New York Dems have their very own ugly tackle Rahm Emanuel’s notorious dictum “You by no means let a critical disaster go to waste”: They seize on crises to get away with waste.
For proof, look no additional than their outrageous COVID boondoggles.
First up? A damning new audit from the Metropolis Comptroller’s workplace reveals that, beneath then-Mayor Invoice de Blasio, a medical staffing and companies firm received a contract permitting it to take taxpayers to the cleaners because it overstaffed vaccination websites and overcharged for the pictures themselves.
Government Medical Companies charged as a lot as $2,423 for some jabs — and an insane $937 for some COVID checks.
That’s as a result of the town’s $390 million take care of the agency was set as much as encourage exactly this conduct.
That’s greater than poor oversight. It’s a blatant invitation to seize as a lot money as doable earlier than the gravy prepare leaves the station.
Nevertheless it strains up 100% with what was occurring on the state degree.
Similar to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s much-hyped Excelsior Go vaccine-tracking app, a part of his Orwellian social-control measures in response to the pandemic.
Moreover recalling the worst excesses of authoritarian China, the app — which was pointless from the beginning, as most New Yorkers merely used phone-taken snaps of their vax playing cards for proof of vaccination — value taxpayers $64 million over the past two years, far past the Cuomo administration’s preliminary (clearly pretend) estimate of $2.5 million.
The associated fee balloon was pushed partly by hefty payouts to topline consultants, payouts now beneath investigation by the state’s Inspector Basic.
Don’t maintain your breath on Cuomo struggling any repercussions.
That eye-watering price ticket and shady file had been probably why now-Gov. Kathy Hochul was so whisper-quiet about setting a sundown date for it.
Not till July 28, although; gotta squeeze each final penny out of the rubes . . . er, hardworking residents!
And Hochul is aware of from squeezing.
She’s the one who arrange a sweetheart deal for main marketing campaign donor Charlie Tebele, beneath which New York paid $637 million in no-bid contracts for COVID checks from Tebele’s agency — contracts enabled by particular provisions in Hochul’s endlessly prolonged COVID “emergency” order.
Empire Staters ended up paying Tebele greater than twice what different states paid for the very same model of check.
Extra than sufficient to deliver a tear of satisfaction to Rahm’s eyes (he’s a Chicago Democrat, in any case).
However a grave harm to taxpayers and their misplaced belief in New York’s public “servants.”
