Democrats are totalitarians. If they decide they don’t like something, demonization and punitive taxation are only the beginning. Sooner or later there will be a total ban — as Governor Kathy Hochul wants to impose on tobacco in New York:

The state Health Department commissioned a new survey aimed at gauging support for an all-out prohibition — despite Gov. Hochul’s failure to secure support from state legislators to include a ban on menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products in the yet-to-be-approved state budget.

The survey isn’t for the little people, but for those whose political support she will need to impose a ban.

The survey, conducted by nonprofit research organization RTI International, was distributed to “community leaders” statewide, including “county legislators and county directors of public health,” according to an April 13 memo to prospective participants from Jennifer Lee, director of the Health Department’s Bureau of Tobacco Control.

Even the proposed level of authoritarianism will not stop people from smoking.

Kent Sopris, president of the New York Association of Convenience Store Owners, predicted a ban would put many stores out of business but wouldn’t stop tobacco use because smokers would just buy cigarettes out of state, online, or illegally on the black market.

“I think it would be bizarre for the state to create another category of illegal product that could lead to more conflict between law enforcement and the community,” he said.

Too bad New York doesn’t enforce laws it already has, rather than succumbing to savagery by letting felons run free.

Meanwhile, Hochul has kicked off a public education campaign encouraging people to buy legalized marijuana products.

“If you are out there advocating for the expanded sale of retail cannabis that sells candied flavored options, how can you tell regulated legal convenience stores they can’t sell menthol cigarettes to adults?” Sopris fumed.

Let alone tell them they can’t sell any cigarettes at all — except marijuana cigarettes.

You can see why Hochul promotes pot while conspiring to make tobacco illegal. Smoking cigarettes is bad for your health, but at least it sharpens the mind, improving concentration, attention, and memory. Marijuana will make you a stupefied zombie — i.e., a fit subject for Democrat rule.

On a tip from Wiggins.

The only thing keeping Democrats in office, other than their control of the media and Big Tech, is their tactic of bribing us with our own money. New York Governor Kathy faces a primary challenge on June 28. So she is sending out checks:

“Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature are providing you this Homeowner Tax Rebate check that you can use to help pay your property taxes,” reads the letter accompanying a check shared with The Post.

The tax rebates are also coming much earlier than in past years.

The idea is that New Yorkers will be so pleased to get some of their own money back that they will forget that the reason taxes are so excessive in the first place is Democrat greed.

Hochul promised to make state government more ethical after succeeding the scandal-plagued Cuomo last year – a vow belied by attaching her name to a government form letter.

It’s not just the letter. For example:

Political rivals like [Thomas] Suozzi and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who is also running in the primary, have questioned the propriety of her support for allocating $850 million in state taxpayer money for a new Buffalo Bills stadium that could benefit a company employing her husband, who has recused himself from matters before the state.

If voters get sick of corruption, they could always try voting out Democrats while it is still theoretically possible. Once these people acquire enough power to ram through “election reform,” the game is over until the next revolution.

On a tip from Wiggins.

For an idea of how far Democrats will take leftist authoritarianism, turn to single-party New York, where Governor Kathy Hochul continues to make even Andrew Cuomo look less alarming by comparison.

We knew she would be among the first of the vultures to flock to Buffalo. But did anyone think she would exploit the event to this extent?

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Hochul said that she would sign several executive orders to restrict access to firearms and monitor “online extremism.”

The Founding Fathers had good reason to put the first two amendments before the others. They defend the fundamental rights that tyrants are most eager to deny us: free speech and self-defense.

These include a measure authorizing the New York State Police to seize weapons from any gun owner “whenever they have probable cause to believe that an individual is a threat to themselves or others.”

That would almost sound reasonable, if authorities could be trusted to apply it reasonably. However, they take orders from people like Kathy Hochul.

