Michael Bloomberg is a great, big piece of
s**t, and I'm gonna tell you why.
Bloomberg is the fetishism of the “pragmatic
center” make manifest.
Every so often, Bloomberg considers a run
for president with the idea being that he's
not a Democrat, not a Republican, sometimes
not an independent, but a technocratic get-the-job-done
type who eschews labels.
That is a very charitable way of saying he
switches party affiliations and goes whichever
way the wind is blowing.
In 2015, concerned that Hillary Clinton's
primary fight pushed her too far to the left
to compete with Senator Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg's
Wall Street friends pushed him to run.
He was even encouraged by Fox head honcho
Rubert Murdoch.
The political pundits' constant advice for
Democrats has been to move to the center.
But he center never stays still.
It moves with the times, and as the Republicans
move further and further right, the “center”
is now right-of-center.
Pundits claim that the problem with both major
parties is that they have moved too far into
their ideological extremes, but in truth,
the Republicans moved to the right, and the
Democrats, in hopes of keeping up, moved to
the right as well.
Enter: Michael Bloomberg.
In a race that already has a “centrist”
as the frontrunner, Bloomberg is here to be
even more centrist, somehow.
The most centrist of all centrists!
But he's not.
He's pretty right-wing, and a lot of Democrats
know this.
As he announced his candidacy, a Morning Consult
poll indicated that he is the most disliked
candidate among the Democratic field.
Nearly 25 percent of likely primary voters
view him unfavorably — the highest disapproval
rating of all the remaining hopefuls in his
party, the poll claims.
Bloomberg, like all billionaires, is concerned
about the medicare plans proposed by Senators
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Such plans would almost certainly raise his
taxes, and with a net worth of a mere 55 BILLION
DOLLARS, this will not stand.
What if he loses half his worth?
Then he'll only have 27.5 billion dollars!
That's only enough money to...end homelessness
in the United States of America – and still
have 7.5 billion dollars left over.
Michael Bloomberg is sticking up for the millionaires
and billionaires.
Poor, subjugated men like Howard Schultz who
thinks that being derided for his wealth hoarding
is tantamount to a slur.
He prefers to be called a “person of means.”
and he can just f**k right off.
Why Michael Bloomberg is running for president
is debatable.
Maybe he's trying to save his fortune.
Maybe it's a vanity project.
Maybe it's a way to shake up the election
to draw attention away from Sanders and Warren,
leading to him eventually endorsing a relative
centrist like Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg.
Maybe he's actually hoping to lose the primaries,
run as an independent and siphon off votes
from whoever ends up being the actual Democratic
candidate to keep Donald Trump in office and
his taxes low.
I don't know.
But what I do know is that Michael Bloomberg
is just terrible.
Let's start with the obvious reason why: [I.
STOP AND FRISK] Michael Bloomberg's tenure
as Mayor of New York City is defined by how
he oversaw policing in the city – most infamously,
“stop and frisk.”
Stop and Frisk is a strategy that allows police
officers to do exactly what it says on the
tin.
To detain someone for questioning on the street,
in public housing projects or in private buildings
where landlords request police patrols.
Prior to this directive, the police still
had incredible power.
They can arrest us, fingerprint us, take our
DNA.
They're allowed to retain our personal information
in their own computer databases, monitor our
movements through cameras placed around the
city, trace our records and car registration,
obtained our phone records, and they all carry
lethal weapons that they have consistently
been proven to use at the slightest provocation.
They can doctor statements and plant evidence
and almost always get away with it.
Across the roads leading from so-called “good
neighborhoods” and “bad neighborhoods,”
police are stationed and are the primary enforcers
of red-lining.
They use these powers to control the poor,
reinforce predominantly white property and
to intimidate minority communities.
Individually, one might believe they are here
to protect us, but as a system, they exist
to protect property under capitalism.
But you know what?
That's a rather broad topic, let's focus on
how Michael Bloomberg gave the police one
more weapon in their already gigantic arsenal.
The Stop and Frisk directive states that officers
are required to have a reasonable belief that
the person is, has been or is about to be
involved in a crime.
However, that determination is made entirely
by the police officer in question.
