“Make the customer think he’s getting laid when he’s getting fucked.” -- The first entry in “Portable Bloomberg,” a booklet compiled by a former employee of Michael Bloomberg.
The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit & Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg
Showing posts with label Michael Bloomberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Bloomberg. Show all posts
Bloomberg is not your guy.
"In total, 1,806 people were arrested during the [Republican] convention. Some were legal observers and members of the press. Some were mere bystanders who unwittingly encountered protesters while walking in the city and got swept up in indiscriminate mass arrests. 'I was just walking by –– I had a receipt from a store that I had bought something from on that street' V'epa Majamutar told Democracy Now some 12 hours after her arrest. 'All of a sudden the street basically just gets cordoned off and we cannot move. So before I was arrested I was just standing still because that's all we could really do. And then they just started putting handcuffs on people. They gave us no warning.'"
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Michael Bloomberg presided over dubious arrests: What Bloomberg Did to Peaceful Protesters by Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic)
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Michael Bloomberg presided over dubious arrests: What Bloomberg Did to Peaceful Protesters by Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic)
You must never vote for Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg, to borrow a line from Elizabeth Warren, is running in the wrong presidential primary.
Reading List:
✓ “In 2002, the first year Bloomberg was mayor, 97,296 of these stops were recorded. They surged during Bloomberg’s tenure to a peak of 685,724 stops in 2011, near the end of his third term. Nearly 90 percent of the people who were stopped and frisked were innocent of any wrongdoing”: You Must Never Vote for Bloomberg by Charles M. Blow (New York Times)
✓ Michael Bloomberg’s Right-Wing Views on Foreign Policy Make Him a Perfect Candidate for the Republican Nomination by Mehdi Hasan (The Intercept)
✓ The surging Democratic presidential candidate and Bloomberg LP have fielded nearly 40 sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits over decades: Why Is Bloomberg's Long History of Egregious Sexism Getting a Pass? by Laura Bassett (GQ)
Disparaging comments. Demeaning jokes. As the mogul reportedly considers a 2020 presidential run, it remains an open question whether his long-alleged history of undermining women will affect his chances: ‘I’d Do Her’: Mike Bloomberg and the Underbelly of #MeToo by Megan Garber (The Atlantic)
✓ "We need to confront the shameful legacy of discrimination, not lie about it like Mike Bloomberg": Warren Slams Bloomberg for Blaming 2008 Financial Meltdown On End of Redlining Policy by Julia Conley (Common Dreams)
✓ Bloomberg education plan to promote charter school expansion by Carl Campanile (New York Post)
✓ Michael Bloomberg On Marijuana: Legalizing 'Another Addictive Narcotic' Is Perhaps the 'Stupidest Thing Anybody Has Ever Done' by Tim Marcin (Newsweek)
✓ I’m an art teacher. Mike’s policies gutted my school. During those years, I was lucky to have enough copy paper for my students to draw on. How Bloomberg Trashed Public Education in New York by Jake Jacobs (The Progressive)
✓ The billionaire’s long history of contradictions, gaffes, and self-owns, in his own words: A List of Things Bloomberg Actually Said About Fat People, Rape, George W. Bush, and J.Lo by Tim Murphy (Mother Jones)
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Reading List:
✓ “In 2002, the first year Bloomberg was mayor, 97,296 of these stops were recorded. They surged during Bloomberg’s tenure to a peak of 685,724 stops in 2011, near the end of his third term. Nearly 90 percent of the people who were stopped and frisked were innocent of any wrongdoing”: You Must Never Vote for Bloomberg by Charles M. Blow (New York Times)
✓ Michael Bloomberg’s Right-Wing Views on Foreign Policy Make Him a Perfect Candidate for the Republican Nomination by Mehdi Hasan (The Intercept)
✓ The surging Democratic presidential candidate and Bloomberg LP have fielded nearly 40 sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits over decades: Why Is Bloomberg's Long History of Egregious Sexism Getting a Pass? by Laura Bassett (GQ)
Disparaging comments. Demeaning jokes. As the mogul reportedly considers a 2020 presidential run, it remains an open question whether his long-alleged history of undermining women will affect his chances: ‘I’d Do Her’: Mike Bloomberg and the Underbelly of #MeToo by Megan Garber (The Atlantic)
✓ "We need to confront the shameful legacy of discrimination, not lie about it like Mike Bloomberg": Warren Slams Bloomberg for Blaming 2008 Financial Meltdown On End of Redlining Policy by Julia Conley (Common Dreams)
✓ Bloomberg education plan to promote charter school expansion by Carl Campanile (New York Post)
✓ Michael Bloomberg On Marijuana: Legalizing 'Another Addictive Narcotic' Is Perhaps the 'Stupidest Thing Anybody Has Ever Done' by Tim Marcin (Newsweek)
✓ I’m an art teacher. Mike’s policies gutted my school. During those years, I was lucky to have enough copy paper for my students to draw on. How Bloomberg Trashed Public Education in New York by Jake Jacobs (The Progressive)
✓ The billionaire’s long history of contradictions, gaffes, and self-owns, in his own words: A List of Things Bloomberg Actually Said About Fat People, Rape, George W. Bush, and J.Lo by Tim Murphy (Mother Jones)
From the Elders of Zion desk:
Tough time for anti-semites with a political bent. Not possible to hate Sheldon Adelson, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros at the same time. One of them is your man.
