New York has no shortage of people with bad ideas. But here Dave Dinkins has a special gift. We saw it this week when he managed to present a bad idea in a way that reminds us why the city went to hell under his mayorship even while undermining the man who considers him a political mentor.
The incident occurred at a conference where Bill de Blasio laid out his plans to fund his proposed pre-K education program by taxing the rich. As he made his pitch, he also heaped praise on Dinkins, in whose administration he’d worked. When it was his turn to speak, Dinkins said he didn’t think Albany would go for a tax on the rich — that the better path was to reimpose a tax on suburban commuters.
That’s being taken as an embarrassing swipe at our mayor-to-be. But on the small point of politics, Dinkins is merely stating the obvious: At a time when the governor says he wants tax reductions, Albany is unlikely to go for jacking up rates even higher.
It’s the larger point that Dinkins got wrong. “So many people dislike the notion of taxing the rich for the poor,” said Dinkins. “I don’t, but many do.” In other words, in suggesting suburban commuters be taxed instead, all he was doing was putting forward a more inviting target.
This interjection helps explain why the Dinkins days are remembered in New York as the bad old days. Two decades after leaving office, it still apparently doesn’t occur to Dinkins that the conversation New York needs is not about which hapless group of citizens to plunder for yet another program but the best way to attract private investment, restore upward mobility and get a $70 billion-and-growing government to start living within its means.