Mamdani Targets Junk Fees and Hidden Charges in Two Executive Orders | Hacker News Reader

Mamdani Targets Junk Fees and Hidden Charges in Two Executive Orders

nytimes.com

120 pointslordleft137 comments

This man has quite possibly talked to more constituents during his campaign than any other campaign in US history. An executive order to ban gyms from making it difficult to cancel a membership sounds like exactly "what the people want". Almost stereotypically so

There are dozens of low-hanging fruit to appease the citizenry that have been explained away as nonviable by talking heads and PR departments for decades. I'm excited to see just how much corporate hand-wringing is exposed as the selfish money-grubbing anti-social behavior that it is.

I'm interested to see too, but I hope you won't let your excitement lead you to forgetting that we need to check later whether the measures accomplish their goals before declaring victory. The talking head position was never that it's impossible for a politician to declare they don't like junk fees.

As we should with conservative or "pro-business" politicians. But what goals specifically do you mean here?

> But what goals specifically do you mean here?

The complaint from the people is "it's difficult to cancel a gym membership". A metric to judge the success of a policy tackling that could be the # of complaints to consumer protection associations, authorities, politicians, or bank chargebacks.

Yeah. Another way to collect that metric is surveying people to ask them if cancelling their gym membership was easier

I do get the previous commenters hesitance though. It feels like you are holding mambani to a higher stnadard that anyone in america has held corporation in regard to something like the blatant wage theft they commit. Seems a bit of selective enforcement

Make an order that any service which holds your money for spending with them (starbucks app, giftcards, ez-pass) has to pay you interest at the benchmark rate (or BM - 0.25%, something small).

It's such a money maker but no one complains because they either don't know it's happening or don't care enough to say something. But 1 million people with $10 in their account will generate $1,000/day in free money for the holder.

>has to pay you interest at the benchmark rate (or BM - 0.25%, something small).

Deposit accounts at most banks pay you less than that, so it's unclear why you'd want gift cards to pay that much. Not to mention that turning gift cards into essentially bank accounts is going to create even more issues. Remember how we have to remind people how paypal isn't a bank? Or how would you calculate income taxes from the interest?

> Not to mention that turning gift cards into essentially bank accounts is going to create even more issues. Remember how we have to remind people how paypal isn't a bank?

I would have thought the intention with such regulation as proposed by the original commenter would be that apps specifically stop offering such functionality?

Then why not just ban gift cards outright?

Because they’re useful and well liked by consumers?

Who actually likes gift cards, as in, would still use them despite better alternatives existing?

If giving/receiving cash wasn't already illegal or socially unacceptable, gift card issuers would have started lobbying for that yesterday.

Other than that original use case, many people use them as a form of poorly functional digital cash (since it's not fungible across issuers) that really ought to exist natively in a currency these days.

I regularly got dunkin donuts, starbucks and the like gift cards for less the face value (sometimes half of face) and therefore strongly preferred using them when I shopped at those stores (at least when I had a balance).

Banks provide services that people want. Gift cards are for people who think it is tacky to gift cash/check but for some reason find plastic less tacky than paper.

Income taxes are easy. 1099-INT. Your bank gives you one, your brokerage gives you one, and your escrow account gives you one.

>Income taxes are easy. 1099-INT.

You think people are going to diligently collect all the 1099-INT forms for all the cards scattered around the house? If you forgot about a gift card, are you suddenly a tax evader?

Other direction: the entity giving you the income is responsible for supplying the 1099-INT statement in January.

That said, they could be required to supply a copy electronically directly to the IRS and the IRS could calculate your taxes for you. Change the responsibility for correctness from the taxpayer to the government, and offer an incentive to catch a mistake.

>Other direction: the entity giving you the income is responsible for supplying the 1099-INT statement in January.

How does that work when gift cards aren't registered to anybody, and can be transferred between people without the issuer knowing about it?

OK fair enough

The goal is to kill those payment schemes which mostly exist for exactly the reason I laid out.

