One Party Rule New York City Fake Progressives

Three more years of de Blasio is starting to feel like a long time

The mayor has become more punctual and less self-congratulatory, but far more worrisome traits have emerged

Foremost among them is the mayor's coddling of campaign donors—which came to light in emails unearthed by media lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. Fears that pay-to-play politics would return to the city when Bloomberg—a billionaire who wouldn't accept a penny from anyone—left office have been realized, and then some. The emails make clear that anyone who forks over a pile of cash can have the mayor eating out of his hand in no time. It's no wonder the mayor tried hard not to release them. Indeed, some messages that he was obligated to divulge in response to freedom- of-information requests somehow disappeared, only to surface when donor Jona Rechnitz was indicted and authorities got the correspondence from him.

Which brings us to two other unbecoming habits of de Blasio's: hypocrisy and prevarication. His proclamations that he would have the most transparent administration in history were rendered laughable by his email secrecy, and his excuse that the messages weren't newsworthy anyway was insulting. The messages also proved untrue the mayor's claim that he hardly knew Rechnitz.

For a time, the mayor blamed his bad press on the New York Post having a vendetta, but then negative stories began popping up everywhere. Last week The New York Times reported that de Blasio rarely visits City Hall anymore, wastes aides' time by making them schlep to Gracie Mansion and goes years without meeting key agency heads. He replied that some meetings were missing from his public schedule. So much for transparency.

De Blasio: I don't get enough credit for my progressive achievements

 

 

Speaking Truth To Power Under One Party Rule

One of the more famous axioms of the Democratic Party is the importance of speaking truth to power, but what happens when that truth becomes the power?

Like Russia or any other country in the world under one-party rule there can be small differences of opinion, but there is no room for anybody outside the ideological tent. Question one and you question all. Try to compromise with the Republican Party for the good of your constituents or come up with a mix and match ideology, cherry picking the best of both parties, and you’re cut off like a bad arm.

 But politics, like war, is a winner take all game. For better or worse the Dems won, along with their ideological belief in modern liberalism including bigger government, social and economic equality, and increasingly in identity politics.

So knowing that try to say something good about the GOP. Maybe that they care more about small businesses and entrepreneurship and the American ideal of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. That maybe Malliotakis has a reasonable plan regarding this city’s inequitable and skyrocketing property taxes.

Or try challenging the one-party Democratic machine. Question for instance the possibility that it is the Democratic Party in power and not market forces that is spurring gentrification and driving the working class and poor out of the city.

Or dig even deeper. That it’s the institutionalized Democratic Party that is redistributing generational wealth in the black and brown communities, taking fully paid off and owned properties under highly questionable circumstances, and giving them to favored non-profits and for-profits in the name of affordable housing.

Or perhaps question how it is the city and state can offer millions of dollars in subsidies to bring Amazon, Facebook and Google to NYC with their high-paying jobs for the newly educated, while refusing for years entrance to Wal-Mart with its cheaper goods and working-class jobs. 

Perhaps it is these types of policies, and not ignorance or racism, which is the reason why rural America just doesn’t get Democrats.
But in the afterglow of the Democrats finally achieving one-party rule in all of New York things like this are better left unsaid.
Unless you are serious about speaking truth to power.

Republicans Hit Rock Bottom in New York. Can They Bounce Back?

 

 

Redistricting 

New York poised to lose two congressional seats
             Census says state leads country in outward migration

A Supermarket King Expands His Inventory(NYT)

John Catsimatidis, known for owning Red Apple and Gristedes stores and running for mayor, has been busy building apartment towers in Brooklyn.