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Ben de Jong
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Oct 3, 2026
Ben DeJong for House District 78: A Local Libertarian Race in the Shadow of the Hudson Break
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17:26BrianHOST
So what would you tell, like, if I was the pure activist compared to, and you're the actual, you know, getting your hands dirty type person?
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17:37Ben de JongGUEST
Yeah, I mean, it kind of comes down to the fact that even though I'm a libertarian and I'm very principled, I'm also elected to represent the population.
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17:45Ben de JongGUEST
And the population is more often than not, is not going to be as principled as I am.
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17:51Ben de JongGUEST
And you do have to sometimes strike that balance of what do I want versus what is, what is the, what is the population want? And then what is best for the city? You know, you kind of have to juggle sometimes a lot of different, you know, competing narratives or, you know, uh, not just narratives, but a lot of competing, the will of, you know, anytime you deal with people on a larger scale, you know, we have recently some land that came up for sale and the developer who is looking at developing some apartments, you know, he wanted to use a loophole called Brownfield TIF, which is a way to basically kind of borrow from your initial tax base of what the future property would be worth to pay the initial building fees for the building.
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18:46Ben de JongGUEST
So it's a way to kind of steal taxes that you would be paying in the future and spending it now.
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18:53Ben de JongGUEST
And it's a government solution to a government problem, which I'm not a big fan of at all.
17 MINS LATER
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36:21BrianHOST
there, do you have an idea?