‘New York’s Mayor Is Turning City Into ‘Havana On The Hudson’: David Asman’ – COMRADE DE BLASIO EXECUTES HIS GOAL; NYC’S DECIMATION! (EMBEDDED VIDEOS)
FOX/BUSINESS | By David Asman | September 8, 2020
New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio gave New Yorkers another gut punch last week by announcing that restaurants will not be allowed to open inside dining until next June, despite the city having met its goal of keeping COVID-19 infection rates below 1% for three straight weeks.
The mayor added insult to injury, defining restaurants as a “very optional activity,” a definition that no doubt would be disputed by the industry’s 300,000 local workers and their families, half of whom are out of work.
As Mayor de Blasio keeps moving the goalposts of what is “acceptable risk” for safely opening the economy, businesses keep wondering whether he really understands the nature of business at all.
His youthful pilgrimages to revolutionary Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba (where he went on his honeymoon), not to mention his penchant for quoting Che Guevara and Karl Marx, seem to better inform his views of capitalism than actually getting to know the businesses his policies are destroying.
At least moving companies are doing well. But even they are worried about business drying up because the moves are all in just one direction: out of town.
Mayor de Blasio is in denial about the exodus, saying “I can’t give you the exact number, but it’s a small number of people” fleeing the city.
What’s clear is that he’s lost touch not merely with the current mood of New Yorkers, but with the exciting essence of a capitalist New York, which has been a beacon for the best and the brightest around the world.
In fact, outsiders often show a better understanding of New York’s appeal than our anti-competitive mayor.
There’s a revealing moment in the 1999 Wim Wenders documentary “Buena Vista Social Club” in which a troupe of aging Cuban musicians, brought to New York to play at Carnegie Hall, are walking up 6th Avenue in speechless wonder.
Of course, they are in awe of New York’s affluence, compared to the uniformed poverty of Communist Cuba. But most of all the Cubans are amazed by the sheer volume of activity and movement going on all around them.
“Actividad, actividad, actividad,” repeats the singer Ibrahim Ferrer over and over again.
Today that once-bustling 6th Avenue is dead. Sidewalks are empty. Street-level storefronts are either closed, have “For Rent” signs, or have just a smattering of customers.
New York’s ubiquitous traffic has slowed to a trickle. It’s as though a neutron bomb has hit, destroying most of the population but eerily leaving the buildings intact.
In fact, it’s not all that different from the feeling you get strolling up an avenue in Havana.
To the extent Mayor de Blasio acknowledges New York’s fall, he blames it all on the coronavirus. But the virus merely triggered a problem that’s been building ever since he became mayor six years ago.
