Now that the Republican National Convention has ended, here are some statistics: there are 520,000 Republicans in New York City (and 2,700,000 Democrats), meaning they roughly one in fourteen of us. Their convention has been estimated by the city comptroller to have cost the city’s economy about 309 million dollars, of which 281 million is economic losses caused by the closure of businesses and residents’ flight from the city. The remaining amount was government spending for convention security, which cost a total of 78 million, of which 50 million was federal monies. New Yorkers, with the highest tax burden in the nation, paid 28 million dollars of their tax money in order to secure members of a political party with a tiny local following by pre-emptively incarcerating… ourselves.
