Michael Bloomberg: American Oligarch by Nancy OhanianBefore we begin today, just let me just say that Republican oligarch Michael Bloomberg is refusing to affirm reports that he plans to make Hillary his running mate. OK, so that's out of the way-- at least for a few days or hours. This chart shows what each presidential candidate had spent on TV ads alone (through January 29) in the four early states and in the Super Tuesday states. Needless to say, Bloomberg spent far more-- obscenely more-- than all of them combined. Here's the breakout for Bloomberg only. Those are eye-popping numbers. He's also spending millions of dollars nationally and millions of dollars-- daily-- on social media, not reflected by these numbers.So... I think by now just about everyone has probably seen the fake Obama endorsement ad, which Bloomberg hopes will persuade African-American voters that Obama has endorsed him. Obama, of course, has done no such thing. But Bloomberg, who has never respected African-Americans and has never seen them as anything but a punching bag and a manipulatable credulous cohort of voters he can buy with bribes and ads, is counting on making a splash in both Carolinas and among targeted black voters in Super Tuesday states where no one else is on the air, like Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma.I hope African-Americas go back and read the OpEd Bloomberg wrote when he endorsed Obama's reelection bid in 2012, 5 days before the election. (Bloomberg refused to endorse Obama in 2008.) The OpEd makes it clear that Bloomberg doesn't especially like Obama but thinks he's better than Romney on the Climate Crisis. Here's a snippet, showing his clear disdain for the president, the one he's spending millions of dollars on ads with attempting to manipulate Obama admirers.Bloomberg, a Republican oligarch who was violently opposed to Obamacare but is pretending to be an Obama-Democrat this year so he can run against Trump, is a scumbag unworthy of support from any Democrats for any number of reasons:
• He's a financial royalist and is as bad as Trump issues impacting the lives of the working class. Like Trump's tax plans, his own are relatively beneficial to-- himself and other billionaires, resisting paying their fair share of the tax burden.• We may not like Biden's record of support for the Iraq War and for the military industrial complex but on that count Bloomberg is even worse, as he is on domestic spying, which he seems to revel in.• And, also like Trump, Bloomberg is a sexist pig who sees women as playthings to be bought and sold. "Bloomberg’s sexism," wrote Laura Basett for GQ late last week, "like that of fellow New York City billionaire Donald Trump, has been prolific and well-documented, but for some reason, the stories about him don’t seem to have taken hold. He is still being embraced by the Democratic establishment as a viable option for its presidential nominee."
Bassett included some Trump-like examples of some of Bloomberg's publicly-known exploits. "Sekiko Sakai Garrison, a former sales representative at Bloomberg LP, alleged in a 1997 lawsuit (one of four separate lawsuits in a two-year period) that when then-CEO Mike Bloomberg found out she was pregnant, he told her, 'Kill it!' and 'Great! Number 16!'-- an apparent reference to the number of pregnant women or women on maternity leave at his company. She also alleged that when Bloomberg saw her engagement ring, he commented, 'What is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?' and that he once pointed to another female employee and told Garrison, 'If you looked like that, I’d do you in a second.' Bloomberg denied having said most of those things, but reportedly left Garrison a voicemail saying that if he did say them, he 'didn’t mean it.' Bloomberg once described his life as a single billionaire bachelor in New York City to a reporter as being a 'wet dream'. 'I like theater, dining and chasing women,' he said. On a radio show in 2003, he said that he would 'really want to have' Jennifer Lopez, which he later explained away as wanting to 'have dinner' with her. A top aide said Bloomberg frequently remarked 'nice tits' upon seeing attractive women. Employees of his in 1990 put together an entire booklet of his some of his more egregious comments, including, 'If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they'd go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale's,' and, of the computer terminal that made him a billionaire, 'It will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.'" Not to mention the young men Bloomberg has hired for sex, something the mass media is reluctance to talk about despite how well-known his life in the closet is among New York-based media.Writing for The Guardian on Wednesday, Benjamin Dixon decided take on how Bloomberg has avoided any meaningful scrutiny in the campaign. He wrote that "Other candidates appear on debate stages to be questioned by the American people. Not Bloomberg. Thanks to his wealth, he can afford to sidestep this process entirely by spending millions on TV ads. Is that fair? Surely anyone who wants to be president of United States needs to be vetted. That’s why I decided to dig through reams of video and audio footage of the former mayor. What I discovered was deeply troubling." Dixon exposed the racist and now-notorious Aspen Institute tape. On it, Bloomberg says "Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods … [the] unintended consequences is people say, 'Oh, my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.' Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is... Ninety-five per cent of your murders-- murderers and murder victims-- fit one MO. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops."
