My biggest worry for the week is that some jerks will show up at the New York City September 11 observance to protest Mayor Mamdani. On social media one cannot mention Mayor Mamdani without attracting hoards of bigots, often saying that NYC “forgot” 9/11 when they elected a Muslim mayor. In their minds all Muslims are personally responsible for 9/11, it seems.

Note that Zohran Mamdani was nine years old and enrolled in elementary school in upper Manhattan on the day the towers fell. And he is a Shia Muslim. The perpetrators were from a radical Sunni faction that doesn’t get along with many other Muslims. I don’t think the Mayor was in on it.

Mayor Mamdani has accomplished quite a lot in just eight months. He approved a rent freeze for one- and two-year leases on rent-stabilized apartments. He won $34 million in repairs, settlements, and judgments from bad landlords. He upgraded over 6,000 apartments through tenant enforcement actions. He got new rules adopted to speed up the removal of scaffolding. (That may not seem like a big deal, but scaffolding that goes up and never comes down is a big issue in Manhattan.) He secured $1.2 billion in funding to expand free child care for low-income families. He’s providing free child care seats for toddlers in partnership with the state. 100,000 potholes were filled. He created a dedicated park repair team to fix broken playground equipment, basketball hoops, and sports courts. He got public sports facilities, including tennis courts in the Bronx, resurfaced and renovated. He closed an inherited city budget deficit. His administration recovered $9.3 million for workers and small businesses affected by wage theft or infractions. There’s a lot more in the works, but that’s the stuff that can be checked off. He’s like the Energizer Bunny of mayors.

Of course, a lot of people just can’t get past his being Muslim. So they are certain he’s a fraud. I suspect a lot of these people are the same ones giving Trump his 33 percent approval rating.

One issue that comes up a lot is that Mamdani inherited a $12 billion budget deficit spanning fiscal years 2026 and 2027 from former Mayor Eric Adams. The budget has been balanced for 2027. I understand New York City has received about $5.5 billion in financial assistance and gap-closing support from New York State this year. This set off screams of “other people’s money!” and “Just wait until the bill comes due!” They are predicting NYC will go bankrupt.

However, for many years taxes from New York City have provided New York State with about 55 percent of its total revenue. Last year NYC and its taxpayers gave the state $68.8 billion. To a large extend the city has been subsidizing the state for a very long time. $5.5 billion to keep the cash cow healthy seems a good investment.

There’s a massive amount of wealth in NYC. New York City has 384,500 millionaires, the most resident millionaires of any city in the world. And no, they aren’t moving out. It has the New York Stock Exchange and the North American headquarters of about every major bank and financial institution on the planet. It’s the bleeping galactic capital of capitalism, for pity’s sake. It seems to me a small tax hike on the big shots would be less expensive for them than moving their long-established operations elsewhere.

Anyway, a recent Siena College poll found that 69 percent of New Yorkers approve of Mayor Mamdani. I’m not sure 69 percent of New Yorkers have ever approved of anything. But I just hope a bunch of bigoted jerks don’t show up at the memorial observance.

In other news — Canada’s counter-tariffs on U.S. goods go into effect at midnight tonight. It might be a good time to stock up on toilet paper.

Interesting read: Neo-Nazis and the Impotence of Trumponomics by Paul Krugman.