Dems Start Sniping Back At "Old Ugly Andy" Cuomo

Here's an interesting piece from Fred Dicker in the Post on how Dems are finally pushing back on Governor Cuomo over his "belittling" of Mayor de Blasio:

Several prominent Democrats said they were “shocked’’ — a word that was repeatedly used — at Cuomo’s criticism of de Blasio for appearing in public with Astorino. The governor cited Astorino’s opposition to abortion, among other things. But that didn’t stop Cuomo from standing with Pope Francis in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in September, despite the pontiff obviously being anti-abortion.

“That was one of the most amazing statements I’ve ever heard,’’ said a prominent Democrat who has known Cuomo for years, noting that the governor in the past has claimed he was committed to cooperating with his political opponents.

“It’s like the old ugly Andrew is back, the way Andrew used to be and had promised after 2002 that he wouldn’t be anymore,’’ the source continued, referring to Cuomo’s repeated pledges of new-found humility after his defeat in the race for governor that year.

Another key Democrat — known to virtually all party activists — said prominent Democrats had become increasingly unhappy with Cuomo’s “belittling’’ of de Blasio.

“Cuomo’s MO of pretending to be high-minded while belittling de Blasio has become a tedious trick,’’ said the source.

“Since [Cuomo’s] sagging polls are in part due to people understanding he’s a nasty piece of work — Astorino’s use of ‘scorpion’ is dead-on — perhaps he should try governing and see if that works.

“De Blasio is tricky in his own way but looks like an alter boy compared to Andrew,’’ the source, who has known Cuomo for years, continued.

Astorino, in the wake of Cuomo’s attack on de Blasio, compared the governor to a “scorpion,’’ saying, “Unless he is angry, unless he is biting somebody, he can’t function.’’

“This guy needs some serious help,” he told Albany’s Talk 1300 AM radio.

Dicker also reports that Cuomo's hand-picked challenge to de Blasio in a primary - Congressman Hakeem Jeffries - is starting to have "second thoughts" about running against de Blasio because his Cuomo connection would be an albatross to him in a Democratic primary.

Dicker has a source say that Jeffries is "starting to resist" Cuomo, trying to distance himself from the governor and appear to be his own man instead of a Cuomo shill.

Quite frankly, that's probably Jeffries or a Jeffries shill trying to change the perception that Jeffries has been completely co-opted by Cuomo.

Nonetheless, it's telling that this stuff ended up in the paper (along with the return of the "Old Ugly Andy" meme from 2002)

It means that some Dems, finally, are pushing back against Cuomo's bullying.

Whether this continues or not when Cuomo pushes back, however, remains to be seen.

But the fact that "Old Ugly Andy" and his governing style keeps popping up in the Silver/Skelos corruption trials surely helps put the spotlight back on his dark side too. 

Rob Astorino Offers Mental Health Services To "Insecure" Andrew Cuomo

This made my day:

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino—the 2014 Republican candidate for governor—today suggested Gov. Andrew Cuomo suffers from “insecurities,” and offered to help connect Mr. Cuomo with therapy.

Mr. Astorino was responding to comments Mr. Cuomo made earlier today, in which the Democratic governor argued that Mayor Bill de Blasio should not appear beside the socially conservative GOP politician at a press conference calling for greater federal infrastructure investment this evening. Mr. Astorino blasted the governor, a resident of Westchester’s Mount Kisco, and said he would be willing to connect him with local mental health resources to deal with his inner demons.

“You know, it seems to me that the statement that the governor made was completely out of line, number one, and just from my observation, it seems like the governor has some insecurities,” Mr. Astorino told the Observer at the presser in Penn Station. “Since he’s a constituent of mine, I’d be more than happy to set him up with our Department of Community Mental Health if he actually needs some help on this issue.”

“I am going to work with the mayor whenever we can see eye-to-eye and can advance an issue that’s important,” Mr. Astorino continued.

Cuomo, btw, works with many Republicans, including former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, now on trial for corruption, and former deputy state Senate Majority Leader Tom Libous, soon to be under house arrest after being convicted of lying to the FBI.

And for years Cuomo has touted his bipartisan bona fides - in fact, he just touted them in a speech at Harvard the other day decrying how Washington can't get along anymore because it's too partisan.

So the phrase that comes to mind after reading about Cuomo's criticism of de Blasio for standing with Astorino on the infrastructure issue is, "full of shit."

As for Astorino's claim that Cuomo suffers from insecurities and needs mental health help, that's a keen and accurate assessment of our sociopathic governor from his former opponent.

Cuomo Insists He Never Said Government Should Be Shut Down - But He Did

Scott Waldman at Politico NY:

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted on Tuesday that he did not explicitly call for Democrats to shut down the federal government if Republicans continue to resist gun-control legislation.

“Just to clarify, I didn't call for a government shutdown," Cuomo told WNYC's Brian Lehrer. "I said the Republicans are very good at making their priorities known and they’re basically saying if we don’t get a tax cut for the rich, then we’ll shut down the government. The Democrats should say, well our top priority is gun control. They should put it up at the top of the agenda and threaten Republicans right back on gun control.”

Last week, however, Cuomo seemed to be more direct in calling for a shutdown in response to the killing of nine people at a community college in Oregon.

“I’d love to see the Democrats stand up and say we’re going to shut down the government or threaten to shut down the government if we don’t get real gun control legislation,” Cuomo told NY1. “It should be that high a priority.”

If you look up "full of shit" in the dictionary, you find a photo of Andrew Cuomo.

Just own up to it, Andy, or better yet, own up to it and say you were speaking emotionally but want to clarify your statements.

Instead he denies he ever said it even though the evidence exists to show he said it.

Cuomo Directive For "Evidence-Based Curriculum" Puts Grants For NYC Substance Abuse Groups In Jeopardy

More "good" from our governor:

For 30 years, Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center has counseled teenagers in the Bronx and Manhattan on avoiding the trappings of drugs.

 

In Harlem, Our Children’s Foundation has served countless children over the last 47 years through tutoring, dance classes and other activities in a free after-school program, shielding them from drug dealers.

 

Similarly, in Chinatown, Project Reach has done its part to keep youths off the streets since 1971 — like the other groups, a beneficiary of state funds.

 

But the programs — and at least a dozen similar ones across New York City — are now imperiled after they failed to make it past a state agency’s new grant-award process that several nonprofit leaders described as cumbersome and confusing. The agency, the New York Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, known as Oasas, is recommending that several longtime groups be defunded, Susan Craig, a spokeswoman for the agency, said.

 

The losses may force some of the programs to close. Mount Sinai had been receiving more than $700,000 annually for its two sites, and Our Children’s Foundation had been getting $914,000 a year, according to Oasas. Project Reach had been awarded $331,000, the group’s director said.  

The new grant-award process arose from a directive by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, for all state agencies to assess contracts to make sure they were competitively bid and, in the case of Oasas, were providing “evidence-based” curriculum approved by the agency, Ms. Craig said.

