Free Republic

New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s views have sparked fears that there will be an exodus of companies and capital from the city. But two of the city’s top commercial real estate executives say it’s simply not true, based on leasing activity and new building investments being made, with no pullback in plans ever since it became clear Mamdani would win, and through the democratic socialist’s official election. “New York City is back,” said Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR, at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference in New York on Thursday. “The people who work here, live here, they feel the energy, they...

Last Wednesday, Nov. 5th I closed on my new home in Southeast Tennessee.Last Friday, Nov. 7th movers arrived at my now former home in Orland Park, IL and loaded up the moving truck. I was so anxious to get out of HELLINOIS, I'd already boxed up everything that wasn't furniture into moving boxes and made the job as easy as possible for the movers. Loading up the 26' moving truck took about three hours and the movers were darn' impressed at how easy it was for them.Saturday mid-day, the moving truck arrived at my new home in Southeast Tennessee (Loudon...

A new analysis finds that the states of New York and New Jersey have lost billions of dollars from their tax base amid an exodus of residents in recent years. Unleash Prosperity released a report on Tuesday that found New York lost $517.5 billion in resident incomes from 2013 to 2022, while New Jersey lost $170.1 billion in that period, according to data from the Census Bureau and IRS. The report covers cumulative gains and losses in each state's resident income, as a mover takes their income to another state for subsequent years – not just the first year after...

The asian-fusion restaurant brand Wagamama USA is relocating its corporate headquarters from New York to Tampa. In December, the company will move to The Towers at Westshore, located at 1408 N. Westshore Blvd., according to a Wednesday media release. There will be between 15 and 20 employees based there. “Relocating to Tampa positions us for long-term growth,” CEO of Wagamama USA, Stephen Judge said in a statement. “It allows us to continue building a world-class team and strengthen the foundations required for disciplined expansion.” Wagamama USA currently operates seven locations across the U.S., including one at Tampa’s Water Street, which...

Nothing says 'socialism' like people fleeing from it.This is as true in New York, Illinois, and California as it was in the U.S.S.R., Venezuela, and Cuba.But the prospect of young and dogmatic socialist Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor of New York City has taken the phenomenon to a new level.Mamdani's lead in the polls has narrowed, but he still leads by six points. The majority of New Yorkers have split their votes between disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and peripatic safety advocate Curtis Sliwa, divving up more than 50% of the vote it would otherwise be if the two united.According to...

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of a massive 3,000-year-old fortress along an ancient route many believe was traveled during the biblical Exodus.The stronghold, recently unearthed in North Sinai, lies directly on the fabled Horus Military Road, the same route the Book of Exodus describes as the shorter path the Israelites avoided when Moses led them out of Egypt.Experts said the discovery provides tangible evidence that the road, long thought to be a key setting in the Exodus narrative, truly existed and was heavily fortified during the period traditionally associated with the Israelites' escape. The site's age, scale, and...

Various blue states are facing towering budget deficits as federal pandemic payments end and expenditures rise. The result is a widening gap between the two parties on tax policies as Democratic leaders seek to avoid massive budget cuts in favor of tax increases. Two of the most economically moronic measures can be found in California and Illinois where leaders could be pushing high-tax residents out of their respective states.In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking a billionaire tax that would target roughly 180 individuals who are expected to remain in the state, like some voluntary canned hunt. In Chicago, Mayor...

All this talk about redrawing congressional districts overlooks the big picture. In other words, the census will end up doing in 2030 what some GOP state legislatures are trying to do before 2026. This is from Tom Rogers:Much has been written about the various attempts to create more Republican House districts through extreme gerrymandering. This column recently discussed a pending Supreme Court case that could strike down the Voting Rights Act’s remedy of creating majority-minority districts and result in the creation of even more Republican House seats.However, none of these actions affect presidential elections, which are decided in the Electoral...

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That applies not only to Newtonian physics but also to markets, even in things like housing. Doral, Florida, is a suburb of Miami, peopled heavily with Venezuelan immigrants. Some of them are citizens, some are in the country legally, and some are not in the country legally. According to a piece in Monday's Wall Street Journal, some of these people are leaving Doral, in no small part due to President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, resulting in a spike in Doral's rental housing vacancy rate. That's a good thing. Here's...

An ancient Egyptian manuscript may prove the biblical 10 plagues described in the Book of Exodus. Known as the Ipuwer Papyrus, the document takes the form of a poetic lament attributed to a scribe named Ipuwer. It recounts widespread catastrophes and societal upheaval in ancient Egypt, describing famine, mass death and environmental disasters.... The text also echoes the biblical plagues' attacks on Egypt's gods, with the river of blood, frogs, and darkness recalling Hapi, Heqet, and Ra. It references slavery and wealth, noting precious metals and stones fastened on female slaves, reflecting the Israelites' bondage ....

