In Cuomo We Trust?

(Illustrated Getty Image/iStock)

“Do not be wise in words. Be wise in deeds.”
-Jewish Proverbs

Just a few months ago, Andrew Cuomo, the three-term Governor of New York, was a folk hero and considered a future Presidential contender. The New York Times asked “Can Andrew Cuomo be one of New York’s greatest governors?”. He was being celebrated as the perfect foil to President Trump. The media portrayed him as a beacon of light. A politician who took charge and guided us through a deadly pandemic by following the science, and listening to the advice of his health experts, unlike our former President.

The Governor became the darling of talk show and late-night hosts. Ellen DeGeneres, Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert professed their love for him as self-confessed “Cuomosexuals”, which according to the urban dictionary is “someone who possesses a powerful urge to engage in various sexual behaviors with a member of the Cuomo family.” 

Major Hollywood celebrities like Spike Lee, Robert DeNiro, Rosie Perez and Ben Stiller were rushing to praise the wonderful Mr. Cuomo in a video tribute at the Emmy Awards, where he received a statuette for his Covid press briefings. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences issued a statement saying it was breaking a long-standing tradition in order to award a sitting politician an Emmy because, unlike most politicians, Mr. Cuomo was real.

He became a regular on CNN. His brother, Chris Como, routinely brought him on his show to heap praise for his handling of the pandemic. There were numerous puff pieces in the mainstream media and the New York Times that declared him “the politician of the moment.” Democratic activists were even pushing for Mr. Cuomo to become Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick until Mr. Biden made it clear that he was going to pick a woman.

Riding high on all this adoration, Mr. Cuomo decided in the middle of the worst global pandemic in one hundred years to write a book praising his own handling of it. In the book he writes “It seems that every day I tell people not to get cocky about this pandemic, and every day they get cockier”. If only he had followed his own advice.

I am a Democrat, and I was watching this with shock and dismay because it was all happening in spite of the fact that New York was one of the worst hit cities in the country. At the time when Mr. Cuomo published his book and was taking a victory lap, more than 30,000 New Yorkers had died from COVID-19 - far more than any other state in the country.

The truth is that Mr. Cuomo botched the initial response to the crisis, by downplaying the virus and dragging his feet on implementing lockdown measures. As late as 13^th March 2020, after California had instituted a ‘shelter in place’ order, the Governor was resisting, saying that “New York City will not be quarantined: It cannot happen”. This after weeks of playing a game of chicken with our Mayor, with whom he has a long history of animosity.

Throughout the crisis Mr. Cuomo continued needling Mr. DeBlasio. He repeatedly contradicted the mayor on school closures, MTA service changes and bickered over measures needed to bring Covid hotspots under control. Rather than rise above this petty rivalry, as a real leader might, Mr. Cuomo seemed to take pleasure in overriding the Mayor’s decisions, never once attempting to coordinate his responses with the Mayor’s to prevent unnecessary confusion for business owners, school parents and New Yorkers caught between the two men’s fragile egos.

In March last year, when it was clear that this virus spread like wildfire, and was more deadly for old and sick people, Governor Cuomo made the inexplicable decision of ordering nursing homes to accept hospital patients recovering from COVID-19, even if they were testing positive. At the same time, in true Trumpian style, he slipped in a little noticed provision into his annual budget that shielded corporate officials who run hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities from liability for Covid-related deaths and injuries.

Mr. Cuomo tried defending his inane directive, saying it was issued in ‘anticipation’ of a hospital bed shortage, which never transpired. But after widespread criticism he rescinded the order and then claimed “It never happened” – that sick patients were never sent to nursing homes.

In late May, an Associated Press investigation found that at least 4,500 recovering Covid patients were sent to vulnerable nursing homes, based on the Governor’s directive. In June, a medical professional organization claimed that the Cuomo administration was underreporting nursing home deaths, and the number of deaths was likely much higher than they were admitting.

