Bloomberg has fukk you money so you know what it is
Between Stop and Frisk & justifying Redlining, how can any black person support Bloomberg?
- Thread starter Robbie3000
- Start date
This is NOT about two soundbites. Bloomberg has been a terrible person who wants power and control for his entire political career.
A Republican Plutocrat Tries To Buy The Democratic Nomination ❧ Current Affairs
A Republican Plutocrat Tries To Buy The Democratic Nomination ❧ Current Affairs
"It’s especially remarkable that Bloomberg has chosen to seek the Democratic nomination, because he wasn’t actually a Democrat until right before starting this campaign, and ran for New York City mayor as a Republican. He supported war criminal George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. He set a record for donations to the New York Republican Party, and heaped “piles of cash at the feet of city and state Republican leaders.” In 2016, he spent $11.7 million helping Republican Pat Toomey keep his Senate seat, an election that Toomey won by less than two points and that helped Mitch McConnell maintain control of the Senate. He endorsed Scott Brown in his reelection campaign against Elizabeth Warren. Bloomberg “not only backed Republicans in competitive and pivotal races” but “has also sunk money into Republican primaries on behalf of McConnell allies” like Lindsey Graham and Thad Cochran. While Bloomberg’s donations have more recently leaned Democratic—an attempt to purchase political influence on his personal issues like gun control—his support for New York Republicans helped maintain the state senate’s decades-long Republican majority,"
"Bloomberg has never been shy about being a free-market conservative waging war on the poor, and the only reason it isn’t immediately obvious that he is right-wing is that so many Democrats have also been free-market conservatives waging war on the poor. Sure, his 2020 campaign has slapped together some hastily plagiarized literature pitching him as progressive, and he is publishing op-eds claiming that “fixing inequality is my priority.” After years of staunchly defending racist policing practices, he apologized for them the moment he began the campaign. But none of this should persuade anyone familiar with Bloomberg’s actual record.
Indeed, as New York City mayor, the billionaire mayor vowed to smash working people’s unions. He adopted an “aggressive approach to reforming the pension system” and made it his No. 1 legislative priority. He “threatened to withhold worker raises unless the municipal unions yielded on benefits.” Bloomberg vowed that nobody would get raises unless they accepted benefit cuts:
When transit workers went on strike after the transit authority’s attempted to raise the retirement age and substantially increase pension contributions, Bloomberg called them “selfish,” “greedy,” and “thuggish.” He even attacked the morality of the city’s firefighters. He eliminated the employee protection plan for the city’s 8,000 school bus drivers, leading to a strike. Bloomberg told public sector workers that “we have to find ways to do more with less” and would not pledge to end layoffs, even as the city spent millions on private consultants. Bloomberg said he wanted workers who appreciated that they should be grateful to the private sector for their salaries: “The unions I will get are the unions who understand that the private sector pays for the work of municipal employees.” (Bloomberg also spent $3 million backing right-wing Michigan governor Rick Snyder—remembered for the Flint Water Crisis and seizing power from Black-led cities—in part because Snyder “took on the unions.“)
Bloomberg has never shown himself to care much about workers’ rights. He once ordered that a low-level city employee making $27,000—supporting a wife and child—be fired after Bloomberg noticed Solitaire open on the man’s computer. Bloomberg forced the resignation of the director of the city’s first Arabic dual language school program after ludicrous allegations that she was a terrorist sympathizer. When Bloomberg found out that a New York City teacher had previously been a sex worker, he demanded she be fired, saying, “We’re just not going to have this woman in front of a class.” The teacher was suspended and ultimately had to resign.
Bloomberg’s own company was sued by 72 women who claimed “the company discriminated against them by decreasing their pay, demoting them, and excluding them from other employment opportunities after they became pregnant,” with one senior executive allegedly remarking “I’m not having any pregnant bytches working for me.”
Bloomberg has always opposed traditional Democratic policies for improving the lives of working people. He said he is “not, and [has] never been in favor of raising the minimum wage” (giving the usual discredited talking point about job loss), and as mayor vowed to veto a living wage bill, comparing it to Soviet Communism and promising to fight it in court."
