In 1975, with New York Metropolis on the monetary brink, President Gerald Ford responded to a determined plea for assist by telling the town in so many phrases to “Drop Useless.”
The well-known headline of the day got here to thoughts after President Biden snubbed Gov. Hochul when she confirmed up on the White Home to demand federal assist for the illegal-immigrant disaster swamping New York.
“Deal With It” is how The Put up summed up the president’s merciless response.
Biden’s habits reeks of the second coming of Ford, and it’s not the one present reminder of earlier laborious instances.
In 1993, Staten Island secession fever reached a peak throughout against the law wave when it felt ignored by Metropolis Corridor.
The motion was later essential within the slender election victory by Republican Rudy Giuliani over incumbent Democrat David Dinkins.
As if on cue, secession fever is constructing there once more.
Staten Island Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis mirrored the spirit after residents denounced Metropolis Corridor’s plan to bus migrants to a shuttered Catholic faculty on the island.
“I believe Staten Island want to have the chance to self-govern,” she mentioned.
Dems’ downward spiral
Mark Twain’s remark that “historical past doesn’t repeat itself, but it surely usually rhymes” suits the second.
With so many issues out of whack on the identical time, Hochul and Mayor Adams must study from the previous and notice their careers and legacies are sinking quick.
To be blunt, New York Metropolis and state are going by such a protracted, painful decline that every new leg down seems like a loss of life rattle.
Up to now, the mayor and the governor appear overwhelmed by the rising crises.
Worse, they usually make issues worse, the migrant mess being Exhibit A.
In equity, Biden’s insurance policies that successfully opened the southern border are the supply of the issue.
He has allowed as many as 6 million illegals into America, most on bogus claims of asylum.
Almost 110,000 newcomers are recognized to be within the 5 boroughs, 60,000 of them dwelling utterly at taxpayers’ expense.
It’s far and away the most important instant drawback, however not the one one.
Crime and taxes, to not point out the hire, meals and utilities, are nonetheless too rattling excessive.
The legalization of marijuana, now being offered and utilized in public areas, is the newest proof that regardless of how dangerous issues are, authorities finds methods to make them worse.
It’s only minor consolation that for a lot of New Yorkers, indicators of the apocalypse spark a sense of déjà vu.
However simply because the town rose from the ashes earlier than doesn’t assure it should once more.
One main distinction this time is that almost all city areas throughout America are in severe decline.
Some have dug themselves into a lot deeper holes than New York and there’s no signal the cavalry is coming to the rescue.
San Francisco seems decided to kill itself and Chicago retains electing mayors who view huge crime and homicide surges as rites of passage for younger folks.
However because the nation’s largest metropolis and the world’s monetary capital, New York stays distinctive and uniquely essential.
The arrogance that Gotham had a deep effectively of expertise and benefits, and was too essential to fail, impressed Giuliani and his successor, Michael Bloomberg, to forge a path out of the crime-and-poverty disaster three many years in the past.
New York led the way in which ahead then, however this time it seems to be following the group.
Right here as elsewhere, the embrace of the damaging “defund the police” motion by some Democratic politicians and soft-on-crime prosecutors are instructing younger people who violence, theft and different types of misconduct are acceptable technique of self-expression.
In his 2021 marketing campaign, Adams courageously fought towards that wing of his occasion, and his election raised hopes that New York would once more emerge stronger and safer from its dance with loss of life.
Whereas he and the NYPD have made significant progress combatting crime, the job is way from completed.
Public dysfunction remains to be widespread and different issues have been allowed to fester, most notably the slow-motion collapse of the general public faculty system. Scholar efficiency — and attendance — are falling off a cliff.
And but Albany and Metropolis Corridor determined this was an excellent time to make it simpler for younger folks to get excessive earlier than class.
E$cape from New York
Regardless of the flight of rich and middle-class New Yorkers to states which are safer and extra wise of their taxes and spending, the exodus has not been addressed within the halls of presidency.
As a substitute, one large motion, along with marijuana all over the place, is congestion pricing, which isn’t about congestion as a lot as it’s bailing out a subway system being riddled to loss of life by fare beaters.
The MTA says the epidemic of dishonest value it $650 million final yr, however as a substitute of persistently imposing the legislation, the pols resort to a punishing tax on those that don’t use the system!
Then got here the migrants.
And so they preserve coming, endlessly.
Hochul, to her credit score, will get one factor proper.
She is refusing Adams’ petulant demand that she power a “proper to shelter” on each metropolis, city and hamlet so a few of the metropolis’s migrants may be shipped across the state, with no native proper to refuse.
The thought of repeating the town’s revolting expertise is of course unpopular and it could be the top of her profession if she agreed.
However to look as if she’s doing one thing, she is upping her criticism of Biden, although principally over his refusal to pay for the mess his insurance policies created.
That she and Adams agree on rushing up work permits for the migrants isn’t any praise to both.
On high of the town’s shelter requirement, permitting migrants to work quickly after arriving could be an invite for tens of 1000’s extra, if not tens of millions, to return to Gotham.
Perhaps that’s the long run.
Everybody else offers up and heads for the exits, and the migrants have the place to themselves.
What a load of bias
The Intercept identifies itself as a information outlet “devoted to holding the highly effective accountable” and declares its journalists “expose corruption and injustice wherever they discover it.”
Unusual, then, that it’s elevating cash with an overt attraction to cease Donald Trump.
An e-mail asks, “Will you make a donation to help The Intercept’s ongoing reporting on the pro-Trump extremists in legislation enforcement companies and the navy undermining our constitutional rights and eroding democracy?”
That’s a tough approach to increase cash, particularly when you could have the identical agenda as The New York Occasions and The Washington Put up.
Reworked UN for diplo hypocrites
Reader Charles Compton calls for that the United Nations observe what it preaches.
He writes: “The UN has been advocating for open borders for many years and has a six-block campus in Turtle Bay. They might reconfigure their buildings to deal with migrants and supply well being care and schooling. In any case, for the reason that world socialist ideology that contributed to this example initially got here from the UN, how can they refuse?”
