Tall Ships, balloons, and puppy dogs will dock in Greenwich Harbor this Sunday

/

She’ll be in Greenwich, but her captain insists, “I’d rather be in Holland, wooden shoe?”

Historic Dutch Tall Ship to Anchor Greenwich Historical Society Celebration of America’s 250th

Greenwich Historical Society will host a major community celebration of
America’s 250th anniversary during a signature weekend of events culminating on June 28, 2026, with Sunday at the Park with George, bringing together history, culture, music, education, and civic pride for one of Connecticut’s signature America’s 250th celebrations.

The celebration will center on the arrival of the historic Dutch tall ship Oosterschelde in Greenwich Harbor at Delamar Greenwich Harbor and a free public festival at Roger Sherman Baldwin Park on Sunday, June 28, from 10:00am to 4:00pm.

The Oosterschelde, the largest restored Dutch sailing ship in operation and one of the world’s most celebrated historic tall ships, will dock in Greenwich Harbor as part of its international voyage. The vessel will serve as the centerpiece of the celebration and will be open for free public tours throughout the day.

That sounds like fun, but the Greenwich Historical Society press release reprinted in Greenwich Free Press offers no explanation of why the Oosterschelde is considered “historic”, which is annoying to anyone with a spark of curiosity about old sailing ships. I initially guessed that its fame might be attributable to Old Greenwich’s Daphne Lamsvelt-Pol’s great-grandmother having used it to smuggle tulip bulbs, chocolate, and stinky cheese to these shores long ago, but checking with ChatGPD, I learned that was not the case — there are additional reasons:

The adjective "historic" is not just travel-brochure puffery in this case. The Oosterschelde is genuinely one of the most significant surviving Dutch sailing ships.

Here are the main reasons.

She is the last of her kind

Built in 1917 in Rotterdam as a three-masted topsail schooner, the Oosterschelde is the last surviving original Dutch three-masted topsail schooner. Around the time of the First World War, hundreds of similar sailing cargo vessels worked the North Sea and Baltic trades, but virtually all were scrapped, converted beyond recognition, or lost. She is the sole authentic survivor of that once-common fleet.

She was a real working cargo ship

Unlike many "tall ships" built specifically for sail training or as replicas, the Oosterschelde spent more than seventy years earning her living. She carried everyday cargoes including:

  • clay

  • timber

  • stone

  • potatoes

  • straw

  • herring

  • even bananas

In other words, she represents the last generation of commercial sailing ships that coexisted with steam and diesel vessels.

She had several lives

Her career mirrors much of 20th-century northern European maritime history.

  • 1917–1939: Dutch cargo schooner Oosterschelde.

  • 1939: Sold to Danish owners and renamed Fuglen II.

  • During the Second World War she struck a magnetic sea mine but survived after being towed to safety.

  • 1954: Sold to Sweden, renamed Sylvan, and rebuilt as a modern motor coaster with much of her sailing rig removed.

  • 1988: Returned to the Netherlands after her working life ended.

That sequence explains why her survival is rather remarkable: most vessels that underwent such extensive conversions were eventually broken up.

She was restored instead of scrapped

From 1988 to 1992 she underwent what was then the largest ship restoration ever attempted in the Netherlands. The work aimed not merely to make her look old, but to recreate her original 1917 appearance using historical plans, photographs, surviving fittings and advice from former sailors. Princess Margriet recommissioned her in 1992.

She still sails the world

Unlike many historic ships that become museum exhibits, the Oosterschelde remains an active ocean-going vessel. Since her restoration she has:

  • circumnavigated the globe more than once,

  • visited more than 50 countries,

  • sailed to Antarctica, South Georgia and the Arctic,

  • rounded Cape Horn under sail,

  • and recently completed the ambitious DARWIN200 voyage, retracing much of Charles Darwin's voyage aboard HMS Beagle while supporting science and youth education.

That's an unusual combination: a ship that is both an authentic artifact from the age of commercial sail and a fully operational ocean voyager.

So if your local paper simply calls her "historic," it's understating things a little. She's not just old—she's effectively the last surviving representative of an entire class of Dutch merchant sailing ships, preserved in working order rather than as a static museum piece.

