In an interview with the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City, Mr. Yang cited gay members of his staff as apparent evidence of his openness to the club’s concerns, and expressed enthusiasm about the prospect of visiting Cubbyhole, a storied New York lesbian bar, participants said.
He proactively talked about resurrecting the city’s Pride March, but failed to pay sufficient heed to more substantive issues they were actually concerned about, including homelessness and affordable housing, they said.
The club is arguably the leading L.G.B.T. club in New York City, according to Christine Quinn, New York City’s first openly gay City Council speaker. Its members, she said, are politically “sophisticated.” Yet Mr. Yang’s appearance struck those members as pandering and tone deaf, according to interviews, a video and a copy of the comments that unfolded during the virtual meeting.
Andrew Yang, coming off as pandering and tone deaf?
Hahahahaha, oh man. How did this not get talked about more?
While it’s common for registered lobbyists to consult on NYC campaigns, Yang’s run for City Hall has been significantly driven by Tusk Strategies, a lobbying firm with corporate clients that have included AT&T, Uber, private equity giant Blackstone, Walmart, and business group the Times Square Alliance. Yang’s top staff are all employees of the consultancy, which was founded by Bradley Tusk, the former campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg’s third mayoral campaign who cultivated a reputation as “Silicon Valley’s favorite fixer” with city governments. His 2018 book was titled “The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics.”
This does kind of emphasize that NYC is probably the worst place to try to get UBI to lift off. When you tell median rich NY Manhattan liberals that you want to provide $2,000 per year they’ll be all like “Heavens, that would only cover two lunches at Jean-Georges!”
It’s a no brainer on a federal level but tough at a local level because you really do have to balance the budget and there is a legit race to the bottom with other cities and states as far taxing people to pay for it.
Seems like he looked at the #s, saw that it would be too politically risky to do real UBI in NYC but wants to force a shitty UBI in anyway because that’s what he is known for.
rhetoric notwithstanding, UBI and social services are not mutually exclusive, and strictly speaking it would be very difficult to convert the latter into the former. it’s also not teh GOP strategy to enhance social security income (a form of UBI) while taking it from elsewhere. their general wedge is to propose cuts to both, claim that they are fighting for you, and letting the op-eds “debate” what is more important.
Isn’t this just the “please something other than steady-as-she-goes corporate Dems” voter? That is totally understandable to me, a lot of people are not well served by the status quo.
I am not really a fan of Yang, but I post this because it’s objectively a good idea. I hope some of the better candidates can get on board with this. I doubt this is a uniquely New York problem, as well. Other cities that don’t already do this should take note.
It certainly isn’t unique to NYC. It’s a problem much like the problem on an underfunded IRS - the rich people have built up cultural resistance to tax assessors (THE IRS AMIRITE!) and measures like doubling the staff to assess and collect taxes would pay for itself many times over.
aww fuck. they found their wedge it seems. i’m all for both people of israel and palestine, but netanyahu has got to go. preferably to prison or the hague. trmp/bibi/modi are all the same.
He also appeared eager to reflect the value systems of those places of power: Yang, who calls himself the anti-poverty candidate based largely on his proposal for annual $2,000 direct payments to the poorest New Yorkers, said he envisioned himself spending his first six months in office luring back the city’s elite by calling the many Masters of the Universe who have recently decamped to Florida.
“ ‘Like, what are the issues that drove you out? What were the decisions?’ And then be like, okay, here are, like, the things that drove people away. If we resolve them, can we get them back?” he had told me previously. “It’s a pretty tight community, so if the mayor is calling people asking these questions and trying to get them back, I think there are a lot of people who would be thrilled about it.”
Couldn’t you like, call them now and have those conversations and be upfront about what policies you’ll pursue?
Also, what the hell is an “operator” and how on Earth does anyone take someone who talks like that seriously? Is there a Malcolm Gladwell book titled Operators that I’ve been fortunate enough to have never heard of?