The new Cuomo bidding process and the scoring for it was non-transparent, opaque and nonsensical:

A lack of transparency and what several nonprofit leaders described as an unfair bidding process drove Felecia Pullen, who heads Substance Abuse Free Environment in Harlem, to pull together the groups that lost financing to compare notes.

 

Representatives of the nonprofits grew emotional at the thought of closing after decades or of leaving children without services. They complained of being blindsided by the new bidding process, and not understanding how their groups were scored.

 

Mount Sinai, one of the larger operations to lose the money, submitted identical applications for two different sites and received two different scores, Michael Nembhard, a social worker at the adolescent health center, said.

 

He said the group had a debriefing with Oasas to find out what had happened. “They really didn’t know what happened,” Mr. Nembhard said. “We basically didn’t learn anything from the debriefing.”

Two identical applications for different sites for the same operation got different scores - that makes sense.

No, actually it doesn't.

This new Cuomo bidding process sounds a lot like the new Cuomo teacher evaluation, doesn't it?

But wait - it gets even better.

Turns out the Cuomo bidding process privileged operations that worked with youth during school hours and passed over operations that work with youth after school hours - because kids with substance abuse problems are always in school, you know?

Ms. Pullen said it appeared to her that Oasas favored larger operations, and was trying to deliver services to youths during school hours, not after school. “Youths who are into drugs are not in school on a regular basis,” said Ms. Pullen, who is a former addict. “They have walked away from groups that have been entrenched in the community.”

Indeed, some of the grants, according to a list obtained by The New York Times from someone who disagreed with the state’s choices, were awarded to the city’s Education Department and the education departments of the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn.

The real problem here is, the operations that are being harmed by the new Cuomo process do some real good:

Jailene Batista, 17, said she learned about the program through a counselor at Queens Satellite High School. She said she did not know what she would do if the program closed, adding that her afternoons had consisted of being outside and watching fights before she entered the program. “Now that I’ve been in this program, I lost a lot of friends, but it’s probably for the better,” she said.

 

The youths appeared to make new friends within the program, and some of the parents in the program said they had also grown close, sharing parenting tips and leaning on each other.

 

Deborah Garnes, 47, said the program helped her be a better parent to her 18-year-old daughter, one of her eight children. She said she learned “every child is different; the discipline is different.”

 

Ms. Garnes said her daughter had been smoking marijuana and cigarettes, but quit both after participating in the program.

 

Mr. Blake said former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo had inspired him to create V.I.P. He recalled that Mr. Cuomo used to talk about how working in his father’s grocery store in Jamaica, Queens, kept him out of trouble.

 

V.I.P. provides its participants with internships in the neighborhood. Mr. Blake said it was ironic that the program would be shuttering under Mr. Cuomo’s son.

 

“I really feel terrible for the children,” Mr. Blake said. “Watching them over the years has been absolutely rewarding.” He added, “This program has survived four governors.”

More mindless destruction from the sociopath in Albany - and to what end?

Cuomo Says He's A Calm Guy Who Never Takes Anything Personal

Governor Cuomo, responding to questions about Mayor de Blasio's critique from last week:

A week after Mayor Bill de Blasio eviscerated Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a pair of stinging interviews, Mr. Cuomo declined to punch back, telling reporters that the mayor was “obviously frustrated” with Albany.

“He chose to publicly vent his frustration. We all have our own styles and our own comportment and we all see our roles in a certain way,” Mr. Cuomo told reporters today after an unrelated announcement in Manhattan. “My father had one style, Koch had one style … that’s the mayor’s style, it’s not my style.”

Mr. Cuomo claimed that he often had to “bite” his “tongue,” implying that his more measured approach with the press today was an outcome of that tact.

“I try to bite my tongue once in a while,” he told the Observer.

More:

Cuomo says he gets things done in Albany by "staying calm, not getting personal" and finding common grounds with others.

— Tom Precious (@TomPreciousALB) July 7, 2015

Oh yeah, Cuomo's a real calm guy who never takes things personal and always tries to bite his tongue.

You know, like this example from June 1:

The long-simmering animosity between Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio flared after the mayor hired a former Cuomo aide as his press secretary, a move the governor viewed as a betrayal, sources told the Daily News.

The new details into the bad blood between two of the state’s top Democrats emerged Monday just as de Blasio and Cuomo privately agreed to bury the hatchet, with both men taking pains to praise each other in public.

“Bill and I are going to be friends after these jobs are over,” Cuomo said during an appearance on upstate public radio’s “The Capitol Pressroom.”

But privately, Cuomo has been seething over de Blasio’s decision to hire Karen Hinton last month, sources said.

Hinton, along with de Blasio, worked for Cuomo when the governor was secretary of housing and urban development.

She is also married to Howard Glaser, a former top Cuomo aide who stepped down from the governor’s office last year.

“The governor was incensed,” said one source.

“He was berating his staff, ‘How can you let this happen?’ He sees imaginary slights everywhere, especially from the mayor.”

Cuomo was particularly outraged that he didn’t find out about Hinton’s hiring until after it was leaked to the press, sources said.

Some close to Cuomo were “calling around to see if there was any way to back it off,” the source said.

“He treats it as an act of treason in the environment we’re in,” said the source.

A second source said of Cuomo’s reaction, “There was a lot of anger (over the hire).”
And it was directed squarely at de Blasio.

See how calm Cuomo is?

See how he never takes anything personal?

As for biting his tongue, here's an example of that from June 25:

A wide swath of local politicos believe New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) basically admitted that he was the anonymous official who criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) in a newspaper story.

The story in question was published in the Daily News on Wednesday evening. In it, a person who was only identified as a "top" Cuomo administration official was extensively quoted accusing de Blasio of bungling his relationship with the state government. De Blasio and Cuomo have an infamously tense relationship and the mayor did not achieve many of his top legislative goals on the state level this year, including those related to affordable housing and education.

"He is more politically oriented in terms of his approach ... and then he makes it almost impossible for him to achieve success," the anonymous Cuomo official said to the Daily News.

The interview was striking to many of the Albany reporters most familiar with Cuomo. The anonymous official spoke with one of Cuomo's most famous mannerisms: asking himself questions before answering them in order to reframe the issue at hand.

Underneath the teasing Thursday morning headline "Cuomo impersonator attacks mayor," Capital New York documented several reporters calling attention to the "eerily familiar" quotes in the Daily News interview.

See, he bites his tongue.

That's Governor Andrew Cuomo for you - a calm guy who never takes anything personal and always tries to bite his tongue and live by the adage that if you don't have anything nice to say about someone, you shouldn't say anything at all about them - on the record, at any rate.

Hedge Fundie Who Made Homophobic Hillary Joke Holds Fund Raiser For Andrew Cuomo

Daniel Loeb, founder and chief executive of Third Point LLC, a New York-based hedge fund with a portfolio reported worth $14 billion, is holding a $5,000 a head fundraiser for Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The fundraiser will be held at Loeb's East Hampton residence on July 11. 

