Cuomo is letting billionaires plan New York's future. It doesn't have to be this way | Zephyr Teachout and Pat Garofalo
The New York governor is replacing elected representatives with private, unaccountable monopolists, and lawmakers across the US are doing the same thing
Last week, New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced that Bill Gates would be responsible for reimagining" New York's education system. Cuomo also asked former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt to lead a panel planning New York's post-Covid tech infrastructure.
As Naomi Klein writes, the appointments of Schmidt and Gates represent a Pandemic Shock Doctrine ... that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up [and] treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent - and highly profitable - no-touch future".
Related: Naomi Klein: How big tech plans to profit from the pandemic
Even before this pandemic, turning to big businesses and their wealthy owners was a common condition of policymaking
Zephyr Teachout is an associate professor at Fordham Law School and the author of Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money
Pat Garofalo is director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of The Billionaire Boondoggle: How Our Politicians Let Corporations and Bigwigs Steal Our Money and Jobs
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