In response to these allegations, Mr. Cuomo ordered his own Department of Health to conduct an investigation. On July 6, the New York State DOH issued a report absolving his administration of wrongdoing. The report concluded that the virus was introduced by nursing home staff, and not by sick patients returning from hospitals. A second AP investigation found that over 9,000 recovering patients had been sent back to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, concluding that this had “unquestionably” worsened the pandemic as it ripped through our elderly population.

In August, Empire Center, a government watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the full death tally in nursing homes. At the same time the Department of Justice launched an investigation to determine whether the state intentionally withheld data regarding deaths in nursing homes.

NY State’s legislature asked the State Health Commissioner, Howard Zucker, for a full accounting of deaths in nursing homes and pressed him on whether there had been an undercounting, he responded saying that there had been “unprecedented transparency” in the public information provided on the number of deaths.

Clearly, Mr. Cuomo believed he would escape scrutiny because it was President Trump’s justice department investigating him, and only right-leaning media seemed interested in pursuing the story. After all, the governor was still the darling of mainstream media, who remained obsessed with President Trump, and felt no need to devote time or resources to investigate the many troubling allegations against the Cuomo administration.

Then in August, as if to add insult to injury to all the New Yorkers who died, Mr. Cuomo announced he was writing a book, chronicling his experiences during the crisis and offering leadership advice. Never mind that we were still in the middle of the crisis and his administration was willfully ignoring the NY State Legislature’s request for an accounting of nursing home deaths.

The full truth only came to light after the NY State Attorney General launched an investigation at the end of January, in no small part thanks to continued pressure from Republican lawmakers and right-leaning media. The attorney general’s report said that Cuomo’s administration undercounted COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, by as much as 50 percent. This means that the real number of nursing home deaths now accounts for about a third of New York State’s total deaths.

The damning report was followed by bombshell disclosure in the New York Post. They published details of a virtual private meeting between Melissa DeRosa, a top Cuomo aide, and several Democratic lawmakers. During the meeting she admitted to hiding nursing home data so the Feds would not find out. On the heels of this revelation we found out that in July last year, top advisors of Mr. Cuomo successfully pressured state health officials to rewrite a report that disclosed substantially higher nursing-home deaths than had been publicly acknowledged. This intervention from his aides occurred at the time that Mr. Cuomo was preparing to write his book.

Much like Mr. Trump, Mr. Cuomo has also repeatedly ignored the advice of health experts. Over the last six months as many as nine top officials have resigned after being sidelined and treated disrespectfully by the Governor. The Governor repeatedly flouted their advice and made changes to pandemic health policy on the fly, often announcing them at his Emmy award winning press conferences. The final straw came when state health officials were blindsided by the Governor’s announcement that the vaccine rollout plan would be coordinated by local private hospitals.

Mr. Cuomo had shelved the vaccine rollout plan designed by the public health experts. It was a plan built based on years of preparation at the local level to counter bioterrorism fears after Sept. 11, and from experience vaccinating people during the H1N1 pandemic. Mr. Cuomo made his own plan after consulting with hospital executives, external consultants and a top hospital lobbyist. In the end, he chose the Greater NY Hospital Association, a group with a multimillion-dollar lobbying arm and a major donor to his campaign, over the city’s own health department.

This explains why New York State’s early vaccination rollout was massively botched and has been plagued by chronic delays, cancelled appointments and vaccine vials being thrown away due to an inability to match patients precisely with the state’s strict guidelines. When asked recently at a press briefing about the mass resignations in the senior ranks of the health department, Mr. Cuomo replied “When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Because I don’t. Because I don’t”.

Now we have a whole new set of revelations showing that the Governor is not only an incompetent megalomaniac, drunk on power, but also a sexual harasser.

This is the same Democrat who a few years ago conveniently aligned himself with the #MeToo movement and launched a “Women's Justice Agenda”. In 2019, when he signed into law legislation to protect against workplace harassment, he said at the time he was doing it to “honour the women who have had the courage to come forward and tell their story…”

Turns out that he is just another hypocrite. We are learning that Mr. Cuomo’s bad behavior led to a ‘hostile, toxic’ workplace culture, based on multiple accusations from former female staffers and aides. Many of the women were forced to abandon their careers because they no longer felt safe or comfortable being around the Governor.

