By Fredric U. Dicker  April 14th, 2014

After his worst week in office since becoming governor, Andrew Cuomo is now viewed for the first time by important Democrats as potentially vulnerable to Republican challenger Rob Astorino, The Post has learned.

The changing sentiment results from the extraordinary criticisms Cuomo received last week from corruption-fighting Southern District US Attorney Preet Bharara — because of the governor’s summary dismissal of his anti-corruption Moreland Commission panel — and from an assortment of “good-government’’ over his transparently phony plan for a severely limited system of publicly financed elections.

“It was a disastrous week for Andrew. He was being attacked all over town, and it appeared to be the culmination of not just weeks, but months, of eroding support for the governor from within his own Democratic base,’’ one of the state’s most influential Democrats told The Post.

“People are starting to say, ‘Hey, maybe Astorino has a chance in the race, even if it is a long shot,’ and a lot of people, Democrats, are starting to also say that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,’’ he continued.

Several Democratic strategists said Cuomo’s eroding support among politically powerful New York City-based unions, including those behind the influential Working Families Party, all but assures an unusually low turnout among the city’s heavily Democratic voters, normally the foundation for a statewide Democratic victory.

At the same time, they expect Astorino, the popular and recently re-elected Westchester County executive, to do well, offsetting Democratic votes in his large suburban county, and his message of property-tax and spending cuts, educational reforms and economic development to appeal to suburban voters on Long Island as well.

“The traditional dynamics for Cuomo appear to be changing, with a big New York City vote no longer guaranteed and a bigger problem in the suburbs, because of Astorino, than [the governor] had expected,’’ said a prominent campaign consultant.

Cuomo, meanwhile, held a tense, hush-hush, meeting with Working Families Party leaders Dan Cantor and Bob Masters at his campaign headquarters in Manhattan last Thursday in an effort to head off the growing possibility that the WFP will field its own candidate for governor in November.

A source said Cuomo was told what he already knew: While the union-controlled WFP’s leadership would like to “do’’ Cuomo as the party’s nominee, widespread unhappiness with Cuomo’s support for business-tax cuts, spending restraints and a fatally flawed publicly financed campaign system is making that difficult.

Many Democrats see the influence of the state’s senior US senator and a longtime Cuomo nemesis, fellow Democrat Charles Schumer, behind Bharara’s stunning criticism of the governor over his handling of the Moreland Commission panel.

Bharara, once Schumer’s chief counsel, is widely believed to have political ambitions, including, possibly running, for the office Schumer himself once planned to seek: governor of New York.

“Preet thinks of himself as a Democratic Rudy Giuliani, a crime- and corruption-fighter who can parley the US attorney’s job into elective office,’’ said a longtime political consultant with ties to Bharara’s office.

“To the extent that the bloom is off the rose when it comes to Cuomo, that may open the door for Preet to run for his job sometime down the road,’’ the consultant continued.

Townhall Magazine | Apr 12, 2014

In the April issue of Townhall Magazine, Bearing Arms editor Bob Owens asks what would happen if a liberal government passed a new gun law but nobody obeyed it?

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) signed what the Hartford Courant called “the toughest assault weapons legislation in the nation” last year. It required owners of semi-automatic firearms to register all firearms designated as “assault weapons” with the state government, along with any “high capacity” magazines they may own, by December 31, 2013.

The Malloy regime expected Connecticut residents to register somewhere between 372,000-400,000 firearms, and roughly 2 million firearm magazines that held more than 10 rounds before January 1.

What they got instead was defiance.

Just 50,000 of the estimated 372,000 so-called “assault weapons” in the state were registered by the deadline, or less than 15 percent. That’s still far better than the anemic 38,000 “high capacity” magazines that were reported to authorities, out of 2 million.

Why is compliance so low? We can’t know for sure. After all, the owners of these firearms and magazines refused to register, so we can’t easily interview them. But the theory we’ve heard bandied about most frequently is that the owners of these firearms felt that registration was a forerunner of confiscation, and that they would rather become felons under the eyes of a vengeful state than become disarmed subjects.

The development has left the government stunned and unsure of how to respond, and has driven the editors of the anti-gun Courant into a sputtering rage.

The newspaper released an unsigned editorial on Valentine’s Day titled “State Can’t Let Gun Scofflaws Off Hook,” and argued that the state should use the background check database to hunt down non-compliant owners, presumably targeting them for police raids and arrests.

