Since 1978 New York City has been run reasonably well (under Mayors Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg – yes Bloomberg is annoying with his nannyisms but the City for the most part has still been well run) the exception being the four years of hell (1990 -94) under David Dinkins. Sadly it appears we are about to go back to the future of the “good old days” of the 1970’s.
by Michael Goodwin
Extra, extra, read all about it. Not all New Yorkers have the same incomes! Not all have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams! And most — gasp! — don’t live on Park Avenue or have nannies and housekeepers!
If this doesn’t strike you as breathtaking news, then you didn’t drink the Kool-Aid and join Bill de Blasio’s movement. I say movement because de Blasio doesn’t just want to be mayor. He has discovered there is poverty in Gotham and many other pesky outcomes where some people do better than others. And he intends to end that disparity.
“Fighting inequality and fighting economic injustice,” as he put it, is what he’s all about.
Good luck with that, but before New Yorkers jump onto the Democrat’s bound-for-utopia bandwagon, some history is required. We could start with Karl Marx, but we’d just get lost trying to decode the incomprehensible differences among Marxists, Leninists and Trotskyites.
Instead, let’s look at Cuba, which, strictly by the numbers, reflects the paradise de Blasio describes. Fidel and Raul Castro had their way for 54 years and pulled off the socialist dream: The island nation had the least income inequality in the world, a survey found. North Korea also was off the charts.
Of course, there are some peculiar facts about Cuban exceptionalism. Everybody is equally poor, with average monthly wages of $19, while children’s shoes can cost nearly as much.
And that much-ballyhooed health-care system? It’s a joke. Bring your own sheets, bedpans and food to the hospital, and pray you don’t die of infections or neglect. True, it is free, so your family won’t get stuck with a capitalist-size bill to bury you. What a relief that must be.
On my visit to Cuba, I was struck by the total breakdown of everything except the police state. Havana’s once-glorious architecture is crumbling, and there are chickens and pigs, but no running water, in large parts of the central city.
Half the cars are owned by the government, and the other half belong in antique shops. Smaller cities look as though they are stuck in the 19th century, with public transportation consisting of a man guiding a horse-drawn wagon. [………]
I’m not suggesting de Blasio could take New York back that far, at least not in one term. But his rhetoric about a “tale of two cities” and his repeated promises to use City Hall’s power to erase inequality mean we would be fools not to take him seriously. As Barack Obama is proving on a national scale, a charismatic, ambitious ideologue with no understanding of economics can do a lot of damage in a short time.
Even more troubling, de Blasio is not alone. Council Member Letitia James, one of two candidates left in the race to succeed him as public advocate, blasted Mayor Bloomberg Friday for saying it would be a “godsend” if “we could get every billionaire around the world to move here.”
[……..]
Hers is a common mistake on the left. The obvious resentment she has about other people’s money leads her to assume that success and failure alike depend on government, and that the poor would be rich if only the government helped them more. If you believe that, it follows that bureaucrats should aim to level the results.
Sooner and later, more socialism means more human misery. But true believers never grasp the basic fact that, if you penalize success, there won’t be any. Remove the consequences of failure and there will be more of it.
Naturally, utopia will be led by elites who know what’s best for everyone else. Whether in Cuba, North Korea or Washington, the mandarins will be cosseted by comforts taken from others.
People who know de Blasio well say he is smart, just as many say Obama is smart. But smart is as smart does, and we ought to save the word for those who can help make the economic pie bigger instead of just trying to re-divide the pie we have. That would be the smart thing to do if you wanted all New Yorkers to prosper.
Read the rest – De Blasio’s Cuban vision for New York City
People such as Bill de Blasio and Barack Obama could never make it in private industry. Only in the field of progressive politics is where mediocrities and ideologues can thrive.
by Michael Goodwin
Trying to defend the indefensible, Bill de Blasio explained his work with Nicaraguan communists this way.
“They had a youthful energy and idealism mixed with a human ability and practicality that was really inspirational,” he told a reporter, before conceding that his heroes were “not free enough by any stretch of the imagination.”
To summarize his argument, on one hand you have energy and idealism, and on the other you have prison and the murder of dissidents. But the leaders meant well and, besides, nobody is perfect.
In a nutshell — emphasis on nut — the Democratic nominee for mayor has outed himself as a supporter of oppression, as long as it comes from the far left. He also expressed his fondness for “democratic socialism,” which is like calling himself a socialist.
The revelations in the New York Times about de Blasio’s warped world view, and history of aiding such despots as Fidel Castro, draw a ho-hum response from fellow lefties. Even if they didn’t know of de Blasio’s admiration for dictators, they surely recognize him as one of their own when he uses the code words of “fighting inequality and economic injustice.”
But for sensible New Yorkers, the emerging portrait of the man poised to be mayor should set off alarm bells. His past, combined with his pro-tax, anti-police agenda, confirm that De Blasio is not your garden-variety liberal like the Democrats he defeated in the primary. Their incremental approach is mainstream compared to his vision of social revolution.
His activism marks him as a hard-line leftist who, as an adult, spouted the idea that the United States was a problem in the world. [……..]
Where does he stand on the autocratic reign of the late Hugo Chavez? What about the Mideast — is Israel the problem? The more we know about him, the more we need to know.
And not because every mayor has a foreign policy. A politician’s philosophy tends to be consistent, abroad and at home. Someone who favors government power over individual liberty for Latin Americans is likely to hold the same view about New Yorkers.
A charitable way to describe de Blasio is that he is naive. But such charity is itself naive.
Consider that de Blasio and his wife snuck into Cuba for their honeymoon in 1994. It was apparently an illegal trip, which would explain why they first flew to Canada. It could also explain why they didn’t tell their children, according to their daughter, who said she recently learned of it. She hailed the trip as “badass.” Indeed.
She’s not alone in needing a lesson about the Cuba of those days. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the end of vital subsidies and most of Cuba’s trade. The island nation, after 45 years of Castro and communism, looked to be in a death spiral.
America saw a chance for improving relations, and President Clinton sent Harry Belafonte and others to meet with Castro about easing the trade embargo. “Forget it, leave it as it is,” Castro responded, according to a member of the delegation.
Castro feared ordinary Cubans would revolt if they tasted the political, economic and religious freedom that would follow an opening. Nor did he and his gangster government want to give up control of the lucrative black market in goods and oil. [……]
So when de Blasio went to help, he was not helping the Cuban people. Similarly, his support for the Sandinistas added to the misery of ordinary Nicaraguans, yet he remains proud.
“I have an activist’s desire to improve people’s lives,” he told the Times.
George Will recently observed that the whole point of modern liberalism is for liberals to feel good about themselves.
By that standard, de Blasio’s waltzes with dictators are a roaring success for his self-esteem. For everyone else, there is only tyranny and misery.
Read the rest – De Blasio’s warped world view should set off alarm bells
