The continuing education of Eric Adams has reached a crucial moment.
The question before him is whether he’s learned anything from the mistake that threatens to sink his mayoralty.
Unfortunately, the answer appears to be not much.
Or maybe nothing.
Oh wait, there is one thing — the mayor is finding out that trickle-down immigration doesn’t work.
He learned that the hard way, from the leader of suburban Rockland County when Adams vowed he would ship hundreds of uninvited migrants there.
Don’t you dare, County Executive Ed Day fumed, saying he wouldn’t let it happen and that Adams had picked a fight with the wrong guy.
Misplayed his bad hand
And so it goes as Title 42 ends and the feds lose a health provision allowing them to more quickly expel migrants.
The lapse is expected to dramatically increase the already-unsustainable tide of illegal crossers at the southern border and that means there will be additional pressure on New York.
Given recent history, the end of Title 42 is especially worrisome because an overview of the past 10 months reveals how Adams has misplayed the bad hand he was dealt.
Last July, the mayor first complained that some 2,800 migrants who crossed the border had found their way to city shelters.
With about 65,000 migrants here now and more coming every day, a mere 2,800 looks like the good old days.
In fact, even then, the city was stretched beyond its capacity.
Adams noted that while New York City alone has a legal requirement to provide care, he worried that a vast network of existing shelters was already filled with more than 58,000 homeless people and there was no place to put more newcomers.
His instinct was to find someone to blame, a reflex as natural as breathing for politicians, but he picked the wrong person.
Instead of blaming the fellow Democrat in the Oval Office who opened the border and let millions of unvetted illegal crossers into America, Adams conveniently settled on a Republican, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In August, Adams called him “inhumane” for putting migrants “on a bus for the 44-hour ride, very few breaks, no food, no direction and clear information.”
Yet in the next breath, Adams pledged to take care of all those who came, saying, “Our goal is every asylum-seeker that comes to New York, we’re going to give them shelter and support that they need.”
And it turns out he also had quietly invited the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, to send thousands of migrants to New York even as he was attacking Abbott.
By January, the number here hit 42,000, and Adams asked city residents to volunteer their time and help as he pleaded for national assistance.
“We cannot do this alone,” he said.
“The asylum-seeker crisis is a national crisis, and it should not be just for New York City residents. That’s just unfair.”
He was right of course — it is unfair.
But it was unfair to every other city and state, too, because it is the federal government’s job to control immigration.
That is something Adams still refuses to emphasize, and the only conclusion is that he won’t criticize another Democrat.
It’s a bad habit that is apparent with his kid-gloves approach to Albany Dems who have contributed to crime and mayhem in the city through their criminal-coddling laws.
Take the gloves off, mayor.
Hit ’em where it hurts until they help your city.
Faded fantasy
In truth, the mayor has a maddening habit of being consistently inconsistent.
Consider that he recently suggested Abbott is a racist for sending migrants to black-run cities, then turned around and tried to send some of those same migrants to white-run suburbs.
It’s not unreasonable to assume that Adams initially saw the potential for personal political gold in the migrant mess.
Coming during his first year in office, it was a distraction from the relentless drumbeat of crime and he likely assumed he could make a national name for himself among the left by embracing the city’s sanctuary status while passing most of the costs on to Albany and Washington.
It’s nice work if you can get away with it.
And why not, since Adams was so sure of his judgment that he celebrated his election by declaring he would show America how to run a city?
Talk about a faded fantasy.
Skyrocketing costs
But among the reasons his calculation missed the mark is that no fellow Dems in the federal government felt obligated to either stem the migrant tide or pay for it.
State officials have been more encouraging in terms of financial aid, but not nearly to the extent Adams had assumed.
The result is that he has no true partner willing to share the burden and there is no reason to believe that will change.
And what a burden it is.
The city budget office estimates that the two-year cost of the migrants will surpass $4 billion, though an independent analysis says the bill is likely to be less.
But either way, combined with recent labor agreements Adams signed, the migrant tab is helping to create multibillion dollar deficits in coming years.
Something has to give in a city where the astronomical cost of living already is helping to drive away the middle class.
And the true cost of the migrants far exceeds the actual price as big parts of the government are consumed with the details of arranging and providing shelter, health care, food, education and transportation for 60,000 people.
The time and energy of these officials, including police, are finite, and so taxpayers and residents are by definition getting less attention than they were.
The impact on neighborhoods is also a net negative.
Hotels, office buildings, airport hangars — anything with a roof and running water are under consideration for conversion to a shelter.
Even a former police academy building in Manhattan is now stuffed with cots, where mostly single adult men mix with some families and young children.
And now it’s all about to get worse because Biden won’t secure the border and because Adams won’t even blame him.
Crazy NYC ‘fare’y tale
Reader Harold Theurer thinks Gotham’s government is hitting rock bottom, writing: “A city council Democrat is proposing that police distribute pamphlets to fare-beaters that would provide information for discount fare programs.
Thankfully I wasn’t reading this online or my computer would have been destroyed by the mouthful of coffee I spit onto the paper.
“Do these people truly believe that those who break the law actually give a horse’s patoot about the law? Buffoonery!!!! God help us.”
‘Spooky’ Hunter aid
The Central Intelligence Agency “may have assisted in obtaining signatories” for the letter signed by 51 former national security officials discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the House Judiciary and House Intelligence Committees found.
The Deep State gets deeper.
