To judge from many of the comments on this site, a substantial number of readers have difficulty understanding the sophisticated modes of thinking of the New York progressive. Looking at New York’s official progressive orthodoxy in action, these readers often see illogic and inconsistencies that seem to make no sense at all. And yet, despite the apparent internal contradictions, the New York progressives themselves generally achieve near or even complete unanimity as to many of the important policies that they seek to implement. How does this work?
We need to take a deeper look. So I thought for today it would be useful to examine some recent policies touted by the progressive crowd, to see what insights we can glean about exactly how they think about the world.
As a starting example, there is the proposal of our boy Mayor Zohran Mamdani to solve the problem of “affordability” of groceries by opening five large City-owned stores to sell groceries more cheaply. I wrote about this proposal in my post of September 2, titled “Here’s An Idea To Get 30% Cheaper Groceries In New York Without Taxpayer Subsidies: Allow Walmart!” The post reported on a big City announcement on July 28 of a plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to open the new stores, with the announcement specifically claiming that a “core basket of everyday groceries” would be “30 percent cheaper” at the City-owned stores. And yet, the post reported, the same progressive crowd had been fighting — successfully! — for decades to keep Walmart out of New York City. And meanwhile a big Consumer Reports study from February 2026 had found grocery prices at Walmart to average about 30% less than prices at some other large chains with big market shares in the City.
Are the opposition to Walmart and the simultaneous support for subsidized City-owned stores just completely inconsistent? Or is there a deeper logic that we are missing?
Consider now the next pair of seemingly inconsistent policies. On the one hand, there is a major push in New York State to reduce the use of energy from the burning of fossil fuels, and instead to force the use of electricity for these purposes. And, by a “push” toward electrification, I mean a series of statutory and regulatory provisions to make electrification mandatory in various big sectors, and thus drive up the demand for electricity by some very large amount.
By far the two largest electrification mandates come from: (1) a regulation mandating that large and increasing percentages of vehicles sold in New York become fully electric, and (2) a New York City statute, known as Local Law 97, mandating electric heat for all large buildings beginning in 2030. The electric vehicle mandate is found in the so-called “Advanced Clean Cars II” rule, which is 6 N.Y.C.R.R. Part 218. It mandates that 35% of all automobile sales in 2026 be EVS, with the percentages increasing each year until reaching 100% in 2035.
By the way, EV sales in New York State are nowhere near the 35% mandated for this year. Here we are in October, and sales of EVs are running around 8-10% of the market. But don’t worry, the Department of Environmental Conservation has announced a two-year “enforcement pause” of the regulation, to give the automobile industry time to catch up. When that “enforcement pause” expires in 2028, the required percentage of sales that must be EVs will supposedly be 51%.
According to an analysis by Modo Energy of NYISO data, building and vehicle electrification are projected to add some 92 TWh of demand for electricity in New York by 2050. This would be in addition to current annual demand of about 140 TWh, or about a 66% increase over current demand.
But there is also another potential driver of increased electricity demand in New York, which NYISO and Modo Energy call “large loads.” Mainly, this would be new data centers. The Modo Energy analysis projects them to add some 10.8 TWh of annual demand to the State grid by 2030, after which building and vehicle “electrification become the dominant growth driver.” So the projected additional demand from these “large loads” is a small fraction of the projected additions from building and vehicle electrification.
And what is New York policy as to these large loads? Simple: Governor Hochul has just put a moratorium on building any more of them. Here is Governor Hochul’s July 14 release announcing the moratorium on what she calls “new hyperscale data centers.” The first reason given for the moratorium is to “protect ratepayers.” Protection of ratepayers is obviously necessary because the large increase in electricity demand from these “hyperscale data centers” is very likely to drive up the cost of electricity.
So building and vehicle electrification are mandatory, while new “hyperscale data centers” are forbidden, at least for now. But won’t the much large increase in demand from the building and vehicle electrification drive up the cost of electricity far more? Our Governor has so far not offered an answer to that question.
And then there is seeming inconsistency number three. Back on June 25, a City body called the Rent Guidelines Board, at the behest of Mayor Mamdani, imposed a one-year rent freeze on the entire stock of rent-regulated apartments in New York City, approximately 1 million units. That means that the landlord of any such unit where the lease is up in the next year must offer the tenant a renewal lease at no rent increase.
Now, just a couple of days ago on September 30, our Mayor announced that the City Housing Authority, known as NYCHA, had closed on a financing deal to renovate one of the City’s dozens of housing projects, known as Nostrand Houses. The financing amounts to some $607 million, and will fully renovate the 1,148 units in the complex. Wait a minute, that’s almost $530,000 per unit! After which the residents will still be living in one of those hideous brick high-rise “projects.” Zillow reports that the median price of a single family house in the U.S. as of August 31 was $388,697. So why not buy each of the NYCHA tenants at Nostrand Houses a nice median-priced house in some reasonably-priced market, and tear down the Nostrand Houses and start over? Because that’s not how we do it in New York.
The City press release does not disclose the interest rate to be paid on the $607 million financing. But assuming they could get the money at 5%, and that there are no cost overruns, and that the tenants paid the cost of the financing, this financing would add some $2203 per month to the rent for each tenant. Current average monthly rents for NYCHA are about $600.
I’ll suggest a few principles of progressive thought that can reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable circumstances:
– The world is divided into the oppressors on one side, and the oppressed and their champions on the other. Whatever oppressors do is bad, and whatever the oppressed and their champions do is virtuous. Walmart is obviously an oppressor. Mamdani is a champion of the oppressed. Data center developers and utilities are oppressors. Promoters of “climate” legislation and green energy are champions of the oppressed. Private landlords are oppressors. NYCHA is a champion of the oppressed. Are you starting to see how this works?
– And then of course there is the principle that taxpayer funds are infinite and can be spent freely without any need to pay attention to costs or tradeoffs.
Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian
