NYC Busses 'SELL OUT' OVERNIGHT... as "Communist" Mamdani's Taxes ERASE MIDDLE CLASS

New Yorkers are furious with the new mayor, who they say is forcing them from their homes.

To the mayor.

Mayor Zohaib Muldooni, you are out your f***ing mind. To the mayor, with the greatest respects, in every campaign speech, in every debate where you engage, we opened our ears to listen.

Oh yeah?

Now today, accept the words echoing from us now.

Do your job as mayor and leave our taxes out. What? were the city would have to exercise the only revenue lever fully within our own control. By lying about a campaign promise. But the city council would have to approve the measure and council speaker Julie Menon says the proposal should not be on the table whatsoever.

But you heard the residents they said that when the mayor campaigned they were listening and what exactly is it he said?

They keep sending me mail that says that you shouldn't be the mayor.

What are these guys saying?

Okay, let me see. This one says support higher taxes and more fees on New Yorkers. I don't want to pay more taxes.

Do you make a million dollars or more a year?

100% disagree.

So then your taxes are not going up.

The only taxes that we are proposing are on the 1% of New Yorkers who make a million dollars a month. What are you going to do about the price of matcha latte? You just heard it.

100% not sure.

Right there, clear as day. Do you make a million dollars or more? Nope, OK. Nothing to worry about.

I don't plan to move. It's my home. I'm not leaving.

This two-story single family home in Cambria Heights is Vivian Campbell's American dream come true. These are not millionaires! His starter home that has become his forever home.

The greatest thing to happen to me.

He bought it just after graduating college in the 1990s. If you step inside, he even has a stack of CDs to prove it. The retired real estate professional, who was on a fixed income, recently poured almost $35,000 into a new front porch and a new roof. But now with Mayor Mamdani proposing a property tax increase, he feels duped.

Do you feel like he lied to you?

He was!

He did not feel. He lied.

He lied!

He did not feel.

It's obvious.

We would have to raise property taxes.

What a lie, man.

But the city council would have to approve the measure, and council speaker Julie Menon says the proposal should not be on the table whatsoever. Meanwhile, Hochul for her part is unlikely to soften her position as she faces re-election this year.

You are giving only two options. You're saying if we don't tax the rich, then I gotta increase property taxes. We are not a part of Southeast Queens. We are not part of your negotiating tactics.

In Queens, Stephon Kim.

Wow, look at this. This sign says no transparency, overtaxed, wrong calculations, stop destroying our communities. But maybe this money's going for a good cause and people will learn to like their higher taxes.

Racial equity, 4.6 million commission on racial equity 835,000 commission on gender equity 260,000 for department of education chief diversity officer 301,000 for three fdny civilian chief diversity inclusion officers. There's a title for you and 118,000 for an fdny chief diversity inclusion officers. Is that necessary stuff? You can't cut that back?

And a list of things you're doing when it comes to public safety, absolutely not. Public safety has got to be at the top of your list. So we can't pay for everything. Everything can't be for free. But what you need is cops out in the street. Tell me how all these programs are going to help when you're getting robbed in the middle

of the street. Yeah, that's the other problem.

Looting, plundering, it's off the chain here.

You tell me, believe me, he's about to find out, sadly. Mondami's progressive agenda includes new budgets items like $750,000 for Art and Cultural Fund, $800,000 for Anti-Ageism, $437 million for child care vouchers. It goes on and on. And you pointed out his climate change budget.

What's he spending on that?

None of this is worth lying to the people who voted for you, telling them that they're going to have to pay for this when they don't want to. If people thought that they needed all this stuff and that this was all super necessary, they would say, yeah, go ahead, take my taxes.

Go ahead, raise raise them because this is gonna make the city great but it's not no one's saying that any of this is gonna do anything as far as the affordability crisis is concerned about here and that's the other thing the mayor ran on. Already provide it's to advance an agenda that makes it easier for working-class people to live in this city. That's not gonna do this. Because as we all know this is both the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and it's a city where one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. And so what we are looking to do is put our city back on a firm financial footing

that also allows us to tackle the affordability crisis.

And we know that part of this crisis

You can't tackle an affordability crisis by raising people's taxes doesn't work that way unless the affordability crisis is gonna be tackled for people who don't pay taxes.

