Free Republic

Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants to hike property taxes for “richer and whiter neighborhoods” in an eyebrow-raising proposal The soak-the-rich proposal is buried in Mamdani’s campaign platform that calls to fix the city’s notoriously skewed property tax system, in which ritzy brownstones are hit at lower rates than homes and rentals in lower-income neighborhoods. “Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” the proposal reads. Democrats and many Republicans have long pushed to fix the out-of-whack system that ends up hitting poorer, often largely...

David Carr, a writer who wriggled away from the demon of drug addiction to become an unlikely name-brand media columnist at The New York Times, and the star of a documentary about the newspaper, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 58. Mr. Carr collapsed in the Times newsroom, where he was found shortly before 9 p.m. He was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Earlier in the evening, he moderated a panel discussion about the film “Citizenfour” with its principal subject, Edward J. Snowden; the film’s director, Laura Poitras; and Glenn Greenwald, a journalist.

It’s now clear why the primary defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, came so completely out of the blue last week: Beltway blindness that put a focus on fund-raising, power-brokering and partisan back-and-forth created a reality distortion field that obscured the will of the people. But that affliction was not Mr. Cantor’s alone; it is shared by the political press. Reporters and commentators might want to pause and wipe the egg off their faces before they go on camera to cluck-cluck about how Mr. Cantor, Republican of Virginia, missed signs of the insurgency that took him out. There...

NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported Tuesday that the Dallas Cowboys worked out David Carr, Tyler Thigpen, John Skelton and Caleb Hanie, only to send all four of the free-agent quarterbacks home without a contract. Now we know why.

Deep Thoughts by Thomas Friedman But don’t worry, the term “admits” is a bit strong. It’s more like the weatherman who predicted there wouldn’t be a flood for a month straight clinging to an antenna on the roof of his house and trying to find reasons why he was right all along even while the sharks are circling his chimney. The standard fallback position for Tahrir’s international cheerleaders is to argue that we were expecting positive results too quickly. The term “Arab Spring” has to be retired. There is nothing springlike going on,” Friedman says. “It’s best we now speak...

HONOLULU -- In a move that could augur the selection of Southern California tailback Reggie Bush as the first overall pick in the 2006 draft, league sources here for the Pro Bowl confirmed late Thursday that the Houston Texans have exercised a "buy back" clause in quarterback David Carr's contract, paying him an $8 million bonus to secure his services for three more seasons. The Texans, who announced the extension Friday in a news release, did not provide details, but called a 2 p.m. news conference to discuss the deal. Retaining the four-year veteran quarterback, who would have become eligible...

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, the reporter/producer team behind the discredited Bush National Guard hit job, won a prestigious Peabody Award last Thursday for their Abu Ghraib story which aired earlier last year on 60 Minutes II. The University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication issues the awards every year and Horace Newcomb, director of the Peabody Awards, insisted to the New York Times: "It was one of the most important stories of the year and was one of the crucial components of the ongoing conflict in Iraq." Mapes, who was fired by CBS over the Bush...

SOMERSET, KY - Pulaski County broadcaster and Republican State Senate candidate David Carr said today there are clear differences between him and his opponent. He said a close examination of his opponent's voting record reveals these differences. In particular, David Carr points two votes in the 2000 session of the General Assembly. These votes to increase his opponent's Senate pensions are a clear need for a change in the State Senate says Carr. "Both bills would have financed the huge pension increase on the backs of Kentucky taxpayers, while many projects and programs went unfunded. I don't think votes like...

SOMERSET, KY – Pulaski County businessman David Carr today said his first act as State Senator would be to introduce legislation to end the penalty against active duty military personnel on the premium rates they pay to reinsure their vehicles. “I want to defend the soldiers who defend our freedom and this is one way of looking out for them while they’re protecting us in the War on Terror,” said David Carr. Carr said his campaign had had discussions with local insurance agents that say America’s fighting men and women are being penalized. His campaign has been told that they...