2008: Bloomberg's not-so-independent run
Bloomberg Moves Closer to Running for President
(Headline, The New York Times, 2007-12-31)
You gotta love it. First Mike Bloomberg was going to run an independent candidacy for president if the Democratic and Republican nominees had "high negatives," i.e., when the conventional wisdom was that it would be Clinton vs Giuliani. Now he's going to jump in if the nominees are "poles apart," i.e., now that it looks like Huckabee vs Edwards or Obama.
So it's safe to say, he wants to run, and he'll find a reason.
The thing is, though, a campaign against Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani made some sense; they are divisive figures with stratospheric negatives. An independent candidate in that situation might hope to be more than a spoiler, as Ross Perot was for George H.W. Bush in 1992.
On the other hand, in many ways Mike Huckabee and John Edwards aren't poles apart, aside from that 40-point IQ spread: for example, both have made ending poverty central to their campaigns, and each inclines naturally to positive campaigning. Both are well-liked, and it is difficult to imagine an independent succeeding against attractive red and/or blue party candidates, as Ross Perot found out when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1992.
Plus, Barack Obama is a bigger conciliator and compromiser than Bloomberg will ever dream of being, so why oppose him?
Anyway, it looks like the Establishment that was displaced by the Bush radicals intends to use Bloomberg to restore the ancien régime (see below, A disempowered Establishment makes its move).
So much for the principled moderate.
(Headline, The New York Times, 2007-12-31)
You gotta love it. First Mike Bloomberg was going to run an independent candidacy for president if the Democratic and Republican nominees had "high negatives," i.e., when the conventional wisdom was that it would be Clinton vs Giuliani. Now he's going to jump in if the nominees are "poles apart," i.e., now that it looks like Huckabee vs Edwards or Obama.
So it's safe to say, he wants to run, and he'll find a reason.
The thing is, though, a campaign against Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani made some sense; they are divisive figures with stratospheric negatives. An independent candidate in that situation might hope to be more than a spoiler, as Ross Perot was for George H.W. Bush in 1992.
On the other hand, in many ways Mike Huckabee and John Edwards aren't poles apart, aside from that 40-point IQ spread: for example, both have made ending poverty central to their campaigns, and each inclines naturally to positive campaigning. Both are well-liked, and it is difficult to imagine an independent succeeding against attractive red and/or blue party candidates, as Ross Perot found out when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1992.
Plus, Barack Obama is a bigger conciliator and compromiser than Bloomberg will ever dream of being, so why oppose him?
Anyway, it looks like the Establishment that was displaced by the Bush radicals intends to use Bloomberg to restore the ancien régime (see below, A disempowered Establishment makes its move).
So much for the principled moderate.
2008: A disempowered Establishment makes its move
David Broder, Bloviator-in-Chief at The Washington Post, is reporting that a "bipartisan group" is considering backing an independent run for the White House, possibly by New York City's mayor, the rare politician who could single-handedly fund such an operation.
The question arises whether the threat to unleash an independent challenger is genuine or if the specter of a Bloomberg candidacy is being used to frighten the big party nominees into line behind the restoration of a deposed Establishment after eight years of policy excesses and abuses of power by the Bush-Cheney radicals. The self-described "centrists" may also hope to prevent American voters, revolted by the corruption and incompetence of the current presidency, from "going too far" and electing a populist peace candidate who will not understand that what is needed is not a change of policy but a change of management.
With the possibility that the reliably status quo candidacies of Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton could be dead as early as next week, the Establishment is waking up to the likelihood that the next president -- be he John Edwards, Barack Obama, Mike Huckebee or Mitt Romney -- may not be as committed as they are to restoring the reins of American power to their dead hands.
How hard these Bush years must have been on them, exiled to endowed chairs on provincial college campuses with nothing to do but watch "Empires Behaving Badly" videos.
