Pointing to his work on gun safety, obesity and smoking cessation, [former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg] said with a grin: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”Really. It's possible to buy your way into Heaven, now? Kind of like selling indulgences, I guess.
But the article was full of blog-title fodder, such as:
You Keep Using That Term "Grass-Roots". I Don't Think That Means What You Think It Means.I imagine that Bloomberg's top-down grass-roots organizations are going to be of little or no effect. Throughout much of the country, it will be bandied about that Bloomie's groups are operating at the will of a former NYC mayor whose signature achievement was a failed attempt to ban big cups of soda pop. I would hazard a guess that you'll see far more politicians running away from Bloomberg's groups than you will see embracing them. Most readers of this blog could probably toss together a storyboard for a 30-second anti-Bloomberg ad in no time.
But hey, it's his money. Even though $50 million would fill a bunch of food pantries or provide heating assistance or provide college scholarship aid to a hell of a lot of deserving students or any other thing like that there..
He thinks he's bought his ticket to heaven. A poorer man might be sent to a hospital for evaluation on his delusions, but money apparently buys a pass there, too.
Well said. And yes the $$ could be put to a MUCH better use...
ReplyDeleteSo the NRA spends about $4 million every two years in contributions, and spent about $19 million in 2012 on general electioneering. That could have been better used too...
ReplyDeleteNow, having said that, I'm just wondering why we tolerate the buying of laws and votes (either way) in a way very similar to the 1890's. Is the press now complicit in the dumbing down of America, or have we become so divided that we don't care...as long as we have our people in power?
Either way, the result is revolution or collapse.
The press no longer works for individual publishers who own the newspapers and television stations. It's almost all large corporate ownership. Those corporations have interests in keeping the power structure satisfied, lest the politicians take too great an interest in them.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, it's all corrupt. Bloomberg and his analogues on the right, the Koch brothers, are just symptoms of the rot.