The Word of a Billionaire Politician is Worth Nothing

Former field organizers for Michael R. Bloomberg filed two proposed class-action lawsuits against his presidential campaign Monday, arguing that they and thousands of others laid off this month had been tricked into taking jobs they were told would last until November.

The lawsuits, both filed in federal court in New York City, argued that the campaign had recruited staff members to work on Mr. Bloomberg’s bid under false pretenses, preventing them from pursuing other opportunities. One of the suits, brought by a former field organizer in Florida, also alleged the campaign had breached its contract with its organizers and failed to pay them necessary overtime.

In short, Bloomberg hired all of those people and told them, whatever happens, that they would have jobs through November. But then Elizabeth Warren eviscerated him in a debate and he, not his staff, not the people producing his slick ads, fell apart.

Nearly a dozen other former campaign workers expressed frustration in interviews on Friday, saying the pay and promises of job security through November had been key reasons they joined Mr. Bloomberg’s long-shot campaign. They requested anonymity to speak because of nondisclosure agreements they had signed with the campaign and a desire not to jeopardize the remaining pay the campaign had promised them.

Bloomberg, like almost every other billionaire, treats people like disposable widgets or interchangeable parts.

His word, like the guy he was trying to replace, is as worthless as a guarantee of safe-conduct from Maj. Strasser.

Did Bloomberg Inadvertently Help Biden?

Democratic voter turnout surged on Super Tuesday, exceeding 2016 levels in at least a dozen states and setting an all-time record in one of them.

In Virginia, the fourth most delegate-rich state to hold a primary Tuesday, more than 1.3 million voters cast ballots — a nearly 70 percent increase over 2016, when about 783,000 voted in the Democratic presidential primary. That surpasses a previous record set in 2008, when just under 1 million voters turned out.

How many of those voters were motivated to turn out to vote because Bloomberg's flooding the airwaves with ads reminded them that there was a primary and what the stakes were-- did they really want to have to choose between two rich authoritarians for president?

Aaand, Bloomie's Done

“It is fair to say,” MSNBC anchor Brian Williams said on-air Tuesday as the primary results rolled in, “[Bloomberg’s] not having the night he thought he paid for.”

And so....

New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg suspended his presidential campaign Wednesday and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was reassessing her candidacy, as the winnowing process in the Democrats’ 2020 nomination fight lurched forward after a consequential Super Tuesday.

Bloomberg quit the race just 101 days after he got in despite pouring more than $500 million of his personal fortune into his campaign. The massive investment netted him a single win in American Samoa.

Over half a billion smackeroos for nothing but a failed stroking of Mikey's oversized ego. For that kind of money, he could have screwed and then paid off a few thousand porn stars.

He's endorsing Biden, as if anyone gives a fuck.

Remember John Connally's "Eleven Million Dollar Delegate"?

Connally ran for president in 1980. He raised and spent $11 million and won one delegate. Rudy Giuliani did far worse in 2008, where he raised well over $50 million (and spent himself close to bankruptcy).

They're both eclipsed by Mayor McBig Gulp, who has spent half a billion dollars to win American Samoa.

Bloomberg ran ads everywhere he possibly could, to no avail.

Which gives me some hope for the life of American democracy, where an oligarch still can't buy a national election.

"Mister Chairman, I Paid For That Election!"

That was basically what Bloomberg said in the SC debate, when he claimed to have been why the Democrats took back the House of Representatives in 2018.

It wasn't just a Freudian slip that reveals Bloomberg's unconscious thoughts. It's what he really believes, Gentle Reader. Bloomberg is Trump on steroids: American elections can be purchased, just like he's bought mansions around the globe.

We'll see on Super Tuesday if Democrats care more for democracy than do Republicans by not selling their votes to the highest bidder.

Bloomberg's Arrogance on Full Display

Mike Bloomberg's campaign is sounding the alarm that Bernie Sanders will soon amass an unsurmountable delegate lead if the Democratic field stays split — and took the extraordinary step of suggesting laggards should drop out.