As reported by Broder, the group invading Norman next week is notable for its lack of what Bill Clinton might describe as "change agents:"
For his part, Bloomberg, who has been flirting all year with the idea of running as an independent, may see the meeting as an opportunity to use those who would use him. "As mayor, he has seen far too often how hyperpartisanship in Washington has gotten in the way of making progress on a host of issues," said Bloomberg's press secretary, Stu Loeser. "He looks forward to sitting down and discussing this with other leaders."
Nunn and Cohen went out of their way on talk television this morning to say that the meeting is not intended to generate an independent candidacy, but is about the need to rebuild and reconfigure our military forces, about the risks from nuclear proliferation and terrorism, and about restoring U.S. credibility in the world.
Funnily enough, two of the candidates most likely to be the nominees, Edwards and Huckabee, are issues-oriented and unlikely to be particularly partisan as campaigners or as president. I suspect that either one of them will welcome the support of politicians from any party who are willing to sign on to the particulars of their respective programs.
Voters should be suspicious of a call for a "government of national unity" that is devoid of content, as if the only thing that's important is whether we can't all just get along. If Nunn and his comrades want to get behind someone who supports universal health care and reduced military spending, as the majority of the American people do, it might be easier to take them seriously. But power, unfortunately, not the quality of the lives of Americans, is what is behind rhetoric that equates partisan divisions during what they inflate to "a time of national challenge" with the difficulties faced by Great Britain during World War II.
It's difficult not to conclude that Nunn et al will be content to accept as worthy of the office any White House aspirant who indicates his willingness to welcome them back to the table.
The rest of the story: The Washington Post
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a potential independent candidate for president, has scheduled a meeting next week with a dozen leading Democrats and Republicans, who will join him in challenging the major-party contenders to spell out their plans for forming a "government of national unity" to end the gridlock in Washington.The effort is being led by, among others, former U.S. senators Sam Nunn and David Boren. In a letter sent to those summoned to the Jan. 7 session, the once-powerful solons said that "our political system is, at the least, badly bent and many are concluding that it is broken at a time where America must lead boldly at home and abroad. Partisan polarization is preventing us from uniting to meet the challenges that we must face if we are to prevent further erosion in America's power of leadership and example."
Those who will be at the Jan. 7 session at the University of Oklahoma say that if the likely nominees of the two parties do not pledge to "go beyond tokenism" in building an administration that seeks national consensus, they will be prepared to back Bloomberg or someone else in a third-party campaign for president.
The question arises whether the threat to unleash an independent challenger is genuine or if the specter of a Bloomberg candidacy is being used to frighten the big party nominees into line behind the restoration of a deposed Establishment after eight years of policy excesses and abuses of power by the Bush-Cheney radicals. The self-described "centrists" may also hope to prevent American voters, revolted by the corruption and incompetence of the current presidency, from "going too far" and electing a populist peace candidate who will not understand that what is needed is not a change of policy but a change of management.
With the possibility that the reliably status quo candidacies of Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton could be dead as early as next week, the Establishment is waking up to the likelihood that the next president -- be he John Edwards, Barack Obama, Mike Huckebee or Mitt Romney -- may not be as committed as they are to restoring the reins of American power to their dead hands.
How hard these Bush years must have been on them, exiled to endowed chairs on provincial college campuses with nothing to do but watch "Empires Behaving Badly" videos.
As reported by Broder, the group invading Norman next week is notable for its lack of what Bill Clinton might describe as "change agents:"
Conveners of the meeting include such prominent Democrats as former senators Sam Nunn (Ga.), Charles S. Robb (Va.) and David L. Boren (Okla.), and former presidential candidate Gary Hart. Republican organizers include Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), former party chairman Bill Brock, former senator John Danforth (Mo.) and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman.It may be lulling that Boren, who will host the gathering as Sooner president, asserted to Broder that the meet "is not a gathering to urge any one person to run for president or to say there necessarily ought to be an independent option. But if we don't see a refocusing of the campaign on a bipartisan approach, I would feel I would want to encourage an independent candidacy."
The list of acceptances suggests that the group could muster the financial and political firepower to make the threat of such a candidacy real. Others who have indicated that they plan to attend the one-day session include William S. Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in the Clinton administration; Alan Dixon, a former Democratic senator from Illinois; Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator from Florida; Jim Leach, a former Republican congressman from Iowa; Susan Eisenhower, a political consultant and granddaughter of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower; David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency; and Edward Perkins, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.Honestly, weren't you just as happy when you thought that most of these people were gone for good?
