Indeed. The more I read about Bloomberg the more troubled I am that he has even become a serious contender. For example this detail from the NYT’s Alex Burns:
The sheer scale of Bloomberg’s political funding and philanthropy combined with this campaign has already corrupted the Democratic party. I guess we need to wait and see how deep that corruption runs. Maybe I am an optimist but my guess is that the current pushback will work and that he will peak pretty soon.
I think that there is no way I want to vote for the kind of authoritarian leader who creates a policy that does the things I’m linking below. And I find it disturbing that ordering and defending things like police planting evidence or holding people in jail for years and never even holding a trial for the alleged crime and ignoring the courts when it comes to reigning in the terror don’t disqualify someone as a president for you. Are the Democrats really taking the ‘lesser of two evils’ things to literally that they’re pledging to vote for the policies below?
We’re not talking about some minor policy disagreement here, we’re talking about someone who chose to run things as a police state when he had the chance.
I’ve now clicked and read three of those articles: the Atlantic one, the NYT article, and the Brennan Center analysis and opinion piece.
After reading three articles and finding nothing that supports your claim that he was “ordering and defending things like police planting evidence or holding people in jail for years and never even holding a trial for the alleged crime and ignoring the courts …” One article was not about anything specific to a Bloomberg policy at all, but an article about how plea bargaining as a system is broken nationally with disparate impacts on the poor. It was an interesting article (that Atlantic one) with more of a specific focus on Nashville than anywhere else, and its point that the nationwide Tough on Crime and War on Drugs heyday is rightfully having a major course correction is well made.
I can only conclude that you are doing some “creative interpretation”.
It is clear and accepted that Stop and Frisk was horribly implemented, had racist impacts, and was not the cause of the drop in crime rates that New York had experienced (and continued to experience as Stop and Frisk was halted). It is clear that the goal of getting illegal guns out of the neighborhoods that had the highest homicide rates was a good goal, one that most of the establishment ignores caring little about people of color being murdered in their own neighborhoods, and that Stop and Frisk accomplished little (if anything) in service of that goal and had negative consequences that far outweighed any possible little good it did. It is clear that we are overdue for judicial reform, including getting rid of cash bonds for non-violent offenses and decriminalizing (not legalizing) drug user offenses. No argument there.
No argument that one of Bloomberg’s significant faults has been a historic blind spot to how law enforcement discretionary policies have racial biases and have resulted in severe impacts.
But your post is bullshit.
I might be stupid, but I don’t see where any of those articles say that Bloomberg ordered or defended planting evidence. And I know enough about the criminal justice system in NYC specifically to know that Kalief Browder spending three years in jail awaiting trial had nothing to do with either Bloomberg or the NYPD.* I don’t see anything that says Bloomberg ignored a court order- he said you won’t see a change in tactics overnight, but that’s not the same thing. And in fact, there were 685,724 stops in 2011, 532,911 in 2012 and 191,851 in 2013 - so it appears that there were some changes even prior to the judge’s decision on 8/12/13.
I hated "stop and frisk " ( in large part because my son seemed to get stopped at least once a week ) and Bloomberg is far from my ideal presidential candidate, but blaming him for things that I see no evidence that he did doesn't disqualify him in my view.
He created the policy, he gets credit for the results. If you can read about what “Stop and Frisk” was actually like from people who were there and still vote to put that person in charge of all Federal law enforcement, I really don’t know what would disqualify someone for president for you other than ‘currently has an R in their party affiliation’. (You can’t even say 'is a Democrat, since his tenure as Mayor of NYC was as a Republican, and he had been working hard to get Republican congressmen and governors elected from 2000-2018).
It was a racist, illegal authoritarian scheme that was intended to (and did) grossly violate people’s civil rights. “Racist impacts” and “horribly implemented” both attempt to excuse its fundamental nature. And Bloomberg not only implemented this policy, he defended it right up until he decided to run for president.
Every authoritarian who sends jackbooted thugs to rough up vulnerable groups has some kind of noble goal to state that it’s for. This is a completely meaningless factoid to throw in, even the worst people typically believe they’re making the world a better place. (Note that ‘jackbooted thugs’ is not a literal claim, you don’t need to provide a cite about NYPD footwear during the period)
He doesn’t have a blind spot at all, he brags about his openly racist policies and how they’re targeted. “Ninety-five percent of murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” Bloomberg told the Aspen Institute in 2015, “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city.” This is not someone with some mild blind spot about biases, this is someone who directly endorses and celebrates acting on biases and trampling on people’s civil liberties as long as he can get away with it.
