Mamdani's War on the Bodega: Because Nothing Says “Helping Immigrants” Like Destroying Their Businesses

New York City Mayor and comrade Zohran Mamdani has apparently discovered the ultimate solution to economic inequality: have the government open grocery stores and compete directly with the immigrant entrepreneurs who spent generations building New York’s neighborhoods.

Naturally, the immigrant grocers being targeted by this brilliant socialist experiment are not impressed, especially since their own tax money is going toward the funding of these stores,

The Multicultural Business Coalition (MBC), which represents immigrant-run businesses, has filed two lawsuits against Mamdani’s plan to open government-run supermarkets, arguing that the city’s taxpayer-funded grocery empire could drive family-owned bodegas and supermarkets out of business.

One lawsuit represents “hundreds” of grocers who are “members of groups historically discriminated against,” according to The New York Post. The city plans to open the first of five government supermarkets next year.

Apparently, the revolutionary dream of replacing capitalism with socialism has reached the point where the government now gets to compete with the very immigrants Democrats routinely celebrate as the backbone of American entrepreneurship.

Sure, keep voting for these leftists, my Democrat friends, and quit complaining. You got what you voted for, good and hard.

MBC President Ken Roldan called the plan “a direct assault on minority business by a mayor who claims to be a champion of disenfranchised poor and working-class New Yorkers.”

That's one way to describe it. Another would be: “Congratulations, your reward for building a successful neighborhood business is a government competitor.” Again, on their own tax dollars.

Mamdani, naturally, is naively confident that everything will work out beautifully. On Monday, he defended the proposal, saying he is “fully confident in both the legality and the importance of our initiative.”

Because when a socialist government starts opening competing businesses, the one thing you definitely do not need to worry about is whether the government knows what it is doing.

The second lawsuit raises concerns similar to those surrounding previous efforts to bring Walmart into New York City. Opponents of Walmart argued that the retail giant could drive small storefronts out of business.

But apparently Walmart was insufficiently progressive. Now New York City wants to become Walmart, except with taxpayers footing the bill and politicians deciding what gets stocked on the shelves.

The immigrant grocers also allege that the city “failed to study the discriminatory effects” of the planned supermarkets on family-owned bodegas and supermarkets operated by Hispanics, Arabs, and Asians. The lawsuit asks the city to conduct such a study.

Never held a real job until now

Frank Garcia, chairman of the MBC, explained why the issue is personal.

“My grandfather opened up one of the first bodegas in the late 1960s when East Harlem was burning, and the A&Ps and Walbaums were leaving,” Garcia said. “He established the first Latino Grocery Association to protect the rights of immigrant store owners. I am proud to be following up in his tradition because what Mayor Mamdani is doing is disgracing his memory.”

Nothing says “honoring immigrant entrepreneurs” quite like making them compete against City Hall.

Jairo Guzman, president of the NY State Mexican Chamber of Commerce, called the immigrant-run bodegas “New York City’s great mosaic,” and said that “Mayor Mamdani needs to withdraw his disastrous plan and work with us to find different ways to bolster and sustain what so many (New York City) immigrants have created.”

“The Puerto Ricans were the bodega pioneers and they were followed by the Dominicans, the Arabs, the Koreans, the Chinese, and finally, my Mexican business members,” Guzman said.

There was a time when the American dream meant immigrants arrived with little, worked hard, opened businesses, served their communities, and eventually built something their children could inherit.

Under Mamdani economics, the dream appears to be evolving into something more modern: work hard, build a successful business, pay your taxes, and wait patiently for the government to open a competing store next door.

Mamdani has pledged that the government-run grocery stores will offer products at prices 30% lower than private retailers.

Economists have warned that the plan could lead to supply-chain breakdowns and bare shelves.

But why worry about shortages when you can simply blame capitalism for them?

Venture capitalist Shaun Maguire recently offered a less optimistic assessment.

“This is LITERALLY how you destroy an economy,” Maguire warned, adding, “This is the story of the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. Now coming to NYC!”

Of course, New York is not the Soviet Union, Cuba, or Venezuela.

Not yet, anyway.

But if Mamdani succeeds, New Yorkers may soon discover the exciting socialist experience of paying taxes to support a government grocery store while standing in line outside a private bodega that has already gone out of business.

At least the empty shelves will be affordable.

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Islam's Useful Idiots on the Left

In a recent twitter conversation, I had the occasion to discuss the nature of Islam with a liberal-progressive-useful idiot. Now you may think it is unfair of me to accuse someone who cannot defend himself on this forum of being a useful idiot but allow me to defend my claim.

