POLITICS: Carl Heastie removed any doubt he’s a political imbecile – and a driving force for all of NYC’s plight

Now he’s done it.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, normally a man of few words, has made the grave mistake of opening his mouth and revealing what’s behind the blank façade. 

It’s not a pretty sight. 

In doing so, Heastie proved the wisdom of the warning that “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” 

While the suspicions about him have been confirmed, calling Heastie a fool doesn’t capture the significance of what he said and the policy impacts on the life of every New Yorker. 

His declaration that “I just don’t believe raising penalties is ever a deterrent on crime” amounts to a Holy Grail of political imbecility.

Everything bad about New York — the mayhem, the criminal coddling, the cold shoulder for taxpayers — is at least partially a ­result of his strange thinking. 

Heastie and his fellow travelers in Albany and City Hall don’t have a clue about human nature and therefore the necessity of certain punishment that fits the crime. 

His confession lays bare the fact that he is so out of touch with ­reality that he ought to have the decency to slink out of office and into oblivion. 

He’s ostensibly from The Bronx, but might as well be living on the moon.

Otherwise, how can he fail to grasp the obvious fact that people who are locked up are deterred during their time behind bars from committing more crimes? 

And has he never considered the possibility they will be so chastened by their experience in prison that they will go straight when they are eventually ­released? 

That, too, is deterrence. 

Lefty talking point 

Tragically, Heastie’s willful ignorance is standard fare on the left, where a whole generation of the best and the brightest are proving themselves to be lacking even a shred of common sense.

Society to them is nothing more than a game of racial bean counting. 

Yet Heastie is not just another rank-and-file radical bloviating about a Marxist revolution and power to the people.

Because he has a life-or-death grip on every piece of legislation that moves or doesn’t move in Albany, his admission illustrates why lawmakers have allowed and even encouraged the waves of crime and public disorder that are destroying New York. 

The lenient bail laws, the handcuffs on judges, the raising of the age from 16 to 18 for young offenders to be treated as adults — they all play a role in the coddling of criminals and the victimization of the innocent. 

The murder of Police Officer ­Jonathan Diller by a career criminal who along with his partner had racked up at least 35 combined arrests underscores the devastating impact Heastie and his Democrat collaborators are having. 

The demonization of police, the ruinous squeeze on taxpayers, the dumbing down of schools, the obsession with promoting transgenderism are the bitter fruits of the progressive agenda in Washington, Albany and City Hall. 

That agenda includes the shocking levels of antisemitism that emerged on elite college campuses and on city streets after the Hamas terror attack on Israel.

Jew-hatred is not unique to the far left, but is far more common there. 

Heastie made his startling remarks in reaction to a push from Gov. Hochul to crack down on the explosion of retail thefts, which is leading many stores to close and costing employees their jobs. 

Despite the context, there is no reason to believe the speaker’s warped thinking is limited to one category of crime.

His record proves he has applied the same illogic to all kinds of crimes, even violent ones. 

Does he really care? 

“We care very deeply about that,” he said of the epidemic of shoplifting in stores ranging from pharmacies to high-end clothing and jewelry stores, many of which have involved assaults on workers. 

Yet the more he talked, the more it was clear he doesn’t actually care that much about victims.

His tortured logic sounds as if he’s in a futile search for a social program that will prevent people from turning to a life of crime — without penalizing those who do. 

“If you just keep dealing with the penalties, what happens after people get arrested? You’re still worrying about what happens after something has already happened,” Heastie said. 

Calling Professor Irwin Corey! 

It sounds as if Heastie does not believe that the threat of serious consequences is a fundamental part of prevention.

If that’s his position, I’d like to hear him name a single society that survived for long when there was crime without punishment. 

There aren’t any, and to believe in some kumbaya on earth is to be stupefyingly ignorant about ­human nature. 

The sad reality is that most people, even those who consider themselves honest, would rob a bank if there was no risk of punishment. 

I might even be tempted to join them! 

Meanwhile, thanks to extremists like Heastie, New York is already proving the point that crime actually creates poverty.

We are still relatively early in this leftist revolution of our history, laws and culture, but already some impacts are clear. 

More taxpayers fleeing 

Among them is the hemorrhaging of taxpayers, both the wealthy and middle class, who have decided that New York is no longer worth the price, the hassle and the danger. 

Studies show the outflow includes black families, too, with the overall black population declining. 

A friend once made the point that when a two-parent family with a combined income of $300,000 or so leaves the city, the impact on the neighborhood is like that of a small business ­closing. 

The supermarkets, delis, pharmacies, dry cleaners and other stores where they shopped lost good customers. Real estate lost a potential buyer or renter and local schools lost students. 

Multiply that family’s departure by the tens of thousands and you get a sense of what has been happening in recent years.

And there is no end in sight, thanks to Heastie’s ilk in Albany and City Hall. 

Because they are so bizarre, Heastie’s words could become legendary.

They capture the ethos of an era in the same way that ­George Washington Plunkitt captured the rampant thievery of the Tammany Hall crowd. 

Plunkitt, also a Democrat and long-term member of the state Senate, tried valiantly to claim that there was a difference between honest and dishonest graft.

He left for posterity a book of his thoughts, called “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall,” in which he made his famous confession that “I Seen My Opportunities and I Took ’Em.” 

Perhaps at this very moment, an ambitious agent or publisher believes there is bestseller potential in a collection of Heastie’s musings. 

My suggestion for a title: “An ­Idiot’s Guide to Politics”