N.Y. Mayoral Candidate Wants ‘Public Option’ for Grocery Stores
Plus, Chinese spy at Vandenberg Space Base; Lee Edwards
A socialist New York State assemblyman who is running for mayor of New York City is pushing a plan to have the City of New York open “a network” of city-government operated grocery stores.
The candidate, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, previewed the plan in a vertical video.
“Grocery prices are out of control. The cost of eggs and milk has skyrocketed. Some stores are even using dynamic pricing, jacking up the cost over the course over the course of a day depending on what they can get away with. It doesn’t need to be this way,” he says.
“I’m Zohran Mamdani, and as mayor, I will create a network of city-owned grocery stores. It’s like a public option for produce. We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging. These stores will operate without a profit motive or having to pay property taxes or rent and will pass on those savings to you. They’ll partner with small businesses and nearby farms and sell at wholesale prices,” he says.
“The job of city government isn’t to tinker around the edges while one in four children across our city go hungry,” he says.
Back in August, The Editors highlighted a similar plan under way in Chicago, under the headline, “Chicago Wants a ‘Public Option’ for Grocery Stores.”
I wrote then, “It seems unjust for people running profitable grocery stores to be taxed so that the government can open up businesses to compete with them. And the government in Chicago and in Illinois are failing so at doing the basic, fundamental tasks they are already supposed to be doing, it’s hard to see the logic of their taking on additional missions, like running grocery stores, that are typically handled by the private sector.”
As a reminder that the war against capitalism and the war against the Jews are closely intertwined, Mamdani’s campaign website trumpets his endorsement by both “JVP Action,” which is an anti-Israel group, and New York City Democratic Socialists of America, another anti-Israel group.
With any luck this guy will get nowhere near the New York City mayor’s office, but it’s somewhat refreshing to see leftwing politicians so transparent about their goals of a government takeover of the private economy.
Also astounding is the level of hubris, and the lack of historical knowledge. Do these people really not remember the empty supermarket shelves in the Soviet Union under communism? And do they really believe that the government can sell groceries with better operational efficiency than master retailers such as Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Costco, and Wegmans, all of which operate in New York City?
“Everywhere I go, I hear New Yorkers talking about the outrageous prices of groceries,” Mamdani told the New York Times, describing his idea as “a bold and workable plan.” The New York Times news article previewed his plan almost stenographically, posing no challenging or skeptical questions. The closest the Times gets to balance in its story is including a quote from an academic who seems to agree that corporate supermarkets are bad, but suggests a solution might involve more emphasis on cooperatives or nonprofits.
Lee Edwards: Lee Edwards, the founding chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, died today at his home in Arlington, Virginia. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has more:
Lee Edwards was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1932, to Leila and Willard Edwards. His father, the national political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, moved the family to Silver Spring, Maryland, where Lee was raised. He attended Duke University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English before serving two years in the U.S. Army.
As a graduate student at the Sorbonne University in Paris, Dr. Edwards witnessed Hungarian students in 1956 launch a revolution in the streets of Budapest that toppled the Communist regime. As Soviet tanks crushed the Freedom Fighters, he was appalled by the West’s lack of response and made a lifelong pledge to oppose communism.
Since then, Dr. Edwards has been a leader in the fight for freedom. He helped found Young Americans for Freedom in 1960 and was the first editor of YAF’s magazine, New Guard. He started or helped sustain key anti-Communist organizations, such as the National Captive Nations Committee, the Committee for a Free China, and the American Council for World Freedom.
Dr. Edwards served as director of public information for Senator Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign and ran a Washington, D.C. public relations firm before earning a doctorate in world politics from the Catholic University of America. He was the founding director of the TFAS Institute of Political Journalism at Georgetown University, a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a past president of the Philadelphia Society. He later served as Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at the Heritage Foundation and was an adjunct professor of politics at Catholic University. The Heritage Foundation instituted its annual Lee Edwards Lecture in Conservative Leadership in 2024.
Often called the historian of the conservative movement, Dr. Edwards was the author, co-author, or editor of over 25 books, including biographies of President Ronald Reagan, Goldwater, Dr. Walter Judd, and William F. Buckley, Jr. His works were translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Polish, and Swedish. His most recent works included A Brief History of the Cold War (2016), with Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, and his autobiography, Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty (2017). …In 1990, while at Sunday brunch, the Edwards family resolved that an organization was needed to memorialize all the victims of communism around the world and to educate Americans about the atrocities of communism.
