New York State's housing crisis has gotten so bad that the Democrats in charge of this fiasco are willing to try anything to solve the problem — anything, in traditional leftist fashion, except the actual solution.  That "anything" includes reverting to their authoritarian instinct, the same one that locked down their state during the pandemic, while my native Florida stayed open and prospered.  Florida easily prevented the falsely predicted killing fields of COVID deaths by allowing natural immunity to do what nature does.  Big Pharma overrode nature and made vast profits.  Big government got bigger.  Under New York's draconian lockdowns, the people paid a heavy price, but fared no better, health-wise, than we did in Florida.  The alarmists were wrong, but they remain unapologetic.

New York State residents have been emigrating to other states for many years now, taking with them their wealth — wealth that  leftist government officials were taxing as if that wealth belonged to them, not their constituents.  Unfortunately, many of the émigrés also exported their voting habits.

This creates problems in other states, including mine, to where many of the tax refugees are moving.  Why is New York taxation a problem for me?  Because New York voters, who repeatedly vote for the very Democrats who are ruining their state, continue to do so when they arrive in Florida, Texas, Georgia, et cetera.  Yes, they complain about high taxation in New York, but then they inexplicably vote for higher taxes in Florida.  I know — I have personally had brief conversations with some of them.  They suffer from stunningly severe cognitive dissonance, saying they will continue to vote Democrat because Democrats "care about people." 

If one defines "caring" as imposing ruinous taxation on the people who pay the state's bills, stuffing nursing homes with lethal contagion, and housing illegal aliens in luxury hotels while disabled American war veterans die on sidewalks, then yes, but this kind of so-called compassion is what New Yorkers are fleeing.  Their motto is long live the Rainbow Revolution, down with Republicans.  Mine is carry on with your self-destruction if you insist, but please, not in my state. 

Democrats have become masters of deception, puppeteers of the terminally gullible.  New York governor Kathy Hochul uttered these flowery words of compassion while announcing her so-called solution to New York's housing crisis: 

The whole objective is so families can stay in New York, kids can raise their own families where they grew up, employers don't have to worry about whether or not there's going to be employees in a community because they'll have a place to live.

So, then, what is the solution?  Is it to lower taxes?  Of course not.  Is it to permit local authorities, responsive to their constituents and accountable to them, to tailor solutions to meet the problems?  Heaven forbid!  No, they do what socialists always do: force their policies on the peasants, to supposedly solve the problems the Democrats created.  Quoting from MSN:

As part of her [Hochul's] push, the state would be granted new powers to override local zoning laws [italics mine] in communities that are not onboard with her vision of creating denser developments which she feels would finally tackle housing shortages in the state, and especially in the New York City suburbs, where homeowners pay some of the highest property taxes in the country. 

Please understand that I have no sympathy for the Martha's Vineyard mentality, the one that urges more compassion for illegals so long as they stay in El Paso and ruin that city.  New York Democrats share that same despicable attitude, but that does not mean they should forfeit their right to govern themselves.  Albany should not burden localities with the mistakes made in Albany, no more so than El Paso should suffer because of the federal government's deliberate failure to control the border.  Yes, New York Democrats voted for those failures, but Schadenfreude is not a solution. 

If it were, I would say, "Now that New Yorkers are being threatened from Albany with socialist rule, let them eat cake — but let them eat it in New York, not in the South."

Image: Wikipedia.