If you have the chance to go aboard, one thing to notice is the rigging. A topsail schooner like Oosterschelde combines fore-and-aft sails with square topsails on the foremast, a rig that gave merchant captains a useful compromise between speed, cargo capacity, and a crew small enough to be economical. It's a type of vessel that was once a familiar sight in the North Sea but has almost completely disappeared.

Update:

As it turns out, Oooosterschelde (not “Oystershell” as spelled by an illiterate drunken Dutchman, as one might assume) is already in port. Gideon was there last night moonlighting as a canape server — chocolate chip Gouda and jalapeno spread and hardtack – and snuck a photo with his Minox spy camera.

Bonus material:

Back when Holland was a fierce trading rival of England and a world-power, it generated the same jokes we tell, or used to tell, about Poles, blondes, and rednecks, and similar to those told by Swedes/Finns and Norwegians about the other (the Irish are in a seperate class; everyone tells jokes about them, and deservedly so).

I know a number of the slurs, but I asked ChatGPD for a compilation, and it obliged. Brush up on them, then visit the Oosterschelde and try them out on her crew; they’ll be delighted, surely.

Expression/Original meaning

Dutch courage Courage inspired by alcohol.

Dutch treat / Dutch date Everyone pays for themselves.

Dutch uncle Someone who scolds or lectures sternly.

Dutch comfort Comfort that isn't comforting ("Things could be worse.").

Dutch bargain A bargain sealed while drunk.

Dutch concert A noisy chorus in which everyone sings a different tune (or snores!).

Dutch feast A party where the host gets drunk before the guests.

Dutch gold/Dutch metal Brass or other cheap metal.

Dutch leave Leaving without saying goodbye ("French leave" is the more common version).

Dutch reckoning An inflated or dishonest bill.

Dutch widow A prostitute (now obsolete).[Who says? — ED]

Dutch nightingale A frog.

Dutch defense A sham or inadequate defense.

Dutch auction Originally, an auction where the asking price starts high and is lowered until someone accepts. Unlike most of the others, this term lost its derogatory flavor and is still standard.

Double Dutch Gibberish; incomprehensible speech.

I'm a Dutchman if..."I'll be damned if..."—expressing disbelief.

To talk like a Dutch uncle To admonish bluntly. [I’d define it as “a mean son of a bitch”, but Chat is so discrete — Ed]

There were also colorful but now almost forgotten ones:

  • Dutch headache — a hangover.

  • Dutch cap — a type of contraceptive pessary (medical usage).

  • Dutch cheese — a person's head (slang).

  • Dutchman — in printing and carpentry, a patch inserted to hide a flaw (this one is still used technically, without any obvious ethnic slur intended).

Interestingly, the English weren't the only ones who played this game. Many European languages pinned undesirable traits on neighboring peoples:

  • French leave (English) = leaving without permission.

  • English leave (French: filer à l'anglaise) means exactly the same thing.

  • In German, a Polnische Wirtschaft ("Polish economy") meant disorder or mismanagement.

  • In several languages, diseases acquired national labels: "French disease," "Spanish disease," "Neapolitan disease," etc., depending on who was doing the blaming.

Oh, the irony: P&Z approves plans to preserve “historically significant” 1906 building, “but can you stick some solar panels on the roof?”

/

As envisioned by the guardians of greenwich’s historic buildings. “Call it the green house!”

We’ll leave it to someone else to explain how solar panels are any business of the meddling members of the Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission, and just note that such features were rare in 1906; in fact, I don’t believe any existed at all. Change my mind™

Historic Greenwich building approved for apartment conversion

GREENWICH — Plans to convert two former dental offices on the first floor of 23 Maple Ave. off East Putnam Avenue, which has been deemed historically and architecturally significant, into residential apartments have been approved.

The site currently contains three apartments, two dental offices and 13 parking spaces. The dental offices would be turned into dwellings for a total of five units, and another parking space would be added.

As a condition of the special-permit approval, the commission recommended that the developers of the property add landscaping at the site and explore the possibility of adding solar panels to the roof.

A previous Greenwich Time article published in Mat offers more details of the project:

Historic Greenwich house would swap dental offices for apartments

By Robert Marchant, Staff WriterMay 10, 2026

GREENWICH — Dental offices in a house at a prominent location in central Greenwich, with a significant repository of local history attached to it, are set to be converted into apartments. 