Sell a product for $7 but only allow "recharge" in $5 increments. It pretty much guarantees that you will have tons of accounts with random dollar amounts laying around in them, never to be used. Even for regular gift cards, the counter party would be beholden to honoring them at their full value, as they should.

Besides, nothing it stopping you from rolling monthly treasuries and using those as a bank. Something people with enough money to exploit this proposed "gift card bank" would almost surely already be aware of.

Wouldn’t it be better to try to kill those payment schemes directly?

On the other hand, microtransactions are horrendously expensive due to fixed per-transaction fees (at least using credit and debit cards), so some business models are simply not viable without stored value cards or accounts.

It's totally viable and trivially possible to just payout earned interest to these accounts. You can still issue giftcards, it's just no longer passively profitable to do so.

It's probably nontrivial anywhere interest income is taxed, but even more so in the US with its non-flat interest tax scheme (it's taxed as ordinary income at the federal level, with an income-dependent rate).

I don't understand why you couldn't just use up the balance and then pay the balance due via another method. I do it all the time.

I believe the real scheme is how many gift cards never get redeemed at all.

Its not supposed to generate revenue, its supposed to shift the cost to the corporarions that are abusing this loophole, and hopefully lead to them not abusing it in the future. Like how high taxes on cigarettes arent meant to make money, theyre meant make smokers pay for burdening the healthcare system and society with their vice, and hopefully make it prohibitively expensive for them to continie doing it, or for someone new to start

The amount of government effort wasted in implementing this will be more than what users will get out of it in current savings interest rates.

Don’t limit yourself to first order thinking. The proposed interest payment disincentivizes companies from seeking carried balances. Companies will implement refund mechanisms and streamline dark patterns at their own expense to avoid paying the interest.

I'd stick to first order thinking, thanks.

It's easy to get things wrong trying to do second order thinking, or just make things up.

There's no reason to believe companies would do as you say. There are several other options, including choosing different financial vehicles to store the users money, implementing even more dark patterns to store N% more money so they are even, or can improve their returns over the status quo.

Your entire second paragraph is second order. You can’t just ignore consequences in a policy debate.

yes, my second paragraph is second order to explain how there can be many many possibilities, not the one you wish would happen.

> You can’t just ignore consequences in a policy debate.

Consequences of consequences though, you can route almost any argument to any conclusion you want :)

This sounds simple but in reality creates a huge regulatory burden so that people can have an extra 10 cents a year. In chicago we passed a law that says landlords have to pay interest on security deposits. Guess what happened? Every single landlord moved to move in fees instead. Now instead of getting your deposit back renters just have to pay thousands of dollars to move. This law without a doubt made life worse for basically every renter in the city

> This law without a doubt made life worse for basically every renter in the city

Let me fix this for you: LANDLORDS made life worse for basically every renter in the city

Everybody responds to incentives, so, no, this is an instance where lawmakers also share responsibility for outcomes.

I don't know, I can tell a story about how fixed move-in fees are better than security deposits, even though you always pay the fee and sometimes get the deposit back. The fixed fee is part of the price of the apartment, and has to react to market conditions. The security deposit is basically a lie told to renters.

I'm not sure what's the problem here. There are two things that could be impacted by your proposal:

1. Gift cards. Users want gift cards so it doesn't make sense to penalize companies for that (by forcing them to complexify their codebase and finances)

2. Top-up cards. I haven't really seen dark patterns here. You're usually not forced to use these as far as I've seen, and are usually rewarded if you do (accumulate points, get free stuff)

Maybe draw a distinction between gift cards that users purchased, versus ones that the user didn't actually want, like credits from refunds that really should have come back as cash. And given the gift card balances going unused and eventually recognized as profits, paying interest across the board seems financially feasible and perhaps even more optimal.

I don't think any of these are targeted by Mamdani (and I don't think they should)

Do people really want (to receive) gift cards? I find them incredibly annoying. They're thinly veiled, unergonomic cash.

It's a cultural thing. Giving someone cash is seen as a lazy gift, but if I take a second and buy you a gift card to a store that my stereotype of you in my head shops at, I'm thoughtful.

