What’s up with ‘historic’ Andrew Cuomo and ‘progressive-in-chief’ Bill DeBlasio and what seems to be a response to Hillary Clinton’s run for the Presidency?
Now it’s true that in politics they say ”If you want a friend, buy a dog” but both men owe a lot more to the Clintons than friendship.
The Governor today was just a young man on the loose after his Dad’s fourth term bid to be Governor of New York failed. Yes Andrew had a law degree but he knew better (as some of us do) that being a lawyer had no appeal…despite the degree.
And so it came to pass that Governor Mario Cuomo reached out to President Bill Clinton and soon Andrew had a job with HUD in Washington, DC. – one that helped launch some bona fides that he certainly would not have had on his ill-fated return to New York to run for Governor in 2002.
As for the new Mayor, he still acts as if his election was some form of mandate for ‘progressive’ government – some rather muddy principles that sound far better than they play in real life. In fact, DeBlasio always trailed the pack in that noisy Democratic primary race until one by one the other candidates blew themselves up and he was left facing Bill Thompson a nice man who was so colorless that he placed last in name recognition at the time…even though he’d actually run for Mayor against Michael Bloomberg in Bloomberg’s controversial ‘bought and paid for’ third term.
DeBlasio’s own color quotient is best seen in the great TV ads featuring the impressive Afro of his tall, impressive son, Dante.
Here’s a fact about the Mayoral election: in the General election only seventeen (17%) percent of eligible voters came out to the polls in DeBlasio vs Joe Lhota (another ‘ball of fire’). That’s it – 17% – of all eligible voters. Is this mandate material? Nope.
Hillary and Bill nonetheless came and did all the right things in their support of him at that point – they’d stayed quietly out of view during the primaries.
So what have we seen since Hillary’s entry into the Presidential race?
From Andrew a constant series of self-congratulatory TV ads – as if the election never took place and the Governor never won a second term of office against a nice but lack-luster Republican county executive.
The ads go on and on – and change constantly. There’s one about all the business that can come into a welcoming New York State – though there’s not been much after four and a half years. Another about the on-time budgets in the past four years – touted as’ historic.’ It’s as if just getting the homework in on time is enough – it really doesn’t have to be correct or complete as long as it is neat and on time. And another ad even more ‘historic’ than that – an improving education system with Governor Cuomo’s new rules to make it better.
What’s sadly true is that what the Governor and Mayor know about the real problems of education in New York and America and what solutions can be developed (if you don’t understand the problem there can be no solution) wouldn’t fill a shot glass – no one uses thimbles anymore.
Now acting on either bad advice or no advice, the Governor has surely supported the wrong horse when he knowingly accepts the newly devised – Common Core-based – standardized tests as a measure not of student knowledge and achievement but of teacher ability. This means test automatically and dangerously sets the test results on this test as the only measurement of a teacher’s ability discounting all the other test results during the year and the various in-class teacher evaluations undertaken by Principals and other professionals. This one test just throws those other evaluation methods out the window if the results are less than satisfactory. And if so, a teacher’s tenure is delayed…and after two years, a teacher’s career is threatened.
Tens of thousands of children all across the State opted out of the tests because parents either knew of these new rules jeopardizing teachers in an unprofessional way or knew that the test results had nothing at all to do with their kids’ education. We’ll say more about this continued education mess soon.
Here’s all you have to know: the Governor said at the conclusion of the quick one and a half day jaunt that Cuba is ripe for New York State business opportunities. Really? The average Cuban who is working – earns an estimated $250 A YEAR as the economy remains under government control. So lots of luck. But it sounded good to the Governor and his chief advisors. And the press in New York covered it. And it is historic.
As for Mayor Bill DeBlasio, taxicab drivers think he has no idea of what he’s doing and they didn’t like Mike Bloomberg because of those new traffic patterns that make them crazy. But they think he looks and acts like a big lost boy who is waiting for his Mama to tell him what to do.
NYC Schools Chancellor
And his war with the Charter schools and their new ally, Governor Cuomo, goes on without him sufficiently able to show that Charter schools hardly make a difference even when successful – and fewer than 17% have proved successful.
And he is surrounded by Melissa Mark-Viverito, the NYC Council President and Public Advocate Letitia James, next in line for Mayor if DeBlasio is out of town or commission. Two very ambitious women.
But wait…we drift from the point. What has Bill gone and done. He went to Iowa as Hillary opened her campaign there to speak at a college turnout on how progressives (will someone please explain how a progressive and liberal don’t add up to ‘what’s in a name?’) are growing in America.
And just before that quick plane ride, he spoke melodramatically and egotistically on national TVs “Meet the Press” about how he could not now endorse Hillary Clinton until she showed him how ‘progressive’ her policies were going to be.
The Mayor speaks out against America’s income inequality by using the ‘progressive line’ that there ought to be a redistribution of income and wealth through taxation without adding a single additional thought to the very complex problem of 1% of the people owning 40% of the wealth in America.
Yet he fundamentally ignores the plight of 600,000 New Yorkers who live in public housing in essentially slum-like conditions. The City purports to be unable to help fix up the 345 buildings owned by the New York City Housing Authority and mainly supported by Federal grants that make up the difference in rent payments. The Mayor and NYCHA say there is no money to fix the tens of thousands of housing problems in these projects.
Yet New York City takes tens of millions of Federal dollars coming into NYCHA in the form of taxes and pours that money into the General Fund rather than using it to maintain those houses in a reasonable way.
We’ll explain the whole story here very soon.
So what does Hillary have in these two? Not much at the moment. But she has a long road.
As for her “Boys”?
Better buy a dog.
I believe it was Harry Truman who said or wrote, ”If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”