With authorization by unanimous congressional legislation signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 17, 1993, Dr. Edwards and his dear friend Dr. Lev Dobriansky co-founded the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in 1994 as an educational, research, and human rights nonprofit organization devoted to commemorating the more than 100 million people killed by communism around the world and to pursuing the freedom of those still living under totalitarian regimes. Years of commitment resulted in the Victims of Communism Memorial, which was erected on Capitol Hill and dedicated by President George W. Bush on June 12, 2007. Dr. Edwards’ vision eventually led to the Victims of Communism Museum, which opened in June 2022…
If ever someone opens a Heroes of the Cold War Museum (as opposed to a Victims of Communism Museum), Barry Goldwater should be in it. Goldwater’s 1960 book Conscience of a Conservative had recommended a strategy toward the Soviet Union of “Not ‘peace,’ but victory.” In the book, Goldwater, the grandson of a Jewish immigrant from Poland, quoted Eugene Lyons: “the great and inescapable task of our epoch is not to end the Cold War but to win it.” Wrote Goldwater: “a truly offensive-minded strategy would recognize that the captive peoples are our strongest weapon in the war against Communism, and would encourage them to overthrow their captors.” Goldwater called for America to move from away from its strategy of containing the Soviet Union, toward a new and different strategy of rolling it back: “In addition to keeping the free world free, we must try to make the Communist world free.” He advised “military superiority,” and American economic power “forged, not under bureaucratic direction, but in freedom.”
People remember Goldwater as a losing presidential candidate in 1964, but the strategy wound up getting picked up by President Reagan and translating into Cold War victory. There’s a faction of contemporary Republicans (not to mention plenty of Democrats, too) who who are hostile to these ideas. Some of them are too young to remember the Cold War victory but are old enough to remember the Afghanistan and Iraq War slogs. Others argue that the approach that worked against the Soviet Union in the 1980s will not work against Iran or Communist China today.
The consequence of not trying, though, was as visible in Budapest in 1956 as it was at Tiananmen Square in 1989. America will be safer, and the world will be better and more free, if more people react as Edwards did when he was a graduate student in Europe.
Chinese spy at Vandenberg Space Force Base?: A December 11 press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California reports:
A Northern California man has been arrested on a federal criminal complaint for allegedly flying a drone over and taking photographs of Vandenberg Space Force Base, the Justice Department announced today.
Yinpiao Zhou, 39, of Brentwood, is charged with failure to register an aircraft not providing transportation and violation of national defense airspace.
Zhou was arrested Monday at San Francisco International Airport prior to boarding a China-bound flight and made his initial appearance Tuesday in United States District Court in San Francisco.
Zhou remains in federal custody pending prosecutors’ appeal of a federal magistrate judge’s decision to release him. No plea was taken and his arraignment is expected to be scheduled in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
“This defendant allegedly flew a drone over a military base and took photos of the base's layout, which is against the law,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada. “The security of our nation is of paramount importance and my office will continue to promote the safety of our nation’s military personnel and facilities.”
According to an affidavit filed on December 8 with the complaint, on November 30, 2024, drone detection systems at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County detected a drone flying over the base. The drone systems detected that the drone flew for nearly one hour, traveled to an altitude of almost one mile above ground level, and originated from Ocean Park, a public area next to the base. Base security personnel went to the park, spoke to Zhou and another person accompanying him, and learned that Zhou had a drone concealed in his jacket – the same one that flew over the base.
Agents later searched Zhou’s drone pursuant to a federal search warrant and saw several photographs of Vandenberg Space Force Base taken from an aerial viewpoint. A search of Zhou’s cellphone showed Zhou conducted a Google search approximately one month earlier for the phrase “Vandenberg Space Force Base Drone Rules” and messaged with another person about hacking his drone to allow it to fly higher than it could otherwise.
Zhou is a Chinese citizen and lawful permanent resident of the United States, most recently returning to the United States from China in February 2024. The person accompanying Zhou at Ocean Park most recently entered the United States from China on November 26.
A complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.
If convicted, the defendant would face a statutory maximum sentence of four years in federal prison.
The FBI is investigating this matter.
Assistant United States Attorney Kedar S. Bhatia of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section and Trial Attorney Benjamin Koenigsfeld of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.
Correction: “When I wrote about Musk back in April 2024, it was to note that his estimated wealth had declined to $195 billion from a $300 billion peak,” is how the sentence in yesterday’s newsletter should have read. Thanks to the many eagle-eyed readers who caught the error and called it to my attention. Sometimes even The Editors need editors.
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Mamdani's plan is not just for the city grocery stores to be tax free, but also rent free.
To create a "public option" with a level playing field the city would need to pay the rent as well as cancel the taxes for the private grocers.
You write that Zhou is a lawful permanent resident of the United States.
I hope you will write whether he has a green card; whether the U.S. government has a listing of his current and prior employers.
Could we exchange him for U.S. citizens in China?