1) New Yorkers Choose Socialism

Democrats won the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey after nominating two relatively moderate members of the U.S. House and expanded control of their state legislatures.  

Things were so bad in Virginia that voters elected nutcase Jay Jones - who mused about killing his political opponents and desecrating their graves - Attorney General.  It's important to remember that both states trend Democratic. Neither has voted Republican for president in over 20 years.  

In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won with 50% of the vote.

The key to Mamdani's victory was twofold: First, Cuomo was a nincompoop governor who locked down the state's entire economy during Covid and ordered infected patients into nursing homes - a fatal decision which killed scores of elderly residents.  

Second, Mamdani focused his entire campaign on "lowering the cost of living for working class New Yorkers." Too many voters accepted his ideas for government-owned grocery stores and free buses even though they were half-baked and unrealistic - as even the New York Times warned.

For non-New Yorkers, just to give you a sense of how looney-tunes the newly elected mayor is, in his victory speech he quoted from the early 20th century socialist Eugene V. Debs. Now there’s a blast from the past.

New York is anything but a bellwether for American attitudes or leanings. But these election results do illustrate the ever/widening political divide between red state and blue city America. It's a sad day that liberal radicals will now be running our three largest cities - New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - on promises of lots of free things paid for by raising taxes on the richest 1%.

Why not give it a try? It worked so well for Fidel Castro.

2) Is the Stock Market Overvalued?

That's the age-old question and one that we are in no position to answer.  We simply live by the iron law of investing: stocks for the long run.  

But this chart in the WSJ yesterday gave us pause. The PE ratio for stocks is the second highest that it's been in fifty years.  

The WSJ calls these high price to earnings ratios in "nose bleed territory."

PE ratios always seemed a bit backwards looking to us - after all, every start-up begins with a PE ratio of infinity.

But for what it's worth, smarter people than us, like Nobel prize winner Robert Shiller swear by it.

3) Stop With the Price Controls, Please

This headline scares us:

According to the Wall Street Journal, the "deal" would require "drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to allow the lowest doses of some of their obesity drugs to be sold to consumers at $149 for a month's supply via TrumpRx."

No, no, no. A thousand times NO!

We love the idea of allowing manufacturers to sell direct-to-patients and have supported regulatory changes to allow a direct sales channel to compete with insurance/pharmacy sales. But in a free market, buyers and sellers set prices, not politicians. If drug makers believe that this or any administration will set floors on their prices, the amount of investment dollars for finding cures will start to dry up.

This is a short term gain for a lot of long term pain.

4) Ranking the Presidents - From Heroes to Zeroes

Prager U recently surveyed hundreds of conservative scholars asking them to rank the presidents from best to worst.  Most of the rankings of presidents by liberal historians put those chief executives who expanded federal powers and federal debt most as "the greatest."  That's why one of our worst presidents, Woodrow Wilson is often ranked in the top 10 or 15.

We did this ourselves a couple years ago at UP and there's a lot of similarities, though we have a few minor quibbles with the Prager ratings.

Still, we think these are much better than the standard rankings that make it into the history textbooks and the newspapers, so we list the top 9 and bottom 9 below.

5) Eric Holder Wants To Pack the Supreme Court

Eric Holder, who described himself as Barack Obama's "wingman" when he was Attorney General, has been emboldened by the strong showing by Democrats in this week's election.

He told the liberal news outlet Meidas Touch it's time for progressives to implement "substantive reforms" of the Supreme Court, calling it "a broken institution" that was causing "an untold amount of damage to the fabric" of the country.

Holder is pleased that many lower courts are blocking President Trump's initiatives and says, "It's only when you get to the Supreme Court that you see these problems start to arise." What “problems” is he talking about?

If the 2028 elections lead to the Left recapturing the White House, he says "expanding the court is something I think that should be considered."

We agree with Holder on one point: there should be a national conversation about whether to expand the size of the Court. And a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices would make sense.

But the Court was meant to be the “xxxxxx of our freedoms” and it doesn’t sound like Holder wants more, but less freedom in America.

6) Everyone’s Leaving

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