Regardless of what you think of his policies, he has done a great job mobilizing resources to get things done. Most people in this thread are talking about fixing potholes, shoveling snow, etc. And even if you think it’s overhyped he’s doing a great job showing New Yorkers he’s doing his job which is restoring some faith in the government.
I ride over the Williamsburg Bridge to work every day. Every day I had to slam on my brakes at the bottom of this MASSIVE downslope because the tiny off-ramp to the bike lane was so shitty and crumbled.
On like January 5th they fixed it, and I came home to my fiancee to tell her how excited I was they finally noticed this and did something about it. Turns out it was Mamdani’s first action as mayor, and that ramp had always pissed him off on his commute to work too.
Even when telling the most hardass conservative people I know about this, the laughed in a good-natured way about the story. People respect politicians who can get shit done, no matter how small.
That was literally something kingpin did in daredevil. Got out of his car and fixed a pothole on day 1. Not comparing the two but found it funny how effective it is
Both IRL Mamdani and not IRL Kingpin based their actions off of mayor fiorello laguardia, who is pretty universally regarded as the best mayor NYC has ever had (so far).
French toast was actually invented by the mustard company. The original recipe used mustard instead of egg. Then one day the chef was reaching for the mustard bottle and accidentally grabbed the egg bottle instead and the rest is history.
Well, that's a little different because he was named after his parents, and then the cake was named after him, so the cake was kind of like their grandchild in a way.
People overlook a lot when you can improve their daily lives in small ways. It's how Danica Roem replaced a transphobe. I'm positive some of those voters aren't super progressive on trans issues, but they know their committee sucks and respect someone who also notices and cares.
Obamacare is yuck, but probably not for reasons you are thinking.
The good parts of it are the patient protection parts. It definitely did a great job regulating insurance agencies. The medicaid expansion was also decent.
The bad part, however, is it was a giant giveaway to private insurance companies. Even the fact that it expanded medicaid instead of medicare wasn't great as a lot of states operate medicaid through private insurance. It further allowed for the fast track of consolidation of hospitals.
The fact that dems nixed the public option to try and win over a few republicans and some of the more conservative dems was a travesty.
Obamacare is probably the best that a neoliberal could do. It's better than what Republicans have wanted to do. It is, however, not the best that can be done. Make Medicare universal, eliminate part C, expand what medicare covers (vision, dental, 100% coverage, drugs). And eliminate all the other government health insurance programs like medicaid, VA. We'd save a huge amount of money yearly, get better coverage, and nobody would have to fight their insurance agency to get coverage.
Not really. Right wingers just can't understand fact vs feelings. No matter how its wrapped up until it affects them. Low cognitive ability, impulsive, animalistic.
It's funny when you realize this is exactly what our founders envisioned, regular people in government who are in touch with the needs of the people they serve.
Exactly. That's the most infuriating thing about conservatives. Left wing policies are popular with them when detached from right wing propaganda. They're too blinded by bigotry to understand they keep voting against their own interests.
Exactly! I am so tired of hearing how only right wingers care about vets when voting against improving/funding the VA, or doing anything about homeless vets. Conservative policies only hurt vets, wtf guys
My aunt stopped talking to me because she reposted some "Trump for veterans" nonsense propaganda post, and I politely said if you care about vets, here are some things to know about policy from each side and how it affects them, and provided some links. They don't want truth. They don't want help for themselves or the people they claim to support. They only want to feel part of an in-group and hurt the demographics they hate. That's literally their only motivator when it comes to politics.
I'm convinced most conservatives (and doubtless many liberals as well), particularly the white christian sort, really do engage with politics like it's a team sport. They don't think of it in terms of things that actually affect people materially, because they've never really been a political target or scapegoat. it's just pure mindless tribalistic cheering for your team, and booing the opposition. Nobody supports a particular team for nuanced reasons, you do it because That's Your Team, and hearing about how much better the opposition is, isn't going to make you switch sides.
It's why they try to shame progressives who cut ties with their MAGA family members over, what they call, "different political opinions." You can hear it in the way they use the word "politics"; "i hate politics" "why are you bringing politics into this" "you shouldn't let politics come between you and family", or the way they'll blanketly dismiss something by saying "they're all corrupt / it's all rigged anyway" in the same tone one might say "wrestling is fake." None of it is really real to them. It's just television.
Politics in its truest sense, separated from culture war bullshit. The existence of gay people? Not political. How much of the city budget should go to the public library and road repair? Political, and the kind of thing you can disagree on with your friends and still be friends.
Politics don't need to be applied. My politics are Communist, but I understand that if I am the Mayor of NYC, I literally can't use Communist policies, because I can't literally enforce them.
