(Not) Lester Freamon 🦞

Next stop, $ABXX.NE to become $ABXX.TO 🇨🇦 We’re excited to be headed to the main board of the TSX. Shareholders have been asking for a while, so we’ve started the processes for main board listings as the business(es) scale (subject to meeting all requirements). 🇨🇦 🇸🇬 🇺🇸 This will also change our index eligibility as we’d now be technically eligible for S&P TSX and global small cap index’s as a first step once listed (with est. ~2mm shares of new baseline demand++ to drive more liquidity in our secondary listings — based on a tentative May listing timeline we will get a final confirmation if there’s a process to meet June rebalancing assessments for the main index, or later in the year).

It will soon be common knowledge that China has been pushing harmful policies from inside of our own country… DEI, absurd climate regulations, wealth taxes, soft-on-crime reforms, illegal immigration and even the anti-standardized test movement.

Can everyone stop trying to trade Barzal and Pelech? Thank you. #Isles

@MikeBartner They’re not shopping Pelech unless it’s a deal that’s so good they can’t refuse.

Kash Money’s amazing OHL playoff run is just further proof that Darche HAS to capitalize on Pelech’s trade value right now. Teams contending rn would lovvvveeee to add a shutdown 2nd pair LHD at sub 6M.

#Isles defenseman Matthew Schaefer and the Islanders Children’s Foundation are partnering with @NorthwellHealth to create a child support center named in memory of Schaefer’s late mother, Jennifer. As part of the partnership, the Islanders Children’s Foundation is donating $150,000 towards the Jennifer Schaefer Child Support Center, located at the R.J. Zuckerberg Cancer Center in New Hyde Park, which will provide a dedicated space for children while their parent undergoes cancer treatment. Read more: bit.ly/4wntdZ8

It is time for the United States Postal Service to ban junk mail. Unsolicited spam calls are already prohibited by the FCC. Emails are heavily regulated by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Junk mail is the majority of mail, 100 million trees per year. Enough!

@RTaub_ Only thing that shocks me is they didn’t draft his legacy.

Jackson Blake is a menace. Son of former Islander Jason Blake. This doesn’t shock me at all.

Jeff Bezos was born in Alberquerque to a 17 year old high school mom who divorced his alcoholic dad before Jeff was 2. He worked at McDonald's before his grades earned his way into Princeton. He started Amazon in a garage with a 245k investment from his parents. That's reality.

@mightyduckman69 @islanders_takes Who had him as a bottom pairing puck mover? The kid is an offensive weapon and hits like a Mack truck.

@islanders_takes Since you’ve watched him a ton more than I have how do you think he projects as a pro? Are we still looking at a bottom pairing puck mover with some bite to his game or has he moved up to second pairing potential?

I watch a ton of OHL hockey. Nearly as much as I watch the NHL. I have friends still buried in organizations, coaching, in the offices. I hear stories about these kids. And I'm telling you that nothing has changed my mind on a player as much as the stories I've been told about Aitcheson. I was lukewarm on him. I said the pick was good value but I saw him as a giant project in a draft that wasn't renown for its depth. But I was told things about Aitcheson. And when you watch the Barrie Colts this year - you can see what I've been told happening in real time. I've been told repeatedly that this kid is a leader everywhere on that squad. Off ice, on ice, in the gym. I've been told that his intensity, his snarl, has infected that squad and those kids look up to him. The Colts up and down the roster are extremely physical. They contest every puck, every pass, every inch of the wall. I still believe they are far from the most talented team but they are swarming KIT all over the place and just punishing them all over. Two years ago and this team was a losing squad. The transformation has been effort first all the way. Aitcheson is visbly a huge, huge part of that.

