Greetings, and welcome, my friends, to the column that never ends. (Apologies to Emerson, Lake & Palmer.) Today is Wednesday, July 15, 2026. My calendar is full of observances celebrated on this day. Among them, Give Something Away Day, Gummi Worm Day, Hot Dog Day, Pet Fire Safety Day, Respect Canada Day, Tapioca Pudding Day, Orange Chicken Day, I Love Horses Day, Be a Dork Day (Shrug... That's what it says), World Youth Skills Day, Saint Swithin's Day, Developmental Disability Professionals Day, and Clean Beauty Day.

Today In History:

1099: Christian knights capture Jerusalem after a seven-week siege during the First Crusade.

1381: John Ball is executed for his role in leading the Peasants' Revolt in England.

1799: Napoleonic soldiers discover the Rosetta Stone at Fort Julien in the Nile Delta.

1834: The Spanish Inquisition is formally abolished after more than 350 years.

1835: Bloodshed erupts in the Toledo War when Ohio partisan Two Stickney stabs a Michigan sheriff in a tavern dispute.

1870: Georgia becomes the last former Confederate state readmitted to the Union.

1903: Ford Motor Company fills its first order, an $850 two-cylinder Model A.

1916: William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products Company, later renamed Boeing.

1918: German forces launch the Second Battle of the Marne, their final major offensive of World War I.

1955: Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration, warning against nuclear weapons.

1965: Mariner 4 flies past Mars, returning the first close-up images of its surface.

1975: The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project launches, marking the first joint spaceflight between rival Cold War powers.

1988: The action thriller Die Hard opens in theaters, launching Bruce Willis's career as an action star.

1997: Fashion designer Gianni Versace is murdered outside his Miami mansion by spree killer Andrew Cunanan.

2006: Twitter launches, eventually growing to hundreds of millions of users.

Birthdays today include: Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch painter; Linda Ronstadt, singer (“You're No Good,” “Blue Bayou”); Forest Whitaker, actor (The Last King of Scotland, The Butler); Jesse Ventura, professional wrestler turned governor of Minnesota; Arianna Huffington, cofounder of The Huffington Post; Terry O'Quinn, actor (Lost, Alias); Diane Kruger, actress (Troy, Inglourious Basterds); Jim Rash, actor and screenwriter (Community, The Descendants); Scott Foley, actor (Scandal, Felicity); Lana Parrilla, actress (Once Upon a Time); Travis Fimmel, actor (Vikings); Buju Banton, reggae musician ('Til Shiloh); Joe Satriani, guitarist (Surfing with the Alien); Jason Bonham, rock drummer known for his work with Led Zeppelin's surviving members and his own band; Adam Savage, television host and special-effects fabricator (MythBusters); Eddie Griffin, actor and comedian (Undercover Brother, Norbit); Willie Aames, actor (Eight Is Enough, Charles in Charge); Kim Alexis, supermodel; and Richard Russo, novelist (Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool).

If today's your birthday, too, happy birthday — you're in good company.

* * *

Tax the rich, feed the poor, 'til there are no rich no more.

That's a lyric from the 1971 hit, "I'd Love to Change the World," from guitar master Alvin Lee and his band, Ten Years After. I've always heard that song as an echo of Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman." It's a real rocker, sure, but also a warning dressed up as what is now known as Classic Rock. One question hangs over the whole "Tax the Rich" thing: Then what?

Elizabeth Stauffer answers that question this morning in Legal Insurrection, and the answer isn't pretty:

Remember when New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani stood outside hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin's penthouse on Tax Day to gleefully announce he had "secured" a pied-à-terre tax — "the first in New York's history!" At one point in the video, the camera zoomed in on his smirking face, emphasizing his obvious delight at sticking it to the rich.

The move was simply the latest in a series of tax increases that have left New Yorkers with one of the highest tax burdens in the nation. But "the rich" didn't become rich by making poor financial decisions. Faced with ever-rising taxes, many have simply packed up and moved elsewhere.

Mamdani got his photo op. New Yorkers got the bill — assuming they're still in New York to pay it. And given the shape the city's finances are in as a result of this self-inflicted wound, he's already trying to tap federal coffers to plug the huge hole in his spreadsheet.

Stauffer keeps going:

On Monday, the Citizen Budget Commission released a study documenting the cumulative effects of New York's aggressive tax policies. One of its most notable findings was that between 2010 and 2022, the state's share of the nation's millionaires fell from 12.7% to 8.7% and their exodus cost the state nearly $11 billion in lost tax revenue for the 2022 tax year alone.

