Don Pesci: The Cuomo catastrophe

A field hospital begins operations in the Javits Center, in Manhattan, on March 30, 2020. That venue would have been a much safer place to send Coronavirus-infected patients than nursing homes.

VERNON, Conn.

The end of life, we know, is very much like its beginning. In the end, all of us rely, as did Blanche DuBois in the Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire on “the kindness of strangers.”

Nothing is stranger than the kindness of politicians, many of whom affect kindness while the television cameras are running, when they know that kindness can advance their political objectives.

Such is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. At the height of the Coronavirus plague, Cuomo shipped hundreds of Coronavirus-infected hospital patients to New York nursing homes, even though other venues were available: a hospital ship sent to New York by then President Trump, a large space in the Jacob Javits Convention Center, and a little used 68-bed tent field hospital set up by Samaritan's Purse in Central Park, all venues packed with kind medical attendants waiting to care for stricken elderly patients.

The strangers in all three venues waited in vain to dispense their services to fatally infected Coronavirus patients. Instead of using the unsung heroes of the Coronavirus pandemic, Cuomo shipped the stricken elderly into what may properly be described as death chambers. Upwards of 60 percent of Coronavirus-related deaths in New York, it had been reported, occurred in nursing homes. Figures in Connecticut were similar. Cuomo only recently was lauded for his communication prowess, and he has been haloed with plaudits by both The New York Times and the Associated Press.    

We learn from New York Post reports, some of which had once been blocked then reinstated by censors such as Twitter and Facebook, that the actual numbers of Coronavirus deaths reported by the Cuomo administration to the relevant federal agency had been previously underreported. New York’s Department of Health undercounted by as much as 50 percent Coronavirus deaths in nursing homes. The precise number of nursing-home patients that ended up in coffins because of Cuomo’s dictums is now being clarified, following the departure from the White House of Trump, who sent the little-used hospital ship to Cuomo.

An accompanying cover-up and media manipulation by the Cuomo administration, underreported by some news outlets in states contiguous to New York, may well cost Cuomo his political future. Even now, grief- stricken relatives of dead nursing-home patients in New York are wondering when impeachment-prone Democrats, such as redoubtable Sen. Chuck Schumer, will begin agitating for the impeachment of Cuomo.

A censure of Trump, rather than impeachment, would have been more politically useful, because, some scholars argue, the only punishment constitutionally assigned for impeachment is removal from office, and Trump had left office a month before the Senate voted on the House indictment. Republicans doubtless would have been much more receptive to censure than impeachment. Given the equal distribution in the Senate of Democrats and Republicans, a possible unconstitutional vote to convict on doubtful House indictments was both impossible and redundant. Then too, any precedent that would in the future allow impeachment for private citizens who have left office would be unnecessarily divisive and redundant.

Under such a precedent, even former President Obama might be impeached long after he left office for having deceived Congress by sending planeloads of cash to Iran, an officially designated terrorist state that in all likelihood used congressionally approved sequestered funds to pay its proxy terrorists in the Middle East to push Israel, the only democracy in the area, into the sea.

The beef on Cuomo, following Post reports and a politically devastating brief by New York Atty. Gen. Leticia James, no friend of Trump, is now broiling on left of center spits such as CNN, no friend of Trump. The New York Times, for years in a seemingly endless anti-Trump fume, and the Associated Press -- perhaps distracted by their fulsome coverage of the most recent (failed) attempt by partisan Democrats in the U.S. Senate to impeach Trump — are considerably behind the times.

The Cuomo cover-up was outed by happenstance. Cuomo’s secretary, Melissa DeRosa, disclosed to Democrats in a virtual meeting that New York officials were concerned with a Department of Justice preliminary inquiry into Coronavirus deaths in state nursing homes; then too, Trump, still president, was tweeting about the death toll. DeRosa’s “apology” to her Democrat cohorts followed a report, according to CNN, “in late January from Attorney General James, noting the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) undercounted Covid-19 deaths among residents of nursing homes by approximately 50%.” After all this, the Cuomo media bubble burst.

Warm on Cuomo and no friend to Trump, CNN reported on the cover-up this way: “But on the private call DeRosa said the administration essentially ‘froze’ because it wasn't sure what information it was going to turn over to the DOJ, and didn't want whatever was told the lawmakers in response to the state joint committee hearing inquiries to be used against it in any way.”

