What did Bloomberg buy for $1B? Not much.

Food for thought...

Michael Bloomberg tried to buy the election. He spent more than $1B on his failed presidential run. To put that in perspective, that's more than the combined campaign expenditures of every Democratic running in 2020.

He used his money to entice campaign workers across the country with promises of a paying job through the November election, regardless of whether he ultimately won the nomination or not. But Bloomberg reneged on that promise, scrapping plans to form his own super PAC and eventually transferring millions instead to the DNC.

His main purpose in running was to leverage his power against the left. Some even speculated that had Sanders won the primary, Bloomberg would have run as an independent or 3rd-party candidate. But now that he's dropped out and with Joe Biden as the apparent candidate, it doesn't appear that all the spending has bought him any more leverage within the party than he had before.

Evidence? Biden's team is now meeting with the AOC/Sanders team, not Bloomberg, to try and resolve their differences enough to win the Sanders base to support the Democrats. The reason? They have troops in the field and Bloomberg doesn't. And without that base, Biden has little chance of winning in November.

Whether those meetings will produce anything substantive in the way of pushing the campaign leftward is anyone's guess. Up to this point, Biden and the DNC have seemed to be worried more about the threat from it's left-wing than from Trump and the Republicans. But it's worth a try if only to save the campaign from another devastating loss a la 2016.

But for those who think that money is all you need to win, think again.

Sanders, who ended his campaign more than a month after Bloomberg's and notched more wins than the former New York City mayor, spent a total of $198.5 million on his campaign through the end of March.

Biden has not yet filed his campaign finance report covering March, but through the end of April, the former vice president spent just under $76 million on his campaign.

As for Bloomberg, the former stop-and-frisk mayor of New York, it appears that few care anymore what he thinks.

The knives were out for Sanders last night. Bloomberg skated.

Last night's debate in SC gave Michael Bloomberg his second chance to rebrand and deflect ("I said I was sorry!") as he led the rest of the pack on a wild, panic-driven, Russian-baiting attack on Bernie Sanders.

BLOOMBERG: I -- I think that Donald Trump thinks it would be better if he's president. I do not think so. Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be president of the United States. And that's why Russia is helping you [Sanders] get elected, so you will lose to him.

And it was all downhill from there. The great irony is that Bloomberg is the only one among the seven with investments in Russia that dwarf Trump's. Bloomberg LP has long had corporate ties to Russia, including as a provider of business and financial news video to RBC TV.

Pete Buttigieg may have been the worst of the bunch with his clueless hit on the '60s Civil Rights Movement. Heading into the South Carolina primary, without a trace of African-American voter support, Buttigieg declared,

 I am not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump, with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s, and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.

Almost as if it were in response, Rev. Jesse Jackson writes in this morning's Sun-Times:

Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t talking about making America into Cuba or Venezuela. He’s talking about extending social guarantees like those offered in other advanced countries, such as Denmark and Sweden.

The other candidates — particularly Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg — have scoffed at these ideas as too radical, too bold, too costly, too ambitious. They offer mostly a continuation of the politics that existed before Donald Trump disrupted the country. The problem with that, of course, is that it doesn’t offer much hope for most Americans.

When he was New York's mayor, Bloomberg led a ruthless expansion of privately-run charters schools that turned the nation's largest school system into a virtual war zone, forcing charter and public school educators to compete for space and survival. But in last night's debate, Bloomberg played the charter moderate and none of the others on stage challenged him, not even charter critics Sanders or Warren.

I can only imagine the looks on the faces of NYC teachers when he said:

"I'm not sure they're appropriate every place" and declared that charters provided an alternative for parents and that both charters and traditional public schools "helped each other" and were "mixed in with each other."

Not a single climate change question. Horrifying.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 26, 2020

Party leaders in the dark about how to deal with candidates' lack of party "loyalty"

Democratic insiders tend to be institutionalists. They are more likely than ordinary voters to care about the fact that Sanders hasn’t always been a registered Democrat, that he often criticizes party officials, and that he didn’t do more to help Clinton in 2016. -- Atlantic

As Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg surge to the top of the polls, and party favorite, Joe Biden continues to sink like a stone, Dem leaders are crying foul. "They're not really Democrats", they shout, pointing to Sanders' history as an independent and Bloomberg's as a Republican.

Actually, Sanders, the self-described socialist has always caucused with Senate Democrats while Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat before seeking elective office, switched his party registration in 2001 to run for mayor as a Republican. Yes, I know. It's hard to imagine the billionaire autocrat Bloomberg as anything but a Republican and he really isn't.

