In a lengthy interview with New York Magazine, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg cleansed the city of all the scum and screwheads like a hard rain on Travis Bickle’s mohawk.
Answering a question about Democratic party mayoral candidate, Bill de Blasio, Bloomberg dipped his gold-toed silk stocking into the deep waters of race and class war.
Then there’s Bill de Blasio, who’s become the Democratic front-runner. He has in some ways been running a class-warfare campaign—
Class-warfare and racist.
Racist?
Well, no, no, I mean* he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote. You tailor messages to your audiences and address issues you think your audience cares about.
Being married to a black woman and having two kids and campaigning as a family is not the same as running around pointing out that you’re Jewish. Sorry, Mike.
This is the de Blasio family:
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio joined with doctors, nurses, health care workers and activists at a major rally to protest the closure of Long Island College Hospital and Interfaith Medical Center. Seen here with his wife, Chirlane, and kids, Chiara and Dante. Image via Wiki.
The asterisk in Bloomberg’s comment in the interview was added later, after Bloomberg’s office took issue with how his answer was characterized. But characterizing Bill de Blasio’s campaign as ‘class-warfare and racist’, which he most certainly did, is an interesting perspective coming from someone who thinks ‘Stop & Frisk’ is good policy and we’d all die penniless and poor without Wall street’s hand on the till.
But his whole campaign is that there are two different cities here. And I’ve never liked that kind of division. The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people. They are the ones that pay the bills. The people that would get very badly hurt here if you drive out the very wealthy are the people he professes to try to help. Tearing people apart with this “two cities” thing doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s a destructive strategy for those you want to help the most. He’s a very populist, very left-wing guy, but this city is not two groups, and if to some extent it is, it’s one group paying for services for the other. (emphasis mine)
It’s a shame, because I’ve always thought he was a very smart guy.
It’s a shame that Bill de Blasio would campaign on the idea that Wall street is taking the country for a ride and that Michael Bloomberg is partially responsible. Several times throughout the interview Bloomberg stroked the precious egos of megalomaniacs everywhere, saying things like, “If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend, because that’s where the revenue comes to take care of everybody else.” Bloomberg even wished aloud for Russian billionaires to swoop in and save the city in the absence of another term in office for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is worth an estimated $27 billion and the 7th richest person in the country– making him the foremost expert on racism and class warfare in America. It’s more of an aerial view.
And, for you economists at home, it’s not that we have the world’s most diverse consumer marketplace, regulated by government, or the trillions of dollars in perpetual bailouts that make Wall street so productive and good for the commoners. It’s that we’d be lost without Wall street’s money management skills. And who else is going to provide the air conditioning we all need to have a better standard of living than third world countries? Just shut up and be more thankful for our financial sector overlords who never seem to get caught up in a ‘Stop & Frisk’ moment befitting their crimes against global economic security.
Bloomberg oozed contempt for the idea that all roads lead to wealth income inequality, and that a man running for public office would campaign with his family. In public!
To Bloomberg, it’s all just a ruse. Getting married to an African American woman, having two kids who are nearly grown? Only a racist would use his family to inflict class-warfare and racism on Wall street and Michael Bloomberg!
New York City hasn’t elected a Democratic mayor since 1989, and the more I hear about the Bill de Blasio family, the more I think that maybe it’s about time for someone to break through the ignorant barriers being set by the Michael Bloombergs of the country. That is, if Wall street doesn’t have any extra money sitting around to negatively and disproportionately influence our elections.