Thursday, March 25, 2021

25 March 2021: Another Day, Another Call for Governor Cuomo's Resignation

Cuomo's Got To Go: Rep. Nicole Malliotakis Calls for Resignation

In the following video, U.S. Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) summarizes Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home scandals and explains why she has called for the Governor's resignation.

That's pretty much the scandal in a nutshell.

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25 March 2021: Commemorating the Tragedy of Governor Cuomo's Deadly Directive and Other Cuomo Scandal News

The families of the victims of the Cuomo's administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive forcing nursing homes to admit COVID patients discharged from hospitals without testing to determine if they were still contagious held several remembrances on its anniversary.

The state legislature marked the occasion by voting to repeal the legal immunity from COVID deaths Governor Cuomo gifted to New York hospitals and nursing homes after imposing his administration's deadly 25 March 2021 directive.

Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo eased restrictions imposed on families seeking to visit relatives in NY nursing homes, and welcomed the distraction of dealing with yet another scandal alleging corruption and abuse of power.

The last story is remarkable in that CNN has all but signed off on the "Quid pro Cuomo" benefit that its prime time anchor Chris Cuomo received from Governor Cuomo. Perhaps the news network's staff, editors and management feel that since they've already shredded most of their journalistic credibility, why not openly embrace their inherent conflicts of interest?

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25 March 2021: The One Year Anniversary of a Deadly Directive

One year later, Cuomo won’t admit deadly nursing-home mandate was a mistake

One year after forcing New York nursing homes to blindly admit COVID patients discharged from hospitals to free up hospital beds, Governor Cuomo still refuses to acknowledge the action and its deadly consequences were a mistake. The New York Post' editors recount many of the key aspects that have caused scandals to explode about Governor Cuomo and his administration:

Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s deadly nursing-home mandate — which he still won’t acknowledge was a mistake. He’s even shrugged off questions about its impact with a callous, “Who cares?”

On March 25, 2020, Cuomo’s Department of Health issued the infamous order that forced nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients. They weren’t even allowed to test admissions for the virus. Why? His donor pals at the Greater New York Hospital Association were worried hospitals would become overwhelmed (which never happened).

Home operators immediately protested, but the administration refused to let them put contagious patients in the field hospital at the Javits Center or on the USNS Comfort — even though Cuomo had warned the virus would spread through nursing homes “like fire through dry grass.”

The order became public knowledge only after The Post’s Bernadette Hogan asked about it at a press conference. Eventually, the resulting public furor led Team Cuomo to quietly rescind it — while leaving intact a similar order that covered homes for the developmentally disabled.

Giving credit where it's due: The New York Post has largely owned the story of Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home scandals from the beginning.

The editorial continues because the scandal didn't stop with the rescinding of the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive. Do read the whole thing!

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25 March 2021: Janice Dean Marks Anniversary of Cuomo's Deadly Directive

Families deserve justice one year after Cuomo’s deadly nursing home order

Here's an extended excerpt from Dean's op-ed:

Today, March 25, marks the one-year anniversary of Cuomo’s reckless mandate that ordered over 9,000 COVID-positive patients into nursing homes. It was in effect for 46 days before his Health Department finally reversed it and then scrubbed it from their Web site.

I believe it helped kill thousands of our family members during the pandemic and although I cannot prove it, I think it contributed to the deaths of my husband’s parents Michael “Mickey” and Dolores “Dee” Newman.

I never set out to be an advocate on behalf of my in-laws. But when I kept seeing the governor on television last summer and fall being celebrated and never even being asked the nursing- home questions we so desperately wanted the answers to, I decided to tell our story.

I did it to raise awareness about this New York tragedy. More than 15,000 seniors are dead and our governor tried to cover up the numbers and blamed everyone else for his mistake. Why wasn’t this one of the biggest headlines in history?

And now, a year later, the governor and his handling of COVID nursing-home deaths is finally being investigated. There is a federal and FBI investigation being conducted in New York. They are circling around Cuomo and his top aides.

People have asked me if I feel some satisfaction in knowing that Cuomo might finally be convicted for his crimes, but I’m not sure if he will ever truly be held accountable. And we’ll never get my husband’s parents Mickey and Dee back.

That Governor Cuomo and members of his administration might never be held criminally accountable for their intentional negligence is itself a scandal.

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25 March 2021: Opinion - Cuomo Abuses Power with Personnel Files

In Our Opinion: Cuomo's abuse of personnel files is another scandal

This commentary by the editors of Oneonta, NY's Daily Star focuses on an underappreciated aspect of Governor Cuomo's abuse of power:

The response by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration to a series of sexual harassment allegations against the governor has brought renewed attention to one of Cuomo’s more disturbing practices: his use of the apparatus of state government as a tool to burnish his image, and to tarnish that of his perceived enemies....

In a piece for the New Yorker this month, Eric Lach notes that shortly after Boylan’s December accusation, several media outlets mysteriously came to possess state personnel files on Boylan that described her as “unprofessional” and a “bully” who belittled three Black employees. Boylan’s attorney, Jill Basinger, called the apparent smear campaign against her client “shocking and disgusting,” and said she expects James’ investigation into Cuomo’s conduct to also look into the leak of the files.

The New Yorker reported separately that former Cuomo staffer Rich Bamberger was the middleman in the leaks; Bamberger now works for Kivvit, a public relations firm that employs two other former Cuomo staffers. Longtime readers might recognize Bamberger’s name, as in 2012 he was the author of a 35-page dossier on Capital Tonight host Liz Benjamin that highlighted comments and blog posts perceived to be critical of Cuomo. At the time, Cuomo press secretary Josh Vlasto — who now works with Bamberger at Kivvit — disputed the characterization of the dossier as an “enemies list” but said it was compiled for use in a meeting with Benjamin’s bosses at YNN. Vlasto said the “meeting went well,” and that “the blogs were never discussed again, and then they were discarded. You know, I guess somebody is going through our trash these days, which is another matter that we’ll have to look into.”

Like Governor Cuomo's nursing home scandals, Governor Cuomo's abuse of power scandals took teamwork. The sooner a conclusion is reached to fully clean house in Albany, the better.

