CUOMO'S MOUNTAIN POSTER REVEALS HOW THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY AT THE TOP IN THE USA

The New Republic has a feature highly critical of Andrew Cuomo's victory poster over Covid-19.  The author, Alex Pareene, does not hold back on criticism of Cuomo and other politicians as the title of the piece is "Throw the Bums Out".

The intro:

We are in the midst of a world-historic failure of governance. Why isn’t anyone in charge acting like they are responsible for it?

Earlier this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled the Covid-19 mountain, a three-dimensional foam mound representing the pandemic’s toll on his state. He had used the “mountain” metaphor before and had apparently decided to make it tangible. Referring to the chart of daily new infections statewide, he said that New Yorkers had climbed the “mountain.” Now, with that number declining to seemingly manageable levels, he turned the chart into a monument to the state’s collective achievement. 

In a functional democracy with any standard of democratic accountability—a country where elected officials expect to be held responsible for outcomes they could have controlled or influenced—a governor would only have unveiled such a bloody monument if he needed an explanation for his immediate resignation.  Cuomo, instead, had the mountain recast as a commemorative poster, which he revealed at a press conference on Monday afternoon.

The “mountain” is a triumphalist materialization of an overwhelming pile of bodies. It is a manifestation of a horrific and avoidable failure. New Yorkers did not set out to climb the mountain; they were led to its peak by their government.

Pareene does not stop with Cuomo. There is plenty of blame to go around. He says that while the federal government's "catastrophic and ongoing failure to prepare for or mitigate the pandemic rightfully earns most of the blame for the explosion of cases, an exclusive focus on the federal response obscures the total extent of our national failure."

To find a little bit of honor in our world leaders today, he had to look all the way to New Zealand. 

We have come to expect so little from our government that it will seem perfectly unremarkable if no major heads roll over a disaster for which leaders across the country all bear some direct responsibility. The U.S. may not be entirely exceptional in this—I don’t really expect Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ouster in the United Kingdom—but New Zealand’s public health minister resigned this month, for mistakenly allowing two (two!) British visitors still suffering from Covid-19 to leave quarantine without being tested. (New Zealand has seen 22 deaths from Covid-19, which is fewer than any state in the continental U.S. but Wyoming, which has had 21.) 

In NY, we have had over 25,000 deaths from COVID-19. In NYC, over 16000 have died from the virus and over 300 tested positive for it on Monday. Nationwide, we've lost 135,991 people.  Much of this was preventable had we hunkered down just a little sooner and had a more competent response from governments at all levels. Why is Cuomo still governor, de Blasio still mayor and Trump still president? Do they even feel any remorse about what happened on their respective watches?

To break it down even further, with 72 deaths of NYC DOE employees and an additional 12 School Safety Agents dying from Covid-19 complications, why do Chancellor Carranza and UFT President Mulgrew still have jobs? Either one could have insisted we not enter infected buildings in early March. Why are these two who botched things up in March now leading the planning for the reopening of schools? 

Is there any accountability for failure among the elites in this country?