The stink of mass deaths in New York nursing homes now hangs over Cuomo’s head, where once a media halo glittered. Governor-in-waiting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has yet to call for Cuomo’s resignation, and the Democrat impeachment crowd is biting its collective tongues. Here in Connecticut, Friends of Cuomo such as Gov. Ned Lamont and members of the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation need not worry they will be pestered by media hounds on the hunt for political blood, and relatives of Cuomo’s nursing home victims will be swallowing their grief in silence. 

Don Pesci is a Vernon-based columnist.

Llewellyn King: Lessons and unknowns in the COVID-19 crisis so far

— Photo by Thomas Jantzen/SPÖ

Snapshots. That’s what we have of the United States as we emerge tentative and fraught from lockdown.

We don’t have the whole picture, just snapshots of this and that.

Some of the snapshots are encouraging: The air is clearer, crime is down and a collective spirit is apparent in many places.

Others are more disturbing: The pandemic has become politicized.

Those to the right are demanding a total reopening of the economy; they’re abandoning masks and social distancing. And they’re using fragments of information to justify their cavalier attitude toward the great human catastrophe: They insist the government can’t tell them what to do, even if it endangers countless others.

The mainstream, meanwhile, reflects a cautious approach of phased-in reopening of the economy, masks, social distancing and sanitization.

Snapshot: People of middle age and older are conspicuously more cautious than the young.

Snapshot: Caution has no coherent spokesperson, unless you count New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Where, one wonders, is Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge President Trump in the 2020 race? He has, one reads, held dozens of election events, but his voice hasn’t been heard. (Can the liberal press be held accountable? Hardly.) Biden snapshot: a distant figure, out-of-focus.

Every time I catch a Biden speech, he’s talking about his family, his Pennsylvania roots, or the tragic loss of his son Beau to cancer. He hasn’t found the words that give strength to a distraught and suffering people.

If Biden has great ideas about the future, about how we will emerge from this terrible time, they haven’t been heard. Maybe he should hire a speechwriter; plenty of good newspaper people out of work.

Snapshot: A new federalism, as espoused by Trump: If it goes right, it’s my achievement. If it goes wrong, the governors are to blame: The buck never stops here.

More Trump snapshots: Obama is to blame; Mueller is to blame; China is to blame; inspectors general are to blame; villains at every turn.

Snapshot: Immigrants are heroes at the top and the bottom.

Every other doctor interviewed on television for their expertise about the pandemic, it seems, has an accent: That shows the power of immigrants in science. Immigrants also carry the load in the most dangerous job in the United States: meat processing and packing. It is high-risk, low-pay work.

The immigrant effect is encompassing and a source of value to all Americans.

Snapshot of health care: A system unequal to the job.

There are overworked and under-supplied healthcare workers, plus many patients who won’t be able to pay their hospital bills. Wait until the invoices start arriving across the country, spreading destitution. If the Supreme Court rules against Obamacare, the destitution will be complete: a black, financial hole swallowing millions of Americans.

Snapshot: The poor are poorly. Hispanics and African Americans are bearing the brunt of the financial pain, and a disproportionate number of infections. Because so many are on the lower rungs of the employment ladder, they’re completely out of money now, and may find they have no jobs to return to as restrictions lift. This may be the ugliest snapshot in the gallery.

Saddest snapshot: Americans lined up in the tens of thousands to get a handout from the food banks. Mostly, one sees long lines of cars waiting for bags of food. Those are the lucky ones: They have cars. The needy must walk.

Happiest snapshot: Science is back, despite the Trump administration’s attempts to hobble it.

The public wants medicines for many conditions, and the rush to find answers for COVID-19 will lead to many discoveries that will benefit other sufferers with other diseases. War spurs innovation, and that’s what we’re getting.

Hard-to-read snapshot: How many companies will survive? Will we have just one national airline? Fewer utility companies? Will retail and office space be on the market for decades? How many people will work from home full time going forward? A boom in self-employment, leading to many startups and innovations galore?

Interesting snapshot: Will the impressive governors and mayors who have emerged during the pandemic save us from the political mediocrity that characterizes the national scene? Check out Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D).

Keep snapping and wearing a mask, things will come into focus: good and bad.

