Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Cuomo Wants Our Ventilators and Buffalo is Having None of It
New York State is a microcosm for how elites view America. A tiny little speck of a megacity controls politics, and the overwhelming majority of the area is dismissed as “upstate,” mirroring the “coasts vs. flyover country” view of the nation.
The hospitals in the Buffalo area especially, and throughout the state in general, have been preparing. We have ventilators and are using them. New York City is running out. Despite the state still having a stockpile of ventilators, Cuomo is now ordering the National Guard to take equipment from our hospitals for New York City. Buffalo’s politicians and hospitals are having none of it.
The largest local hospital system issued a statement that they had been following state guidelines, and need this equipment to handle what we have coming. The local county hospital and trauma center said: “Before announcing an executive order, a solution to work collaboratively and request exactly what is needed would have been a more responsible approach.”
We have made the appropriate preparations. We are not going to allow our people to die because of the incompetent preparation of others. Erie County Executive Poloncarz has flat out said that our ventilators are all in use, and aren’t going anywhere. The ants are telling the grasshoppers where to stick it.
Cuomo claims that the equipment is simply being moved to hotspots, and will be returned when we need them. Among the many problems with this statement is the fact that patients have been lingering on ventilators for weeks at a time. When we need them back, are patients going to be removed from them?
This could get very ugly very quickly. Can Cuomo legally order the guard to steal equipment from our local hospitals? Will the Guard obey these orders? When people resist, will force be met with force?
Published in Healthcare
Our demonic governor, who has overseen the destruction of all the Catholic hospitals in my area, has made it clear his desire to use this crisis to take over New York’s hospitals, blaming private health care for not “coordinating” with public hospitals. It’s chilling.
The Buffalo hospitals are non-profits but they are not public institutions. The state has no claim over their property. It will be up to the state commander of the NY National Guard to make a determination if the order is a legal one.
And yet, my guess is when Cuomo runs for a fourth term in 2022, the election map will look the same as in 2018, with Erie County (Buffalo) being one of only six upstate counties to vote for Cuomo, just as in 2018.
He only got more than 52 percent of the vote in one of those Upstate counties (Thompkins, because of Cornell being there), but the map shows the Upstate urban areas vote more like the nine NYC-area counties, yet Cuomo and the other Democrats running things in Albany really are only ever concerned about keeping the nine Downstate counties happy, because he knows that’s where the core of his voting base is. COVID-19 is just an extreme example of that situation (where stealing ventilators from Red counties isn’t as viable, because the population and the larger regional hospitals just aren’t there).
My sis is a nurse in Upstate NY. We don’t generally see eye to eye on politics. But on this topic we agree.
Here is our exchange, they have 30 intubated patients now, with the first case @March 13. The fear upstate is Cuomo seizes the respirators, leaving upstate with nothing while downstate patients linger.
Me: “Right, it’s like your uncle comes and raids your pantry in a famine.”
Sis: “It’s like your uncle comes and takes your food and says he will pay you back in cash if he can’t replace it. But cash don’t mean $h1T.”
She said, “I’m pretty liberal and this is just tooooo much for me!!!”
We went on to wonder if Upstate citizens would ever enact a Respirator Rebellion. And if there were enough guns to stand up to Cuomo.
Commence with discussion of 2nd Ammendment issues in the Peoples Republic of NewYorkistan.
Hurray for Buffalo! Not only do they sing and toast to each other, they stand for their citizens.
I’d say the Fifth Amendment takings clause prevents Cuomu from doing this. Local officials might need to call out a well-regulated militia to enforce this right, though.
Oh, Mr Cuomo says he will pay. But with respirators in short supply, and patients lingering, there will be an overlap. The funds for a seized respirator don’t alleviate the SARS CoV2 pneumonia in those who need them. Nor do the funds change the lingering timeframe.
My sister is right, “Cuomo’s cash don’t mean $h1T.”
Tell that to the sisters of St. Benedict, who had their good hospital taken from them in a series of underhanded and ugly manuevers. They did not choose to merge in 2009 the way this anodyne article from the “Catholic” “newspaper” implies, the state forced the merger with a failing public hospital, until the public hospitals debts sank them both and a new order of vultures emerged to feast on the corpse. The consortium that operates the hospitals has undergone so many mergers and re-acquisitions I can’t keep track. But I’m sure lots of people have gotten filthy rich off the whole stinking pile of corruption.
Seizing them legally takes time. By the time it is all settled the crisis will have passed. Seizing them illegally kicks in the well-regulated militia.
Cuomo is a monument builder, and like some mayors, and some governors, filling potholes is just not enough for him. The one thing Cuomo cannot avoid as he preens for the cameras is that he and his fellow travelers did nothing to prepare for a pandemic crisis. They all had years to prepare for this type of crisis, but spending money on solar panels was far more important. Cuomo, and the rulers of California not only wish to extend their influence over their own states but they expected the rest of the country to subsidize their states when they threatened to sue the Trump administration for tax reform, especially concerning tax deductions for property taxes in states that weren’t taxing their citizens enough in their opinion.
My wife and I lived in Queens for a short time, and we found New York City to be an exciting place, especially for a couple that had lived on the West Coast. The excitement wasn’t enough incentive to raise children there, so we left.
While I can’t speak for the other counties, Erie County itself has a large disconnect between the very blue City of Buffalo, and the red outlying towns and rural areas. But I am guessing you are correcct that those who voted blue along party lines will probably continue to do so.
My wife is an anesthesiologist. She has a lot of lefty friends. With one very loud exception, they are all as incensed about this as your sister.
