Good for Mike Bloomberg.
During his first debate, he slammed Bernie Sanders by saying: “We’re not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work!”
Exactly right. It’s safe to say Bloomberg is not a communist. I wonder if that means there’s still room for him in the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, Bloomberg is no principled, limited-government capitalist, either.
Like his fellow New York billionaire Donald Trump, he’s used to getting his own way at his own company.
Unfortunately, he assumes government should function in a similar fashion.
Instead of a predictable governing philosophy, Bloomberg has whims — lots of them.
The Media Research Center’s Craig Bannister tallied “32 Bloomberg Bans” (some were overturned).
While he was mayor of New York City, Bloomberg targeted smoking, flavored tobacco products, fattening sodas, cars on certain Manhattan streets, loud music, grass clippings, cellphones in schools, salt, guns, Styrofoam, restaurant menus without calorie counts and restaurants without extra bathrooms for women.
When challenged about how his ban on big soft drinks inconvenienced consumers, Bloomberg contemptuously replied that you could always buy two smaller containers.
“Could be that it’s a little less convenient to have to carry two 16-ounce drinks to your seat(, but) I don’t think you can make the case that we’re taking things away.”
But he was taking something away — freedom of choice. It’s hard to do what we choose if nannies like Bloomberg control parts of our private lives.
During his tenure as mayor, police expanded crowd-control cordons at public events like parades and marathons.
Now, it’s harder to see the parade. And sometimes, to cross one street, you have to walk a long way.
If Bloomberg ends up in the White House, he’d bring his nanny approach to the whole planet.
Still, in my state’s primary, I’ll vote for him over Bernie Sanders.
He knows how to manage people. He was a pretty good mayor of my city, much better than the political hack we have now. He sometimes even cut spending to pull the city out of debt.
He criticizes some of the Democrats’ ruinously expensive proposals, saying “Medicare for All” “would bankrupt us!”
He recognizes the value of work. “In America, we want people to work… to set the alarm clock and punch the time clock. That’s what America’s all about.”
Unfortunately, now that Bloomberg’s a Democrat, he says “the free market is not always perfect,” and he wants paid family leave, a higher minimum wage and higher taxes.
Although he criticized the “Green New Deal” as “pie in the sky,” now Bloomberg has his own expensive “solutions.” He would cut greenhouse gases by half by doing things like banning new natural gas plants. There’s no way to do that without making it much harder for people to heat their homes and buy gasoline.
He spends millions pushing more gun control while issuing groveling apologies for tough-on-crime programs he once believed in.
Five years ago, he bragged about putting “a lot of cops… where the crime is, which means in the minority neighborhoods.”
Now he apologizes “for the pain that (statement) caused.”
But it was accurate, and most of his policies made life better for people in minority neighborhoods.
Bloomberg thinks he can have it both ways, being a Republican or a Democrat depending on which is most convenient for his ambition — and his autocratic tendencies.
That leads him to admire places like China, where dissent is not allowed. As CEO, he was quick to cooperate with the Chinese government.
Sociologist Leta Hong Fincher writes how Bloomberg’s company tried to ruin her financially when she tweeted about corruption in Beijing. Her husband had a nondisclosure agreement with Bloomberg. That meant the company could stop him — not her — from saying anything that might upset Chinese Communist authorities.
Bloomberg’s love of power even led him to get a special exception to New York City’s term limits on mayors. He got the city council to let him run for a third term — not all future mayors, just Bloomberg.
Trump jokes about running for a third term, but Mike actually did it.
Bloomberg, unfortunately, is yet another unprincipled power-hungry political egomaniac.
I think Nanny Bloomberg has given enough orders for one lifetime.
“Bloomberg, unfortunately, is yet another unprincipled power-hungry political egomaniac.
I think Nanny Bloomberg has given enough orders for one lifetime.”
Yet you would vote for him??????
He said in the primary. As in he decided he was better than the other whack jobs. And if someone has to be president, wouldn’t you want the best choice on the ballot for both sides? What if he loved trump and trump lost? He would rather Bloomberg than Bernie.
Personally, it isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans who Mr. Stossel votes for as it’s all going to be decided in Milwaukee. If they decide ‘wrong’ and the streets of Milwaukee turn into a war zone (as if it isn’t already), will the Democrat Party be writing a check for the damages or will they (like all Democrat-run cities/states) be expecting the citizens of Wisconsin to pick up the tab?
If that happens, ten electoral votes can safely be put in President Trump’s column.
Mindboggling…isn’t it?
