A Valley Viewpoint Narrative

There comes a moment when public policy stops being an abstraction.

It becomes the empty chair in your family.

For me, that moment came when my 17-year-old niece was murdered by someone who was in this country illegally.

She was a child. She had a future. She had people who loved her and expected to watch that future unfold.

Instead, my family was left with a loss that cannot be reversed, rehabilitated, or explained away. No policy paper softens it. No television debate makes it smaller. No statistic brings her back.

That is why I struggle when discussions of violent crime and illegal immigration are answered with phrases like “the vast, vast majority.”

I understand statistics. Public policy should be informed by data. Most migrants are not violent criminals, and acknowledging one horrific crime does not make an entire population guilty.

But moral responsibility cannot be outsourced to averages.

For the victim, there is no “vast majority.” There is only the one person who committed the crime and the one institutional failure that may have allowed it to happen.

One violent offender is not a rounding error.

One murdered child is not an acceptable cost of government dysfunction.

Here is where my story refuses to fit neatly into anyone’s political script.

I worked at Lincoln Hall, where I interacted directly with unaccompanied minors. As part of my job, I personally brought Jesuit priests onto campus to provide religious services.

I looked those young people in the eye.

Many were frightened. Many were displaced. Many carried trauma no child should have to carry. They were not “thugs.” They were children caught in chaos, searching for safety, stability, and some reason to believe their lives could still become something better.

I did not see an immigration status when I looked at them.

I saw children.

That experience taught me compassion. My niece’s murder taught me the cost of treating accountability as optional.

Both experiences are part of me.

Neither erases the other.

That is why I reject the false choice at the center of our immigration debate—the idea that we must either dehumanize migrants or remain silent about the people harmed when the system fails.

I will do neither.

Demanding immigration enforcement is not the same as condemning every immigrant. Recognizing the humanity of migrants does not require pretending every person who enters the country poses no risk.

A functioning government must be capable of recognizing both truths.

It must treat vulnerable children humanely.

It must provide legitimate due process.

It must adjudicate claims fairly.

It must enforce lawful decisions.

And it must remove people who pose a genuine danger to the public.

Those duties are not contradictory.

They are the job.

Yet too often, compassion is discussed as though it belongs exclusively to the person who entered the country unlawfully. The victim disappears. The grieving family becomes politically inconvenient. The preventable failure is buried beneath population-wide statistics and accusations that anyone asking questions must lack empathy.

But my niece had human dignity too.

Her life mattered too.

Her family deserves compassion too.

When people ask, “Where are the murderers and rapists?” as though the victims are imaginary figures invented for political effect, I have an answer.

Ask the families who buried their children.

Ask the parents who still pass empty bedrooms.

Ask the relatives who continue celebrating birthdays with someone permanently missing.

Not every case receives national attention. Not every grieving family appears on television. Media coverage is not the measure of whether a life mattered.

Some families simply carry the loss quietly while the rest of the country moves on to its next argument.

Yes, America’s immigration system is broken. It has been broken for decades.

But decades of failure are not an excuse.

They are an indictment.

A broken system cannot mean no enforcement. Due process cannot become permanent paralysis. Mercy cannot require the abandonment of accountability. Compassion cannot become a weapon used to silence victims.

My family is not asking for collective blame.

We are asking for institutional responsibility.

We are not asking that migrants be treated as less than human.

We are asking that victims not be treated as collateral damage.

We are not asking America to abandon compassion.

We are asking that compassion finally include the people left behind when the system fails.

Enforcement without humanity is not justice.

But compassion without accountability is not justice either.

A moral country must be capable of both.

My niece was seventeen years old.

She should still be here.

Any moral framework that makes room for everyone except the victim is not moral clarity.

It is avoidance.

And my family has paid too high a price to remain silent about it.

This wasn’t the first time I sat behind a microphone with Cuban Americans and asked them to talk about socialism.

Before my recent conversation on Hudson Valley Focus, I had welcomed Cuban Americans onto my show for an earlier discussion about something that, for them, isn’t an abstract political philosophy, a campaign slogan, or the subject of a spirited debate over cocktails.

It is part of their history.

And listening back to that first appearance, I’m struck by how relevant their words are today.

That first conversation wasn’t about scoring political points. I wanted to hear directly from people whose families understood what happens when the promises of socialism collide with the realities of government power.

They talked about Cuba.

They talked about what their families experienced.

They talked about the promises that accompanied the Cuban Revolution—and what happened after those promises gave way to a one-party communist state, political repression, restrictions on speech and private enterprise, and generations of people willing to leave behind their homes and possessions for the chance to live somewhere else.

There is something different about hearing history from someone who carries it in their family.

It’s one thing to read about Fidel Castro in a textbook.

It’s another to sit across from Cuban Americans and hear what Castro and the revolution meant around their kitchen tables.

And that is why I believe their first conversation with me is worth hearing again.

Especially now.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the Democratic Socialists of America are organizing, holding events and promoting an ideology they believe offers solutions to economic inequality, housing costs, healthcare and the growing frustration many Americans feel toward government and corporate institutions.

They have every right to make that case.

But those of us who are skeptical have every right to ask questions.

And perhaps the most important question is this:

What can history teach us?