Yeah, I realize it's a cultural thing, but I still think it sucks. I find receiving a Starbucks gift card much less thoughtful than a greetings card, with or without a banknote included.

The worst are these Visa/Mastercard gift cards that are popular in the US: Often horrendously expensive to the buyer and cash-equivalent to the receiver at best, and broken or scammed and causing them further frustration and possibly monetary losses at worst.

When my parents came to visit me in the US I bought them a starbucks card and that was the coolest gift lol, they could stroll around and stop at starbucks whenever

Now imagine, if you will, a universal economic gift card, backed by the government, accepted throughout the country and beyond, even if both buyer and seller are offline... :)

The government would have to implement this, which doesnt make sense imo

I buy some to my gf as gifts, also bought some for my parents, I think they're great

And if the gift card expires, the funds get returned to the original purchaser or it goes into escheat.

the vast majority of gift card schemes allow you to get money into those systems at much less then the face value of the cards. This would kill that. the only gift cards that sell for basically face value are walmart and amazon. Almost every other card type I've regularly seen significant discounts for.

An encouraging start! I'm still chapped about Lina's "Click to Cancel" being sidelined after the administration change, so it's nice to see it being moved forward somewhere.

Can you expand on what happened?

The rule was vacated in July 2025 on (imho, kind of bs) procedural grounds. The current administration does not seem amenable to implementing any policy from the last administration, so it's probably toast.

Is this similar to an executive order from a president? ie, it's symbolic but not very durable, and would have been better as a law?

You're right, but I see these types of orders as an effective way to build public support (assuming they're successful and popular) and make codified changes later on more likely.

Didn't work for Biden

He was incredibly successful at tackling hidden charges, and dark patterns, and extra fees tacked on after the fact

The country ate alive the nicest, most well meaning president we've ever actually had as far as I can tell

Although of course he was up against every media company in the nation, all, including social media, controlled by about... 8 people or whatever

Biden was nice. It turned out his screw up in his debate was that he came back from a foreign trip and was under some medication. He was tired on stage. Full blame goes to this team who did not call the debate off when they should have. (yes i judge in my arm chair)

I don't think anyone believes this versus age-related cognitive decline. There were too many other instances.

Yeah it can seem that way from afar. Those who knew him… knew him. And they said he was a nice guy, and did not say he was cognitively declining.

Part of the reason people liked him is he was not intrusive. He didn’t change his mind like Trump does.

He was too old, they should not have let him run again

A younger person didn’t do any better.

Please stop justifying geriatric presidents suffering clear cognitive decline, regardless of which side of the aisle they’re on.

The president needs to be clear-headed and cogent as much of the time as is reasonable. Biden is and was far beyond that. So is Trump for that matter.

This is where a dogged loyalty to the two-party system gets you. Desperately trying to engender sympathy for someone who went against every better instinct regarding politics and optics.

lol. I’m a Trump voter. It is not loyalty. It is sympathy, plus honesty. His failure was he was momentarily handicapped, tired. Not disabled. And he was a nice guy even though I didn’t agree with his politics.

The very idea of executive orders is antithetical to democracy, only necessary because Congress - in particular the Republicans - has abandoned the foundational idea in the American political system that the two large parties are able and willing to engage in bipartisan work and compromises.

Every US president starting with Washington has issued executive orders except for William Harrison. Harrison would have issued executive orders but he died 31 days into his term before he had time to.

Define foundational? The concept was heavily discouraged and only came about from personal feuds between Hamilton and Jefferson. They were never included in any official founding documents and Washington was right about them leading to "frightful despotism".

The democrats lost it on immigration enforcement (or lack thereof) and not knowing when to step aside for a new face.

All they had to do was two things after trump’s first term debacle: - keep to trump’s remain in Mexico policy - have a fair primary (or stick to the person picked in the fair primary)

We can blame democrats but there's also some real dysfunction in the US in terms of lack of education/critical thinking and relic ideas (guns, religion, white supremacism) that still lingers on. Trump did win the popular vote.