The recently submitted plan would convert two former dental offices on the first floor at 23 Maple Ave. off East Putnam Avenue into residential apartments.

The plan calls for the larger office on the south end of the property to be turned into a three-bedroom apartment, and the smaller one on the east side would be made over as a one-bedroom unit.

…. According to the attorney representing the owners of the site, Michael Thomason, the dental practice there had ceased, and the building’s owners “have been unable to re-lease the dental offices.” The site’s ownership is listed as Coleman Business Holdings LLC, associated with the family of a dentist and oral surgeon who worked at the site. 

The plan calls for the larger office on the south end of the property to be turned into a three-bedroom apartment, and the smaller one on the east side would be made over as a one-bedroom unit.

…. The house has some history and is known in historical records as the “Hyde House.” The home was initially owned by Dr. Fritz Hydeand his wife, and fellow physician, Dr. Harriet Baker Hyde. Those two doctors were among the principal founders of Greenwich Hospital, which opened in 1906. The hospital is a short distance away from the structure.

But wait, there’s more!

(ArchitecturalTrust.com, February 2010)

Around the corner, at 23 Maple Ave., is the Dr. Hyde House (c.1906), an amalgamation of three different architectural styles. The stone walls and double-bay corner window with leaded glass suggest the Tudor Revival style, while the orange clay roof tiles and stucco walls are Spanish Colonial Revival elements. The stone porte-cochere – with its nearly-flat, cantilevered roof – calls to mind the contemporary Prairie Style houses of Frank Lloyd Wright.

I know how I’d choose between the two alternatives

/

Cost of new Greenwich High School pool estimated at $57 million [Before the inevitable overruns]

Kathy Smith at her blog GreenwichWise has the details

On Thursday, June 11, the Greenwich Board of Education (BOE) had its first official read of the NaTCAD (Natatorium, Tennis Courts and Access Driveway) project proposed for Greenwich High School. Under the primary plan being considered, the district would tear down the aging 1968 pool and rebuild directly on its existing footprint, a move that will require relocating GHS aquatics activities for 1 to 2 years during construction.

The GHS pool is well past its prime. Between structural water seepage, non-compliant drain codes, and a ceiling layout so low that divers aren't safely allowed to use the 1-meter boards, a new pool is desperately needed.

Let's Be Honest About the Size of the Natatorium

“While the BOE frames this option as a necessary rebuild within the pool's existing footprint, the data shown in the meeting's presentation tells a completely different story. We aren’t just swapping out an old pool for a modern version of the same thing.

“The plan is to vastly expand the footprint to fit in modern competitive water polo space, elevated spectator seating, expanded locker rooms, and the high vertical ceilings required for safety-compliant diving. The presentation specs reveal that the proposed facility is actually jumping from the original 10,212-square-foot footprint to a massive 35,059-square-foot premier aquatics complex—over 3 times its original size.”

Putting the $57 million Price tag into Perspective

“The current conceptual cost for the new natatorium complex sits around $47 million, and it balloons to $57.4 million when you add the tennis courts and access driveway work.
To understand the scale of this capital investment, it helps to look at how this stacks up against other highly-debated town infrastructure overhauls:

  • Dorothy Hamill Rink Rebuild: At over $57 million, this single high school sports project costs significantly more than the entire $41.2 million rink rebuild project in Byram.

  • Central Middle School: It commands more than half the budget required to build the entire brand-new, 125,000-square-foot Central Middle School campus from scratch.

Fast Track

“This project is moving exceptionally fast. A special meeting is scheduled for this Monday, June 22, to refine the educational specifications for the project ahead of the final fall push. You can view the agenda here.”

Also from Kathy Smith and very much related:

The Dreaded Greenwich Property Tax Bill Has Arrived

As we highlighted in our May 19, 2026 blog (Let's Be Honest About the Greenwich Mill Rate), a combination of high town spending and lagging commercial office valuations, has heavily shifted the financial burden onto local homeowners.

Residential and condo owners in Greenwich are bearing the brunt of this shift:

  • Average Residential Rise: An increase of almost 8%.

  • Condo Owners: Facing a steep 13.60% increase.

