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Gateway Pundit News

CNN Gives Gov. Cuomo A Pass On Disastrous NY Nursing Home Policy

CNN Gives Gov. Cuomo A Pass On Disastrous NY Nursing Home Policy

You probably haven’t seen them (c’mon, who watches CNN), but every week, CNN host Chris Cuomo interviews his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. They’re nauseating segments, with the two brothers claiming they make the best spaghetti or asserting that mom loved them most. Bleck.

But one thing Chris never does is get into his brother’s response to the coronavirus, which has been disastrous.

“While many are blaming Cuomo’s policies for the high death toll, one place you won’t hear any questions about it is on CNN, where experts point out the governor is instead lobbed softball questions during playful interviews with his younger brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo,” Fox News reports.

“The governor’s younger brother’s show on CNN has instead been the showcase for playful banter between the siblings. Governor Cuomo has been interviewed on CNN at least 19 times since March 8, with his younger brother conducting nine of them,” Fox says.

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Social media has taken note.

“Chris Cuomo just interviewed his brother, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo on CNN. It was… interesting,” wrote one Twitterer.

    • This resembles an SNL skit, not news
    • Do CNN viewers trust him to cover his bro’s response to crisis objectively?
    • The sibling rivalry tension is PALPABLE
    • This is ridiculous

“CNN’s coverage of Andrew Cuomo has been consistent with much of the media, focus on the glowing verbiage and ignore the catastrophic mishandling of nursing homes that led to thousands of deaths,” Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News.

“This problem is compounded by a serious conflict of interest arising from the relationship between Chris Cuomo, one of CNN’s highest-profile news personalities, and his brother the Governor,” Jacobson added. “Chris Cuomo should not be allowed to cover or comment on air about his brother, and CNN should appoint someone to monitor and review coverage of Andrew Cuomo to prevent this conflict of interest from bleeding over to other news coverage.”

If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can watch the clip below.

Here’s some stuff you won’t hear the brothers talking about.

New York state has the most coronavirus cases in the United States. There have been 27,169 COVID-19 deaths in the state, the fourth most populous in the U.S., with more than 19 million people. But California, the most populous state at nearly 40 million residents, has had just 2,789 deaths. Texas, second-most populous at about 29 million, has had only 1,121 deaths. And Florida, No. 3 on the list at 21 million and home to many elderly residents, comes in between the two, at 1,779 COVID-19 deaths.

In fact, New York has more deaths than the next five hardest-hit states combined, according to Johns Hopkins Center for System Science and Engineering.

New York state has also seen more nursing home deaths from the coronavirus than any other state. Why? The governor enacted a state directive that required nursing homes to take in any and all coronavirus patients, which then swept through the most vulnerable population.

“New York has seen over 5,300 coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes, which is about one-fifth of the nation’s total of nursing home deaths (about 26,000). The Associated Press reports an average of 20 to 25 nursing home deaths per day in the state of New York,” the AP wrote last week.

“Gov. Cuomo recently reversed a March 25 order that forced nursing homes to accept patients who tested positive for coronavirus despite testing deficiencies for both residents and staff,” Fox reports. “Cuomo signed an executive order on May 11 stopping hospitals from sending infected patients back to nursing homes and ramping up testing for staff.”

Maybe the two can cover that topic on the next episode of the Chris & Andrew Happytime Talk Show.



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Holding healthcare hostage? Cuomo demands federal bailout or he’ll ‘have to’ cut hospital funding — RT USA News

Holding healthcare hostage? Cuomo demands federal bailout or he’ll ‘have to’ cut hospital funding — RT USA News

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has demanded that the federal government bail out his state, or he’ll have to slash funding for hospitals, medical staff, and other local services – whose budgets he’s already cut to the bone.

The governor took aim at the Trump administration’s funding priorities during his Covid-19 press conference on Tuesday, waxing dramatic about political “values” as he accused Washington of shafting state governments with emergency coronavirus bailout packages that favored big banks and megacorporations.




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“Why was Washington so quick to fund the corporations and big businesses, but now they have to think about whether they want to fund state governments and local governments?” Cuomo demanded, reminding his audience that local governments in turn fund hospitals, police, schools, and other “essential” services.