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25 March 2021: Looking Out for Número Cuomo

Top health officials told to prioritize COVID testing for Cuomo's relatives

The Albany Times-Union breaks a huge story of political favoritism that benefited Team Cuomo's friends and family:

High-level members of the state Department of Health were directed last year by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor's relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Members of Cuomo's family including his brother, his mother and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top health department officials — some several times, the sources said.

The medical officials enlisted to do the testing, which often took place at private residences, included Dr. Eleanor Adams, an epidemiologist who graduated from Harvard Medical School and in August became a special adviser to Zucker. Adams conducted testing on Cuomo's brother Chris at his residence on Long Island, according to the two people.

What's the definition of corruption? Are there more examples?

Related: CNN Stands by Chris Cuomo Amid Family COVID Testing Allegations.

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Wednesday, March 24, 2021

24 March 2021: Unwinding Team Cuomo's COVID Nursing Home Policies and the Coming Scramble to Replace Cuomo

Undoing the policies that Governor Cuomo and his administration imposed during the coronavirus pandemic is the unifying them for the following report and opinion column. The first deals with the repeal of the legal immunity Governor Cuomo gifted to New York hospitals and nursing home operators from COVID deaths. The second calls for the New York state government to release all the public COVID data it has compiled during the pandemic, which would unwind Team Cuomo's often illegal withholding of that information from the public and other government agencies.

The next article anticipates a political free-for-all if and when Governor Cuomo exits the Governor's mansion:

The event that might tip the balance in determining whether Governor Cuomo can survive in office is whether state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli gives the go-ahead to state Attorney General Letitia James to investigate Governor Cuomo's nursing home deaths scandals. While it's drawing media attention, the NY Assembly's impeachment probe appears designed to fail.

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24 March 2021: Cuomo Claims He's Still Doing His Job

NY's Cuomo insists he can still do job amid scandals, says governors can handle 'multiple situations'

Here's what the report indicates Governor Cuomo had to say about his ability to do his job:

Cuomo maintained that he is doing his job – opening vaccination centers across the state and negotiating the state's budget – saying that his administration is "making good progress."

"They don't even understand the nature of the job – the nature of being governor, always, is multiple situations to deal with," he said. "I had to deal with Trump as president – talk about distractions – that was a distraction."

The Trump DOJ was actively investigating Governor Cuomo's nursing home scandals, which Cuomo officials have claimed is why they covered up the full extent of COVID deaths while the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect, so we guess we could see how he might find that a "distraction".

What he considers "doing his job" these days appears to be a lot less than it used to be, unless it involves coverups or intimidating witnesses.

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24 March 2021: Editorial - NY Assembly Should Stop Stalling Cuomo Impeachment Trial

Quit stalling — hold Gov. Cuomo's impeachment trial now

The New York Post's editors have a few words to say about Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's lack of scope control for the legislature's impeachment probe of Governor Cuomo:

Just as we feared, the Assembly is stalling to protect Gov. Andrew Cuomo — aiming to take months to complete its impeachment inquiry. What a flagrant farce.

"Given the breadth and seriousness of the issues under investigation, we expect that the timing will be in terms of months, rather than weeks," Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Lavine (D-LI) said Tuesday.

That's because Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) threw everything but the kitchen sink into the mix to drag it out.

In project management, it's called "scope creep". It's a bad thing that generally only ensures failure. Having the Assembly Speaker build it in from the very beginning of an impeachment probe means the probe is designed to fail.

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24 March 2021: The Numbers of COVID-Positive Patients Transferred to NY Nursing Homes

Database: How many COVID-positive hospital patients went to each NY nursing home last spring

A team of journalists at USA Today Network New York have obtained a database with information on about 9,000 COVID-positive patients discharged from hospitals to nursing homes in New York between 25 March 2020 and 8 May 2020. Here are some of their initial findings:

  • About 25% of nursing homes in New York received at least 20 COVID-positive hospital patients, with some accepting between 100 and 170 residents each.
  • Many of the nursing homes that took in COVID-positive patients, about 75%, were in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties.
  • Of the roughly 9,000 COVID-positive discharges to nursing homes overall, about 270 patients went to facilities in the counties of Dutchess, Orange, Monroe, Oneida, Ontario and Ulster.

Details linked to the patient discharges, as well as legal immunity provisions granted to health care providers, are central to the Department of Justice investigation into Cuomo’s administration withholding for months the true COVID-19 death toll for nursing homes.

The highest patient discharge totals included Workmen's Circle Multi-care Center in the Bronx, with 108 COVID-positive admissions and 61 readmissions, as well as the Upper East Side Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Manhattan, with 110 admissions and 44 readmissions.

Overall, there were 6,327 COVID-positive admissions and 2,729 readmissions, which was about 40% higher than the state previously disclosed, as first reported by the Associated Press.

It's information the Cuomo administration did not want to become known by the public.

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24 March 2021: Assembly Leaders "Slow-Rolling" Impeachment Probe?

State Assemblyman Robert Smullen: Cuomo has lost our confidence to govern

This commentary by New York Assemblyman Robert Smullen (R,C,I, SAM-Meco) calls for the state legislature to hold Governor Cuomo accountable for misdeeds in office. That's not surprising, but he questions the approach of the majority Democrats in running the Assembly's impeachment probe:

A Legislature's responsibility is the equal representation of the people throughout the state to make laws. It also serves to check the co-equal branches of the executive and judiciary when necessary to hold them accountable.

So while the Assembly Democrats are slowly moving toward an investigation that may lead to an impeachment vote, I doubt that their motive is justice for the victims of this governor's actions. They simply want to maintain policy leverage for a progressive budget.

My biggest concern in this due process comes from the fact that the Assembly Judiciary Committee is slow-rolling its own investigation by hiring outside lawyers. If committee members were serious, they would immediately empanel a bipartisan impeachment commission with subpoena powers to hear witnesses in public.

We don't need any further delays. It is time to act now and assert our Legislative authority.

A much more serious impeachment probe would be managed much more efficiently, starting with a tight focus on the established misdeeds involving Governor Cuomo's already well-documented stonewalling and deception of New York legislators and New Yorkers in its coverup of the full deadly impact of his administration's 25 March 2020 COVID nursing home directive.