  • District 1 Residents: Seeing a massive 15.25% spike.


Don't be Fooled

When you see your higher tax bill, you won't feel any better being told that Greenwich maintains the "lowest mill rate in the State of CT." Because our property values are so high, Greenwich residents already pay among the highest property taxes per capita in the entire state.

Why are our bills climbing so fast? Just look at the mismatch in town spending:

  • School Spending Up, Enrollment Down: Our local population is growing at a modest crawl of less than 1% per year, but our public school enrollment has actually been shrinking. Over the last three years, Greenwich Public Schools lost 843 students, yet, the school operating budget just grew to a record $207.1 million. We are educating fewer kids, but spending millions more to do it.

  • Capital Spending Out of Control: This year, the town’s capital spending plan hit an unprecedented total of over $100 million (combining a record $66 million in cash levies and nearly $70 million in new debt). While officials frame these figures as necessary "investments," the real issue is green-lighting projects without tightly controlling their size and scope. For example, the Dorothy Hamill Rink project was supposed to be a simple replacement of an aging 21,000-square-foot building. Instead, it ballooned into a 40,000-square-foot ice emporium, carrying with it the massive cost of fully redesigning a 13-acre park.

Between the Lines: When the Greenwich population is barely growing and the public school enrollment is actively declining, you have to ask why town spending levels are rising so aggressively. There is no such thing as a free lunch—and right now, Greenwich taxpayers are picking up a very expensive tab.

Disbarment for Miko, jail time for all

/

hard landing in denver

Denver City Council blocked Denver International Airport from leasing space to Key Lime Air, because the airline worked with ICE.

There was just one problem… It violates FAA rules.

So what did they do? City attorney Miko Brown allegedly urged the airport to fabricate an investigation into the airline’s safety record to cover up for illegally discriminating against the airline for political reasons.

When word got out, Brown and Mayor Mike Johnston flat out denied it. However CBS just obtained an internal airport memo appearing to reveal the entire thing was true.

City officials conspired to discriminate against a private company for political reasons then lied about it to cover it up

The Justice Dept should investigate.

Here’s the CBS report:

Local News

Internal Denver International Airport memo appears to corroborate claims city officials called false

By

Brian Maass

Updated on: June 25, 2026 / 6:50 PM MDT / CBS Colorado

An internal Denver International Airport memo obtained by CBS Colorado appears to corroborate key details of a closed-door meeting that city officials have been publicly disputing.

The memo, written days after a January 6 meeting among city and airport officials, documents a conversation at the center of a federal lawsuit filed by a former airport attorney. That lawsuit, in part, accuses City Attorney Miko Brown of pushing airport officials to investigate a charter airline's safety record -- not because of genuine safety concerns, but to create legal cover for a city council vote that put $90 million in federal grant money at risk.

The dispute over Key Lime Air

The episode began with a routine-seeming request. Key Lime Air, a charter air service, sought to lease 1,200 square feet of office and storage space at the airport last year — the kind of agreement Denver International Airport regularly enters into with airlines.

But the Denver City Council voted overwhelmingly against the lease last December, after learning Key Lime Air had contracted with federal immigration authorities to transport detainees.

That vote created a legal problem. Federal Aviation Administration rules bar cities from treating airlines unequally, and the council's action put $90 million in federal grant funding in jeopardy, according to one council member.

According to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the matter, City Attorney Brown attended a meeting on January 6 with the airport and Mayor's Office officials to address the fallout from the council vote. Attendees included airport Chief Executive Phil Washington, airport attorney Everett Martinez, the mayor's interim chief of staff Emily Garnett, and other senior airport and mayoral staff.

A lawsuit and a denial

What happened in that meeting might never have become public, except that Martinez was later placed on administrative leave and filed a federal lawsuit against the city in March. According to the suit, Brown suggested at the January meeting that Denver International Airport investigate Key Lime Air's safety record -- not because of legitimate concerns, but to retroactively justify the council's vote. Martinez said Brown was effectively asking the airport to fabricate an investigation, calling the proposal likely illegal and unethical.

When CBS Colorado asked Mayor Mike Johnston's office about the lawsuit in March, a spokesperson answered it as coming from "a disgruntled employee" and said, "The city attorney did not say the things listed here. No one called for a fake investigation on Key Lime."

The following day, Brown sent a memo to her own staff stating "The alleged claims are untrue."

The memo

Last month, CBS Colorado obtained an internal airport memo written by Martinez on January 13. The memo was sent to the Denver airport's vice president of airline affairs, who signed off on it -- an acknowledgement that the executive considered it an accurate account of what was said. The memo names all eight people who attended the meeting.

According to the document, Brown told airport officials: "Well you all should investigate Key Lime yourselves. If the FAA comes knocking, I want to be able to have in my back pocket that council was also voting because of safety issues but ran out of time to get to talking about that before voting."

Two sources familiar with the memo confirmed both its existence and its accuracy to CBS Colorado.

The memo also states that Denver International Airport lawyer David Steinberger met with Brown again on January 9, and that she wanted him to once more raise the safety scrutiny she had recommended at the first meeting. It further recounts that Brown emailed Steinberger with "continued questions about investigating Key Lime's safety record" after the January 6 meeting, and " told him to relay to the group that they should continue considering safety violation inquiries into the Key Lime." According to the memo, Brown told Steinberger that "a bad argument is better than no argument."

Legal questions

Denver attorney Steven Zansberg, who specializes in First Amendment law reviewed the memo, the timeline of events, and the city's denials. He said the memo appears to document an attempted scheme that ultimately did not move forward.

"It does appear to be a plot, a scheme, to generate information after the fact to justify an improper decision by the city council," Zansberg said.

Zansberg said it is the denials -- not the original proposal -- that create the greater liability for the administration.

"There's obvious political exposure for being caught red-handed in an outright lie," he said. Asked whether the memo amounted to officials being caught in that position, Zansberg said: "It certainly appears so from the memo."

He said unresolved questions remain about how far up the chain the matter went.

"How high up did it go? The mayor? Was the mayor aware, and who else in the mayor's office -- who knew and who authorized a categorical denial?" he said.

Were it still Biden’s DOJ, we’d never know; as it is, perhaps we will. Fun times.

Here’s Miko Brown from a few years ago, lecturing on, what else, DEI:

So long to Tiny Tots; I'd had hopes they'd preserve it as the historical site of the Fountain Boyz nursery school, but alas ....

/

97 Riverside Avenue, the location of Tiny Tots Nursery school for many decades stretching back at least as far as 1950, was very nicely redone some years ago and has now been sold for $3.375 million. The sellers had asked for $3.495, but accepted this offer in mere days, so they must have been satisfied with what they got.

It’s possible this 1900 home will survive — certainly it’s in great condition — but I notice that sales report was followed immediately by a $20,000 rental listing; that often means the new owner wants to generate a cash flow as a new building application wends its way through our P&Z and building departments. We’ll see.

There's no real estate news to report yet, so let's continue on the lesser matter of the collapse of the Republic

/

Newsom Just Endorsed a New National Wealth Tax, Signaling Huge Shift Toward Socialism

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed a national tax on billionaires that he says is the first part of an “economic reset for America” agenda, which aides explicitly say is part of his considering to launch a presidential campaign.

“The system America’s founders built was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades,” Newsom writes. “We can reverse it together, as a country.”

It is extremely early in the presidential campaign cycle for a policy proposal — but comes as Democrats continue to embrace economic populism and moves against the wealthy. It also comes as California voters in November will decide on a billionaires’ tax after the governor and opponents of the tax late Thursday failed to reach a deal to keep it off the ballot. [The State Employees Union, which runs California, refused to let Noisome back off — ED]

(cont.)

2. Among Democrats, Newsom is considered a moderate, not a progressive. His endorsement of a wealth tax makes it an official part of the Democratic Party platform for moderates and progressives alike; the policy is now table stakes for any Democrat seeking office at any level and in any region. We are no longer going to be able to escape this by simply claiming it’s the fringe left advocating for it.