What they're saying: Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg's top strategist, said: "The fact is if the state of this race remains status quo — with Biden, Pete and Amy in the race on Super Tuesday — Bernie is likely to open up a delegate lead that seems nearly impossible to overcome."

Let's be clear on this: What Bloomberg and his people are saying is that everyone else should drop out. The "everyone else" are the candidates who have been doing the grunt work of campaigning: Meeting people one-on-one, going around the country to talk to people and ask for their votes. They are the people who have been asking people to support their campaigns by volunteering, donating and voting. You know, people who actually walk the walk of democracy.

They should drop out and let another thin-skinned billionaire take over, a man who switches party affiliation as often as Trump changes wives? Bloomberg has been a Democrat less than the duration of a human pregnancy. His idea of "grass roots" is using millions of dollars as fertilizer. He doesn't need volunteers, he hires people for that shit.

Bloomberg, just like Trump, latched onto a political party as a route to power. The Richie Rich of the Democrats, the Billionaire Bully, if you will, really is trying to buy the process.

Everything that most people despise about Trump is applicable to Bloomberg. He is as much an authoritarian. As mayor, Bloomberg repeatedly referred to the NYPD as "his army". He defended "stop and frisk", a policy that was blatantly racist, until it became inconvenient (a policy that Trump called "a tremendous success"). Like Trump, Boomberg targeted Muslims for no other reason than their faith. His reaction to adverse court rulings was to step in front of the cameras, excoriate the judges, and explain how he, Hizzoner Da Mare, knew best and that everyone should kowtow to him. The major differences between Bloomberg and Trump are that Bloomberg is shorter, richer, smarter and doesn't apply his makeup with a trowel.

I will lay my cards on the table: I don't like Sanders, though people have forgotten was that the reason he was elected to Congress in 1990 ws that he ran against a pro-gun control Republican. I think Sanders, Warren and Biden are too old for the job. My inkling is that Klobuchar would be a shitty person to work for. Buttigieg's probably light on experience. I'd go for either Buttigieg or Klobuchar, but I'll vote for any of them over Donald Trump.

But I will not vote for Bloomberg. Between Bloomberg and Trump, there is no choice, only an echo.

And you can take that to the bank and deposit it.

Where Bloomberg and Trump Agree

They both detest those who fight for the civil rights of the oppressed and they hate unions.

Here is Bloomberg:

“We don’t need extremists on the left or the right running our police department, whether it’s the NRA or the NYCLU,” the then-mayor Bloomberg said of the New York Civil Liberties Union, in a 2013 speech in which he defended the city’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy.
...
Referring to leadership of the United Federation of Teachers, Bloomberg said in 2013: "The NRA’s another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn't agree with the leadership.”

That's Bloomberg's metric- if he disagrees with your organization, he compares it to the NRA.

Bloomberg and Trump are both thin-skinned, glass-jawed plutocrats who believe that their wealth makes them people that nobody else has a right to criticize. They differ in wealth, politics and smarts, but in their souls, they are the same people.

The Party of Bloomberg

The New York Times has a large story today about how Bloomberg is using his billions to buy influence. In it, was a case of how his money bought silence:

That chilling effect was apparent in 2015 to researchers at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group, when they turned in a report on anti-Muslim bias in the United States. Their draft included a chapter of more than 4,000 words about New York City police surveillance of Muslim communities; Mr. Bloomberg was mentioned by name eight times in the chapter, which was reviewed by The Times.

When the report was published a few weeks later, the chapter was gone. So was any mention of Mr. Bloomberg’s name.

Yasmine Taeb, an author of the report, said in an interview that the authors had been instructed to make drastic revisions or remove the chapter, and opted to do the latter rather than “whitewash the N.Y.P.D.’s wrongdoings.” She said she found it “disconcerting” to be asked to remove the chapter “because of how it was going to be perceived by Mayor Bloomberg.”

