Andrew Cuomo: the Lord High Executioner

Given the media propaganda machine it’s difficult exposing the truth. This time, the truth about the coronavirus pandemic, and especially about how it is being managed locally.

As you know the federal government does not control the local officials who manage the pandemic. Thus, the mainstream media, the one that is currently drooling over Kamala Harris, has been hard at work covering up the Andrew Cuomo administration’s track record. 

Had they been honest that could have dubbed the governor, the Lord High Executioner of the pandemic. Under the enlightened leadership of Gov. Cuomo New York State leads the nation in coronavirus deaths. As for deaths per million, only New Jersey leads New York. If a Republican had been in charge of either of these states, the airways would be flooded with earnest nitwits proclaiming a new holocaust, the return of Hitler.

Betsy McCaughey explains it all:

More than 32,000 New Yorkers have died from the coronavirus, a toll higher than any other state. New York also ranks second to the worst out of all 50 states, in deaths per million residents. Only New Jersey did worse.

You wouldn’t know it, listening to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who brags that his administration “tamed the beast.” Or the media that praise him and chide states with much, much lower death rates.

Cuomo is doing everything he can to coverup the errors. He’s stonewalling bipartisan efforts in Albany to investigate the deaths of thousands of elderly in nursing homes ravaged by the virus.

Legislators need to persevere, and in fact broaden their investigation to include the poor performance of many hospitals in the state. On March 2, one day after the first coronavirus case in New York was disclosed, Cuomo told New Yorkers not to worry because “we have the best health care system on the planet.” That’s a whopper. Patients treated for COVID-19 in hospitals here died at more than twice the national average. California has had more cases of coronavirus than New York, but less than a third as many deaths.

The press rarely puts the numbers in perspective, talking about positive cases but not fatality rates, increases but not totals. Looking at deaths-per-million shows the biggest impact — the biggest failure — was the Northeast. New Jersey: 1,797 deaths per million residents. New York: 1,689. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island round out the Top 10.

In the meantime, more and more businesses are closing down in New York. New homeless encampments are sprouting up in places like Chelsea. 

This morning an Upper West Side resident, Julia Vitullo-Martin reports in the Wall Street Journal on the conditions in her neighborhood. The interesting part of her account is the attitude of public officials. They do not blame the homeless, the drug addicts, the alcoholics or the sexual predators. Not a chance.

They advise local residents to be more welcoming to the scum that have just invaded their neighborhood. What does that mean? Why it means-- using non-stigmatizing language. Some of these people are so stupid that one wonders how they manage to dress themselves in the morning.

You see, the fault is white people. If only they felt more guilty, things would go swimmingly:

In a Zoom call organized by the office of the Manhattan borough president, participants from the Department of Homeless Services and advocacy groups urged that parents use “nonstigmatizing language” when referring to what they call the “West Side’s new residents who are our brothers and our fathers.” One argued that photos of drunken men sleeping on sidewalks and the Broadway medians “strip these people of any shred of humanity.” What about the humanity of parents frightened for their families and residents worried about their neighborhood?

Under the law, none of this should be happening. The 1989 city charter requires that public facilities likely to burden neighborhoods—jails, waste-transfer stations, drug-treatment centers, transitional shelters—must be equitably distributed. Community boards—bodies consisting of local residents appointed by elected officials—are charged with undertaking regular analyses of government facilities in order to protect the neighborhood, but the Upper West Side’s board hasn’t fulfilled that duty.

Every day the neighborhood seems less like paradise. Petty crime has been increasing, and burglary has more than tripled over the past three months, according to police. In place of their familiar open doors, merchants have been locking entrances and removing valuable items from windows. CVS paddle-locked its ice cream section because of constant theft. Restaurants have been allowed to reopen, but because of Covid, patrons may sit only outdoors, where they are subjected to aggressive panhandling. Some restaurants have closed a second time.

Moving vans are a frequent sight, as families simply pack up and leave. A neighborhood psychiatrist attributed this in part to “annihilation anxiety.” Not only paradise is lost—so is basic civility.