Straight Talk with Bill Frady 7/6/26 Hour 3 - Frady profiles socialists, tracks Rasmussen’s civic project, defends Caitlin Clark, and forecasts a SCOTUS rent appeal.

What this episode covers

Here is the full transcript from the audio clip: Bill Frady: Well, New York City has uh just announced a multi-year rent freeze. Zohran Mamdani, well, he's always trying to tell people there, "I want your money, and I'm going to tell you how much you can make, by the way." And the tenants groups and the left-wing activists are all cheering this, but this is headed for a judicial smackdown at the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2023 and twice in 2024, a very hesitant Supreme Court would not hear challenges by building owners to New York State's state uh rent regulations. Lower courts had ruled that regulations diminish the value of rental property, but the state had good reasons to balance the rights of owners with the need to protect tenants. Clarence Thomas says the constitutionality of New York's rent regulations is an important and pressing question, and he look forward to the case that clearly demonstrated the government was going too far to take an owner's property, which is exactly what this is. Mamdani is giving Thomas what he's been waiting for, on a platter. Moscow Mamdani scheme to deny landlords any rent hikes at all reeks of the kind of expropriation of private property that occurs in Cuba, Venezuela, and other socialist nations. It's actually prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. Fifth Amendment bars government from imposing regulations that make a person's property worthless. And everybody who owns anything—a home or a business—should feel threatened by the Bolshevik scheme to deny building owners fair compensation, doom rental properties to rapid decay, and then seize their building. Because after they get rid of the landlord, what are they going to do then? So, under the framework established by the New York State Legislature, the Rent Guidelines Board must determine allowable rent hikes based on the specific costs landlords incur. But Mamdani's hand-picked RGB members threw the letter of the law out the window. Fuel costs went up 11% in the last year, insurance went up 10 and a half percent, but the RGB announced Thursday that landlords will get no increases this year or the next. According to his campaign promises, not even in the years after, as long as he is mayor. Zero rent hikes is going to be bad in New York. Uh just when the—which is what the new mayor intends. May 29th, he announced that when landlords fail to keep buildings up to code, we will take aggressive legal action to transfer ownership to responsible stewards, stewards that include community land trusts, nonprofits, and even the tenants themselves, which, by the way, that's just theft. Now, New York law already allows that, but only under extreme circumstances. That applied to fewer than 30 properties in 2024 and generally doesn't result in permanent confiscation. But this is going to turn a lot of landlords into targets because they'll lack the revenue to keep the apartments up to code. The rent freeze deliberately creates the conditions for widespread confiscation, and the building owners will get zip out of that. This is like Bolshevik Moscow in 1917. Last Thursday, RGB member Christina Smith, appointed by former mayor Eric Adams, resigned in protest just hours before the vote. She said the freeze was decided last year on the campaign trail, and she offered to help anyone willing to wage a legal battle. "If so, I will do everything I can to assist them in being successful." It's worth noting that a lawsuit already filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against New York City and the RGB also has a significant shot at success. And it focuses on the narrow case of what the real estate industry calls "zombie apartments" that cannot be rented because of a 2019 law, state law allowed owners to recover only $50,000 for repairs, far less than what it would cost to get apartments up to code. Currently, there's 57,000 zombie units that are sitting vacant and worthless to the owners. And this is going to take two to th ...

Distinct summary based on available episode metadata or transcript content.