Indeed, as New York City mayor, the billionaire mayor vowed to smash working people’s unions. He adopted an “aggressive approach to reforming the pension system” and made it his No. 1 legislative priority. He “threatened to withhold worker raises unless the municipal unions yielded on benefits.” Bloomberg vowed that nobody would get raises unless they accepted benefit cuts:
When transit workers went on strike after the transit authority’s attempted to raise the retirement age and substantially increase pension contributions, Bloomberg called them “selfish,” “greedy,” and “thuggish.” He even attacked the morality of the city’s firefighters. He eliminated the employee protection plan for the city’s 8,000 school bus drivers, leading to a strike. Bloomberg told public sector workers that “we have to find ways to do more with less” and would not pledge to end layoffs, even as the city spent millions on private consultants. Bloomberg said he wanted workers who appreciated that they should be grateful to the private sector for their salaries: “The unions I will get are the unions who understand that the private sector pays for the work of municipal employees.” (Bloomberg also spent $3 million backing right-wing Michigan governor Rick Snyder—remembered for the Flint Water Crisis and seizing power from Black-led cities—in part because Snyder “took on the unions.“)
Bloomberg has never shown himself to care much about workers’ rights. He once ordered that a low-level city employee making $27,000—supporting a wife and child—be fired after Bloomberg noticed Solitaire open on the man’s computer. Bloomberg forced the resignation of the director of the city’s first Arabic dual language school program after ludicrous allegations that she was a terrorist sympathizer. When Bloomberg found out that a New York City teacher had previously been a sex worker, he demanded she be fired, saying, “We’re just not going to have this woman in front of a class.” The teacher was suspended and ultimately had to resign.
Bloomberg’s own company was sued by 72 women who claimed “the company discriminated against them by decreasing their pay, demoting them, and excluding them from other employment opportunities after they became pregnant,” with one senior executive allegedly remarking “I’m not having any pregnant bytches working for me.”
Bloomberg has always opposed traditional Democratic policies for improving the lives of working people. He said he is “not, and [has] never been in favor of raising the minimum wage” (giving the usual discredited talking point about job loss), and as mayor vowed to veto a living wage bill, comparing it to Soviet Communism and promising to fight it in court."
This is just fukking insane. He responded to a story of a little 11-year-old Black girl who was homeless due to his cutthroat programs by saying, "That's just the way God works. Some of us are lucky and some of us are not."
Bloomberg is a believer in “trickle-down” economics, whereby helping the rich helps the poor:
This is far from the only time that Bloomberg suggested inequality was good and the city needed to lure more rich people. If the city was divided into rich and poor, he said, it was “one group paying for services for the other,” meaning that the poor should be grateful for their benefactors. He called New York City a “luxury product,” and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” and “If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here it would be a godsend that would create a much bigger income gap.”
Bloomberg’s New York was intensely friendly to rich developers. His city planning director, Standard Oil heir Amanda Burden, stated the administration’s aspirations: “What I have tried to do, and think I have done, is create value for these developers, every single day of my term.” Little-noticed zoning changes protected rich people’s neighborhoods from development and put poor neighborhoods up for grabs. Billionaires building luxury towers in New York City pay almost nothing in property taxes, and CityLab concluded of Bloomberg’s plan to lure as many billionaires as possible that “what Bloomberg saw as a way to provide for the welfare of New York looks more like one of the firmest expressions of inequality anywhere.” CityLab writes that “the property-tax burden has shifted from owners to renters, and from the wealthier to the poorer.” Under pressure, Bloomberg introduced a “market-based” solution for affordable housing, but it produced a pitifully small number of affordable units and “affordability” was often a joke, with units accessible only to those making more than the median income. Public housing was neglected, and “under Bloomberg, the city stopped checking for lead paint in public housing apartments, a disastrous decision that endangered thousands of children.” Kate Albright-Hanna describes the destructive effects of the Bloomberg philosophy for City & State New York, and warns what would happen to the country if Bloombergism were enacted on an even larger scale:
Unsurprisingly, Bloomberg’s tenure saw an explosion in both rent prices and homelessness. By the end of Bloomberg’s time, “half of renting households paid more than 30 percent of their income in rent and utilities.” Commercial rents soared too, and beloved mom ‘n’ pop stores that had been in the city for decades closed by the hundreds. (Moss’ blog is a heartbreaking catalog of these.) The St. Vincent’s Hospital was shuttered and turned into luxury condos, just one of nearly 20 hospital closures between 2000 and 2013.
At the end, nearly one of every three children in the city resided in poverty, and the “record-high shelter population includes more than 22,000 homeless children.” The New York City Coalition For The Homeless has been absolutely scathing, noting that “the number of homeless people in NYC has soared to all-time record highs under Bloomberg; and the number of poor New Yorkers has also risen and remains at alarming levels.”