If you don’t fund New York state government, you know what that means? That means I have to cut aid to Northwell [Hospitals]. To hospitals. To nurses, to doctors. It means I have to cut aid to local governments that fund police and firefighters. I have to [cut] funding to schools and teachers. 

Cuomo already deferred a raise for tens of thousands of state employees last month, including healthcare workers in the state’s prisons and mental health facilities.

The governor slammed Washington’s failure to shovel more money into the states as “offensive,” insisting it flew in the face of the government messaging depicting frontline workers as “heroes of the day,” and implying Congress owed them – and him – a few billion favors. “We give the federal government about 30 billion dollars more every year!” Cuomo protested.

“I understand the large corporations are the ones that fund the political accounts of these officials, but let them remember that they get elected by the people,” he added, demanding Congress and the White House “show the same consideration for the workers that you show for the corporations.”

That line of attack was more than a little ironic for a politician whose detractors have nicknamed him “Governor One Percent” for his unswerving fealty to his deep-pocketed donors. Cuomo’s devotion is such that in last month’s state budget he chose to saddle New York City with an additional $200 million in Medicaid costs rather than adopt any of a possible 14 tax-the-rich measures that could have helped close a yawning budget gap. Many of those measures had upwards of 90 percent support from voters, but their target – the richest .01 percent of state residents – was effectively off-limits. 




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NY’s Cuomo pleases crowds with ‘Hero Compensation Fund’ for healthcare workers… after 9 years of hospital cuts



The governor’s pandemic-era reinvention as a working-class healthcare hero also ignores his administration’s nine-year track record of deep cuts to the state hospital system. Over his tenure, New York lost some 20,000 hospital beds, consolidating, shuttering, and selling off multiple facilities – leaving the system overstressed even before the pandemic arrived.

The CARES Act passed in March provided funding to states from a $150 billion Coronavirus Relief Fund intended to cover all costs associated with the “public health emergency,” and billions more from other Covid-19 bailout programs have gone directly to hospitals. However, Cuomo is seeking more cash to assist with the economic reopening of his state, which has been largely locked down since it became the epicenter of the US Covid-19 epidemic in mid-March. Trump has largely left the decision to close down and reopen state economies to the governors, aside from social-distancing guidelines that expired at the end of last month.

Perhaps hedging his bets on whether the federal government steps up with the money, Cuomo has called in a trio of billionaires to participate in the state’s economic reopening, tasking former Google exec Eric Schmidt with “rebuilding” the state healthcare system, while former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates gets to remake the school system in his image, and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg runs the state contact-tracing program.

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Governor Cuomo Says “Nobody Should Be Prosecuted” for Sticking Sick Coronavirus Patients into New York Nursing Homes (VIDEO)

Governor Cuomo Says "Nobody Should Be Prosecuted" for Sticking Sick Coronavirus Patients into New York Nursing Homes (VIDEO)

Governor Cuomo launched his defense plan on Sunday. He tried to anway.

New York Governor Cuomo was asked about the tragic number of deaths in New York nursing homes due to the coronavirus.

New York state under Cuomo’s leadership forced nursing homes to take in sick coronavirus patients.  The policy resulted in at least 4,900  coronavirus deaths in New York state nursing homes.

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It took 4,900 deaths before they corrected their coronavirus nursing home policy.

On Sunday Governor Cuomo was asked about the huge number of deaths in New York nursing homes.

Governor Cuomo replied — “nobody should be prosecuted” — for the deaths caused by coronavirus.

Translation:  “Don’t prosecute me because I forced COVID patients into nursing homes.”

Hat Tip Josh



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Cuomo puts brakes on reopening NY, claiming ‘nobody’s been here before’ – Wait, what about Georgia? — RT USA News

Cuomo puts brakes on reopening NY, claiming ‘nobody’s been here before’ – Wait, what about Georgia? — RT USA News

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has warned that his state’s reopening may be long and arduous, saying “nobody has been here before.” But other states have been there before, and Cuomo can look South to Georgia for proof.

Cuomo extended the Empire State’s “NY Pause” order on Thursday, dragging out the economic shutdown until the end of May in certain regions of the state. Concurrently, he extended his stay-at-home order until June 13, effectively granting himself the power to further extend the individual components of the former order at will.

