How's it going America,
Check out our latest episode of The Pod Millennial! I sit down with legendary Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan for a wide-ranging conversation that touches on creativity, cancellation, and the state of modern entertainment. Graham opens up about his experience being ostracized from the UK comedy world for speaking out against gender ideology, the personal toll of losing lifelong friends, and his testimony before Congress. Listen, rate (5 stars, of course!), and subscribe!
Let's get into it:
I wrote this newsletter yesterday evening before I heard the news that former Post Millennial and Human Events publisher Jeff Webb had passed. Jeff took over Post Millennial and brought us to the next level, alongside Human Events. Personally and professionally, Jeff will be missed.
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Kathy Hochul has finally caught on to the fact that implementing a massive array of social programs with no way to pay for them may not be a great idea. Speaking to Politico, she said she needed to be "conscious of the fact that I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state." This comes as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has demanded billions extra from Albany to offset both his budget shortfall and the increased social programs he campaigned on.
"Right now," Hochul said, "there are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. 'Okay, cut me the checks if you want to be supportive,' but maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm Beach and see who you can bring back home, because our tax base has been eroded." Why has the tax base been eroded? Because of high taxes, because during Covid, Governor Andrew Cuomo and stupid NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio made life untenable in New York with their mandates, lockdowns, and closures, and because they got tired of hearing "tax the rich" while infrastructure crumbled and police were defunded causing crime to jump.
Hundreds of thousands of people left New York during Covid. In 2025, New York lost 28.2% of their total population while states like Idaho, Wyoming, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, and even little forgotten West Virginia saw population gains. Many people left New York for the same reasons I left, and it wasn't because they didn't love it, but because the quality of life had gone down, services were in decline, costs were rising, and yes, the taxes there are absolutely insane.
"So I philosophically don't have a problem," Hochul said, referring to her feelings on Mamdani's promised social programs, "it is like I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other states that have less of a tax burden on their corporations and their individuals." Mamdani doesn't care about this and if he can't get the money from Hochul his plan is to jack up property taxes and estate taxes on New Yorkers who haven't left—yet.
"And I would say remote work changed everything," Hochul went on. "There were people who could only work in an office in Manhattan and work in New York State, and they were captives to our state, they were going to stay. We saw that that's not the case." She's right. One of the things that made it easier for me to leave was that I could take my job with me. I didn't need to do my remote job from my Brooklyn dining room, it turns out I could do it just as easily from my roomy little home office on my own acre of land.
"I mean, you know, Wall Street businesses looking at Texas, they're not going there because they have a nicer governor, I know that for sure," Hochul joked, though I'm not sure "nice" is really what we should be looking for in a governor. "But they're going there because of the tax rate. We have to be smart about this, but we can fund what we want to fund with what we already are taking in." That's her stance. Mamdani's will be to tax the f*ck out of any New Yorkers who stick around through whatever levers of power are within his reach.
Libby