Posted on 02/29/2016 7:56:06 AM PST by TangledUpInBlue
Because that's where U.S. politicians turn when they want to float a trial balloon.
Bloomberg: Because you need the oligarchy.
It’ll hurt Hillary a lot
No, and the votes he takes will be from hilliarious.
“Not sure this is bad. How many conservatives would vote for him? I see him pulling from the dems.”
This may be wishful thinking. Nobody knows who Bloomberg would draw from. As a billionaire successful Republican, he has to compete directly with Trump. As a centerist, he would play to the area that Hilary would like to occupy.
I just don’t think anyone knows.
GOOD CITIZEN05.13.13 2:45 AM ET
Bloomberg Terminal Scandal Makes Bunga-Bunga Parties Seem Quaint
When a billionaire mayor’s news company uses his financial company’s products to spy on the nation’s top bankers and officials, no line is left uncrossed.
It’s the sort of overblown abuse of power we like to laugh at in other countries, confident it could never happen here.
A multibillionaire, dissatisfied with being just a business tycoon, starts a media division, brands it with his name and starts to gobble up competition and talent. Then he decides to run for office, knowing his opposition will do the good-citizen thing and stay within the established public-finance law, considered a national model of good government. He plays by his own rules, changing parties not because his politics have changed but because otherwise he’d have no chance of winning, and outspends his competition by tens of millions of dollars. He vows if elected to put aside control of his business to avoid any conflict of interest.
He wins and it’s never clear how much he separated himself from the businesses that bear his name. When it comes time for him to step down after two terms as required by law, he decides, no, he’d prefer a third term, thank you very much, and claims a “crisis” requires his personal leadership. After meeting mogul to mogul with the owners of the city’s three leading newspapers, all three editorial boards have changes of heart and declare that what’s good for the billionaire is good for the citizens. Once running, he starts touting how well things are going, thanks to him. When a City Hall reporter asks him if he still needs to run if the crisis has passed, he’s offended and scolds the reporter: “You’re a disgrace.” He spends another fortune and bullies his way into a third term.
Meanwhile, it appears that his news company, like him, doesn’t like to adhere to the rules of the road. It turns out they have been using the terminals named after the billionaire and that made his fortune to peep and pry into the personal activities of important clients, including the nation’s biggest banks and even top government officials.
But this isn’t happening in a foreign country, it’s a homegrown embarrassment by American oligarch Michael Bloomberg.
If I had been a New York resident, I would have enthusiastically voted for Bloomberg in his first two runs for mayor. When he was running as a Republican, my business partner helped out some on his reelection. It’s a good thing when accomplished men and women from business enter public life. I’m confident he was a better choice than anyone else running.
But for a man who seems obsessed with stopping others from indulging in the excesses of a 16-ounce soft drink, Bloomberg is a glutton. His limitless desire for power and earnest self-righteousness has sent him careening from good citizen to a self-parody of public annoyance. He’s become a rogue billionaire who doesn’t believe the rules apply to him even as he’s busy inventing new ones for the rest of us.
Who does this guy think he is? It’s not like he revolutionized new productive uses for capital or has a long track record of success. He was an equities trader with Solomon Brothers who was laid off in 1981 with a $10 million severance package. He then had one great idea: helping equity professionals trade more profitably with a new kind of information and trading terminal. Brilliant. Glad he made a fortune. Only in America, and that’s a good thing.
But so what? Is the marketing of such a terminal by a laid-off equities broker evidence of a great mind or moral force?
Most of the media has given Bloomberg a pass for the usual reasons, along with a couple twists of self-interest and fear. The Bloomberg who spends a fortune promoting gun control is celebrated as a good citizen just as a Bloomberg-like figure who spent a fortune promoting gun-owner rights would be vilified as a rich thug. That’s to be expected, but in a world of decreasing media employment opportunities, Bloomberg’s growing empire of well-paid jobs is a bright spot in a bleak horizon—even leaving aside the rumors, which he’s encouraged, that he’d like to buy the Financial Times or The New York Times. It’s leverage he’s practiced at using, and projecting, like when politicians who lost office after backing measures he’s pushed for end up parachuting into good jobs at his private company.
The Bloomberg who journalists criticize today may be the employer they want to interview with tomorrow.
So it will be interesting to see how the media handles this blossoming Bloomberg News scandal. The clear analogy is the phone hacking by the Rupert Murdoch–owned press. But this looks worse, an abuse not by a handful of story-crazed reporters and editors but a corporate collusion between the news and business divisions of Bloomberg’s empire.
To make it even more incestuous and troubling, the head of Bloomberg News is Dan Doctoroff, formerly a deputy mayor. So you now have the confluence of the triad of Bloomberg’s power: Mayor Bloomberg, Bloomberg News, and Bloomberg LP. It won’t take long until it occurs to some enterprising sort—some journalist, lawyer, or prosecutor—to try to walk the cat back and see if the proprietary information of Bloomberg clients was used by the mayor’s office.
If nothing else, the Bloomberg saga would seem to be yet another cautionary parable on the dangers of unchecked power. When he stepped up to run for office, he wanted to help the city he loved. But squashing the public-financing system and running for a third term was disrespectful of the body politic he was trying to improve.
Now it appears another public trust has been violated. You don’t have to throw bunga-bunga parties like Silvio Berlusconi—the two are neighbors in Bermuda, incidentally—to flaunt how much you believe you are above the normal rules. That never ends well.
well with that expanded agenda....he’s definitely taking a bite out of hilary, not trump!
“If you go state by state...dragging up the anti-gun talk and the big-gulp gimmick...how would he subtract any votes from Trump?”
But it won’t be that way. He will go state to state with gauzy commercials about moderation, getting things done, civil discourse, bringing people together, and all sorts of lies about how great NY has been. He will pull the R’s who can’t stand Trump either because they are RINO’s or because they can’t stand the bombast and profanity. He’ll also pull R’s who still believe the crap about working across the aisle. He’ll pull a lot of D’s too.
Miley will draw from the dims
How can he? He’s presumably not on the ballot in very many states and has passed the deadline for many if not most of them.
He should run as a communist or democrat.
Probably so, there's been so much chatter about it that it's hard to dismiss. I just don't know where the pipsqueak thinks he's going to draw support from. He's NOT going to cut into Trump's support at all. Is he in it to take down Hillary? Does he expect a Hillary indictment? Curious.
Will give the GOPe and Bernie’s supporters an alternative candidate.
Let’s not exaggerate now. It’s 4 squares of tp a day.
That ought to give the Dems fits!............................
It may not be about winning but allowing him to drop billion or so in ads against Trump and allow Hillary to win.
GOPe will like that and Dems will like that. He will be their hero.
She may pick him as VP.
Wow!!!
The era of Big Soda is over!!!
stupid is as stupid does.
Bloomie is an fool but it his money to waste.
He will give the Sandernistas a home.
Make Bern VP and hill is finished.
Hillary and Tom Daschle will be saddened, deeply saddened.
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