I was too busy with grown cops throwing tantrums in Rochester to comment on yesterday’s Cuomo Show. The backstory for this episode is that Cuomo has been low key (well, as low key as Cuomo gets) passive-aggressively fucking with the NYPD and their babyish ways. The NYPD (38,000 officers) is doing essentially no enforcement of COVID mandates, while the New York County Sheriff (150 Officers) has been doing the bulk of the enforcement (example here), along with a task force comprised of State Liquor Authority agents (20 or so) and State Troopers. That task force makes an impressive number of visits to bars (5,981 during the last week in August), and has cited a few (35 during that week in August, for example).
Yesterday, Cuomo upped the ante by refusing to allow resumption of indoor dining in New York City until there’s an enforcement plan in place. Or, as the New York Post put it (not gonna link), “Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo Wish Death on NYC Restaurants”. The only real enforcement that can take place is via the NYPD, and apparently they’re all hiding in their rooms with their favorite plushies working through their feelings.
Whatever you think of Cuomo, his enormous ego is very much tied into this graph and our sub-1% positive rate:
And that graph is in danger , especially with schools re-opening, so he’s digging in on NYC restaurants until the NYPD steps up. As far as I’m concerned, this is fine. I’ve just spent 6 weeks in a state where the governor only cared about how far she could climb up Trump’s asshole, so it’s hard to express just how happy I am to have Cuomo running the show, instead of Dollar Store Sarah Palin.
Also, I wonder just how much good will the cops think they have in the bank on this one. New York has witnessed some true heroism from medical personnel who have died fighting this fucking virus, and most of them don’t have anything approaching the pension and/or union protections afforded to the average street cop. When these motherfuckers get defunded, I hope they have plenty of kleenex to wipe away their tears, because they won’t have my shoulder to cry on.
Lots of ways to suppress community spread
gene108
Good will is not the issue, with regards to police and their unions. It’s the union contracts they have, and the fact no city has a contingency plan, if the police go on strike.
Teachers go on strike? Schools shutdown for a bit. Parents are inconvenienced, kids get more time off from school, etc.
Sanitation workers go on strike? Garbage piles up, and when the stink gets to be too bad, they come to a deal and garbage gets picked up again.
I just do not think either side, the city or the policy union, have ever gamed out what would happen, if the city dug in on a position opposed by the police unions, which in the case of other city workers would trigger a strike.
Kristine
Stealing this. It applies to so many groups.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@gene108: In Rochester, if the police go on strike, we have a pretty well staffed Sheriff’s office, represented by a different union. Would they also strike? I suppose that depends on the circumstances. Would they throw a tantrum? Probably.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Holy cow, APOCALYPSE NOW. Just woke up and the light is a deep, dark orange here in San Francisco. An hour after sunrise, all the streetlights are still on. It’s actually gotten darker in the last few minutes. It’s like the London Fog episode of The Crown.
MazeDancer
You tell ’em, mistermix!
Up until COVID, my loathing for Andrew Cuomo knew no bounds, and I was going to write-in “Hillary Clinton” for the Dem Gov Primary. (Until too much Twitter convinced me inexperienced Cynthia Nixon had a chance, so, screaming in agony, voted Cuomo. Big lesson in Twitter is not RL.)
Have never been so happy that all the things that make Cuomo so intolerable have served NY so well.
A friend, who was born in Manhattan – to some OG Communists – and lived there for decades, recently moved back to NY, She had been traveling the world. What made her come back? Andrew Cuomo. She, rightly, assumes COVID is a multi-year haul and Cuomo’s got it covered,
She was in LA. And decided on the Hudson Valley about the same time the rest of the world did. But after losing a lot of drive-by bidding wars, she lucked in to a lovely rental. Feels safe and happy.
sdhays
Could the National Guard be used to replace the police in a strike scenario?
Striking police should just be fired.
Frank Wilhoit
@gene108: They’ve been on strike since 1967. It just isn’t called a strike.
la caterina
@gene108: NYC cops won’t strike. They’re prohibited under the collective bargaining law. Both the union and members would incur severe fines and penalties. I just don’t see them being willing to take the financial hit when they can just stage a slowdown.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
I don’t think I knew you lived in Rochester. Please go have a cheeseburger Garbage Plate for me.
la caterina
@Frank Wilhoit: Exactly this
Omnes Omnibus
@sdhays: Soldiers, with very few exceptions, are not cops.
schrodingers_cat
M^[email protected]
In the NY gubernatorial primary who did you support, low rent Jill Stein, Zephyr Teachout or neo-liberal shill Cuomo?
bluefoot
Everyone I know if NY keeps joking about how they can’t wait until the end of coronavirus (assuming it ends) so they can go back to loathing Cuomo. :)
Regarding the states who aren’t putting in place mask and social distancing mandates etc: what are they expecting to happen? Don’t they care about burnout amongst healthcare workers and staff? It’s not like training a doctor or nurse is easy. Or cleaning staff in a biohazard environment. What about when supply chain breaks down because too many people are sick? It truly boggles my mind.
germy
Teachers can’t strike in New York.