Supporters of democratic socialism will correctly point out that what they advocate is not Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

That’s an important distinction, and serious political discussion requires acknowledging it.

But acknowledging that distinction shouldn’t end the conversation.

It should begin one.

Because the Cuban Americans who joined me weren’t warning about an American political organization. They were warning about something much larger: the danger of becoming so captivated by the promise of a political ideology that we stop asking where concentrations of government power can ultimately lead.

Listen to how socialism was originally presented to the Cuban people.

Listen to the language of equality.

Listen to the promises of justice.

Listen to the assurances that ordinary working people would finally have a government standing on their side.

Then listen to what happened next.

That doesn’t mean every government program is socialism.

It doesn’t mean every person calling themselves a democratic socialist secretly wants communism.

And it certainly doesn’t mean America is destined to become Cuba.

It means history deserves a voice in the conversation.

And Cuban Americans have earned the right to be among those voices.

That is what made their first appearance with me so compelling—and why I invited Cuban Americans back to continue the discussion.

Their perspective wasn’t theoretical.

It was inherited through parents and grandparents, through stories of what was lost, through families separated and lives rebuilt in a country that offered something Cuba eventually could not:

The freedom to disagree with the government.

So here’s my invitation to members of the Democratic Socialists of America, including those organizing here in the Hudson Valley:

Listen to that first broadcast.

Then listen to the latest one.

Don’t listen because I expect you to suddenly abandon everything you believe.

Listen because a political movement confident in its ideas shouldn’t be afraid of hearing from people whose history challenges them.

Maybe you’ll disagree.

Maybe you’ll say America is different.

Maybe you’ll insist democratic socialism bears little resemblance to Castro’s Cuba.

Fine.

Then let’s have that debate.

But don’t dismiss the Cuban experience simply because it makes the conversation uncomfortable.

Because before socialism became something Americans could discuss over “cocktails with comrades,” there were families who heard many of its most attractive promises before.

And some of those families eventually risked everything to escape what followed.

They told that story on my show once before.

It’s worth listening to again.

The Valley Viewpoint

Your towns. Your schools. Your politics.

Across Connecticut, serious questions are being raised about a judicial system that appears increasingly unable—or unwilling—to hold itself accountable. Felony cases can drag on for seventeen months, leaving defendants, victims, and families trapped in legal limbo. Nearly 2,000 complaints have reportedly been filed against judges, yet the disciplinary machinery meant to protect the public seems asleep at the bench.

Justice delayed is not merely an inconvenience. It can cost people their jobs, homes, reputations, and faith in the rule of law. Victims wait for closure. Defendants wait for their day in court. Families watch their lives stall while a system built to deliver answers produces only postponements.

Backlogs can be explained. Courts face staffing shortages, crowded dockets, and limited resources. But delay on this scale—combined with a complaint process that appears to produce little visible accountability—demands more than another administrative excuse.

So what are Connecticut residents looking at: institutional incompetence, bureaucratic indifference, or a system protecting its own?

Judicial independence is essential, but independence cannot mean immunity from scrutiny. Judges wield extraordinary power over freedom, families, and futures. That power must be matched by transparency, timely proceedings, and a disciplinary process the public can trust.

A courthouse should never become a maze with no exit. When complaints disappear into silence and cases linger without resolution, confidence in justice erodes one delayed hearing at a time.

This is not an attack on the courts. It is a demand that they live up to their purpose—because justice hidden behind closed doors, buried beneath backlogs, or postponed indefinitely is not justice at all.

Listen to my show, Hudson Valley This Morning, as we ask the hard questions and examine what happens when the system entrusted with delivering justice can no longer earn the public’s trust.

Listen here: https://clyp.it/rxuehzli

The Valley Viewpoint

There is something deeply unsettling about the latest chapter in the Luigi Mangione case.

Not because we don’t know who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Luigi Mangione has now admitted that he did.

In federal court, Mangione acknowledged shooting Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk in December 2024. There is no longer much mystery about the identity of the shooter. No whodunit. No competing theory about who pulled the trigger.

And yet, incredibly, Luigi Mangione may never be convicted of murder.

Readers of The Valley Viewpoint may remember that I have written before about the doctrine of dual sovereignty—the principle that allows state and federal governments, as separate sovereigns, to prosecute the same person for conduct arising from the same act without necessarily violating the federal Constitution’s prohibition against double jeopardy.

At the time, it may have sounded like one of those interesting but somewhat academic constitutional-law discussions.

The Mangione case demonstrates that it is anything but academic.

Normally, most of us understand double jeopardy pretty simply: the government doesn’t get to prosecute you, lose, and simply keep trying until it gets the result it wants.

Dual sovereignty complicates that.

The federal government and a state are separate sovereigns, each deriving its authority from a different source. Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, both may sometimes prosecute the same defendant for offenses arising from the same conduct.

As I discussed in that earlier Viewpoint, however, the fact that the Constitution permits successive federal and state prosecutions doesn’t necessarily mean every state must permit them.

And New York is particularly important here.

New York law provides protections against successive prosecutions that can be broader than those guaranteed by the federal Constitution.

That distinction—between what federal constitutional law allows and what New York law prohibits—may now determine whether Luigi Mangione is ever actually convicted of murder.