To confused New Yorkers, some of whom worried about facing down a sweltering summer shut away indoors, the governor offered some consolation on Saturday. Televised sports – baseball, horse racing and stock-car racing – will be restarted, albeit in front of empty grandstands. In addition, Cuomo said he is looking at reopening “any economic activity that you can start without crowds.”

READ MORE: New Yorkers confused as Gov. Cuomo extends NY Pause and stay-at-home orders to seemingly contradictory dates

However, Cuomo cautioned that the path to reopening is by no means straight. “This is a new phase, this is an unknown phase,” he told reporters on Saturday. “Nobody can tell you exactly what happens,” he added, claiming that “nobody has been here before.”

“How you act will determine what happens to you,” he added, reminding the public not to get their hopes up about a full relaxation of rules yet.




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Covid-19 is massacring US elderly in nursing homes, neglected for years by a power-hungry industry



Despite Cuomo’s assertion, some states “have been here before.” When Georgia’s pro-Trump governor, Brian Kemp, pushed ahead with a near-full reopening last month, critics described the plan as suicide. Kemp, read one article in The Atlantic, was about to conduct an “experiment in human sacrifice.” Pundits exclaimed that the Republican governor was “going to get people killed.” Even Trump, who has repeatedly called on governors to re-open their states, said that he wasn’t happy with Kemp’s gung-ho plan.

Three weeks later, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are steadily declining in the Peach State. Given Covid-19’s incubation period of between two and 14 days, Kemp’s gambit appears to have paid off. Indeed, the experience in Georgia seems to confirm what researchers in Massachusetts found last month when they studied the lockdown experience in Europe. Analyzing policy in Italy, France, Spain and the UK, the study found that “full lockdown” strategies had “no evident impacts” on the disease’s trajectory.

Cuomo’s refusal to acknowledge Georgia’s success could be seen as political, given that he and Kemp sit on opposing sides of the aisle. It could also demonstrate a more risk-averse temperament. However, Cuomo is more likely wary of emulating a state with vastly different demographics, population density, and climate – not to mention death figures.

New York accounts for just under a quarter (358,000) of the US’ 1.5 million cases of Covid-19, and nearly a third (27,700) of the country’s deaths. Georgia, by contrast, has reported 37,000 cases, and 1,588 deaths. 

Even though New York has twice as many residents as Georgia, it has nearly five times as many cases and almost ten times as many deaths per million people.

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Major Regions of Upstate New York to Start Reopening But Not New York City – Cuomo

Major Regions of Upstate New York to Start Reopening But Not New York City - Cuomo

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Major central and northern areas of New York State will begin the gradual process of reopening from their novel coronavirus lockdown on Friday, but strict precautions will remain in place in the five boroughs of New York City and nearby regions, Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters.

“Phase 1 reopening [in] some regions are manufacturing, construction, following reopening guidelines [involving] social distancing, curbside pickup and personal protective equipment for employees”, Cuomo said during a daily press briefing on Thursday.

Cuomo pointed out that the openings would start to take place on Friday in the regions of central New York State, Mohawk Valley, North Country, Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier. But New York City and its surrounding region have not yet met state standards to permit the reopening process to start in them, Cuomo added.

Phase 1 of Cuomo’s reopening plan gives priority to construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and wholesale businesses. It also relaxes restrictions in the fields of forestry, fishing, and hunting and permits retail stores to operate curbside or internal pickup and drop-off services.

Cuomo also said that at least seventeen US states have reported cases of children with a multisystem inflammatory disorder linked to the new coronavirus. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said about 100 confirmed cases of the disease named Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (PMIS). One child died, he added.

The syndrome is similar to Kawasaki disease that causes heart and kidney failure and mostly affects young children.

In total, New York State has record 336,681 novel coronavirus cases and 27,282 deaths related to the COVID-19 disease, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).



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Cuomo goes all-in on Covid-19 language gymnastics in standoff with Trump — RT USA News

Cuomo goes all-in on Covid-19 language gymnastics in standoff with Trump — RT USA News

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called Covid-19 the “European virus,” to zero pushback from the press that gave President Donald Trump no end of trouble back when he called it a “Chinese virus.”

Outlining a plan to reopen some parts of the state for business – while keeping New York City and its environs under strict lockdown – at a press conference on Monday, Cuomo argued that the virus came to New York from Europe, not China, and even referred to it as the “European virus” multiple times.