Has been fomented by the inability of government to meet the moment we've spoken about this briefly with regards to the vacancies that have been kept year over year. We want to deliver the most excellent city government so that we can transform the most expensive city in the United States of America into one that every New Yorker can afford. By making them poor. And that is precisely why I have been emphasizing the need for structural solutions to a structural

crisis because what we do not want to do is engage in an annual budget dance where the city is trapped in annual deficits that it needs every single year one-time assistance with. What we need to do is reckon with the structural nature of this and put ourselves back on the kind of footing that allows us to advance an agenda.

An agenda, which is not the agenda he ran on. The agenda he ran on is so that people can afford their homes, is so that people can go to the grocery store and buy food and not feel like they're broke.

Mayor Zoran Mondani has left Governor Hochul in the lurch.

Oh, she's in trouble.

With Democrats scrambling with the brazen tax, the rich ultimatum.

Yeah.

People have told the Post that is a slap in the face to the governor.

It's an ultimatum.

So this all comes on the heels of Zoran Mondani rolling out his preliminary budget this week. raise property taxes by nearly 10% or Hockel needs to raise the personal income tax for people making a million dollars or more by 2%. And this is after a weekend where Governor Hockel had actually negotiated with the Zoran Mondani team all weekend to give him an extra $1.5 billion in funding to help balance his budget.

He's a bad-faith negotiator.

Mondani says that the budget hole comes from his predecessor, Eric Adams, who left him with a $12 billion budget gap for this and next fiscal year.

Mayor Eric Adams only spent money on the same types of sanctuary city policies Mayor Mom Donnie says he wants to strengthen. So don't tell me that the last mayor spent money on things that were irrelevant. I mean, he spent the money on the very stuff you said you want more of.

He went and had a press conference last month in which he sounded the alarm about this budget hole. However, within two to three weeks, that budget gap has shrunk to $7 billion and now down to $5.4 billion, which is what the Mandani administration is pressing Hukul for. The calls from Zoran Mandani put the governor in a precarious situation considering this year is an election year for the governor's office. And with multiple Democrats and also Republicans that the Post reached out to, the initial thing that they told us was it's an election year.

How could they do this to the governor?

Ah, which means if it weren't an election year, this would probably sail on through. That's what that means.

You can't raise taxes in an election year. It's just bad politics. After the election year, that's what they're going to raise. She's not going to raise taxes this year. She's not commented on the fact that it's election year, but she has repeatedly said that she is not in favor of

raising taxes. She believes that the state and the city have enough in their coffers to prop up the budget. They do. And again, she gave another $1.5 billion

to the city this week after giving the city another 1.5 billion dollars earlier this year. So here's the thing the governor she can't give the mayor of New York City any money and expect any of this to go away because he ran on raising taxes on people making over a million dollars which was supposed to pay for everything. Then she says she doesn't want to do that and she says hey I don't want to do this thing that you ran on but here's some money and the mayor's like no I ran I ran on this so either give me the money or I'm going to tell the people of the city that the reason their

property taxes went up is because of you. You see that's the fight that we've got going on here. It looks like the people in Queens that are out there on the streets understand that that's a big lie and a big scam and that it's not the governor that wants to do this, but this is a very tense situation.

Help pay for his early childhood education expenses.

We're going to have some fake daycares.

One of the key players in potentially raising taxes throughout the state is Carl Hastie, who has told us he's been in support of raising taxes on the wealthy, but he has always stopped short. And he said just earlier this month, I think at the end of the day we'll be fine. The city will be fine. We're not going to need the city on the left. The socialist now leaves us with Madani saying that he really needs this money. Democrats across the city are outraged because this leaves some 3 million homeowners, then a hundred thousand commercial properties,

potentially staring down a 9.5% increase in property taxes.

He wanted to make New York more affordable. He wanted to remember the forgotten New Yorker. You're saying this ultimatum here, this could disproportionately hurt black and brown communities. Has he received that message? What has his response been?

Well, I spoken to him. I spoke to him yesterday. I was at the budget briefing with him, and I made it very clear. I didn't bite my tongue on this, that this is a non-starter. Wow. And I think you're starting to hear a lot of the political class, whether you're Republican,

conservative, progressive, who are saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that all of their policies just trend towards socialism. Socialism is the result of progressivism. Things progress in that direction until we have it, and here it is. And the thing is, you got people in New York, they've been convinced that they're not very well off, even though they live in these homes

that are worth tons of money during a housing crisis. And now they're shocked to hear that there are people out there who are doing even worse than they are and that's why they need to pay higher taxes. And nobody thought that was going to happen, but that's exactly how socialism works. But now the question is, will the governor keep her promise?