No, the bullshit is your pathetic attempt to whitewash the explicitly racist, authoritarian policies that Bloomberg implemented and defended right up until he decided to switch parties run for president. Again, no what whatsoever I’m going to vote for someone who thinks you can just xerox ‘black kid’ and start arresting people.
And even ignoring his racist and authoritarian nature, I think it’s also bullshit to endorse a candidate like him as someone who will fight Republicans. He was, until 2018, a Republican himself who spent large sums of money getting Republicans elected. A number of the very senators who voted ‘not guilty’ for Trump’s impeachement received substantial financial contributions from Bloomberg (generally through PACs which Bloomberg contributes to), but we’re supposed to accept that Bloomberg is going to fight tooth and nail against people he helped put into office in the first place?
For anyone who is interested here is the NYT article.
No question that it is not “normal” for anyone to give away 15% of their total wealth, over $10 billion so far, to good causes. I sure haven’t (on a relative scale) done that. Have any of you?
It seems a bit strange to be characterizing having done that as something disqualifying and inherently corruptive.
Quotes and figures that follow in this post are from the NYT article linked to above.
He is to be disqualified because “Mr. Bloomberg spent more than $100 million helping Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Of the 21 newly elected lawmakers he supported with his personal super PAC, all but six were women.” There is NO accusation by anyone involved that he, or anyone representing him, ever associated that with a “but first there is a favor I want …”
He is to be disqualified because of the $1.4 billion, most to any single cause, that he has donated to public health causes (many of which make him less easy to elect, popularly characterized as a “nanny state” mentality).
Those who feel that his giving is all out of self-interest have to explain how the $227 million given to international institutions has served his making more money, how the $278 million given to climate advocacy was done to “buy” him silence from critics, how massive donations to his alma mater Johns Hopkins has bought him political power …
He has used his political and philanthropic spending, a meaningful portion of his total wealth, to fight for very good causes, to accomplish great goods, and that is disqualifying. Here is the crux of that argument as expressed in the NYT article:
Have some who are received his support thought to themselves that they would be less likely to keep giving as much to someone who was critical of them, and therefore self-censored? Human nature such as it is I suspect so. But all appearances are that Bloombergs giving has been informed by a disciplined approach in leveraging his giving to maximal impact on his policy goals and that alone. There is no indication that he requires those around him or those he supports to stroke his ego; what they need be is effective at accomplishing the policy objective.
His approach is also willing to ignore partisan considerations, which definitely plays poorly to some. OTOH being willing to be bipartisan in service of policy goals will play well to others, especially in the general, but I believe even in the primary season.
Yes, lots of good works (by tactical donations or by physically helping out) earn lots of good will … in his case even some bipartisan good will. Of course the good will that good works have earned will serve him well.
At this point I and a few others share his take: the greatest impact to the good of the planet is right now served by having Trump defeated and a Democrat in his place, preferably one with a Democratic Congress. He is going to use his wealth to accomplish that good work in any case (even if Sanders would rather he not) and many of us looking at the field right now see him as the candidate most likely to deliver that, and most able to actually deliver on doing something meaningful about Climate Change, about getting even closer to universal coverage by building on the great success that the ACA has been, for meaningful gun violence prevention, for a less risky world, and more.
Maybe that assessment will change as the season goes on. He not close to perfect but he seems the best of the choices we have to me.
Most of the post this is taken from is just repeating the same crap and not worth responding to yet again, but some blatant mistruths should be corrected.
Bloomberg was, until 2001, a Democrat. He ran for mayor as a Republican in 2001 and left the Republican party two years after his 2005 re-election. Like Sanders he was an Independent since then … except that he is now a registered Democrat, unlike Sanders.
As noted above he has given to a few Republicans along the way in service of policy agenda goals, but again from the NYT article, let’s be clear:
Nobody is saying that it’s bad for him to give money to charity or that every penny he’s donated was intended to be a quid pro quo exchange for political favors.
Here’s what a lot of people actually are saying. Bloomberg’s running for President. He wants to take over the Democratic Party and then jump from there to being the most powerful person on earth. Normally, candidates who want to do so have to convince people to support their ideas by going to debates, doing interviews and town halls and rallies and the like. Bloomberg has almost entirely skipped that. He’s done no debates, no town halls, very few interviews or any other events where he has to answer questions or meet voters face to face.
Instead he relies on two things. The first is an unprecedented flood of advertising, which he can do only because he’s filthy rich. The second is a long string of endorsements, that seems to have appeared out of nowhere while virtually no one was taking him seriously just a few weeks ago. So it’s entirely reasonable to ask whether his money also influences the endorsements.
