Let it never be said that Zohran Mamdani loves New York.
He doesn’t even like it.
The latest evidence is the mayor’s brutal firing of the entire advisory board of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.
The members’ sins were to be a collection of do-gooders and philanthropists who devoted time and money to boosting and improving Gotham.
Silly them.
If they wanted the mayor’s love and support, they should have been loony socialists who aim to burn down the city rather than build it up.
Or maybe the board should have set up homeless encampments in Midtown, in which case the members would get City Hall’s love and sympathy.
Instead, the board members, who are successful in their fields and generously shared their time and fortunes were sent packing in an icy notice.
“I commend you for your dedication and the benefit you have brought to our City as you conclude your tenure on the Mayor’s Fund Board of Advisors,” Mamdani’s letter said.
Donated their time
Board members served without compensation and used their connections to business and cultural institutions.
In addition to making and soliciting contributions, the board, working with paid staff professionals, helped to steer private money to government programs and private initiatives.
As such, the fund effectively acted as the city’s not-for-profit arm.
In recent years it worked with nearly 50 city agencies, including those focused on needy children and housing for poor families.
It also helped fund private ventures in those and other critical areas.
The board members who got their walking papers included Richard Born of BD Hotels; Jeffrey Gural, chairman of GFP Real Estate; Alex Katz, senior managing director at Blackstone Inc.; Edward Skyler, Citigroup Inc. head of enterprise services and and a former deputy mayor under Michael Bloomberg; and James Whelan, head of the Real Estate Board of New York.
The fund has raised millions annually from the business leaders and corporations Mamdani loves to hate.
His war on wealth is as foolish as it is frightening.
He has effectively declared that successful people and companies are the enemies of his leftist utopia.
All he wants from them is their money so he can fund his ever-
expanding list of free-this and free-that.
His tax-the-rich scheme borders on a sick obsession, and includes his pied-à-terre tax on second homes worth $5 million or more, which Gov. Hochul foolishly shepherded through the Legislature.
The tax reflects the mayor’s penchant for class warfare, with an amateurish rollout that is sloppy and shameless.
Similarly, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the ousted board members ran afoul of City Hall largely for reasons of race and class.
As top Mamdani aide Dora Pekec said in a sketchy defense, “In January, our city entered a new era — one that demands our city government reflect our communities.
“The building of a new Mayor’s Fund, built on the ethos of putting those directly impacted in the rooms where decisions are made, is a continuation of that work.”
Oh, please, spare us the warmth-of-collectivism crap about “reflecting our communities.”
Leftist gibberish
She also threw in gibberish about how “reimagining how philanthropy can augment, but not replace, public dollars and public goods,” and said a new board would be named “later this year.”
It is the new left’s conceit that society is eager for them to destroy or reinvent every institution and custom that have made America the envy of the world.
So far, the reds are taking the attitude that to improve the city, they’ll have to destroy it first.
In the case at hand, all the mayor is promising is a new board “later this year.”
In plain English, the nonprofit fund is on the slow track to nowhere and its critical work will be sidelined for at least this year.
The arrogance and ignorance are breathtaking.
The claim that a cadre of anti-Americans can “reimagine philanthropy” by putting in charge the people who need the kind of help the organization has been providing is straight out of all-night college BS sessions.
If that’s their big idea, why not have the inmates run the prisons, patients run the hospitals and children run the schools?
Oops, I didn’t mean to give them any dumb ideas.
They have enough of their own.
The move against the fund is the latest in Mamdani’s quest to fashion a government that would make his comrades proud, including the antisemites who have found a home in his movement.
Recall that last month, when he announced an 18-person committee to advise him on judicial nominations, the mayor boasted the panel reflected the city it served.
Except, of course, Jews, because none made the cut.
There are about 1 million Jews in the five boroughs and many are prominent in top legal circles.
A group of Jewish lawyers called the Brandeis Association wrote to Mamdani in protest, with the letter also signed by leaders of numerous Jewish legal groups in the city.
“Not a single Jewish attorney, former judge, or legal professional was appointed to a committee your administration described as one that would be ‘truly reflective of New York City,’ ” they wrote, The New York Times reported.
It also said Matthew Kluger, head of the Jewish Bar Association in The Bronx, wrote that, “To have no Jews on the committee that’s selecting New York City judges is pretty remarkable,” adding Mamdani isn’t interested “in hearing from the voices of Jewish lawyers and judges, in terms of picking judges. It’s pretty clear.”
Obsession with Bibi
The one Jew Mamdani is obsessed with is Benjamin Netanyahu.
He made that obvious again last month in a video where he called the Israeli prime minister “a war criminal” and “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.”
The ostensible purpose was to announce that he lacked the authority to carry out his promise to have the NYPD arrest Netanyahu if the PM comes to New York.
The lack of authority had been obvious, but the virulent video was an attempt to placate the Jew haters among his followers.
Mamdani’s scorn for New York’s history has led at least 66,000 people to sign a change.org petition urging to him stay away from next month’s 25th anniversary of the horrors of 9/11.
The signers include many families who lost loved ones that day.
Some say his attendance would amount to desecration, but the mayor insists he will attend.
Just 9 years old at the time of the attack, he has said “we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, all of us who call this country home.”