At the same press conference, Cuomo argued that the virus came from Europe in January and “no one knew” about it, appearing to blame the federal government and US intelligence for the fact that New York came to account for about a quarter of all US Covid-19 cases and deaths.

“With all the sophistication, with all the public health organizations, with that whole alphabet soup of agencies, nobody knew the virus was coming from Europe,” the governor said.

The theory that New York cases were seeded from Europe and not directly from China – where the virus was first registered in December 2019 – seems to be based on two pre-published studies from early April, which suggested the largest US city may have been visited by infected travelers from northern Italy, a secondary hotspot of the contagion.

While the mainstream media outlets paid no mind to Cuomo’s curious choice of phrasing, conservative commentators and celebrities quickly noticed the stark difference between how the media treated their beloved governor and their treatment of Trump over his use of “Chinese virus,” which was hounded as racist and xenophobic.

It is understandable that CNN has treated Cuomo with far more deference than Trump; his brother Chris hosts an evening opinion show there, and has often interviewed the governor in a very familiar way. CNN’s Cuomo also made a big deal of his own battle with the virus, including the staged ascension from his basement once he recovered – without mentioning he had violated the quarantine by going outside with his family. Other media have likewise given Governor Cuomo the kid-gloves treatment, never challenging any of his policies or justifications for them, however.

Cuomo did not come under criticism even when it emerged last week that his own executive orders mandated nursing homes to accept Covid-19 patients, spreading the contagion among the most vulnerable and leading to some 5,000 or so deaths by the latest count.




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Cuomo roasted for boastful ‘government competence’ tweet as New York nursing home Covid-19 deaths surge



Nor has there been any questioning of his sudden change of heart about reopening, having previously resisted any relaxation of quarantine measures. 

Just two weeks ago, Cuomo argued that the virus was certain death and therefore far worse than economic collapse; that not wearing a mask is literally killing people (while not wearing one himself); that those who wish to reopen just want his mother dead; and that anyone who lost their job due to the shutdown should seek employment in the field the state deemed essential instead.




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Gov. Cuomo Says New York ‘Safe’ to Reopen on May 15 in Parts of State as Coronavirus Cases, Death Toll Drops

Gov. Cuomo Says New York ‘Safe’ to Reopen on May 15 in Parts of State as Coronavirus Cases, Death Toll Drops

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced the light at the end of the coronavirus pandemic tunnel, revealing regions of the Empire State should prepare for reopening after the state-wide pause is set to end on May 15.

“We start a new chapter today in many ways. It’s a new phase,” Cuomo said at a press briefing from Rochester Regional Health. “We are, from my point of view, on the other side of the mountain. Now we can intelligently turn toward reopening.”

As the rate of new COVID-19 cases in New York has declined to the rate of “about where we started this horrific situation,” Cuomo said the state is ready to begin a “safe” and prepared to reopen.

Cuomo said the state has been broken down into 10 regions, each ranked across seven metrics related to the rate of infection and the hospital capacity for their residents. In the most concrete step toward restarting the virus-stricken state, Cuomo said three regions—the Southern Tier, Mohawk Valley, and the Finger Lakes—have met the readiness metrics and proved they have controlled their infection rate and established local hospitals have the capacity and testing to handle any possible virus resurgence.

“Some regions are ready to go today,” Cuomo said, noting that other regions are very close to begin the re-opening process. “This is the next big phase in the historic journey.” 

To date, 26,000 people in New York have died and hundreds of thousands more have been infected by the deadly virus. Though 161 more New Yorkers died overnight, Cuomo said the state is “over the mountain” as the rate of hospitalizations, intubations, and ICU admissions have all dramatically declined.

“When you see the number of lives lost, again, we’re right about where we started before we really went into the heart of this crisis. And that’s what it’s been. It’s been a crisis and a painful one. But we’re coming out of the other side. So in many ways, from my point of view, we’re on the other side of the mountain, right?”

The latest numbers, Cuomo said, gave him the confidence to begin the phased reopening starting this weekend—with limited construction, manufacturing, and curbside retail—is the first move in toward a return to public life in over 10 weeks.

“When we reopen, we’re talking about a phased reopening… the question is moderating that reopening to do it intelligently,” Cuomo said. “This reopening phase is locally driven, regionally driven.”