You may say that there’s no evidence of him specifically saying to anyone, “I’ll give you $$$ if you’ll endorse me.” But would it be necessary to say so? He’s given money to countless people and organizations. They’re all surely aware of the possibility of him giving more money. They’re all surely aware that he’ll make the decision of whether or not to keep the spigots of money turned on. And it’s reasonable to suppose that some of them might thus want to keep on Mike Bloomberg’s good side.
Therefore I think it’s entirely understandable that some folks would be a bit cynical about the parade of people coming to endorse or praise him, when many of those people have either received money for him or at least are close to some cause or organization that’s taken money from him.
I have done better than that. I have given every single cent of my total wealth above $1 million to charity. Bloomberg can’t begin to compete with me in that arena.
Fortunately, I’m not characterizing his philanthropy as disqualifying. I’m characterizing the strings that are apparently attached to the philanthropy as disqualifying, especially in conjunction with the things like catering rallies to increase turnout, and poaching staff from other campaigns, and discouraging other billionaires from donating money. Isn’t that what I said?
I was until recently on the board of a local nonprofit. Our local hospital, one of (if not the) largest employers in town, petitioned state regulators to change from a nonprofit to a for-profit. As part of the transition, an enormous foundation would be created to fund local charities; the money they’d have would dwarf any other regional funding sources.
Which, y’know, great. Our little nonprofit stood to benefit.
But when they wrote us a letter asking us to endorse the change in status? That was fucked up. They never said, “If you don’t endorse us, kiss our funding goodbye.” But they never said otherwise. The implicit threat was there, because that’s how these things work.
It’s not ethical to seek endorsements from people you’ve funded, for exactly that reason. The possibility of withdrawing funding can be coercive to them.
The only thing I’m ‘prognosticating’ are your own words and their direct implications. That takes no special skill and, alas, won’t make me any richer than I already am.
I saw a fake article yesterday claiming that Bloomberg had bought all of Individual 1’s debt for pennies on the dollar, and was going to foreclose on him to make him show his taxes. I only wish it were true.
ITR,
Funny thing. The same people who are criticizing him for not being in the debates argue here that he should not be allowed in the next debate. Weird.
It is accepted, I think, that how he has chosen to spend his money, what he has chosen to do with his money, what he has accomplished with his massive philanthropy, what those actions say about his values, “influences the endorsements.”
As to the “meanwhile” - As a proud card carrying member of the ACLU and the advocacy they do, I am not surprised that he portrayed the NYCLU’s position against the policy he was still defending as “extremist.” In a thread that’s already been Godwinized, a “you know who else is extremist? The NRA.” is small potatoes. FWIW I think the ACLU is “extremist” in the support of civil liberties and freedom of speech, as I think they should be. We’ve had discussions on this board in which some of the Left side are very uncomfortable with such an extremist position on freedom of speech, as it allows for speech they very much object to, that they want shut down.
And a swipe at the teacher’s union that takes advantage of the chance to swipe at the NRA too, which stated that for both “the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.” is not overly low or even unfair to say if it was true. Not sure if it was or was not accurate at the time.
Also in the article is that the then head of the teacher’s union and he are currently both on the same page advocating for better teacher’s pay.
Was she bought off? Is that going to be the go-to explanation for every endorsement he gets?
LHOD you are free to feel that your chosen metric is of some meaning. I don’t.
Funding and fundraising is, of course, a subset of “helping”. Does your ethical rule apply to other help that has been given? If someone has been of help in the past and might be in the future, should they be disallowed by ethics from asking for an endorsement or support in some way?
Is it ethically problematic for a politician who has done fundraising and donated to another politician’s race (something even Sanders did some of - for those who had endorsed him if no one else) to ask for an endorsement in the future?
Internationally, is it unethical for the United States to ask for support from countries we have helped in the past? If we might want their support in the future the only ethical thing to do is to not help them, or do anything else that they might see as valuable with our resources, now, no matter how much good the help could do?
The only way out of the conundrum that you present for someone with resources to help is to not help anyone, because if they do good for someone, and might do good for them in the future, then they ethically cannot ask for their support later.
FWIW I see no ethical problem in asking your non-profit writing a letter in support of something you supported. With full transparency on whether or not the hospital currently donate significantly to you and that you see this change as helping your nonprofit organization do more good as a result of the change.
RTF hey for all we know you are rich! 
Holman Jenkins column the other day in WSJ “Bloomberg Buys the Democratic Elite”, (paywall), was largely in agreement, from another angle.
