Cuomo and the Pigs
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The state Republican Party is attacking Andrew Cuomo for hypocrisy because, at the same time the Democratic gubernatorial candidate is trying to portray himself as the most environmentally friendly candidate, the law firm where Mr. Cuomo is of counsel, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, is representing corporate polluters in their battles with the Environmental Protection Agency.
To which we can only say that if Mr. Cuomo shares a law office with any lawyer tasked with defending corporate polluters, it’s the best reason to vote for him that we’ve heard so far. The truth is, the environmental regulations in this country are so onerous, the cost of complying with them is so great, and the enforcement of them is so arbitrary, that all of our potential public officials could use some up-close and personal experience with them, if only to underscore the case for reform.
It’s an issue on which Governor Pataki is vulnerable — he’s been pressing the Environmental Protection Agency to make General Electric spend $500 million on what the writer William Tucker recently called “a quixotic attempt to rid the Hudson of the last traces of a relatively harmless industrial chemical present only in a few parts per million — one ounce in 32 tons or a teaspoon over five acres.”
Alas, whatever wisdom has accumulated among the Superfund lawyers at Fried, Frank, little of it appears to have worn off on Mr. Cuomo. In response to a question from The New York Sun over the weekend, Mr. Cuomo said that he “absolutely” agreed with his brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., when Mr. Kennedy said that big corporate hog farms are more of a threat to America than Osama bin Laden.
Whatever you think of the big hog farms that have emerged as the most fashionable agricultural target of the anti-capitalist left, there’s a certain pig-headedness to this debate. No one is making the essential point that concern about environmental conditions usually follows economic growth. And that the kind of overbearing environmental regulation that the candidates of both parties are agitating for is a surefire way to keep New York’s economy wallowing in the mud.
