It has been common knowledge for years that Andrew Cuomo deliberately managed a, “Toxic Workplace,” so the allegations of sexual harassment should not be a surprise:
Cuomo’s leadership style often confuses ruthlessness with greatness, abuse with strength. Interviews with dozens of former Cuomo employees and those who have worked with or adjacent to his administration reveal a governing institution that has been run, at times, like a cultish fraternity, and at others, like a high-school clique — a state executive chamber in which the maintenance of power, performance of pecking orders, and pursuit of competitive resentments matter as much as policy.
Sexual harassment is not really a matter of sex, it is a matter of power, and since before his days as New York State Attorney General, Cuomo has been consistently crapping on people who are under his authority.
What’s more, Cuomo has always operated in a thoroughly corrupt manner, not just with his quid pro quo with nursing home chains, “You donate to me, and I’ll get you immunity,” but in other more profoundly explicit ways, such as his steering bond deals to donors in direct contravention of federal law.
He’s not just a bully and a dirt-bag, he is a corrupt bully and dirt bag: (Even if he never personally touches that money)
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has since 2012 taken in more than $131,000 in campaign contributions from three major financial firms that were then tapped by his administration to manage state bond work, according to an International Business Times review of campaign finance documents and state bond prospectuses. The Democratic governor accepted the money — and his officials handed out the government business without competitive bids — despite federal rules that bar campaign contributors from receiving taxpayer-financed state bond work.
Last week, Cuomo officials designated the three banks that contributed the campaign funds — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America — as the dealers for a $33 million bond issue, enabling the firms to reap lucrative fees. That came on top of the Cuomo administration assigning the firms to manage a $68 million bond issue last fall, even as federal law enforcement officials were investigating allegations that New York lawmakers were doing favors for political donors.
Federal rules bar states from awarding bond work to parties who have donated to gubernatorial campaigns within the last two years (more than $86,000 of the campaign cash from the firms flowed to Cuomo in the last two years). The rules aim to prevent financial firms from gaining influence over officials who have the power to select which firms receive the lucrative bond business. The rules explicitly seek to stop financial companies from circumventing those strictures: They prohibit firms from channeling contributions to bond overseers through PACs, which are giant pools of money distributed to multiple campaign war chests.
“The pay-to-play rules are very clear,” said Craig Holman, an ethics expert at the watchdog group Public Citizen. “If Andrew Cuomo’s receiving any money from a PAC controlled by a municipal dealer, he’d be in violation of pay-to-play rules.”
On the sexual harassment front, we now have a much larger number of women claiming inappropriate behavior, as well as an increase in the severity of the behavior reported, which has resulted in a formal referral of the matter to the Albany police.
In addition, leaders in the state house, and most of New York’s Democratic Congressional delegation have called for him to resign, including Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand, who wouldn’t take a dump without poll testing it.
I really hope that he is done. He is a truly odious human being.