Trump did not win the popular vote this time around. Check your sources.

Trump did win the popular vote with a plurality at 49.8% to Harris’s 48.3%.

I will let people downvote you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...) because I can't

Guns are a part of the constitution. Those aren’t going anywhere. Unless someone wants to work towards an amendment - which means you need the president, 2/3 of Congress and senate and 2/3 of the states to agree.

> Guns are a part of the constitution. Those aren’t going anywhere.

So is due process, but that went out the window last year. It turns out that the constitution doesn't mean shit if the executive doesn't want to follow it.

You're pretending amendments don't exist but the right to have weapons is itself an amendment (:

Democrats lost, in part, by giving in to the republican narrative around immigration. They gave up on arguing that immigration can be good, and started accepting the republican framing of it as a problem to be solved. This strategy is doomed from the start, since republicans will always be willing to go harder on anti-immigration rhetoric and action than the democrats will.

According to Gallup [1], only 47% of US Americans thought that immigration should decrease in 2020. That number had held more or less steady since at least 2000. But it grew steadily over Biden's term, reaching 88% in 2024. This, I believe, is a reflection of how the democrats shifted their rhetoric to be "tough on immigration". And it handed Trump a populace that was primed to be more susceptible than ever to his much more aggressive immigration rhetoric.

Of course, this is just a small part of a much bigger picture, but I don't exactly think it helped.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...

Lack of immigration enforcement is nonsense. Enforcement ramped up under Obama and hasn't gone down since. We americans are just very dumb and buy into obviously bullshit stories about brown people stealing and eating cats.

The border controls were removed under Biden leading to a lot of illegal immigrants. Obama enforced but never stopped the flow. Trump had stopped the flow with remain in Mexico.

Domestic enforcement is 1/2 the problem. Controlling your border is the other half.

I’m baffled that you can look at the Democrats’ decades of running to the right on immigration and still blame their losses on not doing that enough. This is a perfect example of why ceding any ground to right-wing talking points is a mistake. Obama deported more people than any president before him and it never mattered because reality was never the point.

We have a gestapo kidnapping members of our community in the streets and the xenophobic propaganda still has you believing the most vulnerable and underpaid people in our society were ever a serious problem.

Im baffled that you can look at the polling numbers about the migrant fiascos in dem cities and come to any conclusion other than that it was one of the biggest political fuck ups this century. Republicans played urban dems like a fiddle calling their bluff on sanctuary city talk. The bussing programs made republicans look like problem solvers and dems look like the classic progressive trope of all bark no answers. Dems didnt need to close the borders or even slow down immigration, but they did need a real answer that isnt "this isnt a real problem" and they came up with nothing.

The migrants were a serious problem for democrats and youre still denying that.

Why is deep-red-rural America so concerned about the 'migrant fiasco' in the dem cities that they don't live in?

1. Theyre racist and xenophobic so they dont like migrants

2. They feel discriminated against by urban people so they dont like them either

3. Combine those two and its easy to see how they can revel in the suffering caused by the situation. Politics is about narratives and this one spread like wildfire because dems had no counter narrative. End of the day cities are dominated by democratic politics so its easy for republican narrative makers to point at cities that are failing to deal with a crisis and turn that into a reason to not vote for dems.

4. Everyone loves a good told you so. The problem for democrats with this one was that it was so incredibly visible. Made for very good TV on fox news

It's important to put this in the global context that every country in the free world shifted rightward post pandemic.

Even if the Democrats had run a perfect campaign they might not have won. And they probably came closer than many peer groups in other nations

I'm having a hard time even comprehending this. Most of the MSM propped him up and ignored his clear cognitive decline. That doesn't seem like he was up against every media company in the nation or eaten alive?

They are completely detached from reality.

Compare how Biden was covered whenever he made a gaffe to how the current president is covered when he gaffes constantly and you'll see what I mean.

For instance, Trump has said "oranges" instead of "origins", said that Hannibal Lector was a late and great person, praised pedophiles...