A rule that says a police officer needs to
think the person on the street is a bad guy
before intimidating and searching them may
as well not exist if there is no actual recourse
for the person on the street.
A rule that limits police officers means nothing
is the police officer can always override
it.
If police officers believe the detainee is
armed, an officer can conduct a frisk by passing
his hands over the person’s outer garments.
Once again, this determination about whether
or not the person on the street is armed is
made by the police officer, which means that
this limitation only exists in theory but
not in practice.
Furthermore, while the suggested manner in
which to frisk is hands over the person's
outer garments, it would be naive to think
that the police always followed that particular
suggestion, instead digging through the pockets.
Police have incredible reach to intimidate
the population for virtually reason.
Under stop and frisk, the NYPD targeted black
and Latino males as young as 13 simply for
living in neighborhoods with high crime rates
or for making “furtive” movements.
This is a loosely defined term that encapsulates
roughly any type of behavior, including but
not limited to looking over a shoulder or
sitting on a bench.
That is not an exaggeration.
That actually came up in court.
Police can search you and harass you if they
see you sitting on a bench.
During Michael Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor
of New York City, police officers stopped
and questioned people under the pretense of
suspicious activity on the street more than
five million times.
So, how did this get started?
Well, the truth is that stop and frisk policies
existed for law enforcement for decades prior,
but Bloomberg oversaw and consistently endorsed
a massive expansion of the policy.
This did not simply happen under his administration
– he publicly supported it.
After taking office in 2002, the number of
stops multiplied by seven.
The vast majority of those searched were young
black and Latino men.
According to the New York Times, in 2009,
black and Latino people in New York were nine
times as likely to be stopped by the police
compared to white residents.
The policy resulted in a series of lawsuits
by black and Latino men.
One man, Nicholas Peart, was held at gunpoint
on his 18th birthday as an officer passed
his hand over the young man’s groin and
buttocks before leaving without any explanation.
This was not an isolated incident, as it was
one of the five times he had been stopped
by police under this policy.
These searches were for weapons that almost
never materialized.
According to the American Civil Liberties
Union, only 14 out of every 10,000 stops conducted
during the Bloomberg era turned up a gun.
In other words, the stops were no better at
producing gun seizures than chance.
Police were as likely to find a gun on whoever
they believed were “suspicious” as they
would if they chose someone's name out of
a hat.
According to the ACLU, Black and Latino people
were more likely be to stopped and frisked,
even though their white counterparts were
twice as likely to be found with a gun.
Bloomberg falsely correlated a fluctuation
in crime stats with the expansion of stop
and frisk, but in reality, crime rates are
affected by more than just police tactics.
If stop and frisk actually had actually directly
lowered the crime rate, then curtailing it
would have increased the crime rate.
However, when stop and frisk was curtailed
in New York City, the crime rate still dropped.
In other words, stop and frisk did not directly
lower the crime rate.
Other factors did.
Stop and frisk was a waste of police manpower
and did nothing but further erode the relationship
between the police and the citizens of New
York.
So, how did it end?
In 2013, a federal judge ruled that policing
under Michael Bloomberg amounted to policies
of “racial profiling” of black and Latino
people.
Bloomberg appealed this decision.
It took another mayor to end stop and frisk
in New York.
During Mr. de Blasio’s first term as mayor,
stops decreased by 76%.
At the same time, crime fell to levels not
seen in the city since the 1950's.
De Blasio agreeing to court-ordered reforms
did not increase crime.
It continued to fall.
The only way to end stop and frisk was for
there to be no more Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Following his tenure as mayor, Bloomberg continued
to defend stop and frisk every time it was
brought up.
In fact, he defended it as recently as this
year.
As he prepared to run for president, he finally
apologized and acknowledged he was wrong.
The timing of this is transparent.
Even though he apologized, he also pivoted
and avoided the topic, stating that nobody
ever asked him about stop and frisk before
he decided to run for president.
This is such an obvious and demonstrable lie.
We all have Google.
You have talked about this endlessly for years.
You know who “asked you” about stop and
frisk?
The courts.