We can only assume that the Courant’s newsroom staff skipped American history in school, or they would know what happened the last time a group of government forces attempted a series of dramatic gun control raids in a neighboring state. As I recall, that day, April 19, 1775, went rather poorly for the British Regulars under Lt. Col. Smith.

Malloy’s staff seems to grasp their terrible predicament a bit better than the hotheads of the Courant. Sending 1,120 Connecticut State Troopers on SWAT-style raids against more than 80,000 suspect “assault weapon” owners could not possibly end well.

To date, Malloy and his allies in the legislature who rammed through these strict gun control laws largely remain silent on the fact that the citizenry has simply ignored them. What else can they do?

The government of Connecticut can’t threaten the citizenry with criminal charges. They’ve already willingly decided to become felons en masse. The government can’t threaten the citizenry with force. They’re both grossly outnumbered and outgunned. The government can’t offer an amnesty. It would only reinforce how little power the government has over a rebellious citizenry.

The only realistic option is for the government of Connecticut to pretend that their assault weapon ban never existed. To admit it exists, and that they can do nothing to enforce it, would reveal that the emperor and his court have no clothes.

A nearly identical problem is brewing next door in the much larger, more populous state of New York, thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s hastily-passed NY SAFE Act. That law demands that New Yorkers register their semi-automatic “assault rifles” with the government by April 15.

While Connecticut is thought to have something less than 400,000 firearms classified as “assault weapons” under their law, New York is thought to have as many as 1 million firearms meeting New York’s revised criteria.

Cuomo faces an even bigger registration problem in New York than Malloy did in Connecticut because many of New York’s sheriffs are in near open revolt against the SAFE Act, and have stated publicly that they will not enforce it. While they have been less publicly vocal, New York State Troopers have quietly indicated that they, too, will do as little as possible to enforce the law.

New York Assemblyman Bill Nojay, a Republican from suburban Rochester, summed up Cuomo’s problem succinctly. “If you don’t have the troopers and you don’t have the sheriffs, who have you got? You’ve got Andrew Cuomo pounding on the table in Albany.”

As a result of the common revolt by New York gun owners and law enforcement against the SAFE Act, it is quite likely that the law’s April 15 deadline will reveal an even more spectacular refusal of citizens to register their arms, well exceeding 90 percent.

What will Cuomo do then? He has the option of following Malloy’s lead and just remaining silent.

Unfortunately for Cuomo, he’s never shown the ability. •

By Chris Cox On 4:13 PM 03/26/2014

Politicians seeking to diminish Second Amendment rights often couch their views in language that hides their true agenda. But, on January 17, pro-gun advocates were squarely confronted with the contempt in which they are held by some political elites. Speaking on “The Capitol Pressroom” public radio program, Governor Andrew Cuomo labeled gun rights supporters who are “pro-assault weapon” and critical of his so-called SAFE Act as “extreme conservatives” who “have no place in the state of New York.” Ironically, this statement says more about Cuomo himself than those he attacks.

Besides being arrogant and dismissive, these comments ignore reality in the Empire State. The SAFE Act was passed under cover of night, and bypassed normal legislative procedures. Its own proponents obviously knew it would be controversial. Indeed, opposition to the law has been widespread, including among law enforcement groups such as the New York State Sheriffs’ Association. Further, the constitutionality of the act is still being litigated. As noted elsewhere in this issue, a case supported by NRA and the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association challenging the law is progressing through the federal courts, and parts of the law have already been blocked by a federal judge.

One likely reason Cuomo considers those who defend the Second Amendment to be extreme is that he does not believe the amendment protects an individual right at all. As attorney general of New York, Cuomo signed onto a brief defending the District of Columbia’s handgun ban in the landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief argued the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right but instead “was intended to protect state sovereignty by restricting the federal government’s ability to regulate gun ownership in ways that would interfere with state militias.” Following the court’s affirmation of the individual right interpretation, a Gallup poll showed that 73 percent of Americans agreed with the decision, leaving Cuomo in a small minority.

In 1998, as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the Clinton administration, Cuomo’s radical push to have the federal government support frivolous lawsuits against the gun industry faced resistance even from within the decidedly anti-gun White House. One White House insider opined that the scheme “smells like Cuomo” and that the Justice Department wouldn’t want to pursue the case. “How can you blame gun manufacturers for illegal weapons brought into public housing by tenants and non-tenants,” he asked. “Where is the conspiracy?”

