Two days ago crestfallen commie mayor Zohran Mamdani abandoned his desperate plan to aggressively hike property taxes (even more) on New Yorkers following unprecedented pushback (but not before earning the former capitalist mecca a credit rating downgrade warning from most rating agencies). However, since communists who are not redistributing wealth (eventually under the barrel of a gun) are useless communists, it only took Mamdani administration 48 hours before pitching his latest idea how to take: according to Bloomberg, New York lawmakers are planning a new tax on New York City homes purchased in cash for at least $1 million. The lawmakers are also considering expanding the tax to all-cash purchases over $1 million in New York, including those in the suburbs and upstate.
The New York City levy alone is expected to raise $160 million to help fill the city’s budget hole. The proposed tax would be levied at 1% of the purchase price and would be paid by the buyer, according to the people.
A spokesperson for Governor Kathy Hochul said she “announced a general agreement with the State Legislature on many of the major elements of the FY 2027 Budget. The final budget bills will provide additional details.”
All-cash transactions have risen in New York as soaring mortgage costs have deterred financing, and instead buyers opt to be hit with capital gains taxes and liquidated other securities to fund real estate purchases. They are also an attractive option for sellers in New York City’s ultra-competitive real estate market as it’s faster than dealing with the lengthy mortgage approval process, and less likely to fall through.
Such purchases made up more than 60% of the nearly 18,000 transactions in New York City in the first six months of 2025, according to data compiled by the Center for New York City Neighborhoods. The report found that in Manhattan, nine out of 10 purchases over $3 million were done in all-cash transactions between January and June of 2025.
New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the tax would be included in the final budget as “part of the plan to help close the city’s deficit.” State Senator James Skoufis, who sits on the chamber’s finance committee, also said in an interview the new levy was discussed.
Mamdani unveiled his $124.7 billion budget plan for the fiscal year that starts on July 1 that includes more assistance from Albany. He is also counting on funds from a proposed tax on second homes worth more than $5 million that state and city lawmakers are still figuring out how to implement. Hochul said the state will send $4 billion in new aid to the city to help close the budget hole.
“New Yorkers are already the most heavily taxed residents in the country, and the city’s budget issues will not be solved by more taxes,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. He said that the new proposal would further burden home buyers and sellers in the city and threaten existing revenue.
There are other problems with the proposal: New Yorkers already pay a 1% mansion tax, rising to 3.9%, on homes over $1 million whether paying with cash or financing. On top of that, even the wealthiest cash buyers aren't usually just wiring cash from their bank accounts to buy homes. They sell assets (i.e. stocks) to generate the cash. This liquidation is subject to heavy capital gains taxes already that go to both the federal government and also the state of NY. This tax is usually far ins excess of any 1% "cash" tax this idiotic Mamdani administration is proposing.
As some social media commentators were quick to point out correctly, "There are bad policy ideas, and then there are those that make absolutely zero sense. This is the latter."
Tyler Durden Thu, 05/14/2026 - 17:20Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The FBI on Sunday published an early glimpse at annual crime data, releasing preliminary 2025 data alongside first-quarter 2026 numbers that together show that violent crime has dropped sharply.
FBI personnel enter a building in Portsmouth, Va., on May 6, 2026. Peter Casey/The Virginian-Pilot via APThe figures, typically released at the end of summer, marked the first time the bureau furnished a preview of annual crime tallies before the end of the following spring.
The first-quarter 2026 numbers, drawn from 67 major law enforcement agencies, showed homicides fell 17.7 percent against the same period last year, robberies fell 20.4 percent, reported rapes declined 7.2 percent, and aggravated assaults dropped 4.8 percent. Declines appeared in every region of the country, according to the bureau.
Among cities registering the steepest homicide reductions from January through March are Washington, D.C., down 64.7 percent; Philadelphia, 54 percent; San Diego, 50 percent; Houston, 36.4 percent; Memphis, Tennessee, 34.4 percent; New York City, 31.7 percent; and Los Angeles, 23 percent.
The 2025 full-year figures anchoring the release were equally stark.
The FBI recorded a 20 percent drop in the national murder rate, the largest single-year decrease ever captured in FBI data, alongside a 31 percent rise in fentanyl seizures, rescue of more than 6,000 child victims, and a 290 percent increase in gang disruptions. FBI Director Kash Patel told The Epoch Times that the achievements were the result of a “full-scale reset of the FBI—operationally, culturally, and fiscally.”
In 2025, FBI arrests climbed 197 percent, from 34,000 to 67,000; 1,800 gangs and criminal enterprises were dismantled—a 210 percent increase—and more than 30,000 were arrested for violent crimes, nearly double from 2024.
The U.S. homicide rate in 2025 fell 21 percent from 2024—44 percent below the 2021 pandemic peak, according to a report by the Council on Criminal Justice, which analyzed data from 40 large cities. The group projected that when the FBI finalized its annual report, the national homicide rate would stand at roughly 4.0 per 100,000 residents, the lowest recorded in law enforcement or public health data stretching back to 1900.
Patel hinted at the historic nature of the data for months.
“We are on track to have the lowest murder rate in modern American history. The lowest murder rate by double-digit percentages,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2025. He attributed the shift in large part to the FBI’s Operation Summer Heat, noting that in New Orleans and Nashville alone, violent crime arrests climbed an average of 250 percent each.
A month later, Patel told The Epoch Times’s Jan Jekielek that homicides had fallen by double digits nationwide.
“I’m happy to announce, finally, that one of the big targets we had for this year, obviously, was to reduce the murder rate across America,” he said.
In October 2025, Trump and Patel announced that Operation Summer Heat resulted in more than 8,700 arrests and a 20 percent drop in violent crime in targeted cities. Trump, in a Truth Social post days later, said that since he was inaugurated, 28,000 violent criminals have been arrested, more than 6,000 illegal firearms were removed from the street, 5,000 children have been rescued, and 2,000 criminal enterprises have been disrupted—calling them “historic results.”
Tyler Durden Thu, 05/14/2026 - 17:00