Loeb is quite a piece of work.

Loeb sits on the board of StudentsFirstNY and chairs Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy board.

He has given money to Cuomo before and was instrumental in helping Cuomo to push for legalized gay marriage in New York back in 2011.

But those are just the above-board descriptions of Loeb. 

The real Loeb is a vindictive, vitriolic sociopath who goes out of his way to destroy people.

Sounds like the perfect person to raise funds for Andrew Cuomo.

Loeb's reputation as a hedge fundie is that "he doesn't give a fuck" how he goes about making money.

Check out the whole Vanity Fair piece about Loeb I linked to above, but here's a little taste of how Loeb is perceived within the financial world:

A colleague who has known Loeb for decades says Loeb “can write the most obnoxious letters on the planet, make up shit—[because he does] not really care … whether or not you hurt people or don’t hurt people. You just don’t care. The only thing you care about is making money on their stock. . . . [His letters] were juvenile, sophomoric, and cringe-making. Horrible. If you’re a decent member of society you [don’t do] shit like that. But he did. That was his business strategy. He was very smart. Because other people—most of us—have certain values and certain norms, and there are certain boundaries we just won’t cross. And he just obviously doesn’t have those same kind of limitations. Never has.”

Loeb is also a hypocrite - he looked to manage some of the teachers pension fund as a hedge fund manager even as he worked as an education deformer to slash teachers benefits (from Vanity Fair piece linked above):

Loeb’s pugnacious side was also on view earlier this year when the powerful American Federation of Teachers—the nation’s largest teachers’ union—accused him of trying to solicit a chunk of the union’s $800 billion pension fund to manage while being an enthusiastic supporter and board member of StudentsFirst, a national organization that advocates, among other things, replacing teachers’ defined-benefit pension plans with defined-contribution plans. “Loeb has been soliciting the retirement money of public workers, then turning right around and lobbying for those same workers to lose their benefits,” Matt Taibbi wrote on his Rolling Stone blog. “He’s essentially asking workers to pay for their own disenfranchisement (with Loeb getting his two-and-twenty cut, or whatever obscene percentage of their retirement monies he will charge as a fee). If that isn’t the very definition of balls, I don’t know what is.”

Loeb got into it a bit with AFT President Randi Weingarten after she wanted a meeting with him:

When Randi Weingarten, the president of the A.F.T., learned that Loeb was giving a speech in Washington, at the April meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors, a nonprofit association of pension and endowment funds, representing more than $3 trillion of assets (where Loeb may well have intended to do a little soliciting), she suggested a meeting with him. “Given your strong support for StudentsFirst, an organization which is leading the attack on defined benefit pension funds around the country, I was surprised to learn of your interest in working with public pension plan investors,” she wrote.

Loeb agreed to meet with Weingarten, but in the end he canceled his speech and the meeting, saying that his plans had changed and he had to get back to New York. He offered to meet with her at another time. But that never happened. He also decided to give $3 million, instead of $2 million, to Success Academy Charter Schools, a network of 22 New York City charter schools, which many teachers see as undermining public education. “Rather than intimidate me, [the accusations of conflict of interest] had the effect of redoubling my commitment and making me realize how important our work is because these kids face such obstacles,” he told Bloomberg. Weingarten now says of Loeb, “He got very angry when Rolling Stone and others wrote about it, and he’s just been going after me ever since.” She says it was a shame that “he thought he was punishing me” by giving more money to charter schools, but “we should be working together” to improve education for all students.

Someone who knows Loeb asked him about his fight with Weingarten, and, the source says, Loeb replied, “She’s fucking with the wrong person.”

Dan Loeb is a vitriolic sociopath with no core values other than his own success and ego aggrandizement - sounds like a perfect fit for a Cuomo fundraiser.

But wait - it gets better.

You would think given Loeb's support for Cuomo's push to legalize gay marriage in New York, Loeb would be sensitive to homophobia, but you would be wrong about that:

Hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Loeb — one of the biggest and most feared investors on Wall Street and a vocal backer of same-sex marriage — posted a joke speculating about Hillary Clinton’s sexuality on his personal Facebook page.

“Dear Abby,” he posted May 9. “My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job 14 years ago, he hasn’t even look for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and shoot the bull with his buddies, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do? Signed Clueless.”

“Dear Clueless,” the post continues, “Grow up and dump him. Good grief woman! You don’t need him anymore! You’re running for President of the United States. Act like one.”

The anti-Clinton diatribe wasn’t Loeb’s own joke or words — it appeared to be a right-wing meme that has been circulating online since Clinton’s first run. The same faux “Dear Abby” column was also posted on the Facebook page of actor Kevin Sorbo, best known for his role as Hercules in the TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.”

The resurfacing of the old attack on the Clintons this cycle — on the page of a prominent billionaire — indicates how ugly attacks could get if Hillary Clinton gets into the uncharted territory of a general election.

Loeb, who bundled money for Barack Obama in 2008 before turning on him and backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012, has shown interest in a few of the GOP candidates this cycle.

...

 

Loeb promptly deleted the Dear Abby post after POLITICO contacted his office about it.

“This widely circulated, old meme ended up on my Facebook page inadvertently and as soon as I was informed of it, I took it down,” Loeb said in a statement. “ As a longstanding public supporter of gay and women’s rights, it does not represent my views.”

The "widely circulated, old meme" ended up on his Facebook page "inadvertently"?

Add "full of shit" and "bald-faced liar" to the other descriptions of Dan Loeb like "sociopath...who doesn't give a fuck."

This is the guy Cuomo's allowed to host a $5,000 a head fundraiser for him.

Says an awful lot about Andrew Cuomo, doesn't it.

There are protests scheduled for the fundraiser by some labor groups.

Big Motivation For Cuomo During Legislative Session Was To Screw De Blasio

From Fred Dicker's NY Post column today:

Cuomo, sources in both parties said, was motivated by a desire to deny credit to de Blasio on housing (by rejecting the 421-a construction incentive proposal) and education policy (by granting him a mere one year extension of mayoral control of the schools) as well as by a commitment to some of his big-money contributors who favored aid to private schools.

Imagine that one of the primary motivations for the governor of the State of New York was to ensure that the mayor of New York City had his political agenda shunted aside, not because the governor was necessarily opposed to that agenda but simply because he wanted to deny the mayor credit.

What damage was done to Andrew Cuomo as a child that he continues to act like a petulant brat and bully throughout his adult life?

I wrote this earlier today, but it bears repeating:

It says an awful lot about Andrew Cuomo, alpha male, that a primary motivation in policy-making is remaining top dog.

Calling The "Visionaries" In And Out Of The Education World What Many Of Them Truly Are - Sociopaths

Tony Schwartz in the NY Times on Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk:

The three leaders are arguably the most extraordinary business visionaries of our times. Each of them has introduced unique products that changed – or in Mr. Musk’s case, have huge potential to change – the way we live.