That’s why fundamental rights are absolute. Exceptions will be exploited to render the rights null and void. Without due process, everyone whose politics conflict with Hochul’s may be regarded as “a threat to themselves or others.”

Hochul also announced that a new ‘Office of Counterterrorism’ would be created within the State Police with an exclusive focus on “domestic terrorism,” which would be required to monitor social media for evidence of violent tendencies and extremist ideology.

Any Stalinists who were disheartened when blowback caused Democrats to back off for now from their Ministry of Truth will be relieved to see Hochul step forward to solve the problem of free speech at the state level.

Associating “extremist ideology” with terrorism is even more alarming than suppressing it as “misinformation.” The terminology justifies government violence.

In case anyone thinks they are talking about actual terrorism:

She added that she would formally refer social media companies to the New York Attorney General [Letitia] James’s office for investigation for failing to stop “radicalization” of users towards “white supremacy.”

“White supremacy” is a blanket term for anything leftists regard as obstructing their ambitions. According to Democrat demagogues, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are white supremacists. If either had ever said anything racist, we would know about it.

At least chasing down “white supremacists” will give Letitia James something to do, now that she has effectively legalized many actual crimes.

Hochul further said that she would propose legislation requiring all semi-automatic handguns made or sold in New York to “micro-stamp” ammunition after it is fired, making weapons easier to trace by police.

You can see why Kimber got the hell out of Yonkers.

The point of microstamping is to make guns and ammo too expensive for regular Americans to afford. The strategy is similar to the $1,000 per bullet tax schemes that are sometimes floated.

Leave it to leftists to wring every drop of tyranny out of a psycho killing some people because he is crazy.

A phrase from Hemingway comes to mind: “gradually and then suddenly.” That is the Democrat plan for snuffing out liberty. Hochul isn’t alone among them in wanting to jump to the “suddenly” phase.

Watch her declare open war on the First Amendment, after absurdly claiming to defend it:

On tips from Varla, MrRightWingDave, and ABC of the ANC.

Her absurd overreaction to the mild Omicron variant left egg on the face of New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Rather than wipe it off, she is ratcheting up the Covid tyranny further still, decreeing that privately owned public places like restaurants and stores must demand customers wear Covid muzzles or present proof of vaccination:

The new mandate will take effect Monday and applies statewide. It will remain in force until Jan. 15, when it could be extended, officials said.

Maybe it won’t be extended. Maybe Covid will be completely eradicated by then. Maybe pigs will grow wings and fly. Maybe Hochul will stumble upon a copy of the US Constitution and convert from liberalism to Americanism.

Businesses that fail to enforce the rules could be subject to civil and criminal penalties, including a maximum fine of $1,000 for each violation.

Adding insult to injury, Hochul claims to be inflicting this on behalf of the small businesses against which Covid tyrants like herself have been waging a war of extermination for the past 2 years.

“I have to protect people but also the economy. I want to make sure that the little businesses that were hurt so hard during the pandemic in a shutdown — resulting in their loss of income, [and] the loss of income of all the people who work for them,” said Hochul at an unrelated event in Manhattan, after announcing the mandate. “We have to prevent that from happening.”

Who will protect both the people and the economy from Democrats like Hochul?

On a tip from Wiggins.

It would be hard to have a more awful response to Covid than erstwhile liberal heartthrob Andrew Cuomo, who won lavish praise from the media while driving businesses into bankruptcy with gratuitous tyranny and killing thousands of elderly people by forcing nursing homes to accept Covid patients. However, his replacement Kathy Hochul perseveres in her campaign to prove there is nothing Cuomo could do she can’t do worse.

The Nu variant is already yesterday’s news. We skipped the Xi variant because it would be politically incorrect to associate a virus engineered in a ChiCom laboratory with the Chinese communist dictator. Here’s how Kathy Hochul is exploiting the Omicron variant to make her mark on the everyday lives of New Yorkers:

Hochul has declared a state of emergency ahead of potential COVID-19 spikes this winter due to the already-circulating Delta and newly-identified Omicron variants of coronavirus.