Seems it was an open secret in Albany and within the media that Mr. Cuomo routinely delighted in humiliating employees, bullying and threatening people who challenged him, telling them they will be “subject to negative news stories or political challenges or, in one case, would be publicly likened to a “child rapist.” We saw the very same behaviour when he threatened to destroy the career of NY Assemblyman Ron Kim who had refused to cover for him in the nursing home scandal.

Now as the list of accusers grows, rather than resign, as any respectable person would do, he is doubling down and said this past Sunday, “I’m not going to resign because of allegations.” “There is no way I resign”. Instead, he is employing the Clinton defense and casting doubts on the accounts of the women and possibly attempting to destroy their reputation. He is also suggesting that he be entitled to due process. Mr. Cuomo believes that the public should wait for a full and thorough investigation into the allegations before any action should be taken.

This might be reasonable if Mr. Cuomo had applied the same standards for everyone accused of similar wrongdoing. In 2018, The New Yorker published an article detailing the accounts four women, accusing then Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, of abusive behaviour in their private relationships. Mr. Cuomo was among the first people to call on Mr. Schneiderman to resign, saying that he should do it “for the good of the office”.

In the same year, when Brett Kavanaugh was accused by Dr. Blasey Ford and two other women, Cuomo along with every Democrat chastised Republicans who cast doubt on the three women’s accounts, or argued that the women were exaggerating or misremembering things. At the time Mr. Cuomo tweeted that Mr. Kavanaugh should take a polygraph test. I wonder if Mr. Cuomo is willing to take one now?

Most disheartening to me, aside from the media’s reluctance to investigate the numerous red flags over the last year, is the clear hypocrisy that has been exposed with the Democrats, when it comes to one of their own being accused of wrongdoing.

If Democrats were to hold Mr. Cuomo to the same standards that they applied to President Trump for his abuses of power or to Brett Kavanaugh for the harassment accusations against him, then every Democrat in the land, starting with President Biden on down, should have been calling for Governor Cuomo to resign based on all the revelations thus far.

The silence of the party that claims to hold the moral high-ground is deafening.

 

Looking Ahead at 2021 (not predictions)

 (Photo by Danil Aksenov on Unsplash)

“Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.”
Margaret Atwood 

I am an eternal optimist and feel confident that our future is bright. I envision that we will build a more equitable and just world over the next few decades, but the journey to get there will not be without hardship. However, the next few years are likely to get rockier, based on the current cultural, political and economic realities.  

There are five realities that exist and, based on how we navigate these or allow them to unfold, we will determine if the New Year turns out to deliver on the optimism we are feeling, with covid-19 vaccines rolling out and a new, more stable and predictable US President taking office, or if it ends up being no better, or even worse, than the previous year.

One: Vaccine Rollout and Anti-Vaxx Movement
Vaccinating 330 million Americans is going to be a Herculean task, not to mention vaccinating 7.8 billion people. Nothing on this logistical scale has been attempted since WWII. Adding to the complication is the fact that some vaccines will require two doses or need to be stored at temperatures that most storage and medical facilities are unable to accommodate, especially in poorer countries.  In America, we are already seeing major hiccups in the rollout with states not receiving the promised number of doses, healthcare workers turning on each other to cut in line and even one clinic accidentally giving patients antibodies instead of the vaccine. The Trump administration’s goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of December will fall woefully short with only 2.1 million doses being administered as of 29^th December.

Even if the Biden administration ensures a smoother rollout and everything goes according to plan, which it never does, it will take until the third quarter before 90% Americans are vaccinated, to enable herd immunity. This does not account for the growing anti-vaccine movement around the globe and here in the US. The latest Gallup poll found that only 58% of Americans say they trust and are willing to take the Covid-19 vaccine.

Since wealthy countries have hoarded the initial available vaccines, their populations will be vaccinated by end 2021. Other high-income countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia will take until mid-2022 to vaccinate their populations. As a result, low-income countries will not be able to procure vaccines until mid to late 2022, and will take till end 2023 if not early 2024 before they can able deliver mass vaccinations. And we are still months away from developing a vaccine for young adults and children, who have not been a part of the initial clinical trials.

