Michael R. Bloomberg is actively considering a campaign for president as a Democrat in 2020, concluding that it would be his only path to the White House...It used to be that mega-millionaires and billionaires with more money than they knew what to do with bought ranches and farms. Now, instead of running hobby ranches, they're running for the presidency?
What do we then get in 2024; the winning billionaire from 2020 versus Jeff Bezos?
If this country has gotten to the point that the presidency is being held by billionaires, whose main interest is in preserving and increasing their wealth, then the system is rotten beyond reasonable repair.
For one thing, it's pretty clear that the recovery from the Great Recession has been limited mostly to the investor class. Oh, sure, there're jobs again, but wages have been largely stagnant.
One thing that Trump grabbed onto was that the system has failed those who aren't rich. Trump, of course, has done nothing other than work to stamp harder on those who work for a living.
Trump is a symptom of how rotten things have become. So is Bloomberg. Neither one is a cure.
I don't know where we go from here.
Perhaps some Pink Floyd has the answer...
ReplyDelete“And far from flying high in clear blue skies. I'm spiraling down to the hole in the ground where I hide...”
Sorry for the throughly depressing quote, but it just gets worse after that, as apparently the Presidency is threatening to become.
I don't know who the oligarchs think will spend money if there is not a middle class. Because they apparently want a return to feudalism.
ReplyDeleteNew amendment idea:
ReplyDeleteOnly high school teachers will be allowed to run for political office including the Presidency.
Sick and tired of politics being a rich man's game. Time to let the true civic leaders of our nation take the reins.
Paul, since they have to deal with Congress, maybe Elementary School Teachers? Or Kindergarten?
ReplyDeleteTrump => Bloomberg => Bezos => Musk => Zuckerberg.
ReplyDeleteWe are so fucked if this happens.
I actually read a story just after the 2016 election called "Democracy 3.0" that was about a Zuckerberg presidency, and I told the person who showed it to me "No. Just no."
ReplyDeleteI went back to them after it came out that Facebook (which I have never had an account on) was involved in the active measures taken by the Russians to subvert the election, and for which Facebook was paid in Rubles, and asked if they still thought it was a good idea, and they said "It wasn't supposed to be about Zuckerberg specifically." to which I said bull shit. If that's true then it's not about Trump specifically either.
We need to go in exactly the opposite direction as Bloomberg for our candidate in 2020. We have a lot of energy and interest right now, mostly from women and folks who can't believe what's actually happening in their government, and a goddamn Republican who is 76 years old and literally bought a third term as NYC mayor just isn't the candidate we need to excite them enough to overcome all of the cheating we're gonna have to beat in order to win.
-Doug in Oakland
I blame it all on the Me Too movement. No wait, don't go away! Hold on there. Just shut up for a moment and let me explain. No really. Shut up and listen.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, somebody who looked like a toad but was able to amass a bazillion dollars would go out to Hollywood and produce a movie. Why this sudden interest in the arts? They call them actresses. And starlets. The bazillionaire could make powerful decisions about pretty women — "This one, not that one," experimentally paw them, and maybe luck into an affair or a one-night stand with some hot number who was 40 years younger than his wife. Discretion assured.
But now? Do so much as innocently run your hand under a starlet's skirt and you're all over the evening news, shunned, reviled, called terrible names. So the Hotshot Movie Producer Fantasy is finished — as stale as last week's bagel. And what's left to do with yourself to prove that your bazillions, or whatever, are bigger?
Right! Joe Bazillionaire for President! And he owes it all to Me Too.
Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteUh, CenterPuke? I was referring to Bloomberg. And the possibility of Bezos. And of Zuckerjerk. I wasn't referring to Trump per se because he was born with a casting couch in his mouth.
ReplyDeleteYours crankily,
The New York Crank
Apologies, TNYC...it seemed out of line for you, but that was how I read it. My bad, comment deleted, sir!
ReplyDeleteBloomberg is whatever he thinks he needs to be:
ReplyDelete"Bloomberg served as the 108th Mayor of New York City, holding office for three consecutive terms, beginning with his first election in 2001. A Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his party registration in 2001 to run for mayor as a Republican. He defeated opponent Mark Green in a close election held just weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks. He won a second term in 2005, and left the Republican Party two years later. Bloomberg campaigned to change the city's term limits law, and was elected to his third term in 2009 as an Independent candidate on the Republican ballot line."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg
And I agree: Hell no. Thing is, like Trump, if the other party (or even whichever he runs under) can run some candidate who is BETTER than some (pardon the pun) Trumped-up Billionaire, then we might have a chance. If they do the same old power politics, then we will get what we got last election.
Play (and bet) the same game, get the same results.
Hell no to vanity candidates of any kind! No Oprah, no Vinetti, no to ANYONE from New York (CUomo/ Gillibrand)
ReplyDelete