Contrived outrage aside, many of the embattled governor’s loudest critics were themselves complicit in his deadly COVID policies.
Contrived outrage aside, many of the embattled governor’s loudest critics were themselves complicit in his deadly COVID policies.
H earing the jeremiads from the Albany Democrats’ caucus rooms and Twitter feeds, Claude Rains is smiling somewhere. The great actor is best known for his performance as Casablanca’s Vichy authority, the slick Captain Louis Renault — and for one particularly enduring scene. Ordered by Major Strasser to shut down Rick’s Café, he quickly improvises the excuse: He is shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is happening here . . . Clear the premises (and enter the croupier, with the Captain’s nightly winnings).
Such studio-set hypocrisy and contrived outrage would be very much at home in New York’s capital, or at least over the Zoom meetings connecting those Democratic legislators who, nominally, rule the Empire State, of late a wholly owned subsidiary of their very progressive party.
Its leader, now hit with in flagrante delicto/boss-with-benefits scandals, is one Andrew Cuomo, in steep descent from the top of his pedestal as he falls toward the earth. Yes, calls for the impeachment and resignation of the randy, Emmy-awarded governor have much to do with tom-catting allegations. But the booster rocket for the increasing outrage was the emerging public attacks — quite the rage two weeks back — by Democratic legislators who castigated the bullying media darling for his 2020 COVID diktats that turned New York nursing homes and group homes into terminals, places of agony and sorrow, despair and death.
There were alternatives to Cuomo’s lethal policies. But there were also co-conspirators to Cuomo’s madness. They include many of those same Democratic legislators now calling for the governor’s scalp.
Like Captain Renault, they are shocked, shocked to learn that Cuomo’s COVID rulings had such horrific consequences.
If only these same legislators hadn’t actually voted to enable these policies.
Last month — a lifetime ago for the scandal-enmeshed Luv Guv — news broke of a not-so-private conference call in which Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitted to select Democratic lawmakers that his administration had fudged the mortality numbers on nursing-home deaths caused by the governor’s executive order of March 2020. This order barred the facilities, as well as group homes for the disabled, from denying admission to coronavirus-infected patients. This, while the 1,000-bed hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, sat nearly empty in New York Harbor. (The sanitary expert/governor declared that the ship was “too hard to disinfect.”). Ditto for NYC’s converted Javits Center, with its 1,000 beds: It too was largely devoid of the COVID-stricken.
Strange for New York politics, DeRosa actually apologized on the call. But the lawmakers were having none of it. Assemblyman Ron Kim, who was present (and who gained national attention when in a subsequent call Cuomo sought to bully him into doing a 180), told the New York Post that he interpreted DeRosa’s remarks as “trying to dodge having any incriminating evidence that might put the administration or the [Health Department] in further trouble with the Department of Justice.” He added, “That’s how I understand their reasoning of why they were unable to share, in real time, the data.”
Also on the call was state senator Rachel May, who dropped the rhetorical hammer on Cuomo, telling the Post:
At a time when we need New Yorkers to trust their elected officials the most, the Governor and his administration knowingly chose to lie and play politics with New Yorkers’ lives. . . . This news is another slap in the face to the many New Yorkers still grieving the loss of their loved ones across our state.
More of the like came from Assemblyman Richard Gottfried who, according to the paper, “immediately rejected DeRosa’s expression of remorse,” saying, “I don’t have enough time today to explain all the reasons why I don’t give that any credit at all.”
Within days of the scandal’s break, New York’s legislative leaders, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Speaker Carl Heastie, went public with their gubernatorial disappointment. Other elected Democrats added to the outrage, such as Senator Andrew Gounardes, who accused Cuomo of a “betrayal of the public trust.” Gounardes tweeted, “There needs to be full accountability for what happened, and the legislature needs to reconsider its broad grant of emergency powers to the governor.”
Indeed, it must reconsider. But the accusers must also . . . remember. Per Assemblyman Kim, something very consequential happened in real time, last April. That is when this legislative act — consideration and enactment of New York State’s operating budget — took place. It was a voluminous bill, loaded with payoffs and policy — including a provision granting legal immunity to nursing-home operators, on the heels of the governor’s deadly decree. And it was a bill that was soundly approved by the Democrat-run chambers and signed into law.
In the Senate, which now hopes to give voice to grieving families, Rachel May, voted . . . aye. As did now-angered Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins. As did investigation-demander Gounardes. As did Assemblyman Gottfried, and Speaker Heastie, and the vast majority of Democrats who control Albany.
In the upper body, the 35–26 final vote included not a single Republican in favor. There was some Democratic opposition to the bill in the Assembly, but its members nevertheless passed the loaded legislation on a comfortable 76–66 margin.
Responsibility for the massive, unnecessary deaths caused by this terrible set of nursing-home COVID policies belongs with Governor Andrew Cuomo. But not with him alone. For there are many fingerprints on the corpses of the many dead, and on the legislation that exacerbated the effects of this awful policy.
To put names to the evidence, look to those on the Democrat side of the aisle who are now clamoring mightily for the bully-boy governor to get his comeuppance.
You will probably not be shocked, shocked to see that, in far too many cases, they were Andrew Cuomo’s enabling co-conspirators.