For the Record

Posted

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is on the hot seat.
In late January, New York Attorney General Tish James, a Democrat who Cuomo supported in her 2018 race for AG, issued a report accusing Cuomo of undercounting nursing home deaths by as much at 50 percent.
On Feb. 7, the state of New York released new data showing that nursing home deaths were 15,000, not the 9,000 initially reported.
On Feb. 11, The New York Post reported that “Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa admits they hid nursing home data so feds would not find out.” Note that this is the same newspaper that published a much more important series of stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop computer that contained damning evidence that the Biden family – including the then-candidate for president Joe Biden – took huge amounts of money from interests directly tied to the Chinese Communist Party. That story was ignored by almost all of America’s media. In addition, dissemination of the story was thwarted by Big Tech companies.
Apparently, the powers that be in the Democratic Party do not feel as much need to protect Cuomo as Biden. One day after The New York Post story, The New York Times took Cuomo to task. The day after the Times story, The Washington Post had this to say about Cuomo: “Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) faces a mounting political firestorm over allegations his office hid the coronavirus’s true toll in the state’s nursing homes, with new disclosures this week triggering demands for a criminal probe and bipartisan calls for him to be stripped of his emergency powers in the pandemic. The governor, who became a Democratic star for his early handling of the crisis, is accused of downplaying a key part of the coronavirus’s deadly toll in New York by withholding data on nursing home residents who died of covid-19 in outside facilities, such as hospitals.”
That same WAPO story mentions that more than a dozen Democratic state senators issued a letter calling for Cuomo to be stripped of his emergency powers to deal with the pandemic. Another Democratic state senator is calling for him to be investigated.
Why is Cuomo facing such heat? I can’t answer that, but part of the reason is that his decision to put COVID patients back into nursing homes after hospital treatment was remarkably bad. In late March of last year, Cuomo made that decision and Democratic New York City Councilman Robert Holden quickly became a critic of that policy, describing it as a mistake, adding that COVID-positive patients should stay in the hospital until they are no longer a threat to their fellow nursing home patients. Most members of the media, including Cuomo’s brother – CNN’s Chris Cuomo – ignored the problem, along with the thousands of dead nursing home patients. That number is now 15,000.
The media was OK with Cuomo’s disastrous nursing-home policy and also liked his frequent use of the failed total lockdown. While loving Cuomo, the media was highly critical of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, unlike Cuomo, was not a big fan of lockdowns. It’s obvious DeSantis’s decision on lockdowns was correct. But there is something else. DeSantis had to make the same decision that Cuomo faced with respect to putting COVID patients back in nursing homes after a stay in the hospital. The Florida governor’s decision was the opposite of Cuomo’s. DeSantis issued an order that prohibited these patients from going back to their nursing homes until their fellow aresidents were no longer at risk.
There is a reason residents of New York are moving to Florida in record numbers. DeSantis has shown how Republican policies are strongly favorable to those of Democrats. Cuomo is ruining New York. That state’s economy is in such bad shape the federal government will have to bail it out. That bailout is coming down the track at this time in the form of the multi-trillion-dollar COVID bill that is all too much a payoff to Democrat cronies.
California will also get a sizeable chunk of the money. California is badly managed and is likewise forcing its residents to flee, taking large chunks of tax revenues with them. But California has had financial problems for years, with vastly underfunded pension plans.
No state has pension problems that are more serious than those of Illinois. The financial problems of Illinois are the stuff of legends.
And then there is good old Minnesota and its largest metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Think of the money it will take to replace the 700 structures destroyed in Minneapolis by the rioters cheered on by President Biden and Vice President Harris.
Minneapolis not only has financial problems, but a terribly serious crime problem. Last summer when it was cool to defund the police, the city fathers in Minneapolis made big cuts in the police budget. In addition, officials supported the rioters, not their own officers. Surprise. Surprise. Crime went up. Now there are only 630 officers left to respond to criminal activity. That’s 200 fewer than the number needed. The recruit classes are not nearly large enough to fill the void. To steal away officers from nearby communities will take a good deal of money. Residents are asking for better protection and the city has appropriated another $6.4 million to the police department, but much more is still needed.
This is where you and I come in. We are going to have to pick up the tab for the Democrats costly political campaign of last summer.