It’s wild how much more billionaires are spending to defeat Zohran than what his tax proposal would cost them. I guess they’re afraid of a wider movement.
I have much fun remindng people today that the time when “America was Great” aka the 1950’s also saw the median tax rate on the ultra-wealthy at over 90%. It’s a rough third of that now since most are earning wealth through non-taxable investment vehicles and not taxable income-based earnings.
91% was the top-tier tax rate, not the median. Nobody paid that rate: Those who would find themselves in that top tax bracket increased their spending on “business expenses” rather than cut punitively large checks to the IRS. Those “business expenses” were for products and services produced by workers; those “business expenses” paid worker salaries. The high marginal tax rates drove money out of the hands of the ultra-rich and straight into the pockets of the working class. Turns out that paying workers for their labor is more valuable to the ultra-rich than giving away their excess earnings to the IRS.
We need to restore the punitively high top-tier tax rates we had from the 1950s to the early 1970s, to drive more cash back into the working class.
But more importantly, we need to institute an annual, 1% tax on all registered securities. To keep the rich from playing fuck-fuck games, that tax should be paid in shares of the securities held, not the dollar value of those securities.
Natural persons may exempt up to $10 million worth of securities from this tax. Corporate “persons” may not exempt their portfolios. If you’ve got $20 million in your portfolio, you need to find another natural person, or start paying.
The SEC transfers non-exempt shares directly to the IRS; the IRS liquidates those shares on the open market, slowly over time. These liquidated shares will never comprise more than 1% of total traded volume.
It’s wild how much more billionaires are spending to defeat Zohran than what his tax proposal would cost them.
It’s not about beating Zohran once for a single term. It’s about beating the idea of a socialist mayor out of the voting public for another generation. Gotta get back to the idea that DeBlaiso was too radical and Eric Adams is what New Yorkers should expect.
And a win for Zohran isn’t just a single seat in a single city. There’s a municipal offices at play, including the NYPD chief. There’s half a dozen House Reps at play (chief among them Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s seat). There’s state House and Senate seats. There’s the very real possibility of an insurgent campaign to unseat Kathy Hochul or threaten the increasingly unpopular Senator Gilibrand.
He’s a crack in the dam. And at the size and scale of NYC, its a fucking big one.
Wait till you see what they put behind Newsom/Pritzker if neither of them win the next Dem presidential primary…
They’re 100% going to pull a Cuomo if a progressive wins. I expect they’ll even get Kamala to run in the primary, just as a sacrificial lamb so Newsom/Pritzker won’t be the the least progressive on stage.
Really the reason they’re so scared of Mamdani, is there’s enough time to show it works before the presidential primary. And the current DNC chair is a huge fan of Mamdani:
One is, he campaigned for something. And this is a critical piece. We can’t just be in a perpetual state of resisting Donald Trump. Of course, we have to resist Donald Trump. There’s no doubt about it for all the reasons we just talked about. But we also have to give people a sense of what we’re for, what the Democratic Party is fighting for, and what we would do if they put us back in power.
And that’s really critical. And I think that’s one of the lessons from Mamdani’s campaign, is that he focused on affordability. He focused on a message that was resonant with voters, and he campaigned for something, not against other people or against other things. He campaigned on a vision of how he was going to make New York City a better place to live.
I think the larger Democratic party is terrified of the idea that it’s possible to win a national election without being backed by a single billionaire.
And how much did they spend on that? It’s kind of difficult to find current numbers through a quick web search, especially if you aren’t super familiar with US election systems.
Sure, but this is a rather specific claim that seems a little hard to believe. You’re telling me they’re spending billions on a mayor campaign (assuming Mamdani’s plans are similar to what Massachusetts did)?
If they aren’t spending billions, the claim that billionaires are spending more money on the anti-Mamdani/pro-Cuomo campaigns than Mamdani’s policies would cost them is flat-out wrong.
You think that Mamdani’s policies will cost multiple people over a billion dollars?
Facts:
They are billionaires.
Mamdani will raise their taxes
Assumptions:
A. They are likely spending more on Cuomo’s campaign then they would pay in taxes
B. This is because if Mamdani’s policies are successful they’d see wider adoption.
Besides the fact that you somehow think the taxes will cost any single person a billion dollars, the big flaw is you think the office of the NYC mayor is the full war, and not just a battle.