For his part, Bloomberg, who has been flirting all year with the idea of running as an independent, may see the meeting as an opportunity to use those who would use him. "As mayor, he has seen far too often how hyperpartisanship in Washington has gotten in the way of making progress on a host of issues," said Bloomberg's press secretary, Stu Loeser. "He looks forward to sitting down and discussing this with other leaders."
Nunn and Cohen went out of their way on talk television this morning to say that the meeting is not intended to generate an independent candidacy, but is about the need to rebuild and reconfigure our military forces, about the risks from nuclear proliferation and terrorism, and about restoring U.S. credibility in the world.
Funnily enough, two of the candidates most likely to be the nominees, Edwards and Huckabee, are issues-oriented and unlikely to be particularly partisan as campaigners or as president. I suspect that either one of them will welcome the support of politicians from any party who are willing to sign on to the particulars of their respective programs.
Voters should be suspicious of a call for a "government of national unity" that is devoid of content, as if the only thing that's important is whether we can't all just get along. If Nunn and his comrades want to get behind someone who supports universal health care and reduced military spending, as the majority of the American people do, it might be easier to take them seriously. But power, unfortunately, not the quality of the lives of Americans, is what is behind rhetoric that equates partisan divisions during what they inflate to "a time of national challenge" with the difficulties faced by Great Britain during World War II.
"Electing a president based solely on the platform or promises of one party is not adequate for this time," Boren said. "Until you end the polarization and have bipartisanship, nothing else matters, because one party simply will block the other from acting."The most telling indication of the group's intentions comes from former senator Cohen, however. "The important goal all of us share," he said, "is to get government back to the center." In plain English this means, "we're going to wrest power from the Bushite whackos and take it safely back in our hands, where it belongs."
It's difficult not to conclude that Nunn et al will be content to accept as worthy of the office any White House aspirant who indicates his willingness to welcome them back to the table.
The rest of the story: The Washington Post
2008: GOP Hopes Hang on Huckabee
I have been saying for some months that there is only one likely Republican nominee: the Other Man from Hope.
Christian conservatives are not alone in feeling uncomfortable with the idea of a president who is a practicing Mormon, and Mitt Romney's prospects are not enhanced by the image he has contrived of a man with no ideas or beliefs that aren't fungible, that, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there is no there there. And, the polls notwithstanding, the prospect that the ethically challenged, socially moderate, thrice-married, cross-dressing, one-issue Rudy Giuliani would be the GOP candidate, while entertaining, was preposterous. But if not the cult member from Massachusetts nor the whacko from New York, then who? The John McCain of 2000 would have mowed down this year's stunted crop of Republican presidential wannabes, but the latter McCain is too compromised, too burdened by his support of Bush's occupation of Iraq, and probably too old, to seize the prize.
Unlike the Democrats, any one of whom would make a credible candidate, the only Republicans willing to waste their time trying to live down George W. Bush's record are, with one exception, third rate back-benchers (Tom Tancredo) and ideologues (Ron Paul). The exception, of course, is Mike Huckabee, an out-of-work former governor who had everything needed to be a viable candidate -- a modest, unassuming personality, an engaging wit, a natural constituency within his party, a moderate record in office (he actually may be that elusive political Bigfoot, the heretofore chimerical compassionate conservative) -- except money. The inadequacies of the three major candidates encouraged Republicans to forage elsewhere for a leader -- thus the under-amped entrance by Fred Thompson, but there was really nobody else to lead the band than the bass-playing former minister from Arkansas.
Huckabee, despite his new poll numbers, doesn't have a lock on the nomination, though. He's still way behind in the money game, although their are signs that he is enjoying a fund-raising surge. His lack of foreign policy experience is a liability. The party's anti-tax ideologues think he's a closet New Dealer. There are political skeletons in his armoire, including a Willie Horton-ish case of a gubernatorial pardon gone bad (parenthetically, I find it painful to watch progressives gleefully deploying the same techniques against Huckabee that the perfidious George H.W. Bush campaign used to smear the admirable Mike Dukakis -- surely it would be better politics to decry Huckabee's inexperience and discredit his off-the-wall economic ideas -- among other things, he'd replace the progressive income tax with a national sales tax -- than to further legitimize gutter politics). And Romney isn't out of the race -- most of Huckabee's surge has come from Giuliani, whose candidacy has begun to circle the bowl.
