Andrew Cuomo gets heated as he wrongly insist COVID nursing home deaths were not undercounted: ‘That's the Trump line'
Cuomo stood at center stage in the Democratic mayoral primary debate amid a pile up of criticism from the eight other candidates during a fiery NBC-Politico Democratic primary mayoral debate.
'No, we didn't undercount any deaths,' Cuomo loudly insisted during one particularly heated moment.
The harshest attack arguably came from the Rev. Michael Blake, a former Obama administration official, who scathingly evoked the sexual harassment accusations that led to the former governor's resignation.
'The people who don't feel safe are young women, mothers and grandmothers around Andrew Cuomo,' Blake said.
'That's the greatest threat to public safety in New York City.'
Cuomo, who has vehemently denied the accusations from 11 women, uncharacteristically declined to respond.
Blake then seized the opportunity to send a message to to women watching the live debate.
'Everyone woman watching tonight, he was just given a chance to acknowledge the clear claims and he ignored it,' Blake said.
But Cuomo didn't stay silent when speaking about coronavirus death in nursing homes.
He got animated as he insisted nursing home deaths were not undercounted and also refused to say if he edited his administration's controversial report on the deaths — the lynchpin of the investigation into his time as governor by the Department of Justice.
'There was no doubt that my administration produced the report, and it did not undercount the deaths,' Cuomo eventually said but continued to defend his record.
Cuomo said COVID deaths were counted where they occurred — in hospitals or nursing homes.
But many of the 15,000 nursing home residents or patients died after they were gravely ill and transported to hospital.
And a damning 2021 report by state Attorney General Letitia James found that New York's nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 may be more than 50% higher than Cuomo's administration initially reported.
An audit in 2022 by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli also concluded the state Health Department intentionally 'misled the public' about the number of nursing home deaths from COVID-19 to help burnish Cuomo's reputation before a sexual harassment scandal forced him to resign as governor — claims he denied.
'It's very, it's very clear that's the Trump line, the MAGA line,' Cuomo claimed.
The moderators continued to push the ex-gov, but he refused to answer.
'I was very aware of the report,' he said.
Cuomo also dismissed a reported Justice Department probe that lied to Congress during his testimony about his handling of the pandemic.
'No, I told Congress the truth,' he said.
Rivals pounced.
Brad Lander, the city comptroller, accused Cuomo of 'lying' to Congress and 'grieving' nursing home families.
Blake accused Cuomo of refusing to answer the questions.
At least 4,000 residents died after Cuomo's administration issued a controversial March 25, 2020 mandate for nursing homes to admit 'medically stable' coronavirus patients.
Critics have argued the mandate led to the deaths.
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Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
For millions in US mobile home parks, clean and safe tap water isn't a given
Mobile Homes Water Problems The worst water Colt Smith has seen in 14 years with Utah's Division of Drinking Water was at a mobile home park, where residents had been drinking it for years before state officials discovered the contamination. The well water carried cancer-causing arsenic as much as 10 times the federal limit. Smith had to put the rural park under a do-not-drink order that lasted nearly 10 years. 'The Health Department refers it to us like ... 'Why aren't you guys regulating it?' We had no idea it existed,' he said. More than 50 years after the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed to ensure that Americans' water is free from harmful bacteria, lead and other dangerous substances, millions of people living in mobile home parks can't always count on those basic protections. A review by The Associated Press found that nearly 70% of mobile home parks running their own water systems violated safe drinking water rules in the past five years, a higher rate than utilities that supply water for cities and towns, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. And the problems are likely even bigger because the EPA database doesn't catch all parks. Even where parks get water from an outside source — such as a city — the clean water coming in can become contaminated if it passes through problematic infrastructure before reaching residents' taps. Because the EPA doesn't generally require this water to be tested and regulated, the problems may go unseen. Utah is one of the few states to step in with their own rules, according to an AP survey of state policies. 