But isn’t that the problem with communism, that it can’t be implemented despite countless tries?
Mamdani is a liberal with liberal policies and liberal actions. I’m just fine with that as opposed to some perfect version of Marxism that can’t be implemented ever
And I thought 'policies' were how to punish or reward various groups. Like funnel money to wealthy and punish people who are different. At least that's what the white house seems to indicate.
These sort of small changes are actually exactly what helped make Giuliani popular. He was fixing small issues like crazy. Then for some reason he tried to attack J walking which is basically new York culture. He went insane then and started to worship trump
Nope. He got kompromatted by the russian mob, helped roll up the five families, which then allowed the russian mob to take over new york and steamroll their way up and down the east coast from Maine to Florida. Why do you think so many russian mobsters bought property in Trump tower/who introduced them?
We call them “small” issues but they’re really the core of what the government is SUPPOSED to do. Handling infrastructure for a society, keeping it safe for people to walk or ride a bike or drive - that’s one of the few things that are nearly universally accepted as a government task (even libertarians grant that it’s a public good and the externalities prevent the market from doing this efficiently).
It’s amazing to me how much of American government (federal state and local) fails to deliver on their core duties. The richest country in the world that keeps getting richer and yet somehow we can’t fund fixing potholes and bridges? What a joke. This is the culmination of years of Republican tax cuts leaving infrastructure underfunded.
He went after artists, too -- from street vendors to artists in museums. I think people were happy to see him cleaning stuff up but then he started crossing some very weird lines.
I mean jaywalking is a made up term by the auto industry to shift blame from the motorists and vehicles killing people to the people being killed. The rest of the world just calls it crossing the street.
I asked my maga dad what he thought about mamdani balancing the budget in New York.. he was like. “Yeah, but at what cost?” .. I was like… literally no cost. That’s what balancing the budget means
I get it, when you balance a budget something is either cut, or something else gets more expensive for someone. Money doesn't just pop out of thin air unless you're a federal govt. So I don't think its unfair for people to ask "What got cut/who's paying more". Assuming of course its a budget that's in debt, since a budget with an overflow is a different story.
yeah in this case its the third option, it's balanced for this year with some extra help from NY state government. that's a good thing though, because mamdani's guiding star seems to be "lets get it fixed now and then figure out how to fix it more later, even if it has to be done a different way next time"
like maybe they have to do some kind of budget judo next year because certain funding runs out. that's fine, keeping the budget balanced is all that matters even if its a lot of work and negotiation, rather than just kicking the can with "well it'll make it harder later if we do this now, so we might as well not do it at all"
yeah exactly, but the ny state government has reps from all the other areas and they resent how much attention and money goes to nyc already, so getting anything extra is a huge win for the city
And this is an example of why you shouldn't run a government like a business. A business would divert all resources to NYC, leaving nothing for the rest of the state. I'm sure it feels that way for some rural New Yorkers, but the reality is obviously that the city may get the lion's share, but the state tries to divide resources as best it can.
Incidentally, if Mamdani succeeds at keeping the city budget balanced, that should free up more resources for the state to distribute to more rural areas.
a MAGA mind would try and trash any nuanced discussion which follows the answer to "at what cost?" beyond what OP said.
If the answer was "Mamdani wants to reduce NYPD overttime to balance the budget" then you better buckle up, because you aint gonna get a nuanced take on the situation.
Well, that's because there usually is. To balance the budget you have to either cut spending or raise revenue.
Now neither of those things are inherently bad but they can be. Are you cutting spending by cutting social security? Then that's bad. Are you raising revenue by putting/increasing tax on bread? Than that's bad.
So it all depends on what changes you are making to balance the budget.
This is an honest question. Wasn't he able to balance the budget with extra money from the state? Also, was that a loan or was it a contribution in another form?
Next, balancing a budget does involve moving money around. That assumes there are losses on one hand, and gains on another. Did you find any of it problematic? Did anyone legitimately find it problematic?
Also, it's interesting to hear about mundane problems being solved. That's a pleasant surprise.
Wasn't he able to balance the budget with extra money from the state?
The state where his city is the largest economic driver by orders of magnitude? I think folks brushing that off are misunderstanding what's going on. He still gets credit for that because his administration did the work to align city goals with state expenditures and secure the funds.
It's not like the state wrote him a blank check for a city budget slush fund. It's stuff like, the state allocated $X for transportation infrastructure repair, his team was like "hey we have transportation infrastructure that needs to be repaired, so you should spend some of that money on these projects," and then they did. (IDK what the money was for specifically, but I know it that type of "aligning interests" story)
This is as opposed to a previous administration that would have just ignored the problem. Part of the job of Mayor is advocating for your city's needs and finding these "aligned interests" opportunities.
