Thank you, Kathy, but thousands of New Yorkers already have and the only encouragement they needed was incessant taxation and never-ending Covid mandates.
On the campaign trail this week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, the D-list replacement for the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, said that her political rivals should go ahead and leave the state since they’re not New York material or something.
In other words, New York is for Democrats. Period. If you believe in limited government and a lower tax burden, you might as well get on a bus and head south because you won’t find those values shared among anyone in power in the Empire State.
It started a couple of days ago when Hochul said her opponent, Rep. Lee Zeldin, should hop a bus with Donald Trump and head to Florida:
Gov. Kathy Hochul sparked controversy Monday night by saying political opponents like Republican gubernatorial nominee Rep. Lee Zeldin ought to ditch New York as she rallied with fellow Democrats ahead of a special election in Congressional District 19 in the Hudson Valley.
“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,” added Hochul, who raised eyebrows last week for a dig against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Manhattan event commemorating the Holocaust.
Basically, just leave her state if you think you have any right to challenge her at the ballot box or in the arena of ideas. That is how some of these politicians think of themselves. They’re in power, they make the decisions, they and they alone know what’s best for the people over which they rule. Elections are simply token events to reinforce that.
The ultimate irony is that in Hochul’s so-called “defense of democracy” she went ahead and trashed democracy by essentially suggesting her political opposition should be expelled for disagreeing with her.
As Tim Hoefer points out writing in the New York Post, Hochul shouldn’t be encouraging people to leave when her state has already lost 1.5 million residents over the past decade:
If you can move beyond the frankly disgusting political partisanship and intolerance, her message is fiscally irresponsible, even dangerous. The governor probably already knows this, but the state’s extensive public sector is heavily reliant on personal income taxes paid by residents, and with nearly $14 billion in projected budget gaps over the next five years, it can’t afford to lose any taxpayers, let alone 5.4 million of them.
The Empire State has already lost 1.5 million residents in the past decade, and there’s no sign of that trend letting up. In fact, more than 350,000 New Yorkers relocated during the 12 pandemic-plagued months leading up to July 1, 2021.
In her attempt to be snappy, Hochul exposed a major problem that has gripped our state since the dawn of the Cuomo-Hochul era: New Yorkers are leaving, and they’re taking their tax dollars with them.
Hochul should be doing everything she can to encourage people to come to New York, not to leave. But she’s hasn’t. And her record $220 billion budget suggests she has no interest in ever letting taxpayers off a heavy hook.
Politicians like Hochul don’t think they need to do anything to attract new residents or retain current residents. Her leadership and her state are so dang awesome, why wouldn’t you want to stay? Paying the highest income tax rates in the country is just the privilege you get to liver under her rule.
She’s afraid of being questioned by voters which is what an election is. Your policies are on the ballot and, apparently, Hochul is no fan of democracy while she shrieks about defending it.
Hochul isn’t the first New York governor to ask conservatives to leave the state. Her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, once famously said that “pro-life” and “pro-gun” conservatives should leave his state since it’s not for them, a statement which he eventually apologized for.
There seems to be a trend among elected Democrats in New York. They’d be fine with the option of rounding up anyone who disagrees with them and sending them elsewhere to create their utopian Soviet Union with zero opposition.