'If you look back at the history of the Safe Drinking Water Act, like in the '70s when they were starting, it was, 'Well, as long as the source … is protected, then by the time it gets to the tap, it'll be fine.' And that's just not how it works,' Smith said. The challenge of being 'halfway homeowners' In one Colorado mobile home park, raw sewage backed up into a bathtub. In a Michigan park, the taps often ran dry and the water resembled tea; in Iowa, it looked like coffee — scaring residents off drinking it and ruining laundry they could hardly afford to replace. In California, boxes of bottled water crowd a family's kitchen over fears of arsenic. Almost 17 million people in the U.S. live in mobile homes. Some are comfortable Sun Belt retirees. Many others have modest incomes and see mobile homes as a rare opportunity for home ownership. To understand how water in the parks can be so troubled, it's useful to remember that residents often own their homes but rent the land they sit on. Despite the name, it's difficult and expensive to move a mobile home. That means they're 'halfway homeowners,' said Esther Sullivan, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado in Denver who lived in several mobile home parks as she researched a book. Residents often put up with 'really egregious' property maintenance by landlords because all their money is tied up in their home, she said. Pamela Maxey, 51, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, said she had forgotten what it was like to have reliable, clean water until she traveled to her state Capitol last year to advocate for better mobile home park protections and stayed in a hotel. By then, she had spent eight years in a park where sewage backed up into homes and the flow of tap water was sometimes weak or discolored. 'It wasn't until I went into the bathroom to take a shower that I realized, 'I don't have to jump in here and squint my eyes closed the entire time and make sure water doesn't get in my mouth because I don't know what's in it,'' she said. 'I went to brush my teeth, and I just turned the faucet on and I brushed my teeth from the water coming from the faucet. I haven't been able to do that for over a year.' Victoria Silva, a premed student in Fort Collins, Colorado, estimates the water in Harmony Village Mobile Home Park where Silva lives went out or lost pressure 20 to 30 times over roughly three years there. 'People don't realize how much water they need until the water is out for five minutes when they need to flush, when they need to rinse something off their hands, when they need to make some pasta,' Silva said. The park's owner says a licensed professional ensures water is maintained and tested, and outages are minimized. Small water companies, serial problems The U.S. has some 50,000 water utilities, most serving small towns and rural areas. Many struggle to find expert staff and funding, and they violate clean water rules more often than the handful of large utilities that serve cities. But even among the hard-pressed small utilities, mobile home parks stand out. The AP analysis found that more than half these parks failed to perform a required test for at least one contaminant, or failed to properly report the results, in the past five years. And they are far more likely to be repeat offenders of safe drinking water rules overall. But that's only part of the story. The true rates of mobile home park violations aren't knowable because the EPA doesn't track them well. The agency's tap water violation database depends on information from states that often don't properly categorize mobile home parks. When Smith first searched Utah's database in response to an AP request for data from all 50 states, he found only four small water systems identified as belonging to mobile home parks. With some keyword searches, he identified 33 more. Other parks aren't in the databases at all and may be completely unregulated. One July day in 2021, officials with the EPA were out investigating sky-high arsenic levels in the tap water at Oasis Mobile Home Park in the Southern California desert when they realized the problem went way beyond just one place. 'It was literally us driving around and going, 'Wait a minute, there's a bunch of mobile home parks!'' said Amy Miller, who previously served as EPA's head of enforcement for the Pacific Southwest region. The water in these other parks had been off their radar. At some, testing found high levels of cancer-causing arsenic in the water that had been provided to residents for years. It's impossible to know how many unnoticed parks are out there. Most states aren't actively looking for them and say they find very few. In Colorado, after the state passed a new law to require water testing at all mobile home parks, officials uncovered 79 parks with their source of water unknown. That's about a tenth of the total parks in the state. Pipes 'like spaghetti' in the ground Many parks are decades old with aging pipes that can cause chronic water problems, even if the water that supplies the park is clean when it enters the system. Jake Freeman, the engineering director at Central States Water Resources, a Missouri-based private utility company that specializes in taking over small water systems in 11 states, said substandard and poorly installed pipes are more common to see in mobile home parks. 