Emergency is the ideal state for Big Government. Any amount of the next generation’s money can be wasted, because there is no future, only the current crisis. Any power grab can be excused.

Tough luck if you need a medical procedure:

Hochul signed an executive order Friday to postpone elective hospital surgeries — something that hasn’t been done since the worst of the initial coronavirus outbreak last year.

Drastic measures need to be taken, due to all the Omicron cases in New York. Oh wait, there hasn’t been a single one — in New York or anywhere else in the USA.

The new protocols will take effect on Friday, Dec. 3, and will be re-evaluated based on the latest COVID-19 data on Jan. 15.

By then our rulers will have declared martial law due to the Pi variant.

On tips from Wiggins, Occam’s Stubble, and Anonymous.

It seemed impossible that anyone could miss Andrew Cuomo — until Kathy Hochul came along.

She has attacked property rights. She has attacked transportation and free speech. She has pointlessly forced toddlers to wear Covid obedience muzzles. Now she claims to speak for God:

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) said at a Sunday mass in the Bronx that Christians who are not vaccinated against COVID “aren’t listening to God,” adding that God wants them vaccinated.

The Democrat notably made the comments one day before her vaccine mandate for health care workers takes effect. The controversial order has already sparked health care worker shortages around the state.

No worries about the healthcare worker shortage. Progressives always have solutions for the problems they cause. Here’s Hochul’s:

[Hochul] is considering deploying the medically trained members of the National Guard ahead of an anticipated shortage of health care workers.

Hochul released a comprehensive plan to address staff shortages in New York facilities Saturday, amid concerns that a large number of health care employees will not meet Monday’s vaccine deadline.

Looks like no worker is really essential. We might all be replaced with soldiers unless we obey. Soldiers make better workers than civilians because they have to follow orders.

Workers terminated because they refuse to be vaccinated are also not eligible for unemployment insurance unless they provide a medical accommodation from a doctor, the statement noted.

For someone who speaks for God, Hochul does not seem to hold religion in high regard. Her order bans religious exemptions. This ban has thankfully been blocked for now, after the Thomas More Society took her to court on behalf of healthcare workers:

“What New York is attempting to do is slam shut an escape hatch from an unconstitutional vaccine mandate,” [Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher] Ferrara argued. “And they are doing this while, knowing that many people have sincere religious objections to vaccines that were tested, developed, or produced with cell lines derived from aborted children.”

“These plaintiffs are not – I repeat – not anti-vaxxers, as the fake news media calls them,” stressed Ferrara. “They are in fact in favor of voluntary vaccination with informed consent, but they oppose jack-booted coercion by the state to take a vaccine their religion forbids them to take. This is America, not Red China.”

Not yet, anyway. But Kathy Hochul is working to minimize the difference.

On tips from Wiggins and MAS.

Evidence accrues that New York Governor Kathy Hochul is even worse than the disgraced tyrant she replaced. Now she forces toddlers to attempt to breathe through snot-encrusted masks all day for no legitimate reason:

Wearing masks is particularly unhealthy for children (see here and here). There is no significant upside to making kids wear masks to counter the negative impact. Suppose the masks — which are probably rarely on their faces straight anyway — actually do protect toddlers from Covid; so what? Even the leftists at NPR admit Covid is no more serious than everyday viruses for small children. Only a lunatic would impose the masks in the name of the flu. Mask mandates are child abuse.

Speaking of leftists, here Wuhan gain-of-function funder and liberal icon Anthony Fauci reminds us that the masks are a silly waste of time even for adults:

On tips from Mr. Freemarket.

It seemed no replacement could be worse than the arrogantly tyrannical Andrew Cuomo. But progressives always manage to progress still further into dysfunctional authoritarian madness. Kathy Hochul tops even Cuomo by banning normal vehicles and calling on Facebook to censor opponents of abortion.

