Governor Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman hate each other. “The two men are like oil and water,” one of a slew of anonymous sources tells the Times. "And lately fire seems to have been added." The animus between these powerful men is wasting taxpayer time and money, but at least it's produced some titillating tidbits: "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has asked people if they think Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York State, wears eyeliner."
Eyeliner, because, who wears that? GIRLS?
Mr. Cuomo, 56, and Mr. Schneiderman, 59, are cut from decidedly different cloth. Mr. Schneiderman is a liberal product of the Upper West Side of Manhattan who is devoted to yoga. Mr. Cuomo, bred in Queens and apprenticed by a three-term governor, is a workaholic given to tinkering with muscle cars.
Alright, alright, we get it: Schneiderman is a Mozart-loving ficus tree who photosynthesizes Ezra Pound anthologies and almond croissants, while Cuomo is a sweat-drenched horse neck who eats calzones with a trident made of Corvette gearshifts.
The public servants are "girding" for a battle over a $613 million chunk of the settlement the state got from JPMorgan Chase. Schneiderman set up the settlement so that he could use the money to stem the foreclosure crisis in the state and continue to fight big banks. Cuomo wants to use the money for whatever Cuomo wants to use the money for, OK tough guy?
While Schneiderman has won the state hundreds of millions of dollars in pursuing litigation against the inadequately unregulated financial industry, he also made JPMorgan's settlement tax-deductible, costing us money.
Not satisfied with how his former office is being run, Cuomo basically created an agency to do all the things the AG is supposed to do, but Cuomo's Way.
Not long after they both took office, the governor set up a new agency, the Department of Financial Services, that conspicuously overlaps the duties of the attorney general in its pursuit of financial wrongdoing, and installing a loyal and aggressive Cuomo lieutenant to lead it.
Presumably, Cuomo's Department of Spite is also costing us money.
But back to the important stuff:
If the interest of Mr. Cuomo and his team has strayed into chatter about whether the attorney general’s eyes show signs of cosmetic intervention, Mr. Schneiderman has a simple, though little-known, explanation: People told of his condition say he has glaucoma, for which he takes a medication whose published side effects include increased eyelash “thickness” and “darkness.”
In light of this, Cuomo might feel bad for Schneiderman if the governor wasn't, in the words of his libidinous rival, "the dirtiest, nastiest political player out there."