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24 March 2021: A Profile of Janice Dean

Meteorologist Janice Dean has become one of the most prominent critics of Governor Cuomo and his COVID nursing home policies. The articles below provide insight into how she evolved into that role:

24 March 2021: Fox meteorologist Dean turns into fierce Cuomo critic

In the last year, Janice Dean has become a leading advocate for the families of the Cuomo administration's COVID nursing home victims. In that role, she almost single-handedly kept the scandal visible when biased news media organizations were determined to minimize it while advancing a "Cuomo the Hero" narrative. This article provides a window into the roots of her advocacy and its impact.

29 April 2021: Andrew Cuomo’s worst nightmare

This article covers much of the same ground that earlier reporting has covered, but does offer deeper insight into Dean's reaction to Governor Cuomo's appearances on CNN as one of the motivating factors behind her advocacy:

“Had I not seen him and his brother on TV doing their stupid comedy show, had I not seen him writing a book in the middle of a pandemic, when he should be writing condolence cards, and had he come out and said, ‘I'm sorry for your loss,’ which he's never done before, had he spoken with some of the families, had he had a town hall with grieving family members, had he called some of us on the phone,” it might have gone differently, Dean reflected. “Had he said to us in the beginning, ‘I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to right this, I made such a terrible mistake.’ But it was his ego and his quest for wanting more power that truly brought him down. So, I’m actually grateful for his gross comedy hour with his brother, and I’m grateful for his disgusting book. And his, you know, his terrible interviews, you know, puffing himself up to be this — this homecoming king? If it weren’t for that, you would have gotten away with it.”

Follow this link for more information related to CNN's ethically compromised coverage of Governor Cuomo and his many scandals in the timeline.

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24 March 2021: Cuomo and the Other Governors Morning Scandal News Roundup

The New York Assembly is coming firmly down against witness intimidation tactics:

The "Key lawmaker" is Charles Lavine (D-Long Island). Lavine's comments follow the 22 March 2021 accusation of witness intimidation levied by Debra Katz, an attorney representing Charlotte Bennett, one of eight women alleging they were sexually harassed by Governor Cuomo.

Next up, the New York Times continues the kind of long time-delayed news coverage New Yorkers have come to expect:

Rest assured though, if it involves sexual harassment allegations, the NYT has already demonstrated it will be among the first to leap on it with all its available resources!

Bloomberg seems concerned that New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy might be called to account for his state's COVID nursing home deaths scandal, in which he copied many aspects of New York's policies:

Political Calculations' analysis of What Happened in New Jersey's Nursing Homes has been available since 21 May 2020. In many ways, Murphy's COVID nursing homes scandal may be worse because his administration overrode and reversed plans to implement more sound policies that would have mitigated the spread of coronavirus infections in New Jersey nursing homes.

On the other hand, at least Murphy and his administration didn't attempt to coverup the extent to which COVID ravaged nursing home residents in New Jersey.

Finally, the students who run NYU's Washington Square News are getting first hand experience in dealing with an administration determined to give them the run-around as they try to get answers from Linda Lacewell, a former Cuomo administration official identified as one of several who participated in doctoring the numbers in the NY DOH's 6 July 2020 report.

Here's how Ruqaiyah Zarook describes her attempt to obtain answers from the NYU professor:

WSN reached out to Lacewell via email, but she did not directly respond to the request for comment. The email was instead directed to Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, who referred WSN to a statement from Beth Garvey, the special counsel to the governor.

Didn't Linda Lacewell teach a course on "Ethics in Government" at NYU?

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Tuesday, March 23, 2021

23 March 2021: News from Cuomoland Evening Edition

The New York Assembly's impeachment probe is barely underway and it already has a scope creep problem, including a hotline for New Yorkers to report tips for their impeachment probe:

A failure to control the scope of what the Assembly investigates in its impeachment probe may part of a cynical political strategy to keep Governor Cuomo in power.

Meanwhile, two members of the New York Assembly have tested positive for COVID-19:

Despite that setback, the repeal of the legal immunity Governor Cuomo granted to hospitals and nursing home operators may be in sight in the New York Assembly:

More evidence emerges that the Biden-Harris administration is okay with all the COVID nursing home deaths in Pennsylvania:

And now, the most fun headline we saw today:

You know it's bad when you've lost the support of the Caped Crusader!*


* Yes, we know the article isn't referring to the real Caped Crusader, but is instead reporting on Cuyoga County Legislator Keith Batman's call for Governor Cuomo to resign. However, we're pretty sure the legislator has been erroneously mistaken for the Dark Knight before.

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23 March 2021: Raging Fire Less Deadly Than Cuomo COVID Nursing Home Policies

1 resident dead, firefighter missing in massive blaze at New York senior living facility

We now have an unfortunate datapoint to evaluate Governor Cuomo's claim that putting coronavirus-infected patients into a nursing home could see cases and deaths spread "like fire in dry grass". In this report, a multi-alarm fire that raged through a New York senior living facility caused the death of one resident, while all other residents survived (although have been displaced).

By comparison, the Cuomo administration's 25 March 2020 directive contributed to hundreds, if not thousands, of additional COVID-19 deaths among elderly nursing home residents than would have died had it not been mandated.

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23 March 2021: The Cuomo Coverup and the Crime

Why Someone Hid Accurate Death Count for New York Nursing Homes

This transcript of the Daily Signal's podcast (here's the audio) features an interview with the nonpartisan Empire Center for Public Policy's CEO Tim Hoefner. He discusses the history of the Empire Center's Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request for public COVID nursing home data, which the Cuomo administration's stonewalled. That stonewalling led the Empire Center to file a lawsuit against Team Cuomo. He describes how the Empire Center won their legal matchup with Team Cuomo:

When the attorney general's report came out and we saw that even the attorney general couldn't pry these data out of the Department of Health's hand, we followed up with a letter to the judge that had been assigned to the case and said, "Come on. What is it going to take? Even the attorney general can't get access to these data that the Department of Health is collecting on behalf of taxpayers. You need to rule. You need to rule right now."

