From the left: Cuomo’s Comeuppance
“Seventy-four thousand documents, 200 interviews, 168 pages and five months after” state Attorney General Tish James began her probe of Gov. Cuomo, “investigators managed to corroborate nearly every detail of the flurry of allegations,” confirming “what nearly a dozen women told us from the start: Cuomo is hot garbage,” blasts The Nation’s Alexis Grenell. Besides verifying “claims of disgusting comments and forcible touching, they caught the governor in various lies, both big and small.” He even lied “about not knowing the lyrics to a song, which was easily disproved by audiotapes.” And in his prerecorded response, “Well-lit and wearing make-up — possibly supplied to him by his brother, who’s been moonlighting as a crisis PR consultant while pretending to be a journalist on CNN — he gave a master class in gaslighting.” Touting his “side hustle as a rape crisis counselor in his own family,” Cuomo gallingly “peddled the fallacy that his only crime was caring too much.”
Libertarian: Blas’ Vax Tyranny
Mayor de Blasio’s plan “to create a class of citizens barred from civic life is an intolerable imposition on New Yorkers’ liberties,” fumes Reason’s Brian Doherty. Making it illegal for those without “proof of vaccination to work at or be customers of the city’s gyms, entertainment venues and indoor restaurants is a grotesquely unconstitutional tyranny” that violates “liberty of movement, commerce and association.” That “the vaccinated also can transmit the virus makes the purely punitive nature of his power grab all the more clear.” New York’s daily average death toll “inspiring de Blasio’s tyranny” has been “four a day over the past week.” Our “political class’ attempts to pretend” to run a “risk-free” society get “darker and more insane by the week.”
Media watch: Burying Cuomo’s Accusers
The report “detailing multiple, corroborated sexual-harassment charges against” Gov. Cuomo “quickly dominated headlines,” but most media had buried the original accusations, notes Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick. When Lindsey Boylan accused Cuomo of sexual harassment in December, ABC, CBS and NBC were silent — as was CNN, which waited until February and then gave the story just 39 seconds. That’s in sharp contrast “with the mainstream media’s reaction to sexual-assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.” Those networks and others also ignored Cuomo’s sixth accuser: the former aide who’s now made a criminal complaint about his alleged groping.
Progressive: Adams vs. Socialism
Eric Adams thinks he represents the Democratic Party’s future — which means going “to war with the socialist left,” writes Ross Barkan at his Substack. “All across the country, the DSA socialists are mobilizing to stop Eric Adams,” the mayor-in-waiting declared. He poses a threat to the Democratic Socialists trying to take over the mainstream left, Barkan says: He’s a black NYPD officer who appeals to “working-class black and Latino New York, along with a mix of white moderates,” and struck “at something of a soft underbelly of the socialist left: public safety.” Still, many of Adams’ working-class voters rely on the safety net, and unless he delivers concretely for them, the “DSA will keep winning elections.”
Tech desk: ‘Social Credit’ Is Here
Big Tech is fast unveiling “predecessors to what effectively could become a soft social-credit system by the end of this decade,” warns Kristin Tate at The Hill. China has already established one, “a combination of government and business surveillance that gives citizens a ‘score’ that can restrict the ability of individuals to take actions — such as purchasing plane tickets, acquiring property or taking loans.” America’s tech giants are taking similar steps; witness PayPal’s partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to identify and defund “extremist” groups and Facebook’s encouraging of users to “snitch” on friends with “anti-government” views. Beware: “The growth of such restrictions, which will only accelerate with support from (usually) left-wing politicians, could create a system in which individuals who do not hold certain political views could be blocked from polite society and left unable to make a living.”
— Compiled by Kelly Jane Torrance and Sohrab Ahmari