New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is a leftist. His words and actions have proved this repeatedly. Yet during an interview with New York Magazine published this week, he said some things that would make Bernie Sanders wince.
When interviewer Chris Smith asks about inequality, an issue de Blasio ran on, he goes full socialism:
In 2013, you ran on reducing income inequality. Where has it been hardest to make progress? Wages, housing, schools?What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be.I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.
He then goes on to describe the utopia New York City would be if he had the power he really wants:
Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see, and I think what we have, in this city at least, are people who would love to have the New Deal back, on one level. They’d love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.
While commenting on this, Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review put it in historical perspective:
Earlier in life, De Blasio was a left-wing activist and an ardent supporter of the radical socialist government in Nicaragua — the Sandinista National Liberation Front — which at the time was strongly opposed by President Ronald Reagan and his administration.Today, De Blasio is well known for his intensely progressive approach to managing New York City’s government. This interview reveals that perhaps his past desire for openly socialist policies still lingers.
Another aspect of the interview jumped off the page for Michael Gartland and Danika Fears of the New York Post. Mayor de Blasio is very fond of the job he’s doing:
Bitter de Blasio thinks there should be a parade in his honorMayor Bill de Blasio claims he’s running the city so well, “you’d assume they’d be having parades out in the streets” — and insisted he’d be more popular if it weren’t for “the time in history.”“When I think about how crime’s gone down for four years, graduation rates up, test scores are up, more jobs than ever in our history — I think, ‘Wow, just that quick profile, any candidate anywhere would want it,’ ” he boasted to New York magazine.“You’d assume they’d be having parades out in the streets. But that’s not the time in history we’re living in,” he added.
Will the Mayor surrender all of his private property in the near future? Certainly, he’ll lead by example.
Right?
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