And then within a matter of days, the ruling came out, ruled totally in the Empire Center's favor. In fact, had found that we had prevailed so significantly that we were awarded costs and fees from the Department of Health. That's significant insomuch as it means that we prevailed in a way that was unimpeachable, right?

... The case was so strong in our favor that the Department of Health had acted so poorly in this case that they were required to pay us for our time and for our costs leading up to a lawsuit and all the way through it.

The podcast later turned to the question of why the Cuomo administration engaged in its stonewalling and subsequently acknowledged false reporting of the full extent of COVID nursing home resident deaths in New York:

Largely this is a case of the cover-up worse than the crime. The executive order came down—you have to put yourself in the mind frame of what it was like here in the U.S., specifically here in New York, at the end of March. We didn't know very much. There was a lot going on. People were getting sick. People were dying. This executive order came down. Obviously, in hindsight, we can see that it was a mistake.

The reason that the Empire Center and others began asking for the outcome of this executive order was because it did appear that there was a disproportionate share of nursing home residents who were dying.

Janice is a great spokesperson for that in the worst possible way, because she lost not one, but two parents. The story of Janice's in-laws is heartbreaking.

It's part of the reason that, from an academic perspective, we wanted to get a hold of these data, which was not to play "got you," but rather to make sure that if there was a resurgence or in the next pandemic, that we learned from what happened in this one. We can't do that if we don't have access to the data.

It didn't take long after questions started to be asked for the Department of Health to proactively, I suppose, do an analysis on the data and put out a report, which they eventually did in June or July, that found, in their words, no statistical significance between the executive order and the number of deaths in the nursing homes.

But it was when they put that report out and the data that they alluded to in it that we began to see inconsistencies, then we start asking the question, well, what's happening here?

In a subsequent legislative hearing, Howard Zucker, who is the director of the Department of Health, was asked questions about this from legislative leaders and didn't have a good answer. Then it became really clear that there was something there to hide and that was the genesis for what ultimately became our FOIA request, the lawsuit, and then the data that finally came out in February.

"Janice" refers to Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean, who has been one of the most visible and active advocates calling attention to the Cuomo administration's COVID nursing home policies and scandals.

Hoefner's comments are generally well supported. We disagree on one major point and one minor point with Hoefner's recollection. For the major point, it was evident in the period before the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive that placing COVID patients in nursing homes would promote rather than slow its spread among the most vulnerable population in the state with fatal implications. Even Governor Cuomo acknowledged as much on 12 March 2020 when he blocked families from visiting relatives at nursing homes and again on 29 March 2020, just four days after his administration imposed the policy. While Hoefner is correct that "we didn't know much" about COVID-19 in March 2020, the Cuomo administration certainly knew introducing people infected with coronavirus infections into nursing homes would cause "pain and damage from this in nursing homes." He and members of his administration did it anyway.

Our minor point of disagreement is this: we do not believe the coverup is worse than the crime. We think it is has been an integral part of the crime from the beginning, because members of Team Cuomo knew they were engaged in what we would charitably call criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter in the first degree under New York state law. He and members of his administration did it anyway. (Repetition intentional.)

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23 March 2021: The Cuomo Impeachment Trial Gets Started, CNN Tanks, Cuomo and Allies Keep Busy

Is it us, or is the news media treating Governor Cuomo's impeachment investigation like a sporting event?

Speaking of the news media, how are CNN's ratings for its news broadcasts these days?

Just over five weeks ago, on 12 February 2021, the Cuomo administration acknowledged it had covered up the extend of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents. After that, certain media outlets, including CNN, began being called out for having been effectively complicit in Governor Cuomo's coverup.

Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo's scandals are changing how he does his job:

But his political allies are acting to help keep him in power:

Forget it Jake. It's Cuomoland.

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Monday, March 22, 2021

22 March 2021: Cuomo Says "I'm not going anywhere, darling!", Media Minutes, and a Legal Loophole

There's a whole lot of denial going on in the first two articles featured in the evening scandal roundup from Cuomoland:

White House spokeperson Psaki is referring to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf's COVID nursing homes policies, which were managed by state health director Rachel Levine. See our entry for 16 March 2021 to judge for yourself how similar Wolf's and Cuomo's COVID nursing home policies were.

Meanwhile, there is now even more evidence of Governor Cuomo's low opinion of his staffers:

He wanted to know who in the media, other than CNN, was on Team Cuomo.

The next article suggests that Governor Cuomo is currently being protected from investigation by New York State Attorney General Letitia James by a legal loophole involving the State Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli.

DiNapoli is a member of Team Cuomo, so it's really a question of his personal integrity that will decide if Governor Cuomo can evade a criminal investigation related to his nursing home scandals under state law. If Napoli is okay with all those deaths, then Governor Cuomo's boast that he's "not going anywhere, darling" carries weight.

See our entries for 17 May 2020 and 22 February 2021 for more discussion of the most serious criminal charges Governor Cuomo might face under state and federal law.

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22 March 2021: Opinion - Cuomo No Victim of Cancel Culture

Cuomo no victim of cancel culture

The Albany Times-Union's Chris Churchill has a bit of fun in debunking Governor Cuomo's claim he's a victim of cancel culture. Here's how the column begins:

Earlier this month, I wrote about the controversies surrounding Dr. Seuss and the notion that the iconic author from western Massachusetts might be the latest victim of "cancel culture."

Shortly after, Andrew Cuomo, the embattled governor of New York, suggested that he is a cancel culture victim.

"People know the difference between playing politics, bowing to cancel culture and the truth," the governor said March 12, speaking about the politicians who had called for his resignation. "People know the difference between playing to politics, bowing to cancel culture and the truth."

(Yes, he repeated the sentence twice.)

Now, here's how the column ends:

It is worth noting that Cuomo himself has often called on other politicians, including former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, to resign before the claims against them were investigated. Hypocrisy! But self-awareness is not always the governor's strong suit, as evidenced by something else he said at that March 12 press conference.

"I am not part of the political club," said the Emmy-winning three-term governor who is the son of a three-term governor, was once married to a Kennedy and is currently chair of the National Governors Association.

