Sunday School 3/14/21

It's a Sonofa Gov Sunday School today. 

All five of the main classrooms mentioned Andrew Cuomo at least once, and we'll see how much'll fit, starting with Chuck Todd and the panel on Meet the Press, 

• John Heilemann (NBC,) suggested we don't know "what else is out there," and that Cuomo's "following what is now seen as the Trump precedent:" be determined, be shameless, and hold on.
• Lanhee Chen (Hoover Institute) said "this shouldn't be a partisan issue," and eventually the Rs will have to admit that what Trump did and what Cuomo's doing "look very, very similar." All of this stems from having one party in power for a long time, which "creates a toxic environment ...that lacks accountability." 
• Maria Teresa Kumar (Voto Latino) said "Trump has basically moved the goalposts" of what's proper and what's not, and she thinks Cuomo won't step down unless the voters demand it, or unless something worse comes to light.
• Hallie Jackson (NBC) said it's "highly unlikely" that President Biden will address this on his own; she said there's "at least some talk" that Cuomo could lessen the heat "if he were to say he would not... run again in 2022," but even that won't make it go away.
• Chuck said "it was amazing to read today that he has no place to go. No place to live. He has no apartment. He has no house. He only has the governor's mansion."

In the State of the Union classroom, Jake Tapper talked with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan; Cuomo succeeded him as head of the National Governors Association. Hogan said it's not his place to speak for New Yorkers, but "hopefully, we're going to get to the bottom of this, because it's pretty serious allegations and growing every day."

Stacey Abrams didn't want to enter the fray, other than to say she believes "that women should be heard, that any accusations of sexual misconduct should be investigated." 

Tapper had a lot to say, including that Cuomo is entitled to due process. Still, he said,

By now he has to know there is a chasm between how he perceives how he talks to women on his staff and how some of those women perceive it, as in some of them perceive it not only as inappropriate but as pressure to sleep with him...Only he knows what other names and incidents might come forward as he digs in. One wonders if that is even a remote consideration.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked with George in the This Week classroom. She said she's got confidence in AG Tish James, but that Cuomo's got to ask himself if he can be effective in leading our state - but she stopped short of saying he should resign. George also asked his panel about Cuomo. Here's a sampling of their comments.

• Former Rep. Donna Shalala doesn't think he can effectively lead, noting the "cumulative effect" with so many women coming forward, and "at the end of the day, it looks like he cannot and should not survive" as governor.
• Amanda Renteria, a Democratic operative, agreed with Shalala. "The days of where you can use your positional power to take advantage of folks who work for you is over."
• Former Gov. Chris Christie, who called for patience and letting Trump investigations play out, said he has to take the same position here, otherwise "we'd just be playing the same polarizing politics we've been playing in this country. If it's right for the Republicans, it's right for a Democrat, too."
• Former Texas Congressman Will Hurd disagreed with any suggestion that Cuomo's a victim of cancel culture. "This is an issue of a powerful individual creating a toxic culture that prevented women from being successful within their jobs." That's unacceptable, and it's why he needs to step down.

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio, who has a contentious relationship with Cuomo, talked with Margaret Brennan in the Face the Nation classroom. He thinks Cuomo will try to hang on, saying that "he is used to getting his way..."

But I got to tell you, the folks in this state and the political leadership don't believe him anymore. He doesn't have any credibility. So I think an impeachment proceeding will begin, and I think he will be impeached and perhaps right before that he'll decide to resign. That's probably the most likely outcome right now... 

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said it's "very important" to take any allegations seriously, that the women "have credibility," and beyond that, as to the Governors Association, "it's within their bailiwick to deal with that issue."

And finally, here's what the folks had to say in the Fox News Sunday classroom, where Chris Wallace asked his panel about Cuomo. 

• Jonathan Swain, of Axios, said Cuomo "doesn't have a lot of friends, doesn't have a lot of ingrained loyalty and affection," and he's isolated now. He suggested that President Biden's silence "becomes more conspicuous" and may not be sustainable.
• Karl Rove, the Republican operative, said Cuomo "can sort of string this out," but the NY Delegation calling for his resignation on Friday after the majority of the state Dems did so on Thursday make that much harder. "I think he's toast," he added.
• Donna Brazile, former DNC chair, said Cuomo's "not going to listen to the music no matter how loud it plays" - rather, he'll try and tough it out. And, "he's not going to be able to govern effectively" for us in NY, when "we really need leadership at this moment."