I’d just comment on those points to say
a) questionable at the moment if Bloomberg is contributing to Republicans or how relevant it would be to the Democratic primaries even if he were. I’m sure he has, having been at one time a not just registered but elected Republican (Warren was a Republican, Trump was a Democrat, but neither when actually running for office). If Bloomberg were to somehow become nominee and tried to silence down ticket GOP opposition by contributing to their campaigns that would he highly interesting, to see the reaction in various quarters. But I’m pretty skeptical of this particular item
b) also less sure about the claims of encouraging other billionaire Democratic donors to ‘sit it out’ and why they’d listen to him.
Otherwise I don’t think there’s a lot of dispute Bloomberg is doing those things. Although none are really new including leveraging philanthropy as a general political tool at least. Not the exact same formula but the Clinton Foundation was a real charity and also a tool to extend the political influence of the Clinton’s, and wasn’t the first either. Bloomberg’s $ output though is on a new level. When Trump first started one complaint was that he’d do that, but he’s too cheap (and has much less than Bloomberg anyway) and it was eventually spun against him by his opponents that he was not willing to spend unprecedented amounts on his own campaign. In my state two Democratic Goldman Sachs alumni have followed a play book kind of like Bloomberg’s to go from zero to governor (NJ, Corzine and now Murphy) but were ‘only’ worth maybe $100 or few mil each and only spent $10’s mil. A guy with $10’s of bil’s willing to spend multiple $bil is new in scale.
If only! 
Not rich enough to stop working, darnitall.
Went to the Bloomberg campaign office opening in Grand Rapids, MI this afternoon. There was absolutely no local promotion, nothing on Facebook, nothing in the local paper, nothing via email or text. I just happened across it by chance when I went to Bloomberg’s events page last night. Even the event page on the Bloomberg website was scant on details.
But despite all that, there were probably 100-150 people there. And as we were leaving, another 20-30 outside and/or walking up.
I agree with all that. It certainly is possible that it was Bloomberg and/or his people (rather than Trump-siders) who started the rumor for cynical ‘distraction needed’ reasons.
But frankly, I think it’s less likely: Bloomberg, if in need of a distraction, would choose one that would be less likely to bother some of his potential voters. (Part of the pro-Bloomberg argument is that he could attract votes from Never-Trumpers, and obviously getting them to believe he’d choose Hillary wouldn’t be particularly helpful in that regard, as they are not fans of hers.)
The game being played will continue to be an ugly one. If we succeed in saving our constitutional republic from the would-be Trump Reich, we will have to tackle money-in-politics. We can’t afford to let it slide another four years.
We also need to up our game on awareness of disinformation-tactics. In this very thread we have an example of what, apparently, will be a big one: make an ugly claim about an opponent, and add citations to reputable sources—citations that, it turns out, have nothing to do with the ugly claim, and certainly do not support it. Those using the tactic can count on the fact that many people won’t look at the sources (particularly if they are firewalled ones), but will simply assume that the sources do support the ugly claim.
We’ll be seeing that one again, in all likelihood.
Um, okay.
Asking for an official political endorsement from someone you’ve donated money to in the past and may donate money to in the future should not be done. Again, this is what I’ve said, and I think this is like the third time I’ve said this.
International ethics are not remotely the same thing as election ethics, as I’m sure you’re aware. Do you need me to give you some other examples of how they’re not analogous? If so, I’ll start with military aid to voters.
Asking for endorsements is different from asking for support. An endorsement is exclusive: someone who endorses Bloomberg in the Democratic primary necessarily and definitionally doesn’t endorse any of the other candidates. That’s the point where it gets really weird and runs into ethical problems. Asking someone simply to speak up about how you helped them is different, and I don’t see ethical issues there.
Yes, I was incorrect about his party affiliation - he only switched to being a Democrat in 2018, but was in fact an independent from 2007. I misremembered that he was an independent during that time, and my statement was factually wrong.
However, unlike Sanders while he was an independent he contributed vast sums of money to Republicans in contested elections, and as recently as June 2018 hosted a fundraiser for a Republican candidate. His 2018 spending on Democrats doesn’t make his spending in the prior decade go away. I don’t expect someone willing to drop that kind of money on helping the GOP win elections to be the staunch opponent that people here are somehow certain he will be.
Bloomberg was in charge of the NYPD and pushed the program that they were planting evidence during, and has been defending said program until extremely recently. I am not aware that he condemned or did anything significant to stop such practices, so I’m going to give him credit for what his law enforcement agency did while implementing his policies that he has defended right up to the moment when defending them became inconvenient for him.