New York Deserves Better Dems Than Kathy Hochul & Company.

New York might seem a “blue state” on the surface, but with Democrats like ours, who needs Republicans?

Hello, friends,

I hope you’re all doing well.  Last week, we talked about the Scholastic company and its kowtowing to Fascist book bans. There’s a bit of a maybe-positive update in this week’s In Other News.

This week, we’re going to dig into something a little different. Instead of diving into Conservative/Regressive/Fascist bullshit, we’re going to talk about Democrats who aren’t really Democrats in a state that is being ill-served by its administrators.  We’re going to focus on the Governor, but it needs to be noted up front that she’s just a symptom of a larger problem with the party that I’ll touch on wherever possible.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

But first!  If you enjoy these dives into Progressive politics, please feel free to subscribe to The Progressive Cafe.  We’re approaching our one-year anniversary!

Also:  Thanks to Jamie Diamond for consulting with me about some of these issues.

Evaluating The Case Against Hochul & NY Dems.

Let’s begin with one of the first articles we published on this platform, an exploration of how Gerrymandering works to steal peoples’ voices.  I wrote this at a time where New York had just lost multiple Democrat-held seats to people like George Fucking Santos.  How did this happen?  In short, the New York Legislature put forward Gerrymandered maps that were struck down by the court.

While there’s a certain, pleasant flavor to Democrats striking back where Republicans constantly Gerrymander their own states, it wound up leading to an ‘independent’ (but Republican-leaning) authority redrawing the maps in such a way as to heavily benefit Republicans.  In short, Dems tried to pull a fast one and burned their bridges.

In all honesty, there are going to be a lot of throughlines from things Hochul believes and does all the way down to the way the state party in general functions.

Ahhh, but where do my problems with Hochul begin?

Well, let’s make a quick little list.  First off, as we discussed at the time, she tried to slip an abortion-unfriendly, anti-labor choice through to our highest court.

Next up is a bit of a more personal one:  She vetoed the “Freelance Isn’t Free” act.  I was a freelance writer for a long time.  I had clients who would pay me what they felt like, when they felt like it, and I’d just have to take it on faith that I’d get my fair value.  Naturally, I don’t feel like I usually did.  That’s partly why I rarely do freelance gigs anymore!  There’s just no consistency.  

So the combination of nominating LeSalle and vetoing the Freelance Isn’t Free Act proves Kathy Hochul is anti-labor.

More recently, Hochul vetoed the Legislature’s approval of offshore power cables to Long Beach not too far from my home on Long Island.  This essentially stabs the idea of an offshore wind farm in the neck.  That means New York is going to be more reliant on fossil fuels, which is bad for the environment and causes climate change.  Why did she do this?  I have no clear idea, because as someone who knows the lay of the land, there’s probably no plan that’s going to 100% satisfy the NIMBY instincts of Long Islanders.

So instead we’re going to do a little bit more to kill the planet and our local environment, alike.

Jumping into another NIMBY issue, remember how New York has a legend of being a place for immigrants to come to America and discover a better life?  Big copper lady in the harbor, poems about sending her a nation’s poor and desperate?

Well, Hochul is concentrating the current generation of immigrants in New York City, where resources are already stretched thin (Due to terrible “Democratic” Mayor Eric Adams repeatedly cutting the budget…), and resisting allowing them to come to the suburbs where maybe there are resources available to help them. 

Never mind that, in no less a place than my own hometown of Freeport NY, a Ukrainian immigrant saved a life.  If there’s any further doubt as to Hochul’s Republican-grade positioning, here’s a quite-conservative NY Rag talking about her complaints over the border being too open, a common anti-Immigration trope.

Another situation that infuriates me, this time on a more personal level, is that Hochul’s administration has proposed a massive $10+ dispensing fee for any prescriptions filled in New York.  Think about all the chronically ill, disabled, elderly, or just plain sick people who are already pinching pennies because the nation doesn’t have universal health care such as Medicare For All.  Think people who take half-doses to stretch the amount of medication they have, such as rationing their insulin supply - sometimes fatally.