I promise we'll get to some of the other topics - including what's happening at the border - in your Extra Credit. 

See you around campus - masks on, of course.

In Case You Missed it (v29)

What was on my mind here in social-distancing land last week? Here's the week in review, in case you missed it.

My visit to the Sunday School classrooms brought us interviews  with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Face the Nation, and with New York City's Mayor Bill De Blasio, a Democrat,  and Maryland's Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, on Meet the Press.  

Chuck Todd asked them both, starting with De Blasio, what progress would look like.

Real, consistent social distancing being enforced, people living with it. And hospitals that can function. People seeing that their health care system is actually holding because we have the supplies and the personnel. And I think that's going to be a national reality, Chuck... If people see the system holding, that will be progress..

And here's Hogan's response.

...progress is going to be if we can somehow bend this curve down, wherein we can start to stop that spike that's going so we don't overload the health care system. You know, people are just going to -- look, it's very disconcerting. People's lives are disrupted. It's scary. And I understand people out there are concerned about when is it going to look better... What it takes is every one of our citizens is a part of this. And we can't stop it without them cooperating -- but it's going to be a while...

In the Sunday School Extra Credit entry, I shared part of a somewhat challenging conversation between Martha Raddatz and FEMA head Peter Gaynor on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Raddatz had a hard time pinning him down on pretty much anything, including whether FEMA was shipping much-needed supplies from the strategic stockpile.

Again, there are still supplies in the stockpile. We are shipping all those supplies to all the demands, all the asks from all the governors every day. We are -- we're prepared to go to zero in the stockpile to meet demand. Again, this is a whole of government effort. And if could -- if I could just, you know, and this is shared responsibility. I know the president, Dr. Fauci talked about testing. You know, if you don't need a test, if you don't have symptoms, please don't get a test. Because the demand for PPE on unnecessary testing is -- is something that's working against us. So we're all in it together. Every American has a role to play. And we ask you, if you need to get a test and you have symptoms, go get it. If you just want to test to make yourself feel better, please don't do that.

To which I noted that  VP Mike Pence is just one person who had an unnecessary test, so I guess Gaynor was right - this IS "a whole of government effort."

In addition to his classroom appearance, Dr. Fauci also did a phone interview with Jon Cohen of Science magazine, which I capture in Quick Takes (v49) Fauci, Frankly. He spoke a little more freely in this one, Fauci did, out of view of the cameras, even showing a little exasperation at times. And, he gave us some insight on what it's like for the Task Force before those daily briefings we've come to love to hate.

Also interesting? The process of what happens before the daily press conferences.  Fauci said that the task force sits down for 90 minutes or so, then move to the anteroom near the Oval Office to talk about the messages that they want to emphasize. And then?

Then we go in to see the president, we present [our consensus] to him and somebody writes a speech. Then he gets up and ad libs on his speech. And then we're up there to try and answer questions.

Prompted by some memes floating around on social media, I published Quick Takes (v50): Chinese Things, addressing the issue of Trump and his minions referring to the China virus or the Chinese virus, which we know is done in a derogatory manner, no matter how hard he and they doth protest.  

One of the 'reasons' or 'excuses' given for Trump's choice of words is that in the past, we have used terms like Ebola and MERS and SARS and, of course the favorite of all, the Spanish Flu. Here's a bit of history on that.

The article also talked about the stigma of using an ethnic designation, using the 'Spanish Flu' as a parallel to Trump's 'Chinese virus.' 

This strain of flu, thought to have killed roughly 50 million people between 1918 and 1919, did not originate in Spain, and it killed more British, French, Germans, and Americans than Spaniards. However, those other countries censored coverage of the pandemic, while Spain did not, so it became known through Spanish media accounts. 

The Times of London, refusing to report the flu’s death toll among British troops, christened the illness “the Spanish flu,” and the name stuck. (Incidentally, many Spaniards dubbed it “the French flu.”) Today health authorities have recognized the misnomer and typically call it the 1918 flu pandemic. 

But hey - when we have two legitimate terms we can use, and we have experts telling us the right way to do this, we'll ignore them and go with the president. Sigh. 

My Wondering on Wednesday post was mostly full of good news stories coming out of quarantines and social distancing and ingenuity, which was fun. But there was also this passing reference to the president's need for adulation, which is not a good thing, especially during a pandemic. 