The entire article should be read, not just by Bloomberg's opponents, but by those who are lining up to take his silver.

Here is my question for Democrats: How can you have spent the past ten years decrying the effect of Citizens United on American politics and then queue up to take his money and tailor your advocacy to suit his priorities? How can you have denounced the millions of dollars spent by Sheldon Adleman and the Koch Brothers and then take Bloomberg's cash?

Democrats, if you have spent the last three years denouncing the plutocratic and inept authoritarianism of Trump, how can you look in a mirror and justify supporting another plutocrat with authoritarian tendencies, only one who is ten (or a thousand) times as rich as Trump and who also is at least twice as intelligent?

I have been a Democrat for a very long time, but I will have no truck with a party that sells its soul to a plutocrat.

There is a theory of child-rearing that holds that you don't tell a toddler to wear a hat; you ask the toddler whether he wants to wear a yellow hat or a green hat. The kid's happy because he got to choose, but the choice is a choice at the level of insignificance. The kid's going to wear a hat.

The choice between between the Party of Trump and the Party of Bloomberg is an illusionary one. It'd be like having to choose between being ruled by Hitler or Stalin.

That's Going to Leave a Mark

Because it's true.

.@realDonaldTrump - we know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown. They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and incompetence.

I have the record & the resources to defeat you. And I will. https://t.co/fO4azmZaUg

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 13, 2020

The 2020 Twitter War between the two is shaping up to be hugely entertaining. But the possibility that we will have to choose between two arrogant plutocrats as our president is frightening.

Shorter Bloomberg: The 2008 Recession Was Caused by Making Loans to Those People

At the height of the 2008 economic collapse, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the elimination of a discriminatory housing practice known as “redlining” was responsible for instigating the meltdown.

“It all started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone,” Bloomberg said at a forum that was hosted by Georgetown University in September 2008. “Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said, ‘People in these neighborhoods are poor, they’re not going to be able to pay off their mortgages, tell your salesmen don’t go into those areas.’”

Bloomberg, of course, was full of shit. Redlining was a racist policy banks had of not making loans to minorities and to people living in minority neighborhoods.

What is going on, right now, is Bloomberg is reaping the benefit of the donations/bribes that he has been making for the last several years. When Mikey comes calling for support, it's really easy for recipients to overlook Bloomberg's racism and misogyny because the checks cleared.

Which goes to show that Bloomberg's not operating in Texas: You can't be a real Texas pol if you can't take a man's money, drink his liquor, fuck his wife and then still vote against him.

Shorter Bloomberg: White Neighborhoods Are Crime-Free

To combat crime, he says, “put a lot of cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods.”

Bloomberg tried to blame Rudy Giuliani for the stop & frisk program, but as noted in the news report and in the Times, Bloomberg's administration vastly extended the scope and reach of the program to include every brown person between the ages of eight and eighty who had testicles.

A funny aside is that Trump is saying that Bloomberg is racist, even though Trump has previously expressed support for the Frisk All Minority Men program.

Bloomberg is flat-out lying about having misgivings about Stop & Frisk. As the Times noted:

As late as the fall of 2018, when he was laying the groundwork to run for president as a Democrat, Mr. Bloomberg told The New York Times that the policy had deterred crime without violating anyone’s civil rights, ignoring a court ruling to the contrary.

Bloomberg thinks that questioning him on his record is bullying. Which tells me that he is as thin-skinned as Trump, another wannabee autocrat with a glass jaw.

Don't Be Fooled: Bloomberg is Trump on Steroids

Bloomberg is not a Democrat. He's not a Republican, nor is he an Independent. Bloomberg is an autocrat, like Trump.

Like Trump, Bloomberg latches on to the political party that he sees is his best route to power. His history of switching parties is known to everyone who has been paying attention. If Clinton had won in 2016, Bloomberg would be running today as a Republican.