It is easy to forget that there can be no return to normalcy until the majority of the world has been vaccinated, given our interconnectedness through trade and travel. We saw record-breaking Christmas travel in the US, showing that people are starting to let their guard down when we can least afford to. At the same time we are witnessing the worst global spike in cases and deaths since the virus was detected, and have also discovered a new mutation that is 70 % more transmissible than the previous strain. It was first found in the UK but has already shown up in South Africa, India, United States and thirty other countries. Based on these realities, before things get better, I fear the worst of the virus is yet to come in early 2021.

Two: Stock and Big Tech Unreality vs. Small Business Apocalypse

(Source: New York Times)

This one chart says it all. The red line indicates stocks, while the blue and green show GDP and job growth, respectively. While all three took an unprecedented hit at the start of the pandemic, stocks have now climbed back to historic highs, while GDP and jobs lag substantially behind their pre-pandemic levels.

Since the 1920s average Americans and politicians viewed the stock market as a proxy for the US economy, with its peaks suggesting brighter days and troughs indicating tougher times ahead. However, this pandemic has made it clear that Wall Street is now completely detached from Main Street. With access to cheap capital through bond markets, deep cash reserves and global reach, these larger corporations can withstand economic shocks and remain profitable in ways that small businesses simply cannot.

Consider that the five largest listed companies Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook have all seen double digit profit increases this year, and each will exit the crisis in a more market dominant position than prior to it. Contrast this with small businesses that have suffered disproportionately, with over 43% reporting significant to severe impact.

Recent data shows that 60% have closed permanently, which is a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July. One of the worst hit sectors has been the restaurant and service industry, accounting for 82% of the jobs lost since February. In California alone, due to the severe lock downs, the National Restaurant Association predicts that 43% of restaurants will permanently close. Given that small businesses account for 48% of private sector employees in the US, the economic devastation of this crisis will linger for years to come. 

Three: Uneven Economic Hardship & Social Instability
Some ten million Americans are unemployed, and over one million filed new state and federal unemployment claims in the last week of December. More than four million people left the workforce, between February and November, meaning that they are no longer actively seeking employment. According to economists this skews unemployment numbers, showing a drop when it is actually a reduction in labour force participation.

Another worrying trend is the increasing number of people who have been out of work for more than six months. About one-third of the total unemployed are now long-term unemployed. That people are actively looking for work but still unable to find employment indicates a problem in the labour market’s ability to match skills with goods and service needs. Not a good sign.

This crisis has also disproportionately affected women and minorities. Women’s job losses account for 54% of overall net jobs lost. Of the 12.1 million women’s jobs lost, more than 2 in 5 have not yet returned, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Among Black men the unemployment rate is around 11.3 percent, which is 5 percent higher than the rate for white men. To put this in perspective, never during the Great Recession did overall unemployment rates surpass 10 percent.  

 In addition, the crisis has exacerbated the wealth gap that already existed between minorities and whites, with job losses concentrated among minorities and low wage earners, according to the Brookings Institute.  

This widespread economic hardship is represented in the fact that the number of Americans living in poverty has grown by more than 8 million since April this year. Nearly 1 in 4 households are now experiencing food insecurity. An analysis by Northwestern found that food insecurity has tripled in households with children; reaching an all-time high of 29.5%.

In addition, there is growing housing insecurity. Millions of homeowners are now struggling with mortgage payments. A Harvard study finds that more than 6 million homeowners entered mortgage forbearance this year due to loss of income, and nearly half (44%) of these households earn $25,000 or less per year.

Many of these issues represent deeper systemic problems that cannot be fixed by a vaccine or simple policy prescriptions. The reality is that we may be three to four years away from gaining back the jobs that have been lost during this pandemic. Economists are already warning us about a K–shaped recovery that worsens and exacerbates pre-existing economic and wealth disparities. 

Four: Growth of Trumpism & Our Deepening Divide
Far from being a decisive victory for Democrats, the 2020 election showed a resilience of Trumpism. Biden won the presidency with the same number of Electoral College votes as Trump did in 2016. Far from witnessing a Blue Wave, we instead saw Democrats lose ground in national, state and local legislatures.

