Cuomo Continues To Triangulate, Destroying Schools As He Simultaneously Tries To Assuage Liberals On Economic Issues

Andrew Cuomo has governed as a triangulator since the beginning of his first term.

He mostly triangulated on social issues that appealed to lefties early on (gay marriage, for example) even as he governed as a center-right pol on economic issues (property tax cap, for example.)

But ever since that challenge from the left he got from Zephyr Teachout in 2014, coupled with his languishing job approval numbers (44% job approval last February in a Siena poll, 40% last month in a Siena poll), he's seemed more interested in triangulating on some economic issues too - especially ones that his mortal enemy, Bill de Blasio, might take some political benefit from.

Thus Cuomo, who insisted a $13 dollar an hour minimum wage was a "non-starter" in NY State when de Blasio was pushing for it, has since aligned himself with some of de Blasio's union and progressive base and pushed for a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage.

Today he upped the ante on that:

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo plans to unilaterally create a $15 minimum wage for all state workers, making New York the first state to set such a high wage for a large group of public employees.

The increase, which Mr. Cuomo will announce on Tuesday, would place New York’s public employees far ahead of other states on minimum wage, and at the vanguard of a national movement to address stagnant wages for tens of millions of American workers.

Using executive authority, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, would gradually increase the hourly rate: State workers in New York City would earn $15 an hour by the end of 2018; state workers outside of New York City would also see wages rise, though more slowly, with rates climbing to $15 by the end of 2021. All told, some 10,000 workers would see a bump in pay, according to the governor’s office, with the vast majority of those living upstate or outside the city.

The governor’s action comes on a day when fast-food workers across the country are striking for a uniform $15 hourly wage, a movement that Mr. Cuomo has championed in New York and even as a growing number of cities have acted to raise wages. But Mr. Cuomo’s action is the first time a governor has raised wages to $15 for so many state employees

The NY Times points out some of the political motive behind today's move:

Mr. Cuomo’s action comes on the heels of several other executive actions seemingly meant to appease and please the liberal wing of his party, which has faulted the governor in the past for his working too closely with Republicans, who hold the majority in the State Senate. In addition to the increase in the minimum wage for fast-food workers in New York — which Mr. Cuomo accomplished in July via a state wage board — Mr. Cuomo has also empowered the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, to look into police-related killings. And last month, he expanded protections for transgender people, building on a 1945 state law that barred discrimination on the basis of sex.

The Times reports that this move also comes as an offshoot to negotiations with CSEA and PEF, two state worker unions who have had fraught negotiations with Cuomo in the past:

An administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the action had not formally been announced said that Mr. Cuomo’s decision was based in part on pending negotiations with two large public-sector unions — Civil Service Employees Association and the New York State Public Employees Federation.

PEF has new leadership that some see as more Cuomo-friendly than the ousted leadership, so some of this may just be political payoff for a Cuomo ally.

But don't underestimate two others reasons why Cuomo's pushing this now.

First, it allows him to steal whatever progressive thunder de Blasio once had and relegate the mired mayor to the sidelines on yet another liberal issue (and let's note that even though 90% of the workers affected by this are outside NYC, Cuomo had his announcement in NYC today.)

Second, it allows Cuomo to continue to triangulate on another issue near and dear to his heart - the destruction of the teachers unions and public school system.

On the same day that Cuomo said he would issue an executive order raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour for state workers came this news on the education front:

In one of her most significant actions as state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia has granted Buffalo Superintendent Kriner Cash unprecedented power to make changes at the district’s most struggling schools, bypassing the teachers union contract.

Those changes could include a longer school day and year, required teacher training and more control over staffing – all things Cash says are essential to improve student performance.

 In a 107-page ruling released Monday, Elia largely imposes Cash’s proposals with some modifications that call for giving teachers more notice of contractual changes and preference for other jobs, should they be displaced from their position. She also recommends that a committee created to assist with staffing at the receivership schools be limited to three or five people, and consist of an odd number to prevent deadlock between union and district representatives.