Mangione recently pleaded guilty in federal court to stalking offenses resulting in Brian Thompson’s death. Those are extraordinarily serious crimes, and Mangione still faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.

But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg still has a state murder prosecution pending.

Mangione’s lawyers are now arguing that because the federal prosecution has been resolved, New York’s protections against successive prosecutions prevent the state from proceeding with its murder case.

In other words, the very doctrine I previously wrote about has moved from the law books directly into one of the most closely watched criminal cases in America.

And there is an additional irony.

The federal government went big.

Federal prosecutors initially pursued charges carrying the possibility of the death penalty. Those charges were ultimately dismissed, and Mangione pleaded guilty to the remaining federal stalking offenses.

Now the state murder prosecution may have to deal with the consequences of what the federal government did first.

Think about that for a moment.

A man walks up behind another man on a New York City sidewalk and shoots him.

The victim dies.

The accused later stands in federal court and admits that he was the shooter.

Yet because of the complicated interaction between federal prosecution, New York law and dual sovereignty, our justice system could conceivably reach the end of this case without Luigi Mangione ever having the word murder attached to a conviction.

That doesn’t mean Mangione walks free.

It doesn’t mean he has been declared innocent.

And it certainly doesn’t make Brian Thompson any less dead.

It means something considerably more uncomfortable: sometimes the pursuit of the biggest possible prosecution can make the simplest form of justice harder to achieve.

There is another aspect of this case that has bothered me from almost the beginning.

Somewhere along the way, Luigi Mangione stopped being treated in certain corners of our culture simply as a man accused of shooting a husband and father in the back.

He became a symbol.

Then a celebrity.

Then, remarkably, something resembling a folk hero.

There were T-shirts. Memes. Fan accounts. Admirers outside courthouses. Online commentary about his appearance. A proceeding concerning the killing of a human being occasionally began to resemble entertainment.

Meanwhile, the victim slowly disappeared from the story.

Brian Thompson became “the insurance CEO.”

A title.

A corporation.

A representation of an industry many Americans dislike.

Luigi Mangione became a personality.

That’s a dangerous inversion.

You can despise the American healthcare system. You can believe insurance companies have treated people terribly. You can demand reform, accountability and fundamental changes to the way healthcare is delivered and paid for in this country.

None of those things gives anyone the right to become judge, jury and executioner on a Manhattan sidewalk.

A civilized society cannot decide that murder becomes morally negotiable depending upon how unpopular the victim’s profession happens to be.

And perhaps that is why the possibility of Mangione never being convicted of murder feels so strange.

The law is supposed to be precise. Sometimes maddeningly so. Constitutional protections exist for very good reasons, including when applying them produces outcomes we don’t particularly like.

If New York law ultimately prevents another prosecution, courts should follow the law rather than bend it because the defendant is unpopular.

But prosecutors should also ask themselves how we arrived here.

Was justice better served by multiple governments racing to build the biggest possible case?

Or would justice have been better served by doing something considerably less dramatic?

Prosecute the killing.

Prove the murder.

Obtain the conviction.

Remember the victim.

When I wrote previously about dual sovereignty, the doctrine raised an important constitutional question: How many times should government get to prosecute one person for essentially the same conduct?

The Mangione case presents the other side of that question.

What happens when two governments both want their shot at a defendant—and, in the process, one prosecution potentially jeopardizes the other?

That isn’t merely a law-school hypothetical anymore.

Brian Thompson walked down a Manhattan street one December morning.

Luigi Mangione has admitted that he shot him.

And somehow, after federal prosecutors, state prosecutors, dismissed charges, guilty pleas and competing sovereigns have all had their turn, the most complicated question remaining may be the one that once seemed the easiest:

Will anyone ever convict Luigi Mangione of murder?

The Valley Viewpoint

This morning on Hudson Valley Focus, I had the opportunity to sit down with two Cuban Americans and talk about a word that seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance in American politics:

Socialism.

And I have a suggestion for the Democratic Socialists of America, including those organizing right here in the Hudson Valley:

Listen to this conversation.

Not because you have to agree with it. Not because two people can settle a century-old political argument in a radio segment. But because before socialism becomes something fashionable enough for meetings, slogans, rallies—or even “cocktails with comrades”—perhaps we ought to hear from people whose families actually experienced life under a government that embraced it.

For many Americans, socialism is theoretical. It is debated in college classrooms, discussed on social media, and packaged as an answer to inequality, healthcare costs, housing, and corporate power.

For Cuban Americans, the discussion can be far more personal.

They know the promises.

They have also lived with—or inherited the stories of—what came afterward.

The Cuban Revolution promised equality, justice, and dignity for ordinary people. What followed was a one-party communist state, suppression of political opposition, restrictions on speech and private enterprise, imprisonment of dissidents, and generations of Cubans risking everything to leave the island.

That history deserves more than a shrug because someone insists, “That isn’t the kind of socialism we mean.”

Fair enough. Democratic socialists in America are not advocating Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that distinction.

But intellectual honesty also requires something from the other side: listen to people who have experienced socialism somewhere other than a seminar room.

Ask them what the promises sounded like in the beginning.

Ask them how quickly institutions can change.

Ask them what happens when government acquires enormous power in the name of protecting ordinary people.