I can't help wondering what the president is really going to do if a governor "doesn't treat him well" but at the same time, comes knocking for federal help. Do you think Trump will get away with not helping? Do you think we're that partisan, or have we come together with love for each other as True Patriots and Warriors against this, horrible, SAD, invisible ENEMY? He's the guy, remember, who during that same Fox Town Hall meeting, shared a debunked conspiracy theory about my Sonofa Gov, Andrew Cuomo, and some mysterious 15,000 or 16,000 ventilators he should have bought several years ago.  I wonder, does Trump really even knows what 'nice' is?

I ended the week with a note from The Update Desk on the earlier Chinese Things post. It seems the G-7 foreign ministers had a conference call, and one of the things they wanted to do was issue a joint statement on the pandemic. The US was tasked with drafting the statement, and the whole thing fell apart because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo couldn't bring himself to use the term 'coronavirus' or 'COVID-19' - he insisted that it be referred to as the 'Wuhan virus." The six other Gs? Yeah, they were not having it.

Pompeo said in a presser later that "everyone" on the call knows that the virus came from Wuhan, as if what's the big deal?

And I'd suggest that every one of the nations that was at the meeting was "deeply aware" of other deflection going on, coming from a place other than China, would you agree?  In fact, according to the article,

Other foreign ministers were not nearly as emphatic in their own comments about the meeting, with at least one leaving open the suggestion that China is not the only country trying to use the outbreak to advance political points.

And, it seems, the French foreign minister was not shy in his own statement, in which he

underscored the need to combat any attempt to exploit the crisis for political purposes and expressed the view that the unity of all in order to effectively combat the pandemic must now take precedence over any other considerations.

Wouldn't that be interesting, if we could just fight the darn thing without the pejorative labeling?

That's it - the full and veritable pastiche for last week.  I'll be back later today with Sunday School, for sure, and who knows what else.  If you're so inclined, subscribe by dropping your email in the Instant Gratification box on the right sidebar. 

Sunday School 3/22/20

I visited three classrooms for you today; we'll see how much fits here and anything that doesn't, I'll move to an Extra Credit post for all of you distance learners.

Let's start with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who chatted with Margaret Brennan of CBS on Face the Nation.  

Brennan asked if we were on the same trajectory as Italy, which has had more deaths than China. Fauci said not necessarily. He suggested their situation might be because they were not as quick to shut down travel from China as we were, adding

...I don't know why this is happening there to such an extent, but it is conceivable that once you get so many of these spreads out, they spread exponentially and you can never keep up with this tsunami, and I think that's what unfortunately our colleagues and our dear friends in Italy are facing. They are very competent. It isn't that they don't know what they're doing. 

He went on to say that he hopes we won't be in the same situation, but reiterate that "we're going to get hit. There's no doubt about it." 

Brennan wondered if the virus was mutating or changing; Fauci said that, as an RNA virus, it will change but it's not changing the way it's actin, which is something they're watching. She also wondered about the high numbers of young people being affected in Europe and here, where 20% of those hospitalized were in the 20-44 age bracket. 

Fauci said "it looks like there's a big difference" between what we saw in China and what we're seeing in Europe. It's possible the people have underlying conditions, but

if they don't... that will be something we have to really examine as to why we're seeing it here, but we didn't see it in China. So we're going to look at that very closely.

She also questioned the whole issue of whether Trump has actually invoked the Defense Production Act, (he's said both that he had, and that he will if needed). Fauci said they're coming forward on their own and stepping up to make "not only masks, but PPEs and now ventilators." Brennan pushed back, quoting NYC's Bill De Blasio saying his city will run out of equipment in as little as two weeks. Fauci tried to clarify things, noting that

...obviously, New York is the most hard hit. So not only is New York trying to get resources themselves, but we're going to be pouring it in from the federal government. So it would be a combination of local and federal...

On the new drug combos, Brennan wondered who Trump was listening to, if not Fauci, and if there was a concern about those drugs being used for COVID-19 cases, potentially causing a shortage for people who need the drugs to treat other illnesses now. In reference to the anecdotal reports that get mentioned, he said

So I was taking a purely medical, scientific standpoint and the president was trying to bring hope to the people. I think there's this issue of trying to separate the two of us. There isn't fundamentally a difference there. He's coming from it from a hopeful layperson standpoint. I'm coming from it from a scientific standpoint. 

I don't mind a hopeful layperson, but I do mind an argumentative deep-stater acting as a wartime president.

Brennan mentioned NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio; he was on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan this morning. Todd asked the mayor how things stood this morning in the city.  De Blasio pulled no punches. 

