Dingus of the week: Kathy Hochul
CEO safety hotline
Lyz, who is writing about herself in the third person, is off this week, because Thursday was her birthday. So the very funny comedian
took over the weekly dingus. Josh is truly one of the most talented funny guys out there and he has a newsletter where you can read his weekly pep talks and find out where he is going to be performing.Thank you all for making my (tense change because talking about yourself in the third person is insane) year one of the best of my life so far. Thank you for reading this newsletter, laughing at dinguses, raging at the world, buying my books, and listening to my podcasts. I’m so grateful for you all.
And now, over to Josh.
When Andrew “Not Perverted, Just Italian” Cuomo resigned the governorship of New York in disgrace back in 2021, Kathy Hochul was ready to take his place atop the state’s executive branch. Now, in 2024 (the year it somehow is for another week and a half), Cuomo is reportedly considering a run for mayor of New York City, because I guess if Trump can do January 6th (on top of… everything else) and get elected president again, why would rampant allegations of sexual harassment keep someone out of Grace Mansion? Sorry! I’m getting off track already. Andrew Cuomo is a dingus, but he’s not the Dingus of the Week. That honor rests with his successor, who narrowly kept her seat as governor in 2022.
On Tuesday, Gov. Hochul was confronted at a mall like a cheating teenage boyfriend over her October announcement that a Georgia-based company would soon be managing the program that allows New Yorkers with disabilities to hire home care workers of their choice, often family members or other aids they already trust. CDPAP (Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, not, as it sounds like, a competitor to the Columbia House and BMG Music Clubs of the 90s) affects 250,000 New Yorkers, and disability advocates have expressed concerns that Hochul’s plan to streamline the payment structure could lead to worse care, corruption, and a lack of government oversight.
I, a stupid person, do not know enough to make a judgment about this decision. But I will say that it has echoes of DOGE, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s outright scam government body designed to funnel public funds to Trump cronies slash federal spending. Currently, Musk is on the verge of causing a government shutdown with a bunch of tweets, which is alarming. The only thing Musk should be able to render ineffective through his prominence on Twitter is … Twitter. Cutting spending for government services is kind of like an age of consent law. It’s an important concept, but the more someone thinks and talks about it, the bigger a red flag it is. Musk narrowly avoided becoming today’s dingus mostly because I don’t want to talk more about him, but also because of another proposal by Gov. Hochul.
In the wake of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the governor has reportedly been considering implementing a special hotline through which CEOs can report safety threats. Now, Thompson’s murder could have spurred a number of thoughtful conversations. Perhaps this violence could have awakened us, nationally, to the need for a more compassionate and accessible healthcare system. There was even a chance that this high-profile killing would make some powerful opponents of gun control reconsider their stance. It could, at a minimum, have forced people at large to consider what kinds of violence are condemned and what broader systemic violence is allowed without question. Instead, Gov. Hochul chose (D), none of the above, and decided to classify CEOs like an endangered species (which does make sense considering those species are basically the 1% of the animal world).
One galling element of this proposal is that if a wealthy person feels unsafe in NYC and in need of assistance, they can already call … well, basically anyone. Their driver. Their private security team. The police (already looking at their phones in the subway, probably). Their rich dad. A CEO is not, statistically, in any heightened danger on the streets of New York. Much like a bear in the wild, there is no real reason for them to be more afraid of us than we are of them, and yet there is no way for us to reason them out of it.
If Hochul really wanted to prioritize safety, she could start by protecting the welfare of those most at risk, like migrants and unhoused people who are under constant threat by Mayor Eric Adams (sponsored by Turkey). And she’d put effectiveness of government programs ahead of “efficiency,” which might involve irritating a few business leaders. While Citizens United made businesses into people, it did not turn people into businesses (with the exception of alleged sex criminal Jay-Z, who is famously not a businessman, but a business, man). There's only one word for a public servant who sides with commerce over compassion: Dingus.
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 | A guest post by
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Thanks to Lyz for letting me write this little guest post this week, and thanks to her readers for being so kind about it!
Off topic but important: Thank you for calling it Twitter. I’m all for annoying and disrespecting the sperm donor who deadnames his daughter.