According to the study, "Had New York maintained its share of the nation's millionaires over the past decade, personal income tax collections would have been substantially higher – roughly $10.7 billion more in tax year 2022."

Turns out you can smirk outside a hedge fund manager's penthouse, or you can keep his tax revenue. Pick one.

Stauffer pulls this from the New York Post, which reports:

In New York, the top 1% of earners pay about 45% of all state income taxes in any given year, so New York's revenue is very reliant on high earners to stay in New York, and that has been a challenge in recent years.

Gracie Mansion can't do it on its own; it takes Albany. Pied-à-terre [tax] will have some impact, but there's this feeling that New York isn't done raising taxes, and with other places being more competitive, it won't be surprising if high-earner taxpayers choose to relocate.

A couple things jump out immediately. Let's break them out here.

First: New York isn't done raising taxes, simply because it is New York. Trust me — I live Upstate. It's never done raising taxes. That's not a bug. That's the whole operating model. I think highly of the New York Post, but there's a trend I've noted in a lot of their output: They tend to focus on the foibles of the city alone in these matters and neglect the remainder of the state. I suppose New York Gov. Kathy Hochul does as well as most New York governors. The whole state is suffering because of this misguided notion of "tax fairness".

Second, and this is the part nobody wants to headline: What about the people who don't make the papers when they leave? The lower earners — the ones these rate hikes are actually strangling — are fleeing in far larger numbers than the millionaires ever will. They make dramatically less, sure. But they pay New York's absurd rates on incomes that can't absorb the hit, and their sheer numbers land on the state's bottom line just as hard as Ken Griffin's zip code change did. If anything, they have more reasons to run, because their jobs are vanishing right alongside "the rich." When exactly has anyone drawn a "living wage" paycheck from a poor employer?

Fun fact: When Democrats complain about taxes being cut, saying most of the tax cut is going to the rich, well, that's because they're the ones paying the most. Any across-the-board cuts will do this.

Mamdani wanted a war on the rich. Predictably, what he's getting is a war of attrition, and again, predictably, he's losing that on both fronts.

He's not alone. Steve Turley laid out the same story in Portland, Ore., the other day, this time starring Democratic Socialist Katie Wilson.

As Turley puts it, the "Eat the Rich" mantra the left keeps chanting is self-defeating by design. And the pattern never changes; it plays out identically everywhere somebody's dumb enough to try it.

And now, the sound of "Oops!" is overwhelming. Reason magazine noted it back in March:

In 2022, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul urged Republicans to leave the state and move to Florida. Lots of people took her advice, and not all of them the people she wanted to expel. Earlier this month, she was reduced to begging "high-net-worth" former state residents to move back and pay the expensive tax tab to fund her state's spending choices.

It's a rare and glorious sight when politicians shoo those who dislike their policies out the door only to subsequently beg them to return.

At a campaign rally in 2022, Hochul directed Republicans to "just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK. Get outta town. Get outta town. Because you don't represent our values. You are not New Yorkers."

Reason goes on:

Message received. Last year, New York's independent Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) reported that "New York City lost 102K residents and their $13.7B in personal income to Florida from 2018-2022 on net." Detailing reasons for the migration, the CBC report noted, "those leaving the region most commonly move to Florida, California, and Texas….Notably, Florida and Texas have lower taxes."

Drawing on U.S. Census data, the Empire Center observed that "the state as a whole was down by 238,000 residents or 1.2 percent over the four-year stretch [from 2020 to 2024], even as the U.S. population rose by 2.6 percent." New York City has been especially hard hit by outmigration: "The most popular destination for departing New Yorkers was Florida."

This is all very awkward for state officials. New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli observed in a February 2026 report that "the trajectory of State spending has been steep, and is projected to continue to increase faster than inflation and projected revenues." Those revenues are certainly lower than they would have been had more people chose to remain in New York rather than heed advice to leave.

All of this is just as predictable as the result of turning on a light switch, and yet liberal Democrats keep trying it.

Thought of the Day: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." — Ben Franklin

VIP members: I want to hear your comments. Oh, and hit that heart. Your involvement makes a difference.

Take care, gang. I'll see you here tomorrow.

Recommended: Ditch the Candidate, Keep the Crazy Still Isn't Going to Work

Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.

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