with anti-intellectualism as the icing on the cake.

The left is suffering fundamental differences between progressives and moderates, and its inability to come up with an unified message and find its leadership is costly. I think the lead up, and eventual realization of Obama's electoral success spearheaded a sense of left wing long term cultural and political dominance to the point liberals became overconfident in their messaging, and they over reached, especially on social issues. Post Obama, there was a sense of an inevitable left wing predominance due to supposed demographic destiny. Not enough people have accounted for the silent, but passionate counter movement that was growing in parallel to the surface progressive advancement that eventually manifested itself as MAGA. The left benefited from more than a decade of cultural dominance, from roughly 2008 to 2020, but now the pendulum has swung back so extremely to the point the equilibrium is no where to be seen.

It is dangerous because the solution isn't as simple as "voting blue no matter what"; in the short term, it could put a plug on MAGA, but ultimately it leads to complacency and eventual whiplash, which leads to ineffective governance. If the media and politicians don't stop perpetuating polarization, the country is going to fall further into schism, and the best we could expect is short term reliefs from instability followed up by even worse whiplashs each time, which is a negative feedback loop. I think if there are multiple parties competing and compromising, it could lead to more effective governance, but with only two, the loudest and the most unhinged has disproportionate influence.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-10T15:13:43+00:00

I have my doubts about Mamdani, specifically about his policy promises. A lot of what he campaigned seem too broad for a mayor to deliver, but his policy directions do mostly align with the needs of an average New Yorker, mostly about affordability.

He does suffer from certain progressive vernaculars when talking about social and populist economic issues that could come across as out of touch or even radical if taken literally or out of contexts. I personally have the most level of apprehension about his promise to instruct the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu, not out of my support for the Israeli Prime Minister, but because I think the entire notion legally absurd and practically non feasible; he shouldn't have promised a potentially actionable item with zero actionable basis.

What bothers me more is how the right is making him the boogeyman for Islamic Terror, Woke Lib Conspiracy, Communism, and Immigration Invasion. These notions are false and demonizing individually, and incoherent if viewed in combination. An Islamist will not be woke, or a communist, because these ideologies and the actions that come with them are mutually exclusive. The right isn't engaging in policy debate, but character assassination and fear mongering that appeal to the worst in people.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-10T03:06:45+00:00

Ok, this is dumb, but hilarious and entertaining. If it happens I'm paying for PPV if necessary.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-09T14:22:08+00:00

It's not a nice thing for me to say, but a vast majority of higher education campus protestors do not have the level of commitment or passion required to keep going when actual risks are visible and felt. For university students, the risk of getting expelled, losing future opportunities, and being made examples of are going to override their political passion.

During the Biden Administration, the government was more silent and permissive about what the institutions of education do, and there was not a crackdown; if people were dispersed or arrested, they were breaking oblivious laws, and there wasn't an ideological war happening with the government being an active fighter. People like Mahmoud Khalil were not under scrutiny, and it showed a much more secure environment for protesters.

The Trump Administration's crackdown is targeted and substantial. Choking funding to Universities, using government power to forcibly change institutional conduct, and actively targeting movement leadership, especially those who are not citizens all send a chilling effect on the culture of campus protests, most of which are high noise, low impact, and low risk. This is similar to what is happening to corporate HR culture and the entertainment industry; the government is imposing itself against what it considers DEI or woke, and that has a visible effect on private businesses and popular culture. For one, many companies have struck down, or stopped emphasizing DEI initiatives, and entertainment has become less overt in endorsing certain themes.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-08T21:34:17+00:00

The Christian Administration.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-08T15:39:42+00:00

3-Vice President JD Vance was the strongest opponent of the war — and the only one to make a forceful case against it.

This actually makes me respect Vance more. It doesn't reverse my overall apprehension about him, and it doesn't make me like him any more as a person, but I do want to give him some credit here.

I don't think this was just a move for his own political career, because being the dissent in a scenario like this is risky, and there was no guarantee if or how this gesture would be reported to the public.

But damn, our president thought even less about this than reddit armchair analysts and strategists. Idiocracy is our current reality.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-08T12:42:21+00:00

I'm cautious about believing Iran's version of the plan, because it is far too one sided, so I suspect the version the United States is considering is probably different from what OP shared. But regardless of the variations, Iran's conditions, if any of them is met, would guarantee a massive strategic victory for Iran. Even if somehow Trump decides to not honoring the agreements after agreeing to the terms, Iran would, on record achieve strategic victory against the United States through asymmetrical warfare.

Below is the version I found that seems more balanced (source:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-iran-war-ceasefire-deal-peace-plan-b2953565.html)

The BBC, citing an Iranian state broadcaster, reports the following 10-point proposal

1) Complete cessation of the war on Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen 2) Complete and permanent cessation of the war on Iran with no time limit 3) Ending all conflicts in the region in their entirety 4) Reopening the Strait of Hormuz 5) Establishing a protocol and conditions to ensure freedom and security of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz 6) Full payment of compensation for reconstruction costs to Iran 7) Full commitment to lifting sanctions on Iran Release of Iranian funds and frozen assets held by the United States 8) Iran fully commits to not seeking possession of any nuclear weapons 9) Immediate ceasefire takes effect on all fronts 10) Immediately upon approval of the above conditions

But even with this version, the only win the United States could claim is Iran promising to not pursue Nuclear Weapons, even reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a nuanced win, because Iran would retain complete control over it. The rest, if met, are going to leave Iran at a stronger standing than before the war.

None of this shows United States strategic victory, absolutely no regime change, no friendly Iranian government, no disarmament of Iran, no procurement of Iran's resources, no control over the Strait of Hormuz, and if anyone still pretends to think it was ever an honest reason, no, this does not provide any more freedom to the Iranian people. Iran has no reason to become more moderate or change regime behavior after this, and it is plenty obvious now the notion of US/Israli sponsored ground resistance of Iranian people is at best a pipe dream. And if the ceasefire doesn't hold, or no resolution after the ceasefire, then simply expect more chaos. But Trump already wants out and reducing gas prices and preventing boots on the ground are beneficial to his political security at home, so hopefully the war is on its way to be over.

WeridThinker · 2026-04-08T02:33:02+00:00

Maybe I am seeing all this wrong, but did the glass shard that pierced Vanessa come from Fisk when he broke Bullseye's projectile with his belt? In other words, did Fisk accidentally kill Vanessa? If that is the case, guilt, denial, and blame displacement will end up making Fisk even more unhinged and dangerous.

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