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that while new hospital admissions and the percent of residents testing positive have decreased, the city of 8.3 million won’t likely see the ease in restrictions until June. 

“I think it is fair to say June is when we’re going to potentially be able to make some real changes if we can continue our progress,” de Blasio said during his daily coronavirus briefing. The mayor said that despite indications that New York City is ahead of the virus, he is worried that lifting restrictions too soon would leave to a “boomerang” effect across the five boroughs.

To avoid a spike in COVID-19 cases, de Blasio said that city officials are focused on three indicators—daily hospitalization rate, ICU admissions, and percentage of new cases—to decide when to reopen non-essential businesses. “We are going to always go by the data,” de Blasio said. “It’s been pretty good and pretty consistent, but it is quite not where we want it to be but definitely trending in the right direction. But we need to see it sustained in a deeper way and right now that takes us into June.”

Under the state reopening plan first revealed last week, the first phase will allow manufacturing and construction operations to begin with strict social-distancing guidelines, staggered shifts, and frequent disinfecting. Some businesses will also be allowed to open for curbside service.

After two weeks, Cuomo said retail, finance, and professional services will be allowed to carefully lift restrictions with mandatory health screenings and safety guidelines. 

The third phase, which would occur after another two weeks, would allow restaurants, hospitals, and other hospitality to have a limited opening, followed by arts and entertainment venues. Cuomo stressed that education and entertainment sectors will be the last to resume because of the high density. 

Cuomo also said Monday there will be a “circuit breaker” in control rooms for each region, which will monitor the number of local infection and hospital rates to avoid any possible resurgence. 

He said that if regions that begin to open see a surge in new virus cases, or a decline in one of the seven metrics, the “circuit breaker” will alert local officials to immediately lock down the region again.

Despite the plan to return New York to a “reimagined” public life, Cuomo admitted he is cautious about the lifting restrictions, noting any could inflict even more damage on the state and economy if the virus resurges. 

“We have a clear uniform set of criteria, the same all across the state, all science-based, all data-based. We’ll look at those data points to see where it’s safe to open,” he said Sunday.

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Cuomo Announces Partnership With Bill Gates To “Revolutionize” NY Schools In Wake of Coronavirus

Cuomo Announces Partnership With Bill Gates To “Revolutionize” NY Schools In Wake of Coronavirus

Cuomo Announces Partnership With Bill Gates To “Revolutionize” NY Schools In Wake of Coronavirus

Cuomo Announces Partnership With Bill Gates To “Revolutionize” NY Schools In Wake of Coronavirus2020-05-08PopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/05/bill-gates-speaking-at-podium-e1588957267996.jpg200px200px

Above: Bill Gates, former Microsoft CEO and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation speaks at the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018. With a jar of human feces on a podium next to him, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has kicked off a “Reinvented Toilet” Expo in China. Gates said Tuesday that the technologies on display at the three-day expo in Beijing represent the most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he will use the COVID-19 virus as an opportunity to “revolutionize” the state’s school system, inviting Bill Gates to implement his controversial ideas about education. 

Taking time off from mismanaging a pandemic and turning lifesaving masks sent from all over the country into an art installation, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared yesterday that he would use the deadly COVID-19 virus as an opportunity to “revolutionize” the state’s school system, inviting Microsoft founder Bill Gates to implement his controversial ideas about education statewide. Cuomo did not divulge many details of what his imagined education revolution would look like but did mention virtual education and remote learning. However, Gates is best known for one thing in education: charter schools.

“Bill Gates is a visionary in many ways and his ideas and thoughts on technology and education he’s spoken about for years but I now think we have a moment in history where we can incorporate and advance those ideas,” Cuomo said. “When does change come to a society?…[when] we get moments in history” he added, “I think this is one of those moments.”

One of only two centibillionaires in history, Gates is the world’s most popular businessman according to polling company YouGov, enjoying a 54 percent positive and only nine percent negative opinion rating. Nevertheless, Cuomo’s announcement was met with consternation by many. “Right-wing Wall Street puppet Cuomo is going to work with billionaire capitalist Bill Gates, one of the richest human beings in history, to privatize public education. “Philanthropy” is a scam. The Gates Foundation’s goal is to privatize everything so billionaires can profit,” wrote journalist Ben Norton. 