The Taylor Law still denies public employees the right to strike. The penalties for striking are loss of pay for each day the employee is on strike, plus a fine of an additional day’s pay for every day on strike and potential discipline for misconduct.
oldster
At this point, the only reason not to fire all of the cops in the US is what we learned from the Iraq War: if you dissolve the army, it turns into an insurgency. Our Baathists in Blue would unleash a similar campaign of terror and mayhem, even worse than the one that they routinely conduct during business hours.
So we need to deBaathify the police forces gradually, finding useful employment for the ex-cops in positions in which they will do minimal harm.
The mass retirements of police leadership are often counter-productive, since the leaders are often (not always!) far more progressive than the rank and file. Chiefs and liaisons are more often women, more often POC, and when they get fired or resign then the beat-cops continue their old ways. And it’s the union leaders who are the worst.
If Cuomo really is ready to take on the NYPD, I will praise him to the skies. Clearly DeBlasio is too chicken, too compromised, or something. What a disappointment that guy is.
Ohio Mom
This is nationwide, not New York-specific but completely chilling: half of all people killed by the police are mentally disabled:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/half-people-killed-police-suffer-mental-disability-report-n538371
And here is a very recent example, a 13 year old with autism in the middle of a huge melt down shot up by the police as a result of his mother calling 911 for help:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/08/linden-cameron-utah-autistic-shooting/#click=https://t.co/KHaleP2RM2
Defund all of them. Now.
TEL
I live in the sf Bay Area as well. Everything is glowing red-orange. Crazy!
download my app in the app store mistermix
@schrodingers_cat: As usual your knowledge of politics is years behind. Teachout is old news. Cuomo’s most recent primary challenger was Cynthia Nixon.
I’m wondering — did you vote for Ike or Stevenson in ‘52?
schrodingers_cat
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Good catch! But you didn’t answer my question did you vote for Cuomo or his lefty challenger whose name I got wrong. Its hard to keep track of all the cosplay socialists and grifters running around. My bad.
Ah I see that you were not quite the fan of Cuomo then that you are now.
L85NJGT
You know it don’t bother me much running into a cop in this town bent to shit.
I grew up round here, kind of expect it now and then.
What irritates me, is when you call ’em on it and they give you this look like
how dare you insinuate I’m a piece of shit tarnishing my badge.
Raylan Givens
germy
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Why does it matter?
germy
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I was curious.
WaterGirl
@germy: I can’t tell what your take is on this.
Nicole
I want to print this post out and frame it.
I live less than 10 blocks from a precinct, and every time I have walked past it, there is at least one of NYC’s Finest outside, with a mask pulled down around his (usually his) chin. I have a friend who works in one of the departments who has told us that no one in their department wears a mask at work. I see beat cops wearing their masks properly about 50% of the time.
It makes me see red. Of all the city employees who should be setting a goddamn motherfucking example for the rest of us, it’s the motherfucking NYPD. But by God, no one gets to tell the cops what to do, amirite?
I am not a patriotic person, but what NYS did in the late spring, pulling the infection rate down, made me so, so proud to be a New Yorker. I, like John Oliver, eagerly await the time when I can go back to being annoyed by everything Cuomo does, but credit where it’s due; Cuomo really took Covid seriously, and for all that NYC got hit by a viral atom bomb in March and April, I feel safer here now than I would anywhere else in the country. And the fact that the goddamn NYPD doesn’t give a shit about even pretending to care like Covid is a serious issue- aaghgalsdfkdlsghsldkgjds!
germy
@WaterGirl: The police union is very sophisticated using public relations on TV news. Every night on CBS, ABC & NBC, the anchors rush through stories about Trump’s misdeeds (leaving out important details) so they can spend ten minutes or so at the end of every broadcast on copaganda.
That’s my take, anyway.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@schrodingers_cat: I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but if you’re framing both candidates as garbage so you can smear MM regardless of his choice – as if he were responsible for who the candidates are – that’s more the kind of cheap shot I’d expect a Republican to take.