Bloomberg's belief that the rules don't apply to him is also a matter of record. NYC had term limits that were enacted by two referendums. Bloomberg "persuaded" the City Council to remove term limits so that he could run for a third term. It's even more insidious than that; when Bloomberg was on his way out, he "persuaded" the City Council to restore term limits so that nobody succeeding him could be elected to a third term.

I would not be surprised if a President Bloomberg sought to repeal the 22nd Amendment. He is that arrogant, that convinced of his moral superiority to everyone else.

Bloomberg also shares Trump's disregard for the rule of law. Bloomberg persisted with his unconstitutional program of stopping and frisking all men with brown or black skin. When a Federal judge ruled that Bloomberg's pet police state project was indeed unconstitutional, Bloomberg lambasted the judge and cried that blood would run in the streets and that the City's murder rate would skyrocket. (Neither happened.)

Both Bloomberg and Trump regard the legislative and judicial branches of government as appendages whose only function is to rubber-stamp what they want.

Bloomberg shares Trump's hatred of Muslims. He backed religious profiling and monitoring people because of their faith. When this came to light, he lied about it.

Trump is calling for near-summary execution of drug dealers. I have little doubt that Bloomberg would think that is a good idea.

If you vote for Trump because he backs gun rights or for Bloomberg because he'd likely confiscate guns, then you are backing an authoritarian thug because it might benefit you.

Trump and Bloomberg are cut from the same cloth. They are both racist, sexist oligarchs who believe that their money gives them a right to dictate to the nation. Their policies differ, their IQs differ, but make no mistake about it: Bloomberg is Trump.

Here's an argument that Bloomberg is a Republican plutocrat.

Autocrats Love Each Other; Bloomberg Ed

Mike Bloomberg was presiding over his inaugural Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore in 2018 when, to the surprise of some in the audience, he gushed about one of China’s top government officials.
...
Then in September, amid mass pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and human rights activists decrying China’s imprisonment of Muslim minorities, Bloomberg seemed to go out of his way to defend Beijing, saying in a television interview that President Xi Jinping “is not a dictator.” Bloomberg said Xi “has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.” Pressed by the interviewer, Bloomberg said Xi “has a constituency to respond to . . . they really are responsive.”

Xi is not dictator? Tell it to the Uighurs. Tell it to the citizens of Hong Kong. Tell it to the Chinese whose every utterance online is monitored.

Bloomberg may be rich as fuck, but he apparently can be bought.

Donnie No-Class Rides Again (Plus, Mayor McBig Gulp)

Trump at the Army-Navy Game, where he tossed the coin:

At a nonpolitical event, where he is acting as CinC, he's got to wear his stupid grifter hat.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg is leveraging his purported charitable foundation for his presidency:

As Mr. Bloomberg traverses the country as a presidential candidate, he is drawing on a vast network of city leaders whom he has funded as a philanthropist or advised as an elder statesman of municipal politics. Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has assets totaling $9 billion, has supported 196 different cities with grants, technical assistance and education programs worth a combined $350 million. Now, leaders in some of those cities are forming the spine of Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign: He has been endorsed so far by eight mayors — from larger cities like San Jose, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., and smaller ones like Gary, Ind., representing a total of more than 2.6 million Americans.

They laughably attempt to claim that there is no shit no linkage between Bloomberg's philanthropy and his campaign:

Now, some of the same people who aided these mayors from Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation are the ones asking for their political support. Mr. Anderson, who several mayors described as the most vital point of contact at Bloomberg Philanthropies, is now directing the campaign’s “Mayors for Mike” coalition. He and Patricia E. Harris, the foundation’s longtime chief executive, have both moved over to the campaign, changing email addresses and phone numbers but not their relationships with mayors and other leaders.

Mr. Williams, the Huntington mayor, recalled a phone call from Mr. Anderson, “wanting to have a separate conversation from the foundation, asking, ‘Can we switch gears?’” he said.