On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

Philip K. Howard: Create panel to streamline government in wake of virus, including fixing extreme pensions, work rules

Worker disinfects a New York City subway car in the current pandemic. New York State’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority operations are rife with astronomically expensive and outdated work rules and extravagant pensions. Ditto at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

NEW YORK 

Howls of outrage greeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R.-Ky.) suggestion that Congress should resist further funding of insolvent state and local governments because the money would be used “to bail out state pensions” that were never affordable except “by borrowing money from future generations.” Instead, Senator McConnell suggested, perhaps Congress should pass a law allowing states to declare bankruptcy. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo immediately countered that the bankruptcy of a large state would lead to fiscal chaos, and called McConnell’s suggestion “one of the saddest, really dumb comments of all time.” 

Indeed, the lesson of the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was that a bail-out would have been far preferable, less costly as well as less disruptive to markets. 

But McConnell is correct that many states are fiscally underwater because of irresponsible giveaways to public unions. About 25 percent of the Illinois state budget goes to pensions, including more than $100,000 annually to 19,000 pensioners, who retired, on average, at age 59. These pensions were often inflated by gimmicks such as spiking overtime in the last years of employment, or by working one day to get credit for an extra year.

In New York, arcane Metropolitan Transportation Authority work rules result in constant extra pay — including an extra day’s pay if a commuter rail engineer drives both a diesel and an electric train; two months of paid vacation, holiday and sick days; and overtime for workdays longer than eight hours even if part of a 40-hour week. In 2019, the MTA paid more than $1 billion in overtime.   

Cuomo has thrown out rulebooks to deal with COVID-19, and recently mused about the need to clean house: “How do we use this situation and …reimagine and improve and build back better? And you can ask this question on any level. How do we have a better transportation system, a …better public health system… You have telemedicine that we have been very slow on. Why was everybody going to a doctor's office all that time? Why didn't you do it using technology? … Why haven't we incorporated so many of these lessons? Because change is hard, and people are slow. Now is the time to do it.”

Cut red tape, reform entitlements 

Perhaps McConnell and Cuomo are not that far apart after all. While bankruptcy makes no sense now, since states can hardly be blamed for COVID-19, federal funding could come with an obligation by states to adopt sustainable benefits and work practices for public employees.

Why should taxpayers pay for indefensible entitlements? How can Cuomo run “a better transportation system” when rigid work rules prohibit him from making sensible operational choices? 

Taxpayers are reeling from these indefensible burdens. The excess baggage in public institutions is hardly limited to public employees. The ship of state founders under the heavy weight of red tape and entitlements that have, at best, only marginal utility to current needs.

Bureaucratic paralysis is the norm, whether to start a new business (the U.S. ranks 55th in World Bank ratings) or to act immediately when a virulent virus appears (public health officials in Seattle were forced to wait for weeks for federal approvals). 

Well-intended programs from past decades have evolved into inexcusable entitlements today — such as “carried interest” tax breaks to investment firms and obsessive perfection mandated by special-education laws (consuming upward of a third of school budgets). 

Partisanship blocks reform

Government needs to become disciplined again, just as in wartime. It must be adaptable, and encourage private initiative without unnecessary frictions. Dense codes should be replaced with simpler goal-oriented frameworks, as Cuomo has done. Red tape should be replaced with accountability.  Excess baggage should be tossed overboard. We’re in a storm, and can’t get out while wallowing under the heavy weight of legacy practices and special privileges.   

McConnell and Cuomo each have identified the madness of tolerating public-waste-as-usual. But toxic partisanship drives them apart. Nor would ad hoc negotiations work to restore discipline to government; too many interest groups feast at the public trough.

The only practical approach is for Congress to authorize an independent recovery commission with a broad mandate to relieve red tape and recommend ways to clean out unnecessary costs and entitlements. This is the model of “base-closing commissions” that make politically difficult choices of which states lose military bases.      

Recovering from this crisis will be difficult enough without lugging along the accumulated baggage from the past. A streamlined, disciplined government would be a godsend not only to marshal resources for social needs, but to liberate human initiative at every level of society.  That requires changing the rules. But change is hard, as Cuomo noted. Broad trust will be needed.  That’s why the new framework should be devised by an independent recovery commission. =

Philip K. Howard, a New York-based lawyer, writer, civic leader and photographer, is founder of Common Good. His latest book is Try Common Sense. Follow him on Twitter: @PhilipKHoward. This piece first ran in USA Today.

Don Pesci: Those gubernatorial Caligulas

Decisive executive: A marble bust of Caligula restored to its original colors, identified from particles trapped in the marble

VERNON, Conn.