...

What disheartens me is how little care and appreciation any of them give (or in Mr. Jobs’s case, gave) to hard-working and loyal employees, and how unnecessarily cruel and demeaning they could be to the people who helped make their dreams come true.

...

Given the extraordinary success of these men, the obvious question is whether being relentlessly hard on people, and even cruel, may get them to perform better.

Like their biographers, I think the answer is no. Our research at the Energy Project has shown that the more employees feel their needs are being met at work – above all, for respect and appreciation – the better they perform.

Here's how these three "visionary" leaders treated their employees and/or others:

As Mr. Isaacson writes of Mr. Jobs: “Nasty was not necessary. It hindered him more than it helped him.”

...

Mr. Jobs drove around without a license on his car, and he regularly parked in spaces reserved for the handicapped. As Mr. Ive said of his attitude, “I think he feels he has a liberty and a license to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don’t apply to him.”

Amazon employees collected examples of Mr. Bezos’s most eviscerating put-downs, including, “Are you lazy or just incompetent?” “Why are you wasting my life?” and “I’m sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?”

When Mr. Musk’s loyal executive assistant of 12 years asked for a significant raise, he told her to take a two-week vacation while he thought about it. When she returned, he told her the relationship wasn’t going to work anymore. According to Mr. Vance, they haven’t spoken since.

And of course all of this nastiness, this "I am the most special person on the planet and you will treat me as such!" stems from the egocentric belief these men had or have of their own so-called genius.

But Schwartz thinks there's another reason Jobs, Bezos and Musk act or acted so badly - out of fear:

People like these three visionaries deeply crave control. Each of them was far more likely to act out suddenly and behave poorly when he wasn’t getting exactly what he wanted — when he felt that others were failing to live up to his standards.

All three invested endless hours and energy in building and running their businesses — and far less in anything else, including taking care of the people who worked for them or even understanding what doing so might look like. To a large extent, people were simply a means to an end.

I understand what it is like to have one’s self entirely tied up with external success. No amount is ever quite enough. To a large extent, for these men, employees are simply a means to an end.

If you're a teacher these days, you know some of the drill that the people who work or worked for Jobs, Bezos and Musk know because some of the same personality types have been given the power to run school systems and schools themselves.

In the "visions" of the corporate education reformers, students are seen as "products," teachers are seen as a means to an end, control is the most sought-after goal and the only thing that truly matters is imposing an agenda and rigging the data to make it look successful.

Many education leaders these days are little versions of Bezos, Jobs and Musk - always without the "genius" or "vision," of course, though some education leaders think they have it - see Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Cami Anderson, et al. for the same delusional arrogance and egocentric patterns that Bezos, Jobs and Musk displayed.

But it doesn't really matter whether the Kleins and Rhees of the world have the "genius" or "vision" of Bezos or Jobs or not because a truly successful leader shouldn't be treating people like "products" or a "means to an end," a truly successful leader shouldn't be so obsessed with control and fear that they run roughshod over everybody and everything.

Schwartz concludes:

The question their management style raises is not whether being tough, harsh and relentlessly demanding gets people to work better. Of course it doesn’t, and certainly not sustainably. Can anyone truly doubt that people are more productive in workplaces that help them to be healthier and happier?

The more apt question is how much more these men could have enhanced thousands of people’s lives – and perhaps made them even more successful — if they had invested as much in taking care of them as they did in conceiving great products.

“Try not to become a man of success,” Albert Einstein once said, “but rather a man of value.”

It is time we stop fetishizing so-called corporate geniuses like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other so-called "visionaries" (you can add many others to the list - Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates come immediately to mind) and call them exactly what they are - sociopaths who in the end do a lot more harm than good.

The same goes for the little versions in education - the Kleins, the Rhees, et al. - who for years have lived on the press of their "visions" and "genius" (think the TIME cover with Rhee on it holding the broom.)

But remember, you can't decry the sociopathology of the Kleins and Rhees of the education world while praising the "genius" and "vision" of sociopaths like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates.

Gates is an easy one for people in the ed world to despise - his foundation's work to destroy public schools makes that an easy thing.

But Steve Jobs still gets fetishized by some for his "genius" and "vision".

Truly his "vision" was "@#$% you, I get my way or I destroy you!"

And that's the kind of vision we can do without these days - in or out of education.

For another example, see one Andrew Cuomo in Albany.

Why Are Cuomo's People Such Emotional Regressives?

State of Politics:

A letter from members of the state’s Congressional delegation supporting stronger rent control protections garnered a sarcastic reply in response from an aide in the Cuomo administration’s Washington, D.C.-based office.

In the letter, House Democrats who represent New York City in Congress urged Gov. Andrew Cuomo to support strong rent control regulations, similar the measures adopted by the Assembly, which backed a package last month ending vacancy decontrol.

In response, Cuomo special counsel Alexander Cochran sent a sarcastic reply in an email address to staff as well as Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Queens Rep. Grace Meng.

Cochran’s response, in full:

Chiefs and LDs

Great letter. Didn’t realize the federal delegation was supposed to be used as a state lobbying vehicle. Second time in two weeks. Looking forward to seeing letters to the Mayor on state and city issues. Happy to give you suggestions.

The email was sent this afternoon, a day after the letter was made public.

A commenter at the post notes:

Cuomo's snarky with...Congressmen; State Senators; State Assemblymembers; the Mayor of NYC; local Mayors; County officials; union leaders; school board elected; newspaper columnists.

Indeed, about the only group Cuomo isn't snarky with is his wealthy donors.

As for his staff, clearly they have been told it's cool to share the boss's dismissive attitude of everybody but his wealthy donors - they have a rep for being asses to just about everybody (see here and here.)

What damage had to be done to these people as children that they're comfortable working for Cuomo and acting this way?

As for the question in the post title, I know why Cuomo's people are emotional regressives - it's because their boss, Sheriff Andy, is an emotional regressive and he surrounds himself with the same.

Andrew Cuomo Makes Stuff Up During His Prison PR Tour

Andrew Cuomo on ABC News after two prisoners escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY:

The governor, who toured the prison Saturday, described the escaped convicts as "resourceful" and "dangerous." 

"This was the first breakout since 1865 and I want to make sure that it's the last," Cuomo said.

Cuomo was wrong:

Since Clinton opened in 1845, dozens of inmates have escaped over, under or through the prison’s thick walls, their exploits detailed in breathless, often sensationalistic, newspaper reports of earlier eras.

...

Jeff Hall, a history professor at Queensborough Community College, said Clinton’s history of escapes was fairly ordinary among state prisons. “Escapes aren’t common, but they’re not uncommon,” said Professor Hall, whose doctoral dissertation was about prisons in the North Country region of New York, where Clinton is. He said that, typically, the prisoners were not found by police activity like helicopter flyovers, roadblocks or bloodhounds.

While it's true many of the prison breaks from the prison came before the 1865 date Cuomo gave as the last time there was a successful breakout, there were also some after the 1865 date.