Is she going to hold back on tax increases or are those just one year away? So what's the first thing Democrats do once they're elected into office besides move out of their parents' house? this He's right, man. A record $127 billion, billion dollar budget. Which is a lot of money to spend on homeless people freezing to death. And it's to be funded with property tax hikes. Cause nothing says affordable like making it more expensive to live.

It's called the property tax. And that's what's so crazy. But as no gains were realized, it's no tax at all. It's wealth confiscation. It's just more linguistic deception. He's cutting 5,000 cops, but don't worry, he's pouring millions into racial equity

and six-figure diversity jobs, which means if you get mugged, you'll be pleased to know that your attacker will soon enjoy a high-paying position on the mayor's staff as a motivational speaker. Now let's head to Virginia where after winning on the promise of

affordability Governor Spanberger unveiled a flood of new tax proposals on dog walking, dry cleaning, car repairs, event tickets, counseling, seriously tax. 100% this is a problem this is the brand of this party. They say one thing they say okay there's an election year we're not going to raise taxes bad politics and as soon as it's over bang people are furious But you see the thing is there's no return policy on a politician. You're stuck with them for four years They can say anything they go on the subway

They can make cute videos about how they're gonna save everybody money and help nobody making more than a million is gonna pay for anything And then up. Yeah. Yeah plans changed. The property tax thing got everybody's attention.

Sure did.

They knew the guy was going to go after the rich, OK?

But then he says, no, I've got this kind of hostage situation. Socialism goes after everybody, man.

Property taxes.

How are people, like the council members in New York City, people in New York City, thinking about that rent?

She's the only Republican. Or one of the only. Well, I think they made it pretty obvious yesterday when Julie Mennon stepped out of her box a little bit and she got very firm. You know, we got 51 council members. And I don't think we're going to stomach this too much longer. You're talking about us losing our entire tax cuts.

He cannot raise this 9.5%. What is he thinking? It's unrealistic. And we have a battle right now between the socialist agenda, which he campaigned on. This is no surprise.

Right.

It's not a surprise. You use the word hostage. How right you are. Because that's exactly what's happening right now. You do this or this is going to happen. You're going to hold us, the middle class folks that he claimed that he was in all support of for all the people, and yet he's going to hold us hostage.

He's holding the middle class of New York City hostage based on a lie.

That's not how this game is played, Zoran. Okay? Oh, he's playing. And why don't you start digging into the $20 billion of our $116 billion citywide budget, which goes to non-for-profits. Cut spending. Let's dig a little bit. I'm so glad you brought that up.

Why don't we talk about fraud, Ken?

Oh, the fraud!

We did a little family project.

We got to pay for the fraud. We put this into AI, and we asked AI, where could New York City cut spending? There you go. Exactly. Where could New York City go spending exactly turns out there's so much area Oh, man, you know, you've got retired city workers who get lifetime pensions. They could be on Medicare, right? You've got New York City workers all public workers a hundred percent of their insurance and their family's insurance is paid

That doesn't happen in the private 10 20 30 percent that would be a massive multibillion-dollar shift. You know, you could tackle some of the overtime costs. How do you see some of this cutting taking place? It doesn't seem to be that difficult.

Cutting's not on the table.

They're not going to cut anything.

Well, you can't go into our rainy day fund. to all and hitting all retirees. These retirees paid in for 30 years. They he's talking about hitting that for 920. They've been in litigation for years. Yes, exactly. They have been. But we got to go down back to brass tacks. Brass taxes get right to the line by line item. Go into-

They're not gonna go line by line in anything that's not how socialism works. You heard the mayor say he's got an agenda and he wants to accomplish it and he's gonna do it either with the governor's help or with the money of homeowners living in Queens who never voted for this. Cutting things isn't part of the

plan at all. Those I'm telling you go into these non-for-profits just recently. The frauds. Recently as last week I'm in District 19 in Queens. In District 23, which is my neighbor, they just found $120 million in fraud through their senior centers.