Those powers Elia is giving Kriner Cash to bust the Buffalo teachers union and essentially privatize "Buffalo's most struggling" public schools come courtesy of Cuomo's receivership program that was shoved through in the last state budget by the governor.

Cuomo, who last year promised to "break" the public school monopoly, has given NYSED the tools to do just that with this receivership law that allows them to take over schools and circumvent union contracts and what is happening in Buffalo is expected to happen elsewhere around the state too.

It's not an accident that even as Cuomo provides NYSED with the power to bust the teachers union he's rallying with other unions over a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage.

Cuomo, ever the pragmatist, is bending on some of his economic policies (like that $13 dollar an hour minimum wage he said couldn't happen in NY) - but this bending is so that he can continue to triangulate on other issues like his privatization/teachers union-busting agenda.

Cynical?

Sure, but that's just how this governor operates - and he learned it from the master, Bill Clinton, who was his boss back in the 1990's.

Cuomo Administration Hack Defends His Boss Over Common Core, Education Policy

Remember Jim Malatras, the Cuomo administration hack/director of state operations who "wrote" to Merryl Tisch about education policy right before Governor Cuomo unveiled education reforms for the state budget that included a school receivership program and increasing the weight of test scores in teacher evaluations to 50%?

Well, he's back with another piece of writing, this in the Times Union, defending Boss Cuomo over those very education policies, which are very unpopular (as is his boss.)

In his commentary, Malatras claims Cuomo has "led the nation" in limiting testing time in schools (a bogus claim since Cuomo has increased the weight of test scores on teacher ratings which means the official "testing time" does not include the Endless Test Prep kids undergo all the year through so that their schools are not closed and their teachers aren't fired based upon their state test scores) and has provided the highest funding for schools in state history (another bogus claim which ignores all the new state mandates Cuomo and NYSED have thrown onto school districts that eats up gobs of that money as well as the property cap that limits the ability of districts to increase funding.)

In addition, Malatras takes a victory lap that the feds have followed suit with the 2% limit on testing, writing that "rather than following the lead of the U.S. Department of Education, New York has led the way for other states and was highlighted in a recent federal announcement as a model for other states looking to move this work forward."

This ignores that the 2% rule was instituted at the federal level by the same guy who pushed it here (former NYSED Commissioner, now acting-Secretary of Education John King) and that, in the end, it's meaningless because it still means kids will spend at least 22 hours a year on standardized testing.
If you add in all the Endless Test Prep that must be done during the Endless Testing regime to the 2% testing time so that teachers don't get fired or schools don't get closed, you can see how the rule changes little.

That Cuomo has taken to having his hack Malatras write rebuttals to op-ed pieces in the Times Union tells you how defensive Cuomo is over his education polices.

Given that he's engaging in another dog and pony show with his Common Core Review task force (which appears to want to hear as little as possible from anybody who doesn't already agree with the governor) and is trying to make it look like he's making changes to the Common Core/Endless Testing regime in New York State without actually making any changes, he should be on the defensive.

His defensive actions are fruitless - parents and teachers are fed up with his reform agenda, are fed up with him and are not going to be fooled by any dog and pony show that makes minor tweaks to the state's education policies but essentially leaves the damaging Common Core/Endless Testing regime in place.

Obama Approval Hits Lowest Point

David Broder, David Brooks and the rest of the Washington Village Elite think he had a great week reneging on a campaign promise to end the Bush tax cuts for rich people, but the rest of America doesn't seem to think so:

President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

The biggest reason for Obama's fall: a sharp drop in approval among Democrats and liberals, apparently unhappy with his moves toward the center since he led the party to landslide losses in November's midterm elections. At the same time, he's gained nothing among independents.

"He's having the worst of both worlds right now," said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New York, which conducted the national survey.