Via Newsmax:

Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., last week signed legislation banning the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035.

Mandating the use of economically inefficient electric vehicles in the name of the climate allows Democrats to adopt the posture that they control even the weather. The policy also has a real world application: to make vehicles unaffordable to many Americans, denying them independent transportation. All things independent are anathema to Democrats.

By 2035, the last sane Americans will have escaped the People’s Republic of New York anyway. But Hochul et al. would like to see authoritarian ecolunacy imposed nationwide:

New York, California, and 10 other states asked President Joe Biden in April to set standards to ensure that all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks are zero-emissions by 2035.

Censorship is something else Hochul would like to impose beyond the borders of the Empire State. Via The Blaze:

In a letter to Facebook founder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the governor requested “information on any and all existing efforts to combat misinformation regarding abortion laws, procedures, and their availability.” She also pressed for Zuckerberg to, “Take additional action to curb the spread of this misinformation, as Facebook has with information related to COVID-19, vaccines, and voting rights.”

If information regarding Covid and election integrity that Democrats want suppressed constitutes “misinformation,” so does anything that might dissuade expectant mothers from aborting their children.

New York’s next governor will likely be even worse than Hochul, difficult as that might be to imagine.

On tips from Wiggins and Mr. Freemarket.

Remember when Stacy Abrams — the election denier who used to claim she was Governor of Georgia — posed maskless in front of a group of masked schoolchildren?

This was especially politically incompetent because we knew from early on that Covid was not a significant threat to children and that the masks were bad for their health.

Yet even now, with Covid petering out, we see this:

Comments Not the Bee,

• Forcing children to wear masks is child abuse.

• Forcing them to wear a mask while you, as an adult, don’t wear a mask because of your superior status, is elitist hypocrisy.

• Forcing children to mask up while you dance and smile and use them for a photo-op is disgusting exploitation.

But as Shrillary might shriek, what difference at this point does it make? If the Covid tyrant Kathy Hochul could get reelected after the way she has been running New York, she need have no worries about the impression she leaves on voters. The state is so deep into the Democrat Death Spiral as to have achieved single-party rule.

This phenomenon occurs when the high taxes and suffocating regulations that come with Democrat control drive out enough productive citizens that those who remain can be counted on to vote for ever higher taxes so as to attain ever more freebies, driving out more productive citizens in a vicious cycle that does not stop until the entire state has become Detroit — which was once the wealthiest city in America.

On a tip from . . . NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Meanwhile, as top Democrats accuse Republicans of violence…

Biden sounded the alarm on Wednesday about the growing threat of political violence and attacks on democracy stemming from ex-President Donald Trump and his Republican allies’ Big Lie as the midterm elections loom closer.

…they remain the Party of Violence.

Earlier this election season, a moonbat attacked gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin (R-NY) with a deadly weapon while he was trying to give a speech (the maniac was predictably freed within hours). Now this:

A supporter of New York gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Lee Zeldin, was allegedly attacked and assaulted at a rally for Democratic candidate Gov. Kathy Hochul on Saturday.

It happened near the Stonewall Inn, which is sacred ground for Democrats because homosexuals rioted there.

Video obtained by Fox News shows a Hochul supporter appearing to punch and choke a woman named Angelica Torres.

First a woman grabbed her sign. Then a man assaulted her. Two others prevented her from retrieving her sign.

The thugs underscored why so many will be voting for Zeldin tomorrow. Lamented Torres,

“I was very shocked and upset that I couldn’t express my opinions openly without violence. Crime and violence is a big issue in our city.”

That’s because New York is run by Democrats.

New York City Councilwoman Krystal Hudson, a Democrat, was also reportedly seen tussling with Torres, who alleged that the councilwoman grabbed her. Her office has not responded to requests for comment.

Democrat rule means thugs don’t just own the streets. They run the government.

