The Mayor-Elect of Washington, DC, a self-described Democratic Socialist who followed the example of her New York City counterpart, Zorhan Mamdani, vowed to open the doors to the municipal treasury, raise the floodgates, and turn on the spigots to send uncountable millions down the sluice to the inner city.
'Black folk done suffer enough', she said, standing by a wall-sized graph showing how DC wealth will be redistributed through a steady flow from the white wards of the city to the all black ones. 'We goin' take what's ours', she said, and in that one defiant, historic, and defiant statement exposed the blatant racism endemic in DC government.
The cornerstone of the new punitive, redistributive policy is a wealth tax - a tax of individual and corporate wealth that cannot be sheltered. No matter how creative the financial instruments, no matter how many trusts, no matter how many layered investments, and no matter how many loopholes, and complex configurations, wealth will be taxed.
'You think you can hide yo' money', said the Mayor Elect, 'ain't no where to hide it in my administration, honey'.
Pharoah Jones, the King of Anacostia, the heart of Washington's inner city neighborhoods was invited to the Mayor Elect's administration headquarters to discuss just how to cover the money ready to flow down the Anacostia River. There was no shilly-shallying between friends (Jones had delivered Ward 8 with a plurality that any politician would envy) - the money was his to distribute as he saw fit.
The Mayor was an astute political observer, and she had watched the Somali fraud with interest. The City of Minneapolis had siphoned tens of millions of dollars into the hands of Somali Bernie Madoffs without giving the gift a second thought. The politicians deemed the poor, immigrant communities deserving of unquestionable generosity and therefore authorized liberal grants for self-improvement. Daycare centers would provide a needed institutional home for children whose mothers worked and at the same time give them a solid pre-school education. Looking any further than the signatures on the contract would be intrusive, racist, and presumptuous.
'What can we learn from them?', the Mayor Elect asked Jones who had been a master of turning Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry's walkin' around money - chicken feed compared to what was now coming - into a bonanza for his people. No show jobs, earnest money, and investment in the lucrative 'underground economy' were all hallmarks of Pharoah Jones' canny management of municipal funds.
'Democratic Socialism is my cover, sweetheart', told Pharoah Jones, 'you figure out something blacker than black on your end'; and so a deal was struck. The Mayor Elect put the final touches on her inaugural speech announcing her radical new plan for income redistribution ('The wealthiest in our city will pay their fair share; and those who are deserving will get theirs') and Jones returned across the river to set up a financial shell game worthy of Jeffrey Skilling of Enron and Bear Stearns, let alone Mohammed Bari recently of Mogadishu.
And so it was that finally and at long last there was a real, remunerative contract between the governed and the governing. Mayor Barry could only dream of such genius. Imagine! A Socialist Mayor with the support of her progressive shills in Congress who in the name of diversity and inclusivity believed in the moral righteousness of robbing the rich to pay the poor. What could be more ideal?
'I want to meet with the President', the Mayor Elect said, 'with the big white man who goin' pay me some respect. 'R-E-S-P-C-T, y'all'. I'll show that muthafucka who de boss in Washington.'
'Mamdani ain't got nothin' on me', she added remembering the Oval Office lovefest when the Democratic Socialist Mayor Elect of New York City was invited to the White House.
Residents of white Ward 3 saw this coming but had little choice. There was no space between the candidates in the Democratic primary, the dc facto mayoral race - they were all far-left politicians who promised the same 'fairness', the same obsession with equity, and the same redistributive passion as the new mayor.
Yet these same residents were uniformly progressive, inveterate Trump-haters who endorsed every item in the canon - climate change, open borders, DEI, world peace, environmental sanity and all the rest. As such they were supportive of every municipal administration's attempts to help rescue the black man from white oppression.
These liberals put up with the worst of Mayor Barry's dismissiveness, and even with his famous trifecta of fuck-you to white Washington - 'It'll melt', referring to his indifference to plowing the white wards that voted against him; 'Get over it', referring to his yet-again overwhelming electoral victory without white support; and 'The bitch set me up', a reference to his arrest in an FBI sting - they stuck by his Chocolate City initiatives.
This was different. White residents with two-million dollar homes, an EV Lexus in the garage and two children in private school, now faced with an insupportable tax bill, were at sixes and sevens. Despite their liberal convictions, they had sheltered their income so that the District would not get a penny; but now this wealth tax would wipe them out. For the first time in decades, they began to complain.
'Fuck 'em', said the Mayor Elect. 'Our brothers and sisters in Congress goin' open up the treasury for us black folk', and right she was. Those Democrats, most of whom favored if not endorsed Democratic Socialism, would be quite willing to give the white man the comeuppance he for so long deserved and raise the black man to the pinnacle of society where he belonged. The new Mayor would have nothing at all to worry about if the white man left the city.
The Mayor Elect was delighted at the blue wave rout of the Republicans in the recent midterm elections and an insurmountable Democratic majority in both House and Senate. Pharoah Jones didn't agree. He loved Donald Trump. Fuck Obama, Trump was the first black president with his love of bling, booty, and street sense.
National allegiance was irrelevant, however, and money was to be made right here and now in Anacostia, the District of Columbia.
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