It looks like Bill de Blasio has finally had enough of Mario Cuomo’s worst legacy:
Mayor Bill de Blasio, in candid and searing words rarely employed by elected officials of his stature, accused Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday of stymieing New York City’s legislative goals out of personal pettiness, “game-playing” and a desire for “revenge.”
In an extraordinary interview, Mr. de Blasio, appearing to unburden himself of months’ worth of frustrations, said that Mr. Cuomo — who, like the mayor, is a Democrat — “did not act in the interests” of New Yorkers by blocking measures like reforming rent laws and the mayor’s long-term ability to control the city’s public schools.
“I started a year and a half ago with a hope of a very strong partnership,” Mr. de Blasio said of the governor, whom he has known for two decades. “I have been disappointed at every turn.”
You should really give the interview a listen. It’s quite, um, candid.
shell
There’s already a feeling of things starting to slow down. Do you think people are taking off this early for 4th of July weekend?
JPL
Good for de Blasio!
srv
As for candid, Stephen Colbert takes over a Michigan public access show and interviews Eminem. Who does not appear to be in on the joke.
SarahT
It’s about time the Mayor called out NY State’s version of the Outlaw Jersey Whale. Sadly, it’s unlikely to make much of a difference – Guess we’ll have to wit for more indictments from Preet Bharara.
rikyrah
Netflix is putting popular Telenovelas on their streaming list, and you can use the subtitles to understand them!!!!
I started La Reina del Sur yesterday…love it!!
Tommy
@JPL: What you said. Off to listen to the interview. Very interested what he has to say about schools. There is no reason NYC and any city for that matter can’t have good schools.
gelfling545
Of course he’s had enough of Cuomo. Most everyone in NY had had enough around the time of his second inauguration, the problem being the Republican would (probably) have been (somewhat) worse. If Cuomo continues to harbor presidential aspirations – which he is arrogant enough to believe is realistic – he’d better found himself a 3rd party.
Tommy
@rikyrah: Cool. My Spanish is lacking and I’ve tried to watch a few shows on Hulu and frankly can’t follow them. There are a few shows on Netflix, like Rita, that is foreign language and they do a good job with the subtitles. I mean it is 2015. If you can’t subtitle a program you are doing something wrong.
Lavocat
Andy Cuomo is a fucking douchebag. DiBlasio knew this. But DiBlasio figured he was “his” douchebag. He figured wrong. It’s about time DiBlasio went public with this.
bystander
I’d listen to the interview but I’m sure it would harsh my vibe. I hate Andy Baby instinctively, so hearing how he’s sabotaging NYC and Mayor De Blasio wont serve any purpose. I voted for the Fordham law professor at last election.
PS. I also hate his brother. When Andy and Chris show their fraternal jocularity, all I can think of is a nest of vipers.
ruemara
I’m rather enjoying this. If only it cuts Mr. Cuomo out of office with a better Democrats.
Gin & Tonic
Mario’s legacy? “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.”
Apple, tree.
rikyrah
Go Mr. Mayor!!
Tell the truth about this snake.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: NYC has outstanding (public) schools. World-class. It also has some terrible ones. But what other cities have a high school devoted to the performing arts, another devoted to fashion, another for at-risk LGBT kids, two world-class STEM high schools, on and on.
Jay C
@JPL:
Yeah, well maybe good for Big Bill, but I’m not sure this is going to be particularly good for the City. Like him or not (and believe me, I’m one of those New Yorkers utterly underwhelmed by Gov. Andy), the political and economic relationships between New York City and New York State are fairly complex, and a lot of the power balance is tilted, by design, to give the State a great deal of leverage of what the City can or can’t do – or finance, which amounts to the same thing. I’m not sure it’s all that great an idea for a Mayor of New York to publicly dump on the sitting Governor, especially on the nasty personal level – not that Andrew Cuomo doesn’t deserve it, fully – this crap is the sort of thing I think should have better been left unsaid. Or at least said more tactfully.
Epicurus
Hizzoner is not wrong…I voted for Andrew once, a mistake I will never make again. He’s a snake….or a Republican in Democrat’s clothing. Can’t wait to see him go…..
