The cowardice that courses through the American political system is on display every day. Cowards who won’t stand up to the rich and the powerful who are just voraciously stripping every dime and dollar they can find from the hides of the people.

   Andrew Cuomo is right up front.Andrew Cuomo will be now feted by the lazy press as either "courageous" or "tough", having now negotiated a budget deal:

Capping weeks of secretive negotiations and intense political jockeying, Gov, Andrew M. Cuomo and leaders of the Legislature on Sunday announced a $132.5 billion budget agreement that would cut overall spending, impose no major new taxes and begin a long-term overhaul of New York State’s bloated Medicaid programs.

   None of the press will call him what he really has shown himself to be: a coward. Any political leader who thinks first about his political career and second about the poor, the elderly, school children is a coward. And he isn’t even a very impressive coward–all he had to do was stand tough against some pretty weak political leadership, people who were not willing to shut the state down until, at the very least, the cowardly Governor was willing to demand that millionaires in the state pay a little more to pay, say, for 105 senior centers to stay open at a cost of something like $30 million.

   The problem is not, as the moron reporters from the Times write, "bloated Medicaid programs" (I assume the two reporters have some deep resentment to poor people). It is that the political leaders in the state–and, for that matter, the country–do not want to demand that the wealthy pay their fair share. If we had a progressive tax system in this state, there would be no budget "crisis". The only crisis we face is that we are led by a coward.

   Cuomo, the hired-gun-poodle-for-the-rich, cares about one thing, and one thing only: himself. And he has come to the conclusion that his continued political career is in the hands of rich donors and powerful corporate allies–and if he has to pave his political career by walking over the bodies of seniors who will be tossed out of centers, kids that won’t get a decent education and tens of thousands of other workers who won’t get a fair wage, it is a small price to pay.

   If this is the future of the leadership of the Democratic Party–people with no soul who are craven servants to the people who have already ripped off the people for several generations–we are in deep trouble.