Message To De Blasio: Cuomo is Not Your Friend - Cuomo Has NO Friends

Ken Lovett in the Daily News:

ALBANY — Mayor de Blasio is at his “wit’s end” over the harsh treatment he’s received from supposed good friend Gov. Cuomo since taking office, according to sources who say they spoke directly to the mayor.

De Blasio was seeking advice from people who are close to both himself and Cuomo on what he can do to improve his working relationship with a governor he believes has gone out of his way to routinely embarrass him.

“He was very direct,” one source said. “He just said, ‘I don’t know what to do. Why does he keep coming at me like this? I want it to work.’ He’s at wit’s end.”

Lovett goes on to write that de Blasio thought he would have a better relationship with Cuomo after he saved Cuomo's bacon with the Working Families Party in May and helped ensure Cuomo would not face a third party challenge in the general election.

But it's been business as usual since then - Cuomo's out to screw de Blasio, embarrass him, make him look like a fool.

He did it over de Blasio's Sunnyside rail yards deal, he did it when he closed the subway without telling the mayor first, he did it when he abruptly changed course on Ebola patient restrictions.

The truth is, de Blasio's a fool for thinking he can have a working relationship with Andrew Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo is a sociopath - he has no friends, his own family is rumored to not be too enamored of him, and time and again he demonstrates how the only principles he holds are to his own career.

The only way to deal with Cuomo is to stick a political shiv in him before he sticks it into you.

Maybe de Blasio will learn that one of these days.

Maybe Assembly Dems will too - they just weakened a powerplay against the governor by Senate Republicans by introducing Cuomo's poison pill 30 day budget amendments after the Senate refused to.

What is it with these Dems who look to get along with Andrew Cuomo, look to do his bidding in the hopes that he'll be nicer to them in the future?

They seem to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

They should get over it finally.

NYSUT Backs Indicted Senate Republican

Your union in action:

There was also no consensus among union leaders about the effort to flip the Senate into Democratic hands – a push that largely originated with unions during the labor-backed Working Families Party’s debate over whether to endorse Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Fordham Law Prof. Zephyr Teachout. In a deal brokered by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, Cuomo ended up endorsing a Democrat-controlled Senate as well as the return of IDC members to the so-called regular Democratic conference.

But NYSUT members feel strongly that individual senators – both Republicans and Democrats – have been very supportive of their issues over the years, and they wanted to repay that loyalty with endorsements, Pallotta said. For example, NYSUT threw its support behind GOP Sen. Ken LaValle, longtime chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee; and another Long Island Republican, Jack Martins, who is among the Democrats’ top targets this year, even through it opted to take a pass in many of the Long Island districts – including the one represented by Senate GOP Leader Dean Skelos.

NYSUT also remained loyal to the Senate Republicans’ second-in-command, Sen. Tom Libous, of the Southern Tier, despite his indictment on charges that he lied to federal agents about helping his son get a job with a politically-connected law firm.

Okay, I get paying back Republicans like Martins, who has been good on education issues.

But why back the indicted Libous?

And the next time you hear jive about Working Families Party backing Cuomo so that the State Senate could be taken back by Dems, remember this sentence from Liz Benjamin:

There was also no consensus among union leaders about the effort to flip the Senate into Democratic hands – a push that largely originated with unions during the labor-backed Working Families Party’s debate over whether to endorse Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Fordham Law Prof. Zephyr Teachout.

I'm agnostic these days about Dems taking back the Senate - many of them are ed deformers and pro-Common Core, after all.

But I do want to point out the jive around the WFP endorsement.

Where Are The Dems And The Protesters On The Rhode Island Firings?

I don't get it.

The mayor of Providence FIRED EVERY teacher in the city on Thursday and I have yet to see ANY action from the union to push back on this.

I know that the protests in Wisconsin are sucking up a lot of media oxygen, but it shouldn't be too difficult to tie the Rhode Island firings to the Wisconsin workers' protests.

I wonder if the fact that the mayor is a Democrat has anything to do with the silence on the part of many on the left on this issue?

I also wonder if Barack Obama, cheerleading the firing of teachers up the road from Providence in Central Falls, Rhode Island last year doesn't complicate this somewhat?

Not for me, of course.

I see Barack OBama for EXACTLY who he is - a bought politician doing the dirty work of his corporatist owners and overlords, no different from George Bush or Bill Clinton before him.

Frankly on education, Obama is EVEN WORSE then Bush, perhaps because the Dems in Congress decided to give in on every neo-liberal wet dream policy Obama wanted as part of Race to the Top - from school closures, to teacher firings to merit pay to teacher evaluations tied to test scores.

No way the Dems would have given Bush that stuff.

So now here we are, a year and a half later and the fall-out from the concerted Obama teacher bashing policies are coming to fruition all across the country, but especially so in Rhode Island.

It's easy for the Dems and the unions to get together and push back against Scott Walker for trying to bust the public employees unions in Wisconsin.

But how do they get together to push back against a Democratic mayor who fires ALL of the teachers in his city in order to bust their union after a Democratic president put into place policies that helps unionbusters in public education and cheerled the firing of teachers in Rhode Island last year?

The fight in Wisconsin?

That's R vs. D.

But the fight in Rhode Island?

That's Dem vs. Teachers.