Why does Cuomo feel the need to give definitive statements like this that aren't, you know, the truth?

Andrew Cuomo's Gonna Love This Unauthorized Biography Coming Out Next Week

Michael Shnayerson's biography of Andrew Cuomo (The Contender) is coming out later this month and it promises to be a fun read.

So far we've learned from excerpts of the book that Cuomo may hate Attorney General Eric Schneiderman because Cuomo may have been schtupping Schneiderman's ex-wife and saw Schneiderman (who was still friendly with the ex-wife) as a rival.

And we've learned that Cuomo so much despised the family of his ex-wife Kerry Kennedy that he may have purposely played "Sympathy for the Devil" at his informal launch for governor in 2002 in order to embarrass them:

The “Cuomolot” union was on the skids by the time the ambitious son of Queens geared up for his abortive 2002 run for governor. Still, Kennedy agreed to stick by him during the campaign.

There was no shortage of tense and painful moments: At the Manhattan party considered the informal launch of Cuomo’s campaign, the Kennedy clan was aghast to hear “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones played at “rousing volume,” Shnayerson writes.

The Kennedys, who had lost two of their loved ones to assassins’ bullets, listened, “disbelieving,” Shnayerson details, as the sound system spewed Mick Jagger’s famous lines: “I shouted out, ‘Who killed the Kennedys?’ / When after all, it was you and me.” They wondered if Cuomo had chosen to play it, the bio says.

The book also puts forth the idea that Cuomo may have pushed to have his ex-wife prosecuted after she was arrested for "drugged driving":

“The Contender” suggests the bad blood between Cuomo and his ex continued to manifest itself long after the divorce, including when Kennedy got pulled over for drugged driving in 2012 and was prosecuted by Westchester County DA Janet DiFiore, described as a Cuomo ally.

Although Kennedy was acquitted in the incident, in which she said she’d gotten behind the wheel after accidentally taking Ambien instead of her thyroid meds, Shnayerson quotes Kennedy’s brother, Douglas, as opining that Cuomo would spend the rest of his days “trying to take her down.”

No wonder Cuomo allegedly tried to get Shanyerson to write with him instead of writing on his own.

The book is coming out on March 31 (the release was delayed a bit) and that's unfortunate, because it's coming right at the budget deadline.

The portrait that is going to emerge from this unauthorized Cuomo biography is that he's even a bigger sociopath than has been so far publicized and he's going to be on the defensive for awhile after the release.

This book is certainly not going to help him politically.

For example, in the battle over ethics reform, Senate Republicans are trying to include disclosure of partners of both legislators and statewide politicians as part of the reform package.

This is aimed at Cuomo's paramour, Sandra Lee, who has some business deals with companies that lobby the state government on issues but doesn't have to disclose her income or business dealings publicly.

In pushing back against that proposed Senate reform, Cuomo flacks have twice suggested that if the Senate wants to add girlfriends to the ethics reform package, Cuomo will happily add the girlfriends of married legislators to the mix.

The Shnayerson book looks like it's going to detail multiple instances of Cuomo's own extra-martial dalliances so the next time Cuomo's flacks attempt to pushback on the Senate's Sandra Lee proposal, they're going to have to find a different insult - it's not going to work to insult Senate pols as adulterers when Andy Cuomo himself is concurrently being revealed as an adulterer.

In any case, this unauthorized biography is just one more gift coming if you're a Cuomo-hater in a year of gifts for Cuomo-haters.

First, Preet Bharara has seemingly thrown Cuomo off his game and has Sheriff Andy rocking on his heels over the Moreland mess and ethics reform.

Next, Cuomo's been slammed by teachers over his education proposals and his poll numbers are dropping.

Finally, there's the battle between some pols in Albany (particularly Senate Republicans) and Cuomo that has seen Cuomo have to fight for what he wants rather than just have everybody cave to him.

Now we have the Cuomo biography coming out that looks like it's going to expose Cuomo as the sociopath he is and put him further on the defensive even more than he already is.

Good times these days every time you google the name "Andrew Cuomo" and the word "news".

When Does Cuomo's Sociopathic Behavior Come Back To Haunt Him?

Ken Lovett has this quote from an Albany insider over Cuomo's thuggish treatment of his fellow pols in and out of Albany:

“You can run that bullying game for just so long before you’ve p---ed off enough people that it all starts to add up and there’s no one left willing to stand with you.”

When does that point come?

De Blasio's still acting like he thinks he can work with Cuomo.

Assembly Dems just undercut a powerplay Senate Republicans were playing over Cuomo's poison pill 30 day budget amendments.

At what point do the Dems finally say "Screw Cuomo - we can't work with him anymore!"?

Seriously.

Aren't we well past the point where they should have had that epiphany?

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.

Turns Out Brian Williams Misremembers A Lot Of Things

I'm sure you've heard by now how Brian Williams "misremembered" being in a helicopter that was forced down by enemy fire in Iraq in 2003.

It turns out, there's a lot more he misremembers:

The NBC news anchor, who apologized Wednesday for telling a false story about taking fire in a helicopter while covering Iraq, is being called out for possibly lying about his experience covering Hurricane Katrina, according to a report.

Williams claimed to have gotten dysentery from drinking flood water and seeing dead bodies float past his hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter while covering Hurricane Katrina.

However the The New Orleans Advocate noted that the French Quarter was not flooded and quoted a local health expert who did not recall anyone getting such a stomach ailment.

Williams recalled his bout with the bug in interview with Tom Brokaw last year, when he said: “I accidentally ingested some of the floodwater. I became very sick with dysentery."

The Advocate said a public health official never heard of people getting things like dysentery after the storm.

“I don’t recall a single, solitary case of gastroenteritis during Katrina or in the whole month afterward,” Dr. Brobson Lutz told The Advocate.

“I don’t know anybody that’s tried that [drinking flood water] to see, but my dogs drank it, and they didn’t have any problems.”

Williams said also during an interview in 2006 that he saw dead bodies float past his window in the French Quarter.

“When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country,” Williams said in 2006.

But the French Quarter, the original high ground of New Orleans, was not impacted by the floodwaters that overwhelmed the vast majority of the city, The Advocate said.

He also said in his Brokaw interview: “Our hotel was overrun with gangs, I was rescued in the stairwell of a five-star hotel in New Orleans by a young police officer. We are friends to this day.”

NBC News brass don't want to hold Williams accountable, but former Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw does:

“Brokaw wants Williams’ head on a platter,” an NBC source said. “He is making a lot of noise at NBC that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report.”

Brokaw's own credibility is in question here, since he apparently knew the Iraq helicopter tale was a fable:

Brokaw, 74, was still the “Nightly News” anchor when Williams came back from his Iraq expedition — and an insider said he knew the story Williams later spouted was bunk.

“Tom Brokaw and [former NBC News President] Steve Capus knew this was a false story for a long time and have been extremely uncomfortable with it,” the source said.