MomSense
@rikyrah:
They are so addictive.
Tommy
@Gin & Tonic: I didn’t mean to seem to put down NYC schools. I just have a fierce love of public schools and want the best of the best for all places. My family could have afforded to send me to private schools. Public schools were always good enough. Public schools!
Steve in the ATL
@rikyrah: I used to love watching “Amigas y Rivales” even though I speak no Spanish
Belafon
@Tommy: If you ever get a DVD that has both subtitles and an English dub, turn them both on. The subtitles for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are different than the English being spoken.
srv
Even the liberal Christian Science Monitor thinks liberals are in denial.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: I didn’t think you were putting them down, I just suspected you might not be fully informed, since you’ve never lived there (AFAIK.)
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Bronx High School of Science is on the short lists for best secondary school in the country and on the planet, public or private.
daveNYC
@Jay C: I’d like to think that de Blasio isn’t doing this just to blow off steam. Chances are he’s figured that Cuomo is going to be actively working against him, so he’s probably better off calling him out so he doesn’t get all the blame for when things don’t get done.
Just Some Fuckhead
I feel faint when Democrats engage in candor. So uncivil!
Tommy
@Gin & Tonic: I do not know much if anything about NYC schools. As you said I don’t live there. No direct experience. I think living somewhere helps. When you live day-to-day you know shit.
KG
@Gin & Tonic: i suspect some of that is the fact that NYC is so large. Orange County, California is less than half the size of NYC (3 million vs 8.5 million), and has some pretty good magnet/STEM schools and a performing arts school. Fashion and LGBTQ aren’t there, yet, that I know of…
rikyrah
@srv:
I am SO not in denial…I love this…..Go Rat on top of head Man.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
Hells yes.
I’m rooting for The Donald to win the GOP nomination.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Am sure we all recall the dreamy days of 2012, when Michele Bachmann was “surging” and Santorum was “surging” and Herman Cane was “surging” and Rih Perry was “surging” and…”Please proceed, governor.”
Rinse with UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH and repeat, that’s a lot of surging.
Culture of Truth
@shell: Not the President!
@POTUS will be answering your questions on health care and the Affordable Care Act at 3:30pm ET. #AskPOTUS
beltane
@trollhattan: Even Newt Gingrich got his surge. Everyone gets a trophy in the Republican Games.
Gin & Tonic
@Culture of Truth: Hope this doesn’t turn into an #AskBobby fail parade.
MDC
@daveNYC:
I’ve seen some speculation that de Blasio could have an inside line on a brewing indictment of Cuomo. As an NYC resident, I can only hope! Another possible motive, suggested by an unnamed Albany politician in a story I read, is that the mayor has figured out that Cuomo is a bully, who only respects people who fight him. Whatever the reason, I’m glad he’s said what we’ve all been thinking.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: SHOCK POLL! SHOCK POLL!
SarahT
@MDC: Your mouth to god’s ear, as my Grandma used to say.
Peale
@rikyrah: As someone who goes through k-drama and j-drama phases and is currently engrossed in a fairly low production value Thai lakorn, I will not argue against the pleasure of global soap binge watching. I think its what was promised to us 20 years ago but not yet delivered – the opportunity to watch any show anywhere in the world if the shows in your own country go stale.
Valdivia
@rikyrah: Enjoy! They can be quite addictive ;)
PurpleGirl
@Peale: I don’t know if they do it but at least through 1970s Norway broadcast shows from the UK and the US intact. They provided subtitles in Norwegian. It was expensive to dub the broadcasts so they figured that broadcasting TV shows in English was one way to help people learn to speak English. According to my penpal, it worked quite well. Young children would learn English in school and have their pronunciation reinforced when watching TV.
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
Please tell me “Hee-Haw” wasn’t in the mix.
Cluttered Mind
@daveNYC: I agree. I live in NYC as well, and am a big fan of the mayor. I think his anger is justified, as is his expression of it. de Blasio is taking heat for things that he had no control over, and that’s by Cuomo’s design. The only thing de Blasio can do about this is to try to educate the people of the city directly about just who is standing between the city and real progress. He’s a good man with good policies who doesn’t deserve to be dragged down by Cuomo’s neoliberal BS.
trollhattan
@Cluttered Mind: From three time zones away, de Blasio seems pretty awesome. National office ambitions ahead?