Ask them why so many Cuban families remain deeply suspicious when they hear political movements casually romanticize socialism.

Most importantly, don’t dismiss their experiences because those experiences complicate the narrative.

There is something increasingly troubling about American political debate: we seem much more interested in defending our ideology than testing it.

We search for people who confirm what we already believe and avoid those who might make us uncomfortable.

That’s precisely backward.

If you believe socialism offers America a better future, you should be especially interested in hearing from people who have witnessed its failures elsewhere. Maybe you’ll disagree with them. Maybe you’ll argue that democratic socialism is fundamentally different. That’s a legitimate debate.

But first, listen.

Because history doesn’t always arrive waving a warning flag. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in beautiful language—fairness, equality, justice, solidarity—and promises that government can finally make everything right.

And sometimes the people best qualified to warn us are those who once heard those promises themselves.

So to my friends at the Democratic Socialists of America—and particularly those organizing here in the Hudson Valley—I extend a simple invitation:

Listen to these two Cuban Americans.

You don’t have to agree with them.

But if we’re going to have a serious conversation about socialism in America, surely the voices of people whose families actually lived under it deserve a seat at the table.

Maybe even before the next round of cocktails with comrades.

https://audioboom.com/posts/8939709-jesse-vasquez-jerry-machado-two-cuban-americans-on-what-socialism-really-is-featuring-ed-kowa

The Valley Viewpoint

Your towns. Your schools. Your politics.

A young friend of mine, long ago, once looked at me and asked a question that stopped me in my tracks:

“Will my mom still love me… even after she’s gone?”

I didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” I told her. “Absolutely. A mother’s love doesn’t end when her life does. It becomes part of you.”

You carry it in the way you think, the choices you make, and eventually in the way you love other people. You hear her voice when you need guidance. You feel her pride when you get something right. And when you inevitably get something wrong, somewhere inside you is the certainty that she would forgive you, probably long before you managed to forgive yourself.

She may no longer be there to say the words, but the love remains.

Always.

That conversation reminded me of something I’ve come to believe more strongly as I’ve gotten older: women are the stronger sex.

Men may like to think strength is measured by how much we can carry, how much we can endure without complaining, or how convincingly we can pretend that we have everything under control.

But women—and mothers especially—have taught me that real strength looks very different.

It is carrying a child before anyone else has even met them. It is enduring pain to bring life into the world and then spending a lifetime worrying about that life. It is getting up in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. It is putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own, often without recognition and certainly without applause.

It is knowing when to hold on and, perhaps even harder, knowing when to let go.

And I’ve learned something else about women along the way: a good woman has an extraordinary ability to make a man look better than he probably deserves.

She sees possibilities in him that he sometimes cannot see in himself. She steadies him without diminishing him, challenges him without trying to change who he is, and has a remarkable way of making him believe that becoming a better man was his idea all along.

Men may get the credit for standing tall, but more often than we care to admit, there is a strong woman somewhere nearby who helped straighten our shoulders.

And if we’re smart, we know it.

But I believe there is something a good man owes a woman in return.

There is a song in the heart of every woman that only the truest kind of love can reveal. And I believe part of a man’s job is to help her find that song—and then give her every reason to sing it.

Not by trying to define her or rescue her. Not by telling her who she should be. But by loving her well enough that she feels safe being completely herself. By listening to what she says and, perhaps more importantly, what she doesn’t. By reminding her of her beauty when she cannot see it, her strength when she doubts it, and her worth when the world has made her question it.

A good woman may make a man look better than he deserves. A good man should spend his life trying to make sure the woman beside him knows she deserves every bit of the love he has to give.

Mothers do much the same thing. They hold our hands when we are small and somehow continue holding our hearts when we are grown. They teach us, guide us, challenge us, forgive us and believe in us during those moments when we have stopped believing in ourselves.

Perhaps the greatest testament to their strength is this: even death cannot completely take them from us.

Their voices remain. Their lessons remain. Their mannerisms suddenly appear in us when we least expect them. Their love becomes woven so deeply into who we are that separating ourselves from it becomes impossible.

So yes, I believe women are the stronger sex.

Not because men are weak, but because I have watched women carry burdens—physical, emotional and spiritual—with a strength that too often goes unnoticed. I have watched women and mothers give away pieces of themselves, year after year, asking remarkably little in return. And I have watched good women make the men in their lives stronger, kinder and better—often while allowing those men to take far more credit for it than they deserve.

So to all the moms—and all the good women—out there: thank you.

For the late nights and early mornings. For the encouragement and the tough lessons. For worrying when you told us you weren’t worried. For loving us when we were lovable—and especially when we weren’t. And for occasionally making us men look considerably better than the raw material you were given.

Most of all, thank you for giving us something powerful enough to answer a young person’s heartbreaking question with absolute certainty:

Yes. Your mom will still love you after she’s gone.

Because a mother’s love was never meant to last only for her lifetime.

It was meant to last for yours.

The tax machine is always hungry.

This week, Jen Metzger unveiled a proposal for an income-based surcharge on higher earners in Ulster County — a plan that would target residents making over $200,000, or couples making over $400,000. County officials say the measure could generate between $10 million and $20 million annually. (spectrumlocalnews.com)

And there it is again: the same tired formula politicians across New York use every time government wants more money.