NBC News execs had counseled him to stop telling the tale.

NBC put a guy who made shit up about his Iraq war reporting experience into the Nightly News anchor chair - heckuva job NBC!

While the elites at NBC are trying to save Williams' lying ass, some of the plebes feel differently:

NBC brass hasn’t been talking to lower-level employees about the situation, leaving people in a panic, the insider said.

“NBC bosses don’t understand how serious this is. Nobody in a leadership position is talking to the troops. Nobody has addressed it,” the source said.

One longtime NBC employee who has worked with Williams on several occasions had a few dirty words to describe the celebrated anchor, calling him a “real pompous piece of s–t.”

“He’s an a–hole,” he fumed. “He’s not a journalist. He’s a reader.

“Oh, the fireworks that are going off inside,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. He’s the face on NBC. He’s a liar.

“Everyone knew it.”

Can't wait for the next NBC Education Nation where the pompous Williams asks directs questions to Michelle Rhee about the importance of holding teachers accountable for their performance and behavior.

Same goes for Brokaw, who has been known to pontificate about teachers unions allowing poor performing teachers to remain in their profession.

Brokaw knew Williams was full of shit, NBC News brass knew he was full of shit, Williams himself knew he was full of shit - and yet, there was Brian Williams, hosting the NBC Nightly News last night.

Ah, yes - accountability is only for the little people.

Cuomo "Shocked" To Find Out Shelly Silver Is Corrupt

Make sure you're not drinking anything while you read this:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters today that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s arrest on corruption charges “totally shocked” him–and declined to affirm the mayor’s belief that Mr. Silver, set to resign his powerful post today, is a “man of integrity.”

“I mean, no one had any clue. I’ll tell you the truth, I was totally shocked on a number of levels. And so I was really, really shocked,” Mr. Cuomo said after giving a speech on ethics reform in Manhattan.

Mr. Cuomo called it an “old story,” referring to past indictments and arrests of elected officials in Albany. But he said the political system, rather than the individuals, is as much as fault for the misconduct.

“It’s not just the individual anymore, it’s the system,” he said. “You should have a system that does everything it can to be protect and deter–and our current system encourages.”

“Think about it: you have to disclose campaign contributions, but you don’t have to disclose who pays you privately which is actually more important,” he continued.

Cuomo's "shocked" to find out Shelly was corrupt?

Who's Cuomo kidding?

He knew everything the Moreland Commission was investigating because its executive director was feeding information from the commission's work back to Cuomo via his secretary, Larry Schwartz.

We know that Moreland was looking into Silver, so you can bet that Cuomo knew they were looking into him, and we know that at least part of the criminal complaint leveled at Silver came from Moreland.

Smacks of quid pro quo that Cuomo shut Moreland down so fast in return for a budget deal and a few mild ethics reforms and I wouldn't be surprised if the US Attorney's office doesn't see it the same way.

The only thing I'm "shocked" about here is that Cuomo can be so disingenuous with a straight face.

Although I guess I shouldn't be shocked about that - sociopaths are like that.

The Arrogance, Hubris And Pathology Of The Education Reform Movement

I want to play a game.

I'm going to list education reformers from different professions.

See if you can figure out what they all have in common:

Oligarchs: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, Mort Zuckerman, Reed Hastings, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, various members of the Walton Family, Merryl Tisch, hedge fundies backing DFER, StudentsFirst, etc.

Politicians: Barack Obama, Andrew Cuomo, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, George W Bush, Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford, Cory Booker, Kevin Johnson

Political functionaries: Joel Klein, John King, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Kaya Henderson, Cami Anderson, John White, David Coleman, Chris Cerf, Tony Bennett, John Deasy

Charter entrepreneurs: Eva Moskowitz, Steve Perry, David Levin, Andre Agassi, Pitbull

Celebrities who publicly identify as education reformers: Bill Cosby, John Legend, Isiah Thomas

Media members who publicly identify as education reformers: Joe Scarborough and the entire cast of the Morning Joe Clown Show, a good part of the NY Times columnist corner (Brooks, Friedman, Kristof, Bruni), Jonathan Alter, Campbell Brown

That's just a partial list above - I know there are a whole host of names of reformers from all the categories I've missed (you can add the names in the comments section of the post.)

They are all different people with different personalities and different experiences from different walks of life.

But they all share one thing besides an interest in education reform.

And that's hubris, arrogance and certitude that they are RIGHT.

What is it about education reformers that they can't ever admit to being wrong?

John King never makes mistakes at NYSED, nor Merryl Tisch at the Board of Regents, even when they hand over a charter school to a con man who has lied about everything on his resume except for his birthday.

Andrew Cuomo never makes mistakes either, not with Common Core (which he assures us is great if only the NYSED and Regents would implement it better) nor with his APPR teacher evaluation (which only needs to be "strengthened" to ensure more teachers are fired to make it better.)

Barack Obama never makes mistakes, which is why he wants his education reforms enshrined into law well past the sunset of his administration (No Child Left Behind waivers are going to try and maintain the Obama deforms into 2019.)

Eva Moskowitz is so right that she refuses to allow anybody to audit her charter network if she can help it.

David Coleman knows everything about everything.

Michael Bloomberg is so egocentric he needs to put his name on everything he owns.

Go through the list - find me a reformer who isn't arrogant or hubristic.

Then go through the list and count how many narcissists and sociopaths are on it.

When the people behind the education reform movement are such an unsavory lot of sociopaths, narcissists, and pathological know-it-all's, can there be anything good that comes from that movement?

Cuomo Sticks The Shiv Into De Blasio Before Election Day

Last spring, Governor Andrew Cuomo beat Mayor Bill de Blasio badly in fights over charter school co-locations and tax increases on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for NYC's universal pre-K plan.

De Blasio had been in a showdown with charter school entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz over co-locations of three of her schools when Cuomo helped co-ordinate a pro-charter rally in Albany and pushed through new rules in the state budget that forced New York City (and only New York City) to either find space for all charter schools or pay rent for space in privately-owned buildings.

Moskowitz and her charter school supporters are major donors to Cuomo and while the governor and the mayor were supposed to be friends going back to the days when they were both in the Clinton administration, Cuomo didn't think twice about screwing his old friend over for his wealthy charter school friends.

Cuomo also rolled de Blasio over the mayor's push for a tax on the wealthy to pay for universal pre-K in New York City.  The governor provided state money for de Blasio's pre-K plan (though not as much as the tax plan would have raised) but made sure that money did not come from increased taxes on wealthy people, many of whom are also Cuomo donors.

Again Cuomo didn't think twice about sticking it to old friend de Blasio and making sure his donors got what they wanted - no new taxes.

Cuomo was riding high after his twin showdowns with de Blasio during the budget negotiations, but that ride didn't last for long.

A challenge from the left flank of his party arose in the figure of Fordham professor Zephyr Teachout late in the spring.