With that, Cuomo may have been channeling Groucho Marx, who famously said he wouldn't want to be in a club that would have him for a member.

Yes, Woody Allen said something similar. But hasn't he been canceled?

In between, there are some very astute observations and comparisons, which are well worth reading. All in all, there are good reasons why Chris Churchill has earned his newspaper column!

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22 March 2021: Cuomo Accused of "Classic Intimidation of Witnesses 101"

Exclusive: Debra Katz, Attorney For Cuomo Accuser Charlotte Bennett, Accuses Governor Of 'Intimidation Of Witnesses'

The latest Cuomo scandal involves the alleged intimidation of witnesses involved in the investigation of the alleged sexual harassment by the Governor.

The attorney for one of the women accusing Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment said Monday it's inappropriate for the governor's office to conduct a parallel investigation and provide counsel to supervise interviews with staff.

Debra Katz, who represents Charlotte Bennett, sent a letter to Attorney General Letitia James Monday morning and spoke exclusively with CBS2's political reporter Marcia Kramer.

"What the governor is doing is classic intimidation of witnesses 101," Katz said. "Trying to know what witnesses are telling investigators after their interviews or asking to come along is clearly designed to chill people's willingness to speak to investigators."

While this particular story falls outside our main area of focus, the accusation raises a red flag that should be looked at with respect to how the investigations into the Governor's nursing home scandals are being conducted. It sounds like the practice could be another "standard operating procedure" for the Cuomo administration.

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22 March 2021: Cuomo vs Inslee COVID Nursing Home Policies

Key differences between how Washington and New York handled nursing homes

In this well done video report, Brandi Kruse of Seattle Fox affiliate KCPQ describes how the state of Washington's Governor Jay Inslee's policies aimed at getting nursing homes to take in COVID patients from hospitals were different than New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's policies.

See our previous entry from 13 March 2021 for our coverage of the story that broke the news of Governor Inslee's "cash for housing previously hospitalized COVID patients" scheme. We think it's not in quite the same league as what happened in Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, yet it certainly qualifies as a policy that would reasonably be expected to increase the risk of exposure to and deaths from COVID within nursing homes.

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22 March 2021: Cuomo Accused of "Classic Intimidation of Witnesses 101"

Hamilton students hold rally supporting alum, calling for Cuomo's impeachment

This article covers a rally held by students at Hamilton College in Utica, NY, who are calling for Governor Cuomo to be impeached. The school is the alma mater of Charlotte Bennett, one of the nine women who have accused Governor Cuomo of sexually harassing them.

Students at Hamilton College are holding a rally 4 p.m. today to support alum Charlotte Bennett and call for Gov. Andrew Cuomo's impeachment.

Bennett, who graduated from Hamilton College in 2017 and worked as an aide in the Cuomo Administration until November 2020, was the second of seven women alleging sexual harassment by the governor.

"I think that it was heavy news to hear someone you know and … someone that you look up to has been hurt," said Nicole Eisenberg, a 22-year-old senior at Hamilton. "I think a lot of students at Hamilton College really took this to heart.

Here's where Charlotte Bennett's allegation have appeared in the timeline:

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22 March 2021: Remembering 12 Days that Will Live in Infamy

This week marks the first anniversary of one of the most tragic events in American history, when Governor Cuomo and members of his administration drafted and implemented policies that ensured the death toll from COVID-19 in New York's nursing homes would not be small. If this is your first time visiting the timeline, here are the key events that took place over 12 days from 21 March 2020 through 2 April 2020:

Each one of these events has produced rippling consequences that we've endeavored to capture in the ongoing timeline of Governor Cuomo's nursing home scandals. You can investigate the twists and turns in the scandals by searching for topics of interest or navigating the chronological daily archive.

Alternatively, you could also scroll to the bottom of the site and click "Older Posts" until you have reached back to the beginning, where you can read through the timeline content in reverse chronological order. At this writing, it only takes six clicks to get the whole story!

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22 March 2021: Scandal News Roundup from Cuomoland

Today's morning roundup features the following: A single sexual harassment allegations pushing a NY pol other than NY Governor Cuomo out of politics. A profile of Charles Lavine, who will run the NY assembly's impeachment probe that has been described as a "sham". A story of potential Cuomo retaliation against his political opponents by denying a large state county its own state-run COVID vaccination site. An op-ed describing how scandal plagued politicians like Governor Andrew Cuomo seek to exploit "Black support" to stay in power.

What other news will will the workday bring?

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

21 March 2021: A Memorial for COVID Nursing Home Victims in Brooklyn

Families of Nursing Home COVID-19 Victims Honor Loved Ones, Demand Accountability

The families of victims from COVID nursing home fatalities gathered in Brooklyn for a memorial:

On Sunday, a street in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood was filled with photos of seniors who passed away. The wall of remembrance put faces and names to the number of victims that is estimated to be in the thousands. They died away from their sons, daughters, grandchildren and other relatives, who could not visit them in their final moments due to the COVID-19 lock down.

The next excerpt features a description of one of the victims, who doesn't fit the mold of who you might think lived in New York's nursing homes:

"You don't go there to die. You go there to live and my mother is a perfect example of that. She was more active in her assisted-living facility than she had been in three years," said Donna Johnson, who lost her mother.

The organizers of the memorial identify the motive behind the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive:

Peter and Daniel Arbeeny lost their father and other relatives. They organized the tribute.

"We do not blame the 15,000 on the nursing home staff who left their family to save our families," said Daniel Arbeeny.

Many of the families blame Governor Andrew Cuomo. Last year, in an effort to free up hospital beds, Cuomo signed an executive order which sent thousands of recovering COVID-19 patients to nursing homes. The relatives say this was fatal mistake.

"It was like our our governor said even though he did this, throwing fire in a dry brush. We lost thousands of our loved ones. I lost four family members in one week," said Peter Arbeeny.

The New York Post also covered the event, providing additional reactions from the families of other victims of Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandal.

Ron Kim blasts Andrew Cuomo at memorial for COVID nursing home victims

New York Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) also spoke at the memorial. This report presents his comments.

