"You (NYC voters) elected a Fidel Castro, not an Abraham Lincoln. Now you have to live with." Letter to the Editor of the NY Post by Bill Cancesse
- In the past two months, I wrote several pieces about the consequences of NYC electing a far-left, progressive mayor. At the time, I predicted the city would be plunging into progressive hell. It appears my warnings were justified.
- A little background. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio likes to brag that he received 73% of the vote. He did. But more than 80% of NY City's registered voters did not vote for de Blasio. Why? The answer is in the numbers: three out of four registered voters didn't even go to the polls. While he was offering himself up as a prophet (reminds one of someone else), he's turned into a false prophet.
- In addition, one of his allies---Melissa Mark-Viverto---is now Speaker of NYC Council. Her legacy is interesting. She lobbied on behalf of five Cuban intelligence officers convicted of spying on the United States. She also lobbied for the release of the leader of the FALN Puerto Rican terrorist group. The FALN was responsible for 120 bombings largely in NYC and Chicago from 1974 to 1983 resulting in deaths and injuries. As a sidebar, in 1999, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 of these terrorist thugs. Viverto is also a former member of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) long associated with ACORN.
- Like many urban school districts, the NY public school system has many problems. For example, at 53 public schools, not one black student passed the state's most recent math tests. At 48 schools, not one Hispanic passed the same test. In fact, there are 105 schools in the system where the math proficiency rate is 5% or less. The list of public school failures is endless.
- So what does Mayor de Blasio and his herd of progressive despots want to do? They want to shut out some of the more successful schools in the district---charter schools. As Peggy Noonan pointed out so well last week: "Ideologues will sacrifice anything to their ideology. Even children." And in the case of most of the charter schools, the children happen to be mostly black and Hispanic. Noonan added, "Bill Blasio doesn't like charter schools. They are too successful to be tolerated." They are also too successful to also be tolerated by the public school union. In fact, the parents of one of the charter schools, Success Academy, announced a series of law suits against the city. How successful is Success Academy? Last year, 82% of its students passed citywide math exams. For the public system, the rate was 30%.
- Mayor de Blasio's actions are right out of the progressive playbook: Namely, the collective is more important than the individual. That ideology was expressed by Pres. Obama himself in the last presidential campaign when he said, "If you have a business, you didn't build that."
- Once again, NYC Mayor de Blasio is showing the nation progressive failure. Unfortunately, this time (among many), it's a reign of terror on the poor.
Postscript:
Since this was posted, New Yorkers are ripping into De Blasio for crime, poverty and rising homelessness.