Bloomberg’s administration required homeless people to prove to shelters that they had no other options. In fact, he was critical of the very notion of a “right to shelter,” and said that shelters might be clogged with rich people taking advantage of the system: “You can arrive in your private jet at Kennedy Airport, take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system and walk in the door and we’ve got to give you shelter.” (Because lots of oligarchs in limos are trying to check in to the New York City homeless shelters.) As the Coalition for the Homeless noted, “he sought to repeal longstanding court orders obligating the City to provide emergency shelter for homeless children and adults,”and “urged New Yorkers to overturn these fundamental legal protections for homeless people, saying: ‘New York City taxpayers have just gotta go to call their representatives in Albany and say, ‘We ain’t gonna do this anymore.’’”
Bloomberg “even lobbied against a measure that sought to save city funds and prevent homelessness among disabled New Yorkers living with AIDS.” Bloomberg also:
Asked about all this, Bloomberg alternated between pretending it wasn’t true and admitting he didn’t give a shyt. “Nobody’s sleeping on the streets,” he said, though even if they were, he believed the shortage of housing was a “good sign.” The Coalition for the Homeless says that, confronted with the problem he had caused, “the mayor and his aides responded with evasions, distortions, and a refusal to accept responsibility.” He had the audacity to “claim[] credit for the same legal right to shelter for homeless New Yorkers that he has fought aggressively to repeal!”
The human reality of this situation was documented well in a New York Times profile of an 11-year-old Black girl named Dasani, constantly bouncing from bed to bed in the city. The Times described how Bloomberg’s vision of a New York for billionaires had treated girls like Dasani as nonentities:
Bloomberg is a believer in “trickle-down” economics, whereby helping the rich helps the poor:
This is far from the only time that Bloomberg suggested inequality was good and the city needed to lure more rich people. If the city was divided into rich and poor, he said, it was “one group paying for services for the other,” meaning that the poor should be grateful for their benefactors. He called New York City a “luxury product,” and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” and “If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here it would be a godsend that would create a much bigger income gap.”
Bloomberg’s New York was intensely friendly to rich developers. His city planning director, Standard Oil heir Amanda Burden, stated the administration’s aspirations: “What I have tried to do, and think I have done, is create value for these developers, every single day of my term.” Little-noticed zoning changes protected rich people’s neighborhoods from development and put poor neighborhoods up for grabs. Billionaires building luxury towers in New York City pay almost nothing in property taxes, and CityLab concluded of Bloomberg’s plan to lure as many billionaires as possible that “what Bloomberg saw as a way to provide for the welfare of New York looks more like one of the firmest expressions of inequality anywhere.” CityLab writes that “the property-tax burden has shifted from owners to renters, and from the wealthier to the poorer.” Under pressure, Bloomberg introduced a “market-based” solution for affordable housing, but it produced a pitifully small number of affordable units and “affordability” was often a joke, with units accessible only to those making more than the median income. Public housing was neglected, and “under Bloomberg, the city stopped checking for lead paint in public housing apartments, a disastrous decision that endangered thousands of children.” Kate Albright-Hanna describes the destructive effects of the Bloomberg philosophy for City & State New York, and warns what would happen to the country if Bloombergism were enacted on an even larger scale:
For a deeper look at the sad destruction of New York’s culture and heritage that the Bloomberg years produced, see Jeremiah Moss’ book and blog Vanishing New York (reviewed here). Moss documents block by block, building by building, the eroding fabric of New York City culture, as beloved diners, dives, and bakeries are turned into banks and luxury goods stores after their rent is hiked from the thousands to the tens of thousands. Perhaps the ultimate expression of Bloombergism is Hudson Yards, the lifeless complex of glass towers, an “ultra-capitalist Forbidden City” where the poor are invisible.
Unsurprisingly, Bloomberg’s tenure saw an explosion in both rent prices and homelessness. By the end of Bloomberg’s time, “half of renting households paid more than 30 percent of their income in rent and utilities.” Commercial rents soared too, and beloved mom ‘n’ pop stores that had been in the city for decades closed by the hundreds. (Moss’ blog is a heartbreaking catalog of these.) The St. Vincent’s Hospital was shuttered and turned into luxury condos, just one of nearly 20 hospital closures between 2000 and 2013.
At the end, nearly one of every three children in the city resided in poverty, and the “record-high shelter population includes more than 22,000 homeless children.” The New York City Coalition For The Homeless has been absolutely scathing, noting that “the number of homeless people in NYC has soared to all-time record highs under Bloomberg; and the number of poor New Yorkers has also risen and remains at alarming levels.”