Other gun control supporters agreed. In a Dec. 17, 1999, editorial, the Washington Post described the Cuomo supported lawsuits as “disquieting even for those who, like us, strongly support rigorous controls on handguns.” The piece went on to explain it “seems wrong for an agency of the federal government to organize other plaintiffs to put pressure on an industry… to achieve policy results the administration has not been able to achieve through normal legislation or regulation.”

Congress itself implicitly condemned Cuomo’s tactics by passing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005, which effectively barred these sorts of suits against gun manufacturers.

Even before Cuomo’s latest outburst, on May 21, 2013, the Albany Times Union reported that a source told them Cuomo “threatened to remove sheriffs from office” if the law enforcement officials did not keep quiet about their opposition to the SAFE Act. This is consistent with Cuomo’s attempt in 2000 to bully gun makers into signing an agreement supporting several gun control proposals by threatening to exert his influence as HUD secretary to sway municipal law enforcement contracts.

Most tellingly, the so-called “assault weapons” and “large capacity” magazines banned by Cuomo’s “SAFE” Act are among the most popular, fastest-selling arms in the United States. Law-abiding Americans are expressing their disagreement with him with their hard-earned dollars.

Based on Cuomo’s long history of thuggish tactics to advance a radical anti-gun agenda, his recent comments striking at the core of New York’s pluralism are merely the latest example that he is the true extremist. This November, we encourage all NRA members and Second Amendment supporters in the Empire State to deliver just as strong a message that he is not welcome as their governor.

Chris’s column appears in the NRA publications American Rifleman, American Hunter and America’s First Freedom. Click here to get a discounted NRA Annual Membership for only $25 a year complete with your choice of magazine delivered to your door.

On December 9, 2013 Bob Lonsberry, a Rochester talk radio personality on WHAM 1180 AM, said this in response to Obama’s “income inequality speech”:

The Democrats are right, there are two Americas.
The America that works, and the America that doesn’t.
The America that contributes, and the America that doesn’t.
It’s not the haves and the have not’s, it’s the dos and the don’ts.

Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society, and others don’t.   That’s the divide in America.
It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility.

It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office.

It’s about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country.   That’s not invective, that’s truth, and it’s about time someone said it.

The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting “income inequality.”    He noted that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that’s not just.

That is the rationale of thievery.   The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you.   Vote Democrat.

That is the philosophy that produced Detroit.   It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America.

It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a betrayal.

The Democrats have not empowered their followers, they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victim-hood and anger instead of ability and hope.

The president’s premise “that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful“ seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices.

Because, by and large, income variations in society is a result of different choices leading to different consequences.   Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure.   Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income.

You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college – and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education.

You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt to take another course.

Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take.

My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do.  There is significant income inequality between us.  Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but, our lives also have had an in equality of effort.   While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant.

He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes.   His outcome pays a lot better than mine.

Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth?  No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes.

It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away, it is freedom.  The freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail.

There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure.

The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy.

Even if the other guy sat on his butt and did nothing.  Even if the other guy made a lifetime’s worth of asinine and shortsighted decisions.

Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort.

The simple Law of the Harvest “as ye sow, so shall ye reap“ is sometimes applied as, “The harder you work, the more you get.”  Obama would turn that upside down. Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society.

Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if Barack Obama gets his way.   He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity.

By Teri Weaver | tweaver@syracuse.com The Post-Standard
February 27, 2014

SYRACUSE, N.Y.   A proposal in Albany to make it easier for hunters and anglers to register to vote has been dubbed the “NRA voter assistance act” by one critical lawmaker.

The proposal would make voter registration an option for people who buy hunting and fishing licenses through the state’s Department of Environmental Conversation.

Already, people who interact with other government agencies – including the Department of Motor Vehicles, social service agencies and unemployment offices – can register to vote while renewing a driver’s license or applying for other public programs.

Sen. Greg Ball, R-Patterson, wants to add the DEC to that list.

But some Democratic senators questioned that today, arguing Ball’s bill was really intended to help hunters and fishers – who might oppose New York’s gun laws under the NY Safe Act – to register to vote.

Sen. Brad Hoylman, D-Manhattan, called the bill “the NRA voter assistance act” during today’s floor debate.

Later, Ball pulled the proposal before a vote was held.

Similar legislation passed the Senate twice in the past two years. Last year, it passed 54-9; all of Central New York’s senators voted in favor of the bill. Hoylman voted against the proposal last year.