Addressing dozens of mourners who came out to the emotional event on Henry Street in Cobble Hill, Kim (D-Queens) recalled a phone call he received from Cuomo allegedly threatening that his political future would be "destroyed" unless he shilled for the administration’s accounting of the death toll.

"When I got that call from Gov. Cuomo threatening me and my career, my livelihood, to lie for him, I wasn't scared of his bully tactics," Kim said. "But I was afraid that he would escape accountability.

"This is about decency," continued Kim. "And a decent man uplifts those who are not in power.... That's what this is about: This is about decent human beings coming together, taking on the most powerful politician in the state of New York."...

"Together, decency will win," said Kim, whose uncle, US Army veteran Son Kim, was among the 15,540 residents of nursing homes or adult-care facilities to die of a confirmed or suspected case of coronavirus through March 19. "Together, we will get to the truth.

"And that's why I know, I know that this governor will be held accountable," he continued. "That I know that his reign of abusive power will end soon. Because there are way too many decent people in the city of New York to let this guy go unchecked."

Does Governor Cuomo truly believe he's a decent man?

Here is video coverage of Kim's comments at the memorial:

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21 March 2021: Dueling Op-Eds - Why Cuomo Won't Resign; Why Cuomo's Impeachment Is Overdue

We have dueling commentaries! One on why Governor Cuomo shouldn't resign and another on why he should be impeached....

Analysis: Cuomo hasn't resigned because he still has support from Democratic voters

CNN continues its cheerleader coverage using polling of Democratic Party voters to justify why Governor Cuomo shouldn't resign, despite bipartisan calls by elected officials for his resignation and/or his impeachment from office.

The Push to Impeach Andrew Cuomo Is Overdue

This commentary by the Colgate-Maroon News' Nathan Biller both raises questions:

... one of the most important questions to take away from this situation is not simply if Cuomo's governorship will survive these allegations, nor even if it should. Rather, we should be asking ourselves: Why are we only talking about impeachment now? Why not after his disastrous management of the Covid-19 pandemic within his state, where the virus claimed nearly 50,000 lives — a narrow second only to California, who has double the New York state population? Why not after New York's pandemic spread and crippled the American northeast, immediately after he blocked attempts at interstate travel restrictions through threats of lawsuit? Why not after 15,430 LTC facility residents died following his absurd policy of forcing nursing homes to take in Covid-19 patients, a policy he then blatantly lied was forced upon him by the CDC? And worst of all, why not after it was revealed his administration covered up the true figures on nursing home deaths by almost half specifically as a means to ward off federal investigators, an abhorrent abuse of power for which Cuomo's administration is now the subject of a new federal probe?

And doesn't pull punches:

The reason impeachment has only now been seriously discussed is quite simple: because the establishment Democrats and their allies were personally invested in portraying Cuomo as a hero of the pandemic and did not allow his atrocious failures to detract from the criticism they levied against now-former President Donald Trump. They couldn't afford for the pandemic to simply be a government failure going into the 2020 election cycle; it needed to be a Trump failure. Why else, as his administration initially came under fire during the pandemic, was he being regularly brought onto his brother Chris Cuomo's CNN Prime Time slot and a plethora of late-night talk shows for unabashed self-love fests? Why else would the celebrity world grant him an Emmy in a hollow salute to his "masterful" leadership during the pandemic? Why is it that he was under consideration for the next United States attorney general? To make Donald Trump the villain of America's story, the leftist establishment needed a hero. And Andrew Cuomo blundered right into that role.

Cuomo himself was principally concerned with preserving this image built for him and capitalizing off of it as much as possible. As constituents died the governor lied through his teeth about the severity and cause, this man had the audacity to use the pandemic as a means to make seven-figure book sales, crash the Emmys and stand on his brother’s soapbox to tell the world "I put my head on the pillow at night saying I saved lives."

Andrew Cuomo has proven that the only thing exceeding his sheer incompetence as a leader is his sociopathic sense of apathy towards his own constituents. Although this national realization may be overdue, if it takes mounting allegations to finally crack Cuomo's invincible public image and hold him accountable, New York will be better off for it.

Biller identifies a lot of different aspects of Governor Cuomo's scandals, many of which we've documented in the timeline. To find out more about them, take the "Search This Blog" feature on this site for a test drive!

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21 March 2021: A Profile of Elise Stefanik

Stefanik vs. Cuomo: While governor faces scandals, north country congresswoman leads public drive against him

This article presents a profile of U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who has provided strong, consistent leadership against Governor Cuomo's deadly COVID policies in New York. That's especially true for the Cuomo administration's nursing home scandals, where she has kept pressure on Team Cuomo from the beginning of the pandemic and where we think history vindicates her efforts. This article describes how she worked to keep attention on the Governor's deadly scandal as the mainstream news media instead sought to advance its "Cuomo the Hero" narrative:

The north country congresswoman, a staunch Republican born and raised in Albany, has blasted the governor, a scion of an old-school New York Democratic political dynasty, on every platform she's able to access. Fox News, The New York Post, Twitter, Facebook, everywhere you turn, Rep. Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, can be found calling Gov. Cuomo "the worst governor in America."...

Rep. Stefanik has consistently criticized Gov. Cuomo on the state's handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic as well. Since March of last year, she has repeatedly said the governor's directive that state nursing homes take in COVID-positive senior patients, and not test patients before admitting them, was misguided and wrong.

The article provides a longer discussion of Stefanik's role in opposing Cuomo administration policies, beyond its COVID nursing home policies. Should Governor Cuomo be forced from office, whether through resignation or impeachment, her role in contributing that outcome by putting irresistible pressure on those who would otherwise seek to keep Cuomo in power should not be underappreciated.

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21 March 2021: Opinion - No Justice for Michigan's COVID Nursing Home Victims

Jacques: In Michigan, no justice for nursing home victims

The Detroit News' Ingrid Jacques faults the state's Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, for refusing to investigate Michigan's COVID nursing home deaths in this opinion piece.

Michigan's Democratic attorney general is refusing to look into COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes at the request of a group of Republican state senators.

