Hacker News Reader

Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

How has he not been impeached already?

https://nypost.com/2021/06/15/cuomo-nursing-home-order-cause...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/nyregion/cuomo-nursing-ho...

I thought those links would be about all the sexual assault allegations that somehow disappeared with no consequences. I had forgotten about all about the nursing home thing. How is this guy still in office?!?

He is a high level career politicians and therefore has friends in the right places so the procedural things that need to happen for him to be impeached will simply not happen unless there's a reason.

The party will depose him eventually because they don't want people known to have those skeletons in their closet but it will either happen quietly later (i.e. he won't seek further political office and will get a cushy board job somewhere), or if in the near future the party needs to look like it's tough on incompetence or tough on sexual misconduct he'll be the sacrificial lamb.

Welcome to single party state politics.

Also his last re-election was a joke, "somehow" his only primary challenger was a nobody and literally not a politician, so he won that handily, and then beat his Republican opponent more or less on the grounds of being not-a-Republican. It sucks.

Is it time to move? Stop consenting.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to move, and a lot of places are worse anyway.

The last thing anywhere else needs are people who have NY politics within their overton window.

That sounds like House of Cards.

Honestly, I was pointing out these "conspiracy theories" back in 2020 and nobody cared then and frankly nobody cares now. Complacency and apathy of The People -- that's how he's not impeached. The same goes for many other representatives.

Are you implying that the NY Times is promoting conspiracy theories?

Rather implying that these were called conspiracy theories until no longer convenient to hide them.

I would add that it's mostly tribalism and avoiding cognitive dissonance. Democrats were calling for Desantis' head because he was thought to be cooking the numbers. Republicans are calling for Coumo's head because he was cooking the numbers. In general, people ignore things that don't fit, and seek out things that do fit, their existing world view.

> Democrats were calling for Desantis' head because he was thought to be cooking the numbers. Republicans are calling for Coumo's head because he was cooking the numbers.

Except, rational people can see that someone being 'thought to cook the numbers' and someone 'cooking the numbers' are wholly different things and only one 'side' worthy of condemnation in this instance.

There is a theory that the term 'conspiracy theory' and the stigma around it was invented by government agencies to discredit unsavoury leaked information and to discredit whistleblowers. This category allows information to be mixed in with obvious misinformation to taint the reputation of the whole category so that status-oriented people would be primed to distrust the entire category.

A similar approach can be used to discredit anything.

> How has he not been impeached already?

Simple answer? He's delivering on policy. Legalised weed. Election reform. Ex-convict rights reforms. New tax package. Much of this was gridlocked. Magically, the grease hit the wheels when impeachment came into focus.

None of this will win him another term. But he's functionally useful and not showing signs of becoming an albatross on the party.

Do you have more info on why it was gridlocked? I thought many of these initiatives passed by wide margins, like 2:1 for weed.

If you really want to know look know further than Cuomo's mismanagement of the governor's office (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-cuomo-miscond...)

There’s was infighting over how to divide up the financial benefits of legalization.

I could see him winning another term. If the only candidate to run against him in the primary is someone with little to no prior political experience, endorsed by AOC—-I can definitely see him being renominated by default.

Those things were deadlocked by his office. The legislature had tried legalizing weird years ago, for example. His office is notoriously dysfunctional and only gets around to doing anything when he needs a political win.

> were deadlocked by his office

Yes. But ask yourself why? In each case, powerful constituents sat in opposition. For legalized weed, it was the restaurant and liquor lobbies. Those lobbies focussed on him because they knew he'd listen. If Cuomo took a "they can shove it" attitude from the start, they'd have dispersed and likely been more effective. (There is also an Albany tradition of legislators voting for bills on the Governor's assurance of a veto.)

With respect to dysfunctionality, the on-time budgets and--to the degree one can in a one-party state--fiscal restraint hints at deeper mechanics. In that respect, Cuomo's governship is almost Caesarian. Where Cuomo is, things happen. Where his attention isn't, useless deputies are screwing things up.

The Democratic Machine is very much alive in the Empire State

The same reason SF elected Chesa Boudin. NY's best days are behind it.

Chesa got 14% of the vote. And my gut feeling on city sentiment is right, he’s going to get recalled.

is this true? How is one elected with 14% of the vote?

It's not true. He got 50.8% of the vote. Even if you just look at the first round of IRV he got 35% of first-choice votes (https://ballotpedia.org/District_Attorney_election_in_San_Fr...)

Thanks for the source. Even if I were to try the best interpretation of the claim above, which would be that Boudin got 14% of the vote in the first round of a ranked choice scheem, that falls flat. Boudin was the first choice of a plurality of the city. This claim falls extremely flat.

It's just (d)ifferent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com