New York's socialist mayor, Bill de Blasio, has always touted himself as the champion of the working man, the little guy, the people of color. After all, he toured the Soviet Union during the bottom of the Cold War in 1983, spent his pricy honeymoon in communist Cuba, and went to Nicaragua to 'serve' the Sandinista communist revolution.

So his upcoming move Tuesday, to limit the number of Ubers and Lyfts in New York, in the inevitable comradely style of the Soviet nomenklatura, is going over like a lead balloon among the poor of New York, particularly in the outer boroughs. The socialist's socialist claims he's just trying to cut congrestion and raise the wages of Uber drivers. It sounds so ... socialist. But nobody ever called New Yorkers stupid and what they see really going on is he's cut them off at the knees. 

Especially the poor and the little guys. Here's what ran on a Bronx community bulletin board on Facebook Friday, from writer Ruth Papazian, who lives there and knows the deal:

Remember what life was like before Uber?

1. You stand on some Manhattan street with your arm in the air trying to wave down a cab. If it's raining, cab after cab zooms by without stopping because there's aleady a passenger inside. If you need a cab during a shift change, there are no cabs on the streets at all.

2. You've been standing on the street waving your arm in the air, and a cab is finally in view, the driver slows down as he approaches you, sees you're black and zooms past you.

3. You've been standing on the street waving your arm in the air, and a cab is finally in view, the driver slows down as he approaches you, sees you're not black and stops so you can get in. You give him a Bronx address. He refuses to take you, because the trip will take at least 25 minutes each way and he will not have a fare on the way back to Manhattan. He kicks you out of the cab.

4. You're in Morris Park and need to get to Riverdale. The trip will require riding buses on two to three routes, or a bus and a subway, or a subway downtown to Manhattan where you can switch to a an uptown line that goes to the Riverdale area.

If the City Council wants to limit e-hail cars in Manhattan, that's one thing. But don't leave the millions of New Yorkers who live in The Bronx and the other Outer Boroughs in the lurch.

Bronxites have the longest commutes of any other New Yorkers, and the fewest transportation options. Make sure all of our elected officials -- not just on the city council -- know that you don't want them to leave you stranded with this misguided plan.

Make no mistake: This isn't about congestion. It's about campaign contributions from medallion owners who don't want the value of their investment to be further eroded as we abandon a street hail system that never served Bronxites in favor of an e-hail system that does.

Since I've lived in the South Bronx, pre-Uber, I know exactly what this writer is talking about. Oh, what a lowering in the quality of life of the Bronx residents that Uber crackdown is going to be. Same for the people who live in the boonies of Queens, and the rough parts of Brooklyn, and I don't want to even think about Jersey or Staten Island. People are going to be traveling for hours, exhausted, unable to get basic transportation except the subway and absolutely nothing they can do about it.

What's more, the bulletin boards of New York are rife with talk of what this really looks like, which is a bid to raise the value of taxi medallions, which the city profits from, and which well-connected political cronies get their hands on. (Such as President Trump's now-ex lawyer, Michael Cohen, a medallion owner whose net worth should rise.) New Yorkers know that's always been a corrupt racket.

Quite an achievement for a socialist champion of the little guy, taking away their taxis in the rain. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg only went after their salt shakers on their diner tables. This guy goes after their transport. Which shows the rest of us again what happens under socialism.

You've got to hope they'll finally get 'woke' and start protesting the heck against him, because obviously de Blasio has dismissed the interests of New York's ever-stressed working class and has just handed them a s-- sandwich.

Image Credit: Kevin Case, via Flickr, and Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0