Patricia Kayden
@trollhattan: By the way, where is the troll that used to haunt BJ with his taunts about Republicans unleashing UNLIMITED CASH during the 2008 election? Now that was a great troll.
gogol's wife
@srv:
Oh, please, God, let Trump be the Republican nominee.
Goblue72
@Cacti: It is also 87% white & Asian in a public school system that is only 29% so. Only 3% of its students are black in a public school system that is 30% so.
So let’s not all pat ourselves on the back because NYC has a handful of magnet schools that are de facto designed at this point to mostly serve middle class white and immigrant Asian parents.
Such is the story in nearly every urban school system with magnet schools (see, for ex, Boston Latin)
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
I’m assuming he’s offline getting a firmware update for a more lifelike comms interface and is perhaps negotiating for a higher per-post rate, maybe a DIME in 2016!
Mike in NC
@Patricia Kayden: 2012, because Mitt was unstoppable!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@srv:
Please, please, please, let me get what I want…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Been a while since MSNBC was all Christie-Bridge all the time, but there seemed to be a lot of hints back then that a full investigation into the Port Authority would not be a good thing for Cuomo.
Honoré De Ballsack
@PurpleGirl: Based on what my European friends have said, *every* European nation showed *plenty* of subtitled American TV in the 1970s and 80s (and, I assume, they still do today.)
gelfling545
@PurpleGirl: I helped a friend get ready for her French teacher qualifying exam using the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the language changed to French on the DVD player. Xander is called Alex which is just not right but we had fun (& popcorn).
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan:
When I lived in France in the mid-80’s, French dubbed “Dukes of Hazzard” was all the rage. Had no idea that Roscoe could speak French….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Holy crap. Why? The worst I’ve seen is dubbed friends, Phoebe has a Victoria Jackson-like baby doll voice, and Joey sounds like your dopiest, dude-bro-est friend trying to imitate a Sopranos character (but not as bad as Chris Christie). In French.
Eric U.
the only problem is that if Trump gets to the top of the Republican field, there will be mass suicides every time the NYwhoreTimes does a puff piece on him.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Cuomo is just the type of Democrat to return the state mansion back to the Republicans.
Elie
@Jay C:
I agree with you, though I am not conversant on the details off NYC. Making this open moves it from disagreements to out and out war. Unless the Mayor has some tricks up his sleeve, he could be putting his city at MORE risk. Maybe he feels that by “outing” the dispute, it makes it harder for Andy to retaliate… makes it more obvious? While Cuomo is powerful, he really can’t afford to piss off New Yorkers by retaliating in ways that harm their best interests… And if you consider the national arena and his ambition, he has to be doubly careful. Dunno. This could get pretty interesting.
Eric U.
@Peale: getting rid of Cuomo via an electoral loss might not be the worst thing in the longer term view.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Dammit
I guess with Lindsey Graham as the designated scare-monger and Trump and Christie being blustery buffoons, the marble headed stoop, loud-mouth-at-the-end-of-the-who-makes-other-barflys-suddenly-remember-their-kid-has-a-violin-recital niche didn’t look like a path to victory.
(Does MSNBC think having Michael Steele on is going to improve their ratings?)
bystander
Cuomo wants to use tax dollars for another giveaway – tax cuts for people sending their kids to private school. Whom does this benefit? The Catholic Church and the Spence/Brearley/Fieldston crowd of multimillionaires. Win/win. And that’s on top of what he wants to give to the misnamed “charter” schools.
I like Big D a lot, but he’d be crucified if he ever ran on a national level. I’m guessing between Bill and his wife, they have friends and acquaintances who could make Obama’s Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers look like friendships with Nancy Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
beltane
@Goblue72: I’ve recently read in the NYT that NYC has one of the most segregated school systems in the country, and that things have gotten much worse over the past decade. The city’s African-American and Latino children attend middle schools that don’t prepare them at all for the rigorous testing required to gain admission to the elite high schools. In other schools, the children are coached and coddled every step of the way. Jim Crow laws are not needed when a test determines all, while some groups are given preferential treatment in test preparation.