Find a group small enough to demonize.
Call them “the wealthy.”
Tell struggling residents this new tax will only hurt “someone else.”
Then expand government even further.

The problem is that in New York, “someone else” eventually becomes everyone else.

People are already drowning here. Property taxes. School taxes. Sales taxes. Utility bills. Gas prices. Insurance costs. Fees piled on top of fees. Young families can’t afford homes. Seniors are fleeing states they spent their entire lives helping build. Businesses are quietly looking for the exits.

And the answer from government is always the same:
More taxes.

Never restraint.
Never reform.
Never asking whether government itself has become too large, too expensive, and too addicted to taxpayer money.

The Hudson Valley used to be a place where working and middle-class families could build a life. Increasingly, it feels like a region being redesigned for political activists, government expansion, and wealthy transplants who can absorb endless tax increases while lifelong residents get crushed.

And let’s stop pretending these “targeted” taxes stay targeted.

That is the oldest lie in New York politics.

Once government creates a new revenue stream, it never voluntarily gives it up. The thresholds move. The taxes spread. The bureaucracy grows. The middle class absorbs the damage.

Residents should be asking a simple question:
If nearly half a billion dollars in county spending still isn’t enough, when exactly does government believe it has enough of our money?

Because the truth is this proposal says less about “fairness” than it does about the mindset now dominating New York government:

If government has a spending problem, taxpayers must have a funding problem.

And that mentality is driving people out of this state every single day.

Returning to my New York City office has reminded me of something I had almost forgotten:

Manhattan may be the greatest people-watching city in the world.

Unfortunately, nobody is watching anybody anymore.

They’re watching their phones.

Walking through Midtown these days is like participating in a giant human obstacle course populated by twenty- and thirty-somethings with their heads down, AirPods firmly implanted and absolutely no apparent awareness that several million other people also live here.

Yet somehow they don’t collide.

It’s remarkable.

They can text, scroll Instagram, listen to a podcast, order lunch, check their 401(k), swipe right on someone in Brooklyn and cross Sixth Avenue against the light without ever looking up.

Meanwhile, I’m still stopping at the corner trying to remember whether the little white man means “walk” or “you have six seconds to make peace with your Creator.”

And then there are the young women.

Apparently Carrie Bradshaw reproduced.

Everywhere.

Manhattan is filled with young women who appear to have graduated from the Carrie Bradshaw School of Urban Living.

Designer-looking handbag? Check.

Shoes engineered with absolutely no consideration for the human skeletal system? Check.

Coffee in one hand, iPhone in the other? Check.

Walking down the sidewalk with the confidence of someone who pays $4,800 a month for an apartment roughly the size of my first refrigerator?

Absolutely.

You expect Sarah Jessica Parker to suddenly appear from behind a scaffolding and announce:

The answer, Carrie, is me.

“And I couldn’t help but wonder…if everyone in Manhattan is staring at their phone, who’s looking at me?”

Because apparently I’m the only person left looking around.

The men aren’t much different.

They’ve got backpacks, AirPods and sneakers that cost more than my first car. They’re moving at approximately 11 miles per hour while conducting conference calls with people in Singapore.

Occasionally one will walk directly toward me without looking up.

I used to move.

I’ve stopped.

This has become my contribution to science.

I want to know exactly how close a 27-year-old investment banker can get to a 68-year-old man before his peripheral vision activates.

So far: about fourteen inches.

And then there’s the earbud phenomenon.

Everyone has them.

We’ve somehow reached the point where being alone with your own thoughts for three consecutive city blocks is apparently considered a medical emergency.

There must always be something playing.

Music.

Podcasts.

Audiobooks.

Conference calls.

True crime.

Meditation apps telling people to be present while they walk through Manhattan completely unaware of their surroundings.

“Breathe deeply. Notice the world around you.”

Sir, there’s a bus coming.

But beneath all the humor, there’s something fascinating about returning to the city and seeing it through older eyes.

When I was younger, Manhattan felt like a place you had to conquer.

You hurried.

You competed.

You wanted to get somewhere.

Now I find myself wanting to slow down and watch it.

Because the greatest show in New York has never been on Broadway.

It’s the sidewalks.

The characters.

The cab drivers.

The doormen.

The tourists standing motionless in the middle of the sidewalk while studying Google Maps, thereby violating one of New York’s most serious criminal statutes.

The guy selling umbrellas thirty seconds after the first raindrop falls.

The woman walking a dog wearing a sweater that probably costs more than mine.

And, of course, the endless parade of Carrie Bradshaws heading somewhere fabulous.

So here’s my modest suggestion to the younger generation.

Every once in a while, take out the AirPods.

Put the phone away.

Look up.

Make eye contact.

Say hello.

Notice the buildings.

Listen to the horns.

Watch the people.

Experience New York without a screen between you and it.

You may be surprised by what you discover.

And if you’re one of those young Carrie Bradshaws walking down Fifth Avenue in six-inch heels while simultaneously texting, drinking coffee and carrying a $3,000 handbag, don’t worry about me.

I’ll get out of your way.

I’m 68.

My reflexes aren’t what they used to be.