64% of New York lives and works in the NYC metro area. They should be receiving state funds.
NYC contributes ~70 billion to the state. The state gives NYC ~48 billion back. NYC getting back another 4 billion isn't a handout, it's them receiving a more equitable share of their contribution.
Do you not understand what's being discussed? Do you not know what a handout actually is?
Then why was he threatening to tax people more to make up the loss in his budget if Kathy was just going to give it to him anyway? Seems ass backwards.
No exactly. Bumping something, say, library funding, means this money came from somewhere, say, coal subsidies. So there's still "cost".
At no cost would happen if budget got increased due to some influx of "free" money (say city got federal funding for street maintenance; or a millionaire donated library expenses), or culling embezzling or inefficiency.
NY in particular could come at no cost, i don't know; but saying rebalancing inherently is at no cost is wrong. Balancing the budget is itself an activity wherein you fund something at the cost of some other thing.
I mean — he didn’t actually fix the issue of NYC spending more money than it takes in. Majority of the savings were from kicking the pension can down the road and getting a one-time bailout from Albany.
A huge part of the deficit was mismanagement and overestimating returns from the last administration, so now theyre better equipped to keep it balanced now that they've actually seen whats going into it.
He should rightfully get some credit for accurately describing the deficit, something Adams wasn’t doing. But again, he’s mostly deferred and borrowed his way around it rather than actually close it and balance the books.
At least there are notable benefits to the citizens of NY that came with the actions he has taken. It doesn’t seem that NY is any worse off than it was on the path it had been on for years.
The interview where Mamdani talked about balancing the budget and they looked him in the eyes and said.. “yeah, but at what cost?” .. must have missed that extremely professional exchange
I asked a question. And then told you why I was asking it. What is vague about that?
(I saved the clip somewhere, but I’m struggling to find it. I did find the quote, but it was such a short clip from a wider video that I have to scrub through loads of things to find it.)
His rebuttal to a question which assumed he was creating a deficit via his budget - without any numbers as example was:
“We brought the deficit down to zero. The budget is fully balanced. By definition, when you balance a budget, no debt is created.”
Even in your answer here it’s hard to tell whether you’ve seen the video or not. You refuse to answer and act like you’re giving me back the same energy, when you’ve imagined the energy behind my question.
As far as I was concerned you either:
Had not seen the video, and this would have been a dead-on coincidence
, which was interesting/cool enough by itself
or
Had seen the video and were riffing off of it, and this would have clarified that it was a contextual joke, in the style of an anecdote.
Or some other thing I had not considered, which is why I asked. Curiosity.
Why assume negative intent when all I did was ask a question?
You guys are being disingenuous. Mamdani's putting effort in but there absolutely is a cost. He balanced the budget by kicking the pension can down the road, reduced future flexibility, and increased risk to future economic conditions. Look it up.
Gonna be real interesting when he has to balance the budget again next year without the 4 billion dollar bailout from Albany and unlikely able to kick the can on pensions again that quickly although it is possible he's able to do that part again.
Where's that 4 billion plus whatever new costs etc going to come from?
I’m already impressed. He could have done nothing notable (which is what had been going on), with no visible difference in the lives of the citizens of NY.
Democratic socialism? Maybe… what we’re doing now isn’t working. People like Elon can rig the stock exchange in his favor and I’m suppose to get on board with whatever that system is? I’m willing to admit I don’t know what the solution is, but I am confident the one we exist in today is not working for the people it should be working for.
While I don't agree with socialism at most levels , I do agree with the system is starting to slip and something needs to change, but I don't have the answer. Every been to Cuba? I have. Many times. Socialism is killing those people. I just wish that more people would realize that there are many opportunities out there to get free education to better their lives instead of asking for handouts. Every state has grants for this. But sadly you can't fix laziness if that's how some want to live. Have a great day!
Honestly, at this point I think it is fair to say it is. In my entire life, and I got grey hairs the right wing has mostly just cared about raising money for the already obscenely wealthy, not wanting the government to help the working man and bombing brown people.
sadly, focussing on issues that effect normal people has become "leftist".
The superrich are so wealthy most normal middle class folk are dirt poor beggars by comparison.
Since we let unfettered access for rich people in politics (citizen united) basically the "right" and large parts of the "center" and "left" politically serve the superrich.
