Kathy Hochul

And Just Think: Abe Lincoln Wrote The Gettysburg Address All By Himself On The Back Of An Envelope…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Hey, it’s only money!

The New York Times today reveals that New York’s governor Kathy Hochul spent about 2 million dollars to outside consultants for help in preparing her 2022 and 2023 “State of the State” speeches. Apparently no previous governor had done that, or anything close: they relied on their staffs for speech ghostwriting.

The extravagant expenditure cannot be justified, though even as the Times exposes it, the paper tries to rationalize Hochul’s waste of taxpayer funds, emphasizing repeatedly that “the speech is among the most significant a governor delivers each year, laying the groundwork for months of negotiations and browbeating over the executive budget and other priorities.” Sure. It’s a speech. It’s not a contract, and what a governor says in it doesn’t commit her to anything, nor is anyone likely to remember what she said within a week of its delivery (especially the way Hochul talks). To be fair to the Times, Hochul is a Democrat, and the Times sees its job as protecting the party, even as the paper reports on inconvenient facts. When it chooses to….

Paying 2 million bucks for help on two speeches not only indicates unseemly insecurity in an elected official, it demonstrates no respect for budgets, priorities, or the public’s hard-earned tax payments. The consultants who got the job also were recipients of non-bid contracts. (Heck, I would have written one of those speeches for some Red Sox -Yankee tickets!)

The arrogance of our current class of elected leaders is a disfiguring blotch on the face of democracy, one that will only get uglier until voters hold them accountable for displays like Hochul’s.

 

It Really Is True: A Disturbing Number Of Elected Democrats Don’t Understand Or Support The First Amendment

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Do the voters who elect these opponents of democracy understand the implications of what they are doing in states like California, Massachusetts, Washington and, in this case, New York? I hope not. I sincerely hope the voters are just lazy and stupid, not genuinely in favor of curtailing individual rights.

Once again, a judge has had to step in and remind a government that “Congress shall make no law–– abridging the freedom of speech” as applied to the states through the 14th Amendment. New York’s dangerously woke governor Kathy Hochul happily signed into law last December “The Hateful Conduct Law,” entitled “Social media networks; hateful conduct prohibited.” She had personally called for the law, declaring that “[o]nline platforms should be held accountable for allowing hateful and dangerous content to spread on their platforms” because the alleged “lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability of these platforms allows hateful and extremist views to proliferate online.”

It is thought control Democrats and progressives like Hochul want, and prosecuting those who “spread” ideas that their mob calls hateful and dangerous is essential to that goal. The law, N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 394-ccc(1)(a) defines  “hateful conduct” as

“[T]he use of a social media network to vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

Naturally, since the “beauty part” of such a law for aspiring totalitarians is that all-wise, ever-virtuous overseers like Hochul can decide any conduct or expression is “hateful” if they want to silence and punish the speaker. “Vilification, humiliation, or incitement” is undefined, but if whatever it is is directed toward an individual or group based on their “race”, “color”, “religion”, “ethnicity”, “national origin”, “disability”, “sex”, “sexual” orientation”, “gender identity” or “gender expression,” then it’s illegal. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: NY Gov. Kathy Hochul

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“We are fighting for democracy. We’re fighting to bring government back to the people and out of the hands of dictators. Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values.”

—-New York’s unelected, acting-Governor Kathy Horchul, fighting for democracy and against dictatorship by ordering American citizens out of her state because she doesn’t like their political beliefs

Wow. How must it feel to New Yorkers to get rid of a thuggish governor like Andrew Cuomo and have this as his replacement? Well, come to think of it, it probably feels fine, since they continue to vote for unethical hypocrites election cycle after election cycle. Nonetheless, Hochul is special. Democrats have been projecting their own totalitarian ways on their political opponents for many moons now, but seldom has the flagrant absurdity reached this epic level of self-indictment. Does Hochul even know what democracy means? Does her party? “Get out of the state if you won’t do things my way”? Exile for  dissidents?

We saw this before from Democrats—if a GOP mayor or governor ever demanded that her opponents move out, I missed it—back in 2012. Then the mayors of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York City all vowed to ban the fast food chain Chick-Fil-A  from their cities because its CEO Dan Cathy expressed his support for a traditional definition of marriage, meaning that same-sex marriage was not on his list of favorite things. Pundit Ed Morrisey called their grandstanding the beginnings of “the easy slide into fascism.” Ethics Alarms called it “Democratic politicians attempting to use the power of elected office to stifle free speech and impose mandatory thought conformity,” and elaborated in part, Continue reading →

More Weird Tales Of The Great Stupid! “Death Of A Salesperson”?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Watch out! This one is really, really stupid.

Increasingly embarrassing New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation last week officially eliminating the word “salesman” in official parlance and replacing it with “salesperson.” “Jobs have no gender, but unfortunately, many of our state’s laws still use gendered language when discussing professions that are practiced by people of all genders,” state Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-Nassau) said of the bill she sponsored with Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell (D-Manhattan).

No, unfortunately the legislators’ political party is now addicted to Orwellian GoodSpeak measures, as it tries to control thought by restricting language.

The new law also replaces “his” or “her” with “their” in relevant statutes affecting the real estate industry. Other new Big Brother laws in New York ban the official use of  “mentally retarded” and “inmate” in favor of “developmentally disabled” and “incarcerated person.”

Did you know that Donald Trump and Republicans pose an existential  threat to democracy? Continue reading →