"Over the years, Bloomberg’s large donations to gun control groups and liberal super PACs have made him many liberal friends," writes Alex Kotch. (Democratic Presidential Candidate Michael Bloomberg Is a GOP Bankroller Exposed by CMD [Center for Media and Democracy] 02/14/2020; also at Common Dreams 02/14/2020)
But as his article's title notes, the aspiring Democratic Presidential candidate provides a lot of cash to Republicans:
He may no longer be the Republican mayor who endorsed George W. Bush and hosted the Republican National Convention in 2004, but his financial support for the GOP continued through 2018.Not surprisingly, spreading money around is a major tool for Bloomberg in politics. As Molly Olmstead notes in Michael Bloomberg Is Good at Throwing Money at Elections and Winning Slate 12/05/2019, 2018 brought "a rearrangement of Bloomberg’s identity as a donor" tilted more toward Democrats.
Since 1987, according to Federal Election Commission records, Bloomberg donated over $900,000 directly to Republican candidates’ campaigns, national GOP party committees, and federal PACs of state Republican Party committees. Recipients include former Rep. Dan Donovan of Staten Island, New York, whom he has given a total of $10,800, including $5,400 in 2018; former Sen. John McCain ($13,700 total); Giuliani, who has become one of Donald Trump’s closest devotees ($5,000); and Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby ($4,000).
Bloomberg has given $4.6 million to New York state GOP party committees and roughly $300,000 to Republican state and local candidates.
But the billionaire’s donations to outside political spending groups, including one he founded, represent far more money, and some of these groups have helped Republican candidates win elections.
"Money talks in this business and bullshit walks. And it works the same way down in Washington." As Congressman Michael Myers said in the most famous quote during the Abscam case, "I'm gonna tell you something, real simple and short. Money talks in this business and bullshit walks. And it works the same way down in Washington." (See: Charles Babcock, Rep. Myers Is Convicted Of Bribery Washington Post 08/30/1980) And in those days, the Supreme Court hadn't yet laid waste to limits on campaign financing and spending. The Abscam case was the real-world story behind the 2013 film American Hustle.
Bloomberg's actual and potential donations are something to keep very much in mind when seeing and hearing how establishment Democrats react to his hostile-takeover candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Bloomberg is also making huge media buys, which TV executives including those at MSNBC certainly have very much in mind.
Benjamin Dixon earned the ire of mainstream reporters by digging up these comments from Bloomberg on his notoriously racist stop-and-frisk program in New York City, relying on a source that mainstream reporters can't easily access, i.e., they were available online for years. Meet the Journalist Who Exposed Bloomberg’s Racist Defense of Targeting Black & Brown Youth Democracy Now! 02/12/2020:
Here's the quote from Bloomberg, Bloomberg: Put All The Cops In Minority Neighborhoods and Throw Them Against the Wall The Benjamin Dixon Show 02/10/2020:
Lee Fang reminds us that Mike Bloomberg Claims He Cut Stop-and-Frisk by 95 Percent - After Increasing it Sevenfold The Intercept 02/12/2020:
Far from changing course over the mayor’s focus on “racial equity,” as he has since claimed, the practice was clawed back by several lawsuits, which charged that the law enforcement program violated the basic constitutional rights of residents. U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, in a scathing decision, noted that over the course of 2.3 million frisks, weapons were found only 1.5 percent of the time. The decision pointed out that over half of the stops included African Americans and about third Latino, with less than 10 percent targeting white people.This is also a revealing explanation from Bloomberg on how the financial crash of 2008 is all the fault of them thar minorities. Michael Bloomberg - Origins of the Economic Crisis Fora.tv 09/23/2008:
The Bloomberg administration fought alongside New York’s notoriously aggressive police union to continue the program, arguing that the stop-and-frisk effort was focused on suspects with “furtive movements,” in “high-crime areas” and those with a “suspicious bulge.” But the judge knocked down those assertions, noting that such claims are vague and subjective.
He kinda-sorta apologized for his notorious racist stop-and-frisk program when he started running for President. It was all to help minority kids, you see - at least according to him. Sonny Hostin confronts Michael Bloomberg about Stop and Frisk 01/15/2020:
Lisa Cooley has provided a long, very helpful tweet thread of links to articles describing important aspects of Bloomberg's political style:
As a New Yorker, please let me explain why Bloomberg is not a viable candidate. But also, let me explain why. At @sarahkendzior’s suggestion, I read Wayne Barrett’s 1992 book on Trump. It’s all there, the lies, the mafia connections, the shamelessness. The media failed to vet him— Lisa Cooley (@lisacooleynyc) February 11, 2020
Wayne Barrett wrote about the evolution of Bloomberg's politics in The Transformation of Mike Bloomberg Village Voice 11/19/2008:
The Bloomberg who came into office as the anti-politician, promising to transform city government, has been transformed himself. Some of us liked him precisely because his wealth insulated him from the kind of horsetrading that diminished his predecessors. But seven years later, Bloomberg has not only proved himself to be a master politician, as hungry for power as anyone we’ve ever seen, but he’s also ended up putting nearly everyone who deals with the city deep into his political debt.And, apparently, oligarchs gonna oligarch:
... the large number of Bloomberg fans who are also Bloomberg beneficiaries makes it harder and harder to distinguish enthusiasm from interest. His control over a vast city budget, hundreds of millions in private donations, and billions in undisclosed personal investments cloud the authenticity of every nice thing said about him. And a day-after-Christmas decision last year by the Bloomberg-appointed Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) has made his money trail both more expansive and more elusive. At his request, the board decided that he would no longer be restricted to salting away his money in “large, professionally managed mutual and exchange-traded funds.” The COIB now allows Bloomberg’s influential investment advisor, Steve Rattner, another big third-term booster, to put Bloomberg’s estimated $20 billion fortune to work in a wide variety of investments, so long as he and the rest of us never find out precisely what they are. [my emphasis]Barrett elaborated:
His message, and it once was true, was that he owed nothing to anybody. He began parceling himself out in the 2005 campaign, when he did five contracts with unions that endorsed him and spent more of our money to re-elect himself than his own. And since his re-election was never in doubt, he dipped into his money and ours, it turned out, for vanity: It merely increased his margin of victory. Imagine how many own a piece of him now.It seems there are drawbacks for Bloomberg on the signature Woke theme of #MeToo. Megan Garber (‘I’d Do Her’: Mike Bloomberg and the Underbelly of #MeToo The Atlantic 08/19/2018) refers to:
... a series of stories about him, accumulated over decades, that suggests in the aggregate a distinct pattern when it comes to his treatment of women: reports of disparaging comments made about women’s bodies and appearances. Allegations of a deeply sexist work environment at the company that Bloomberg founded and, for many years, ran. Stories that linger like exhaust in the air every time Mike Bloomberg is mentioned as, potentially, the next president of the United States.Check out some more of the items on Lisa Cooley's thread. Including this one from the Washington Post's Josh Rogin:
Forgot about Bloomberg, he’s just like Trump https://t.co/aZGZfdLl11 https://t.co/qPmGXoMD8l— Lisa Cooley (@lisacooleynyc) February 11, 2020
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