Speaking of universal healthcare, In another Democratic failure, New York State’s Legislature has constantly punted the New York Health Act down the line.  Hochul sure as hell hasn’t taken the lead on the issue, so it’s not like she’s out there saying she wants it passed and we’re just missing it.

So to compile just what we’ve touched on so far, Hochul is:

 - Anti-Labor

 - Questionable-at-best on reproductive liberty due to nominating an questionable-on-abortion judge.

 - Against reasonably accommodating immigrants - in New Fucking York.

 - Backsliding bigtime on clean power.

 - Anti-Affordable Healthcare.

Those five things are all bad enough, and this isn’t a total list.  There’s plenty of other stuff that should, if my thesis isn’t clear already, disqualify her from ever receiving your vote.  Let’s start with her rolling back bail reform.  

Hochul has called for the end to the practice of “least restrictive” bail.  She worked towards this end by stalling out our budget talks, eventually forcing the Legislature to accept changes to laws it had somewhat-recently passed all in the interest of getting a budget, you know, passed.  Included in our budget law was more ‘discretion’ for judges to jail defendants pre-trial.  Oh, and as per the earlier Bloomberg article, this is her second time doing that.

A reminder that pretrial detention is, in so many cases, a civil-rights issue about a damaging prospect based largely on the ability of a defendant to pay bail. - a defendant like, say, Donald Trump can pay bail for his crimes in other states, practice stochastic terrorism repeatedly against court staff, and instead of being jailed like most people would be, he gets slapped on the wrist with a $10,000 fine.

So let’s add “Anti civil rights” to our above list.

One last nitpick I have with her comes out of her previous campaign for Governor. I’m a member of the New York Progressive Action Network (NYPAN), which held a virtual candidate forum. Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi both showed up. Hochul sent a surrogate. She wouldn’t even have had to make a trip, just turn her computer on, and she couldn’t even be fucking bothered. What’s more? No offense, but the surrogate was awful. She had no idea what she was talking about, and no skill at talking about it.

So add “Closed off to facing criticism” to boot.

But there’s one more thing to consider about her, and it’s a big one:

There’s the Buffalo Bills stadium disaster.

The Buffalo Bills Stadium Debacle

Here’s Hochul bragging about the economic development that the stadium will bring to New York.  It sounds like this is a great thing!  $1.6 billion in economic activity?  Wow!  Someone must have made a really big investment in New York!

She leaves out the $850 million price-tag that taxpayers are shelling out to help a billionaire football stadium owner build his stadium for less money.  He gets to profit from it, while we get…Economic development?  Okay.  But some might argue that getting double our money back is worth it.  And maybe that’d be true…

But, alas, now I want to get to the real offensive part.  That price tag article was released on March 28, 2022.  This other article, dated March 25, 2022, is about the New York State budget and covers a proposed a cut of $800 million to Child and Family Services.

It sure as fuck looks like Hochul’s budget took $800,000,000 from the neediest families in our state and gave it - and more - to a wealthy billionaire to further increase his wealth.

Oh, and her husband William Hochul works for the concession company for the stadium, Delaware North.

Coincidence, or corruption?  Who’s to say? Hochul has generally denied that it’s corrupt, and sometimes appearances aren’t realities. But sometimes they are.

Ahh, but what if she’s the nominee, anyway? Don’t we have to vote blue no matter who? Well, speaking of Buffalo:

New York Democrats Killed “Vote Blue No Matter Who.”

In 2021, a woman by the name of India Walton won the Democratic primary to become Mayor of Buffalo.  This was awkward because India is a Democratic Socialist, and Byron Brown - the at-the-time mayor - was a Democrat.  In other words, she’d beaten him in the primary for his own job.

So what happened?

Well, rather than respect the Democratic process he’d subjected himself to, Byron Brown ran a third-party write-in campaign for Mayor.

Kathy Hochul?  She sat this one out.  She didn’t do the “appropriate” thing and endorse and support the Democrat she didn’t like just because he was the Democratic nominee.  She didn’t vote Blue no matter who.  She refused to endorse a Democrat in the face of a third-party run.

