It break your heart. To watch the place of your birth and the home of your family to fall into criminal mismanagement is a tragic thing to watch, even if you are grateful you only have to watch from afar.
First there’s the mayor, Bill de Blasio, who is quite possibly the worst mayor in the city’s history – and there have been some terrible ones. His latest ingenious move is to shutter the city’s public schools, even though all available evidence is that schools have not been the source of COVID outbreaks in the city or anywhere else for that matter. And while I normally cringe away from such rhetoric, it’s hard to disagree with this California Assemblyman:
California’s system amounts to “state-sanctioned segregation,” Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach), the chair of the stateAssembly Education Committee, said in an interview — a frank declaration for a Democrat consistently supported by the California Teachers Association.
“Some kids get to go and some don’t. That’s not what California stands for,” he said. “I think we need to move faster but remain thoughtful.”
There needs to be a political reckoning for teachers unions, but that’s a subject for another time. The mayor has just managed to disrupt the lives of thousands of working New Yorkers while forcing children to endure a grossly inferior method of instruction, and all because none of the idiots in charge actually seem to understand the science or data.
And then there’s the governor. Oh Andrew. Fresh off expressing disappointment that a COVID vaccine was developed during the Trump administration, Andrew Cuomo gave a testy press conference where he berated one member of the press for his tone (a tone which was decidedly even-tempered to anyone listening) and then showed just how much of an intolerant jerk he truly is:
“Just to make it very simple. If you socially distanced, and you wore a mask and you were smart, none of this would be a problem,” Cuomo said. “It’s all self imposed…if you didn’t eat the cheesecake, you wouldn’t have a weight problem.”
Hear that New Yorkers? If you got COVID, it’s all your fault because you’re just a big dummy (Hmmm, didn’t the governor’s brother wind up with COVID?) And if you lost a loved one to the virus – well, they had it coming really because they didn’t listen to the governor’s advice. I mean sure, they may have been stuck in a nursing home where some airhead decided to place sick COVID patients, but I am sure they could have figured out a way to socially distance better so as to avoid getting killed.
Meanwhile, in my adopted home state, the governor understands how to strike a balance between taking the virus seriously and understanding that you just can’t keep shutting everything down.
I don’t think I will be moving back to New York any time in the near or distant future.
Letters from Cato 