The Percoco Verdict, says City Journal’s Bob McManus, shows what happens when the Upstate New York economic strategy is simply picking winners and losers.

There’s an amazingly good article over at City Journal about the Percoco verdict. You won’t find much of anything about the verdict itself or Andrew Cuomo’s “brother” Joe Percoco, though. Rather, the author, Bob McManus, makes the point that what happened to Percoco (which could get reversed on appeal as happened with Sheldon Silver) is illustrative of what happens when the Upstate New York revitalization strategy is nothing more than picking winners, throwing other people’s money at them and expecting graft in return.

McManus gets at the root of the problem with Governor Andrew Cuomo who’ve I labeled Corruptocrat to the chagrin of a few readers. Cuomo is both corrupt and a control freak, facts which have led him to devise economic strategies for Upstate that put him front and center, deciding who, what, how much and what is expected in return. It’s an approach almost guaranteed to end badly and it has—for Joe Percoco and Upstate.

Read more:

http://naturalgasnow.org/percoco-verdict-shows-fruits-pay-play-upstate-strategy/