“He has a separate telephone number from where it was before. He emails me to my personal email address. It’s always very clear. Personal number. Campaign number,” Mr. Williams said. “They understand the lines of demarcation.”

Those "lines of demarcation" are about as strong and well-marked as the border between the Trump's campaign and his business dealings. I'll bet that there isn't a single mayoral beneficiary of Mikey's charity money who believes that the money will keep coming if they stiff-arm his campaign.

If the choice next year is between these two wannabee autocrats, the loser will be America as a republic.

On Bloomberg: What He Said

The New York Crank has torn into Mayor McBig Gulp. You should read the entire thing.

The Antidote to an Elderly Egomanical Billionaire as President Is an Even More Elderly Egomanical Billionaire?

According to Mayor McBig Gulp, it is.

Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest men, has formally launched a Democratic bid for president. ... He will quickly follow with a massive advertising campaign blanketing airways in key primary states across the U.S.

Right.. "I made tens of billions of dollars, I was rich enough to buy a third term as mayor in NYC, I can buy the presidency."

Fucking give me a break. Bloomberg has a lot of Trumpian qualities; a belief that his billions have embued him with a special quality that would serve him well as president. Bloomberg is smarter than Trump, but he would be no more willing to listen to Congress than is Trump. Bloomberg would govern as does Trump; by scrawling his name on executive orders and expecting the entire country to kowtow to him.

Bloomberg would probably be the first Democratic candidate in a long time to poll into negative numbers in the Black community and possible the Latino community. People dead and those not yet born would hate him. For Bloomberg is a nothing if not a fascist. His "stop and frisk all the darkies" policy was ruled to be unconstitutional, a policy he defended right up until he realized that it would hurt his presidential bid. His conversion on this is about as convincing as Giuliani's conversion on the Second Amendment. Or Trump's.

Like Tom Steyer, Bloomberg will spend a lot of money on TV advertising, which will reach anyone who doesn't have a DVR.

Good Morning America is Run by Superficial Idiots

This morning on GMA, some clown was reporting on Bloomberg's pseudo run for the presidency. The reporter pointed out the last person to skip the initial primaries and win the nomination was Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

That is true on a very superficial level. But only that.

Plumbing my memory banks from 1968: Humphrey was, at the time, LBJ's veep. LBJ was running for reelection until Eugene McCarthy nearly beat LBJ in New Hampshire. LBJ then dropped out and others entered the race, including Robert F. Kennedy (the father of the moron who thinks vaccines are bad). Kennedy emerged from the California primary as the front-runner for the nomination, but he was assassinated that night. Humphrey then was the front-runner and he won the nomination.

So unless Bloomberg is counting on an assassin to kill off whomever is in front, he's got as much chance as his money will buy him.

Which hopefully is damned little.

OK, Billionaire

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, is opening the door to a 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, signaling his dissatisfaction with the current crop of candidates vying to take on President Donald Trump.

I dislike Bloomberg. He's just another goddamned billionaire who made a reputation in NYC of trying to be a national nanny ("Mayor McBig Gulp"). When he was the mayor of New York City, they had term limits. Bloomberg spread a ton of cash around ("campaign contributions") to get the city council to ditch term limits, something that the voters of the city had twice voted for.

Bloomberg has no party loyalty. Republican, Independent, Democrat, Bloomberg turns his coat as it suits him (like Trump). He is a megalomaniac and a fascist. He has been one of the backers of stopping and frisking minorities.

We don't need another arrogant billionaire as president. Between Trump and Bloomberg, the only rational choice is blackout drinking.

Bloomberg 2020: Oh, Hell, No!

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.

Shorter D.C.: "Somebody Has to Try to Kill You Before You Can Have a CCW Permit."

That's what they argued in court and the judge wasn't having any of that bullshit.

Courts elsewhere have accepted that bullshit, so this'll eventually go to the Supremes.