The Assembly did not take up the bill last year.

Contact Teri Weaver at tweaver@syracuse.com, 315-470-2274 or on Twitter at @TeriKWeaver.

Shttp://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/02/senator_calls_effort_to_add_voter_reg_to_hunting_license_forms_an_nra_voter_assi.htmlource:

By Denton Publications Editorial Board

First Posted: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 -6 a.m.

“Nobody needs 10 rounds to kill a deer,” or so bloviated our governor while he was in the process of ramming the so called “SAFE Act” down New Yorker’s throats.

Passed in the dead of night in the wake of the Newtown school shooting, an outlier in the world of homicides if there ever was one, the SAFE Act takes away much of the protections New Yorkers are afforded under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In his “10 rounds” pontification, the governor was referencing one section of the SAFE Act, since ruled unconstitutional, limiting magazine capacities to no more than an arbitrary limit of seven rounds. If you don’t need it to kill a deer, the governor implied, you shouldn’t be allowed to have it.

Let’s look at this concept a little more deeply. First off, by this logic, we can’t imagine why snub-nosed revolvers should be legal. Nobody needs a snub-nosed .38 to kill a deer after all. And what about any shot smaller than 00 Buckshot? Nobody needs bird shot to kill a deer. Taking the governor’s “logic” ad absurdum, only slug shotguns, and rifles with calibers between 30-30 and 300 Winchester Mag should be allowed. Nobody needs anything other than that to kill a deer after all. And why seven rounds? A good hunter needs one, maybe two or three rounds to kill a deer. Why stop at seven? Ban anything above three rounds?

What the governor overlooks here is the Second Amendment, the single most costly incomplete sentence in American history. The Second Amendment does not give Americans the right to just keep and bear deer rifles. It affords citizens the right to keep and bear arms. Assault rifles, Mr. Cuomo, are arms. They are protected under the Second Amendment.

Gun control advocates will most certainly argue that it’s a matter of safety. Our children are being mowed down by assault rifles. While that was tragically true at Newtown, and Aurora, California, and unfortunately some other mass shootings, it’s simply not the case that assault rifles are killing more people than other means. Statistics abound, but the FBI’s are typically considered the gold standard. Let’s take a look at the 2012 homicide stats, compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Homicides by all methods of firearm totaled 8,855. Of those 322 were by rifle — not assault rifles, any kind of rifle. (Separate statistics are not kept for assault rifles.) Add to this some unknown percentage for a category the FBI has for “Firearms, type not stated,” which totaled 1,749. Even given the statistical impossibility that all of these were rifles, that gives us a possible total of 2,071 homicides by some sort of rifle. An unknown, but definitely smaller, number of these rifles were assault rifles. Handguns on the other hand were used in at least 6,371, plus whatever percentage of the 1,749 unclassified guns were handguns. So at the very farthest statistical borderline you are 66 percent more likely to be killed by a handgun than some sort of rifle. The true gulf between handguns and rifles is likely much higher.

But wait, there are plenty of other ways to be killed. Keep the 322 deaths by rifle figure in mind. Now consider that 1,589 people were killed in 2012 by knives or cutting instruments. Also notable, 518 were killed by blunt objects, and 678 were killed by “fists, feet, etc.” Shotguns bring up the rear at 303, plus again some percentage of the unknown firearms. So, to keep our children safe, the governor targeted the second least dangerous death-inducing implement there is, based on FBI statistics. More people would be made safer if he had banned blunt objects, something, by the way, which isn’t constitutionally protected.

Ignoring that obvious problem in the governor’s logic, anti-gun advocates will argue that the SAFE act also keeps us safer by mandating that mental health professionals report anyone who might espouse suicidal tendencies to the State Police, undoubtedly so their guns can then be confiscated by the State Police. Here is where this idea runs off the rails. Gun owners love their guns. Suicidal gun owners, or borderline suicidal gun owners, also love their guns. If a gun owner is considering suicide, they now know that if they reach out to a mental health professional and try to get help for their condition, they will lose their guns. Thanks to the SAFE Act, fewer people on the borderline of mental illness or suicide will seek help. Any gun owner who is feeling suicidal is going to keep that fact to themselves, instead of getting help. How, Mr. Cuomo, does that make us safer?

Let’s make no bones about the true purpose behind the SAFE Act. Mr. Cuomo has for some time set his sights on higher office — now rumored to be that of vice president. He saw the possibility of gaining some national spotlight, plus lining up some liberal Bona Fides, for fund raising and national campaigning time, with a “Andrew Cuomo is tough on guns, so vote for the Clinton/Cuomo ticket” platform.

