Bill de Blasio can’t seem to satisfy anyone
“You can no longer hide behind your black wife and children,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said on Saturday. “You are exposed. You are not doing the things you said you would do when you were interviewing for this job.”
Arzt says that progressives have already forgotten all of de Blasio’s gifts and are upset with him over his ill-fated presidential run, in which he challenged liberal icons Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
In the meantime, a growing number of lawmakers on the left, including two of the current three candidates running for mayor, are calling to lop off more than 20 percent of the NYPD’s $6 billion annual budget. Arzt doubts that will happen, since police won’t be able to protect the city’s residents on that allowance.
“It will be difficult to operate a police department where they’re taking off $1 billion,” he said. “I don’t know which programs are going to be affected. Reform won’t happen in the next year and a half.”
Upstate in the governor’s mansion, Andrew Cuomo hasn’t fared much better. He has yet to explain why half of all coronavirus deaths in the United States were in his state. And his order in the early days of the pandemic to shelter coronavirus patients in nursing homes was directly tied to 5,300 deaths among the aged population.
The Jewish community in particular has been upset at Cuomo for not allowing shuls or stores to reopen, despite the steady decrease in coronavirus — this past weekend saw 35 victims in the entire state. A source in Hatzolah of Boro Park said the organization hasn’t transported any coronavirus patients in a month.
Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein said that all arguments to open in stages over a process that could take months no longer made sense. “No partial re-openings! No phases! Just open up NYC!” he tweeted.
Arzt said that he could not recall a time when the city had so many crises piling up at once.
“There have been poor relations between minority communities and the cops that bubble up from time to time,” he said. “Lindsay had them, Beame had them during the 1977 blackout and the looting that took place. But you didn’t have a pandemic. Never did you have so many bad and worse situations simultaneously. It’s very, very tough times right now.”
“But the city,” he assured, “will be back.”
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 814)