Chuck, the truth is -- and New Yorkers and all Americans deserve the blunt truth, it's only getting worse. And in fact, April and May are going to be a lot worse. Right now, we are a third of the cases in the country. That's going to get worse. We're about two thirds or more of the cases in New York State. That's going to get worse.

And, he said, he's not getting any help from the president, who is a New Yorker himself.

...he will not lift a finger to help his hometown. And I don't get it. I don't get it. Right now, I have asked repeatedly for the military to be mobilized, for the Defense Production Act to be used to its fullest to get us things like ventilators so people can live who would die otherwise. Chuck, I can't be blunt enough. If the president doesn't act, people will die who could have lived otherwise. Senior citizens, folks who are members of families. And we can't get action from the president of the United States.

And what could the military do for him?

...All military personnel who are medically trained should be sent to places where this crisis is deep, like New York, right now. The military is the best logistical organization in the nation. If there are ventilators being produced anywhere in the country, we need to get them to New York. Not weeks from now or months from now, in the next ten days. And the only force in America that could do that is the military. Why are they at their bases? Why are they not being allowed to serve? I guarantee you they're ready to serve. But the president has to give the order.

And on how he'll enforce his 'shelter in place' order? 

Chuck, people really do get it. I've been around my city the last few days. They're getting the message more and more. Also, we will use the NYPD and other agencies to go out and remind people. Educate them, break up groups of people if they're congregating. It'll take a while for people to truly get it.

And one last time, aiming a shot at Washington.

...I'll tell you one thing, everyday New Yorkers, everyday Americans, are much farther ahead of the curve in terms of understanding this crisis than anything we're seeing from the White House. And that's troubling, to think the people that have the power are not using it, when everyday people get right now, shelter in place is necessary to protect our families.

Turning to Gov. Hogan (who's an R, by the way), Todd brought up the absence of social distancing in DC and Virginia, where either people aren't paying attention or restrictions haven't been issued, and wondered if Hogan was hoping that everyone would get on the same page. Hogan said that he's been meeting with the others, "taking actions an trying to work together." And, he added

But yeah, the social distancing is not being enforced. And it's a little crazy to see the kind of crowds at the cherry blossoms. I mean, people have to listen...

He said they're cracking down in his state, 

...limiting people to groups of ten. We were chastising all these spring breakers that came back from partying in Florida. And we told them they need to self-quarantine for 14 days, otherwise they're risking the lives of their parents and their grandparents and their friends because this no longer is just about older people. People of all ages... We had a ten month old, a five year old who have gotten this disease. So people are kidding themselves if they think that they should just go on spring break or enjoy being out there just as business as normal. We've got to get people off the streets and out of these crowds. It's absolutely essential.

Turning back to De Blasio, Todd wondered about folks who are doing what they've been told, who are home and watching numbers get worse and worse, and he wondered what progress would look like. 

Real, consistent social distancing being enforced, people living with it. And hospitals that can function. People seeing that their health care system is actually holding because we have the supplies and the personnel. And I think that's going to be a national reality, Chuck. Medical personnel are going to have to be taken from one part of the country to another as this crisis deepens.The supplies, the equipment have to go where the needed is greatest. If people see the system holding, that will be progress...

Hogan was asked the same question, what would progress be.

...progress is going to be if we can somehow bend this curve down, wherein we can start to stop that spike that's going so we don't overload the health care system. You know, people are just going to -- look, it's very disconcerting. People's lives are disrupted. It's scary. And I understand people out there are concerned about when is it going to look better... What it takes is every one of our citizens is a part of this. And we can't stop it without them cooperating -- but it's going to be a while. We don't know how long or how long it's going to be. But it's going to continue until we can get it stopped. And we're just going to keep fighting 24 hours a day until we could get it done.

That's all we've got room for tonight. We'll look at the rest of it tomorrow.

See you around the virtual campus, and remember - social distancing and hand washing save lives. 

Pre-debate Jitters

The Democrats are kicking off the 2020 election season on Wednesday, with Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA) Cory Booker (NJ) and Amy Klobuchar  (MN); former Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro, who also served as mayor of San Antonio; Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (HI) and Tim Ryan (OH); former Reps Beto O'Rourke (TX) and John Delaney (MD; Gov. Jay Inslee (WA); and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio taking the stage in Miami for the first half of the first debate.