Not only is this data point inaccurate, but it also reflects a deeply disturbing, racist worldview that harms minority men and is based on fallacious logic and inaccurate data.The unearthed clip provides a glimpse into his deeply held philosophies regarding young minority men as well as his governing principles. The clip demands that the mayor come forward and answer to the people he ostensibly wants to lead.Unfortunately, far from using the footage to help hold Bloomberg to account, many in the media want to divert attention away from his wrongdoings. One CNN anchor, for example, tried to malign me and question my motives for disseminating the tapes. She wondered how I got the audio and why I was distributing it now. Let me answer her: I got the audio by doing the most basic research that should be expected of any journalist. As to why I released it now, because if not now, when?I make no apologies for my vehement opposition to billionaire Michael Bloomberg purchasing his way into the 2020 election. In fact, I believe that every American citizen should be terrified by the idea that, in the midst of a Democratic primary where big ideas are being debated and ideologies are being scrutinized, one man can advance not by merit but by the millions of his own money spent on ads. The gall of it is unacceptable.The Aspen audio clip reveals Bloomberg’s governing philosophy: use the force of the government not to correct the underlying causes of a problem such as violence but to persecute the people who are the victims of the violence:“And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them. [Inaudible] and then they start, they say, [inaudible] ‘Oh, I don’t want to get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.”He believes that the power of the government should be wielded to control the masses instead of to promote general welfare. This is evident in other statements he has made in the past. Consider the video of Bloomberg as he explains the rationale behind the infamous soda tax:“Some people say, well, taxes are regressive. But in this case, yes they are. That’s the good thing about them, because the problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money. And so higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves.“So I listen to people saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to tax the poor,’ Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life.”This belief that the government should use punitive force to “correct” the ills of marginalized communities is deeply disturbing. Is this what we want in the White House? How can Americans know without the opportunity to ask?These are precisely the types of worldviews and philosophies that must be interrogated by the American people. Instead, the mayor is circumventing our democratic process by leveraging his tremendous wealth.Which is why, until Michael Bloomberg addresses his critics in a meaningful way, we are calling on all of those politicians and leaders who have endorsed him to rescind their endorsements. How can they endorse someone who has yet to answer for worldviews that, if he still holds them, would certainly disqualify him from being president?Democracy is too fragile to endure the complete circumvention of our electoral process by a billionaire with enough wealth to take the easy route while other candidates do the actual work of convincing America they are the right choice.
On Friday, NYC Mayor, Bill de Blasio endorsed Bernie Sanders. De Blasio, who endorsed Hillary in 2016, had run for mayor as the not-Bloomberg candidate. Although the endorsement was all about Bernie as the candidate who can benefit the working class and take on Trump, the subtext was about the primary and Bloomberg, who de Blasio detests. "De Blasio is not mistaken to think that he is well situated to serve as a voice of reason amid Bloomberg’s excessively rosy presentation of his own tenure as mayor. Like a Cassandra from City Hall, de Blasio is warning Democrats to resist Bloomberg’s enticements... De Blasio’s open scorn for Bloomberg-- and his desire to scratch that itch, even six years into his mayoralty-- has proven a constant in his City Hall. During de Blasio’s frigid 2014 inauguration ceremony, Bloomberg sat in the audience grimacing as de Blasio and his hand-picked participants laced into the former mayor’s record, his 'plantation called New York,' and the 'Dickensian' justice system wrought by Bloomberg’s use of stop-and-frisk policing."Jon Paul Lupo, who worked on de Blasio's presidential bid and now consults for his political action committee: "As his successor, Mayor de Blasio has a unique perspective on Mayor Bloomberg's legacy and you and many of your colleagues have asked his opinion, which he is happy to share. This is a fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party and he believes a true progressive Democrat is best positioned to win." And, as David Graham noted yesterday for The Atlantic the primary really has boiled down to a race pitting the working class champion against the Republican oligarch for who will take on Trump, another Republican oligarch. "In dueling rallies in North Carolina’s Research Triangle late this week," wrote Graham, "the emerging front-runner Bernie Sanders and the emerging non-Sanders alternative Mike Bloomberg each made the case that they should be the nominee-- and that the other man should not. Neither named the other as the two candidates kicked off early voting in North Carolina, which is both a crucial Super Tuesday state and a likely swing state in November, but they left no doubt whom they were talking about.
In focusing their rhetoric on each other, Sanders and Bloomberg are both making a pragmatic calculation. Based on recent polling, many analysts see the race headed for collision between the socialist senator and the centrist ex-mayor. But the strategy of treating the race as already narrowed to two entails risks. As measured by delegates, Buttigieg still has a lead over Sanders. Even with lower poll numbers in some upcoming states, Buttigieg remains a threat. Sanders also still has to contend with Elizabeth Warren, who has reported $6 million in new fundraising since Iowa. Bloomberg has even more work to do consolidating his support. He still splits the non-Sanders moderate vote with Biden, who is down but not out; Buttigieg; and a surging Klobuchar. Bloomberg hasn’t yet proved that he can clear the lane.The contrast between Bloomberg and Sanders was clear long before either candidate stepped onstage. Bloomberg spoke before a graying crowd that listened to piped-in U2 and Fatboy Slim. In Durham, Bowerbirds, a beloved local indie band, opened for a younger, more casual crowd. If blue hair abounded in Raleigh, the coifs in Durham were more likely to be pink, green, or purple. Bloomberg’s crowd was overwhelmingly white. The supporters who flocked to hear Sanders were more diverse, although the crowd still didn’t reflect the demographics of Democratic-primary voters in the state, a third of whom were black in 2016....After taking criticism in 2016 for failing to effectively reach minority voters, Sanders has adopted a new approach. In Durham, he was introduced by five women of color and one black man, all local activists, candidates, or elected officials, as well as Susan Sarandon. Sanders left it to one of them, his steadfast ally Nina Turner, to hit Bloomberg directly-- though again not by name-- over recent leaked recordings in which he defended New York City’s stop-and-frisk program and said that the end of redlining had caused the 2008 financial crash.“He is a billionaire and he don’t give a fill-in-the-blank about working-class people,” Turner said.