Billionaires will spend more than Mamdani will cost them, because they see it as a single battle in a very long class war. Win or lose the battle, they will keep fighting the war
Under New York City laws that aim to curb the potential for or appearance of pay-to-play corruption, nobody on the city’s official list of companies and individuals doing, or even seeking, business with the city can give more than $400 to a citywide candidate in any election cycle.
But there’s another option: so-called independent expenditure committees, New York’s version of super PACS, that allow deep-pocketed players to spend unlimited amounts of money backing one candidate. And this election cycle, the overwhelming beneficiary of such spending has been former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — and those seeking to influence the vote in his favor.
mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo has received $10.8 million in total contributions to his Super PAC “Fix The City”.
A few “fun” snippets here:
donor Scott Rechler, chairman and CEO of RXR Realty, a major player in New York City’s ultra-competitive real estate market.
On March 13, Rechler wrote a $2,100 check to Cuomo’s campaign. The campaign promptly refunded him $1,700, bringing his donation in line with the $400 limit on “doing business” donors. Rechler had landed on the list two months earlier regarding the Hall Street project.
But Rechler wasn’t finished. The very next day he wrote a much more impressive check of $250,000 to Fix the City, an independent expenditure committee that is aggressively supporting Cuomo’s bid for City Hall.
Arker also owns a company called Progressive Management of New York and a limited liability corporation called Chateau GC LLC. On April 23, the day after Arker wrote his $400 check to the Cuomo campaign, Progressive and Chateau each wrote $25,000 checks to Fix The City.
The tell
the Cuomo campaign and Fix The City have already been accused of improper coordination on the spending side.
The city Campaign Finance Board made such an accusation last month when it withheld nearly $1.3 million in public matching funds from Cuomo’s campaign, finding that a Fix the City ad plugging Cuomo’s candidacy was nearly identical to language on the campaign’s official website.
Some more:
In addition to Fix The City, a landlord group, the New York Apartment Association, last week announced the formation of an independent expenditure committee called Housing For All, promising to spend $2.5 million to support the former governor’s mayoral bid.
24 entities who are currently on the “doing business” list wrote checks to Fix The City ranging from $5,000 to $1 million
They include corporations such as DoorDash ($1 million), Lyft ($25,000), Charter Communications ($125,000) and major real estate developers The Durst Organization ($100,000) and Two Trees Management ($250,000) — entities that are strictly prohibited from giving any amount to campaigns.
To date (NOTE BY ME: that date was June, 4 months ago) Fix The City has spent $5.6 million in support of Cuomo’s City Hall bid and has more recently launched negative ads against his main rival Zohran Mamdani. That includes $1.29 million to air a video ad that included text the CFB found mirrored text that existed on an obscure page within the Cuomo campaign’s website.
In short, its really hard to know how much is being spent, because they can hide it in all kinds of ridiculous ways.
Tens of millions of dollars have been spent in easily tracked money. There’s more being spent that isnt as easily tracked.
For their personal finance, yes. Running a company? Line go up this quarter, nothing else matters. Slowly destroying the planet and poisoning the population? Irrelevant, line must go up.
It’s wild how much more billionaires are spending to defeat Zohran than what his tax proposal would cost them. I guess they’re afraid of a wider movement.
That is exactly it.
I have much fun remindng people today that the time when “America was Great” aka the 1950’s also saw the median tax rate on the ultra-wealthy at over 90%. It’s a rough third of that now since most are earning wealth through non-taxable investment vehicles and not taxable income-based earnings.
Lotsa paper tigers out there…
And they could still afford to lobby to get their taxes lowered and deregulate their industries, so clearly 90% wasn’t enough!
Well, it’s been 70 years now, so it’s not as if the rich haven’t been playing the long game.
91% was the top-tier tax rate, not the median. Nobody paid that rate: Those who would find themselves in that top tax bracket increased their spending on “business expenses” rather than cut punitively large checks to the IRS. Those “business expenses” were for products and services produced by workers; those “business expenses” paid worker salaries. The high marginal tax rates drove money out of the hands of the ultra-rich and straight into the pockets of the working class. Turns out that paying workers for their labor is more valuable to the ultra-rich than giving away their excess earnings to the IRS.
We need to restore the punitively high top-tier tax rates we had from the 1950s to the early 1970s, to drive more cash back into the working class.
But more importantly, we need to institute an annual, 1% tax on all registered securities. To keep the rich from playing fuck-fuck games, that tax should be paid in shares of the securities held, not the dollar value of those securities.
