Current Events > Andrew Cuomo cultivated a culture of deception and abuse

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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-cuomo-misconduct-allegations.html
This is an amazing article. I'll share some excerpts:

Andrew Cuomos governorship has been defined by cruelty that disguised chronic mismanagement. Why was that celebrated for so long?

It's the byline, but it's a brilliantly succint summary. Consider this your TL;DR.

Early in their employment, a few of these staffers were invited to a party at the governors mansion in Albany. Partway through the bash, there was a roast of Cuomos top aide, Melissa DeRosa, then the chief of staff but soon to be promoted to secretary to the governor. The roast, said Wertheimer, entailed projecting photos of prominent state officials, then asking Melissa if she knew their names, and her not knowing. The newcomers whispered and huddled together while everyone else laughed. We were saying to each other, This is f***ing weird, said one former staffer. This was not ha-ha funny, Wertheimer explained. This was, You guys are bad at your job! And, Youre mean!

That Andrew Cuomo is being characterized by fellow Democratic politicians as a lecherous tyrant who empowers his staff to threaten and intimidate should not, in some ways, come as a surprise. During his decade as governor, he has often strutted his thuggish paternalism while his top aides disparaged those who challenged him. Two years ago, a Cuomo spokesman called three female state lawmakers in his party f***ing idiots. In 2013, Cuomo created the Moreland Commission to investigate public corruption, only to shut it down abruptly less than a year later amid allegations that he had obstructed its work; one of Cuomos closest associates, Joe Percoco, is serving a six-year term in federal prison on bribery charges.

Cuomos leadership style often confuses ruthlessness with greatness, abuse with strength. Interviews with dozens of former Cuomo employees and those who have worked with or adjacent to his administration reveal a governing institution that has been run, at times, like a cultish fraternity, and at others, like a high-school clique

As the governor left, he stopped to greet staffers of the event; when he approached Kaitlin, she introduced herself and told him that she used to work for a politician. To her surprise and confusion, he replied that she would soon be back in government, this time at the state level. Then he grabbed me in a kind of dance pose, she said, while a photographer snapped a picture. I was thinking, This is the weirdest interaction Ive ever had in my life I was like, Dont touch me. Everybody was watching. Kaitlin recalled feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed in front of her new colleagues my whole team of people Id just met who gathered around her after Cuomo walked away, joking Oh, the governor likes you.That same week, Kaitlin received a voice-mail from Cuomos office asking her to interview for a job. She had not provided his representatives with contact information; they had found her on their own

After every public event, Kaitlin sorted through photographs of Cuomo posing with guests, selecting images to which he would append personal notes. She said he always paid special attention to pictures of himself with pretty women. If he didnt like how he looked in them, he would yell at Kaitlin. I got screamed at for a lot of bad photos, she told me.

Liss became depressed, lost weight. I felt gross, like I was just an ornament. She said that she had never felt more depleted by the male gaze than the time she spent in Albany. Melissa DeRosa had Louboutins, and there were legs everywhere, and I just felt stupid. I was living in a place that was full of people who were mean and predatory. It ground me down to the lowest point of my life, like I was a piece of nothing and my career was going nowhere.

Felix believed that in certain instances, Cuomo and certainly the people who worked for him had good ideas. But you were never able to implement any of them because the culture within his staff was so violent and corrosive that people cant get anything done without cheating, without cruelty, without bribery. Days before news broke that Cuomos staff had altered the nursing-homes report, Felix had observed to me: You have to imagine that people do bad things, corrupt things, because they feel like they dont have a choice. Theres so much fear all the time. Thats bad because it stops not just progress; it stops government from efficient governing.

Biaggi won her primary against Klein in September 2018; she didnt hear from Cuomo. But on the day before the general election, she got a call from his office, telling her that the governor wanted to see her. Biaggi brought two campaign staffers along with her, but Cuomos staff did not permit them to accompany her into the room, where he was sitting with DeRosa. Biaggi said that most of her conversation with Cuomo was normal and nice, until the end when his whole demeanor changed and he sat back in his chair, looked at me, and said, Tell me again how your grandfathers career ended?