What is a useful idiot?

According to Wikipedia "useful idiot is a term for people perceived as propagandists for a cause whose goals they are not fully aware of, and who are used cynically by the leaders of the cause." It goes on to say that this phrase was often attributed to Vladimir Lenin in 1987, but there has been no published works that identify it as being accurately his creation as a term. To see the entire article go to here.

American Thinker discusses how the phrase "useful idiot" was coined by leaders of the Soviet Union to describe how people in the West naively promoted the cause of Communism while they were themselves held in contempt and cynically used by the Soviet elite. Thus, the term "more than ever applies to a vast swath of citizens in the United States who have been cynically used by the hardcore left for a cause they are unwilling to understand."

The useful idiot phrase has grown in stature and now it is often applied to those on the left who promote Islam or use moral equivalency to defend it. That is precisely what this twit did in our discussion.

I tweeted a poster about Islam's so-called prophet, Muhammad stating that he was a genocidal murderer, rapist, slaver, thief, torturer, necrophiliac, and filthy pedophile.

The liberal on the other end of my tweet said that was "disgusting" of me to say this. On the positive side, I felt quite satisfied that I was able to create a physical reaction in this useful idiot to the point where he probably vomited all over his Festivus pole, but I also knew that there was no way I would be able to show him the error in his thinking. That is, he was convinced that Islam is a "religion of peace," as he literally said, and I would not in 140 characters convince him otherwise. 

But that is what blogs are for. So let's take a good look at Muhammad. I will refer to him as "Mo" from herein.

When Mo was a child, his mother was abandoned by her hubby and she couldn't handle the lad, thus he was raised by an uncle who was eventually rebuked by Mo because he refused to become a Muslim. 

When he started out on the Islamic trail, his fighting forces were weak, thus the Koran was more accepting of other religions. This was the Meccan era, and the suras (chapters) of the Koran were comparatively peaceful. Later, when he went to Medina and had over 10 thousand terrorists on his side, the Koran suddenly became more violent and intolerant of other religions.

Since Mo was illiterate, he had a scribe do all the actual writing of the Koran. This scribe at times would realize that some of what was said in the book conflicted with other passages that Mo had him write. When this was pointed out to Mo, he had the scribe make the appropriate changes so the book would hang together. But as time went on, the scribe realized that the Koran wasn't the work of a god named Allah, it was all coming from Mo.

So Mo had him killed. That alone made him a murderer, but this was one in many thousands of murders Mo was directly responsible for.

Islam also allows for the practice of necrophilia as seen in at least 6 classic reference texts, including Kanz al-'Umal by Mutaki al-Hindi and Al-Hujja fi Biyan al Mahujja, an authoritative text on Sunni Doctrine, by Abu Qassim al-Asbahani.

According to this Hadith, Muhammad took off his shirt and placed it on a dead woman and laid with her in her grave. The rest is history.

When Mo was 52, he married Aisha. She was all of 6 years old and still playing with dolls. Her father did not want Mo to have sex with her at such a young age so Mo waited until she grew a little more--she was 9 when he raped her. This is where some people had the idea that Mo was a pedophile--I concur.

There are many suras that speak about slaves. In fact, Muslims are allowed to have sex with all of their wives (they could have as many as 4, but Mo could have as many as he wanted) and could also have sex with "what your left hand possesses," which happen to be slaves. In fact, slavery still exists today in Muslim countries but useful idiots don't want to discuss it, or have no clue it exists.

Insofar as Mo and his merry band of terrorists are concerned, they robbed caravans like it was a sporting event, killed the men and pubescent boys, and made the women sex slaves (ISIS is doing that today). The booty from these raids was divided among the terrorists but Mo always got the biggest cut. Mo in his infinite hatred of the Jews, beheaded anywhere between 600 to 900 Jews from the Qurayza tribe because he wasn't the type of murderer who took male prisoners.

The truth is, if Mo were alive today, he would not only approve of the Islamic State, aka ISIS and ISIL, he would have been the ringleader.

Useful idiots on the left like to think that there is a moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity. The truth is, while there has been violence in Christianity, there is nothing in the preaching of Christ to suggest that this is part of the religion. But with Islam, it's in the book. Islam was born from war and it is prescribed as a means of spreading itself throughout the world in a caliphate where the only god is Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.

Even the cry "Allahu akbar" is misunderstood by useful idiots. It doesn't mean 'God is great,' it means 'Allah is greater.'

And if you believe that, you're part of the problem.

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