'A lot of times, it's hard to find the piping in the mobile home parks because if there's any kind of obstruction, they just go around it,' he said. ''It's like spaghetti laying in the ground.' After a major winter storm devastated Texas in 2021, Freeman said, the company found pipes at parks it had taken over that 'were barely buried. Some of them weren't buried.' When pipes break and leak, the pressure drops and contaminants can enter water lines. In addition, parks sometimes have stagnant water — where pipes dead-end or water sits unused — that increases the risk of bacterial growth. Rebecca Sadosky is public water supply chief in North Carolina, where mobile home communities make up close to 40% of all water systems. She said owners don't always realize when they buy a park that they could also be running a mini utility. 'I think they don't know that they're getting into the water business,' she said. It doesn't have to be like this Utah is a rare state that enforces safe drinking water standards even within mobile home parks that get their water from another provider, according to AP's survey of states. A small number of other states like New Hampshire have taken some steps to address water safety in these parks, but in most states frustrated residents may have no one to turn to for help beyond the park owner. In Colorado, when Silva asked officials who enforces safe drinking water rules, 'I just couldn't get clear answers.' Steve Via, director of federal regulations at the American Water Works Association utility group, argued against regulating mobile home parks that get their water from a municipality, saying that would further stretch an already taxed oversight system. And if those parks are regulated, what's to stop the rules from extending to the privately owned pipes in big apartment buildings — the line has to be drawn somewhere, he said. Via said residents of parks where an owner refuses to fix water problems have options, including going to their local health departments, suing or complaining publicly. Silva is among the advocates who fought for years to change Colorado's rules before they succeeded in passing a law in 2023 that requires water testing in every mobile home park. It gives health officials the ability to go beyond federal law to address taste, color and smell that can make people afraid to drink their water, even when it's not a health risk. The state is now a leader in protecting mobile home park tap water. Smith, the Utah environmental scientist, said stopping the contaminated water flowing into the mobile home park and connecting it to a safe supply felt like a career highlight. He said Utah's culture of making do with scarce water contributed to a willingness for stronger testing and regulations than the federal government requires. 'There's sort of the communal nature of like, everybody should have access to clean water,' he said. 'It seems to transcend political ideologies; it seems to transcend religious ideologies.' ___ The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP's environmental coverage, visit Solve the daily Crossword
2 minutes ago
For millions in US mobile home parks, clean and safe tap water isn't a given
The worst water Colt Smith has seen in 14 years with Utah's Division of Drinking Water was at a mobile home park, where residents had been drinking it for years before state officials discovered the contamination. The well water carried cancer-causing arsenic as much as 10 times the federal limit. Smith had to put the rural park under a do-not-drink order that lasted nearly 10 years. 'The Health Department refers it to us like ... 'Why aren't you guys regulating it?' We had no idea it existed,' he said. More than 50 years after the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed to ensure that Americans' water is free from harmful bacteria, lead and other dangerous substances, millions of people living in mobile home parks can't always count on those basic protections. A review by The Associated Press found that nearly 70% of mobile home parks running their own water systems violated safe drinking water rules in the past five years, a higher rate than utilities that supply water for cities and towns, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. And the problems are likely even bigger because the EPA database doesn't catch all parks. Even where parks get water from an outside source — such as a city — the clean water coming in can become contaminated if it passes through problematic infrastructure before reaching residents' taps. Because the EPA doesn't generally require this water to be tested and regulated, the problems may go unseen. Utah is one of the few states to step in with their own rules, according to an AP survey of state policies. 