Yes, that was the whole point.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: BTW why do only I have to justify my comments to you and that other lawyer person who comments here. Find someone else to pick on.
schrodingers_cat
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I like Cuomo alright. MM has been on record on this blog calling Cuomo names. I was being sarcastic, I guess sarcasm doesn’t translate well in blog comments.
WaterGirl
@germy: I’m wondering why they are taking the good cops and putting them in a special unit – that just leaves all the bad cops together. Seems like they should put the bad cops on desk duty and let the good cops swell their ranks.
germy
@schrodingers_cat:
I voted for Cuomo, although I often criticize him. Every time I voted for him, it was because I liked his opponent even less.
As much as I dislike Andrew, I’m glad he’s governor, rather than the various NY Republicans who challenged him. Cynthia Nixon admitted after the race she didn’t expect to win. I didn’t vote for her in the primary because she struck me as a dilettante.
Cuomo has let me down in many ways over the years, but he’s done a good job dealing with this virus. He listened to scientists.
Mary G
Some pictures of San Francisco’s YIKES sky this morning:
Chyron HR
@schrodingers_cat:
Maybe you should go over to r/AmItheAsshole and get an outside opinion on this one. Be sure to repeatedly say “BALLOON JUICE PRIMARY” in all caps so they really get a feel for what a charmer you are.
StringOnAStick
My friend in Medford, OR is dealing with smoke, evacuations, idiots spreading rumours that antifa is setting all these fires. She has mixed race kids and we both agreed that black teens like hers should not be driving to work today, for plenty of reasons.
That fire setting rumour is an attempt by the local white supremacists to get their war on. The line that defines “civilized” is getting fanned thin these days.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: Thanks for your thoughtful answer.
HumboldtBlue
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
This is absurd, it’s 830 am and the streets lights are still on.This really does look apocalyptic.
The smoke level is so high and we have ash falling.
@Mary G:
I’ve never seen this other than in an immediate fire area. This is terrible.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@schrodingers_cat: Your reading comprehension is about as weak as your argumentative skills. Pretty much every single post I’ve put up about Cuomo post-COVID points out that, like a lot of New Yorkers, I grudgingly admire him at best.
Unfortunately, you act like changing your mind about a politician, or, worse yet, having a nuanced position on a given politician, is the worst sin possible. Everything’s the same in black and white, in your world. I prefer Kodachrome – it has the nice bright colors, gives me the dreams of summer.
It’s pointless to argue or even discuss things with you, unfortunately. At best, I hope spending a few calories on typing out a response will allow me to drink a little more this evening without gaining weight.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: You don’t have to just anything to me. You were insistently asking a question of MM, and I wondered why it mattered. In my view, one could have easily hated Cuomo with every fiber of one’s being and still found that he is doing a good job with Covid.
Kropacetic
As someone who has had to repeatedly justify my comments to OO, whether he was being reasonable in a particular instance or not, I can assure you this isn’t true.
randy khan
Sometimes a huge ego is helpful, particularly when coupled with an actual brain. Cuomo (like Bill Clinton in many ways) has some ideas about how he will be judged and has concluded correctly that his COVID-19 performance will be a big part of that. Since he wants to be remembered as a great governor, he cares a lot about what likely will be the signature issue of his tenure. (Seriously, before now his obit might well have been filled with stuff about political maneuvers in Albany; now it will begin with his COVID-19 leadership.)
schrodingers_cat
@Chyron HR: I have never claimed to be a charmer and this blog is a bastion of white liberal privilege. I realization that only slowly dawned on me since Mr. Orangina began his first run to be president.
dopey-o
@schrodingers_cat: use the pie, luke.
Kropacetic
It is true that I can fall back on my parents, for now, as our broken form of capitalism puts any degree of independence out of reach, even working two jobs.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Mary G: YIKES only begins to describe it. We keep thinking it can’t get any darker this morning, and then it does – even as the sun gets higher. I’d say it’s as dark as late civil twilight, almost nautical twilight. But at least, thank G-d, we don’t have any fires very nearby. I can’t imagine what it’s like for folks in Oroville or the Sierra foothills.
ETA: seriously, is there a solar eclipse no one bothered to tell us about?
schrodingers_cat
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Mind reading and name-calling burn calories, who knew? Enjoy your drink.
@Kropacetic: Good point.
Kropacetic
@schrodingers_cat: If you pie a front pager, does that result in pie on the front page?
A Ghost to Most
FTFNYP.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@schrodingers_cat:
? If only this were true, I’d be Kate Moss. (Without the heroin.)
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: You’re free to ignore OO or anyone else here.