Imagine if a white guy choked a black woman like this at a Republican rally. The media would talk of nothing else for months.

On tips from Bluto, Anonymous, and Varla.

Kathy “Crazy Eyes” Hochul continues to double down on the worst aspects of the catastrophically awful Andrew Cuomo. The former moonbat heartthrob earned the admiration of famously tolerant liberals when he snarled,

“Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”

Under Hochul, it isn’t only “extreme conservatives” failing to toe the liberal line on abortion, gun rights, and the LGBT agenda who are unwelcome in New York. Those who aren’t on the same page as Democrats regarding feminism, “environmental justice,” and union thuggery are also told to leave:

“We’re here to say the era of Trump and [Lee] Zeldin and [Marc] Molinaro — just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK?” Hochul said, according to a transcript of the rally. “Get out of town.” Hochul said the Republican candidates do not “represent our values.”

“You are not New Yorkers,” she said. “We come from a long line of people who fought for women’s rights that happened here first. We fought for environmental justice that happened here first. We fought for labor rights that happened here first. We fought for LGBTQ rights that happened here first.”

If Hochul wants all 5.4 million Republicans to leave the Empire State, she appears to be getting her way:

The Empire State has already lost 1.5 million residents in the past decade, and there’s no sign of that trend letting up. … New Yorkers are leaving, and they’re taking their tax dollars with them.

That could be a problem, considering New York’s $220 billion budget. Unlike Biden, Crazy Eyes can’t just print the money.

New York City residents pay the highest combined state and local personal income tax rate in the nation. Those high taxes and other factors have led to a mass exodus of jobs and job creators.

Those other factors are also consequences of Democrat hegemony: out-of-control Covid tyranny, the collapse of law & order, excessive regulation, et cetera.

It isn’t only Republicans who are giving up on the failing state:

Polling has shown high taxes are the primary reason New Yorkers are considering or making plans to bolt the state — and that’s the case across key subgroups: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, moderates, conservatives, all income groups, all age cohorts beyond age 24 and almost all education levels.

Liberal rule has induced the Democrat Death Spiral: Democrats get elected, they jack up taxes to pay for handouts, productive citizens leave to avoid being looted, those remaining elect still more radical Democrats to get bigger handouts.

This cycle destroyed Detroit, which was once America’s wealthiest city. It is currently destroying the entire state of New York.

If the refugees bring their New York politics with them after they escape, the liberal cancer will continue to metastasize.

On tips from Wiggins and ABC of the ANC.

Natural gas is an ideal source of energy; it is efficient, plentiful, and good for the environment because it burns so cleanly. So it will come as no surprise that the leftists who run New York intend to ban it:

Gas stoves will soon become toast in New York, under a controversial new handshake deal between Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Albany lawmakers that would make that state the first in the US to ban natural gas.

The pending budget deal mandates all new buildings under seven stories be fully electric by 2026 with larger structures following three years later.

With a straight face, we are told this will prevent the climate from continuing to fluctuate the way it always has and always will. Specifically, Hochul says banning gas stoves will protect New York from hurricanes and excessive snow. Her estimation of her constituents’ intelligence is not high.

Hochul notably has kept gas stoves in her own Buffalo home and the Executive Mansion in Albany while pushing for the gas ban in future buildings through the state budget process.

The point, as with the war on nuclear energy, is to make electricity prohibitively expensive, even while making us increasingly reliant on it by mandating inferior electric stoves, electric cars, et cetera.

This will add to the burdens already imposed by green energy efforts, including a 2022 state law signed by Hochul that will ban the sales of gas automobiles by 2035.

You have to wonder how blatantly hostile Democrats would need to be toward those they rule before people will cast off their liberal media brainwashing and start pushing back.

On tips from Chuck A and Wiggins.