As they say, the devil is in the details, and the parts of the SAFE act which haven’t already been found unconstitutional either do nothing to make New Yorkers safer, or will have the exact opposite effect. We respectfully ask our state legislators to repeal the SAFE Act now, and go to work on some measures that might have a chance of doing something other than making the situation worse.

Letter to the Editor

Watertown Daily Times 2/1/14

Gov. Cuomo, I left New York state when I was 19 years old and ended up in a place called South Vietnam with the 3rd Marine Division carrying an M60 machine gun (that’s a real assault weapon).

But I came back just before my 21st birthday to St. Albans Naval Hospital on Long Island in a full body cast with shrapnel and bullet wounds. Eventually, I recovered and served as a NYS forest ranger carrying a gun for the people of New York state for nearly 26 years.

One of my daughters, Amanda Reif, was a NYS trooper who was shot on the job on her 29th birthday, wounds that effectively ended her career. Now you say there is no place for us in New York because we want to possess semi-automatic guns that have plastic cosmetic features you think makes them assault weapons?

There is no place for me here anymore because I believe in very limited situations where abortion should be allowed. Because I believe life begins at conception and that baby has a right to life, and cop killers don’t, I need to leave?

And the gay marriage issue. I guess I don’t care one way or the other. I have two friends who got married last summer. What I don’t understand is why you’re so adamant that gays marry but you won’t marry the woman you live with.

When I took the oath to uphold the Constitution, I didn’t say except for the First and Second amendments and anything else I might not like. Guess you took a different oath.

These are strange times in the kingdom, Andrew. Strange time in the kingdom.

Bob Barstow

Cranberry Lake

Link:

http://www.ogd.com/article/20140201/OPINION02/702019959

Created: 01/30/2014 6:25 AM WHEC.com
By: Amanda Ciavarri

News10NBC has an eye opening viewpoint about the SAFE Act. It comes from local firefighters. They want to set the record straight.

The law was signed shortly after two West Webster firefighters were murdered in 2012. For the first time, a group of local firefighters “opens up” about the controversial gun law and whether it has made their jobs any safer.

Every day, firefighters are out in the community, taking calls and helping people. They’re like a brotherhood. There is one thing that many are standing against. It is the New York SAFE Act.

Steve Sessler, volunteer firefighter, said, “To try and capitalize to push an agenda, especially for a politically ambitious governor, who is looking at the presidency. That doesn’t sit well with me.”

Craig Akins, former Webster Fire Chief, said, “The governor took it upon himself to use us as a pawn and I think most of us are not very happy about that.”

They’re from West Webster, Webster, Irondequoit, Rochester and other departments in Monroe and Wayne counties. They want you to know how they feel so they came to News10NBC. Former Webster Fire Chief Craig Akins gave us a unique perspective.

Akins said, “A lot of people thought that a lot of the firefighters were 100% behind the SAFE Act.”

In fact, these firefighters and many other oppose parts of the SAFE Act, especially when it comes to make certain guns illegal and the requirements for background checks for buying ammunition.

Akins said, “We are for stiffer penalties for illegal guns, anyone who wants to kill a first responder, by far those are great.”

Without a doubt, the events on Christmas Eve 2012 changed the mentality of a first responder.

Akins said, “We have several firefighters, right now, who feel very unsafe going into a call.”

News10NBC’s Amanda Ciavarri asked, “Do you feel the SAFE Act makes you feel safer going into a call?

Sessler said, “Not at all, not at all, not at all. No, in fact, the SAFE Act ironically named doesn’t make anybody any safer. In my opinion, the events of Christmas even last year, definitely changes your mind as a first responder. In fact, in Honeoye Falls, about three weeks after that incident last year, we had a call for a shooting and that was the first thing to go through my mind.”

For this brotherhood, the SAFE Act to them is not a step in the right direction.

Akins said, “The state used us, the quote, fire department’s name, to sign the enacted SAFE Act and to sign the SAFE Act in Rochester.”

Some of these men knew and worked with the victims of the West Webster shootings.

Akins said, “It is hurtful to use because one of the victims was a huge advocate, a big gun advocate, and I know he wouldn’t be happy right now knowing that these laws were enacted because of anything he had involvement with.”

January 18, 2014

Michael Filozof