It’s not exactly “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but it is certainly a relief to see a New York governor on the front page for something other than scandal. Andrew Cuomo’s headline-grabbing pledge of an all-out assault on Albany is already changing the conversation from the dreary last four years.
The culture of corruption that Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson embodied didn’t just dig the state deeper into a fiscal hole. It added to the trust deficit that Cuomo vows to eliminate.
Good for him, and great for New York. Maybe our state nightmare really is over.
If Cuomo delivers on his promises, which he will lay out in more detail in his State of the State speech today, he will become the most important Democrat in America whose name is not Barack Obama. He has a chance to prove that the Empire State is not a lost cause.
If he can make it here, his reforms will set a new standard for governing a blue state and give his party a road map to credibility with independent voters across the country.
Cuomo’s plans go to the heart of why so many voters turned against Dems in the midterms. His no-new-taxes pledge, a proposed spending cap and a wage freeze for state workers are tacit endorsements of the public mood that government needs a diet. Its gorging at the all-you-can-eat buffet is bankrupting the country and squeezing families and businesses.
Cuomo captures that mindset when he says “the old way of solving the problem was continuing to raise taxes on people, and we just can’t do that anymore.” In a welcome twist, it is a case of power speaking truth.
The obstacles to success are not to be underestimated. It’s not just the vague “special interests” that are the problem. Nor is it limited to legislators who illegally use public money to buy votes.
The heart of the matter is a sense of entitlement among too many otherwise decent New Yorkers. The explosion of spending on everything from Medicaid to pork projects to “community development” grants has created a feeding frenzy.
Everybody wants a piece of the government pie, as though it’s free and limitless. It’s neither, but most politicians are afraid to say so. Both parties believe the way to get elected and stay elected is to spread the wealth around, which is what they have done, to our great peril.
Even essential services, such as education and health care, are larded with extras that don’t make any sense. Keep that in mind when those who benefit from the excess scream that not a single penny can be touched without killing widows and orphans.
Legislators, even the honest ones, are part of the entitlement culture. Whether it’s a pension sweetener for unions or $10,000 for the local Little League, it all fosters a mindless expectation that government is an ATM.
You don’t even have to make a deposit. Just line up and put your hand out.
But Cuomo must remind voters of the connection between the unbridled spending and the taxes that follow. He must remind them that the predictable calls to soak the rich or put another tax on business are what’s driving jobs out of state.
He won’t be able to succeed unless he gets the public into the game and on his side, and he knows it. “The potential power of the governor is to mobilize the people of New York,” he said in his inaugural speech Saturday.
A mobilized citizenry is an irresistible force. The time for mobilizing is here.
SNOW JOB FROM SANIT COMMISH
The operation was a roaring success, although the patient died. That pretty much sums up how the world’s best sanitation commissioner grades the performance of city workers during the blizzard.
“From my point of view, they did an A-plus,” Commissioner John Doherty says, though he acknowledges that taxpayers see it as “probably a C-minus.”
Doherty’s good-enough-for-government assessment is shocking without being surprising. What exactly would constitute a failure on his planet?
Increasingly, Doherty and his boss are on different pages. Mayor Bloomberg, who had lavished praise on Doherty, has been inching away from his initial testy defense of the department and made it clear yesterday he doesn’t share Doherty’s high opinion of the performance.
“I would give our grade as unacceptable, I’ve said that,” the mayor repeated. “And we’re going to try to figure out why and make it better.”
He said he thought Doherty was “trying to work on the esprit de corps of his members.” If so, it’s another form of social promotion, right down to the concern for worker self-esteem over results.
Apparently, it’s just fine for city workers to do a crappy job. In addition to overtime and bonuses, they get praised so their feelings aren’t hurt.
They might be looking for love in all the wrong places. Amidst allegations that some workers slowed the plows to protest City Hall cuts, a new report says federal prosecutors are joining city probers in digging for facts. Maybe they can get to the bottom of the disgraceful snow job.
Dems in poor health
File this one under Hope Springs Eternal. Or maybe under the Definition of Insanity.
With Republicans in Congress planning a series of votes to repeal the federal health-care takeover, some Democrats see the clash as a fresh chance to convince the public that ObamaCare is really on their side.
Good luck with that. The debate on the bill consumed nearly a year, and at no time did a majority of the public support it. President Obama and party diehards passed it anyway and convinced themselves that, once voters knew more about it, they’d get on board.
We know how that turned out. The GOP won the House in a historic rout, picked up six Senate seats, won key gubernatorial races and about 700 new state legislative seats.
And Dems want to keep selling this turkey? Slow learners.
Blowing off the taxpayers
The Federal Emergency Management Agency blew about $650 million on improper payments and fraud after Hurricane Katrina but hasn’t made any effort to collect the money, a new report says. The waste is about 10 percent of the $7 billion paid out to victims since 2005. That’s infuriating enough, but the real outrage is that a FEMA flack in sists the agency is “committed to being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars” and says it is still putting a plan together to recoup the dough. And we’re supposed to believe that?
Little ‘left’ of Arnie
Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mayor Bloomberg were the Republican pet rocks of the jet-set left? Newsweek and among other propaganda sheets hailed them as pragmatic, independent-minded leaders focused on results instead of ideology. That was then.
Now, the former Terminator leaves office with a 22 percent approval rating, and California is headed for the financial cliff.
Just saying, mayor.