Latino voters flocked to Trump in Florida, Texas and New Mexico. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that Trump improved his performance in every Texas County with a Latino population over 75 percent. Trump also measurably increased his support among Black voters, including over 18 percent of Black men, 34 percent of Asians and 28 percent of the gay, lesbian and transgender community. Even in New York, a solidly Blue state, Mr. Trump increased his vote share within immigrant rich districts in Queens and the Bronx.

If there is any doubt about the broad appeal of Trumpism among the working class and minority voters, we need look no further than Robeson County. It is the largest county in North Carolina and possibly the most diverse in the nation. Robeson is 42.3 percent Native American, 30.6 percent white, 23.6 percent black, and has a growing Hispanic population. It came as a shock when Trump won this formerly Democratic county in 2016, with 67 percent vote share, but in 2020 he increased it to a whopping 81 percent.

On a national level, rather than seeing a healing of divisions that came into sharper focus during the divisive 2016 election, the 2020 election map shows a more entrenched electorate with far fewer counties flipping from one party to the other. In the last election 237 counties changed allegiances from Obama to Trump, in this election only 77 counties flipped.

American’s divisions are not just political but also seep into bi-partisan institutions that require trust for our democracy to thrive. Only 10% of Republicans polled by Gallup say that they trust the media. This is a dramatic decline even from the 30% and 36% who did during eight years of the Obama and Bush administrations, respectively. According to Gallup we now have the largest gap recorded between the two parties since they started conducting this poll in the 1970’s.

As we head into 2021 we can expect these differences to become even more extreme at a time when the left does not believe that the New York Times is ‘woke’ enough, and the right is abandoning Fox News for not being far-right enough.

Five: Democratic Party Civil War
Any party that fields 27 candidates for their presidential primaries, which is the largest number in history, is both leaderless and visionless. Republicans only had 18 candidates during their disastrous 2016 primaries which ended with a hostile takeover of the party by Donald Trump. Imagine a company stating that they have 27 candidates vying for the CEO’s job during a leadership succession – would you invest in them?

Much like the Republican Party, the rifts we see in the Democratic Party have been growing for a number of years. Like the Tea Party who targeted and removed moderate Republicans, this rebel group, who call themselves Democratic Socialists, are intent on remaking the soul of the Democratic Party from the inside. Waleed Shahid, a Bernie Sanders campaign alumnus who now recruits progressive candidates for Congress, was asked if this far-left group was the equivalent of the House Freedom Caucus, his answer was unequivocal: “Yes, it is”.

Even before the new administration takes office, Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez, the most outspoken member of the Squad, has called for the ouster of current Democratic leadership. In the past she threatened her moderate colleagues, saying she would put them on a list to oust them in primaries if they made attempts to reach or work across the aisle.

After a poor showing by Democrats in the 2020 election, despite facing an unpopular and polarising incumbent, the knives have come out and the battle lines drawn between the moderate and progressive wings. The divisions were best summed up by Rep. Spanberger (D-Va.) when she said: “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. … We lost good members because of that”. President elect Biden too was heard on tape asking civil rights activists to stay quiet about overhauling police, echoing what many in the party believe; “That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police”.

It is easy to forget that Progressive Democrats had written Biden off during the primaries, and were also not happy about his selection of Kamala Harris, who is viewed as being too establishment friendly. It is true that Progressives grudgingly coalesced around Biden in order to defeat Trump, but any group that is simply united by hatred for an enemy and not by a common vision is in danger of self-destructing when it comes time to govern. 

The bottom line is that at a time when the Democratic caucus is about as divided as it has ever been in its history, they also have a razor thin majority in Congress. They have 222 members with 218 being the bare minimum votes needed to pass legislation. With the smallest majority any party has had in two decades and given the deep internal divisions, it leaves them vulnerable to losing a handful of members. There is also a strong possibility that Republicans will regain control of the Senate after the runoff races in Georgia, They just need to win one of those races for the wily Mr. McConnell to remain as the Senate Majority Leader.