Gates is one of the most important driving forces leading the assault on the American public education system through the promotion of charter schools. Charter schools effectively privatize the public school system, where the public continues to foot the bill for the school, but has no influence or say in how it is run. While very popular with both the private sector and the religious right, the large majority of unionized public school teachers oppose them. 

Thus, Cuomo’s attempt to push through what he promises to be a massive overhaul of the state’s entire education network is a perfect example of what writer Naomi Klein called “disaster capitalism.” In her seminal book, “The Shock Doctrine”, Klein describes how regressive forces wait until the collective panic of a disaster to force through legislation that the population would never accept and would fight back against in normal times. 

During Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans school system was privatized in an instant. Before the disaster, the school board ran 123 public schools, afterward, it ran only four. Meanwhile, the number of charter schools quickly rose from seven to 31. Unionized school teachers were all immediately fired, with some rehired at reduced salaries and virtually no benefits. As a result, the racially diverse city has effectively been privatized and remodeled to exclude much of its poor black population. As Klein wrote: 

The auctioning off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision. Within nineteen months, with most of the city’s poor residents still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

While maintaining an affable public facade, behind the scenes Gates appears obsessed with the discredited pseudoscience of eugenics and has made it a priority to reduce the population of Africa especially. He also has funded programs to circumcise millions of men and boys across the developing world. Another of his more questionable ideas is that of tattooing the entire human race with a so-called “microdot” once they have been vaccinated. And, as Whitney Webb cataloged for MintPress, Gates is a close associate of infamous sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, finding a 2001 article noting that Epstein had made his fortune out of his close ties to the Microsoft co-founder. “His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing” Gates said of Epstein in a leaked 2011 email, three years after he was convicted of sex crimes with children. 

Therefore, while Governor Cuomo sees the pandemic as a wonderful opportunity to reorganize New York’s flagging school system, it is far from clear whether the public should embrace his ideas and the supposed generosity of the world’s second-richest man.  

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York surpassed 330,000 today. The state has more confirmed cases than any foreign country in the world. At least 25,436 New Yorkers have died from COVID-19, although local officials accept this is certainly an undercount.

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his Ph.D. in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.



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Cuomo Says Healthcare Workers Who Voluntarily Traveled Across Country to Help Fight New York’s Coronavirus Outbreak Will Have to Pay State Income Tax

Cuomo Says Healthcare Workers Who Voluntarily Traveled Across Country to Help Fight New York's Coronavirus Outbreak Will Have to Pay State Income Tax

Andrew Cuomo

Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that healthcare workers who voluntarily traveled to New York to help with the Coronavirus will have to pay state income taxes.

Recall, Cuomo begged America’s healthcare workers to travel to New York to fight the outbreak at the hardest hit part of the nation.

So THOUSANDS of medical workers left their families and traveled to New York, risking getting the virus in order to help others in need.

Now Cuomo is taking money from the volunteer workers because his state has a $13 billion deficit.

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“We’re not in a position to provide any subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “So there’s a lot of good things I’d like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say I’m gonna spend more money, when I can’t even pay the essential services.”

It gets worse…

According to PIX11, the medical workers may also have to pay New York state taxes on income they may make from their home states that they’re paid while in New York.

“If we don’t get more money from Washington, we can’t fund schools, right, so at the rate we want to fund them. We are in dire financial need,” he said.

More from PIX11:

The issue first came up when the temporary hospital in Central Park was being erected by Samaritan’s Purse.

“Our financial comptroller called me,” said Ken Isaacs, a vice president of the organization, “and he said, ‘Do you know that all of you are going to be liable for New York state income tax?’

“I said, ‘What?’” Isaacs continued. “[The comptroller] said, ‘Yeah, there’s a law. If you work in New York State for more than 14 days, you have to pay state income tax.’”

“I didn’t know that,” Isaacs told PIX11 News.

“What we’re even more concerned about than the money,” Isaacs continued, “is the bureaucracy, and the paperwork, and I think that once that’s unleashed…once you start filing that, you have to do that for like a whole year or something.”

A top New York City certified public accountant explained the situation further in a FaceTime interview with PIX11 News at the time.

Entities from “these other states will have to register in New York,” said Lawrence Spielman, a partner at the accounting firm Spielman, Koenigsberg & Parker, LLP, “and do withholding here in New York.”

