Massive wealth redistribution

Bloomberg has so much to give. And there are so many needs.

This transactional, corrupt favor-trading is as unacceptable as anything we see in Trump’s Washington. It’s abetted by an orgy of spending unseen in modern political history, a corporate-run, corporate-marketed Potemkin village of a campaign (where the talking points are so road-tested they’re plagiarized). Bloomberg has perfected an unrebutted, unsoiled image outside the primary fray (“I'm not running against the other Democratic candidates,” he has said at his canned, catered events, “I'm running to beat Donald Trump”). It calls to mind television networks’ unfiltered broadcasts of Trump’s speeches in 2016, only Bloomberg, unlike Trump, is paying for the time. And unsurprisingly it works; corporations use advertising for a reason. At the same time that he’s deluging the airwaves with his own dollars, he’s also leaning on his pals in the plutocracy to starve competitors seeking big-money dollars. He’s paying Instagram influencers to say nice things about him, and paying meme-makers to boost his image. Fake social-media content to cultivate support? Mike will get it done.

I'm still trying to get a bead on how many of the sudden Bloomberg employees are just in it for the cash windfall. You hear the occasional  anecdote about this or that person who is getting the $6,000 a month and the free computer from Mike but is actually out knocking on doors for Warren or whatever.  But you have to figure that can't be most of them, right?

Anyway we'll know more when the mayoral endorsements come rolling in.  A few have already but there are some we're watching with particular interest.

In spring 2018, the Jackson mayor held a town hall with Sanders before the Vermont senator announced his intentions to again seek the presidency.

Although Lumumba has not signaled whether he will make an endorsement, several Bloomberg staffers have ties to the capital city’s mayor.

A tale of two mayors

Nothing Mitch said in this speech makes a lick of sense. It did repeat a lot of the creepily authoritarian newspeak he's made his trademark over the years. Nonsense phrases like "Radical center," and the "One Voice" thing abound. There's a Katrina^TM reference and accompanying boat metaphor that unwittingly endorses disaster capitalism as a governing model.  Most disturbingly, there is this "people over politics" assertion which itself negates the basic concept of democracy.  Democracy is people empowered by politics. In Mitch's model, a "leader" ignores the politics to make decisions for them. On whose authority and at whose behest, these leaders act, though, is unspoken. 

Anyway, we've heard all of this a thousand times from our mayor now and, as distressing as it is to consider how far it's gotten him, we're a little bored with it.  So, instead, go read this Democracy Now interview with Chokwe Lumumba. The segment begins with Lumumba's speech to the People's Summit in Chicago. There the newly elected mayor of Jackson Mississippi offers a refreshing contrast to Mitch's elitist anti-politics.  

And so, ultimately, it becomes greater than a question of color and more a question of ideas and what are the best ideas and what are the worst ideas. And what the worst ideas are, is that you can be oppressive to anyone. And so, we now demand—we now demand that our leadership looks at how we include the people’s voice in the process, and that we have a—we have two choices. We have a choice of economics by the people and for the people or economics by a few people for themselves. And so, we’re demanding, right now, right now, that we begin to rescue ourselves. Right now, as my comrade said, we have nothing to lose but our chains.