Just expanding on the point here. The failures are deeply interconnected at city, state, federal level. Personally, as a New Yorker, I feel DeBlasio’s failures most acutely. They’re the ones I’m angriest about, especially because his and the chancellors were so born of ...
2/ arrogance. I relive all the missteps and cocky nonsense like an auto accident you watched but couldn’t stop. I’ve also been a huge fan of Cuomos pressers like so many others. But my understanding of the New York constitution is that the governor cld in an emergency ...
3/ which this obviously was overrule the mayor on basically anything at any power. Maybe not easy, maybe not obvious. Maybe it wouldn’t have been popular. He did increasingly show his impatience with DeBlasio. But whatever. He could have overruled the mayor but he didn’t.
4/ So even though it doesn’t square with who I want to be mad at and who I want to cheer he’s really just as responsible. Looking back on things I couldn’t believe as I was hearing them the mayor said again and again that the three big priorities were defending ...
5/ the school system, the transportation system and the hospital system. At first I thought this was misguided but driven by benign motives. Over time I realized it was idiotic. The school system isn’t a thing. It doesn’t need defending. The population needs defending.
6/ The children who go to the schools need defending. The parents need defending. The grandparents who are caregivers for so many kids need defending. The mayors and the chancellors increasingly self serving bullshit about defending the school system obscured all of this.
7/ To an extent it was the same as the transport system, though maintaining transportation even on a more limited basis is critical to the city’s survival even during a sever lockdown. The arrogance, inflexibility, stupidity are all just beyond imaginable.
