…wherein two of my favorite commenters on the planet (Mike Rowe and Bill Whittle) talk about this issue. What amuses me is that Rowe plays a little devil’s advocate up front, and Bill of course does his usual incisive rapier job.
Get yourself a cuppa, and settle back.
And a couple of the articles below this one will make a great deal of sense.
Of course, the foundation policy of all Marxist policymakers and politicians is to punish the rich. So nobody should be surprised that Hizzoner Comrade Mamdani of NYfC has a plan to tax residences in Manhattan that are adjudged to be non-primary — i.e. the so-called pied-à-terre dwellings of those people who need a place to doss down during the week before fleeing to their houses in Lawn Guyland or Scawsdale for the weekend.
To my surprise, this little smash ‘n grab tax thievery has had its peepee severely whacked by a judge:
Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi issued a temporary restraining order effectively prohibiting any action on the luxury second home tax until an August 31 hearing on a lawsuit filed by three disgruntled homeowners.
Ozzi also hit out at Mamdani’s decision to release a list of the homeowners who could potentially be hit by the tax, many of whom were sent notices warning they would be liable unless they filed an exemption.
‘No law permitted or required the City to publish such a list of the names, addresses and property values of more than 900,000 New York City homeowners, or to publicize that list through an irregular, mid-year publication,’ Ozzi wrote in his decision.
‘[The judgment] annuls and vacates [the] city’s mailed notices, and any determination that such mailed notices constitute proper notice under tax law.’
He added that city officials should have conducted an ‘individualized statutorily-required initial determination’ before issuing the notices to homeowners, so as to not place the burden on the property owners.
The judge then barred city officials from taking any further action on the 17,000 notices sent by the Department of Finance, which warned they would face a five-figure tax bill unless they requested an exemption.
Hubba hubba. For once, a New York judge got it right.
Sadly, it’s not going to end there, because the Marxists’ ravenous appetite to punish the wealthy and successful knows no bounds — even legal ones like this one — and at some point in the future, sure as sugar, those taxes will be imposed.
While I hate Marxists with a passion, especially when they engage in theft of this nature, I have to suspect that among those 900,000 unfortunate people are an awful lot — 50%? 60%? — who can be reliably counted on to vote Democrat in their elections, because New York. So in this case, they’re getting what they voted for, good and hard.
And I’m not sympathetic.
Apparently there’s this foolishness emanating from the BritGov and its new (Marxist) Prone Monster:
Andy Burnham’s review into the prisons early release scheme will be conducted in the “coming days and weeks” and decisions need to be made “very quickly”, a Labour minister has said.
Under the new Sentencing Act set to come into force in September, some 6,000 criminals were due to be released under the early prison release scheme, but the Prime Minister on Thursday paused the plans and ordered an urgent review.
That’s because among the 6,000 would-be releasees are a pair of cop-killers — and needless to say, this eventuality has created a serious stir, even among the normally-passive Brits.
Under changes in the Sentencing Act, some offenders were set to be let out of prison after serving a third of their sentence, rather than half, in a bid to ease prison overcrowding.
Hell, I have a problem with that “half”, let alone a third because the Brits have appallingly-low sentences for serious crimes to start off with. When attempted murder gets seven years (I watched one such example on a TV documentary, a few nights back), that would mean his effective sentence is barely two years. For attempting to kill someone — in the one I watched, he stabbed the victim fourteen times, and only a miracle saved the victim’s life.
Frankly, I’m not at all sympathetic towards the moans about “overcrowding”, particularly when I see how the folks in El Salvador handle their violent criminal population:
And if we all feel strongly about this — and I’m pretty sure we do — allow me to offer a solution to their overcrowding problem:
Now I know that many are against the death penalty, and for once I’m going to be a little sympathetic to their concerns.
So start off by hanging only the murderers who killed more than one victim, add those who were caught in the act of murdering — say, in a public place where there were lots of witnesses — and let’s throw in the child-murderers for good measure.
Not only will the overcrowding problem be eased, but I’m willing to bet that would-be murderers may start to think twice before pulling out the kitchen knives and what have you, and the crime rate will start to drop.
It’s worth a try, because nothing else the BritGov has tried or even suggested has worked.
All this, of course, because the same BritGov — of whatever party — spends more money on cossetting illegal immigrants than on building new prisons in, say, the Outer Hebrides where there’s lots of space and a climate guaranteed to chill [sic] all thoughts of mayhem from prospective criminals.
It’s just a question of priorities, really.
Signal Hill, Cape Town
(…I think; it might be Lion’s Neck, taken from a strange angle.)
From this guy (via Insty):
“There is Chief Justice Roberts, the institutionalist, who strategically guides the Supreme Court by not deciding more than is necessary to decide. Then there is Chief Justice Roberts, the institutionalist, who strategically guides the Supreme Court by deciding more than is necessary to decide. Which Roberts do we get in each case?”
Going by past decisions, we get the Roberts which is most likely to piss off conservatives in that particular case.
Whenever I’m talking about some scrote getting shot in the act of burgling someone’s house and threatening the homeowner, some bleeding heart always asks the question: “So you think that your TV is more valuable than someone’s life?”
The answer, of course, is that it’s not whether I think that; in fact, it’s the burglar who thinks that the TV is worth more than my life. So as we’ve established that someone thinks that a life is worth less than a TV, it might as well be me who ends the philosophical discussion.
I was reminded of this when reading this happy little tale:
A man who reportedly became angry after being denied alcohol entered a Riverton, Utah, convenience store Friday with a shotgun and was shot dead by a bystander.
Okay, that’s worth some applause all by itself.
However, when the full story is revealed:
KUTV reported the man entered the convenience store and was denied an alcohol sale because he did not have identification. He allegedly responded by confronting the clerk and was then coaxed out of the store by other customers.
KSL noted the man had become “argumentative” and “belligerent” before having to leave the store. He then got into his vehicle and drove around, only to circle back to the store and enter carrying a shotgun, according to the report.
The Gephardt Daily pointed out that an armed bystander engaged the man when he re-entered the store, fatally shooting him.
But wait! There’s MOAR!
One report indicated that two armed bystanders may have fired at the man.
Now go back to my original thesis. Think about it: This asswipe put the value of a bottle of hooch above the cashier’s life. (I know, I know: maybe he just wanted to scare the poor schlub into selling him a bottle of Old Rotgut 2-year-old; but maybe he was that angry and frustrated that he intended to blast the guy into Kingdom Come — we’ll never know.)
So Our Hero (or Heroes? O be still my beating heart) was quite within his rights to see him off; and Anger Boy found out, too late, that the booze wasn’t really worth it.
Scratch one more asshole off the list of Them Wot Needs Killin’.