This was how people in the administration were taught to behave, said Camonghne Felix. You had to subjugate someone. These are, of course, the strategies that reinforce capitalism and brutal political regimes: Authority is created and strengthened through the diminishment and depletion of others. Too often, those in power wind up spending more time performing muscularity than actually doing whatever it is theyre supposed to be dominant at doing. As Felix said, The state gets trapped in this cyclical nonsense. You look up and see that nothing is getting done. And not only that: Things are getting broken.

Behind the scenes in those first weeks of COVID, Cuomo was making the unprecedented move of expanding his emergency powers beyond those of any New York governor since Nelson Rockefeller. Into the massive state budget, he inserted an immunity provision for hospitals and nursing homes; the provision had been drafted by the Greater New York Hospital Association, an organization that, in 2018, donated over a million dollars to the New York State Democratic Committee (which funded Cuomos reelection campaign) and was repped by Bolton-St. Johns, a powerful firm where the chief lobbyist is Giorgio DeRosa, Melissa DeRosas father. In a particularly bitter irony for those whod envisioned New York State government as the lab for progressive federal policy, the states gold standard corporate immunity law would indeed wind up a model for Mitch McConnell.

They are a reminder that the problem with dismissive assumptions about hierarchical power is that you often underestimate those you are oppressing and overestimate your ability to suppress them; a reliance on divisive mean-girl machinations can keep you from seeing how women might one day come together to challenge your power.

One impression that emerges from Cuomos ten years in office is of an immense amount of time wasted. Biaggi said that on the day after Amazon pulled out of its deal to open in New York City, she received a call at 9:30 a.m. from Cuomo, upset at her for having been critical of his handling of the deal. What struck her was that he was more concerned with calling me than with the aftermath of Amazon leaving. He spends his days yelling at people who say bad things about him, rather than governing.

Who does that remind me of?

In any case, it's a devastating article that lays bare the abusive and ineffective governing culture Cuomo created. What we must ask ourselves is this: how was Andrew Cuomo allowed to get away with this for so long?

ElatedVenusaur posted...

In any case, it's a devastating article that lays bare the abusive and ineffective governing culture Cuomo created. What we must ask ourselves is this: how was Andrew Cuomo allowed to get away with this for so long?

Dude, honestly, that's a really important and serious question. And we should definitely find out quickly. Because it wasn't that long ago that the faux left or regressive left (the tankies) were swearing up and down that Cuomo was a good guy. When in reality it turns out he may be some warhawk neo-lib psycho rather than a good guy.

I noticed the true Marxists or social democrats or liberals on here from over a long span of time NEVER liked Cuomo though. The people who truly advocated for labor rights always seemed to distrust him. And I see some of those same patterns with that dude in California now. Newsom. I'd defer to someone here who is on the left and lives in California - I lived there in 2015 + 2016 and loved it but haven't kept up to date with the politics super closely. Any validity to the Newsom Recall movement?

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How was he allowed to get away with hiding COVID deaths at nursing homes but this is what brings him down?

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Clutch posted...

How was he allowed to get away with hiding COVID deaths at nursing homes but this is what brings him down?

Its more the combination of factors.
And, of course, hes still in office and has given no indication that he will resign.

@MaddenDude--

This is your president?

This is the shitstain you stan for?

I guess no more liberal activist celebrities will be calling themselves "Cuomosexuals" anymore

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ElatedVenusaur posted...

Its more the combination of factors.
And, of course, hes still in office and has given no indication that he will resign.

Yeah, but weve know about the nursing home shenanigans for months. It just seems that people care more about him being creepy with girls than actual people dying.

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@Antifar Any thoughts on Cuomo and what about Newsom from California?

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you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

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ThePrinceFish posted...

I guess no more liberal activist celebrities will be calling themselves "Cuomosexuals" anymore

They were too old for him anyways.



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pure_temper posted...

Any validity to the Newsom Recall movement?

As best I can tell - and I live in NY, not CA, so take all this with a grain of salt - the push to recall Newsom is led by people upset that his Covid restrictions went too far. Newsom doesn't seem great, but that doesn't feel like a fight worth fighting.

Also, I do not believe tankies were ever singing Andrew Cuomo's praises.

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ToPoPO posted...

@MaddenDude--

This is your president?

This is the shitstain you stan for?

Better than Trump

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Morning bump.

That dude definitely needs to go.

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Sounds like a scum bag. Get his ass out.

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