Case in point. Amid one of the most pivotal campaigns in the country in 2016, one many thought could decide control of the Senate, Bloomberg poured millions of dollars into the contest — to help Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Each of them recently has in fact, sworn fielty to the eventual nominee with Sanders signing a loyalty pledge and Bloomberg offering to donate a much as $1 billion to the eventual nominee's campaign, even if it's not him.

That being said, the charge of party disloyalty doesn't seem to be hurting either of them in the primary and in fact, might even be helpful with white suburban Democrats who just want to beat Trump, or in some of the battleground states where the aroma of the disastrous Hillary Clinton campaign still lingers.

Sanders spokesperson, David Sirota on party loyalty:

When I was working to successfully elect a Democratic governor, @MikeBloomberg was speaking at the GOP convention helping Bush win reelection.

So spare me your pious lectures telling me I don't meet your party loyalty test. I've done more to elect Dems than 99% of my critics.

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) February 19, 2020

Dems being played by Trump. Now they're echoing his attacks on Bernie.

Bernie Sanders got more young voters in New Hampshire than everyone else combined/

Bernie Sanders Is The Front-Runner For Democratic Nomination. The democratic socialist is assembling a broad coalition of voters. -- Huffpost 

"I don't understand how Bernie is considered a frontrunner' after New Hampshire primary." -- Chuck Todd, MSNBC

Donald Trump is still the tail wagging the Democratic dog. His every tweet has Dems running from pillar to post in shock-and-awe.

Whether it was calling nazi thugs in Charlottesville "fine people"; or ICE agents raiding communities and separating thousands of immigrant children from their parents on the southern border; or now, the Stone sentencing outrage. Each outrage was going to be the big thing that would break Republicans away by, in the words of Chuck Schumer, putting them in touch with their "better angels."

When the needle didn't budge, they turned to impeachment, certain that the Ukraine quid-pro-quo scandal would resonate with disenchanted swing voters and peel off a section of Republicans. It was also hoped that the impeachment trial would boost the campaign of their chosen one, Joe Biden, while keeping their progressive opposition, Sanders, and Warren, out of the media spotlight.

It didn't. They didn't.

The good news, at least from my perspective, is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says that she is jumping back off the impeachment train-to-nowhere and will be refocusing the party away from the Ukraine shitshow (which probably hurt Biden as much or more than it did Trump) and on to "economic issues." Up til now, Dems have conceded them to Trump.

According to Politico:

To further underscore that point, Pelosi hosted a special speaker’s meeting on Tuesday with a top Obama economics adviser to explain to Democrats why the economy isn’t actually as strong as Trump claims and how they can message that to voters.

 “I’m glad that we’re shifting and pivoting to something else. Every time I poll in my area, it’s always the same thing: education, health care and the economy,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, who is facing a fierce primary challenger from the left in his sprawling south Texas district.

 “Impeachment didn’t move the needle ... so continuing to focus on that target, you’re not going to convince anyone at this point,” said Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin, who represents a Trump-district. Kind said Trump’s real problem is in states that are key to his reelection, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where some haven’t benefited from the president’s economic good fortune.

But the risk for Pelosi and the DNC is that a focus on the economy and the environment will strengthen Bernie Sanders, who they currently see as a greater threat to their power than they do Trump himself.

Yes, you read me right. Despite recognition of the fact by both camps that without party unity, it will be impossible to beat Trump in November, party leaders and media allies are doing everything possible to make post-primary unity impossible.

First, they have become an echo for Republican red baiters. Check out one of their media faves, Chris Matthews, raising the specter of Bernie's commie assassination squads.

Leading up to Sanders’s win this week in New Hampshire, Matthews truly lost it, implying that Sanders would cheer on his public execution: “I have an attitude towards [Fidel] Castro,” Matthews explained. “I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain other people would be there cheering, okay?” -- Vice

Second, they have targeted Sanders' young activist base harder than Sanders himself, calling his supporters "Bernie Bros" and "a mob." This, even knowing that without these young activists, the party has little chance of pulling off the kind of mobilization necessary to win in November.

DNC surrogate & AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten has been leading the attack on the Sanders activists often referring to them as a "mob." Here she retweets this post by Kurt Bardella, a media strategist who previously worked as a spokesperson for Breitbart News:

Virtual lynch mobs are not something people of color or women — or anyone — should have to just live with.

Third, they are using their control of the party apparatus to tilt things in favor of their chosen candidate(s) and diminishing Sanders' primary victories in their media spin. Think Iowa and Chuck Todd's quote at the top of this column.

But here's the thing...Without young voters and a huge turnout of voters of color, a Democratic win is virtually impossible. The votes in Iowa and NH show that Bernie has the youth vote behind him. He got more young voters in New Hampshire than everyone else combined. Those are the foot soldiers every presidential campaign needs to turn out the vote.

They may not be enough to assure a win in November. But the Democrats sure can't win without them.