"As he moves to the center, he's not picking up support among independents and he's having some fall-off among his base. If his strategy is to gain independents and keep the Democrats in tow, it isn't working so far."

The poll was taken from Dec. 2 through Wednesday, as the president proposed a two-year freeze on federal civilian workers' pay and cut a deal with congressional Republicans to extend expiring tax cuts — even those for the wealthy, which he'd opposed.

Overall, just 42 percent of registered voters approve of how he's doing his job, while 50 percent disapprove.

Obama's standing among Democrats dropped from a month ago, with his approval rating falling to 74 percent from 83 percent, and his disapproval rating almost doubling, from 11 percent to 21 percent.

Among liberals, his approval rating dropped from 78 percent to 69 percent and his disapproval rating jumped from 14 percent to 22 percent.

His position among independents remained virtually the same, with 39 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving. A month ago, it was 38-54.

The president's continued failure to rally independents could ruin his bid for re-election. A hypothetical 2012 matchup showed him getting the support of 44 percent of registered voters and Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, getting 46 percent.

This president does NOT have the same political skills or reputation Clinton had.

Obama can try and emulate the Clinton triangulation strategy of keeping liberals and traditional Dems in the fold while appealing to centrists and independents by moving more to the center.

But I doubt he can pull it off.

A) Many centrists and independents think he is "liberal" and he doesn't help himself when he makes these centrist sell-out moves like the Bush tax cut agreements while denigrating both the agreement and the people he made the agreement with.

B) Many liberals now see him as as corporate sell-out.

I know I have long been off the "Change We Can Believe In" Express, but many Dems and liberals who have long been apologizing for the previous Obama sell-outs - like TALF or Geithner/Summers or the failure to push for a public option in the HCR bill or the promoting a 40% excise tax to fund HCR over a millionaire's tax or the disastrous HAMP mortgage relief program - are really pissed off by this Bush tax cut extension agreement.

Maybe Obama is skilled enough to bring pissed off Dems and liberals back into the fold while attracting some independents to support him in 2012.

But I have yet to see the kind of political skills he would need to bring that off from him or anybody in his administration.

So maybe he'll get votes from the 42% who still approve of him, and maybe he'll get votes from David Broder and David Brooks and the rest of the Village Eliters.

But winning 42% overall in an election isn't gong to get him any prizes, not unless a third party candidate runs and takes a large enough number of votes from a Republican candidate to make that enough to win.

Obama Triangulates Against Unions

After the way the midterms went, there is little surprise to this:

President Barack Obama’s embrace of the politically symbolic two-year freeze on federal government salaries aligns him with House Republican leaders and against unions, public workers and some leaders in his own party.

A winner of incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's YouCut online spending-cut poll in May, the proposal would require the House and Senate, at the last minute, to include the freeze in any long-term federal spending bill dealing with the slate of unfinished fiscal 2011 appropriations laws.

The president's adoption of a GOP proposal that goes straight to the ideological divide between the parties — the size, scope and value of government — could be an early sign of White House efforts to move toward the political center in advance of the 2012 election.

It infuriated union leaders, some rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers and even a handful of Republicans — few of whom saw it coming — and thus put the president squarely to the political right of liberals and other labor allies. The word "triangulation" — a reference to President Bill Clinton's practice of calibrating positions to distance him from both the political and left and the political right — floated through the corridors of Congress on Monday.

Listen, this guy despises union members and rank-and-file Dems.

Time and again - from the way the UAW got treated during the GM bailout to the way the Central Falls, Rhode Island teachers got treated as part of Obama's RttT policy to the way he has gone about the politics of this wage freeze announcement - it is quite clear that Obama thinks his future lies in selling out union members, rank-and-file Dems and other liberal constituencies.

I think we will see MUCH more of this in the coming months. I think we will hear MUCH more of this in the State of the Union in January.

And I think this bodes ill for the NCLB re-authorization after January.

You can bet teachers and union members will be sold down the river by Obama.

He seems to enjoy doing it.