But unlike you…

I’m actually looking where I’m going.

Ed in the City
Observations from a guy who remembers when walking down the street required looking at the street.

There is an irony in Zohran Mamdani’s story that is almost impossible to ignore.

It begins not in New York City, but thousands of miles away in Uganda.

In 1972, dictator Idi Amin ordered tens of thousands of Asians to leave the country. They were given roughly 90 days to pack what they could carry and go. Businesses were seized. Homes were lost. Families that had spent generations building lives in Uganda suddenly discovered that the government had decided they were no longer welcome.

Among those forced out was the family of Mahmood Mamdani — Zohran Mamdani’s father.

Think about that for a moment.

A government looked at a group of people, decided they were too prosperous, too privileged and too closely associated with an unjust economic system, and turned resentment into public policy.

It didn’t begin with confiscation.

It began with a story.

There were people who had too much.

There were people who had too little.

And government, under Amin, would supposedly correct the injustice.

The Asian community became a convenient villain. Their businesses, property and relative economic success were portrayed not simply as individual achievement, but as evidence of exploitation.

Once we stop seeing people as individuals and start seeing them primarily as members of competing classes, races and economic groups, some very ugly things can suddenly be described as “justice.”

That is the lesson from Uganda worth remembering.

And it is why I find Zohran Mamdani’s political rise so fascinating.

No, Mamdani is not Idi Amin. Saying so would be historically absurd and intellectually lazy. Mamdani is an elected democratic socialist operating within the American political system. Amin was a murderous dictator responsible for repression, expulsion and mass killing.

But history doesn’t have to repeat itself exactly to teach us something.

Sometimes it rhymes.

Today, we once again hear a political vocabulary increasingly built around dividing people into categories.

Landlords and tenants.

Owners and workers.

The wealthy and everyone else.

The privileged and the oppressed.

Those who supposedly have too much and those government believes deserve more.

The rhetoric is softer. The institutions are democratic. The circumstances are completely different.

But the temptation behind it is ancient: find somebody to blame for somebody else’s hardship.

Mamdani’s agenda promises government intervention on a remarkable scale — rent freezes, government-run grocery stores, free buses, expanded social programs and substantially higher taxes on corporations and wealthy New Yorkers.

Each proposal can and should be debated on its own merits.

But there is a larger philosophical question underneath all of them:

When did success become something government should apologize for?

There is nothing inherently immoral about wealth. There is nothing inherently virtuous about poverty. A landlord isn’t automatically a villain because he owns an apartment building, any more than a tenant is automatically irresponsible because she struggles to pay the rent.

Human beings are more complicated than political categories.

That used to be obvious.

Increasingly, it isn’t.

And perhaps that is the strangest part of the Mamdani story.

His own family’s history contains a powerful warning about what can happen when political leaders convince people that their economic problems are primarily the fault of another group.

Uganda’s Asian population didn’t create all of Uganda’s problems.

But Amin told people they did.

Their property was redistributed.

Their businesses were taken.

The supposed exploiters were expelled.

And Uganda didn’t become prosperous.

Its economy collapsed.

Because redistribution can divide wealth.

It cannot magically create it.

Government can confiscate a grocery store. It cannot confiscate the knowledge, discipline, risk-taking and entrepreneurship required to operate one successfully.

Government can freeze a rent. It cannot order someone to build another apartment building.

Government can raise taxes on people it believes have “too much.” It cannot order those people to remain in New York.

That last point should concern every New Yorker.

We are already living in one of the highest-taxed states in America. Businesses can move. Capital can move. Families can move.

And eventually they do.

The tragedy is that the people who suffer most from bad economic policy are rarely the wealthy people politicians promise to punish.

The wealthy have options.

Working families often don’t.

There is another lesson from Uganda that deserves remembering.

When politicians tell you society would be better if only somebody else had less, be careful.

When they tell you prosperity is suspicious, be careful.

When they tell you your neighbor’s success explains your hardship, be very careful.

Because free societies depend upon something much more difficult than resentment.

They depend upon opportunity.

The goal shouldn’t be to make successful people poorer.

It should be to make it possible for more people to become successful.

Build more housing.

Encourage businesses to open.

Make it easier to hire people.

Create better schools.

Make government smaller, smarter and more accountable.

Give people ladders to climb instead of arguing about who should be pulled down a rung.

Zohran Mamdani’s family history should make him uniquely sensitive to that distinction.

His family experienced what happens when government turns economic grievance into a political identity and decides that one group must surrender something so another group can prosper.

That doesn’t mean New York is becoming Uganda.

It means Uganda left us a warning.

History usually does.

The question is whether we’re willing to listen before we convince ourselves that this time the same old ideas will somehow produce a different result.

The Valley Viewpoint

Your towns. Your schools. Your politics.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about the Luigi Mangione case, and one question keeps coming up: How can someone potentially face both state and federal prosecution arising out of the same alleged killing? Doesn’t the Constitution prohibit double jeopardy?

It sounds like it should. But under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, the answer is more complicated.

The key is something called the dual sovereignty doctrine.

The Fifth Amendment says that no person shall “be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” Most of us understand that as the government doesn’t get to prosecute you over and over again for the same crime.

And generally, that’s right.

