The budgetary culture war continues in Albany

The new budget proposal in Albany is two parts. Part One is Democrats “addressing” crises that they themselves created. Part Two is a culture war: a direct attack on New York’s suburban areas.

Finding a single appropriate metaphor for New York’s Democratic machine is challenging, but Orwell’s “1984” works: the endless party doublespeak; a constantly shifting set of morals and rules that, as the linguist and writer John McWhorter has pointed out, only a full-time academic could be expected to keep up with; a tribalism and unapologetic cult of personality wherein ideology is replaced by jingoism and the skin color, ethnicity, gender or political affiliation of an individual committing an action determines its righteousness, rather than the action itself.

Describing the budget in these terms seems insufficient, though it is reminiscent of a scene in “1984” in which the Party triumphantly announces an increase in the chocolate ration, and the faithful celebrate because they don’t remember that the chocolate ration was recently slashed, and they are still in the red.

Take the “public safety” initiatives that Gov. Kathy Hochul touted in her announcement of the proposed budget, which include fighting retail theft and making public safety a top priority. To review: the party that abolished bail, made public announcements about no longer prosecuting retail theft, and otherwise gutted our public institutions in the name of defunding the police will now rescue us from a mess of their own design, like arsonists selling fire extinguishers.

Next in line is the budget’s promise to fight “illegal cannabis businesses.” Again, the Democrats demonized and then decriminalized (and then legalized) marijuana in the state, and have since failed to create a rollout plan despite having had years to do so. This embarrassing failure has created a void into which numerous parties have stepped, and now the Democratic perpetrators will swoop in and save us all (and if you believe this, I have a chocolate ration to sell you).

Perhaps most galling is a public safety initiative that the governor’s own website focuses on: “Making our streets safer with new efforts to fight toll evasion on our roads and fare evasion on our subways.” As to the second goal, we again see the Democrats in the arsonist role, as they alone pushed to deprioritize the enforcement of subway fare evasion. The focus on toll evasion, however, is a departure from the arsonist role and a foray into that of jingoistic culture warrior. Road tolls do not affect public safety, but rather how much (more) of the hard-earned money of people living in Nassau, Suffolk, Queens and other parts of the state is sucked into New York City’s and Albany’s coffers, overflowing as they are from our crushing taxes.

What this initiative is really about is the crime of living in the suburbs — an unforgivable sin in the eyes of most Democrats. Our safe streets, good schools, and hard-earned and well-maintained homes are the deepest offense to them, and they are proceeding accordingly. They cruelly cut our already minimal public transportation options and service, and at the same time make it more expensive for us to drive to work to serve their needs, to drive our trucks into the forbidden city to fill their stores. And with this announcement, the actions of commuters are now a top public-safety concern, meaning there is some inherent criminal capacity to any Long Islander, because we have no choice but to drive places that force us to pay tolls.

This one-two punch continues in the budget’s housing proposals. Part One is replacing the 421-a Affordable Housing Development Program and trying to encourage landlords to re-let vacant apartments (both problems famously of Democrats’ own making). Part Two is “encouraging” multi-family development. In other words, as last year’s failed multifamily-density housing bill and the new faith-based housing initiative demonstrate, how can the state eliminate the suburban way of life by destroying single-family neighborhoods and creating the overly dense, concrete wastelands that Democrats love to call home? The answer is by disenfranchising Long Islanders by invalidating local laws, getting rid of the policies that made Long Island a great place to live and turning it into a place that looks just like their own city: a place where all cultures and ways of life are respected, except those of their neighbors and fellow New Yorkers.

Surely, 10 years from now, Democrats will draft a bill to protect the few remaining safe enclaves of Long Island from crime, overcrowding and overdevelopment.

Jake Blumencranz represents the 15th Assembly District.