Bloomberg’s administration required homeless people to prove to shelters that they had no other options. In fact, he was critical of the very notion of a “right to shelter,” and said that shelters might be clogged with rich people taking advantage of the system: “You can arrive in your private jet at Kennedy Airport, take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system and walk in the door and we’ve got to give you shelter.” (Because lots of oligarchs in limos are trying to check in to the New York City homeless shelters.) As the Coalition for the Homeless noted, “he sought to repeal longstanding court orders obligating the City to provide emergency shelter for homeless children and adults,”and “urged New Yorkers to overturn these fundamental legal protections for homeless people, saying: ‘New York City taxpayers have just gotta go to call their representatives in Albany and say, ‘We ain’t gonna do this anymore.’’”
Bloomberg “even lobbied against a measure that sought to save city funds and prevent homelessness among disabled New Yorkers living with AIDS.” Bloomberg also:
Former City Council chair Christine Quinn was blunt: “In a time of prosperity, he took aggressive steps from a policy perspective to hurt the homeless.” Bloomberg’s idea of a solution to homelessness was giving them one-way bus tickets to get them out of the city. Today, Bloomberg insists that inequality is a top priority, but before his sudden transformation into a Democrat, Bloomberg said of inequality that “that’s not a measure of something we should be ashamed of.” (Recall he specifically wanted billionaires to move to New York to increase the “income gap.”)
Asked about all this, Bloomberg alternated between pretending it wasn’t true and admitting he didn’t give a shyt. “Nobody’s sleeping on the streets,” he said, though even if they were, he believed the shortage of housing was a “good sign.” The Coalition for the Homeless says that, confronted with the problem he had caused, “the mayor and his aides responded with evasions, distortions, and a refusal to accept responsibility.” He had the audacity to “claim[] credit for the same legal right to shelter for homeless New Yorkers that he has fought aggressively to repeal!”
The human reality of this situation was documented well in a New York Times profile of an 11-year-old Black girl named Dasani, constantly bouncing from bed to bed in the city. The Times described how Bloomberg’s vision of a New York for billionaires had treated girls like Dasani as nonentities:
Asked to comment on Dasani’s story, Bloomberg said, “That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not.” (God apparently being the one making New York City housing policy these days.) Asked whether he was concerned about the poor, he reiterated his usual line about how everything depends on benevolent businessmen like him, and then gave the classic billionaire’s line about how because there is air conditioning people should shut up and stop complaining that the rent is too high:
Bloomberg’s approach to poor people is that he knows what is best for them, and that their job is to shut up and do what he says. He has even said that regressive taxes are good (regressiveness is “the good thing about them”), because taxing the poor more makes them behave. Has called for fingerprinting public housing residents and food stamp recipients (making New York one of the only places in the country to do this). One could see this same mentality in his signature proposal, the “big soda” ban; big sodas are unhealthy, but Bloomberg thought more about how to control poor people’s decisions than how to improve their material conditions. In defending taxing the poor for their own good, he said he didn’t want to “pander to these people.” "
Json
Superstar
New York keeps sending us their trash upper class to national politics.
Dusty Bake Activate
Fukk your corny debates
Geez
This motherfukker is Mr. Burns.
Giuliani, Clinton, Trump, Bloomberg all used NY as their launch pad. WOAT political city of the 21st century.
Or...we just dont vote at all...
If it comes down to Bloomberg vs Trump we will have officially become an oligarchy. At that point this country deserves whatever comes its way to be honest.
He called New York City a “luxury product,” and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” and “If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here it would be a godsend that would create a much bigger income gap.”
Klobuchar needs to take this POS down next week. The DNC and anybody endorsing this guy should be shamed forever.
Apollo Kid
Veteran
He sued the city twice to prevent low level city employees from making $10/hr.
feelosofer
#ninergang
I hope Bloomberg doesn't win but to be honest, I would, he'd still be better than Trump. Even though this would set an upsetting precedent that the guy with the deepest pockets can buy his or her way into the oval office.
With that I don't think a lot of posters are thinking long term what another 4 years of Trump means, he already got the Supreme Court to rule gerrymandering as 'not in their jurisdiction'.
NPR Choice page
With that I don't think a lot of posters are thinking long term what another 4 years of Trump means, he already got the Supreme Court to rule gerrymandering as 'not in their jurisdiction'.
NPR Choice page