And where's the wall to wall coverage of that like there was when Biden screwed up that debate? Where's the weeks on end coverage of those stumbles? How come ABC doesn't even show the public when Trump calls _their own_ reporters piggy and tells them they're incompetent?

Not detached from reality, but thanks for the lame, no effort comment.

Similarly! Where were the weeks of coverage for the IRA which expanded energy production in this country (which most of my friends don't even know what the acronym stands for)

Where was the coverage for the semiconductor act which added 500bn in semiconductor manufacturing.

Biden wanted to do a land on the moon type quest to cure cancer, how much cooler would that have been for our nation than ICE raids on farm workers.

The man was incredibly successful, and barely anyone realizes that, and that's what I'm talking about.

Are we talking about Trump (his current cognitive decline) now or Biden last year? It’s not really clear since we have a geriatric presidency now.

He is not in cognitive decline. lol

He is geriatric though.

Really? Talk about denial, or abject lack of paying attention.

The idea Trump is not in cognitive decline is easily rent asunder by watching any clips of his recent speeches and comparing them to clips from 2016 and 2020.

He's falling asleep in meetings, confusing words, hearkening back to old time shit like flag burning, stumbling, can't walk in a straight line, tweeting rambling word salads filled with falsehoods all night long.

But again, this just proves my point.

> rambling word salads filled with falsehoods

tbf he was doing this when he was 40

How about we accept both Biden and Trump were and are in cognitive and physical decline, simply due to their age?

Biden was 78 when he assumed office, and so was Trump in his second term. Neither of them should have been in any position of power, not at that age - the average American has a life expectancy of ~75 years for males.

The position of the American President is inarguably the position with the most power, responsibility and stress in the world. Personally, I'd say if there is a floor cap of 35 years of age... there should be a ceiling cap as well. Pension age, or even lower.

I believe we should judge folk based on their actions not their gaffes personally.

Under Biden the US reduced inflation faster than any other peer country, reduced student loan debt by billions, secured 1 trillion in mostly green infrastructure investment, secured 500 billion in semiconductor manufacturing, had a low 4% unemployment rate, helped with the NATO expansion, supported Ukraine, fought for consumer protections, expanded transgender rights and visibility, and so much more.

Literally the most successful president in my lifetime, and all I hear is people tell me about how he couldn't do his job.

It just, doesn't mesh with reality. What it does mesh with is the messaging that's been pounded pounded pounded through everyone's heads for the last four years though.

Of course anyone trying to refute 15 lies in 60 seconds while actually performing the duties of his job (instead of say... tweeting, golfing, and calling women derogatory names while fostering hate, and rewarding sycophants with insider trades and contracts) and then also make their own point is going to fail.

Lots more people than Biden, who're a lot more physically fit would fail at debating serial liars and thugs like Trump.

> Under Biden the US reduced inflation faster than any other peer country, reduced student loan debt by billions, secured 1 trillion in mostly green infrastructure investment, secured 500 billion in semiconductor manufacturing, had a low 4% unemployment rate, helped with the NATO expansion, supported Ukraine, fought for consumer protections, expanded transgender rights and visibility, and so much more.

Indeed! But in politics, especially in the two-party systems that are the US and the UK, it is (almost) never about actual actions, policy and even campaign promises to a degree (because no one believes them any more). Individual voters often lack knowledge, context or empathy with others to recognize when stuff happens and if it is important.

In contrast, a politician's public image aka his "story" is much much more important. Even in a country like Germany which one might think focuses more on policy. We had incumbent Chancellor Schröder neck-deep in issues in 2002, then a historic flood disaster happened - and Schröder showed up in rubber boots while his competitor Stoiber was off vacationing. In the 2021 election, Armin Laschet didn't realize Steinmeier was talking on camera, someone cracked a joke or whatnot, he laughed - and got caught by said camera [2], which damaged his campaign so hard that he lost to Scholz.

Biden's age was already under discussion in his first term, and the critics were very vocal. There would have been the chance to set up Harris in the second half of his first term as a successor, prop her up into the spotlight and promise the voters continuation, the DNC didn't do that - and lost.

