{"id":240692,"date":"2026-05-22T16:49:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T16:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/240692\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T16:49:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T16:49:29","slug":"socialist-new-york-city-bites-the-hand-that-feeds-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/240692\/","title":{"rendered":"Socialist New York City bites the hand that feeds it"},"content":{"rendered":"

These must be utterly baffling times for the successful, public-spirited financier in New York City<\/a>. <\/p>\n

You\u2019ve made your living not by snatching bread from the mouths of widows and orphans or otherwise exploiting the masses, but by producing consistent returns and financial security for your many grateful clients. Your company<\/a> has generated billions in economic<\/a> prosperity for the city, with all the concomitant property and income tax revenue. And you\u2019ve dedicated your life not just to doing well but to doing good. You lavishly fund all sorts of local and national worthy causes (medicine, education, the arts) with donations totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. <\/p>\n

You undoubtedly don\u2019t do it for the kudos, but under the circumstances, you might expect New York\u2019s elected officials to be at least quietly appreciative.<\/p>\n

Instead, the prevailing sentiment seems to be outright hostility. The newly elected, avowedly socialist<\/a> mayor of New York held a press conference on the sidewalk outside your residence and identified you by name, not to thank you, but to announce that you and your exploitative ilk should contribute even more in taxes to the city. <\/p>\n

Another socialist, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Queens and the Bronx, asserted that it\u2019s a \u201cmyth\u201d that people like you could possibly have earned their money by legitimate means. (\u201cYou can\u2019t earn a billion dollars. You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they\u2019re worth.\u201d)<\/p>\n

And the broader trends are all ominous. Two-thirds of Americans under age 30 say they have a \u201cfavorable view\u201d of socialism, and, as Christopher Caldwell has observed, the Democratic Socialists of America is fast becoming the main political organ of the American Left. Worse, the rhetoric on the left is often eliminationist to the point of Bolshevism. Luigi Mangione<\/a> is a folk hero to many, not a pariah.<\/p>\n

A shoestring charity is blowing against this ill wind. Founded in 1993 and operating out of a small-but-movingly-effective museum in downtown Washington, D.C., the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation\u2019s mission is to educate younger generations about the sordid history of Marxist socialism (\u201cthe deadliest ideology in history\u201d), to \u201cexpose the lies of Marxism for the na\u00efve who say they are willing to give collectivism another chance,\u201d and to \u201crededicate our free society based on individual liberty, free enterprise, the rule of law, democratic self-government, and human rights.\u201d <\/p>\n

The foundation also researches and exposes human rights abuses in present-day communist and socialist regimes, such as China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, and Venezuela. The Foundation\u2019s team includes numerous members with painful, first-hand experience of communist and socialist regimes, who meet with students and other museum visitors and powerfully tell their stories.<\/p>\n

Just one illustrative example is Rosa Maria Paya, a fearless human rights and democracy activist, whose father, Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Paya, was murdered by the regime<\/a> in 2012.<\/p>\n

TRUMP MUST MANDATE HIGH SCHOOL ECONOMICS TO STOP SOCIALISM<\/a><\/p>\n

During a recent visit to the museum, Foundation CEO Dr. Eric Patterson told me that his dream is to live in a world in which wearing a T-shirt with Che Guevera\u2019s face is as appalling as would be one with Adolf Hitler\u2019s, and the hammer and sickle was as repugnant as the swastika.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a worthy cause indeed, and an especially timely one.<\/p>\n

John Sciortino is a lawyer practicing in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These must be utterly baffling times for the successful, public-spirited financier in New York City. You\u2019ve made your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[878,12246,7511,9,24,55,54,56,1211,82],"class_list":["post-240692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-alexandria-ocasio-cortez","tag-communism","tag-democratic-socialism","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-socialism","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}