Bloomberg: The Billionaire Nothingburger
By E. Jeffrey Ludwig
AmericanThinker.com
November 30, 2019
Michael Bloomberg, who served as mayor of New York City, has announced that he is a candidate for the Leftocratic Party’s nomination to run for president in 2020. In his announcement, he said President Donald Trump is an “existential threat” to our country. This hyperbole is his way of reaching out to the extreme, panicked, deranged, and enraged Leftocrats who literally believe that everything worthwhile about America is being assaulted by our president.
Additionally, he noted that health care costs need to be addressed, that we live in an economy that is “tilted against most Americans,” that we have a “cruel and dysfunctional” immigration system, education, climate change, and Washington gridlock. These glittering generalities regarding areas for improvement represent his attempt to play on the public’s fears without being too specific. The question of immigration has been boggling our leadership’s minds since the 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s amnesty for illegals was supposedly going to solve the problem, but it served only to send a message: “come to the USA illegally, and eventually you’ll get the citizenship you crave.” Then we had bipartisan support for a fence in 2006, which was signed into law, but it was never fully implemented, partially because of objections and obstacles raised by the Department of Homeland Security and partially because of a shell game by our congressional representatives in both houses who wanted to appear to be doing something to protect our borders while shoving implementation opportunities under the rug.
Bloomberg is not only issues-oriented. He is also a strange creature who is obsessed with soft drinks. In 2012, he banned the sale of sugary drinks in containers 16 oz. or larger in New York City. Two years later, the New York Court of Appeals struck this ruling down as being “arbitrary and capricious.” Five years after that sugary drink fiat was struck down, this hobby horse, or obsession, is still deeply in his mind. In an interview since he announced for the presidency, he said higher taxes help people live longer because they will have less money to indulge poor eating habits. The example he gave was…sugary drinks. If they are taxed, people with more limited incomes will not drink them, will spend more on education, and will have more enjoyable lives. It did not occur to him that if they had less money they would still buy sugary drinks and fewer fruits and vegetables.
Since announcing his candidacy, Bloomberg has sought to ingratiate himself with the race- and gender-obsessed constituencies of the Leftocratic Party. He issued a mea culpa regarding his use of stop-and-frisk procedures during his tenure as mayor of New York City as placing an unfair burden on black and Hispanic communities. However, he has not yet recanted his opposition to the legalization of marijuana when he was mayor, but even at that time he expressed a desire that its possession be lowered from a misdemeanor to a violation. Sen. Cory Booker will probably challenge him on that in one of the upcoming debates. Such a challenge may result in another reversal and another mea culpa.
He is also on safe ground with his perverse support of homosexual “marriage” going back before Obergefell v. Hodges. In 2012, he endorsed Maryland’s same-sex “marriage” law saying in a statement, “I do not believe that government has any business telling one class of couples that they cannot marry.” Yet again, his logic is flawed and self-serving. Why do states and cities even issue marriage licenses? It is because by doing so, the government is regulating the classes of couples that can and cannot marry. Brothers and sisters cannot marry. A divorced parent cannot marry his child, or even a niece. A human being cannot get a license to marry a pet…or even a wild animal.
The Rest…HERE