I couldn’t agree with you more; the guy’s a power-starved Napoleon. Like you, Mr. Stossel, I have come to despise this class of people who thinks they know better how to spend my money than I do. Bloomberg thinks he has the solution to our current political polarization; he’s blinded by hubris. While I am no lover of Mr. Trump’s style, I excuse it (to a degree) by believing that draining the proverbial swamp was not a job for Mr. Niceguy. Blowing up the duplicitous, incestuous, and corrupt D.C. culture could never have been–IMHO–accomplished by an insider versed in the toxic culture of “that’s how it’s always been done.” Separate style from substance to the degree that it can be done, and I’ll vote for Trump every day. Certainly not for a commie-admiring socialist or a flip-flopping, power-hungry maniac. Leave me alone to make my own decisions, and put our country first. It’s the American way and it’s why we are the greatest and most admired country on our planet.
Amen
I wasn’t giddy about voting for Trump in 2016, but for the second time in my lifetime, I’ll be voting for Trump because he’s truly the best man for the job, not because I dislike the opponent more (the first time was 1984 for Ronald Reagan).
@Will Tell LOL “It’s the American way and it’s why we are the greatest and most admired country on our planet.” you really should get out more.
Yea, a ton of illegal people coming to American can’t be wrong…
😛
Why did Bloomberg pressure the people responsible for term limits to make his run 3 terms? And then when he was finished, he had them change it back again?
Why and Why?
Note to Bloomberg.
The Radio and TV stations who love you and your money, I am sure they will vote for you. However, I will not, nor my family, nor my friends
will vote for someone who tries too buy his way in to become president. Use that money to help people get into collage for free, or build many large free apartments for the homeless, or even help by finding a cure for the Coronavirus. Mr. Bloomberg When you do these type of things prior to your running for president a heck of a lot more people would voted for you . Now it long past since your are running on only your money which is not helping you very much. Why not spend millions now on trying to help find a cure for the Coronavirus. Oh how that would be a great plus in your favor.
I approve this message.
John Stossel says, “Bloomberg is no principled, limited-government capitalist”. Grover Norquist is a principled, limited-government capitalist and he said in his 2011 “60 minutes” piece that he wants American tax revenue cut to 8% of GDP like it was in the late 19th century. He claims that the U.S. economy functioned “quite well” at that time. It might have worked well for rich people like David Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie but it wasn’t so great for the 80% of the population that was in poverty. At that time the United States was like any third world country today with large crowded slums, low wages, long work hours, and no benefits. Lack of regulation enabled companies to sell contaminated food and drugs. Why would anyone want to return to that? It has been tested and we can look up what it was like. United States wage earners didn’t attain prosperity until the New Deal policies of high taxes, regulation, union support, and big government went into effect. (Low taxes enable unlimited top incomes so there is little money left over for anyone else, that’s why wages were low during the Gilded Age and why wages have stagnated since Reagan’s tax cuts. High top tax rates put a cap on top incomes and enabled the high wage growth that was seen during the New Deal high tax era from 1933 to 1981.) There are several countries today with tax revenues below 10% of GDP. Leaving out oil-rich Mideast countries that don’t need to collect taxes, they are Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Bahrain, Myanmar, Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Yemen, Guinea, Bangladesh, and Haiti. Are those countries the model of what we want the United States to be? Meanwhile according to Gallup polls the countries with the highest household median incomes are Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and Denmark in that order. Isn’t it better to live in a high tax nanny state like those? I don’t understand why anyone would choose the low tax poverty model over the high tax prosperity model. Compare low tax, small government Mexico to high tax, nanny state Canada. Which is better?
The idea that “Medicare for All” would bankrupt us is utter nonsense. The predicted cost of “Medicare for All” is $30-40 trillion over 10 years. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the ten year projected total healthcare spending from 2018 to 2027 is predicted to be $47 trillion with the current system. That’s how much we are already spending, so how could it bankrupt us to spend less? Every other first world country has universal health care, and it costs significantly less on a per capita basis than what the United State is currently spending (with better results).
The Green New Deal, properly funded with taxes on the rich, would be a boon for American workers. It would create jobs, clean the environment, and stop the rich from hogging the nation’s wealth like they have been doing for the last 40 years. History shows that high top tax rates cause wages to go up. All oil companies that I know of have publicly admitted that burning fossil fuel causes global warming (Occidental, Repsol, and British Petroleum have pledged to become “carbon neutral”), at the same time they are privately funding climate change denial disinformation organizations. Limiting global warming would require 80% of known oil reserves to remain in the ground. That represents a lot of money that oil companies don’t want to give up.
If Mexico is ‘all that’, why are they trying to illegally come into the United States? or…are they just trying to get to Canada?
Mexico isn’t “low tax, small government”. I lived and worked there, they’ve nationalized the entire petrochemical industry and ran it into the ground due to unions and government control.
Now that (Former New York City Mayor) Bloomberg has cut bait, who’s next in line?