03 January 2014

The DeBlasio/Snowden Affair

Following is an exchange of correspondence with friend Rick Fischbein, who, you will be surprised to learn, swears he did not vote for Mayor DeBlasio:

"Today I listened to our new Mayor give his inaugural address and was so appalled that I re-read his actual words in the "Grey Lady" (a double whammy for me on New Years Day),  just to see if my old ears accurately heard his "class warfare" rant. Alas, I can still hear. 
After reading DeBlasio's call to arms, I immediately used my extremely limited cyber ability and found a single paragraph written by Abe Lincoln. 
Below I have included some of what DeBlasio said today and the one paragraph by Honest Abe. 
DeBlasio:
"So let me be clear. When I said we would take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities, I meant it. And we will do it. I will honor the faith and trust you have placed in me. And we will give life to the hope of so many in our city. We will succeed as One City. We know this won’t be easy; It will require all that we can muster..........
We’ll do it now. We will require big developers to build more affordable housing. We’ll fight to stem the tide of hospital closures. And we’ll expand community health centers into neighborhoods in need, so that New Yorkers see our city not as the exclusive domain of the One Percent, but a place where everyday people can afford to live, work, and raise a family. We won’t wait. We’ll do it now.........
We will ask the very wealthy to pay a little more in taxes so that we can offer full-day universal pre-K and after-school programs for every middle school student. And when we say “a little more,” we can rightly emphasize the “little.”.......
Think about it. A five-year tax on the wealthiest among us – with every dollar dedicated to pre-K and after-school. Asking those at the top to help our kids get on the right path and stay there. That’s our mission. And on that, we will not wait. We will do it now.
Of course, I know that our progressive vision isn’t universally shared. Some on the far right continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics. They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else. They sell their approach as the path of “rugged individualism.”
But Fiorello La Guardia — the man I consider to be the greatest Mayor this city has ever known — put it best. He said: “I, too, admire the ‘rugged individual,’ but no ‘rugged individual’ can survive in the midst of collective starvation.” [Failed to mention we were in the Great Depression when La Guardia made this statement]. 
So please remember: we do not ask more of the wealthy to punish success. We do it to create more success stories........"

Abe Lincoln:


"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves." --Abraham Lincoln 



OK, so you might ask, "what am I prepared to do to stop New York from becoming the first "Soviet Socialist Borough State?" 
An excellent question. 
Normally, I would go on my annual "New Year Resolution 15 day diet"!
Not this year Mr DeBlasio!
This year I am dedicated to gaining as much weight as possible, so that when you, Mr DeBlasio, send out your posse to round up all the "Fat Cats", there will be No Mistaking me! 

P.S. Please don't tell Mimi that I am not dieting!"
--------------------
My response follows:

"Rick:

Not to worry.  Forget about finance, taxes, budgets, all that boring technical stuff. The key to municipal success is confidence. We need to keep our chins up. The new Mayor knows this. So I was not surprised to learn this afternoon (from a highly placed confidential source in the service of a former POTUS (No, my source did not also service the FLOTUS) that the successor to the NYC Director of Communications will be none other than Mr. Edward Snowden.  DeB is now confident Mr. Snowden will soon be able to return to the US without penalty because The New York Times has just this morning opined that he should.  Word is that upon his return,  Mr. Snowden will be given a ticker tape parade.  This report is confirmed by the fact the old Bloomberg Department of Sanitation is saving all New Year's Eve vomit-specked confetti for use on that occasion.

To facilitate the organization and execution of the parade, the Mayor has created a new municipal agency and has appointed as its head Mr. Glenn Greenwald, the British reporter who first published the Snowden leaks of NSA documents. Mr. Greenwald thereafter helped Snowden find a new home under protection of the internationally renowned free speech advocate, Vladimir Putin.  Mr. DeBlasio's new cabinet officer will bear the title "Administrative Head of Leadership Events."  The New York Times editorial board can rest easy: The new AHOLE is already free to enter the United States without penalty.

Chin up and carry on."

A bientot!