This is an injustice to thousands of families who have unanswered questions about how their relatives were treated and how they died. More than 5,500 individuals fell victim to COVID in these homes — as far as we know....

More than a third of the state's COVID deaths have taken place in long-term facilities, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's emergency orders dictated how they were to handle the virus. Michigan was one of only five states to instruct elder care centers to take in COVID patients from hospitals, and the state was one of the last to change the misguided policy.

The Health Department refuses to turn over raw data related to these deaths, which has prompted a lawsuit from the Mackinac Center.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer's pandemic policies for nursing homes in Michigan deserve special scrutiny. Here is background for Michigan's COVID nursing home deaths situation:

The entry for 15 March 2021 covers Michigan Attorney General's decision to deny an investigation into the effect of Governor Whitmer's COVID nursing home policies in contributing to the deaths of nursing home residents.

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Saturday, March 20, 2021

20 March 2021: Anti-Cuomo Rallies, CNN's Falling Ratings, and What the Second Wave of COVID in Nursing Homes Says About the First

Anti-Cuomo protesters want Cuomo resignation over nursing home deaths:

Anti-Cuomo rally in New York City, first Cuomo sexual harassment accuser Lindsey Boylan speaks:

Boylan made a very valid point in her comments at the rally:

"When the Governor should have been focused on leading us out of this pandemic, he instead focused on covering up the deaths of 15,000 New Yorkers, and smearing me and my reputation."

In a lot of ways, the sexual harassment allegations are being used by New York Democrats, including Governor Cuomo, to distract attention away from the Cuomo administration's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. The Cuomo administration has only tainted itself in its actions against Boylan.

In other news, the "Cuomo Show" isn't what it used to be:

Just a reminder that Peak Cuomo was reached for CNN's cheerleader-style coverage of Governor Andrew Cuomo on 6 May 2020. It's not often you see a news network choose to shred all its journalistic credibility, which entered its rapid collapse phase on 21 May 2020.

The final article in today's roundup relates to how a handful of New York nursing homes never got their act together in preventing the spread of COVID in their facilities. A failure that carried a price when the second wave of COVID came in the fall and winter of 2020:

The report points to the role of nursing home workers as superspreaders within the most affected facilities. By contrast, most other facilities saw much fewer infections, including those that experienced severe outbreaks and deaths during the first wave of COVID infections in New York.

The difference between the earlier and later waves in these other nursing homes may be attributable to the Cuomo administration's 25 March 2020 directive and other policies that limited the nursing homes ability to obtain PPE during the first, deadlier wave. The 25 March 2020 directive would have contributed to the initial exposure of nursing home workers to COVID while it was in effect, while the lack of sufficient PPE supplies would contribute to its rapid spread within the facilities during that period.

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20 March 2021: Team Cuomo Communicates from Inside Proverbial Bunker

Sources: Cuomo digs in to fight harassment accusations; staff deflated, exhausted

This article describes the bunker mentality that has developed within Team Cuomo:

"They are still dug in," one source said. "In his mind they are not cases of sexual harassment. That's what's going on in his mind."

The source is among four former Cuomo executive chamber staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to speak about private conversations in the chamber. Cuomo has been accused by six women — three of them former Cuomo staffers — of unwanted sexual advances....

Inside the executive chamber, one source described Cuomo's closest staff as exhausted and deflated. Other sources have described a "toxic" work culture, particularly for young women, of oppressive work hours and demands followed by "being read the riot act" for mistakes.

The article goes into considerable detail about how staffers view the sexual harassment allegations and their work environemnt.

But it's very telling that not a word of the administation's COVID nursing home deaths scandal was spoken by any of the Cuomo administration staffers in their interviews for the article. We think it likely their silence reflects the understanding that the careers of many members of Team Cuomo would effectively end if they truthfully acknowledged their roles in the implementation and enforcement of those policies.

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20 March 2021: Cuomo Running Political Campaign to Retain Power

Cuomo Adopts Campaign Tactics to Cling to Job as Probe Proceeds

Governor Cuomo's scandals are changing how he does his job. This report indicates he is, for all practical purposes, running the equivalent of a primary re-election campaign.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is approaching the fight to save his job like it's another run for office, borrowing tactics typically used on the campaign trail to discourage the state legislature from removing him.

As part of that campaign, he's making deals to reward his strongest supports for their continued loyalty, where as the incumbent, he can use the powers of office that others cannot:

Cuomo faces multiple accusations of sexual misconduct and is under fire for under-counting the number of coronavirus deaths at nursing homes. But over the last two weeks, Cuomo has made broad promises on popular proposals like marijuana legalization and taxing the rich, cashed in long-held political favors with friends of his father, the former Governor Mario Cuomo, appealed to his party's most loyal constituencies, and announced reopenings of businesses, sports and concert venues as Covid-19 death and hospitalization rates drop.

That kind of "quid pro Cuomo" policymaking is inherently corrupt. It is why the story of his COVID vaccine czar acting to assess the loyalty and support of county level Democratic Party politicians raises such a red flag, as it communicates that those who don't go along will move back to the end of line for having the needs of their contituents met. Allegations of that particular abuse of power have already been levied by county level officials on Cuomo's "wrong side".

The solidly-reported article also describes specific examples of Cuomo's power retention campaign.

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Friday, March 19, 2021

19 March 2021: Standard Operating Procedure for Team Cuomo

NY officials covered up more than just nursing-home deaths

We joked in our roundup of Cuomoland scandal news on 18 March 2021 that all the scandals were changing how Governor Cuomo does his job, "except for coverups, which which would appear to be a standard operating practice."

If you go by this op-ed by nonpartisan Empire Center for Public Policy's CEO Tim Hoefer, we were almost perfectly on target with that description. Here's an excerpt:

Gov. Cuomo's coverup of nursing-home deaths revealed the stunning lengths to which he and his staff go to keep damning information from the public. But few New Yorkers may realize that such behavior is actually standard operating procedure throughout much of New York government.

Hoeffer goes on to recount the Empire Center's role in suing various government transportation agencies in New York for information that ultimately led to criminal charges and convictions on the part of government officials. The officials who refused to comply with lawful requests for public data were covering up their misdeeds.