But as I argued a couple of months ago (Déjà vu all over again?), this agonizingly protracted and criminally costly nominating process will have been worth enduring if it comes down at last to a contest between John Edwards and Mike Huckabee, with vice presidential candidates of the caliber of, say, Bill Richardson and Chuck Hagel. Such a competition would be issues-oriented and civil out of all proportion to our custom, with the voter permitted to choose between clear and contrasting visions of the nation's future, both -- surprising in itself -- focused in their way on making the American Dream available to everyone. In contrast, a brawl between Hillary Clinton and Giuliani/Romney, I fear, would be muddled and brutish in the manner to which we are so painfully habituated, with an outcome unlikely to disturb the rest of even the lightest sleeper in the luxuriant bed of the status quo.
An Edwards-Huckabee match would also discourage New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, from declaring (not necessarily a good thing: the mayor in his own way can be relied on to lay a soothing hand on the fevered brow of our politics), since a contest between between candidates of modest mien and low negatives would make it unlikely his independent run could exceed that of a Ross Perot-style spoiler.
Be sure to read Frank Rich's The Republicans Find Their Obama in yesterday's New York Times for a fuller discussion of the Huckabee phenomenon.
See also, New poll shows big shake-up in GOP race (CNN, 2007-12-10)
Christian conservatives are not alone in feeling uncomfortable with the idea of a president who is a practicing Mormon, and Mitt Romney's prospects are not enhanced by the image he has contrived of a man with no ideas or beliefs that aren't fungible, that, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there is no there there. And, the polls notwithstanding, the prospect that the ethically challenged, socially moderate, thrice-married, cross-dressing, one-issue Rudy Giuliani would be the GOP candidate, while entertaining, was preposterous. But if not the cult member from Massachusetts nor the whacko from New York, then who? The John McCain of 2000 would have mowed down this year's stunted crop of Republican presidential wannabes, but the latter McCain is too compromised, too burdened by his support of Bush's occupation of Iraq, and probably too old, to seize the prize.
Unlike the Democrats, any one of whom would make a credible candidate, the only Republicans willing to waste their time trying to live down George W. Bush's record are, with one exception, third rate back-benchers (Tom Tancredo) and ideologues (Ron Paul). The exception, of course, is Mike Huckabee, an out-of-work former governor who had everything needed to be a viable candidate -- a modest, unassuming personality, an engaging wit, a natural constituency within his party, a moderate record in office (he actually may be that elusive political Bigfoot, the heretofore chimerical compassionate conservative) -- except money. The inadequacies of the three major candidates encouraged Republicans to forage elsewhere for a leader -- thus the under-amped entrance by Fred Thompson, but there was really nobody else to lead the band than the bass-playing former minister from Arkansas.
Huckabee, despite his new poll numbers, doesn't have a lock on the nomination, though. He's still way behind in the money game, although their are signs that he is enjoying a fund-raising surge. His lack of foreign policy experience is a liability. The party's anti-tax ideologues think he's a closet New Dealer. There are political skeletons in his armoire, including a Willie Horton-ish case of a gubernatorial pardon gone bad (parenthetically, I find it painful to watch progressives gleefully deploying the same techniques against Huckabee that the perfidious George H.W. Bush campaign used to smear the admirable Mike Dukakis -- surely it would be better politics to decry Huckabee's inexperience and discredit his off-the-wall economic ideas -- among other things, he'd replace the progressive income tax with a national sales tax -- than to further legitimize gutter politics). And Romney isn't out of the race -- most of Huckabee's surge has come from Giuliani, whose candidacy has begun to circle the bowl.
But as I argued a couple of months ago (Déjà vu all over again?), this agonizingly protracted and criminally costly nominating process will have been worth enduring if it comes down at last to a contest between John Edwards and Mike Huckabee, with vice presidential candidates of the caliber of, say, Bill Richardson and Chuck Hagel. Such a competition would be issues-oriented and civil out of all proportion to our custom, with the voter permitted to choose between clear and contrasting visions of the nation's future, both -- surprising in itself -- focused in their way on making the American Dream available to everyone. In contrast, a brawl between Hillary Clinton and Giuliani/Romney, I fear, would be muddled and brutish in the manner to which we are so painfully habituated, with an outcome unlikely to disturb the rest of even the lightest sleeper in the luxuriant bed of the status quo.
An Edwards-Huckabee match would also discourage New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, from declaring (not necessarily a good thing: the mayor in his own way can be relied on to lay a soothing hand on the fevered brow of our politics), since a contest between between candidates of modest mien and low negatives would make it unlikely his independent run could exceed that of a Ross Perot-style spoiler.
Be sure to read Frank Rich's The Republicans Find Their Obama in yesterday's New York Times for a fuller discussion of the Huckabee phenomenon.
See also, New poll shows big shake-up in GOP race (CNN, 2007-12-10)
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