This is the first in a two-part series of the Great Dispersion of Americans across the country.For much of the past century, in both the United States and elsewhere, the inexorable trend has been for people to move from rural areas and towns to ever larger cities, particularly those with vibrant downtown cores such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and dozens of other iconic American cities. Most visions of the future still view urban cores as the uncontested centers of production, consumption, and culture, with rural areas, small cities, and suburbs relegated to the backwaters of modernity.A RealClearInvestigations...

"Democracy," H.L. Mencken once wrote, "is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." Mencken probably would feel right at home among Californians in this age. Or, perhaps more accurately, among the Californians who haven't left yet.According to a new poll from Politico and its partners, California voters want graft and fraud on a massive scale to continue. And lucky for them, they've elected a governor who can deliver! For example, slightly more than six in ten Californians want Gavin Newsom to keep funding the high-speed rail project that hasn't...

The UK closed a tax loophole. Guess what. NYC can expect the same.Extreme Wealthy Flee the UKThe Wall Street Journal reports The U.K. Closed a Tax Loophole for the Global Rich. Now They’re Fleeing.The U.K. is trying to tax the superrich. It’s off to a bumpy start.“I’m on my way out,” said Bassim Haidar, a Nigerian-born Lebanese businessman who moved here in 2010. “There comes a time when you don’t feel welcome anymore, and it’s time to just start packing and leaving.”Haidar is one of the estimated 74,000 who used a centuries-old tax loophole, abolished in April, that catered to...

Hey New Yorkers. I heard you're probably going to get an outright communist as your mayor. Zohran Mamdani sounds like a real peach, and the fact that he won the Democrat Primary and is well on his way to the mayor's office has made many of you fire up your Zillow account and start looking for homes out of state. Read: New York Real Estate Broker Flooded With Calls From Wealthy Residents Looking to FleeI don't blame you, but let me offer you some advice. You're probably going to be tempted to come to Texas because so many companies have...

As the vote totals rolled in on Tuesday, it quickly became clear that a major upset was brewing. Disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo had been favored to win the Democratic Party primary for Mayor of New York City. Yet, the numbers kept stacking up for a left-wing Muslim socialist who wants to "queer the police" while also defunding them, and sometime before midnight, it was no longer a hypothetical. Zohran Mamdani had emerged victorious, and with that, New York City's fate appeared to be sealed. While there's still an outside chance that the scandal-plagued current mayor, Eric Adams,...

On Wednesday morning, while talking about New York's mayoral primary with the host on a live radio spot, I heard myself saying something alarming. Only days ago, I would have bet serious money that those words would never be uttered by me. The fateful words were these: "It would have been better if Cuomo had won." I know, right? The guy who won, full-bore Communist Zohran Mamdani, is now making all kinds of promises, and while we all know that his mouth is writing checks his butt can't cash on many of these, he can do enough to make things...

Whether they’re doing it on purpose or out of just plain ineptitude, Illinois’ political leaders have been slowly destroying this state. More recently, they’ve moved into overdrive.What we’re talking about is all the wealth the state is giving up by pushing out wealthier taxpayers and inviting less wealthy people in. Not to mention the flood of illegal immigrants that have been “welcomed” to Illinois, many fully dependent on the state.Not only is Illinois a net loser of people to other states, but the people leaving Illinois make far more than the people coming into Illinois, making things even worse.The taxpayers...

Since the beginning of the Oregon legislative session in January, my wife and I have been having ongoing discussions about whether we should leave Oregon for another state, where the leftists are not in control, or whether we should stay and fight to stop the landslide of insanity that grips Oregon right now and will cross borders to contaminate other red states. We have many friends here, established doctors and dentists, and a great one-story house between the mountains to the East and the Pacific Ocean to the west. We attend a strong church that teaches out of the Bible....

Exodus is a historical novel by Leon Uris regarding the founding of the State of Israel beginning in post-World War II. The movie EXODUS is a retelling of of the 1947 IMMIGRATION SHIP EXODUS and the main characters relationship to the birth of the new Jewish state. 1st Part: The movie begins on a ship filled with Jewish immigrants bound for Israel then were off-loaded in Cyprus. An Intelligence officer succeeds in getting them back on board their ship only then to have the harbor blocked by the British forces preventing them from entering Palestine. 2nd Part: The second part...

Despite an apparent lack of Arab partner states willing to accept Gaza residents voluntarily leaving the Strip, the number of civilians departing Gaza has risen over the last month. Since the beginning of March, 1,000 residents have left the Gaza Strip, with another 600 expected to leave this week, according to Hebrew media reports. During the 2023-2024 war period, around 35,000 Gaza residents fled the Strip for other countries, often paying bribes to be smuggled out through Egypt. Some Gaza residents were also permitted to leave to receive medical treatment in other countries. The announcement of an increase in the...