Cuomo and the bloat
Legal weed and taxing the rich.
It took long enough, but it’s a no brainer in both cases. With marijuana, we’re at last syncing the law and the lifestyle of so many ordinary, otherwise lawabiding New Yorkers. As for tapping the super wealthy, like the banks, it’s where the money is. Federal handouts will not go on forever.
While debatable, I doubt we would have seen either pass as part of the state budget this year if Gov. Andrew Cuomo were not a bruised and battered political animal far from the top of his game.
He claims he’s fine, that it’s business as usual. But it is most certainly not that. A bloated, $212 billion budget, a nearly 10 percent increase over last year, alone speaks volumes about his inability to keep legislators and their demands in line as he had always been able to do. While new-found legislative initiative is mostly a good thing, a $2.1 billion — that’s billion with a “b” — slush fund for illegal immigrants affected by the pandemic? Last year’s Cuomo would never have allowed that sort of insanity.
Not that some financial relief isn’t justified even for illegals, but a lot closer to California’s $75 million — that’s million with an “m” — and even then with a much closer eye to avoiding fraud and judging more closely who deserves it. What have we done with this grand giveaway that will come back to haunt us in the future? I get a bad feeling here.
The governor insists he won’t resign, no matter who calls for it, because he’s done nothing wrong. As each day passes that is harder and harder to find credible. Yet, despite an ongoing impeachment investigation by the Assembly, an ongoing investigation by the state attorney general, and an ongoing investigation by federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York, we seemingly find ourselves spinning our wheels, with no resolution in sight. Ah, but take heart, there is movement.
True, investigations take time and should, since these findings are likely to be crucial to whether the governor has a future in state politics. I would posit, though, even now the odds against him grow longer.
This past week, thanks to great work by The New York Times and our own Chris
Bragg, we are seeing a couple of seemingly disparate accusatory issues afflicting the governor coming together as related, and the sum potentially of much graver consequence.
The debacle of the great book deal has jumped to the front of the line, right next to a regiment of women claiming sexual harassment. We’ve learned a number of staffers, state workers all, worked on the book perhaps as volunteers but prob-
ably not, at the same time a critical state Department of Health report on nursing home deaths by COVID-19 was being edited and seriously sanitized by some of the same folks working on the book.
A major premise of the bestseller “American Crisis” is that Cuomo did a swell job getting us through the darkest times and, among other things, kept deaths in nursing homes down. Which is not what the original numbers in the Health Department report showed, but implicitly did in the revised version.
There’s a direct line of connected dots between the governor with a motive, a $4 millionplus book deal with Crown Publishing, a number of Cuomo staff working on the book on state time, possibly in violation of state law, and an edited version of an official state document related to thousands of deaths in nursing homes being made to conform to the premise of the book.
If this is not impeachment territory not to mention hubris of the first order, I would be surprised. That the Assembly would move very slowly on this, however, would surprise me less.
From an investigation perspective, there’s something for every entity looking at Cuomo in this little fandango, including the feds armed with the 60year-old “civil rights of institutionalized persons act.” And of course the state attorney general, who by reason of her office can look at just about anything, if she wants to.
At the same time, the newest sexual harassment allegations against the governor feature groping and fondling, which don’t diminish in any way earlier allegations of less serious offenses. The newest, however, would be a crime.
Who has the stones to take on the still dangerous but badly wounded lion?
The feds are like the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois, who operate in their own time. Who knows when and if they get in the game.
My money is on Letitia Ann James, from the kingdom of Brooklyn, our attorney general. Before she was elected, we were told she was a lightweight who would toe Cuomo’s line. Nope. Turns out she has the spine for it, and this is her time. Her damning report on the nursing home deaths got the anticuomo ball rolling and it keeps picking up speed.
So. If our recent state history guides us, James may very well be our next governor. No one knows that better than the wounded lion.