Seattle’s Clueless Socialist Mayor Says ‘Bye’ to Tax Base. Epic Brilliance of ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’ Why Dems Should Be Nice to Fetterman. Another Dead Kimmel Joke. More
Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson says that reports that the rich are fleeing Seattle’s high taxes are “super overblown,” but even if so, Wilson has a super dismissive message for them: “Bye.”
Wilson was “slammed” for her “wave to tax weary residents” (also known as the tax base) of Seattle. In her self-satisfied remarks, which evoked approving titters from the audience, Wilson “waved good-bye to prosperity,” according to a devastating editorial in the Washington Post.
The editors noted that Seattle’s most iconic business, Starbucks, already had fled after being targeted by Wilson:
Nine days after winning Seattle’s November mayoral election, Katie Wilson joined Starbucks baristas on a picket line and pledged to boycott the coffee conglomerate until their union got its way. The socialist will need to wait a while longer for her caffeine fix.
In March, after Wilson took office, the chain said it would close five additional stores in Seattle, including four that had unionized. Starbucks said they were selected because of poor financial performance and bad customer experiences.
Then, last week, Starbucks announced it will establish a new corporate hub in Nashville, investing $100 million and bringing up to 2,000 jobs.
The 43-year-old Wilson, who received a $10,000 allowance from her parents last year, is defiant about the consequences of her antagonism toward successful people who create value for society.
The Washington Post goes on to note that such arrogance is increasingly typical of the state’s elites. More details on Wilson’s background. On the drive to eliminate those annoying rich people, another Washington Post editorial (I’m telling you—the WaPo’s editorial pages are getting better by the day) says that California stands to lose revenue if the 5% billionaire tax goes into effect.
Meanwhile, the other famous socialist Mayor, New York’s Zohran Mamdani, was elected on the false promise that he would “immediately” freeze rent on rent-controlled apartments for four years—easier said than done:
Since taking office, however, he has been forced to recognize what the law has made clear from the start: He cannot set rents himself, and overt interference with the independent RGB could expose a rent freeze to a legal challenge.
So Mamdani has found another way.
His Office of Mass Engagement will soon recruit so-called volunteers to fan out across selected neighborhoods and encourage rent-stabilized tenants to attend the hearings.
In other words, City Hall is mobilizing the constituency most likely to support the mayor’s preferred outcome while insisting it is merely promoting civic participation.
He’s paying lip service to the RGB’s independence while directing a government office to organize a campaign ensuring the board “answers to the people it serves” — an ominous phrase that gives away Organize NYC’s actual purpose.
The mayor insists the effort aims to educate, not advocate. According to Mass Engagement Commissioner and DSA veteran Tascha Van Auken, the volunteers are “not advocating for any specific outcome or position.”
Don’t be fooled. …
Not an Escort Service. In an arm’s-length effort to unblock the vital supply waterway that doesn’t involve escorts by U.S. warships, President Trump says the U.S. will “guide” stranded ships through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. denies Iran’s claim to have hit a warship in the Strait. Is the blockade the U.S. strategy that finally makes a difference? A news story in the Wall Street Journal suggests as much:
For almost five decades, Iran’s Islamic government has survived financial pressure from the U.S. by selling oil to China. It confronted American military might with guerrilla tactics. But with the U.S. Navy’s blockade, that strategy might have met its match, analysts said.
Epic Brilliance. According to Rich Lowry, Operation Epic Fury is highlighting the utter brilliance of “Drill, baby, drill”:
“Drill, baby, drill” is arguably the most successful public policy of the last 20 years.
On top of sweeping innovations forged by private industry, President Donald Trump has driven a stake through the heart of Joe Biden’s “net zero” energy policy — based the delusion that we could phase out fossil fuels — and has pursued US “energy dominance” instead.
The Western hemisphere stands to gain from the Iran crisis, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz underlines the inherent risks of reliance on Middle Eastern suppliers.
Meanwhile, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal explains how Russia helps Iran by providing intel to help target Americans:
President Trump is clear-eyed about the threat from Iran, but he seems to view Russia with Kremlin-colored glasses. Perhaps he needs an intelligence briefing on the extent of Russian aid for Iran. Vladimir Putin hosted Iran’s foreign minister in St. Petersburg recently, and evidence is accumulating that the Kremlin has been helping Iran with intelligence to target Americans.
While trying to shoo off rich people—who provide tax revenue—our friends on the left welcome illegal aliens, who too often don’t stop doing illegal things just because they are here. The New York Post cover today features an illegal alien who butchered two Long Island women. The newspaper reports:
An illegal migrant on Long Island fatally butchered a beloved mom of three and another woman in separate savage attacks — before calling cops and calmly confessing he “killed somebody,’’ police said.
Rony Yahir Alvarenga Rivera, 22, of El Salvador — who entered the US as an unaccompanied 12-year-old in 2016 — knifed a 42-year-old coworker and mom to death at an Island Park Wendy’s around 12:30 a.m. Friday, authorities said.
Three hours earlier, around 9 p.m. Thursday, Rivera had hacked his 32-year-old roommate to death at their Valley Stream apartment, according to Nassau County police.The tragic woman was identified by cops as Eddy Raquel Hernandez Castillo.
Rivera later went to his job at Wendy’s and killed de Aguila, cops said.
Advocates of illegal immigration are particularly sympathetic to unaccompanied minors such as Rivera. California Governor Gavin Newsom, in particular, has been on an illegal alien funding spree.
“Hasan Piker is left’s Nick Fuentes. Why do they embrace him?” is the headline on an Ingrid Jaques column at USA TODAY. Good question:
The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg has called Fuentes, a 27-year-old online influencer, a “Hitler-loving white nationalist.” The Times has run ominous headlines like “Nick Fuentes’s Rise Puts MAGA Movement in a ‘Time of Choosing’ ” and “Nick Fuentes: A White Nationalist Problem for the Right.”
Meanwhile, the news media largely ignores the rise of a similarly repugnant force on the left: Hasan Piker. Piker, 34, has more than 3 million followers and streams hours of political content each day on Twitch.
Piker is an anti-Zionist, capitalist-hating Marxist who appears far too comfortable with political violence, so long as it serves the “right” cause.
Piker’s growing popularity among progressives has coincided with a broader and deeply disturbing rise in left-wing tolerance for political violence.
In a Politico story headlined “Inside the Quiet Republican Effort to Flip Fetterman,” Jonathan Martin raises a chilling specter: What if the maverick Democrat from Pennsylvania did switch? The Dems could help themselves by listening to Fetterman, but that is a bridge too far. Another rich guy: Andy Kessler of the Wall Street Journal says, “We’re going to miss Tim Cook,” the Apple CEO who is retiring. And an editorial at the same esteemed outlet on the end of Spirit Airlines starts this way:
The demise of Spirit Airlines is a tragedy for its 15,000 or so employees, though at least taxpayers weren’t forced to pay for a bailout. But the airline’s closure shouldn’t pass without giving dubious credit to the main culprits: The antitrust theorists of the Biden Administration.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, NOT a socialist but known as “America’s Mayor for his stewardship of the city after 9/11, is in critical but stable condition in a Florida hospital. The increasingly ghoulish Jimmy Kimmel made an ill-timed quip about Giuliani, 81, “calling [him] from the grave.” President Trump weighed in, decrying “radical left lunatics” for their treatment of Giuliani. Thoughts and prayers for the former Mayor.