'If you look back at the history of the Safe Drinking Water Act, like in the '70s when they were starting, it was, 'Well, as long as the source … is protected, then by the time it gets to the tap, it'll be fine.' And that's just not how it works,' Smith said. In one Colorado mobile home park, raw sewage backed up into a bathtub. In a Michigan park, the taps often ran dry and the water resembled tea; in Iowa, it looked like coffee — scaring residents off drinking it and ruining laundry they could hardly afford to replace. In California, boxes of bottled water crowd a family's kitchen over fears of arsenic. Almost 17 million people in the U.S. live in mobile homes. Some are comfortable Sun Belt retirees. Many others have modest incomes and see mobile homes as a rare opportunity for home ownership. To understand how water in the parks can be so troubled, it's useful to remember that residents often own their homes but rent the land they sit on. Despite the name, it's difficult and expensive to move a mobile home. That means they're 'halfway homeowners,' said Esther Sullivan, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado in Denver who lived in several mobile home parks as she researched a book. Residents often put up with 'really egregious' property maintenance by landlords because all their money is tied up in their home, she said. Pamela Maxey, 51, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, said she had forgotten what it was like to have reliable, clean water until she traveled to her state Capitol last year to advocate for better mobile home park protections and stayed in a hotel. By then, she had spent eight years in a park where sewage backed up into homes and the flow of tap water was sometimes weak or discolored. 'It wasn't until I went into the bathroom to take a shower that I realized, 'I don't have to jump in here and squint my eyes closed the entire time and make sure water doesn't get in my mouth because I don't know what's in it,'' she said. 'I went to brush my teeth, and I just turned the faucet on and I brushed my teeth from the water coming from the faucet. I haven't been able to do that for over a year.' Victoria Silva, a premed student in Fort Collins, Colorado, estimates the water in Harmony Village Mobile Home Park where Silva lives went out or lost pressure 20 to 30 times over roughly three years there. 'People don't realize how much water they need until the water is out for five minutes when they need to flush, when they need to rinse something off their hands, when they need to make some pasta,' Silva said. The park's owner says a licensed professional ensures water is maintained and tested, and outages are minimized. The U.S. has some 50,000 water utilities, most serving small towns and rural areas. Many struggle to find expert staff and funding, and they violate clean water rules more often than the handful of large utilities that serve cities. But even among the hard-pressed small utilities, mobile home parks stand out. The AP analysis found that more than half these parks failed to perform a required test for at least one contaminant, or failed to properly report the results, in the past five years. And they are far more likely to be repeat offenders of safe drinking water rules overall. But that's only part of the story. The true rates of mobile home park violations aren't knowable because the EPA doesn't track them well. The agency's tap water violation database depends on information from states that often don't properly categorize mobile home parks. When Smith first searched Utah's database in response to an AP request for data from all 50 states, he found only four small water systems identified as belonging to mobile home parks. With some keyword searches, he identified 33 more. Other parks aren't in the databases at all and may be completely unregulated. One July day in 2021, officials with the EPA were out investigating sky-high arsenic levels in the tap water at Oasis Mobile Home Park in the Southern California desert when they realized the problem went way beyond just one place. 'It was literally us driving around and going, 'Wait a minute, there's a bunch of mobile home parks!'' said Amy Miller, who previously served as EPA's head of enforcement for the Pacific Southwest region. The water in these other parks had been off their radar. At some, testing found high levels of cancer-causing arsenic in the water that had been provided to residents for years. It's impossible to know how many unnoticed parks are out there. Most states aren't actively looking for them and say they find very few. In Colorado, after the state passed a new law to require water testing at all mobile home parks, officials uncovered 79 parks with their source of water unknown. That's about a tenth of the total parks in the state. Many parks are decades old with aging pipes that can cause chronic water problems, even if the water that supplies the park is clean when it enters the system. Jake Freeman, the engineering director at Central States Water Resources, a Missouri-based private utility company that specializes in taking over small water systems in 11 states, said substandard and poorly installed pipes are more common to see in mobile home parks. 