Thursday night, we'll be treated to the second half, which will feature former Vice President Joe Biden; Senators Kamala Harris(CA), Michael Bennet (CO), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Bernie Sanders (VT), who is still not a Democrat; Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA); former Gov. John Hickenlooper (CO); South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg; self-help author Marianne Williamson; and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

Each of the participants has achieved at least 1% recognition nationally in approved polls, has raised money from at least 65,000 individual donors, including getting at least 200 donors in 21 states, or both (Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Gabbard, Gillibrand, Harris, Inslee, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, the non-Dem, and Warren).

Four other candidates - Rep. Seth Moulton (MA), Governor Steve Bullock (MT), former Rep. Mike Gravel (AK), and Miramar, FL mayor Wayne Messam - failed to make the cut.

There will be no opening statements (yay), but each candidate will have one minute for a closing argument. Answers to questions will be limited to one minute, with 30 seconds  for followup questions, not there'll be much time for them.

Savannah Guthrie, Lester Holt, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow and José Diaz-Balart are the talking heads. Holt will be the official moderator of the first hour, with Guthrie and Diaz-Balart joining in; for the second hour, Todd and Maddow will share moderating duties, with Holt joining.  I have not seen the rules for how much time the talking heads (particularly Maddow and Todd) will be able to chew up - that might be one of the more interesting things to keep an eye on. 

There's no defined list of questions that will be asked, and of course no guarantee that each candidate will be asked the same questions or be given the opportunity to chime in on all of the issues.  It's expected that there will be questions on health care, climate change, education (free college, wiping out student debt, and so on), and of course the great divide between rich and poor people and rich and poor corporations. 

We should also expect questions on foreign policy, immigration, race, and gender, and on anything critical SCOTUS decides this last week of their session. 

And, there's the e-word: electability, whatever that means. And impeachment. - don't forget impeachment. 

Dear lord, this could be cluster with one moderator and only a handful of folks on the stage answering questions.

20 candidates.

5 moderators.
4 hours.
3 networks.
2 nights.

What could possibly go wrong?  Or maybe the better question is, what could possibly go right?

Noodling Around: The Failed Amazon Deal

I've been thinking about the Amazon deal that just went poof in NYC, coming to terms with why I supported this project even though I long have questioned the value of most economic development projects, and thinking about my utter frustration with politicians in New York State.

The deal would have provided performance-based incentives over the course of a decade, in addition to other incentives under local programs designed to encourage development in 'opportunity zones' as well as a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement on property developed for community use on the Amazon campus.

There was to have been a new school, job training, infrastructure improvements, and more. And yes, there would have been issues to deal with along the way - there's no question about that on a project of this size. But these incentives are not new - the state regularly offers these deals, and others, to companies large and small, for a variety of promises. Counties and cities across New York also offer their own incentive programs, with similar mixed results.

A deal of this significance falling apart? That's new for us, so I'm trying to understand what happened.

Right from the get-go, why did Amazon walk away so quickly? Lots of speculation there, including the possibility that they weren't really committed to Long Island City in the first place. I admit to some surprise that any location in New York was chosen; for better or worse, we're a blue state, after all. And our Sonofa Gov's protestations notwithstanding, we're not really a business-friendly state.

So, while questioning the company's haste in leaving is certainly valid, it seemed clear the local (and national) killer attack progressives didn't want to play with Amazon. I say that because, at least from their public comments, they were happy to see the deal fall apart and happy to criticize Amazon, Bezos, de Blasio and Cuomo, and not all that interested in running towards salvaging the deal. If I were Amazon, and wanted to expand into an area that said they wanted me to be there, only to find out that I'm going to be fought at every single turn by folks who seem uninterested in negotiating with me, and that apparently even doing the things that the opponents wish were going to be done wasn't going to be enough, I'd think hard and fast about putting down roots, too. And my answer would likely have been the same as Amazon's.

Meanwhile, Virginia, a more business-friendly state, has moved forward quickly to approve their (much smaller) incentive package, clearly showing a welcoming attitude and a willingness to participate fully to bring  HQ2's 25,000 $150K jobs to their neck of the woods. Similarly, things look pretty upbeat in Nashville, which will be getting another 5000 high-paying Amazon jobs.  And yes, the incentives are smaller, but they can be, because of the differences in the business climate, as well as the political climate.

Let's untangle a few more noodles.