Any out-of-state resident who’s come to the Empire State to work on coronavirus relief is subject to the tax after 14 days here.

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Government by billionaires? Cuomo names former Google CEO to join Gates & Bloomberg in drafting post-pandemic ‘reforms’ — RT USA News

Government by billionaires? Cuomo names former Google CEO to join Gates & Bloomberg in drafting post-pandemic ‘reforms’ — RT USA News

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has appointed ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lead a panel on post-pandemic “reform” of health and education systems, despite criticism for taking other billionaires with conflicts of interest on board.

Schmidt will head a ‘Blue Ribbon Commission’ tasked with “reimagining” New York’s existing systems of healthcare and education, Cuomo announced on Wednesday during his daily coronavirus briefing. The decision to place such power in the hands of another unelected billionaire has riled critics already uneasy about the governor’s post-Covid-19 plans.

The panel’s initial priorities will be “tele-health, remote learning and broadband,” Schmidt announced, dropping into Cuomo’s broadcast. The former Google exec still receives a paycheck from parent company Alphabet in an advisory capacity, raising questions of conflict of interest given Google’s leading role in developing a digital contact-tracing platform for Covid-19. While Cuomo confirmed in the same presser that the state is partnering with former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg – another billionaire – in building a human contact-tracing network, any digital component will likely involve the participation of Google. At the same time, the tech giant’s insatiable hunger for health data, as evinced by initiatives like Project Nightingale and Google’s acquisition of Fitbit, is unlikely to sit well with New Yorkers concerned about the company’s privacy record.

Cuomo was previously deluged by criticism after announcing on Tuesday that he would place the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in charge of developing a “blueprint to reimagine education in the new normal,” praising former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates as a “visionary” and calling for state schools to be “revolutionized.” Public schooling groups slammed the billionaire, accusing him of promoting “one failed educational initiative after another, causing huge disaffection in districts throughout the state.” 

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Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt claims he can link tech & defense, but he’s just a civilian dilettante who doesn't get reality of war

The Gates Foundation poured nearly half a billion dollars of its own money into the notorious Common Core program, which while pitched as a way to improve floundering educational performance in mathematics has actually caused the US to drop even lower in international rankings since its nationwide implementation in 2013. After steering over $4 trillion of taxpayer dollars into the government-funded program, the Foundation tacitly admitted failure in 2016, acknowledging in a letter to donors that it had “underestimated the level of resources and support required for our public education systems to be well-equipped to implement [Common Core].”

Cuomo himself has landed in hot water in the past for his efforts to unilaterally refashion New York’s admittedly dilapidated public school system. In 2015, he was accused of “unconstitutional interference in education policy” by New York State Allies for Public Education, which highlighted his “cozy relationships” with charter school advocates and education technology businesses. One of those education technology businesses was Google. In 2014, Schmidt, then the company’s executive chairman, was appointed to a three-person commission to advise on a ‘Smart Schools’ bond issue, setting off alarm bells among consumer advocates who pointed out that Google would directly benefit from system-wide adoption of Google Apps and Chromebook laptops. 

The New York governor’s history with his state’s healthcare system is equally checkered, marked by a long string of budget cuts, hospital consolidations, and layoffs, and his pledge to “revolutionize” the chronically strapped system has already gotten off on a bad foot. On Wednesday, Cuomo announced that out-of-state nurses who had come to New York to help out with the coronavirus epidemic would be required to pay state income tax on whatever compensation they had received, even if they were being paid by companies located in their home state.




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Cuomo’s decision to appoint private equity bigwigs, including Bill Mulrow of Blackstone Group and Steven Cohen of MacAndrews & Forbes, to the economic advisory team charged with reopening New York has also come in for criticism, given that private equity firms often benefit from the same bankruptcies the state’s businesses are hoping to avoid.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Blasts Trump’s Coronavirus Bailout Stalemate, Says It Doom Us All

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Blasts Trump’s Coronavirus Bailout Stalemate, Says It Doom Us All

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Republicans’ refusal to bail out cash-strapped states “will lead to defeat for us all,” in an epic rant on Tuesday against the federal government’s “decades” of mismanagement and crippling partisanship in the face of COVID-19.