Teachout attempted to get the Working Families Party ballot line during the WFP convention last May and present Cuomo with a problem for the general election - he would have had two opponents to take on, one from the right in GOP candidate Rob Astorino, one from the left in Zephry Teachout.

A Sienna poll showed Cuomo would have trouble breaking 50% if a challenge from the left emerged for the general election, so he and his campaign pulled out all the stops to make sure Teachout didn't get the ballot line.

First they had their union friends, major supporters of WFP, threaten the party with dissolution if the ballot line for the general election was given to Teachout.

Then Cuomo had his old friend Bill de Blasio intervene with the party faithful and negotiate an agreement between the governor and the party in which Cuomo would receive the ballot line in return for agreeing to work for a Democratic takeover of the State Senate.

De Blasio was supposed to be riding high after this intervention, since Cuomo had needed his help to secure the WFP line, but I thought at the time de Blasio was acting the fool for helping his old friend Andrew Cuomo in the negotiations.

On May 30, I wrote:

Is de Blasio suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or did he get something in return for mediating negotiations between Cuomo and WFP?

If you remember, it was just a short while ago that Cuomo took every opportunity to stick it to de Blasio over not just charter schools but issue after issue.

Anthony Weiner even noted how putzy Cuomo was to de Blasio in a DN piece.

Now de Blasio helps save the day for Sheriff Andy.

My guess is, seconds after the election is over, Cuomo starts sticking it to de Blasio and the unions again.

Hard to know if this is Stockholm Syndrome, stupidity or a sell-out, but whatever the hell it is, it sucks.

De Blasio's aid for Cuomo didn't stop in May at the Working Families Party convnetion.

Polls showed late in the summer that Cuomo's pro-gun, anti-abortion running mate, Kathy Hochul, could lose her primary challenge to Teachout's running mate, Tim Wu.

Cuomo again reached out to de Blasio and had the mayor (along with union buddy Randi Weingarten) issue robocalls throughout the city in support of  the"liberal" Hochul.

After the election, Wu said that internal campaign polling showed him with the momentum going into the primary, but the de Blasio robocalls essentially stopped that momentum cold and Hochul won the race.

In short, Cuomo's running mate won her primary challenge because de Blasio helped her do it.

Again I wrote at the time that de Blasio was a fool for helping Cuomo, that Cuomo wouldn't think twice about screwing his "old friend" - and Ken Lovett and Jennifer Fermino at the Daily News reported the same thing:

“For good or bad, the governor is not a person who views the world as 'I owe you one.' If someone came to him and said, ‘I was there for you and I took care of you — you owe me,’ you don’t get a good reaction,” the insider said.

A second source who has had dealings with de Blasio and Cuomo agrees.

“Andrew appreciates what Bill has done for him. But if he needed to f--k over the mayor tomorrow, he's going to do it. That’s just how he operates.”

Even I thought Cuomo would wait until after the election to "fuck over" de Blasio, but it turns out Cuomo, worried that his GOP challenger Rob Astorino is making inroads over the first reported Ebola case in the city, decided post-Election Day was too late to screw de Blasio over.

So he did it yesterday instead.

On Thursday, Cuomo and de Basio made a joint appearance to reassure city residents after it was reported a doctor who had worked with Ebola patients in West Africa had tested positive for the virus here in the city.

Both Cuomo and de Blasio took pains on Thursday to tamp down hysteria over the incident and assure New Yorkers that the chances of getting infected by Ebola on the subway or in a cab were slim.

That was Thursday.

On Friday Cuomo changed course and suddenly decided hysteria over Ebola was exactly what was needed:

On Thursday night, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sat beside Mayor Bill de Blasio at Bellevue Hospital Center as they offered soothing words to worried New Yorkers: New York City’s first case of Ebola, they said, was no reason for panic.

Less than 19 hours later, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, joined the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and struck a starkly different tone. The governors announced Friday that medical personnel returning to New York after treating Ebola patients in West Africa would be automatically subject to a 21-day quarantine.

The risk, Mr. Cuomo said, was grave. Offering an ominous hypothetical, he raised the precise situation that the mayor and the city’s health commissioner had tried to play down the night before: the danger of Ebola spreading through the subway system.

“In a region like this,” Mr. Cuomo said, “you go out one, two or three times, you ride the subway, you ride a bus, you could affect hundreds and hundreds of people.”

...

Within the city, an unexpected policy shift by Mr. Cuomo on Friday appeared to open up a public divide between the governor and the administration of Mr. de Blasio, a fellow Democrat. The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Mary T. Bassett, was not informed in advance of the Cuomo-Christie mandatory quarantine order and was “furious,” a senior city official who spoke to her said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, said city officials were not consulted about the quarantine policy because it pertained to airports that are run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Mr. Cuomo’s shift came just 11 days before he will be on the ballot seeking a second term, and on a day when his long-shot Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, seized on the city’s Ebola case to assail the governor for not closing the New York airports to travelers from affected West African nations.

As Lovett and Fermino had reported in the Daily News in September, Cuomo wouldn't think twice about having to "fuck over" de Blasio if political expediency necessitated the screw job.

Apparently between Thursday night and Friday morning, political expediency necessitated Cuomo "fuck over" Bill de Blasio on the Ebola crisis.

In the same Times story on the "public rift" between Cuomo and de Blasio over Cuomo's sudden shift in policy, this is said about past health crises:

The partisan divide over how to respond to Ebola stands in stark contrast to previous public health threats over the last decade, including the anthrax attacks after Sept. 11, 2001, the West Nile virus, the avian flu and the tuberculosis outbreaks in the 1980s and 1990s. In those cases, public health officials worked largely in concert with elected ones to maintain calm and disseminate consistent information.

This time around politicians - including Cuomo and Christie, but certainly not limited to these two - are hyping the crisis for political gain.

Caught flat-footed once again by his old pal, Andrew Cuomo, it remains to be seen how de Blasio responds to the pre-election screw job by the governor.

But clearly Cuomo was showing de Blasio up yesterday at his press conference with Christie, big-timing the mayor by not alerting anybody in the de Blasio administration about the change in policy and protocol Cuomo was going to put into place with Christie at the Port Authority airports.

Much of this is de Blasio's own fault, of course.

De Blasio spent much political capital helping Cuomo in the spring with the Working Families Party and in the fall with the Hochul robocalls.

If Cuomo wins re-election with over 50% of the vote, that will happen because Bill de Blasio ensured Cuomo would not have a challenger from the left on the WFP ballot line taking double digits away from Cuomo in the general election.

Now Cuomo pays de Blasio back by sticking the shiv in him less than two weeks before Election Day.

I see two takeaways here:

One, De Blasio was a fool for expending so much political capital to help a "friend" who everybody knew would screw him over at the first opportunity.

And two, Andrew Cuomo is a sociopath, a man with no moral center who will literally do and say anything to promote himself and his career.

Neither of these takeaways are surprises, of course - we knew this stuff long before yesterday.

