This article I wrote appeared on the Newsmax.com website on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.
Archive for the ‘Andrew Cuomo’ category
Cuomo’s Competence Could Triumph Over Adams’ Histrionics – By George J. Marlin
October 21, 2024This article I wrote appeared on the Newsmax.com website on Monday, October 21, 2024.
A Cuomo political comeback? – By George J. Marlin
March 20, 2024The following appeared on Monday, March 18, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:
It appears that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is taking steps to re-enter public life.
Following his successful 2006 comeback strategy that led to his election to the New York attorney general post, Cuomo’s public activities are managed in a methodical way.
First there was the 2023 publication of “What’s Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics and Crisis” by Cuomo’s longtime top aide, Melissa DeRosa.
The most important chapter is the epilogue. DeRosa exposes the shoddiness of the accounts of Cuomo’s accusers and the reports released by state Attorney General Letitia James and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Despite public threats, DeRosa points out, not one of the accusers has sued Cuomo and five district attorneys have cleared him of any wrongdoing.
Next, Cuomo has been reaching out to constituencies that have remained loyal to him, particularly African-Americans.
Just last week, he appeared at the Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem. In his talk, the New York Post reported he made this humorous comment: “I want you to know as a matter of full disclosure, I am a Catholic. Catholics basically believe the same teaching that Baptists believe. We just do it without rhythm. But we try. We are not as without rhythm as some of our Jewish brothers and sisters.”
Cuomo has also been writing op-ed pieces on pressing public issues.
In a December 12, 2023, in a Wall Street Journal essay titled “Migrants and the Urban Death Spiral,” he declared “the federal government sets immigration policy. It is outrageous to make cities shoulder the cost.”
“Forcing cities to pay for a migrant crisis that they have no business managing,” he added, “is government malpractice. Cities are already struggling and in crisis.”
Two weeks later, in a Post opinion piece, Cuomo went after the governor and the state Legislature for failing to address the migrant “right to shelter” issue in New York City.
“They have the state constitutional authority,” he wrote, “to establish policies such as defining who has a right to shelter, what that entails and who is responsible for the cost. The Legislature could end the current confusion and court cases by establishing a uniform migrant (and homeless) policy for the state.”
Cuomo went on to take a shot at New York City’s state legislators: “Ironically the majority … are from New York City, so they are unfairly burdening their own constituents by imposing the cost on city taxpayers alone.
This year, Cuomo has focused his attention on the MTA’s congestion pricing plan.
While Cuomo concedes he approved the congestion tolls in 2019, he does not believe the MTA should commence the program at this time.
In the Post on March 12, he answered MTA critics who accused him of flip-flopping.
Citing the depressing facts that the city “still hasn’t recovered from COVID,” “office occupancy is still only at 48.5%,” and “mass transit is still operating 29% below pre-pandemic levels,” he concluded that the MTA “must seriously consider if now is the right time to enact it.”
Cuomo asked: “What impact will an additional $15 entry surcharge have on New York City’s recovery in this moment—when the migrant crisis, crime, homelessness, quality of life and taxes are all pressing problems?”
The MTA should address his concerns before imposing the congestion toll on struggling commuters.
In the public arena, Cuomo is coming across as a “liberal with sanity”—a rare species in New York.
And many taxpayers may clamor for just such an elected leader, one who will stand up to the extreme leftist ideologues in the state Legislature or the City council.
So, if Cuomo is eyeing another run, will he take on the state’s hapless governor in 2026 or the city’s hapless mayor in 2025?
In my judgment, running for mayor is the better of the two.
In a gubernatorial primary, Cuomo and Hochul could cancel one another out, thus, permitting a radical to win with a 34% plurality.
In a mayoral primary, however, Cuomo could patch together a winning coalition of working-class whites, browns and blacks. He may even pick up the support of Upper East Side liberals who have had it with Mayor Eric Adams.
With the political knives out for Adams, 2025 may be the year for Cuomo to be the “Comeback Kid.”
Andrew Cuomo for NYC Mayor, Anyone? – By George J. Marlin
January 8, 2024This article I wrote appeared on the Newsmax.com web site on Monday, January 8, 2024.
New York’s Billion Dollar Boondoggle – By George J. Marlin
July 25, 2023The following appeared on Monday, July 24, 2023, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:
During the Cuomo-Hochul years, vast amounts of taxpayer dollars have been squandered on private-sector job investments.
Money has gone to initiatives that in many cases fell short of the job goals, while others did not set any benchmark for assessing their success or failure.
One flop was Cuomo’s 2013 “Start-up New York.” Over $50 million was spent on television and radio commercials to promote that program, which grants 10 years of no taxes to approved technology companies that locate in zones near state and City University campuses. The results were de minimis.
The program failed because the scope was too limited, there was no regulatory relief and interested companies had to endure a laborious application process.
But the biggest boondoggle of all has been—the heavily hyped “Buffalo Billion.”
In 2013, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proudly announced an investment to build plants in Western New York that would create at least 3,000 jobs.
The key participant in the project, Buffalo Solar City, controlled by Elon Musk, initially received $750 million in state subsidies and an additional $200 million in 2017.
An audit, performed by the office of State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli in 2019, revealed that the Musk project did not come close to meeting expectations.
To rationalize the faltering investment, the state approved amendments to the deal that reduced “the number of jobs required … as well as making it unclear what and where the remaining jobs will be.”
The dumbing down of the deal, the comptroller concluded, would result, at best, in a paltry economic benefit of 54 cents for every dollar spent.
A laid-off Solar City employee, Dale Witherell, insisted in a letter to U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that “New York State taxpayers deserved more from a $750 million investment. Tesla, he added “had done a tremendous job providing smoke and mirrors and empty promises to the area.”
Since DiNapoli’s report was issued in 2020, there has not been any real progress.
A July 17, 2023 front-page expose in the Wall Street Journal titled “New York’s $1 Billion Bet on Tesla Isn’t Paying Off” explains just how bad a deal Cuomo cut with Musk.
Musk’s claim that his plant would produce over 1,000 solar panel shingles a week has fallen far short of that goal. “The company is installing on average only 21 solar installations a week,” the newspaper said.
The WSJ report noted “the suppliers that Cuomo predicted would flock to a modern manufacturing hub never showed up. The only new nearby business is a Tim Horton’s coffee shop.”
Democratic state Sen. Sean Ryan, whose district includes Buffalo, told the Journal “It was a bad deal. A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”
After inspecting the facility, Ryan sadly concluded that the activity “didn’t look like full-scale manufacturing work.”
The chairperson of the state Senate Finance Committee, Democrat Liz Krueger, was also shocked by the poor return on investment. She said we “should invest in infrastructure and job training instead of spending billions of tax dollars pretending we’re very good being angel investors.”
E.J. McMahon, of the Empire Center for Public Policy, summed up the Cuomo debacle thusly: “In building and equipping the Tesla solar panel plant, the state became an investor in that project under the worst possible terms. In terms of shared direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the biggest economic development boondoggle in American history.”
One can only hope that state officials finally learn that “Big brother” type government bureaucrats should not be the persons to dictate where entrepreneurs should locate and risk investment dollars.
If Gov. Hochul and her Democratic colleagues are serious about jump-starting New York’s economic engine, they will employ genuine incentives—tax cuts and regulatory reforms—that have created lasting middle-class jobs in flourishing states like Texas and Florida.
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