So the unhamlet-like Andrew Cuomo has announced his candidacy for Governor of New York State and 100s of down ballot Democrats breathe a sigh of relief. Cuomo should get my vote; in fact as a past Democratic Township Chair and a former elected official, my vote should be near automatic, but it is not.
AG Cuomo released his 224-page platform on Sunday: "The New NY Agenda: A Plan for Action."
The plan includes good government reform items like independent redistricting, public financing of campaigns, and tough ethic standards. His plan also calls for important social agenda items like support for same sex marriage and opposition to the death penalty. And, you won't get any immigrant bashing from Andrew Cuomo, he'll focus on the employers illegal hiring an exploitation of workers, and, he calls for wall street reform. These are good things.
His plan also calls for a good healthy dose of old fashion Republican Party platform items: $3000 tax credit for business, a cap on spending and freezes on state employee salaries, caps on property taxes and a commitment to no income, sales, or business tax increases.
Cuomo's plan to increase employment:
Cuomo's plan will make New York the jobs capital of the nation and get unemployed New Yorkers back to work. He will propose giving businesses a tax credit of up to $3,000 for each unemployed New Yorker hired for a new job; replace the Empire Zone program with an aggressive program that incentivizes businesses to move into New York for the first time, or expand their operations here by adding jobs. He will replace New York’s ineffective economic development efforts with a new strategy organized around regional industry clusters; reduce the high costs of doing business in the State; and support small businesses by increasing access to capital and streamlining regulatory barriers.
To me, this is typical boilerplate stuff with a dash of beggar thy neighbor corporate deck chair rearranging.
Cuomo also supports increasing the number of charter schools and evaluating teachers based on the performance measures.
Where am I troubled?
- I think placing caps on taxes and state employee salaries is retrograde. Rather, emphasis should be placed on government jurisdiction duplication and efficiency. I live on Long Island and I pay taxes to a bunch of taxing districts (fire dept, water), and to other governmental entities: county government, township government and school taxes as well as state & sales taxes. I live in a hamlet so I don't have to pay village taxes. Somewhere in there is room for streamlining and cooperation and coordination of services.
- I'm not sold on charter schools. I guess I'm in the Diane Ravitch education camp:
Charter schools won't save the American school system, says Diane Ravitch, a historian of education at New York University who worked in the first Bush administration as assistant secretary of education.
In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Ravitch argues that charter schools do little more than skim off the most motivated students, while giving crooks a chance to squander tax dollars on big salaries for administrators.
Support for charter schools goes hand in hand with teacher union bashing and I think that is wrong.
So I am troubled by some of AG Cuomos's platform.
It seems for a lot of people the way to get America going again is to denigrate public employees and teachers. I do not think that holding wages down for public employees will lead to an economic renaissance of new business growth and employment opportunities. It might make us feel better about having another $200-$500 in our wallets, but I don't think it will improve our economy.
We seem to be able to find ample sums for wars and bailouts for the powerful. For the middle class, its pit one type of worker against the other, hoping we won't notice the goodies going to corporate welfare cheats.
Well, there might be an alternative for New Yorkers.The Working Families Party might ask Alec Baldwin to run on their line. They're looking for a progressive alternative to Cuomo. (Note: the Working families party is in legal trouble due to activities of their campaign consultant offshoot.)
In the end, being the good Democrat that I am, I'll probably vote for Cuomo, but I'm not thrilled.