When it asked you to end stop and frisk, and
you appealed the decision so your police could
continue to harass black people, you mummified,
old bastard.
This turnaround on stop and frisk after years
of court battles to protect it and declarations
of innocence is completely disingenuous, and
only a fool would believe that Bloomberg's
heart suddenly grew three sizes on the day
he happened to announce his presidential campaign.
But stop and frisk was not the only heavy-handed
police directive under Bloomberg.
Yeah, I know, but wait!
There's more! [II.
“SCARY FOREIGNERS” and FOREIGN POLICY]
Michael Bloomberg's NYPD spied on mosques,
Muslim communities and Muslim-owned businesses
and restaurants.
A surveillance project was undertaken despite
“no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior.”
This contradicts claims by Bloomberg where
he denied that the NYPD launches investigations
based solely on religion.
"We don’t stop to think about the religion.
We stop to think about the threats and focus
our efforts there."
The police commissioner made a similar denial,
but the report clearly indicates that Muslims
were under heavy surveillance in the city
due solely to being Muslim and not for any
criminal activity.
A secret dossier published by the Associated
Press shows the NYPD both thinking about religion
and singling out a particular group in the
absence of any leads whatsoever.
This wasn't some rogue entity either.
It was part of the NYPD's Demographics Unit,
a group of officers tasked with mapping where
Muslim-Americans lived.
According to The Daily Beast, plain-clothes
officers who investigated Muslims were called
“rakers” – named after the figurative
coals they raked Muslims over.
Those were investigated specific places rather
than specific people were called “mosque-crawlers”
and would monitor sermons.
In addition to profiling Muslim-Americans
and all the bigotry that comes with it, the
Demographics Unit was also a big waste of
time and money.
In all the time it existed, the Demographics
Unit never produced one lead.
Not one.
He also cracked down on Occupy Wall Street
protesters.
Anything that upsets the status quo and anything
that upsets billionaires is the enemy of Michael
Bloomberg.
During a speech at MIT, Bloomberg stated “I
have my own army in the NYPD...”
That's who he is: a man who sees the police
as an oppressive force that he utilizes to
control the population.
So, we have a general idea about where Bloomberg's
politics land in terms of domestic policy.
But what about foreign policy?
Bloomberg not only supported the illegal invasion
and occupation of Iraq, but he also supported
a bizarre and false justification for the
war: the conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein
was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and not
Osama bin Laden.
Some version of this common lie was told by
Vice President Dick Cheney and the talking
heads on Fox News.
In 2007, Bloomberg backed the Bush administration
against congressional Democrats who were trying
to find a timetable for the withdrawal of
US troops from Iraq.
But that's not all.
Bloomberg is a long-standing supporter of
Benjamin Netanyahu, the disgraced Israeli
Prime Minister indicted for fraud.
When Israel assaulted Gaza in 2009 and 2014,
Bloomberg flew to Israel to support the civilian
bombings.
In an interview recently, he once again indicated
his support for bombing hospitals and using
right-wing talking points about Hamas “hiding
in hospitals” to justify the catastrophic
loss of life.
Bloomberg helped launder the reputation of
the crown prince Mohammad bin Salman in March
2018, when he hosted the murderer of Jamal
Khoshoggi in New York and smiled for photos
with him in a Starbucks.
Now, you might think, hey, that's not fair.
That visit happened before the murder and
dismemberment of the journalist.
OK, but has his support changed since then?
Not one bit.
In fact, in September, long after the murder,
Bloomberg sat down for an interview with the
Saudi-owned newspaper, Arab News, where he
lavishly praised the economic reforms made
by Mohammad bin Salman and said that he is
going in the right direction.
No mention of Khashoggi's murder, Saudi Arabia's
war crimes in Yemen, the imprisoned women's
rights activists, torture, beheadings of gay
people or anything like that.
Just...money talk.
Let's get away from the Middle East for a
minute.
What else does Michael Bloomberg believe?
Let's go to the lightning round!
[III.
LIGHTNING ROUND] Alright.
There is so much more.
In the first years of his tenure as mayor,
Bloomberg jumped up a hundred spots on Forbes’s
Billionaires List, the single largest increase
by any individual in the world.