In 458 BC, Rome was on the brink of collapse. An invading army had trapped the Roman consul and his legion in a mountain pass. Panic spread through the city. The Senate did the only thing they could think of: They sent messengers to find a 60-year-old farmer plowing his field. His name was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. He had once been a senator, then lost his fortune paying his son's bail. Now he worked his own four-acre plot just to feed his family. When the Senate's envoys arrived, they found him sweating behind a plow. They asked him to put on his toga so they could deliver an official message. The message: Rome was making him dictator. Absolute power. Total command of the army. No checks. No oversight. No term limit. He accepted. Within 16 days, Cincinnatus had raised an army, marched out, surrounded the enemy, and forced their surrender. The republic was saved. He had legal authority to rule for six months. He could have stayed. He could have expanded his power. He could have done what every other ruler in human history did when handed unlimited control. Instead, he resigned on day 16. He took off the toga, walked back to his farm, and finished plowing the field he'd left half-done. Twenty years later, when Rome faced another crisis, they called him back. He was 80 years old. He took command, crushed the conspiracy, and resigned again, this time after just 21 days. He died poor. On his farm. 2,200 years later, when George Washington was offered a kingship after winning the American Revolution, he refused and went home to Mount Vernon. The reason he was hailed as "the American Cincinnatus" is because Europeans literally could not believe a man who had won would willingly give up power. King George III, on hearing Washington would resign rather than rule, said: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." The lesson isn't that Cincinnatus was humble. The lesson is that for most of human history, the people most qualified to lead were the ones who didn't want to. And the moment a society starts rewarding those who chase power instead of those who flee from it is the moment the republic begins to die. Cincinnati, Ohio is named after him. Most people who live there have no idea why.

I am the Chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust. Eighty-four years old. Seven buildings in Midtown Manhattan. I said what I said. I said "tax the rich" is the equivalent of a racial slur. I said it at REBNY. Into the microphone. Eight hundred people. Median net worth in that room was north of $240 million, I know because our CFO ran the guest list through a Bloomberg terminal as a joke, and then it wasn't a joke. And when I said it, twelve people applauded. The rest nodded. One woman in the third row mouthed, "Finally." I saw her. Sharon, my communications advisor, Columbia, $430,000 a year, very bright, Sharon wants me to walk it back. She drafted something. "Mr. Roth's comments were intended to highlight the emotional impact of political rhetoric on business communities." I read it. I put it in the trash can on my desk. Not the recycling. The trash. Here's my clarification: I understated it. "Tax the rich" is worse than a slur. A slur is just a word. It doesn't come with a CBO score. Nobody is introducing a bill called the Racial Slur Implementation Act of 2026. But there are seventeen active proposals in Congress, I had Sharon count them, seventeen proposals designed to take more of my money. My money. Mine. Money I acquired by being better at acquiring Manhattan commercial real estate than anyone alive for four consecutive decades. That is not a crime. That is a record. I pay property taxes on $18.2 billion in assessed assets. $412 million a year. Say it again: four hundred and twelve million. I carry that number. It's the first thing I think about when I see a protest sign. I think: I pay more in property tax than the entire annual budget of the city of Fort Lauderdale. I looked this up. Fort Lauderdale: $408 million. Steve Roth: $412 million. I am a small city. And the city doesn't get screamed at. My effective tax rate last year was 11.4 percent. I say this because I believe in transparency and because I'm not ashamed of it. The rate reflects the legal structure of real estate investment trusts, depreciation schedules Congress established in 1986, and carried interest provisions that both parties have voted to preserve for forty years. I did not write these laws. I organized my entire financial existence around them with the help of nine full-time tax professionals who have offices on the 38th floor of 888 Seventh Avenue, which I also own. Their office is in my building. Their work protects my buildings. This is not a loophole. Sharon calls it a loophole. I've told her: a structure maintained by nine attorneys across four decades is not a loophole. A loophole is something you slip through once. This is architecture. This is the foundation. This is the building. Last Tuesday, same as every Tuesday, I walked past 1290 Sixth Avenue. My building. And there was a man. Same man as last week. Same sign: "Billionaires Pay Your Fair Share." He was standing on my sidewalk. My literal sidewalk — my company owns the ground lease. He was maybe thirty. He was wearing a jacket I would estimate cost $60. My lunch that day was $114. For one. I am telling you this not to boast but because these are facts. He has decided I'm his enemy. Based on a number he saw on a Forbes list. He doesn't know what I pay. He doesn't know what my buildings cost this city in construction jobs and lease revenue and foot traffic. He knows one number. He has made one judgment. I see him every Tuesday. I've started to notice things. He brings coffee from the cart, not the Starbucks. He has a backpack that looks heavy. He doesn't look unhealthy. He looks like he probably works somewhere, but not on Tuesdays. I've wondered: does he have a job? Does he have a building? Does he have anything that depends on him the way 4,200 employees depend on me? I suspect not. And yet he has opinions about my tax rate. I gave $22 million to charity last year. The Met. NYU Langone. Mount Sinai. I gave a building to NYU. Not money for a building — a building. The Steven Roth Residence Hall. It houses 400 students. That man with the sign has never housed 400 students. He hasn't housed one. He gives cardboard. I give structures. This is not a comparison I'm making to flatter myself. It's just arithmetic. When I said what I said at REBNY, I was saying what every person in that room believes and none of them will say publicly because they have communications advisors and the communications advisors all went to Columbia and they all say "unhelpful." I'm eighty-four. I'm too old for helpful. I'm too old to perform restraint for people who hate me for something I can't change. I didn't choose to be rich. I chose to be good at one thing for a very long time, and this is what happened. You don't punish someone for that. You don't legislate against someone for that. My net worth fluctuates between $3.8 and $4.1 billion depending on the quarter. I fluctuate more in a fiscal week than that man on my sidewalk will earn in his life. Both of these are facts. Only one of them is considered polite to say. They want me to apologize. I'll be dead in ten years. Twenty if I'm lucky. And they'll still be renting my buildings.