And indeed, Cuomo had already broken his promise to de Blasio and WFP that he would work for a Democratic takeover of the State Senate.

One thing I am surprised at, however.

I really thought Cuomo would wait until Wednesday November 5th to stick the shiv into de Blasio.

But he shoved the shiv in nearly two weeks earlier - that just shows you how desperate Cuomo is to not only win re-election but run up the score.

The Old Paradigms For Education Cannot Work In This World Anymore

The editorials from the NY Post about de Blasio and Farina get more vicious and ridiculous by the day.

Today's is about how ruthless competition among schools and putting extra stress on students is the key to success for children:

In the course of admitting he didn’t have a good reason for taking a good school away from kids in Harlem, Mayor de Blasio said that to fix a “broken” city school system, we have to “shake the foundations.”

Today, some 1,500 students and teachers from Success Academy charter schools will be doing that at the Armory on the Hudson. They are holding a giant pep rally as they head into next week’s tests. It’s called “Slam the Exam!” And it’s a terrific example of how to “shake the foundations” of a public-school system mired in low expectations and even lower performance.

This Empire is centrally organized, overly bureaucratic and failing 85 percent of our black and Latino students.

Yet it has its defenders. Look at Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. She’s already made clear charter children are not her concern. So what does she tell principals of the children who are her concern? Not to go overboard on “test preparation.” Hmm. Wonder if that’s the approach in Singapore or South Korea, whose students score well above ours in reading, math and science.

Fariña worries about “stressing” students. She should go to the armory today. These kids believe they can compete with the best of them, and that tests give them an opportunity to prove it. So their approach to testing is simple: “Bring it on.”

Then there’s Mayor de Blasio’s idea of shaking it up, which is to take away good schools for kids if they are charters and keep failing schools open if they are traditional schools. That’s the instinct of the old guard who put teachers union above student performance.

The mayor complains about competition. But competition is the key to shaking the foundations. Because charters are showing kids can learn, and in so doing, deprive failing public schools of excuses. And they invite comparisons important to parents.

Our students need more of this, no matter how much the Empire of the mayor and his schools chancellor may strike back.

I figured when the Post published the story a few days ago about Farina talking about the rash of suicides that has struck New York City school students the last seven weeks, they would look to use her statements against her.

And they are - they're mocking her for worrying that the current system is "stressing" students, that she should instead be teaching these kids the kind of "grit" and "determination" the Success Academy students show while trying to "Slam the Exam!"

The sociopath who wrote this editorial clearly does not understand that teaching kids to divorce themselves from their feelings and use external events and extrinsic motivation to get through works to make for a good and healthy life in the long run.

Neither does Jeb Bush, who defended the Common Core this week by railing against people who worry that the current battery of education reforms isn't healthy for children.

The refrain from the reformers is always the same here: "Screw what you think or feel, do what you have to do to succeed the way we tell you to succeed!"

One of the reasons we have such a screwed up culture these days is because so many people are divorced from their inner selves, so many people are leading lives of distraction and isolation, alone with their technology and their material things.

This is the sort of culture sociopaths like Jeb Bush and the Murdoch people like because it keeps them in the money, everybody playing on their field with their rules, with competition and materialism the highest order of the day.

One of the best lessons we can teach students these days is to be able to judge if they want to live by these rules the Bushes and their ilk make for them or if they want to find their own way in life, find their own sources of value and beauty.

I dunno, might be the Jesuit education I received as a teen, but I come from the school of education that looks to teach kids to have the confidence that they can find their own way in a society and a culture that is clearly troubled and getting worse by the year.

I'm not a big fan of teaching them to "slam the exam!" or telling them to get some "grit" to outcompete everyone else.

According to the sociopaths at the Post, that makes me a bad educator.

I'm supposed to be teaching children to "slam the exam!", to learn "grit" and "determination" to succeed no matter the cost.

But looking around at what is left of our dying ecosystem, deteriorating economy and dreadful culture, I think we need to find a different way for education going forward that emphasizes collaboration over competition, intrinsic motivation over extrinsic, and new ways of looking at ourselves and our world that take into account not just the material but also the emotional and, dare I say, the spiritual.

How's that for "shaking the foundations!"?

Oh and about South Korea and their terrific education system?

It leads the world not just in test scores but also suicides of children and adults.

When Does De Blasio Realize Cuomo Is Not His Friend?

Hopefully he has realized this already after news like this:

In a radio interview, Governor Andrew Cuomo downplayed the funding for universal pre-K.
"Yes, that will be in the budget, but that's been established for a long time," he said. "The charter discussion is going to be new, and it's going to be important."

The governor, who sources say got deeply involved in the negotiations Wednesday night, insisted on a number of charter school initiatives in the state Senate budget resolution, including rescinding de Blasio's move to block three city charter schools from co-locating in buildings that already house traditional public schools.

"To come and question those three, I think is ludicrous," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. "I think the mayor looked at them carefully. He accommodated a significant number of them, and he thought three were inappropriate."

Cuomo put a stick into de Blasio's eye over the charter issue, deliberately trying to humiliate him by giving Eva Moskowitz everything she wants in the budget.

Same happened with pre-K (although de Blasio will get the program, he will not get the tax on the wealthy he wanted to fund it and the money can be pulled back at any time at Cuomo's whim.)

It has been said in the past that Andy Cuomo has no friends, just people who do his bidding or people he considers enemies who he looks to destroy.

I think we can see that dynamic in the Cuomo/de Blasio relationship.

If de Blasio doesn't start acting on this knowledge soon and protect himself and his agenda from Cuomo, he's going to be roadkill.

Even Michael Goodwin Thinks Bloomberg Is Lame

From the Goodwin in the Post:

Mayor Bloomberg deserves an answer. “What can I do?” he demanded to know when reporters pressed him about his absence following Sunday’s train crash.

Here’s his answer: Show up. That’s the job, and until Jan. 1, he should do it without whining.
It is a blot on his record that he remained AWOL despite knowing the horrific details. As four riders lay dead and scores were injured in the Bronx derailment, the mayor continued to play golf in Bermuda. His admission that he learned of the tragedy soon after it happened at 7:20 a.m. but didn’t return to the city until nightfall shows an indifference that is like telling the boss to “take this job and shove it.”

Suppose the accident had not been an accident. Suppose scores were dead and hundreds injured. Would the mayor have continued to play golf?

However you slice it, there’s no defense for his decision. He blew off his responsibility because he doesn’t have to face voters again, and the effort by aides to argue that the mayor could play because Gov. Cuomo was working is ­pathetic. It’s impossible to imagine Ed Koch or Rudy Giuliani making the “it’s not my job” argument.

Indeed, even Bill de Blasio knows better. The mayor-elect said it was “important to be there” and added: “My instinct is to be present even if the city is not the lead.”

To be lectured to by de Blasio must gall Bloomberg, but he can only blame himself. He screwed up big time.

Elect a sociopath who doesn't care about people in the individual (only in the abstract - as data) and this is what you get.