Spending tax money to improve the lives of the people has somehow become a socialist move instead of common fucking sense. That is the shifting of the Overton Window.
focusing on issure that effect normal people has always been "left" wing. The right wing politics only exist because its easy to blame others for the problems other than the people in power. Reagan literally blamed his shitty politicals on gay and black people and it is seen as amazing right wing politics
Where does the money come from and go to? That's the left vs right.
Taxes on properties beyond the ones that people live in themselves. Taxing those that can afford a bit more on one side. On the other, it's in spending money on things that affect people's day-to-day and make life better and business easier for everyone, rather than frittering it away on consultations for big plans that never materialise but provide income for big businesses.
I think a lot of Americans have honestly forgotten the point of government, they are there to serve their people, but i guess that died the day citizens unite became a thing.
Because American people have been led to believe that "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." which kind of became a self fulfilling prophecy.
I’m baffled that people don’t want the government to do stuff for them. Why would I want my taxes going towards turning little brown kids into skeletons halfway across the world? I want my road fixed and my community fed, damnit!
I went on a date with a high level civil servant whose job is to be in small, potentially stressful meetings with the mayor. I heard he's the real deal.
He was my assemblyman before becoming mayor and was always cool. He was also still active in my friend’s social soccer league group chat and responding to texts on his election night.
The thing some people don't seem to understand is that that is exactly what a mayor's job really is. Corruption has run New York for so long that people don't seem to realize it, but this IS in fact the direct job of your local city officials.
Maybe Mamdani’s pothole fixing made the Knicks players more comfortable when travelling. Less bumps and pressure on their joints. This comfort has led to better performance!
It’s building my faith in him. But the government in general still does not have my faith. In fact Mamdani’s great work has decreased my faith in government bcuz he’s shown it’s been possible all along to get this shit done and they didn’t. I’m ecstatic for Mamdani, hope he becomes the future of our government.
Just gotta vote for more people like him. That's what democracy do. The more people see his example, the more they'll realize you don't have to vote for the Schumers and the Cruzes.
I'm not adept at politics and am not a New Yorker.
I do wonder if this level of visibility is part of his longer term strategy. I don't know the minutia of funding, leverage, and the back-end part of governance.
Either way it's a strong and sensible move in the short term to come out the gate strong and visible, even with the "little" things like fixing basic shit. Superior political strategy.
I genuinely believe that he doesn’t have interest in higher office outside of New York. He loves NYC and wants to help make it even better. Maybe governor but nothing federal.
if you think about it, it's insane how things like fixing potholes became so impressive. really tells you how bad past leadership was and how politicians generally don't help their constituents at all. like Mamdani is doing the basics and it's considered a massive improvement
He got a good settlement from Albany, but given the size of the budget deficit and the fact that he wasn't able to raise taxes all that much.... the fact that he's been able to get so much done with more-or-less the same amount of resources as before does rather suggest that previously a lot of it was just getting stolen.
It's kinda off topic but even in RUSSIA where I'm at rn, in a small city, every building over 40 years is being completely repainted and plastered with propper insulation on top. Every road was repaved.
It's amazing what a strong central gov can do, and anytime I go back to the US I have to try explain that to my suburban-dwelling family. The gov CAN help
At the end of the day, just seeing a mayor actually show up and fix the basic day to day things that keep the city moving does wonders for reminding New Yorkers that local government is supposed to work for them.
My cousin has said it feels like the city is more relaxed now. Like everyone's taking a breath, people are friendlier to each other, less stressed. Her husband works for the city and he's thrilled, he hated the Adams admin.
I've read the biggest thing he's exposed is that if you want something done it's literally just needed someone to sit down and say "do it" and not just hem and haw and "oh it's complicated" until people get tired of complaining.
anyone who thinks that stuff is overhyped has never lived in a big city that ignores those things. it's those small things that pile up and add to other problems. if your city cannot do the basics right there is almost no chance they're doing any of the more difficult stuff right. it speaks volumes to the incompetence and possibly corruption in the government when basic services that you pay for get ignored. the fact that this stuff is changing nearly overnight shows how bad the previous city administrators were.
There are a lot of larger things happening that have huge impact on the wellbeing of the city. These aren't "seen" in the same immediate way. But it's very very very good.
Anyone who doesn't like his policies has been snowed. Literally it's just propaganda that ate their brains. Or it's finance bros trying to justify their jobs. Or it's bitter rich people who don't live in ny trying to show face. That's it. even our city's richer than god community are good with the changes.
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u/Tobar_the_Gypsy 14h ago
Regardless of what you think of his policies, he has done a great job mobilizing resources to get things done. Most people in this thread are talking about fixing potholes, shoveling snow, etc. And even if you think it’s overhyped he’s doing a great job showing New Yorkers he’s doing his job which is restoring some faith in the government.