What form of government do you think we live in? Where laws are routinely ignored by our "leadership" and bribery is essentially legal and we have our own "oligarchs"?
The US initiates wars and supports war crimes as policy - dictatorship? We're far beyond that.
Considering the Biden administration pressured Facebook and Twitter to shadownban people/organizations they didn't like, TikTok being forced to sell to a US company, which has a literal shitton of goverment contracts and CIA ties.. the US is not that far away from Russia. Russia is just more open about it.
It is funny that you are comparing the scope of covid misinformation bans to Russia's broad censorship of international media. Ultimately, though, you should evaluate the system rather than the efforts of a single individual. Because the social media bans were litigated.
Wouldn't TikTok being sold to a company that the government trusts be an indication that the concern over access to Americans' data (rather than the message) is a genuine one?
They're both censoring what individuals and organizations are allowed to say online and what their citizens are allowed to read/hear..? Just because they took a different approach and pressured companies without telling the public doesn't change that fact.
So you think the government forced TikTok to sell it's US operations to Oracle, the company with CIA ties, that has been caught spying on it's customers data before, and who's CEO proudly said "Citizens will be on their best behavior,” and “because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” is about" data privacy"?
If your position is "all censorship is equivalent" then I don't have much to say.
The TikTok legislation was about protecting Americans' data from foreign ownership. Oracle was not named in the legislation. Regardless of how corrupt the subsequent events have been, I don't think anyone on the platform has been censored as a result.
Maybe, but Trump is already violating plenty of Constitutional and statutory "pursestrings", and so far Republicans have been quite complicit in the process. Even with a reduced presence, they are likely to keep ~34 senate seats [0][1] which is enough to continue protecting him from justice.
How would/should our system recover if a President commits all sorts of crimes with the support of 34 senators?
(Bonus fun fact: The theoretical minimum popular support needed for 34 senators would be 3.6% of the population.)
Between the Epstein stuff and the economy, if it starts to look like Trump is going down Republicans in Congress will start bailing like rats leaving a sinking ship. They may be amoral, but they aren't stupid.
> My biggest doubts are around the idea of price controls,
DeBlasio froze rent for rent-stabilized units for 3 years straight. Literally everything Mamdani campaigned on is entirely possible and funding straightforward.
But also he can only do it for a very small fraction of housing in the city, about 16,000 units. And even that Adams may undercut before he leaves office.
No. He's proposing a rent freeze on rent stabilized housing, not rent controlled housing.
Despite the widespread (and why would folks who don't live in NYC and shouldn't really care about local elections except as they repeat flat wrong assertions about Mamdani and his proposed policies) incorrect framing, in NYC (which is what we're talking about here), rent control is a specific program governed by a specific set of laws. Rent stabilization is a different specific program governed by a different set of laws.
While there are only ~24,000 rent controlled units, there are ~1,000,000 rent stabilized units.
The latter is what's affected by Mamdani's proposal. This isn't new either. Rent stabilization in pretty much its current form has existed for more than 40 years and rent control much, much longer.
So this isn't some new policy that "commie jihadi" is proposing. And freezes on rent stabilized units have been done repeatedly, the last time in 2020/2021.
You are confusing a 2-way race with a 3-way race. Mamdani could've won with a lot less than 50% (since there was no ranked choice - and even if it was, I doubt any Sliwa voter would have given Cuomo any 2nd place votes).
The fact that he cleared 50% in a 3-way race is itself a mandate.
> The fact that he cleared 50% in a 3-way race is itself a mandate.
Most people would not agree with this.
To put it another way, he is leading a city where a majority or close to a majority did not support his candidacy. A mandate is when a large majority of the people you are leading supported your rise to leadership and you are no leading with their approval.
>To put it another way, he is leading a city where a majority or close to a majority did not support his candidacy. A mandate is when a large majority of the people you are leading supported your rise to leadership and you are no leading with their approval.
No. A majority supported his candidacy. In case you're confused about that, a "majority" is more than 50%. Mamdani received more than 50% of the vote despite something like 40-60 million dollars in attack ads making all sorts of unsubstantiated claims and outright lies about him, his policies and his background.
His victory with a majority is not in question, is it? How, exactly do elections work here? The person with the most votes wins. Full stop. Are you making some sort of claim that such is not the case. If so, where's your proof?
I'd also note that Mamdani's margin of victory (~8.5%) is right in line (with a few exceptions) with margins going back decades.[2]
Mamdani was, by far, the best candidate in the race. HIs opponents being a handsy, disgraced serial sexual harasser, a bribe taking incumbent who oversaw the most corrupt mayoral administration in decades and a media clown whose claim to fame was that he used to ride the subways at night with his gang and beat up random strangers.
As such, who should we have voted for in your opinion?
Actually, if you don't actually live in NYC, we don't care what your opinion might be. We don't tell you how to vote in your local elections, so mind your own damn business!
All that said, are you claiming that Mamdani should not be allowed to become mayor? Do you claim that his election somehow illegitimate?
Shall we, as some have suggested, strip Mamdani of his citizenship and deport him[0][1] as well?
Europe could be relevant again if it only embraced China and gave NATO the finger.