| >(do you know what NYC was like in the 90's? It's not some distant history) I do. And today is light years better than it was in the 90s. In fact, there were crack dealers on my corner in the 90s. They're not there any more. Or on 95th street and Amsterdam. And there aren't any hookers on 90th street and Broadway or 58th and Sixth like there were in the 80s. And I didn't know Verdi Park was called "Verdi Park" back then either. I just thought they called it "needle park" because it was kind of shaped like a needle. Silly me. Or the side streets between 38th and 42nd streets from 10th Avenue to the West Side Highway literally covered in hundreds/thousands of used condoms every morning And the 80s were much, much worse than the 90s. And don't even get me started on the 1970s, when there were street gangs every few blocks. Oh, and back then (not much change AFAICT), the cops were just the biggest and best-armed gang. Oh, I'm sorry haven't you lived in NYC for nearly 60 years too? Soft on crime because Mamdani wants to send non-cops to help people having mental episodes? Soft on crime because he wants to enforce the law and close Rikers? Free buses? Really? that's not exactly going to break the bank. And even so, the MTA needs to approve that -- and the MTA is controlled by the Governor, not the Mayor. Five grocery stores in areas which aren't served by private ones? How exactly is that going to threaten[0] (perhaps USD$10 million to acquire space and set them all up, then presumably it can cover its costs from, you know, selling groceries -- or even USD$2.5 million in subsidies) the economic viability of NYC which has a budget of USD$116 Billion[1]? Crime is down at levels not seen since the early 1960s (before I was born -- that's relevant because I've lived in, with the exception of a year here, six months, three months elsewhere, etc. in NYC my whole life) and crime is at its lowest in all that time.
Free buses are a few tens of millions and a few grocery stores are chump change[2] in NYC. >If you don't think any of those policies are contentious, you are living in a bubble and greatly disconnected from huge portions of the population. I take issue with that characterization. How long have you lived in NYC? [0] https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/cost-to-open-a-sup... [1] https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/06/30/nyc-council-passes-11... [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chump%20change Edit: Fixed prose/punctuation. |