XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.coronavirus, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.politics.republicans   
   From: stick-it@latimes.com   
      
   Here’s one step Mayor Bill de Blasio can take to recover the credibility   
   he needs to lead Gotham through the coronacrisis: fire Schools Chancellor   
   Richard Carranza.   
      
   Not that Hizzoner should ever have hired Carranza. The race-baiting   
   fraudster arrived from San Francisco via Houston two years ago and has   
   since added exactly nothing positive to the city’s epically troubled   
   public schools.   
      
   But there’s more. The death Monday of Brooklyn high-school principal   
   Dezann Romain, from apparent coronavirus troubles, highlights the   
   tragicomic laxity which Carranza has brought to the crisis.   
      
   Tragic because, well, Romain has died. She was the school system’s first,   
   but will not likely be its last, casualty. And while Carranza isn’t   
   directly responsible for her death, his approach to the pathogen itself   
   has been appallingly irresponsible.   
      
   And here is the comic part — in a darkly bizarre sense of the word: The   
   Post’s Susan Edelman reported Sunday that the chancellor earlier this   
   month had ordered school officials not to report evidence of coronavirus   
   contamination. “There is no reason for any school to call [the Department   
   of Health] to report potential or confirmed cases,” he wrote in an e-mail   
   to subordinates.   
      
   No reason to report? Who thinks like that? Someone lacking seriousness of   
   purpose, an awareness of public anxiety regarding coronavirus and the   
   skills necessary to navigate this potentially lethal crisis.   
      
   Carranza, in a nutshell.   
      
   Of course, this is true of de Blasio himself, the essential difference   
   being that he’s the elected leader of the world’s greatest city — and   
   not simply an unqualified hireling.   
      
   Well, at least not a hireling. And because he isn’t going anywhere, de   
   Blasio really needs to boost his game. New York needs a mayor who will   
   bring a resolute, disciplined presence to the crisis.   
      
   Above all, it needs a mayor who understands — to paraphrase Fiorello La   
   Guardia — that there is no Democratic or Republican way to govern through   
   a pandemic.   
      
   Whether de Blasio’s incessant, though barely focused, hectoring of the   
   Trump administration is meant to distract from the incoherence of his own   
   policies is unclear. Probably it’s just more incoherence.   
      
   He strongly resisted closing city schools, yet never credibly defended his   
   decision to keep them open. By the end, the issue wasn’t so much public   
   education as it was mayoral confusion. And the schools were closed anyway.   
      
   The mayor never bothered to learn if he even had the power to order a   
   unilateral lockdown of New York City before he all but announced his   
   intention to do so — again offering no details, no reassurances and no   
   credible justifications.   
      
   And all of this has been peppered with one sky-is-falling caution after   
   another. At best they have been statements of the obvious — there are   
   supply shortages everywhere, for example, not just in New York. But mostly   
   they have been panic-tinged expressions of weakness and despair.   
      
   “If we don’t get a supply of [respiratory] ventilators quickly,   
   literally after a week, we won’t have enough ventilators to keep people   
   alive,” he gasped over the weekend.   
      
   Well, yes. But, not to downplay the absence of ventilators, there’s a big   
   difference between stating a need and citing a potential solution — Gov.   
   Andrew Cuomo Tuesday identified specific federal stockpiles — and inchoate   
   pleadings.   
      
   The mayor needs to get a grip. He’s scaring people unnecessarily, and he   
   needs to come to terms with his responsibilities.   
      
   De Blasio needs to lead, and while this clearly won’t come naturally, he   
   can start by showing he grasps the seriousness of the crisis, but also   
   that he understands he isn’t standing helpless before it.   
      
   Firing Carranza, while explaining that any attempt to cover up evidence of   
   coronavirus contamination is a dereliction too far, would demonstrate that   
   he gets it on both levels. The upside is that Carranza’s departure would   
   be no real loss. At all.   
      
   The danger is that once having acted decisively, de Blasio will roll over   
   and go back to sleep; the mayor is not a man troubled by a long attention   
   span.   
      
   Still, crisis can bring out the good in the unlikeliest of characters. If   
   ever a mayor had an opportunity to write a positive page for the history   
   books, it’s this one.   
      
   Go for it, Blas. Take the leap and boot the chancellor.   
      
   https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/to-save-his-mayoralty-de-blasio-must-ax-   
   chancellor-richard-carranza-now/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)