But the Supreme Court has long held that the federal government and the individual states are separate sovereigns. Each derives its authority from a different source and each has its own laws to enforce.

That distinction matters enormously in the Mangione case.

Under the dual sovereignty doctrine, when the same alleged conduct violates both state and federal law, the Constitution does not necessarily treat those prosecutions as being for the same “offence.” Instead, the law views them as separate offenses against two separate sovereigns.

In other words, New York can prosecute an alleged violation of New York law, while the federal government can separately prosecute an alleged violation of federal law arising from the same underlying conduct.

That isn’t considered unconstitutional double jeopardy.

The Supreme Court reaffirmed this principle as recently as 2019 in Gamble v. United States. In that case, the Court rejected an invitation to overturn the dual sovereignty doctrine and reaffirmed the principle that an “offence” is defined by the law that creates it. Because state and federal governments enact their laws independently, violations of those laws can constitute separate offenses for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause.

The doctrine isn’t limited to state-versus-federal prosecutions, either.

In certain circumstances, two different states may prosecute conduct implicating the laws of both jurisdictions. Tribal sovereignty can also produce circumstances in which successive prosecutions are constitutionally permissible.

The underlying theory is fairly straightforward: each sovereign has an independent interest in enforcing its own laws.

Think about a criminal act that violates New York law but also interferes with an area specifically regulated by Congress. New York has an interest in enforcing its criminal laws and protecting people within its jurisdiction. The United States may have a separate federal interest established by Congress.

One prosecution does not automatically extinguish the other’s authority.

And that brings us back to Luigi Mangione.

There has been understandable confusion surrounding the fact that Mangione faces separate state and federal proceedings connected to the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. People naturally look at that and ask: How can the government prosecute someone twice for essentially the same alleged conduct?

The constitutional answer is that we’re not talking about one government prosecuting someone twice.

We’re talking about two sovereign governments exercising separate prosecutorial authority.

Now, whether prosecutors should pursue overlapping cases is a different question from whether they constitutionally can. There are Justice Department policies and practical considerations surrounding successive prosecutions, and defendants can certainly challenge particular charges or procedures on other constitutional and statutory grounds.

But the Double Jeopardy Clause, standing alone, does not create an automatic barrier simply because a state prosecution and federal prosecution arise from the same underlying event.

That distinction is important because the Mangione case has generated an enormous amount of commentary—some of it suggesting that whichever government gets to a verdict first automatically prevents the other from continuing.

That’s not how the dual sovereignty doctrine works.

A New York prosecution does not, simply by occurring first, automatically eliminate federal prosecutorial authority. Nor does a federal prosecution automatically erase New York’s authority to enforce its own criminal laws.

You can certainly debate whether having two governments prosecute substantially the same conduct is fair, efficient or necessary. In fact, the dual sovereignty doctrine has been criticized for precisely that reason.

But as the law stands today, the constitutional rule is well established.

Double jeopardy generally prevents the same sovereign from putting someone in jeopardy twice for the same offense. It does not categorically prevent two separate sovereigns from prosecuting violations of their respective laws arising from the same conduct.

And that is the legal principle to keep in mind as the separate proceedings involving Luigi Mangione continue to unfold.

$850 Million Later, Some Bills Fans Still Can’t See the Field

There are certain things you would think $2.1 billion could buy.

A decent football stadium, for instance.

Maybe some bathrooms reasonably close to the people sitting in the upper deck.

A video board large enough to see without binoculars.

And, call me old-fashioned, but perhaps a seat from which you can actually see the football game.

Welcome to the new Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park.

The Buffalo Bills unveiled their new home to more than 50,000 fans at their August 8 “Return of the Blue & Red” practice. Almost immediately, photographs began circulating showing some pretty remarkable sightline problems. Fans complained about stairwells, railings and other obstructions, along with video boards some thought surprisingly small for a brand-new NFL stadium. (New York Post)

The Bills have responded, saying they are listening to fans and addressing concerns. The organization also says the particularly awful seats making the rounds on social media aren’t actually sold for football games, and that fewer than 1% of PSL holders have raised concerns. That’s important context. (Talksport)

But here’s where this becomes more than a Buffalo sports story.

You helped pay for it.

New York State taxpayers contributed $600 million toward the stadium.

Erie County taxpayers contributed another $250 million.

That’s $850 million in public money committed to building a stadium for one of the most valuable franchises in professional sports. Empire State Development confirms those numbers and says the Bills were responsible for the remaining costs, including construction overruns. (Empire State Development)

The final cost eventually climbed above $2.1 billion. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

Think about that for a moment.

New Yorkers were told this was an investment.

Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration argued that the stadium would keep the Bills in Western New York for the next 30 years, protect jobs and generate an economic impact exceeding the public contribution. Those aren’t frivolous considerations. The Buffalo Bills are woven into the identity and economy of Western New York. Losing the franchise would have been painful.

But government calling something an “investment” doesn’t relieve government of the obligation to explain why taxpayers should be making it.

Especially when the recipient is an NFL franchise.

This is the part of corporate welfare that has always fascinated me.

If a small business owner in Poughkeepsie wants to expand his restaurant, Albany doesn’t write him a $600 million check.