3. Notice that Newsom calls it a “billionaires tax” but references the wealth of the top 10%. If you think a tax such as this would be limited to billionaires, you are delusional (remember that the income tax originally applied to less than 1% of earners). Billionaires have an entire industry of wealth managers, lawyers, and tax advisors helping them shelter assets. When this “billionaires tax” fails to collect even a small percentage of what Democrats promise it will, they will quickly expand it to apply to anyone with even $5M of assets (which is a top 2% net worth). Ordinary people far below the level of the ultra-wealthy—main street small business owners, mom-and-pop real estate investors, farmers, anyone with a decent-size nest egg in their IRA or 401k account—will quickly feel the pain as well.

Pay attention. This is serious, it’s not going away, and it’s going to come for all of us, billionaire or not.

I've been writing about the Democrat Socialists of America since AOC first crawled out from behind her Starbucks counter; here's another warning

/

Understanding The Masterminds Behind The Communist Revolution

Chloe Trapanotto• Daily Wire, Jun 25, 2026

The socialists are infecting the Democratic Party, hollowing it out, and boot-stomping its corpse.

It’s 1917 all over again. Some communists weren’t communist enough, so the truly radical ones ate them alive. This time, it’s not the Bolsheviks destroying the Mensheviks. It’s the socialists destroying the Democrats. And the organization leading the charge isn’t marching under a red flag; it’s marching under a donkey.

Meet the Democratic Socialists of America.

Their mission is to hollow out a country they are convinced is the root of all genocide, poverty, and malfeasance in the world, and replace it with third-worldist, communist radicalism that leaves the United States in permanent ignominy.

,,,, To prevent that very bleak reality, we need to understand what the DSA is — and why it is the antithesis of America.

The DSA is the largest explicitly socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters across nearly all 50 states. They use young people, TikTok, and apathetic voters to propel obscure candidates to victory and make themselves look more mainstream than they are. They’re a radical, multi-tendency activist organization that runs carefully recruited candidates exclusively as Democrats, while simultaneously pushing campus radicalism, street organizing, and a platform of “democratic socialism.”

Which is a fancy new way of saying communism.

They want to replace capitalism with top-down government control over private property, housing, healthcare, energy, and more. Democrat policies aren’t radical enough for them. The Democratic Party is simply the vehicle they’re using to Trojan Horse their revolution through.

We know this because their leaders are saying it openly.

NYC DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo recently boasted that the group needs to “turn DSA into a factory,” and admitted their alliance with the Democratic Party is more for a ballot-access vehicle — not because they share its goals. Most of them, in fact, detest the Democratic Party. They compete in Democratic primaries, make their liberal opponents look like MAGA Cavemen by comparison, get elected with a “D” next to their name, and then treat the Democratic establishment as an obstacle to be discarded. Never a home. Always a beachhead.

It’s the classic “entryism” — or “dirty break” — strategy: infiltrate the larger party, use its infrastructure and ballot access to grow, then fracture from within. They aren’t hiding it.

It’s no wonder they idolize Vladimir Lenin.

The long-term plan may seem far-fetched, but its seeds are already sprouting. The DSA started with the Squad: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib — the usual suspects. Then they expanded to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the communist terror-sympathizer who recently declared: “[These] were not just victories from one elected office. They were victories of a movement.” He’s right. That’s exactly the point.

The blueprint is methodical: start small in winnable local and state races, build name recognition and infrastructure, primary moderate Democrats, shift the Overton window left on wealth redistribution, housing, policing, immigration, and foreign policy (hating Israel), and eventually capture enough leverage inside the Democratic Party to make it a fully functioning vehicle for socialist priorities.

They will do this for as long as it takes. Their stamina outlasts your attention span.

They can sustain it because their promises will never go out of style: “Free housing!” “Abolish the police!” “Healthcare is a human right!” (It’s not.) But make no mistake: the only way to fulfill those promises is to seize the means of production, tax your ideas and innovation into the ground, and handicap the creative, the strong, and the successful in the name of forced equality. Vonnegut wrote about where that leads in 1961. Venezuela lived it more recently. The DSA is apparently unaware of either.

In the meantime, the mask slips. At a DSA Socialism conference, a panelist openly declared, “I want to perform abortions in a church before it’s all said and done.” This came from a panel on “The Left and the Family,” which also featured arguments for abolishing the nuclear family, placing children under state supervision rather than with parents, and celebrating sex work. Separately, DSA members have stated: “It should not be controversial to say ‘Death to U.S. empire’ — this should be the moderate position,” and “We need to orient ourselves toward insurrection.”

