Unmasked

June 1^st arrives on Monday. It begins a third month where businesses in New York City have rent to pay and no possible way to generate revenue, courtesy of a Governor’s executive order. June 1^st starts a third month where employees with no jobs from those business have to pay rent to their landlords. June 1^st starts a third month where many of those employees will continue to fight for unemployment benefits, enhanced but as yet unpaid, because a system designed to hand a few thousand at a time is swamped by nearly a million new requests.

Some years ago a local writer dubbed an intractable problem of water pooling in the street near his apartment “Lake Messinger.” Both the problem and the name represented the ineptitude of career bureaucrats and politicians to fix even the simplest of problems. In this case some poor repaving meant that every time it rained, stagnant water remained for days afterward and made a crosswalk impassible. Given the hundreds of thousands, probably many times that, of non-submerged intersections in the city, it shouldn’t really be a stretch to get the problem fixed. Yet weeks, months, and years went by, and still nothing.

Now there’s a new geography of incompetence, and I’ve named it “Mt. Cuomo.”

For those who can’t find it on a map, you can summit this elevation in our apartment. Neatly stacked bags of clothing for Goodwill rise in our entryway, high enough to establish a country’s border. It’s not that we are hoarders, it’s that we can’t take it to Goodwill because, yes, the Governor closed Goodwill along with the rest of the state. Mt. Cuomo replaced the Cuomo aluminum mines, which tunneled around our apartment in bags of cans waiting to be returned for their deposit. Normally this process is an easy one—just pop downstairs to our local drug store and get back a few nickels that Cuomo and the soda industry would normally split. They even say it’s good for the environment, right up to the point that the can industry says it really doesn’t want recycled aluminum, so however that works.

So what could go wrong? Well the very environmentalist Governor stopped enforcing the requirements that business do their environmental duty and take back the cans they sell. Wise to this unusual grace from governmental thuggery, businesses stopped accepting the cans. Wiser still, my wife surveyed the growing glut of returnables and shut down the mine. Out the cans went to the municipal recycling or homeless bottle collectors, whoever got there first.

Which gets us back to June 1^st. Lacking any original programing, our Governor now commands midday live TV. Well he did a lot more, but now even the local networks are bored of his PowerPoint commands about how Washington needs to “’Revitalize’ the economy, not just open it,” “Plan a vision for the future,” and “Stop corporate layoffs.” Since actual mass dying from Covid in New York is a thing long past, reporters are understandably looking for news of when the state will join the rest of the world out of cave dwelling. With no such idea forthcoming, we are subject to a fond monologue on how face coverings are saving us all. How the Governor wears a “cool” mask. The bandanna I wore from my first marathon in ’92 probably isn’t cool. Legally compliant, yes. Medically effective? It’s not exactly a featured as life-saving solution on Chicago Med.

June 1^st is on Monday. The curve resembles a meeting of the flat earth society. Never-used tent hospitals in public parks have long since been packed up. The state has to be counterfeiting money by now in order to pay its bills since there is no sales tax, income tax, or even bottle return revenue. It’s time to open up, and open up big. The stench on the streets is not the summer heat, but desperation, and no amount of gubernatorial goodwill can mask that.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.