Comment #1

jarasan — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 01:02:48 GMT

Hypocrites all of them.

Original Blog Entry: Hypocrisy, thy name is Albany Democrat.

emilyg — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 21:11:41 GMT

Hypocrisy, thy name is Albany Democrat.

Gov. Cuomo and Senate Conference Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins spent the past few days hammering Republicans who won't withdraw support for Donald Trump following his locker room remarks.

It's shameful, said Stewart-Cousins, that Republicans would back a proven misogynist like Trump. Added the gov: If you support him, you stand against women. There is no 'but' in this situation.

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Funny, but the very same thing could be said about Albany's Democrats especially Cuomo himself.

For years, the governor and his colleagues stood behind then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, turning a blind eye as he orchestrated secret hush-money payments to cover up repeated sexual harassment (and worse) by his staffers and cronies.

In four distinct cases, Silver cut deals to spend hundreds of thousands in taxpayer cash to buy the silence of his colleagues' victims.

No one complained, because crossing the all-powerful Speaker was political suicide.

Cuomo even took to the airwaves to defend one of those hush-money deals, involving victims of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, insisting it wasn't a secret deal but rather an agreement with confidentiality.

After all, he noted, it was signed off on by two other Democrats, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, so nothing was done outside of the checks and balances of government.

Some defense. Bottom line is the public was never supposed to find out about it in fact, the victims would be fined $5,000 per act of public disclosure.

As a result, serial violators like Lopez got to go on groping and abusing women.

In fact, one Republican who dared raise the subject on the Assembly floor during a debate on workplace sexual harassment, to boot was officially admonished and had his microphone shut off.

Trump's comments have been widely and properly denounced. But Cuomo and his fellow Democrats should drop their sanctimonious cant about standing against women and take a long look in the mirror.

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