In another recent display of tyrannical leadership and failure of New York’s direct democracy, Andy Cuomo is his new tax code past lawmakers and voters to pass to cut taxes for millionaires and raise them for low income citizens.
The current tax breaks for millionaires are expiring at the end of the month, but Cuomo announced Sunday afternoon that he was going to comprehensively reform the tax code, and then announced two days later that the legislature had already agreed to the new code, despite the fact that it was the same day that he had summoned them to Albany, and that they had never seen the measure or voted on it, according to the New York Times. Tuesday night they still didn’t know a thing, and Wednesday night he threw them a party.
Meanwhile, many of the lawmakers didn’t even attend the vote – or couldn’t – out of protest for how short the notice was, and against how little say they had, although Cuomo argued that the code didn’t happen overnight, and that it was something “we’d been working on for three years. He posted the full bill online just 26 minutes before it was voted on.
Cuomo has managed to bypass everything from waiting periods on bills to public meetings with legislative leaders, a practice which he called a “silly, rehearsed staged show” according to the Times, “arguing that state government is now functioning far more smoothly and productively than in recent years.”
Cuomo's behavior rightfully incurs criticism that he behaves like a king.
It is the nature of tyrants to be more expedient in times of necessity, because without the pyramid of elected officials separating (and protecting) the people from the king, a dictator can get things done more quickly. This is why the Athenians often elected a dictator in a time of need. However, the Roman Republic, with it’s Senate and Consults, was supposed to offer an alternative to that. And while Cicero proved that absolute power doesn’t have to corrupt absolutely in the hands of a philosopher king, when he assumed the mantle of dictator long enough to put down the Catilinarian Conspiracy – but then immediately put it down, like a Cincinnatus – others were not so just. Cataline was but the first “Populares” to try and assume full power of Rome. Whereas Cicero refused the offer to join the Triumverate, other Populares like Pompey embraced it, and Caesar never had the chance, or perhaps he never had the inclination, to restore the republic.
Likewise, we’ve seen similar behavior to Cuomo’s from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Without even mentioning how he won his third term, his ability to push a city budget past the “recommendations” of the City Council, who compiled them from countless hearings with Community Boards, shows how little checks on power citizens in New York seem to have against executive branches. Clearly, the lawmakers, the press, and the citizens think there’s a need for change in the process here, and they don’t seem to even need to think it matters.