The Update Desk: Please Say it Ain't So

I'd love to say it ain't so, but it is in fact so, according to these updates:

• The Associated Press tweeted  BREAKING: Amazon drops New York City as one of its new headquarter locations, will not search for another.
• Reuters tweeted BREAKING: Amazon says it will not build headquarters in New York after mounting opposition $AMZN
• J David Goodman tweeted AMAZON CANCELS PLAN TO COME TO NEW YORK "After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens" - Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth

And here is the statement released by Amazon, as published in the NY Times:

After much thought and deliberation, we've decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens. For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long term. While polls show that 70% of  New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.

We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion - we love New York, its incomparable dynamism, people and culture - particularly the community of Long Island City, where we have gotten to know so many optimistic, forward-leaning community leaders, small business owners, and residents. There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams.

We are deeply grateful to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and their staffs, who so enthusiastically and graciously invited us to build in New York City and supported us during the process. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have worked tirelessly on behalf of New Yorkers to encourage local investment and job creation, and we can't speak positively enough about all of their efforts. The steadfast commitment and dedication that these leaders have demonstrated to the communities they represent inspired us from the very beginning and is one of the big reasons our decision was so difficult. 

We  do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the US and Canada. 

Thank you again to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and the many other community leaders and residents who welcomed our plans and supported us along the way. We hope to have future chances to collaborate as we continue to build our presence in New York over time.

It will be interesting to see who, now, will be creating the 25,000 $150,000 promised jobs that would have helped create and support countless small businesses that would have spun off from this project, and how long it will take for those jobs and small businesses to materialize. And unionize, of course.  I'll wait patiently for that.

And I'll wait patiently for all of the politicians who proudly declare that they won't accept corporate money to similarly disavow union money.

And, I'll wait patiently for the Dems in the NY Legislature to immediately meet with NY's  Congressional delegation - Schumer, Gillibrand, and all the folks in the house, including AOC -  to demand legislation to update corporate tax regulations so that so that American companies like Amazon can no longer legally have a $0 federal tax liability - and I want them to do that FIRST, before they worry about taxing the rich businessmen who own and run the companies that they so desperately do not want here in the Empire State. 

Waiting patiently, but not holding my breath (I'm not an idiot).

Please, Say it Ain't So!

If you're a New Yorker like me, these can be crazy times.

• Our Sonofa Gov has his lowest favorability rating I think since he took office, even though we've now got a trifecta state government (single party control of the whole shebang) and the agenda is moving forward at a pace described by one member of the media as 'drinking from a firehose'; 
• Our senior senator suffers as well from poor ratings;
• Our our junior senator announced her candidacy for president and, in doing so, branded herself a liar; 
• We're doing our taxes and feeling the pain of the Christmas present the president and the Republicans gave us back in 2017; and
• We're maybe going to blow the Amazon deal. 

That's right - we're maybe going to blow the Amazon deal, which will bring one of the company's new headquarters locations to Long Island City (the other is being built in Arlington VA).

What does this Amazon HQ2 deal mean for the two areas?  Here's a snippet from CNN back in December. that touches on what the deal means, and what the selected cities need to be working on - now.

The to-do list for both locations includes making sure there's enough housing for new hires, improving the local transportation and infrastructure and adding nearby schools. The company says it will invest $2.5B in each place. Both will have more than 25,000 workers over time, and hiring starts next year. 

And, as that article noted, "there's still plenty of work ahead for New York and Northern Virginia."

So, Virginia is moving forward full steam ahead but what's happening in New York?

Wayne's World

Did you catch Wayne LaPierre's talk at CPAC the other day?

He talked about 'hardening' schools and making them safer, of course. He also took credit, on behalf of the NRA, for the National Instant Check System, and for fighting to make sure that all the bad people who needed to be in the background system were there. Many people disagree with those characterizations of the NRA's positions, but that's a story for another post.

What I wanted to share with you is LaPierre's vision of America; if you like the 2016 Republican National Convention or Trump's inaugural address, you'll love this stuff.

As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain. Saul Alinsky would have been proud. The breakneck speed of calls for more gun control laws, and the breathless national media eager to smear the NRA - think about that, in the midst of genuine grief, in an understandable passion, as millions of Americans searched for meaningful solutions, what do we find? Chris Murphy, Nancy Pelosi and more, cheered on by the national media, eager to blame the NRA and call for even more government control. They hate the NRA. They hate the Second Amendment, they hate individual freedom....

For them it is not a safety issue, it is a political issue. They care more about control and more of it, their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms, so they can eradicate all individual freedoms. 

