Cuomo's Two Troubles

 Governor Andrew Cuomo is in political trouble this week for a couple of reasons. He sent people with active cases  of Covid back to nursing homes leading  to the infection and deaths of thousands of people, lied about the number of people who died, and got caught in his lie. He also has been accused by several women of groping or sexually harassing them. Some organizations are covering both stories, but many people in the traditional media are reporting on the second story and ignoring the first. Almost all Democrat Party politicians are doing the same.

At first that must seem odd. Boorish remarks toward women and a case or two of unwanted grabbing are bad things, but they are so far less bad than negligently killing people and lying about it as to make them almost irrelevant in judging the man and his fitness to stay in office.  Yet Democrats and their public relations people in the traditional media are behaving as though the reverse were true.

I can think of a couple of reasons why. One is the desire to maintain and stick to the theme that Democrat governors and officials uniformly handled the epidemic wisely and effectively while Republicans did not.  Telling the truth about Cuomo’s failure would be implicitly admitting  the story was false and might lead to having to face doubts about the behavior of Newsom, Whitmer, and various others and even to questions about whether some of the decrees and power grabs were necessary or even productive.

Another reason might be simple embarrassment. Throughout the first months of the epidemic Democrat politicians and people in the traditional media treated Cuomo as a hero and near genius for his handling of it. They gave him awards and touted him as the obvious relief pitcher to be held ready to step in as their candidate for president in case Biden’s mental decline became too obvious to hide.   One can see how it might be a little deflating to have to admit what he was and did. It also might make cynical people wonder whether they can trusted to be accurate about anything political.  

Of course both of those guesses make the charitable assumption that they are suppressing the story only for reasons of expediency and not because they  really believe the killing of to them insignificant old people is less an offence than rudely  inconveniencing a few women of a quality and type similar to their own.  There are some cases in which that assumption would be very charitable indeed.

New York, New York

That many politicians are vulgar, larcenously avaricious grifters and extortionists who would tax the gold out of the freshly deceased’s teeth if they could get away with it, is not news.  However sometimes one of them manages to surpass his colleagues and do something  along those lines that is newsworthy.  This week Andrew Cuomo did just that. He announced that as thanks to the many volunteers from Samaritan’s Purse and other places  who came to New York at at least some risk to themselves to help local medical people deal with the epidemic, he was going to shake down any of them who helped for over fourteen days for state income taxes. Then, as though advertising himself as a despicable  fool and ingrate was not enough, he offered an explanation.  He said that since the state government had collected less tax money than usual during the epidemic, to would be wrong to give the volunteers a subsidy by not taxing them at a time when he and the boys had problems with their budget.  He apparently really thinks that anything anyone earns in the state is his and that letting someone keep some of what he earns is giving him a subsidy,  a present from his benevolent rulers no different from a welfare check.  That is worth noticing, particularly since some Dems are talking him up as a possible relief pitcher if Biden’s dementia sends him to the showers before the election.

With all that, Cuomo’s behavior was not the worst from a New York politician this week. Mayor Warren Wilhelm (alias di Blasio which plays better at election time) of New York City announced he was suspending the First and Fourteenth Amendments  and decreeing that the people will not be allowed peaceably to assemble and speak about his decrees until he decrees that they can. His seemingly ignorant sidekick the police commissioner explained that this was now a law “passed”  by the order of the leader. Wilhelm is a hard leftist. It is not surprising that he would want to rule in the manner of Castro or the Duce (who at least really had an Italian name).  It is a little surprising and a lot worrisome that he thinks he can get away with it. Maybe New Yorkers will show him he is wrong.

I feel sorry for the decent New Yorkers who are saddled with these two. I wish them better. I also am even more glad than usual that I live in Texas.  Our politicians certainly have their faults and make lots of mistakes, but they look pretty good by comparison.  Some people from out of state have wondered how a woman in Texas of all places could be sent to jail for opening her own business and then refusing to lick the boots of an arrogant, Democrat judge. Well it happened in Dallas.  Politics in Dallas are not what they were years ago. Many of the people in the Dallas area who would vote for Republicans or ordinary Democrats now live in the suburbs, leaving a higher percentage within the city limits of Dallas of people willing to support leftist Democrats. Some of Dallas’s boosters used to speak of their city becoming like New York. In some ways, they may be  getting there. The good news is that after the governor ordered that no one could be jailed for violating the rules of  the declaration of emergency, the state supreme court ordered the woman to be released. Other good news is that people are chipping in help her financially, including paying her fine.