> Lots more people than Biden, who're a lot more physically fit would fail at debating serial liars and thugs like Trump.

Of course, of course. But still, I wish y'all had less gerontocrats in place.

[1] https://www.stern.de/politik/hochwasser--was-gerhard-schroed...

[2] https://www.rnd.de/politik/laschet-lacht-was-war-der-grund-u...

A lot of the changes you are referring to were probably implemented by Lina Khan's FTC.

Guess where Lina Khan is now.

Lina Khan is probably my favourite American official of all time. Everything I've seen of her is just focus and directly pushing forward rights for all Americans, and she wasn't afraid to square up against $tn companies.

The CFPB was a hub of good works as well.

> The country ate alive the nicest, most well meaning president we've ever actually had

Cf. Jimmy Carter

Maybe there are existing laws already in the books that can be leveraged as part of this EO. I know Lina Khan with FTC was focusing on this. And this is being taken up by the NYC administration where Lina was part of the transition team. Lina was in charge of seeing how to fulfill Mamdani's vision using the existing law system.

They’re not de facto laws like some of the presidential orders. He created a task force to research the issue and directed the municipal consumer and worker protection division to prioritize enforcement of existing laws.

I’d assume the goal of the task force is to propose new laws which should be pretty easy to get passed.

I can't speak for executive orders for a mayor, but I can say that executive orders of the president are anything but symbolic. Their scope was expanded significantly under Bush and Cheney, and they are binding for federal agencies. For example, they used executive order 13440 to circumvent a supreme court ruling that stated the Geneva convention applied to the people they illegally kidnapped and held at CIA black sites. This EO functioned by essentially weakening the definition of torture, so they could go on and torture the folks they captured.

So, while the next president can just undo executive orders made by any previous one, making them a bit ephemeral, they do have direct and real consequences going as far as torture.

It's interesting that 'banning junk fees and hidden charges' is part of a leftist political agenda according to this article:

> Protecting consumers, including renters, appears be a large part of Mr. Mamdani’s early agenda as mayor. The actions of Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, appear so far to indicate a willingness to govern based on a leftist political agenda.

Has the overton window just shifted so much that not wanting to get screwed by greedy con artists is communist now? Or is the perspective of the NYT's coverage skewed because they don't like this guy? It's weird.

According to this same article, the efforts seem to be a continuation of existing work that was happening before he got elected:

> In June, Letitia James, the attorney general, announced a $600,000 settlement with Equinox Group over the difficulty of ending a membership. Last month, she joined a multistate coalition that filed suit against Uber regarding the difficulty of canceling subscriptions.

Agendas are all how you frame them and a lot of time statements at a high-level can be misconstrued.

The left and right actually agree on a lot at a high-level but do not agree on how to tackle the problem.

> Has the overton window just shifted so much that not wanting to get screwed by greedy con artists is communist now?

In the context of US politics, progressive politics have been often labelled "communist" for around 100 years.

> According to this same article, the efforts seem to be a continuation of existing work that was happening before he got elected

Mamdani is not the first progressive politician in NYC

> Has the overton window just shifted so much that not wanting to get screwed by greedy con artists is communist now?

I've seen this dude described as an "islamo-communist" more than once in different countries' medias (not fringe medias). I presume "islamist" because muslim, and "communist" because he's left of the center-right. You can't really talk with these people anyways, they're too far gone

At the gym, which bombards us with propaganda on the telescreens, I saw him called a "jihadist communist". It was either Fox News or Newsmax. It's like they looked for the scariest word salad that would trigger their boomer audience.

I also doubt either channel can define communism or jihad correctly.

Americans called Joe Biden a communist. They called Barack Obama a communist. Even Hillary Clinton.

"Communist" in American political parlance is just a synonym for "Democrat" and has been since the days of the New Deal.

They know it when they see it!

He’s not just left of center-right, he’s literally a “democratic socialist” which is far, far left. His tenant advocate literally has called for seizing of private property.