 They fantasize about more laws stopping what other laws fail to stop. The truth is, laws succeed only when people obey them, that is what the law-abiding majority in this country practices. But once again, so many existing laws were ignored. Their laws do not stop illegal criminals from crossing our borders every single day. Their laws do not stop this scourge of gang violence and drug crime that savages Baltimore, Chicago and every major American community. Their laws have not stopped the plague of opioids and Chinese fentanyl that floods the streets and kills victims every single day in this country. No wonder law-abiding Americans all over this country revere their Second Amendment that protects them more than ever. They do not care if their laws work or not, they just want to get more laws to get more control over people. 

Hold a moment please - the "breakneck speed" with which LaPierre moved from hardening schools to protect children to accusing Democrats and the media of being responsible for, or at the very least complicit in, all of society's ills and of trying to take over the universe was truly breathtaking.

And that's not all. There's a whole cabal of America-hating bastages at work here that need to be foiled, don't you know?  You don't know?  Well, follow along.

Obama promised a fundamental transformation of our country. And you know what? It began with his own national party, a party that is now infested with saboteurs who do not believe in capitalism, do not believe in the Constitution,  do not believe in our freedom, and do not believe in America as we know it. 

Obama may be gone but their Utopian dream, it marches on and president Trump's election, while crucial, cannot turn away the wave of these new European-style socialists bearing down upon us. I'm not just talking about Bernie Sanders, I mean, he's near the end of his career. What about Elizabeth Warren, Bill De Blasio, Andrew Cuomo, Cory Booker, Christopher Murphy and Keith Ellison?  They are not Democrats in the mode of John F. Kennedy or Tip O'Neill.

They hide behind labels like 'progressive' to make their socialist agenda more palatable and that is terrifying. And that should terrify every citizen who values the American ideal in this country of individual liberty. They politicize the Department of Justice. They weaponize the Internal Revenue Service, the EPA, perhaps cripple the FBI and the Intelligence Community, and seized and embedded leadership in all of them to advance their agenda 

Set aside, for a moment, the idea that my Sonofa Gov Andrew Cuomo and New York City's mayor Bill De Blasio have anything to do with the DOJ, the IRS, the EPA or the FBI and the Intelligence Community. Note also that that Keith Ellison, as a DNC executive - and a Democrat in the House - has even less influence than do Warren, Booker and Murphy in the Senate. But again, the truth and facts are not what we're looking for here.

This is a raw meat fest, CPAC is, and everyone knows it. I was naive, I guess, as to how raw the meat was - it's still on the hoof, for Pete's sake. It's blue and mooing, I tell you. Ready to get some of that?

Absolute control in every corner of our government is their ultimate dream. These intellectual elites, they think that they are smarter than we are. They think that they are smarter than the rest of us. And they think they are better than we are. They truly believe it. And you know it. 

The privileged and the powerful, they think they deserve to be in charge of every level of power but you know what? The United States Constitution makes it absolutely clear that they are not in charge. We, the people, are in charge of this country! But Washington - OH. MY. GOSH. The city likes to ignore that. Our intelligence community shrouds everything in secrecy, driving into darkness every dirty memo. And every dirty institutional secret and memory, in the name of national security. But when the leaks come, as so often occurs in the light of day, it reveals nothing about the security of our country and it reveals everything about the corruption of those in power. That is because in a captive society, the loss of transparency results in the loss of truth. 

And I'm thinking, "in the midst of genuine grief, in an understandable passion, as millions of Americans searched for meaningful solutions", the Executive Director of the NRA went off the deep end, way off the deep end, into the dark spiral of paranoia.

I can understand a bit of bad apples in organizations as large as the FBI. But what is hard to understand is why nobody at the FBI stood up and called BS on its rogue leadership. I mean, really, where was the systemic resistance that should protect every powerful institution that serves us? The lowest-ranking Marine knows to resist an unlawful order. The rank and file in every powerful institution must police its own leadership.

Do you think the membership of the NRA was hearing that call, to resist the urges of LaPierre and his bizarro world vision? And do you think LaPierre was right to co-opt the Parkland teens' rallying cry of "we call BS" for his own purpose?

But still, too much of today's Washington, nobody speaks out. Nobody challenges authority. Everyone keeps their mouths closed and their heads down. And that is exactly how socialistic societies function, when leaders do whatever they want, when resistance and repercussion disappears, and when the fundamental concept of moral behavior is expunged. 

The state rules the day and anyone who resists is smeared right into submission. Yep, you know it. - yes, the "art of the smear." 