But we can't cut the fraud. Nope, better raise taxes to pay for the fraud. Because if the fraud gets cut, well, I mean,

there goes all the money that seems to make its for profits that where is the money going? So he's going to go to Holkil for money. And as a New Yorker, can we trust them with this tax money?

I mean, no, we cannot. You know, New York should just defund all these non profits. They're not solving anything. Go ride the subway in the city and tell me what the non profits are solving. Otherwise, we have to raise taxes to pay for stuff that's obviously not working. The path that we want to pursue is working with Albany to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, the most profitable corporations by that little bit more. If we do

not have that state action, then the only tools that the city has at its disposal is a property

tax increase. Right. Instead of cutting, Wall Street Journal editorial board calls the tactic quote taking New York hostage saying what an ultimatum fleece the rich for him or he'll fleece them and the middle class. This would smack middle class homeowners in the outer boroughs as well as the wealthy. Let's bring in democratic strategist who lives in Manhattan. Oh a democratic strategist. Melissa what do you think about how he outlined what needs to be done? He says he basically has a crisis. He's got to raise taxes.

I think that this is a crisis of his own making. He ran his entire campaign on three-word slogans like tax the rich, you know, very similar to Bernie and AOC, the far flank of the party. And at first it was tax the rich to get child care. But then Kathy Hochul like stepped in and gave him some of what he wanted and he declared victory. But he still needs to tax the rich because this isn't about governing, it's about ideology. And it's about the DSA and the extremists in the party and class

warfare. So now you're seeing what he's doing now, which is completely absurd.

Now what I don't understand is when Mamdani came in and he had this agenda he says he's gonna freeze rents, there's gonna be free grocery stores, he's gonna expand sanctuary city programs, just blow all this stuff up to levels never before seen and his way to do it was to tax the rich. If he knew that he wasn't gonna get that tax increase from the governor, why didn't he come into office?

And then every time there's a problem, blame the governor. You say, well, look, I ran on taxing the rich. I want to do it. The governor, she won't let me do it. And that's why you can't afford to live here. It's not my fault. I'm doing everything I can.

I'm fighting her every single day and it's her fault. Why didn't he just do that? He had a scapegoat for every single policy failure, but now all of those scapegoats go away. You can't blame the governor if he's going to smack her with an ultimatum and say, look, either you give me my millionaires tax or I'm going to tax homeowners. You see, now the problem is if he doesn't tax the homeowners who are revolting, if he doesn't tax the middle class and wipe them out, if the governor really does say

no, now he can't fund the other stuff that was supposed to make the city more affordable. And then there's gonna be people that are saying, hey, you said you were gonna tax the rich to make our lives more affordable. Didn't happen. Then you taxed us to make our lives more affordable. And that didn't happen either.

Now he's got nobody to blame for himself when things blow up. And I think that's a massive political liability, which he didn't even need to have, he could have avoided this by letting the governor say no and then blaming her.

He's going after people who make 120,000 as if they're the problem. They take home probably 65,000. Yeah. They're the one with the other taxes and they're the problem.

No, and you know what? It's very interesting because he ran an entire campaign on affordability, right? Saying affordability crisis, affordability crisis, affordability crisis. And now he's basically saying to Kathy Hochul, he's putting a gun to his own head and he's saying give me your wallet or I'll shoot. And it would impact not just people who are renting, because obviously real estate owners pass along these tax increases to the people who are renting and to homeowners, but small

businesses there are still far too many vacant storefronts in New York City post COVID. So this would have ripple effects that are unending.

And by the way, the landlords are really getting worried because if he freezes the rent, now that he has the numbers on the board to do that, expenses are already going up, utility costs are going up, and they're saying, I'm going to go out of business.

No, 100%. And it's, you know, at the end of the day, day the real estate term it doesn't pencil out. It won't make sense for these landlords to continue to hold on to these buildings.

And look if your landlord walks away from the building you live in while you're in there you think it's going to get repaired? Of course not. Place is going to fall apart and then your affordable life is going to evaporate when you are homeless. You see that's where this city is headed. This city is headed in the wrong direction and I don't see how the mayor walks away from this looking like he's won some

victory. I don't see how he can even politically swing it because he's the one that put the ultimatum on the table saying, give me the money from the rich or I'm taking it from my own voters. I just don't understand that logic. What do you think's going to happen? my own voters. I just don't understand that logic. What do you think's going to happen? I'll see you in the next video.