Fear and Loathing in Nevada: The Bell Tolls for Bloomberg…
“Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop-and-frisk. Look, I’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is. But understand this: Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another.”
By JM Hamilton (2-22-2020)
Inside sources tell JMH that if one visits the Paris, Nevada auditorium, where the Dem presidential debate was held last Wednesday night, one can still smell the faint odor of burnt plutocrat.
Clearly, the Nevada performance (and this is coming from a Bernie - Warren fan) left no doubts as to the smartest candidate running, from either party... that title belongs to Senator Elizabeth Warren. (Obviously, Senator Sanders suffers no deficit in the smarts department either.) The Mayor of NY – slumping on the debate stage, eyes rolling - looked like a man who had lived in a billionaire bubble all his life, especially after Senator Warren took him to task for scores of NDAs (nondisclosure agreements) that are said to exist between the Mayor, his company, and former Bloomberg women employees. The long-term impact of the debate still remains to be seen, but there appears to be little doubt that a billionaire running for the Dem nomination – particularly with Mr. Bloomberg’s record - in the year 2020 - is a complete exercise in folly. Quite possibly, it may prove out that Mr. Bloomberg, in the furtherance of his presidential ambitions, is better off dumping his hundreds of millions directly into the ocean.
To break that conclusion down further, it’s very important to look at Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy from three different perspectives.
First, we have to compare the Mayor with the current White House occupant, Donald Trump:
Both Bloomberg and the POTUS are racists. Stop and frisk versus voter suppression and any number of comments and actions taken by Trump more than prove the point.
Bloomberg and The Donald are homophobic. Shockers.
Both men have exceptionally vile track records in their treatment of women, from wanton sexism to allegations of rape and unwanted sexual advances.
Bloomberg and The Don both embrace an authoritarian management style, as exhibited w/in their public and private careers.
Bloomberg and Trump, moreover, love dictators… See Bloomberg standing up for China’s communist leader.
Which of course, brings us to the myriad number of foreign conflicts of interests both men generate. Gee, does The Donald, and Mr. Bloomberg, look out for the interests of their foreign holdings & business dealings or do they look out for US values and Americans?
Both plutocrats have advocated, and supported, gutting Social Security and Medicare. Multinational welfare & financed tax cuts for the exceptionally wealthy, on the other hand, are all good.
Mike and Donald give to charities, which doesn’t point to their generosity, but rather, draws attention to our completely rigged tax code (which allows these men to accumulate vast fortunes, while leaving the less fortunate – the 99% - to pick up their tax avoidance tab).
As it stands, both men own their respective political parties. Trump has not only become the face of the Republican Party, but he also has a lock on his base. Bloomberg doesn’t possess the Dem base, and it’s doubtful that he ever will, but clearly the New Yorker has purchased the Democratic National Committee.
Both Bloomberg and Trump are Republicans. Take away Bloomberg’s efforts at gun control, and the Donald’s policies on trade protectionism, and you basically have two centrists, who cater to billionaires, C-Suite trash, dictatorships, and multinationals.
Bloomberg and Trump love the police and surveillance state, and therefore, the gutting of your civil liberties. Bloomberg runs an arm of the surveillance state, via his company, and he installed a police/surveillance state w/in NY City, during his time as Mayor. Trump, on the other hand, and despite his well-publicized feuds, has backed every spy agency, with foreign and domestic portfolios, during his time in the White House.
Both men are foreign policy hawks… and both will, or have, doubled down on endless war.
Donald is a political chameleon, changing his spots from Dem to Republican; while the Mayor has changed his stripes from GOP to Independent to Dem. Bloomberg’s money wouldn’t do much good today, w/in the GOP, so what better way for the plutocracy to, attempt, to gain a lock on both political parties than to run Bloomberg as a Dem?
Both Bloomberg and Trump will look you straight in the eye and lie, like they are breathing air.
In short, nuances aside, when we compare Bloomberg and Trump – from management style to a web of foreign conflicts of interest to their treatment of women & minorities – there’s no daylight between the two fascists.
Photo via the Washington Post
It’s amazing. Less than 12 years after the financial crash, and we have a product of Wall Street running for POTUS. A man who made his tens of billions by catering to Wall Street royalty, the very sharks who destroyed the global economy. Bloomberg has calculated that Americans have already forgotten about the crisis (the fallout of which, is very much w/ us to this day), or he lives in such an entitled bubble that it hasn’t dawned on him that Wall Street’s ongoing demolition of the US economy is likely to prove the key deal killer to his candidacy.
It all goes back to the entitlement, hubris, and ignorance of the billionaire class… particularly among the Wall Street elite. Here I’m thinking of – doing god’s work – Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Or – bank bailout king – Jamie Dimon popping off about socialism at Davos 2020.
In regards the Wall Street connection, I’ll leave my readers with three quick thoughts: a) when Wall Street was bailed out – a bailout that continues to this day, especially courtesy of the Federal Reserve – Mr. Bloomberg was also saved and his fortune has only grown; b) per former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, Wall Street hasn’t produced anything useful since the ATM (and I’ll take that a step further, Wall Street banks are little more than a predatory tax upon all Americans); and finally, c) is Mr. Bloomberg – as he claims - really going to rein in his Wall Street buddies?
And the last perspective… what does it say about the DNC, with all the corruption and fallout from 2016, not to mention a catastrophic loss to Trump, that the Dem establishment would bring on board, bending all rules, a man of Mike Bloomberg’s deformed character and history?
What it tells me, dear readers, is that the DNC is just as corrupt and plutocratically hacked as it was in 2016. As the second political arm of the US political duopoly, bending rules to allow Mike to hit the Nevada debate stage (despite numerous moral & policy failings) demonstrates that the party elite refuse to learn the lessons from the last presidential election cycle. And rather than reform, the Dem establishment is putting up a billionaire candidate, who - as pointed out above - is but a mere Trump clone.
As such, the Democratic Party, the lesser of two evils party, is still very sick. Fortunately, for Americans, and as Senator Warren quickly pointed out Wednesday night – w/ laser like precision - Mike Bloomberg is not the cure but a key problem.
What is the cure? Well, if the DNC shafts a Sanders or Warren nomination (w/ either candidate achieving a plurality of voters), the solution is the creation of yet another third party, or both candidates, possibly, going Green.
The political duopoly has served the oligarchy very well, now it’s time to serve the people.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2020
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