The state rules the day, and the president, its leader, is a master of the art of the smear - it's one of the ways he vanquished his 16 opponents.

We live in a socialistic age of the art of the smear. It does not have to be true, it just has to stick somewhere, anywhere. It is designed to degrade, destroy, and it is all over the national media to serve their agenda.

Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!  Oh, sorry - I digress. I was practicing the Art of the Smear, which I'm sure will be a new Trump book now that the title has been handed to someone on a sliver platter.

And socialism is a movement that loves the smear. Racists. Misogynist. Sexist. Xenophobia and more. These are the weapons. These character assassinations scream to permanently hang on their targets and create a growing segment of victims. Because socialism feeds off of manipulative victims. You name the group and they will find a way to turn them into victims, they keep their movement growing by finding somebody to be offended every minute of every day.

You know, those 20 manipulative first graders and the six manipulative adults at Sandy Hook, and the 14 manipulative teenagers and three adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and all of the other manipulative victims of other mass shootings, the bastages. 

They do not like free speech any more than they like the Second Amendment. They like only limited speech, controlled speech, controlled by them through safe zones where they can shame the outspoken or riot to shut them up. If you still think that we have full First Amendment freedom in this country, try going right now at Berkeley and speaking out in favor of conservative causes or even the Second Amendment.

Forgetting, he must be, the sad tale of Milo Yiannopoulos. You see,  CPAC's sponsor invited Milo, who was the victim of those riots-against-free-speech-at-Berkeley to speak at the 2017 gathering of this same voodoo-juice-drinking crowd -- and then disinvited him when his free speech was a little too freely offensive. How soon, how soon, the conservatives forget that CPAC is a safe zone itself!

He then talked about how the "socialist state dreams of manipulating schoolchildren" to get information from them, all kinds of information about their parents, what they watch on TV (ironic, since the NRA and LaPierre point out how violent video games cause mass shootings) and if they own guns and stuff.

And all that private information will be entered in to the ultimate list, that cloud of data storage that couldn't care less about due process and constitutional freedom and your privacy as an American citizen and then it is just a short hop to the systematic destruction of our most basic freedoms in this country and you all know what they are, but let me say them: family; faith; individual responsibility; and self destiny. A free market economy; patriotism; respect for our national flag and our national anthem. Personal liberty and justice for all... It will not take long if we stay on the path we are on to erase them completely. That is the consequence of this new socialist wave in America.  

You know, I hear a lot of quiet in this room and I sense your anxiety. And you should be anxious and you should be frightened. If they seize power, if the so-called new European socialists take over the House, and the Senate, and God forbid they get the White House again, our American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever.

I wonder, was the anxiety coming from LaPierre's ranting and raving?  Mine sure was.

And the first to go will be the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. History proves it. Every time, in every nation, in which this political disease rises to power, its citizens are repressed, their freedoms are destroyed, and their firearms are banned and confiscated. It is all backed in this country by the social engineering and the billions (billions of dollars, he means) of people like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and more, and gleefully promoted by those who have risen to power in the so-called national news media and seized control of social media to spread their propaganda.

They do not tell us news, you all know it and people know it all over the United States. They say it to me every day, they do not tell us news, they tell us what we need to think... 

You know, some people out there think that the NRA should just stick to its Second Amendment agenda and not talk about all our freedoms, but real freedom requires protection of all of our rights, and the Second Amendment isn't worth its own words in a country where all of our other individual freedoms are destroyed...

Forewarned is forearmed -- the NRA TV channel is looking to be way more bigly involved, and way more bigly accessible, just like NBC and CNN. Which are fake news. And Fox, which is real news, except that it does exactly the same thing as LaPierre just described the media doing, which was bad, in case you didn't catch that.

And now, the big finish - and yes, he does talk about guns again. I forgot that he was the Executive Director of the NRA for a second there - as, I think, did he.

Let's be clear. We are never talking about an armed resistance against the socialist corruption of our government. We are always talking about a resistance armed with the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights in our country. The genius of those documents, the brilliance of America, of our country itself, is all of our freedoms are for every single citizen and there is no greater personal individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive. 

It is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright. So I call right now today on every citizen who loves this country and who treasures freedom to stand and unflinchingly defend the Second Amendment, the one freedom that protects us all in this country.

And yes, in case you were wondering, LaPierre did close with the "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.

And yes, in case you were wondering, CPAC, according to several reports, including this one, and this one, is a gun-free zone.