Being from Upstate New York, I grew up seeing politicians participate in pay to play, crony corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse. Considering I’ve had Andrew Cuomo as my governor for my entire adult life, his politicized response to COVID-19, enforcement of authoritarian quarantine orders, and dangerous decision to require nursing homes to admit positive-testing patients was frustrating beyond belief, but not shocking.
As I became an adult in Upstate New York, I always had Nashville on my list of southern safe havens to potentially move to one day (right next to Texas, Florida, and South Carolina). So imagine my shock to find even Nashville’s leadership has acted with serious levels of corruption in this already-difficult time for Americans: new emails have surfaced showing officials from the mayors office decided to keep important statistics from the public when they showed only 80 of the 20,000 local cases were traced back to bars and restaurants. Read here for yourself.
I can’t begin to imagine the anger, frustration, and sadness felt by the small business owners of Nashville who were forced to follow the shut down orders and then received nothing but lies from their representatives when the truth was available. SHAMEFUL!
This is why Turning Point’s vision for America of small government, transparent and ethical leadership, and support of the private sector is so vital: when a crisis hits, we do not want to be relying on corrupt career politicians who do not have our best interest at heart.
