“Together, we will craft a fresh narrative for our city,” declared Zohran Mamdani during his inauguration speech on Thursday.
“This narrative won’t depict a city governed solely by the elite 1 percent, nor will it portray a city divided into rich and poor factions.”
Mamdani seems to be continuing where former Mayor Bill de Blasio left off, by criticizing the affluent and creating a sense of division.
It wasn’t accurate then, and it remains inaccurate now.
When have the wealthy truly stood in opposition to the less fortunate in New York City?
The top 1% of earners pay 46% of the city’s budget — a budget, by the way, that at $116 billion equals that of the spending for the entire state of Florida.
Were the rich “versus” the poor when they funded billions in social services?
When de Blasio wasted $1 billion on his wife’s pointless Thrive mental-health program?
When Mayor Eric Adams sheltered and fed 210,000 migrants from President Joe Biden’s open border?
Thanks to Wall Street bankers, tech-company innovators and dreamers of all sorts who want to live in this city, Mamdani has a tax base of which most leaders can only dream.
To him, it is still not enough.
And every problem is their fault.
Mamdani spun a dystopian fantasyland in his speech, asking “who does New York belong to” and then claiming “for much of our history . . . it belongs only to the wealthy and well-connected.”
What is he talking about?!
We must have missed the City Council meetings where committee chairs wore cravats and monocles.
For much of our recent history, New York has had one-party rule: the Democrats.
Is he suggesting Koch, Dinkins, de Blasio and Adams were oligarchs?
Mamdani railed against “crowded classrooms and public-housing developments where the elevators sit out of order.”
Who is to blame for that, we wonder?
If classrooms are crowded, it’s because parents want to get their kids into the best schools, because the union refuses to hold bad teachers to account.
With public housing, they’ve made residents feel less safe by letting gang members go free without bail.
We spent more per student than almost anywhere else in America.
Our welfare budget is the size of a small country.
Yet Mamdani claimed his predecessors were scared to do things.
“We will govern expansively and audaciously,” he said.
“To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this — no longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers’ lives.”
It is not how much money we’re spending, but the bad ideas that never change.
Before Mayor Mamdani starts writing more checks, maybe he should consider that he needs better solutions.