Ken
No, but the warnings map at http://www.weather.gov shows a solid band of red flag warnings along the west coast, from the Canadian to Mexican borders.
taumaturgo
https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2020/09/08/democrats-made-gains-from-multiple-sources-in-2018-midterm-victories/
From the Pew Research Center, a breakdown of Democrats gains comparing 2016 to 2018 elections cycles.
Kay
Obscene levels of corruption. Watch the Trump Family sleaze spread unchecked.
germy
@Kay:
That doesn’t sound good. Can we get her for treason?
schrodingers_cat
@Kropacetic: I don’t think you can pie a frontpage post.
HumboldtBlue
@Ken:
The air quality is so poor my Levoit can’t keep up.
This is dreadful. I have lamps on in my apartment at 9 am
Kropacetic
@schrodingers_cat: I suspected this was the case; but I don’t use the pie filter, even to experiment with, out of some form of conviction.
Gin & Tonic
Boy, does this piss me off. Why do we always have to wait for somebody’s book to tell us the truth about what happened, months or years after the fact? If only there were some mechanism by which somebody who learned something like this, call it “news,” were able to get that “news” out to the public on a timely basis. You know, publish it for general reading? Maybe we could call that kind of thing a “news paper.”
I’m sure Kay will be all over this with righteous anger, better than me.
Kropacetic
But DeBlasio downplayed the virus for a couple weeks in March so both sides argle bargle.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you have access to NPR’s program “On Point,” they’re spending this hour talking with undecided Wisconsin voters.
PPCLI
@Mary G: It’s a sign of the sickness of the Trump administration that everyone just assumes the Federal Government won’t do a damn thing in this massive crisis because it’s just affecting blue states.
It’s a fact so obvious that nobody even bothers to mention it.
Jeffro
@debbie:
Really? Both of them?
Baud
@debbie:
Kent
If I were a NYC politician right now, I’d be getting in front of TV cameras and asking why we are funding the police when they are not doing the jobs they were hired to do. And musing about how maybe the protesters maybe have a point about defunding the police and redirecting the money elsewhere.
Kropacetic
If one really wanted an easy way to get on television, it would make sense to present oneself as an undecided voter in a swing state. Or an avid Trump supporter in a diner in a reddish area of a swing state.
debbie
@Baud: @Jeffro:
LOL to you both. So far, though, they seem unpleased with Trump, especially with the tariffs.
Benw
@WaterGirl: IMO there’s no good NY cops. The best we’ve got are the ones silently accommodating the brutal racist ones.
schrodingers_cat
@Kropacetic: I use it sparingly when I am on my phone.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@debbie:
Oh, fuck those people. Enough already.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Sadly they no longer make Kodachrome, nor can you get it processed.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@HumboldtBlue: That last pic of the cemetery is what it looks like here. And what a great photo – conveys the eerie gloom perfectly.
The Moar You Know
@oldster: I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with you on anything here, but damn, you nailed this. To the wall. This is exactly what needs to happen. Police need to be slowly brought under a common federal set of laws, norms, and supervision.
Because if we just cut these fuckers loose, you are right, we will have Iraq War Part IV, but here in America. Nobody wants that.
Kent
I doubt there are very many actual undecided Wisconsin voters. But just a lot of wankers who like to pretend that they are.
Kropacetic
@oldster: @The Moar You Know: Some former police may even find what they consider to be more rewarding, focused work in whatever new public safety paradigm emerges.
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
The reporters with the books are gross but this revelation is interesting. Trump’s stupid so I assumed he actually believed the pandemic was like the flu. It’s much worse than that. He knew. They all knew. They knew there would be 200k dead and they lied about it to cover their asses.
Kropacetic
Did mama take your kodachrome away?
marklar
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Re: Kodachrome….there are some pretty good LUT files that simulate the effect in post-processing (of course, given your exceptional photographs, my guess is that you probably know that. BTW, thanks for posting as often as you do; I’ve been picking up some composition tips from your art).
Roger Moore
@la caterina:
The problem is that even if they don’t strike the cops wind up doing work to rule. They do the absolute minimum they possibly can, which is often far less than their real obligations. That kind of slowdown is why their rate of clearing serious crimes has collapsed. And they can do all kinds of other skulduggery, like prioritizing enforcement in the districts of city council members who support them while ignoring the districts of council members who oppose them. “We can turn your district into a crime-infested hell hole if you don’t go along with us” is a pretty serious threat to any politician.
HumboldtBlue
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
I like the Carson Mansion shot as well.
Cameron
NYP union endorsed Trump even before national FOP did. Why would you expect a Trump supporter to do any actual work?
Kay
The audio in the Woodward book will be good for Biden, too.