If a family-owned manufacturer in Newburgh needs a new building, taxpayers aren’t asked to construct it.

If a Hudson Valley business makes a bad investment, government generally doesn’t announce that preserving the company’s “economic impact” requires taxpayers to pick up the tab.

That’s called capitalism.

But professional sports apparently operate under a different economic system.

The profits are private.

The franchise appreciation is private.

The luxury suites generate private revenue.

The sponsorships generate private revenue.

The television contracts generate private revenue.

And somehow taxpayers end up helping build the stadium.

We have managed to create an economic philosophy in which billionaires become socialists precisely when it’s time to build an arena.

And New York didn’t simply contribute a few dollars toward infrastructure surrounding the project.

The public commitment was $850 million.

That’s real money.

Money collected from people who will never attend a Bills game.

Money collected from businesses hundreds of miles from Orchard Park.

Money collected from families struggling with property taxes, utility bills, groceries and one of the highest overall tax burdens in America.

Which is why taxpayers have every right to ask uncomfortable questions.

Was this really the best possible use of $600 million in state resources?

Could the Bills have remained in Buffalo with a smaller public subsidy?

What return are taxpayers actually receiving?

And perhaps most importantly, why does government repeatedly demand fiscal discipline from ordinary citizens while discovering extraordinary generosity whenever powerful institutions arrive at the negotiating table?

The stadium itself may ultimately turn out wonderfully.

There are already fans praising its wider concourses, improved concessions, acoustics and intimacy with the field. (Buffalo Rumblings)

And some of the early complaints may prove relatively minor once the Bills work through the opening-day problems.

But none of that changes the larger question.

Government should never become casual about spending somebody else’s money.

Governor Hochul proudly stood behind this project. Her administration called it the largest construction project in Western New York history and celebrated the completion of a stadium that will keep the Bills in Buffalo for decades. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

Fine.

Then own the investment.

Own the cost.

Own the deal.

And own the scrutiny that comes with spending $600 million belonging to New York taxpayers.

Because whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, Bills fan, Giants fan or someone who couldn’t tell Josh Allen from Woody Allen, there ought to be one principle we can agree on:

When government spends $850 million of the public’s money helping build a football stadium, the public has every right to ask whether it got its money’s worth.

And after the first weekend at the new Highmark Stadium, some Bills fans were asking an even simpler question:

Can I at least see the field?

The Valley Viewpoint

Your towns. Your schools. Your politics. And occasionally, your $850 million football stadium.

My friend Claire recently attended the wedding of her niece.

Her family was all there. Children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters—generations of one family gathered in the same place to celebrate two people beginning their life together.

And somewhere in the middle of telling me about the weekend, Claire said something that stayed with me.

She said she could see the next generation taking shape.

I thought that was a beautiful way of putting it.

Because when we’re young, we go to weddings and look forward. We see beginnings. We think about the life ahead of the bride and groom—the home they might build, the children they may have, the places they’ll go and all those years seemingly waiting patiently in front of them.

But when you’re a parent—and especially when you’re a grandparent—I think you see something different.

You see time.

You look across the room at your children and remember when they were the little ones running around at family gatherings. You remember holding their hands, getting them ready for school, sitting through games and concerts, worrying about them when they were sick and lying awake wondering whether you were making the right decisions.

Then, almost impossibly, you look across a wedding reception and those children are grown.

And now their children are the little ones running around.

That’s the part that struck me most about what Claire said.

The next generation doesn’t arrive with an announcement. There isn’t a particular morning when you wake up and realize the family has moved forward a generation.

It happens quietly while everyone is busy living.

And then occasionally life gives you a wedding.

It gathers everyone into one room and gives you the opportunity to look around.

I found myself imagining Claire doing exactly that.

Watching her children talking and laughing together. Watching her grandchildren being passed from one set of loving arms to another. Watching nieces and nephews who were once children themselves now standing as adults.

And perhaps, for just a moment, seeing all those years at once.

The children she raised now have children of their own.

The people she once protected are now protecting someone else.

The little hands she once held are now holding little hands.

There is something incredibly beautiful about that.

Because eventually every parent discovers that raising children was never really about keeping them close forever. It was about giving them enough love, confidence and security that someday they could walk away from you and build lives of their own.

And then, if you’re fortunate, they come back.

Not as the children who left, but as adults carrying children of their own.

Maybe that’s why weddings become more emotional as we get older.

We’re not simply watching two people exchange vows.

We’re watching the continuation of something.

Behind us are the people who raised us, some perhaps no longer physically present but still alive in family stories, traditions, expressions and mannerisms.

Beside us are the people with whom we traveled much of the journey.

And in front of us are our children and grandchildren, carrying pieces of all of us into a future we won’t completely see.

There is some sadness in that realization. There has to be. Time gives us these extraordinary people, but it never promises to stand still for us.

Perhaps that’s what makes a moment like Claire experienced so precious.

For one weekend, the family was together.

And while everyone else may have simply seen a wedding, I think Claire saw something more.

She saw where her family had been.

She saw where it is now.

And looking at her children and their children, she caught a glimpse of where it is going.

The next generation was taking shape right in front of her.

And perhaps one of life’s greatest gifts is living long enough—and loving deeply enough—to recognize it when it happens.