Meanwhile, as Soros-appointed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg strategically attempts to secure the Republican nomination for Donald Trump with deliberately absurd criminal charges, real criminals run free:

The proportion of cases in which the Manhattan DA’s office has not asked for felony suspects to be held on bail has more than doubled since 2018, according to its own data. …

Campaigners have accused officials of ‘a depraved indifference to human life’ and pointed to a spate of recent cases in which suspects have been released without bail before going on to commit heinous crimes.

Small price to pay for social justice, right liberals?

The Trump case hinges on promoting an old alleged misdemeanor to multiple felonies.

Meanwhile, data shows [Bragg] is increasingly downgrading felonies to misdemeanors, contributing to fewer cases being bail eligible.

Not even Kathy Hochul has the belly for Bragg’s level of moonbattery:

[Hochul] has previously blasted Bragg for ‘going soft’ after he released without bail a man who terrorized McDonald’s patrons with an ax.

Just another example of civilization unraveling.

She has also personally intervened in a case to ensure a registered sex offender who sucker-punched a man into a coma would remain in jail despite the Bronx DA’s office initially charging him with only a misdemeanor.

The revolving door criminal justice system barely inconveniences criminals in New York:

Mayor Eric Adams revealed that just ten individual criminals made up for 500 of the arrests in the city over the last two years, and at least six of them are still walking the streets.

Consequently, the USA’s largest city is becoming uninhabitable.

As recently as the 1990s, Democrats understood the necessity of three strikes laws. In those days, Democrats would often side with law-abiding citizens against sociopaths. Things have changed. Hochul had better scramble to keep up.

On a tip from Ed McAninch.

For moonbats, intolerance is an end in itself. So desperate are New York City liberals to find something to be intolerant about that they demand the Mets change the name of Citi Field — because Citibank invests in the precious fossil fuels that allow the city to function.

Via Fox News:

City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is pushing to rename the New York Mets’ home stadium, Citi Field, over climate change concerns.

Citigroup pays an estimated $20 million per year to have its name on the stadium. That money is ill-gotten, from the moonbat point of view, because some of it came from investing in energy.

Because money is only clean to a liberal if it has been confiscated and redistributed by Big Government, all stadiums should be renamed “Government Field.” That would establish equity, so that no stadium would have a more appealing name than another.

“The Public Advocate and fans will cite the bank’s role in financing polluters and profiting from climate chaos,” Williams’ office said in a statement.

“Global warming” was discarded because the climate fluctuates in both directions. “Climate change” doesn’t work either, because too many understand that the climate will always change no matter what Big Government inflicts on us. “Climate chaos” will do for now. When people continue to laugh off the imaginary crisis, progressives may have to switch to something even darker, like “climate doom.”

According to leftist ideology, generating energy by effective means causes climate chaos because it releases the essential plant nutrient carbon dioxide.

Barks Jumaane Williams:

“Citibank’s practices do not represent the values of the Mets or our city, and we must make better demands. If Citi refuses to end their toxic relationship with the fossil fuel industry, the Mets should end their partnership with Citi.”

Once the values of sports teams centered on sports. Theatrical displays of obeisance to Black Lives Matter put an end to that. Sports are no longer about sports. They are about moonbattery. In a totalitarian society, everything is about the ruling class ideology.

It isn’t just Jumaane Williams. Lucas Sanchez is co-executive director of New York Communities for Change.

“I can’t teach my kids to love the Mets if I’m also teaching them about climate change,” said Sanchez, whose kids are 7, 9 and 13. “The Mets are contributing to polluting the planet by partnering with Citi.”

Imagine the effect on the 8.8 million people who live in NYC of reducing electricity to what can be generated through green energy idiocy. Civilization would collapse. Does the stench of rotting corpses count as pollution?

Citi contributed approximately $31 billion in combined lending and underwriting to oil, gas and coal firms since 2021.

Because of such investments, when viewed from the air at night, New York City is a field of light. Moonbats would prefer that it look like the leftist utopia North Korea.

On a tip from Varla.