"Mike" Bloomberg Presidential campaign, 2020

[SuntanLotion]

Looking forward to the debate

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Psst. Look up.

Oops, sorry. I missed that. I saw your post in the Nevada Caucus thread after I posted, but missed your post earlier in this thread.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

No worries, H&R; yer good people.

Bloomberg would sell business interests if elected president is on the front page of the AP right now.

Bloomberg would put Bloomberg LP into a blind trust, and the trustee would then sell the company, adviser Tim O’Brien said. Proceeds from the sale would go to Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable giving arm that funds causes from climate change to public health and grants for American cities.

The only restriction Bloomberg would put on the sale is that it not be sold to a foreign buyer or a private equity company, O’Brien said. Bloomberg, a Democrat, is currently chief executive of the company.

“We want to be 180 degrees apart from Donald Trump around financial conflicts of interest,” O’Brien told The Associated Press. “We think it’s one of the biggest stains on the presidency, and Trump’s record is his refusal to disengage himself in his own financial interests. And we want to be very transparent and clean and clear with voters about where Mike is on these things.”

[DSeid]

How many can afford it??

[Snowboarder_Bo]

How ironic would it be if Bloomberg won and Trump bought his businesses?

[CarnalK]

@DSeid

How many can afford it??

He doesn’t have to sell it as one piece.

[DSeid]

@Snowboarder_Bo

How ironic would it be if Bloomberg won and Trump bought his businesses?

Who can afford even separate pieces of it?

NOT Trump.

Bezos maybe.

[Sherrerd]

@DSeid

Who can afford even separate pieces of it?

NOT Trump.

Bezos maybe.

Yeah. Trump may well be squirreling away megabucks in numbered offshore accounts----but if he wants to buy Bloomberg LP, he will have to come up with money that he can account for.

[CarnalK]

@DSeid

Who can afford even separate pieces of it?

NOT Trump.

Bezos maybe.

Some subdivision of Disney. People seem to be forgetting that he’s a rich guy but there’s richer corporations. I bet Google could do something with a few of his assets.

[DSeid]

Good point. I could see Apple salivating for them too.

[Locrian]

Facebook, Instgram, Amazon…

Great. The robots are coming.

[ITR_champion]

I never liked Christopher Hitchens much, but I like him better after reading this article.

In addition to redlining and stop-and-frisk, some folks have begun paying attention in recent years to how many city governments try to fix holes in their budget by imposing fines for trivial offenses, and how these tend to fall most heavily on minority and working-class people. Bloomberg’s New York was a notoriously extreme example of nanny-state tendencies and it’s hardly surprising that he was pushing the same thing. Excerpts:

Take the case of Brian Bui, who owns the Mekong restaurant in SoHo. Like everyone else, he has been deprived of the choice of allowing his customers to smoke. He lives under a city government that knows better about what’s good for him and his clients. So smokers have to step outside. But is that the end of it? By no means. You see, there is no smoking allowed under an awning. So Mr. Bui was fined $200 for allowing one of his guests to smoke in that space. But the awning was, at the time, retracted. Never mind that, said the inspector who wrote the ticket. There was a canopy involved. Thus, a hardworking Vietnamese was penalized for, in effect, having an awning in the first place. He was also told by the judge that he hadn’t made “a good-faith effort” to police his guests or to draw their attention to this anomaly. Upon the second occasion that he was cited, again at a time when the awning was retracted, Mr. Bui went to court and won. But it cost him $3,000 in legal fees to prove that the health department and the city’s judges are unclear on the law.
…
An Israeli tourist named Yoav Kashdia was recently fined $50 for nodding off between stations and implicitly occupying two seats by virtue of his slumping.
…
My next challenge was to tempt the same fate that overtook Jesse Taveras, who sat on a milk crate outside the hair salon in the Bronx which is his place of employment and was fined $105 for “unauthorized use” of said crate. If you look closely at a milk crate, you will see an inscription confining its use to the crating of milk bottles and cartons by its owner, so don’t go using a crate as a safety razor, say, or a contraceptive.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

“Vietnamese”? No; that guy is American.

[SlackerInc]

I think it would probably be best if Bloomberg is not the nominee. But he has promised to spend “whatever it takes” to defeat Trump regardless, and that’s a pretty exciting prospect even if it’s kind of messed up that we’re just lucky to have the richest billionaire on our side.

There’s a cascading effect of Mike’s money that especially thrills me. All the “mere millionaire” Dem donors can, instead of contributing big checks to GOTV operations or super-PACS, give the maximum $2800 to each and every Dem up and down the ticket, across the country. (This is something Mike can’t do any better than they can, as he’s limited to giving them each the same $2800.) Meanwhile Bloomberg will identify every Dem leaning voter and give them all limousine rides to the polling stations, and babysit their kids if needed. If you live in Wisconsin, and lean Dem but often don’t vote, Mike’s going to practically hire you your own butler to make sure you get to the polls.

[septimus]

@ITR_champion

I never liked Christopher Hitchens much, but I like him better after reading this article…

Interesting article. But your link just takes me to the home-page of Proxysite.Com.

Does the link work for others, and my problem is just yet another symptom of Internet-in-the-Jungle?

[Rick_Kitchen]

@septimus

Interesting article. But your link just takes me to the home-page of Proxysite.Com.

Does the link work for others, and my problem is just yet another symptom of Internet-in-the-Jungle?

My virus protection tells me not to go there.

[ITR_champion]

@septimus

Interesting article. But your link just takes me to the home-page of Proxysite.Com.

Does the link work for others, and my problem is just yet another symptom of Internet-in-the-Jungle?

The article is on the Vanity Fair site here: https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2004/2/i-fought-the-law , but only for subscribers.

[nearwildheaven]

After seeing him get eviscerated at tonight’s debate, I don’t think he’ll be in the race much longer.

[Happy_Lendervedder]

Unless his poll numbers absolutely crater in California, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas and Michigan between now and March, I don’t see any way he’s dropping out after one bad debate, or even a rough second one. And yes, tonight was bad, especially the first half. But I imagine he still believes he is the strongest candidate to face Trump in the general. Unless polling numbers start showing him finishing in third or fourth place in the big states on Super Tuesday and March 10, he’ll continue on.

If Warren or Biden don’t do particularly well in NV and SC, they’re going to have a hard time continuing to raise money to compete in March. Same with Amy. As the field contracts, Mike will still have a shit-ton of money to compete. And honestly, I can’t imagine his debate performances actually getting worse from here on out, so as more states start to pay attention, and there are less candidates lobbing bombs at him, there’s a chance he is able to find his sea legs on the debate stage.

Or not. Who the fuck knows?

[Whack-a-Mole]

@nearwildheaven

After seeing him get eviscerated at tonight’s debate, I don’t think he’ll be in the race much longer.

He came off as woefully ill-prepared and the others pounced on him.

But he has a lot of money and may try to buy his way through. If he spends $1 billion on this and fails he’ll still be massively wealthy and will never notice the difference.