Ken Griffin started Citadel in a Harvard dorm room in 1987 with $265,000 raised from friends and family. He put a satellite dish on the roof of his building, ran a cable through an old elevator shaft, and pulled it through his window to get real-time stock quotes. In the 24 months before the 2008 financial crisis, Citadel earned $13 billion in trading profits. More than Amazon had made in its entire history at that point. Then Lehman failed. Citadel lost hundreds of millions of dollars a week. CNBC parked a van outside their office waiting to break the story of their collapse. By the end of 2008 they had lost half their capital. Here is how they survived. Every single day, they did whatever it took to buy one more day. Sold assets. Closed business lines. Let people go. Suspended redemptions. The management team personally absorbed $500 million in costs to show their investors they believed in the firm's future. One painful decision at a time. No putting things off. "Often the choice was between painful and more painful. But day by day, we bought ourselves a future." The lesson Griffin took from it came from Andrew Carnegie: take away my factories, my ships, my money, strip me of everything. Leave me my people. In two or three years I will have it all again.

@ucienemk @IslesTerritory Not just any rookie…

@IslesTerritory Not hating , but why did they choose a rookie to be in that NOBULL commercial?

Matthew Schaefer explaining the NHL Draft Lottery featuring the Martin girls. The best thing you will see today. #Isles

@islesfan777 @IslesCave In this day and age these kids are able to come in and make an impact, no way you trade that unless you’re getting a haul.

@IslesCave I’d trade the pick if possible to improve current roster and still protect guys we already have

The #Isles win the NHL Draft lottery and select 3rd overall. Who do you pick and why?

@RTaub_ @TDA7724 No one else deserves a resigning more than him. Not sure how they make it work with these young guys coming in but I hope they find a way.

Tony DeAngelo (@TDA7724) on “Morning Cuppa Hockey” on being a pending UFA: “I love the Islanders, I’ll tell you that. I love being here. The team’s been good to me since I got here. Great group of guys. I love being here.” #Isles

@TheStalwart Bookmarked so I can revisit in 2030.

Love the optimism of anyone who thinks that if they watch a one hour lecture they’ll have a marketable skill with that much money.

@UziCryptoo #1 reason I’ll never move back east. My grandparents and their siblings all got pushed out of their homes even with senior discounts.

My dad sold the house I grew up in back in 1999. It's 60 years old, 2,500 SF, on a third of an acre on Long Island NY. If he owned it today the property taxes would be about $2,600. Not bad right? The problem is that's per month not per year. Yup, 33K a year in property taxes! Property taxes should be illegal.