If they’re all making big bucks off our misery, and they are, at least in this one it might be useful to get us out of it.
Kropacetic
Support the “right” side and wait for the benefits to accrue to you. It’s the Republican way.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Not that Antifa, LLC listen to me but since police have giant budgets and are bad at investigating and solving crimes – on their best day they were clearing 30%- I would focus there.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kropacetic: If your mama is Kodak, yes!
@marklar: I do have some Kodachrome LUTs, I also have Dxo Film Lab that can emulate a bunch of film types(pretty convincingly).
The Moar You Know
@Baud: precisely. There are no undecided voters. There never have been. It’s a media creation to run bullshit horse-race narratives and it needs to start being called out as such.
Roger Moore
@germy:
Lèse-majesté
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: Cuomo (and DeBlasio) both dragged their feet, and fought with each other about who had power to do what, very early on.
From April:
https://ny.eater.com/2020/4/8/21213598/nyc-coronavirus-warnings-deblasio-cuomo-nytimes
Cuomo eventually did a good job, but it took longer than it should have.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
Reading the Woodward excerpt you understand why Trump and the low quality Trump hires have such a platinum-level test and trace program in their own workplace.
They were scared shitless by the virus. Knew it was “deadly”. So they told you-all to go back to work while creating a safe little bubble for their own coddled asses.
It reminds me of Right wing judges and guns. Their workplace is bristling with security to keep their lunatic gun nut constituents far away, but they’re happily sending you-all into a potential slaughter.
germy
Washington Post
Kropacetic
It was the ma-ma-market.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: I think I might prefer taking a ball peen hammer to my toes.
Kay
There’s the President. He said this as he was sending the low quality hires out to fan across the country and tell us all to put our kids in school.
Luckily, they lie so much only 40% of people believed them. Too bad about that 40% though.
randy khan
@Kay:
It’s worth mentioning that this is just a processing formality. The real action will come when her lawyers challenge the filing at the federal court.
While the real purpose of this likely is delay, as the theory is kind of stupid (as in, if the President blurts out at a press conference that he was at fault in that auto accident he’s being sued for, do you really think it’s an official action?), a friend of mine who’s familiar with these sorts of things said that, if the filing really did miss the deadline (which it would seem to have), some courts will bounce the case back in just a few days. Federal judges, it seems, are not particularly interested in clogging their calendars with cases that don’t belong in front of them.
Another Scott
@?BillinGlendaleCA: No, but, as you no-doubt are aware, one can simulate it with various digital cameras.
https://fujixweekly.com/2019/08/02/my-fujifilm-x-t30-kodachrome-64-film-simulation-recipe/
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
@Kay: Barron is not sitting in a classroom.
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
As someone who started in photography after digital took off, I’ve never really understood the desire to emulate the look of a particular kind of film. Part of the advantage of digital is that you can adjust the colors picture by picture to get precisely the look you want. Maybe that’s similar to an old film stock, but maybe it’s something completely different.
Original Lee
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Ditto.
scav
I’m somehow suspicious about all the rearview mirror ‘We were absolutely right from the beginning!’ preening. Even if that digs them deeper into the rubble of they’re absofluckingky doing nothing useful about it, it preserves their holy and immaculate self-image. It’s like BS: they’re beyond caring if it’s dangerous or not just as truth or non-truth is meaningless.
Just One More Canuck
@randy khan:
I thought you were referring to certain front pagers and commenters
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: I think it’s really, really nice that one can get cameras with various effects already built-in, so that one doesn’t have to fiddle with PS for hours if one doesn’t want to.
https://www.f16.click/blog/tips/fujifilm-jpeg-settings.html
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@germy:
Pot, meet kettle.
bluefoot
@Gin & Tonic:
Woodward obviously didn’t care that people would die since he had a book to sell. God forbid he actually report this in a timely way – like way back in early February – when we could have put pressure on the government for a coordinated response. Profits over lives is the American way.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: Yup, Fuji is known for that.
@Roger Moore: A lot of photographers love the look of film and still shot with it, but if you’re after Kodachrome, the only way to get it now is emulation. They like the retro look and while you can try to emulate it yourself(and you certainly can) and create a preset, I just went with the bought emulation.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: One of my photog friends shot and put up a pic on FB using Kodak T-100. I decided to do the same with emulation(I think you’ve see the photo, it’s at a cemetery), I also added clouds. The one thing that didn’t fool folk was the sky wasn’t washed out enough for a real T-100 shot.
prostratedragon
As of September 2, more than 1000 U.S. healthcare workers have died of covid-19. Babyish cops indeed.