It is an undeniable fact that “progressives” all across the country are viewing the current pandemic, not as tragedy, but as opportunity. A panicked populace is an easily manipulated one that will gladly surrender its liberties for an illusion of safety. Rahm Emmanuel’s “Never let a crisis go to waste” line is deeply ingrained within their political DNA.
How deep? Very deep. An instance that comes to my mind is the Navy’s seizure of a private all-girls school in downtown Washington in December of 1941.
The Mount Vernon Seminary for Girls was founded on 15 acres of prime real estate on Nebraska Avenue in 1916. (By 1928 it had doubled in size.) Built on one of the higher elevations in the district, it overlooked the construction site of the new Pentagon Building just 7 miles away and the Navy brass first became interested in it in the late 1930’s. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor surveyors from the Navy showed up unannounced to take what it wanted.
The late David Brinkley recounted in his book Washington Goes to War:
The Navy left the property 10-years later but the United States Government did not. The property is now home to the Department of Homeland Security.
Well, the Fifth Amendment takings clause specifies “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”. (There may be some play in the joints as to whether this amounts to “public use”.) Not sure that the Fifth Amendment can stop him, if he’s will pay for them.
Like I said make him take it to court to force the transfer through an eminent domain hearing. And taking something vital to the life of the person who possesses it probably would fail in an eminent domain case. It would be like saying a state official could force you to surrender your life jacket to him while you are bobbing around in the water on the grounds the state can apportion its use better than your use of it.
Don’t you think Cuomo is an “act first, apologize (maybe, but probably never) later” kind of guy?
Cuomo is also a very accomplished bully who has made bullying the hallmark of his political activity. He even implements bullying as official state policy.
Cuomo and the other Democrats running things in New York state are actually rarely in Albany. They are all based in the NYC area, and conduct most of their meetings and activities in NYC. So it’s more than just voting base. [I lived in the Rochester NY area for 19 years until 2018.]
That’s the reason for the well-regulated militia. Possession is 9 points of the law. Call out the militia (in the form of the local constabulary) to prevent getting dispossessed. Make arrests as necessary and use force if required. (You can treat the state’s agents forcing the issue in the hospitals where the ventilators are if push comes to shove.) Throw the issue into the courts for settlement.
I would argue that the definition of “just compensation” becomes very narrow under present circumstances.
Wow. I’m not sure I have ever read about a situation in modern America more likely to spark armed rebellion. Pray for all enforcement officers involved, that they may be granted wisdom and courage.
I’m part of a group that has been fighting for six years to keep a company from putting 600 foot tall wind turbines along the shore of Lake Ontario in a major migratory bird flyway, not 50 miles from Niagara Falls, which is currently running at 55% capacity because of low demand for power. We have been fighting through the Article 9 process, carefully following the law, operating on donations, and everyone except the landowners who have signed leases are on our side (and you should see those leases). So when it looked as though we were going to succeed, Cuomo added an amendment to the state budget called Article 30, which completely invalidates any local laws or regulations and extends semi-automatic approval to industrial wind and solar applications within one year.
Our county budgets are 94-96% state mandates, leaving the local politicians (including my daughter, who ran for town board a few years ago) to explain why the second highest property taxes in the country can’t fix sidewalks and resurface roads.
I would never put myself near the intellectual level of Victor Davis Hanson, but we have one thing in common: we live in a place that we dearly love, that is surrounded and threatened by hideous progressive politics.
Probably.
Probably.
Without guns, doubtful. Besides, I’m not sure citizens would fire on their own military carrying out a humanitarian action. But if the National Guard was there to confiscate weapons and subdue the population? Hmmmm . . .
Cuomo should have issued a general request for all medical facilities to send what they could spare. However, he has to demonstrate what a tough guy he is (a bully), so he will clean the state of all respirators (putting it at risk) to save NYC. This is what happens when one city dominates a state . . .
DeBlasio on Morning Joe:
So, I’m curious where the Pentagon keeps its stockpile of nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists? Is there a big warehouse somewhere?
I’m pretty sure we could find some blow-up nurses. Depending on the target demographic, they might come bundled with respirators.
So a quick internet search reveals that at least as of a few years ago New York City had one of the highest medical doctor to population ratios in the country. Which means there are a lot of doctors in the city of which Mr. deBlasio is mayor. It appears there are at least 30,000 medical doctors in and around NYC. And he thinks he needs the federal government to take 150 from places that have fewer doctors per person? How about he persuade a few more of the tens of thousands of medical doctors in his own city to step up? Many doctors have apparently been idled from their normal work by the government ordered shutdown of the economy. [I mostly relied on a 2014 report by New York Public Interest Group and other advocacy groups, the gist of the report being a complaint that while metropolitan areas like NYC were getting more doctors, doctors were leaving less populated areas of the state.] I presume there are also large numbers of trained nurses and respiratory therapists in and around New York City. deBlasio seems to be just trying to get someone else to do his job (which I suppose is par for the course for a Socialist).
Part of my heart lives in Upstate New York, including the Southern Tier, Buffalo, and Rochester. I will love the people there forever. My prayers are with you! The government, in this case, is evil. If it’s one thing I learned from them is to stand my ground. I think Buffalo will do that.
Not to worry. Oregon is sending NY the 140 we got from the strategic national stockpile. Governor Brown is confident Cuomo will send them back when we need them (projected to be.3-4 weeks). He will, right? Right?
I highly recommend that book, by the way.
Gov. Brown is a dope to do this. How does this serve the people of Oregon? That should be her first priority, right? (Oh right, she believes she can control the climate from Oregon so after that the people of Oregon should be a priority).