No One Challenges Andrew Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo’s new reputation as a calming, rational leader is not earned. He’s still a conservative Democrat. He is still a bully. He is still corrupt. He is still cruel, with his cuts to state Medicaid being a good example. And he is still ruthless in his management style. He holds grudges. He’s like Michael Jordan, only more destructive, since he wields state-wide policy.

Trump knows that he has escaped scrutiny by the New York Attorney General's office for decades. There have been eight Attorney Generals in Albany since Trump took over his father's business, and all of them had opportunities to put an end to his business and political career, including Andrew Cuomo (2007-2010). Now New York is playing catch-up, ready to charge Trump and at least two of his adult children with crimes once he is out of public office.

New York needs a new Democratic party. The current party machine gave us such greats as Andrew Cuomo, Joe Crowley, Rubén Díaz Senior and Junior, and Eliot Engel, just to name a few. This state’s Democrats are particularly awful given how educated and how far north it is. It’s embarrassing. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is the role model for the future. We need many more like her elected into office.

All Local Governments Are Broke

Back in 1975, New York City almost went broke. Quite a few people, myself included, thought it did. But actually, New York was able to narrowly avoid a city bankruptcy in a famous 11th hour move that is still studied by urban scholars today.

However now, in 2020, as we reel from the first wave of the global SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, we find that the vast majority of city and state governments across the United States are running out of cash. As I see it, it’s not a matter of if municipalities and states declare bankruptcies, but how soon. Once in a while. Democrats remember this looming crisis. and ask for bailouts. But just like the looming collapse of the US Postal Service, it is quickly forgotten.

The COVID-19 crisis is only beginning. Most of us escaped death in the first round. Nearly 40% of us lost their jobs. Some of us are on the brink of a mental breakdown. Now our governments are running out of cash as a second wave of the pandemic creeps closer.

We’re in a world of hurt, and the pain is going to get worse. And very few outlets are reporting it.

New York Gives Away Too Much, Again

Last November, New York announced that it was going to take from its residents and give billions to Amazon.

If Amazon was going to open a large office in New York anyway to support its original programs ("streaming content"), then New York should never have offered incentives or tax breaks aside from the lease of city land. New York offered Amazon far too much. And we’ll be reading articles supporting that in the years ahead.

And that’s if this deal sticks. Perhaps it won’t.

New York attracts smart, energetic people to live there, just as it called me in 1995, when I was just 22. They know what New York has to offer. Pity Amazon didn’t see any value in my city without corporate welfare and publicly-financed handouts. Or maybe, New York isn’t as great as it thinks it is. Maybe having some of the best museums, parks, bars and cultural institutions in the US is not a draw at all. We don’t have the best hospitals and universities in the US. That’s Boston. We don’t have the best mix of dominant professional sports teams in the US either. That’s also Boston. Maybe New York doesn’t realize that it’s not number one in anything aside from population and local taxes. It’s just another desperate city begging corporations to rent space. That’s what this process revealed.

This is classic welfare for billionaires. States and cities should stop giving taxpayer money to the richest corporations and individuals on Earth, and spend it on public projects for the benefit of the people. Wouldn't that be a radical idea. Having a contest between cities intensified the madness and showed the intelligent among us how destructive it is..

This isn’t the first time that New York State has thrown taxpayer money away in trying to attract new companies. The Start Up New York program blew a big budget ad campaign and tax breaks to net either just over or under 1,000 new jobs, depending on which report you choose to believe.

Considering how much Albany was willing to give, one has to wonder if New York’s economy is not as strong as Albany tries to make it appear. Upstate unemployment is a Mississippi-like 11%. The city is now made up of luxury towers full of millionaire families and absentee billionaires built over crumbling infrastructure. New York is not well. And I think Albany showed its hand and its future economic forecast in this deal.

There is strong resistance to this deal. It has already exceeded exceptions in that it has forced Amazon to reconsider leasing land in Queens. And the resistance has proven that the Democratic base in New York has shifted to the left. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blaso are not progressives, and the base knows it.

And as a footnote to this ordeal, I hope that Mayor de Blasio has killed one of the worst buzzwords of corporate America in the last 20 years: synergy. When he and Cuomo did their rare joint press conference to announce the Amazon deal, de Blasio was asked wouldn’t it be awkward for Amazon to build a corporate campus next to a public housing complex. He answered that having the rich and poor next to each other on the Long Island City waterfront would produce extraordinary “synergy.” In other words, both sides would benefit from each other. Bullshit. Get out of here with that word. That buzzword is now dead. And hopefully, so is the Amazon tax break and subsidy from Albany. Amazon can reconsider Virginia or North Carolina now.