Gore Vidal – deceased, but not from Coronavirus complications – was once asked whether he thought the Kennedy brood had exercised extraordinary sway over Massachusetts. He did. And what did he think of the seemingly unending reign of “Lion of the Senate” Edward Kennedy, who had spent almost 43 years in office?

Vidal said he didn’t mind, because every state should have in it at least one Caligula.

The half-mad Roman emperor Caligula, who reigned in 37-41 A.D., considered himself a god, and the senators of Rome generally deferred, on pain of displeasure, to His Royal Deity. Caligula certainly acted like a god. The tribunes of the people deferred to his borderless power, which he wielded like a whip. They deferred, and deferred, and deferred… .Over time, their republic slipped through their fingers like water. Scholars think Caligula may have been murdered by a palace guard he had insulted.

Here in the United States, we do not dispose of our godlike saviors in a like manner. At worse, we may promote them to a judgeship, or they may be recruited after public service by deep-pocket lobbyists or legal firms, or they may remain in office until, as in Edward Kennedy’s case, they have shucked off their mortal coil and trouble us no longer

.Coronavirus has produced a slew of Vidal Caligulas, all of them governors. In emergencies, when chief executives are festooned with extraordinary powers, the legislature is expected to defer to the executive, and the judiciary remains quiescent.

This deference to an all-powerful executive department is not uncommon in war, but even in war, the legislative and judiciary departments remain active and viral concerning their oversight constitutional responsibilities.The war on Coronavirus, however, is a war like no other. Here in Connecticut, the General Assembly remains in a state of suspended animation. Every so often, an annoying constitutional Cassandra will pop up to remind us that we are a constitutional republic, but constitutional antibodies in Connecticut are lacking. Our constitutions, federal and state, are still the law of the land, and even our homegrown Caligulas are not “above the law,” because we are “a nation of laws, not of men.”

These expressions are more than antiquated apothegms; they are flags of liberty that, most recently, have been waved under President Trump’s nose. However, in our present Coronavirus circumstances, no one pays much attention to constitutional Cassandras because --- do you want to die? Really, DO YOU WANT TO DIE?Every soldier who has ever entered the service of his country in a war has asked himself the very same question. And we are in a Coronavirus War, are we not? Pray it may not last as long as “The War on Drugs.” Drug dealers won that one, and Connecticut has long since entered into the  gambling racket; the marijuana racket looms in our future.

Then too, in the long run, we are all dead. Even “lions of the Senate” die. The whole point of life is to live honorably. And this rather high-falutin notion of honor means what your mama said it meant: don’t cheat; don’t lie; treat others as you expect them to treat you. Bathe every day and night in modesty, and remember – as astonishing as it may seem -- sometimes your moral enemy may be right. Put on your best manners in company. “The problem with bad manners,” William F. Buckley Jr. once said, “is that they sometimes lead to murder.” Caligula forgot that admonition.

Once Coronavirus has passed, we will be able honestly and forthrightly to examine closely the following propositions, many of which seem to be supported by what little, obscure data we now have at our disposal: that death projections have been wildly exaggerated; that reports of overwhelmed hospitals were exaggerated; that death counts were likely inflated; that the real death rate is magnitudes lower than it appears; that there have been under-serviced at-risk groups affected by Coronavirus; that it  is not entirely clear how well isolation works; that ventilators in some cases could be causing deaths.  These are open questions because insufficient data at our disposal at the moment does not permit a “scientific” answer to the questions that torment all of us.

At some point, a vaccine will be produced that will help to quiet our sometimes irrational fears, but vaccine production lies months ahead. The question before us now is: what is more dangerous, the wolf or the lion? New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and allied governors in his Northeast compact, cannot pinpoint a date to end their destructive business shutdown because of insufficient data. According to some reports, Cuomo has hired China-connected McKinsey & Company to produce “models on testing, infections and other key data points that will underpin decisions on how and when to reopen the region’s economy.”

If the economy in Connecticut collapses because Gov. Ned Lamont accedes to the demands of those in his newly formed consortium of Northeast governors that business destroying restrictions should remain in place for months until a vaccine is widely distributed, the effects of the resulting economic implosion will certainly be more severe than a waning Coronavirus infestation. After Connecticut has reached the apex of the Coronavirus bell curve, it is altogether possible that a continuation of the cure – a severe business shutdown occasioned by policies rooted in insufficient data – will be far worse than the disease it purports to cure.

Don Pesci is a Vernon-based columnist.