More than a third of New York residents expect to be driven out of the state in the next five years by a lack of economic opportunity.
That’s on top of the million who have left over the last decade.
No state has hemorrhaged people like this since the Dust Bowl.
It is the Cuomo diaspora, New York’s version of the potato famine. Across the country, New Yorkers are the Okies of this generation.
And it’s hard to tell whether the state simply doesn’t care, or actually has depopulation as its objective.
If something happens once, it might be an accident. But if it happens all day every day, it’s a plan. And years and years of policies and practices intended to bankrupt upstatecommunities and families are more convincing as purposeful policy than they are as serial incompetence.
The banning of fracking, the strangulation of state mandates, the nation-leading taxes, the looming state-forced bankruptcy of our towns and villages, and now even a cut to reimbursementsfor our rural ambulances.
The only people with economic security and the promise of a raise are the people on welfare. We are a call-center state, and now even those jobs are leaving for greener pastures.
All this adds up to a years-long rush for the exit that only threatens to get worse.
The large majority of expatriate New Yorkers lived upstate and were working, tax-paying Republicans. Exactly the sort of people who Andy Cuomo said had “no place” in New York. And now, thanksin large part to his policies, they literally have no place in New York.
That is not an accident.
Cuomo and his New York City base are simply purging their upstate colony of undesirables. More-primitive societies do ethnic cleansing with guns, New York does it with taxes. Andso those whose heritage and values don’t align with Andy’s aspiration to create “the progressive capital of the nation” are shoved across the border.
Every person who leaves New York solidifies the Democrats’ hold on the politics of the state. Every person forced into dependence on a government check solidifies the Democrats’hold on the politics of the state.
Even the looming loss of seats in the House of Representatives – which will come from Republican districts upstate – serves the interests of Andy and his party by weakening thefew remaining political opponents he has.
It’s a slow-motion war of conquest and expulsion.
And it’s a rout.
As an upstater, as someone whose family has lived in the Southern Tier for 200 years, it’s enraging, and dispiriting. Because there is no pushback. There is no political weaponthat can be brought to bear, no means of resisting the oppression, no venue or forum in which to be truly heard. There is only to pick up and move on, one more refugee from the Cuomo-empire state.
Or to stay and suffer. To accept a life that is less free and less prosperous because of political decisions in which you have no voice. It is not only taxation without representation,it is a repudiation of the American concept of a Republic.
Being represented by Republicans in the legislature, who are structurally frozen out of all legitimate involvement in the levying of taxes and writing of legislation, means beingunrepresented.
Being a working New Yorker means being a tax slave to people who don’t listen to you and don’t care about you. And you can only ignore that so long.
This polling data reflects that.
A third of New Yorkers say they not only cannot afford to live here, but they are going to move as a result. That should cause a seismic shock through the state and its leaders.
But it won’t.
Because they didn’t want us here anyway.
Because the insufferable burden of expensive and failed government is their stock in trade, and our departure is their objective.
All they need upstate for is to dump their trash and imprison their criminals and to host their green-energy monstrosities. The people are secondary, and our departure makes theimposition of their desires even easier.
The poll was a somber note or New Yorkers.
But at the Governor’s Mansion I suspect they had a party.