Meanwhile, the same mayor who touted his C.E.O.-style
managerial abilities began to erode the government's
relationships with the city workforce.
His bitter battles with NYC unions eventually
caused a New York Transit Authority strike.
He once unfavorably compared the United Federation
of Teachers to the NRA.
Democrat Bill de Blasio lamented that when
Bloomberg finally left office, he had failed
to resolve labor contracts with 152 of the
city's unions.
In 2004, Bloomberg advocated for the re-election
of George W. Bush.
He also was firmly in favor of the PATRIOT
ACT, which allows greater state surveillance.
Oh yeah, and Michael Bloomberg's policies
directly contributed to the explosion of the
homeless problem in New York.
In 2013, City data showed that there were
more than 52,000 homeless people residing
each night in the municipal shelter system,
up 69% since Bloomberg took office.
This is the largest number of homeless people
in NYC since the City began keeping records
more than three decades ago.
This record-high shelter population includes
more than 22,000 homeless children.
And the number of homeless families has increased
by 80% since Bloomberg took office.
What did Bloomberg say about this?
Well, he evaded and used some half-truths.
He claimed that NYC has a lower rate of “street
homelessness” than other many other major
US cities, but that doesn't mean it has a
lower rate of homelessness altogether.
The reason “street homelessness” is lower
is because NYC has the legal right to shelter,
unlike any other city in the US.
This is not because of Bloomberg, of course,
it's thanks to legal victories won by Coalition
for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society.
The statistics showing the increase of homelessness
under Bloomberg is undeniable.
So, how did this happen?
Bloomberg took away permanent housing resources
from homeless families, which drove the shelter
census to an all-time high.
Bloomberg cut off homeless families from priority
access to public housing apartments and Section
8 vouchers – permanent housing resources
that had successfully helped move tens of
thousands of homeless children and families
from shelters to stable housing under three
previous mayoral administrations.
They replaced those programs only with short-term
subsidies that the Coalition for the homeless
called “a revolving door back to homelessness
for thousands of families.”
When asked about a homeless child that made
the news in New York, Bloomberg offered only
this: “That’s just the way God works.
Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of
us are not.”
Yikes.
So, how about Bloomberg and women's issues?
Bloomberg has long been accused of making
offensive and belittling remarks about women's
appearances and sexuality.
According to Business Insider, he has faced
scrutiny over remarks attributed to him in
a booklet with quotes presumably made by himself
called ''Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom
of Michael Bloomberg.”
It features a number of misogynistic, racist,
and homophobic jokes.
One quote attributed to Bloomberg read, "If
women wanted to be appreciated for their brains,
they'd go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale's."
He avoided confirming whether or not he actually
said that and berated journalists who questioned
him about it.
Now, you think, oh big deal, he's just kinda
gross.
Well, it's actually more than that.
Last year, Bloomberg questioned the #MeToo
movement, telling the New York Times that
the battle against sexual assault has gone
too far.
He also defended Charlie Rose shortly after
he was fired for sexual harassment.
There is more.
There is so much more, including Bloomberg's
history of not believing women when they come
forward about being assaulted.
But...let's wrap up.
Michael Bloomberg is so overtly vile that
he seems like a caricature of a billionaire
that you see in movies and TV.
Instead of taxing the rich, he has recently
advocated changes that will effectively tax
the POOR.
That's how much of a billionaire caricature
he is.
He oppresses minorities, has a far-too-cozy
relationship with the police, treats women
like objects, actively harms the poor and
has no firm ideology except maintaining his
own power and wealth.
Bloomberg's policies are so out of line with
Democrats – even some centrist Democrats
– that he has opted not to join the debates.
He's doing this by not taking donations since
he knows full well that donation counts are
part of the debate qualifications.
This gives him an out.
He's clever enough but still transparent.
Michael Bloomberg probably won't win the Democratic
nomination.
He's polling fifth, and centrists have already
settled on their milquetoast candidate.
But his presence could disrupt the primaries
or even the general election in other ways
mentioned earlier.
The best way to take away his power to do
that see through his bulls**t.