It would be interesting to look at statistics from the 1980s and see what the racial statistics for Stuyvesant and Bronx Science were like.
Eric U.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was forgetting the clown car inhabitants, so I searched for them. The GOP site had a convenient page, and King’s name was on the list. So apparently the party isn’t sure who is running either.
SarahT
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: A 2 for 1 sale – great idea !
Yatsuno
@Peale: Cuomo keeps winning because the Republicans keep throwing up idiots like Paladino to run against him. He’s feeling zero pressure from the party because of the make-up of the Senate and there’s zero competition from the Republicans for the guv chair. So yeah, he can do pretty much fuck all until he gets his hands caught in some cookie jar somewhere or actually primaried.
beltane
@Yatsuno: Cuomo is more of a Republican than Pataki.
Missouri Buckeye
@PurpleGirl: I spent some tine in The Netherlands over the last 10 years, and they would show lots of American TV shows and movies with the English soundtrack and Dutch subtitles.
In France, they get dubbed. I loved watching the French dub of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the original movie). Their French Spock was sooooo wrong it was hilarious.
Kay
@bystander:
The expansion of vouchers came after charters in Ohio because charters pulled from (the less expensive) Catholic schools. They admitted it. They would have had to close urban Catholic schools in some areas. We have religious schools that are 70% voucher-subsidized in certain areas. It’s a political coalition, ed reform, as much as it is “policy” and private schools are in that coalition. They get a piece.
You may be surprised though. Vouchers are an (overall) bust in Ohio as far as demand. We were told people would “flee” public schools in droves but they didn’t. They promote the voucher program relentlessly but it never really took off. This year they couldn’t explain how they had vouchers going begging so they blamed public schools for not publicizing the program. The private schools picked up some they had lost to charters as a result of vouchers but it was really breaking even.
Cuomo’s education reforms are identical to Ohio’s. It’s really striking. He’s where we were 15 years ago. I have no idea why he’s doing this because we are now reforming ed reform in Ohio. We are fixing the same policies he’s putting in. Well, trying to. Our leg took a weak, half-assed stab at it, got waylaid by lobbyists and left for summer break without doing anything despite almost daily editorial board pleas to “do something! regulate this!”. We’re not the state to follow. Run in the other direction.
Calliope Jane
@rikyrah: okay, that is awesome. La Usurpadora is on there! Whoo hoo! The novela that got me hooked (it’s cheesy and fun; my mom, who doesn’t speak Spanish, was even sucked in!). I never would have known this. Thank you!!
PJ
@trollhattan: This is the problem for New Yorkers – De Blasio wants to be President, not Mayor. He tends to be tone deaf and seems to not have any understanding of the power structures involved in the city. He makes a lot of pronouncements which sound good on a national stage, but does not follow through with implementing them in any constructive fashion. I think he will have some difficulty getting re-elected (and I voted for him.)
bystander
@Kay: All these “reforms” just sound like new ways to divvy up the take and less like real efforts to improve education.
@PJ: I don’t know what reforms you’re talking about that he hasn’t made some real progress on, most notably pre-K. (We don’t have kids, unless you count Frenchies as permanent 3 year olds, so I don’t pay much attention to education.)
Pedestrian safety, cars out of the park…except for the horse drawn carriages still shi**ing up 59th street, but I don’t blame him for trying.
PJ
I was thinking about Riker’s and police. He’s also as gung-ho for developers as Bloomberg was (not that this is a lobby he would ever publicly oppose.)
SarahT
@bystander: You have Frenchies ? SOOOOOO jealous ! We can’t really afford them due to all the health issues, but we borrow them from our neighbors as often as possible – Frenchies just make life better.
bystander
@SarahT: Actually, only one and that’s plenty. You hit the nail on the head about his vet bills…not to mention the agita around every medical event. We have friends who have two rescues (down from three). Fun to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.