Zohran Mamdani was not yet the new mayor of New York City when the city council signaled that it would serve as willing accomplice in his assault on fundamental property rights. In December, the city council passed legislation that had been hanging fire for several years, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), to further limit New Yorkers’ right to use and dispose of their own stuff. COPA would give ‘give certain nonprofits … an early shot to bid on certain residential properties that go up for sale, before they hit the wider market.’ The law pertains to buildings ‘with poor conditions or where an affordability provision is expiring.’ … If COPA is not dead on arrival, it will depress market prices as the city strongarms owners into making deals at lower-than-market prices.” (01/02/26)
“Companies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia — such as banks, shippers, oil refiners, traders and insurers — have historically faced a choice when dealing with U.S. sanctions regimes. They could do business with a targeted country such as Iran and risk being sanctioned, effectively cutting them off from U.S. suppliers, banks, customers and all the wealth of U.S. markets. Or they could refrain from doing business with the world’s rogue states and retain their access to the U.S. economy. In the 2000s and 2010s, most companies chose the U.S. The risk of being cut off was just too great. Today, however, a growing business ecosystem is taking the other side of that choice: They are willing to risk getting cut off from the U.S. because there is enough money to be made elsewhere.” (01/02/26)
“Since at least the trial of Sextus Roscius in the days of Ancient Rome, humans have had a strange fascination with murder. The source of this fixation is debatable. Perhaps it stems from the basic human fear of death or else from our desperate need to see justice and order done in a chaotic world. Whatever the root, humanity’s interest in murder has now transformed into an entire commercial industry filled with reality TV shows, podcasts, and sensational journalism. Detective fiction has long been the most cultured avenue of our murder obsession. In the books of authors such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and John Dickinson Carr, the quest to discover a murderer turns into a cerebral window into human nature and society. The latest iteration in this great tradition is Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movies featuring the enigmatic Southern Sleuth Benoit Blanc (played by the inimitable Daniel Craig).” (01/02/25)
“I don’t mean to imply, by the title of this article, that I think America is about to totally ‘destroy’ itself. I happen to believe that the United States, in some shape, form, or fashion, will be around for a long time into the future. I don’t know what shape, form, or fashion that will be; indeed, America has already monumentally changed, since 1789, from the virtuous, limited, constitutional government (a ‘confederacy,’ Alexander Hamilton called it), into a society with a dominant federal government that does whatever it can get away with. In effect, we have become, in a way, exactly what our Founding Fathers rebelled against. But time changes many things, and countries are among those things.” (01/03/25)
“People used to have a ‘midlife crisis’ in their late 30s, or even earlier, back when a man might reasonably say that he expected to die ‘in my late 50s with a heart full of pastrami.’ The midlife crisis moved to later ages with advancing life expectancy, and I suppose it was a decade or so ago I began to hear people talk about the ‘quarter-life crisis’ at age 25. As the 21st century enters its second quarter, one might wonder if this century is going to provide anything except crisis.” (01/02/26)
“In 2025, protest policing in major US cities increasingly took on the character of a spectacle: overwhelming deployments, theatrical staging, and aggressive crowd-control tactics that emphasized signaling power over maintaining public safety. This was not a one-off episode; it followed the deployment of federal troops into multiple Democratic-led cities, prompting lawsuits and court challenges that local leaders described, with justification, as militarized intimidation. … Across Chicagoland, protest control became overtly choreographed. … The most brazen moment came when homeland security secretary Kristi Noem appeared on the facility’s roof beside armed agents and a camera crew, positioned near a sniper’s post, as arrests unfolded below. This was performative policing at its most distilled: public safety reduced to a spectacle with vaguely defined urban threats cast as the danger being neutralized.” (01/02/25)
“On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his bearded revolutionaries marched into Havana. Church bells rang across the island as Batista fled into exile. This January 1st marked the 67th anniversary of that revolution. Sixty-seven years of a system built on deception, imposed through violence, and sustained through repression. But now, for the first time since Castro’s march into Havana, genuine change appears inevitable.” (01/02/25)
“Critics warn that a rent freeze can actually make the housing crisis worse. Even if new housing construction is exempt, skeptics say the policy could discourage building in general as developers and investors scale back. Meanwhile, the real estate lobby argues that landlords would get squeezed by rising costs, which would lead to deferred building maintenance and more vacant units. Warnings against rent control policies often come wrapped in dire metaphors about ’destroying cities’ and ’halting investment’, but, politically, freezes are popular. More than three-quarters of voters support them, depending on the poll. Long term, we need more housing — but construction takes years and often faces fierce resistance. A thoughtfully designed freeze could protect renters against precarity while paving the way for a more comprehensive approach to the housing crisis.” (01/02/25)
“Israel is expelling 37 aid groups – a likely death sentence for 100,000s of Palestinians. But the Times speaks only of ‘new rules’ in Gaza, and ‘suspensions’ for those who ‘resist registration.'” (01/02/25)
“Europe has obvious reason to be concerned about Russia’s operations. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys cited the recent explosion damaging a Polish train line to Ukraine as a dangerous ‘escalation’ by Russia: ‘we should address it really seriously because we are minutes from big casualties here.’ Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski declared, ‘This time, it was not just sabotage, as before, but an act of state terrorism, as the clear intention was to cause human casualties.’ However, this is precisely what the allies intend with their aid to Kiev. To kill Russians, lots of them. … Although American sympathies should be with the Ukrainian people, the United States has little at stake in the ongoing war.” (01/01/26)
