Deroy Murdock: Coronavirus crisis -- Cuomo, de Blasio, Johnson bite the hands that heal New York
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Billy Joel might call it a New York state of ingratitude.
As the Empire State and America’s largest city endure COVID-19, their most powerful Democrats ooze a truly revolting lack of appreciation for those who have helped their constituents survive this ongoing microbial attack.
Rather than say “Thank you,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City Council President Corey Johnson bite the hands that heal their state and metropolis.
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“If you don’t have a health care crisis in your community, please come help us in New York, now,” Gov. Cuomo said March 30. Americans heeded his call. On April 2, he announced that some 21,000 health care workers from coast to coast rushed in to aid their countrymen on the Hudson. “These are beautiful, generous people,” Cuomo said, “and New Yorkers will return the favor.”
Cuomo just returned the favor.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“We’re not in a position to provide any subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit,” Cuomo said Tuesday. “We are in dire financial need.” Consequently, out-of-state medical personnel who earned wages back home while volunteering their talents for at least 14 days must pay New York state tax on such income. Albany also expects full compliance with its dense tax paperwork.
That morning, Mayor de Blasio was customarily crass. “Every day, President Trump resembles, more and more, Herbert Hoover, the president who ignored the Great Depression, who didn’t care to put America back on its feet, who has been now remembered in history as someone who failed at the most basic responsibility, which is to protect the people he serves,” de Blasio said.
De Blasio called President Trump “a former New Yorker who seems to enjoy stabbing his home town in the back” and, while demanding a federal bailout of Gotham’s bloated books, de Blasio added: “I’ll give him another chance to show that there’s a beating heart there….”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}De Blasio also used grotesque language April 19 while begging Trump for taxpayer dollars: “Are you going to save New York City or are you telling New York City to drop dead?”
The remarkably self-absorbed de Blasio seems unaware of the Niagara Falls of assistance that Team Trump cascaded into New York City:
- They deployed the Army Corps of Engineers to erect temporary hospitals. In just nine days, the Corps created a 3,000-bed pop-up facility at Manhattan’s Javits Center convention complex. It then fortified this installation with a 48-bed Intensive Care Unit.
- Trump dispatched the 1,000-bed hospital ship USNS Comfort to Manhattan. It arrived on March 30 to offer routine care, so onshore hospitals could focus on COVID-19 patients. But Comfort soon was retrofitted to treat virus victims. Of the 182 patients it welcomed, 70 percent were COVID-19-positive.
- Trump projected 1,000 military personnel into New York City to hammer COVID-19.
- Trump assigned 448 civilian physicians, nurses, and respiratory specialists to NYC’s hospitals.
- Trump devoted $1.3 billion in FEMA funds to support New York.
- Trump gave FEMA 48 hours to provide New York City four large medical stations with 1,000 beds.
- Trump instructed FEMA to supply New York 250 ambulances and 500 emergency medical technicians.
- Trump, as of April 2, had steered 4,400 ventilators to New York.
- As of Monday, FEMA Region 2 (which includes New York) had received 478,535 surgical gowns, 875,890 face shields, 4.3 million surgical masks, 9.2 million surgical gloves, 12.8 million N95 respirators and more.
The reliably partisan and relentlessly embarrassing de Blasio should thank Team Trump for this literal airlift and sealift of emergency support. Instead, he most likely will bash Trump daily, between now and Election Day.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Corey Johnson is Cuomo and de Blasio’s brother in thanklessness. The far-left Democrat who runs the über-liberal City Council attacked a group of non-New Yorkers who came in peace to salve COVID-19’s epicenter.
The Rev. Franklin Graham — son of the late, legendary preacher Billy Graham — runs Samaritan’s Purse. This faith-based non-profit arrived March 28, raised 14 tents in Central Park, and created a 68-bed outdoor field hospital.
The evangelical Christian organization came upon request of Mount Sinai Hospital, just across Fifth Avenue. This fine establishment has treated me, as a loyal and highly satisfied patient of the Mount Sinai Health System. It was founded in 1852 as The Jews Hospital.
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Samaritan’s Purse has provided at least 333 New Yorkers with free care. And, since its personnel have labored in the Empire State for more than a fortnight, they must pay New York state taxes on salaries earned as they mended Gothamites.
Unfortunately for Samaritan Purse’s sake, it embraces traditional marriage, which makes it unfiltered evil to Johnson and other local leftists. So, despite claiming that “NYC should be a city for all of us,” Johnson demands that Samaritan’s Purse fold its tents and get lost.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“It is time for Samaritan’s Purse to leave NYC,” he exploded on May Day, via Twitter. “This group, led by the notoriously bigoted, hate-spewing Franklin Graham, came at a time when our city couldn’t in good conscience turn away any offer of help. That time has passed. Their continued presence here is an affront to our values of inclusion, and is painful for all New Yorkers who care deeply about the LGBTQ community.”
So, a bunch of Christians waded into a disease-filled city chock full of gay people, treated 300+ patients — in cooperation with an historically Jewish hospital — without quizzing them about their sexuality or spirituality. And Johnson tells them to bugger off.
Who’s spewing hate here?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It was OK, Johnson argues, to have these inclusion-affronting homophobes around when New York City needed them. But now that the crisis has abated somewhat, these pain-inducing homophobes should beat it.
Johnson would have been more principled had he blocked Samaritan Purse’s trucks at the Holland Tunnel upon arrival. That stance would have been bold, albeit ugly. But accepting this group’s aid for one month and then telling them to scram is just plain mercenary.
Something is far more vital here than Samaritan Purse’s private-sector beliefs on gay marriage, a matter that the public-sector U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in June 2015. What’s vital is preventing New Yorkers from dropping dead due to COVID-19, as did 108 disproportionately black and Hispanic Gothamites on May Day alone.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This escapes Johnson. Rather than thank these volunteers for serving 333 New Yorkers, some of whom might be gay, the openly gay Johnson bullies these good Samaritans like the bigot that he is.
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If Corey Johnson’s Manhattan residence ever suffers a blaze, will he stop firefighters to confirm their support for gay marriage or will he thank them for showing up and let them douse the damn flames?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Samaritan Purse’s Franklin Graham takes all of this remarkably in stride: “We were there to save lives,” he told Faithwire. “We weren’t there to argue with people.”