Meanwhile, the head of New York State’s Democratic party, Jay Jacobs, went a step further.  Actually, two steps further.  He compared India Walton, a Black woman, to David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.  I mean, you think he’d have retired after that, but - alas - he’s still fucking up the Democratic party here.

So it’s very clear that Democratic authorities in New York don’t believe in “Vote Blue No Matter Who,” and it’s concretely clear that Progressives should not feel beholden to vote Democrat regardless of who wins in a primary.

Someone Needs To Primary Kathy Hochul - And Run Third Party If She Wins The Primary.

I mean…What more do I have to say?  The section header says it all, really.  We need someone - preferably a strong candidate - to run against Hochul.

And that person needs to declare, up-front, that they will pursue the governorship third-party if she does indeed win.

As we’ve explored, between her track record as a de-facto Republican, her apparent corruption, and her disregard of a pseudo-sacred tenet from the Democratic party, she has no right to the presumption of a Democrat’s vote.

I, for one, will not under any circumstances I can foresee (Short of her, like, kick-starting and passing the New York Act), be voting for Kathy Hochul.  If that means a Republican wins the nomination, well, she shouldn’t have run in the first place.

Plus, it’s almost certain the legislature will still be Democratic, so a Republican governor can’t do very much harm.  I mean, what’s he gonna do?  Cut funding for child and family services?  Oh, wait, Hochul already did that.

She should exit politics with what little grace remains for her to behold, and be done with it.  If she won’t, we need to make that a reality at any cost.

In Other News…

• The war in Israel and Palestine continues.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has discussed how the “People of light” are fighting the “People of darkness,” which is pre-genocidal language (De-Humanization) at best and genocidal perpetration at worst.  He’s also talked about the Prophecy Of Isaiah, which means he views this as a religious war and not a war of self-defense.  I call on all sides to implement an immediate cease-fire, and demand that Joe Biden do the same.  Also, Kathy Hochul is going to Israel soon, and she must do the same.  We cannot give Israel our unconditional support while their Prime Minister’s words reek of extermination.
  
  With that said, to my friends who are further left than me:  Let’s not start acting like Hamas is a legitimate resistance group.  Palestinian civilians are suffering, and that needs to stop, but Hamas can fuck right off, and supporting Hamas is actual Anti-Semetism at a time when such accusations are easily thrown from figures on the far-right (Who are, usually, themselves quite Anti-Semetic). Also: Let’s return those hostages, shall we?

• There’s a brand new Speaker Of The House, Mike Johnson.  A good Democrat from NY, Melanie D’Arrigo, put together a list of red flags about him.  It appears she didn’t have room to include that he wants Queer people sent to jail for having queer sex.  The Republicans, who voted in lockstep to confirm Johnson, have confirmed they are a Christo-Fascist party, which is all the more reason for Hochul to step aside.

• In Texas, Lubbock County became the latest and largest county in the state to prohibit people seeking an abortion from moving through their borders.  In other words, they are violating your right to freedom of movement if you want to move through their territory in order to have an abortion.  In other words, the Republicans are a Christo-Fascist party who must be stopped, and Kathy Hochul has to step aside in order to prevent that from being a risk for New Yorkers.

• A Black woman in Mississippi looked for her missing son for months.  It turned out police knew exactly where he was - a police officer had run him over and concealed his death, burying him in a pauper’s field and keeping the distressed mom from knowing.  If you’re the praying type, pray that justice is done for Dexter Wade, and that the murderer and their accomplices get the stiffest penalties possible (short of the death penalty, although if anyone deserves it…).

• In some mixed news, Scholastic has apologized for its segregation of diverse & marginalized authors at its book fairs, a topic we discussed just last week!  This means that we achieved some change - though as I read the text of this letter, I’m reminded of the wiggle-wording they used and I see it popping up again when they say their segregated case “will not be available” at future events.  Whether this means those stories will be integrated or forgotten is yet to be seen.

• In some good news, The United Auto Workers have reportedly won a tentative contract with Ford, leaving just Stellantis and GM to negotiate with.  This goes to demonstrate that strikes are a good, effective tool.

• In more good news (because we need it), over 200,000 people showed up at a Pride event in Florida just to stick it to Ron DeSantis.  Good.

Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe.  If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list.  This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.