'A lot of times, it's hard to find the piping in the mobile home parks because if there's any kind of obstruction, they just go around it,' he said. ''It's like spaghetti laying in the ground.' After a major winter storm devastated Texas in 2021, Freeman said, the company found pipes at parks it had taken over that 'were barely buried. Some of them weren't buried.' When pipes break and leak, the pressure drops and contaminants can enter water lines. In addition, parks sometimes have stagnant water — where pipes dead-end or water sits unused — that increases the risk of bacterial growth. Rebecca Sadosky is public water supply chief in North Carolina, where mobile home communities make up close to 40% of all water systems. She said owners don't always realize when they buy a park that they could also be running a mini utility. 'I think they don't know that they're getting into the water business,' she said. Utah is a rare state that enforces safe drinking water standards even within mobile home parks that get their water from another provider, according to AP's survey of states. A small number of other states like New Hampshire have taken some steps to address water safety in these parks, but in most states frustrated residents may have no one to turn to for help beyond the park owner. In Colorado, when Silva asked officials who enforces safe drinking water rules, 'I just couldn't get clear answers.' Steve Via, director of federal regulations at the American Water Works Association utility group, argued against regulating mobile home parks that get their water from a municipality, saying that would further stretch an already taxed oversight system. And if those parks are regulated, what's to stop the rules from extending to the privately owned pipes in big apartment buildings — the line has to be drawn somewhere, he said. Via said residents of parks where an owner refuses to fix water problems have options, including going to their local health departments, suing or complaining publicly. Silva is among the advocates who fought for years to change Colorado's rules before they succeeded in passing a law in 2023 that requires water testing in every mobile home park. It gives health officials the ability to go beyond federal law to address taste, color and smell that can make people afraid to drink their water, even when it's not a health risk. The state is now a leader in protecting mobile home park tap water. Smith, the Utah environmental scientist, said stopping the contaminated water flowing into the mobile home park and connecting it to a safe supply felt like a career highlight. He said Utah's culture of making do with scarce water contributed to a willingness for stronger testing and regulations than the federal government requires. 'There's sort of the communal nature of like, everybody should have access to clean water,' he said. 'It seems to transcend political ideologies; it seems to transcend religious ideologies.'
Los Angeles Times
4 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Letters to the Editor: Congress requires fundamental reforms to regain its relevance to the people
To the editor: The story of President Trump chiseling away at Congress' power is hardly news anymore ('With gavel in hand, Trump chisels away at the power of a compliant Congress,' July 21). The decline of Congress as an effective institution has been happening for years — slowly at first but accelerating in recent times. What succeeded in the 18th century doesn't address the realities of the 21st. The last and only instance in which Congress declared war before significant hostilities began was in 1812. In today's fast-paced world, it is nearly impossible for more than 500 legislators to make swift, well-informed decisions, especially on matters of national security. Fundamental change is long overdue. For Congress to reclaim its role as an equal partner among the three branches of government, it must be restructured to meet the demands of our era. While the United States is more of a republic than a direct democracy, Congress could — and should — embrace republican principles of delegation and efficiency, particularly in areas like national security. Only through such reforms can Congress regain its relevance and effectively serve the nation. Jack Kaczorowski, Los Angeles .. To the editor: As Lisa Mascaro writes, there is a 'transfer of political power, from Capitol Hill to the White House as a compliant Congress is ceding more and more of its prerogative to the presidency.' What happened to the balance of power? What happened to legislators representing the will of their constituency? Sadly, we are witnessing and feeling the effects of an imperial presidency. His whim is their command. His power overrides the law. Fearful legislators no longer have the well-being of constituents as their guiding principle. The 'No Kings' protests voiced our concerns that authoritarianism should not control our lives and well-being. We continue to hope for justice to restore balance to this democracy, not a kingdom. Lenore Navarro Dowling, Los Angeles