> he’s literally a “democratic socialist” which is far, far left

For an US perspective, yes. From an European perspective... him and Bernie are center-left, if not centrist. The Overton window is positioned much more towards the authoritarian right in the US than it is here - although the huge amounts of American and Russian funding towards far-right parties have been shifting the window here as well for about a decade.

Mamdani is an American politician. Why would comparing him to European standards make sense?

Because Mamdani is not "far far left" unless you live in the American echo chamber which treats anything not right-wing as a leftist threat [1]. On a global stage, where actual political systems exist beyond America's basic, captured two-party system, the words "left" and "right" have established political meaning.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks...

Because in the US feeding kids for free in schools is seen as communism, but that's not what communism is. You can't say this dude is a communist or an islamist because words have a meaning and these meanings transcend American borders

It really isn't rocket science lol

because Americans are incredibly stupid when it comes to understanding class politics so they just throw words like marxist and communist around without knowing what they mean (source: I am American)

This, America has shifted to the extreme right by a lot and Mamdani policies which are more centrist are seen as extreme here

Wait until you hear about what the GOP has allowed energy companies to do with eminent domain... and the expansion plans they have recently called for.

Please don’t classify me as some sort of GOP supporter just because I am clarifying the parent post as to Mamdani’s self-admitted political classification.

I didn't say you support the GOP. I am saying that the seizure of private property has long standing political support in the US from both sides of their political spectrum. It is hardly a "far-left" idea.

Most of the left is very centrist (Biden, Buttigieg, Newsom, Kamala, etc.)

These damn leftists want people to be able live and prosper, I can't take it.

I have not seen any indication that Mamdani has advocated for violence to achieve his goal, so calling him a communist seems unfair, but I think he would also agree it is unfair to simply say he is "left of the center-right".

Mamdani seems very proud to be a socialist and you get a taste of it where he says "...the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment" and "..we have to continue to elect more socialists and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism", etc. He is very clear about his beliefs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K7HDuoJ0MQ

To give you a real answer, yes, the Overton window has shifted. Anything at all that is perceived as limiting what a business can charge or negotiate is considered leftist now. Banning junk fees is a limit on what businesses can charge/negotiate.

"Political agenda" does indeed stick out like a sore thumb there. "Policy" is the word they should have used.

Using the term "leftist" to describe something Nixon would do is absolutely a sign the Overton Window has shifted.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-11...

The ideology of Democratic Socialism has always been focused on helping low income and working poor people live better lives, and that manifests in action to put more money in their pocket. I suppose you more often hear about more indirect ways to do this (eg. trying to lower rent, create more subsidized low cost housing) but lowering fees puts more money in people's pocket and that is directly in the wheel house of Democratic Socialism.

So if this seems like Mamdani is doing something weird here, I think it's more that the twisted media framing of the left has pushed people to have a vision of it that is dissonant from its real ideology and goals.

It is leftist compared to the baseline of American politics, which is center-right compared to the opinions of the American people.

https://archive.is/4R8da

https://x.com/OnTheNewsBeat/status/1923610786683027484

Full text for the orders:

Junk Fees - Executive Order 09: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/01/executive-ord...

Subscription Traps: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/01/executive-ord...

Fuck yes. Does anyone know what is the appropriate (USA) government level for this? I.e., could something similar to implemented in State or Federal legislatures?

Reasonable people have been disagreeing on that since at least the late 18th century.

In a practical sense the right place is wherever it gets passed. If the United States is an experiment every legal jurisdiction is a laboratory.

Yes it can be done on the state level. California passes consumer protection laws all the time. Some of the recent ones are listed here. The problems is people are waiting for Congress or the President to do something when it could be enacted at the state level first and when there are enough support and consensus could be passed by Congress.

https://www.kcra.com/article/new-california-laws-in-2026-jan...

That's what you get when you elect a communist. What's next... cancellation fees, delivery app dark patterns, affordable housing??? We're doomed.

(Not an American, just an attempt at satire)

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