“It’s not red or blue, it’s red, white and blue. This coronavirus doesn’t pick Democrats or Republicans. It doesn’t kill Democrats or Republicans, it kills Americans,” Cuomo said during his daily press briefing in New York City, urging the nation to embrace “factual, productive and united” bipartisanship to pass a virus relief stimulus bill necessary to “get this economy back on its feet.”

“The virus is less discriminating and more of an equalizer than the lens through which we’re viewing it,” he added. “And if we can’t get past this now, when can we get past this? You can’t put your politics aside even now, even today?”

Cuomo has repeatedly feuded with Republican leadership over the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. In a Tuesday interview with the New York Post, Trump said he wouldn’t provide federal aid to states that have been hit hard by the coronavirus, including New York, because they’re mostly blue states.

“I think Congress is inclined to do a lot of things but I don’t think they’re inclined to do bailouts. A bailout is different than, you know, reimbursing for the plague,” Trump said. “It’s not fair to the Republicans because all the states that need help—they’re run by Democrats in every case. Florida is doing phenomenal, Texas is doing phenomenal, the Midwest is, you know, fantastic—very little debt.”

Cuomo, who has been asking for federal funding for weeks, said the federal government has the authority to “literally determine how many people live or die.” New York is grappling with a $13.3 billion budget shortfall and is projected to lose another $61 billion over four years as a result of the public health crisis.

Cuomo said New York was resilient enough to bounce back from what he previously called an “economic tsunami” but he said he was more appalled that the federal government was in a stalemate over allocating funds in the next stimulus bill to state and local governments.

“It’s not a blue-state issue. Every state has coronavirus cases. This is not any mismanagement by the states,” Cuomo said. “If anything, the mismanagement has been on behalf of the federal government, and that’s where the mismanagement has gone back decades.” 

Trump’s comments to the Post echoed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who suggested last week that states most affected by the pandemic should consider filing for bankruptcy rather than seeking additional aid from the federal government. McConnell said any additional assistance to state and local governments needed to be “thoroughly evaluated.”

Cuomo, who has repeatedly slammed McConnell for his “absurd” suggestion, said Tuesday that New York had paid $116 billion more than it had received from the federal government annually, money he wished “to get back” if Republicans refused to provide relief funding. New York had given the most money to the federal government, while Kentucky—McConnell’s home state—was among the top three states to receive more than they give, he added. 

“If you starve the states, how do you expect the states to be able to fund this entire reopening plan?” Cuomo said, adding that Democratic lawmakers will not pass another bill that does not provide funding for states. “The president, in my opinion, has to be the responsible one here.”

Aiming directly at Trump, Cuomo said he wouldn’t call financial assistance a “bailout”—which he called a “rhetorical, hyperbolic word”—but considered it lending a hand to states most in need. 

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also slammed Trump on Tuesday, calling the president “a pure hypocrite” for putting politics over the coronavirus response. In his daily briefing, de Blasio said Trump claimed he does not “do bailouts” but provided nearly $58 billion to the airline industry amid the pandemic.

“He says he’s not inclined to do bailouts. He’s a pure hypocrite given how much money he’s put in the hands of the corporations and the wealthy already,” de Blasio said, noting that the pandemic is projected to cost the city $7.4 billion in lost tax revenue next year. “That means he’s not inclined to help firefighters, EMTs, paramedics, police officers, doctors, nurses, health-care workers, teachers, sanitation workers.”

The political squabble comes as New York officials shift their attention to reopening the economy. To date, 25,000 residents have died and 318,953 more have been infected with the coronavirus. Cuomo said that, although 230 people died in the last 24 hours, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths have decreased over the last week. 

The state is past the worst of the pandemic but Cuomo stressed his continued apprehension about lifting shelter-in-place restrictions too early, triggering a second wave of the disease. 

“There’s a cost to staying closed, no doubt. Economic cost, personal cost. There’s also a cost to reopening quickly. Either option has a cost,” Cuomo said. “The faster we reopen, the lower the economic cost, but the higher the human cost because the more lives lost. That, my friends, is the decision we are really making. What is that balance? What is that tradeoff?”

Federal projections now estimate the COVID-19 death toll will increase from 60,000 to 100,000. Cuomo reiterated Tuesday that, despite political and economic pressure to loosen restrictions, New York still has a long way to go between public life to return to a “new normal.”

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