That brings us back to Team Cuomo's stonewalling in releasing public data for COVID nursing home deaths.

But the worst, and now most famous, New York government data coverup came when Cuomo's Department of Health asked New Yorkers to rely on its own "reporting" on COVID nursing-home deaths. We (and others) asked for the full data, including those who died after being sent to hospitals, but Team Cuomo stonewalled — never mind that the numbers were critical to learn how best to deal with the virus.

Not until Attorney General Letitia James revealed in January that DOH may have understated those deaths by nearly 50 percent did a court rule on the Empire Center’s lawsuit and order the full numbers released, forcing Cuomo & Co. finally to come clean. Yet even this week, as our Bill Hammond reports, the governor's office is again delaying, for a third time, release of the records of its vaccine-review panel.

We'll know soon if the administration’s nursing-home shenanigans warrant criminal charges, pending the outcome of various investigations. But it's already clear Team Cuomo works hard to keep the public in the dark, despite the governor's pledge to run the most transparent administration in history. It's equally clear that the public suffers greatly as a result.

Team Cuomo doesn't own that information; it belongs to the public. If that information held positive news for the Cuomo administration, why wouldn't they put it out on demand?

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19 March 2021: FBI Is Investigating If Team Cuomo Falsely Reported Cuomo Nursing Home Deaths

F.B.I. Investigating Whether Cuomo Aides Gave False Data on Nursing Homes

The New York Times does it again with not exactly groundbreaking news. As in more than a month old news:

A federal investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic has focused in recent weeks on whether the governor and his senior aides provided false data on resident deaths to the Justice Department, according to four people with knowledge of the investigation.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have contacted lawyers for Mr. Cuomo’s aides, interviewed senior officials from the state Health Department and subpoenaed Mr. Cuomo’s office for documents related to the disclosure of data last year, the people said.

The interviews have included questions about information New York State submitted last year to the Justice Department, which had asked the state for data on Covid-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes, according to the people. False statements in such a submission could constitute a crime.

Considering the Biden-Harris Department of Justice wasn't investigating Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandal until after Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa acknowledged the Cuomo administration had falsely reported and withheld data on the full extent of COVID nursing home deaths in New York's nursing homes, which is what forced them to begin their investigation in the first place, it's nice to have the New York Times confirm the FBI is indeed investigating the matter that forced them to start their investigation.

For background, here's where the Biden-Harris DOJ investigation appears in the timeline:

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19 March 2021: Michigan Governor Whitmer Sued for Hiding Public COVID Nursing Home Death Data

Did Michigan cover up nursing home COVID deaths like New York?

This op-ed by Mackinac Center for Public Policy analyst Steve Delie and Pulizter-Prize winning journalist Charlie LeDuff examines whether Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has covered up any aspect of COVID-19 nursing home deaths in Michigan. The question arises because Governor Whitmer has declined to provide the public data they've sought in connection with COVID-related nursing home resident deaths.

They describe the fundamental problem in their efforts to obtain that data that is unique to Michigan:

Michigan is one of only two states where the governor is exempt from Freedom of Information laws, and the only state where that exemption is written into statute. Thanks to this exemption, the governor has no obligation to produce any records whatsoever, despite making decisions affecting the lives of every Michigander.

Gov. Whitmer has used this veil of secrecy to act with impunity. Her office has almost single-handedly dictated the state’s COVID-19 policies, without disclosing the data she has used to make her decisions. After the Michigan Supreme Court struck down the statute Gov. Whitmer relied on for her emergency authority, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services became the vessel for COVID decision-making. Yet while that department is subject to FOIA, it has not been any more transparent. The state continues to release information about the number of cases and deaths but not the underlying records.

If we were tasked with determining whether Governor Whitmer's 15 April 2020 directive (Executive Order 2020-50) ordering Michigan nursing homes to admit COVID patients being transferred from hospitals without testing to determine if they were still contagious contributed to the deaths of previously unexposed nursing home residents, we would start by seeking the following information:

  • Date of admission for all patients transfered to nursing homes from hospitals following their treatment for COVID-19.
  • Date of admission to identified individual nursing homes for all deceased patients.
  • Date of death according to death certificates indicating COVID-19 as a cause of death.
  • Dates COVID-19 test samples were collected from all nursing home residents or staff members who tested positive with an active infection.

Again, this information would provide a starting point for a more detailed analysis from which the progression of fatal COVID-19 infections in nursing homes could be generally mapped. All of this data would be part of the underlying public records of all nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 collected by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

We believe neither Governor Whitmer nor the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services have a legitimate reason for witholding this public data from the public. Just as New York Governor Cuomo nor New York Department of Health Director Howard Zucker did in their acknowledged coverup.

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19 March 2021: Roundup of News Featuring Governor Cuomo Seeking Support and Bullying Underlings

Governor Cuomo is seeking support from "Black Democrats" in New York to stay in power, which is the element connecting these following two seemingly unrelated articles:

The second article relates the conflict of interest that as arisen from New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's hiring of a law firm with ties to Governor Cuomo to run its impeachment investigation, which has been accused of being a sham. While not new information, we linked the story because it shows Governor Cuomo rubbing Speaker Heastie's shoulders, as the Speaker is one of the "Black Democrats" from whom Cuomo is now seeking support.

The "ick" factor is high with Lindsay Boylan's description of Governor Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment of her. If you read other contemporary headlines involving some combination of the words "dog" and "mount", it came from the following interview:

On the same vein, did you know Governor Cuomo says mean things to people he sees as underneath him? Junior members of Team Cuomo and other are coming forward to describe the toxic culture promoted by Governor Cuomo within his administration, in which both alleged conduct and reporting are on par with elementary schoolyard bullying and tattling:

The New York Times really hasn't distinguished itself with its chosen narrative coverage of the Cuomo administration's scandals.

Speaking of which, the scandals are changing both the way Governor Cuomo does his job and New Yorkers' satisfaction with his job performance:

On that first story, it's more than a little scary Governor Cuomo is using the official he put in charge of New York's COVID vaccination effort to deliver such political messages to county and local government officials. Is he the vaccine equivalent of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi?

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