Natural persons may exempt up to $10 million worth of securities from this tax. Corporate “persons” may not exempt their portfolios. If you’ve got $20 million in your portfolio, you need to find another natural person, or start paying.
The SEC transfers non-exempt shares directly to the IRS; the IRS liquidates those shares on the open market, slowly over time. These liquidated shares will never comprise more than 1% of total traded volume.
It’s not about beating Zohran once for a single term. It’s about beating the idea of a socialist mayor out of the voting public for another generation. Gotta get back to the idea that DeBlaiso was too radical and Eric Adams is what New Yorkers should expect.
And a win for Zohran isn’t just a single seat in a single city. There’s a municipal offices at play, including the NYPD chief. There’s half a dozen House Reps at play (chief among them Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s seat). There’s state House and Senate seats. There’s the very real possibility of an insurgent campaign to unseat Kathy Hochul or threaten the increasingly unpopular Senator Gilibrand.
He’s a crack in the dam. And at the size and scale of NYC, its a fucking big one.
Wow! Didn’t know there was that much at stake in one election. When is it?
Early voting has already started. The final day to vote is Nov 4th.
You think this is big?
Wait till you see what they put behind Newsom/Pritzker if neither of them win the next Dem presidential primary…
They’re 100% going to pull a Cuomo if a progressive wins. I expect they’ll even get Kamala to run in the primary, just as a sacrificial lamb so Newsom/Pritzker won’t be the the least progressive on stage.
Really the reason they’re so scared of Mamdani, is there’s enough time to show it works before the presidential primary. And the current DNC chair is a huge fan of Mamdani:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/dnc-chair-on-the-path-to-winning-back-voters-and-lessons-democrats-can-learn-from-mamdani
Billionaires are shitting themselves, they’ll just never let the media they own report on it.
I think the larger Democratic party is terrified of the idea that it’s possible to win a national election without being backed by a single billionaire.
Source on that? There have to be quite a few billionaires in NYC, how much are they spending on that anti-Zohran campaign?
Depends on if you accept that the Cuomo campaign and the “anti-Zohran campaign” describe the same thing…
And how much did they spend on that? It’s kind of difficult to find current numbers through a quick web search, especially if you aren’t super familiar with US election systems.
I’d say anyone even slightly familiar with US politics would know billionaires have lots of ways to obfuscate campaign donations…
Like, it’s not exactly a secret, and US politics are kind of unavoidable.
Sure, but this is a rather specific claim that seems a little hard to believe. You’re telling me they’re spending billions on a mayor campaign (assuming Mamdani’s plans are similar to what Massachusetts did)?
No…
I think you’re confused
If they aren’t spending billions, the claim that billionaires are spending more money on the anti-Mamdani/pro-Cuomo campaigns than Mamdani’s policies would cost them is flat-out wrong.
So…
You think that Mamdani’s policies will cost multiple people over a billion dollars?
Facts:
They are billionaires.
Mamdani will raise their taxes
Assumptions:
A. They are likely spending more on Cuomo’s campaign then they would pay in taxes
B. This is because if Mamdani’s policies are successful they’d see wider adoption.
Besides the fact that you somehow think the taxes will cost any single person a billion dollars, the big flaw is you think the office of the NYC mayor is the full war, and not just a battle.
Billionaires will spend more than Mamdani will cost them, because they see it as a single battle in a very long class war. Win or lose the battle, they will keep fighting the war
But how much ARE they spending then? And why? I’m not from the US either and I’m baffled at the media attention this mayoral election is getting.
https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/09/cuomo-super-pac-fix-the-city-donations/
A few “fun” snippets here:
The tell
Some more:
In short, its really hard to know how much is being spent, because they can hide it in all kinds of ridiculous ways.
Tens of millions of dollars have been spent in easily tracked money. There’s more being spent that isnt as easily tracked.
Yes! And, taxes are abhorrent to their sense of justice. It’s disgusting.
Taxation is theft but wage theft is good business, I guess they’d say
When you boil it down the philosophy of the rich is “GIMME GIMME GIMME, MINE MINE MINE” and everything beyond that is blather.
One time fee vs forever more. These guys think in terms of the long game, not the 4 year cycles your government is concerned with.
For their personal finance, yes. Running a company? Line go up this quarter, nothing else matters. Slowly destroying the planet and poisoning the population? Irrelevant, line must go up.