So yes. These people exist. They are organized. And while you’re watching Love Island and going on matcha dates, they are winning races.

They are also the direct antithesis of everything this country was built on. America’s foundation rests on individual liberty, limited government, secure property rights, free enterprise, and a civic culture rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition. The DSA’s project — collective economic control, mass redistribution, cultural radicalism targeting the family, and the deliberate erosion of American power abroad — attacks every single one of those pillars.

Like the Frankfurt School before them, they use American institutions as temporary hosts before devouring them from within.

These are not cartoon villains in ski masks plotting gulags for tomorrow. They are organized, funded, patient, and growing today. They believe capitalism is immoral (It’s actually the most moral economic system ever devised), and they are doing everything in their power to kill it. The Democratic Party is just a stepping stone.

The Bolsheviks didn’t win because they were right. They won because nobody took them seriously until it was too late. Don’t make the same mistake.

Like socialism itself, rent control has never worked, and a rent freeze is rent control on steroids

/

NYC enacts rent freeze on 1M stabilized units after Mamdani accused of stacking board

The board passed a rent freeze on both one-year and two-year leases for the Big Apple’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units in a 7-1 vote.

The vote, during a meeting at El Museo del Barrio in Upper Manhattan, sparked an eruption of cheers from the crowd of mostly tenant groups.

But landlords have been sounding the alarm for months on the dangers of a rent freeze while costs continue to skyrocket.

A report released by the Rent Guidelines Board in April showed rent-stabilized housing insurance soared 10.5% in 2026 year-over-year, while fuel and maintenance rose 11% and 6%, respectively.

James Whelan, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, also blasted the rent freeze as a “terrible decision.”

“The Rent Guidelines Board ignored its own data and made a terrible decision tonight. Older rent-stabilized buildings are already struggling under rising operating costs, yet the Board chose to disregard those realities,” Whelan said in a statement. 

“This decision will mean less investment in maintenance and repairs, accelerating the deterioration of the housing stock that millions of New Yorkers call home. Tonight’s vote may be politically popular, but it will make New York’s housing crisis worse.”

Maksim Wynn, a Mamdani-appointed landlord representative, gave a lengthy speech at the meeting acknowledging landlords’ struggles — but ultimately said the rent freeze was in their best interest.

“There is a substantial subset of housing stock in distress,” Wynn told the crowd. “Still, a 0% increase on 1 and 2-year leases is in landlords’ best interest.”

How can operating an apartment building at a loss be “in the landlords’ best interest”? Mandamni’s flunky doesn’t say, but I’d interpret that as a threat: “go along with us, and we might delay confiscating your properties, for now”. Mamdani has already announced his intention to seize “unmaintained” buildings and this is all a part of that plan; landlords will be unable to maintain, even heat their buildings, and the communists running the city will move in, declare the buildings “neglected” and take them over.*

Tinfoil hat thinking? Take a look at the picture above, and notice all the preprinted signs and orange T shirts, all supplied by an organization (that files no financial reports or donor list) ,“NY Tenants Bloc.

We’re building a bloc of 250,000 tenants to take control over our homes.

There are over 9 million tenants in New York. We keep our state running every day. But now a small group of landlords and real estate executives holds disproportionate power over our homes, neighborhoods, and even our democracy.

The real estate industry is squeezing us for every dollar we’ve got, getting rich off our backs by raising our rents, refusing to make basic repairs, and pushing us out of the places we call home. 

But we have the numbers: there’s millions more tenants than there are landlords. We have the power to break the real estate industry’s grip on our lives by uniting as a bloc, and working together in our homes, our neighborhoods, and at the ballot box.

*AI Overview

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's “Block by Block” housing plan includes a "Fix the City" initiative that aims to seize properties from negligent or abusive landlords and transfer them to responsible stewards like community land trusts, nonprofits, or the tenants themselves. [1, 2, 3]

The strategy utilizes aggressive "roof to cellar" code enforcement by the Department of Buildings to identify and document chronic violations in unmaintained buildings. Properties with severe, long-term neglect can face legal action aimed at removing careless owners and reassigning the properties. [1, 2, 3]