His city's economy in ruins, New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio can think of nothing better than to tell wealthy already-fleeing New Yorkers to get the heck out out. There will always be more like them.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has dismissed rich New Yorkers who fled the city as 'fairweather friends' and said their taxes should be raised - days after Governor Cuomo begged the city's top 1 percent to return to prop up its ailing finances. 

Swarms of wealthy residents fled New York when the city went into lockdown in March and became the coronavirus epicenter of the world.

Despite the city reopening and bringing the outbreak under control, New York has failed to lure back its richest residents with many upping sticks altogether for areas where they can enjoy lower rent and taxes. 

And here's why:

'I was troubled to hear this concept that because wealthy people have a set of concerns about the city that we should accommodate them, that we should build our policies and approaches around them,' he said.  

 

'That's not how things work round here anymore.' 

He continued: 'This city is for New Yorkers, this is for people who live here, work here, fight to make this place better, fight through this crisis. 

'There's a lot of New Yorkers who are wealthy, who are true believers in New York City, who will stand and fight with us and there are some who may be fair weather friends but they will be replaced by others.' 

Which is an astonishing thing to hear from a leader whose city's coffers are bare, and who relies on rich New Yorkers for more than 50% of his city's budget to finance his government. The last time that was seen was a couple decades ago, when Venezuela's Hugo Chavez told wealthy fleeing ex-pats (flights from socialism always starts with wealthy, but never end with the wealthy) to "go to Miami!"  We all know how well that worked out for the Venezuelans. And curiously, many of the fleeing New Yorkers from Bill de Blasio's socialist hellhole in Neew York are also going to Miami.

Here's what the Caracas clown commanded in 2006:

"Petroleos de Venezuela workers are with this revolution, and those who aren't should go somewhere else. Go to Miami." Chavez accused opponents of coup-plotting and said the military - like PDVSA - must be totally committed.

"Venezuelan soldiers are in this revolution, and I have told them: anyone who isn't had better leave here," he said.

 And de Blasio's own brand of socialism comes from the same branch, rooted as it is in his days as a Nicaraguan Sandalista, leaning his party line at the feet of Fidel Castro's own, same as Chavez. Like Chavez, he governs through chaos - the more chaotic and crime-ridden the streets of New York can become, the more passive and powerless the people will be and the more power will centralize to himself. People fleeing is a good thing to him.

Cuomo is a different story, a socialist as well, and perfectly capable of remorselessly issuing lethal orders, such as he did when he ordered the state's nursing homes to be seeded with COVID patients, likely in a bid to save the state money for the elderly's care. He's very much focused on money issues as he begs New Yorkers to come back to the city, promising to cook for them. Like de Blasio, he's also an amasser of socialist power, but with more in common with, say, Stalin, than Chavez. He governs with an iron fist and has stated he favors tax hikes on the rich to be national tax hikes on the rich, so that the incentive will flee will end. In a different context, Stalin called that "socialism on one country."

Bottom line, though, is that socialists fight. For every Stalin there's a Trotsky, for every Maurice Bishop, there's a Bernard Coard. Socialism itself is a litany of patriots and traitors, and with propaganda the only communication, to win is to rewrite history.

On a sorry state level, we can see it in Cuomo and de Blasio. Socialists always get into fights with each other and New York's got a lot of them. What a wretched mess.

Image credit: Embassy of Venezuela in Minsk, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0