Only losing candidates will take black voters for granted

Biden's support is sliding among black voters. -- Washington Post

Just to be clear, at this point in the race I support Bernie Sanders. First, because his politics are closest to my own and secondly because current polls show he is among those who have the best chance of defeating Trump, head-to-head. In the final election, I will vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is, even if I have to hold my nose while doing it.

The latest Quinnipiac poll has Trump at 42% and losing to every potential Democratic nominee

Bloomberg 51 - 42
Sanders 51 - 43
Biden 50 - 43
Klobuchar 49 - 43
Warren 48 - 44
Buttigieg 47 - 43

Of course, I never underestimate the Democrats' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, especially in the battleground states where Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election by not campaigning and working to turn out voters of color in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee.

But these numbers also belie the claim, repeated over and over by DNC leaders, that Sanders can't win and that their chosen one, Joe Biden, is the only candidate that can beat Trump.

Biden's claim to DNC's chosen-one status is based on the premise that he has the black vote in his pocket. But I wouldn't be so sure. That same poll shows Michael Bloomberg cutting into those numbers.

While Biden is still holding onto his lead among black voters, according to the poll, his support has plummeted from 49 percent before the caucuses to 27 percent. Bloomberg, meanwhile, has rocketed into second place among black voters, with 22 percent support compared to 7 percent late last month. -- Politico

I'm no fan of the oligarch, stop-and-frisk Bloomberg, but I can understand why this is apparently happening. Rev. Jesse Jackson offers a plausible explanation in an op-ed appearing in both Chicago papers this morning.

Democrats can’t inherit the black vote. Joe Biden is finding that his support for mass incarceration legislation costs votes. Pete Buttigieg is discovering that the opposition of black leaders in his own city amid failure to reform the police costs at the national level. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are learning that relationships in the black community have to be built over time, not simply forged by championing bold economic reforms.

Speaking of Sanders and Warren -- favorites of this city's progressive voters (including this one) -- they really blew it when it came to getting a key endorsement of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Neither candidate bothered to meet with the city's popular black, female, gay mayor and even ask for her endorsement.

They both came into town to show support for the CTU strikers (good on them) but got caught up in the wave of vicious personal attacks and overheated rhetoric directed at the mayor by CTU leaders and especially by AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten. Fearing a loss of the union's endorsement, they each left town without paying any respect to Lightfoot, who has become a key figure in state and national Democratic Party politics.

Now, they will likely neither receive endorsements from the union nor the mayor. The CTU has decided not to endorse anyone. With members split between Sanders and Warren, a CTU endorsement would mean little. It didn’t mean a thing in the 2019 mayoral race under similar circumstances when CTU-backed Toni Preckwinkle lost to Lightfoot in every ward in the city.

But Bloomberg, who has some appeal to big-city mayors because of the resources he brings as well as his strong stand on gun control, was smart enough to visit with Chicago's mayor, sparking rumors that Lightfoot would endorse him.

Bloomberg has racked up more endorsements from mayors in the 100 largest U.S. cities than any other candidate. D.C.'s African-American, female mayor Muriel Bowser has endorsed him. And former U.S. Conference of Mayors president Steve Benjamin, an African-American whose city of Columbia, South Carolina, whose position in an early voting state with a majority-black electorate gives him clout among Democrats—is leading Bloomberg’s campaign as co-chair.

So far, Lightfoot has said nothing to confirm or deny the rumor and might just as easily decide not to endorse anyone at all.

I've heard from some Warren people that she's apologized for the Lightfoot slight and is making new overtures to the mayor. But I can't confirm and doubt that would change things. Nothing yet from the Sanders camp.

But the fact remains that the road to the White House goes through urban America where black and Latinx voters will make the difference. Candidates who forget this will do so at their own peril.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

With SEIU members packing the stage behind her, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot endorses Marie Newman for Congress in the Democratic primary against Republicrat Dan Lipinski.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot 

“Dan Lipinski is on the wrong side of history and he doesn’t represent our values,” Lightfoot said. She said Lipinski also didn’t support Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, voted against the Affordable Care Act and had disenfranchised Latino voters. Lightfoot said Lipinski also had opposed same-sex marriage in the past. “I’m happy to be here supporting Marie Newman,” she said. “We are not ever going backward, not ever.” -- Tribune

MSNBC host Chris Matthews 

...drew rebukes on social media Friday night after suggesting that as a Democratic Socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders could lead a dictatorship in which establishment political figures would be “executed,” should he win the presidency. -- Truthout

Kalyn Belsha, Chicago education writer

Educators say the [CTU] votes not to endorse were a result of a variety of concerns. Some were procedural, including questions about whether members had been adequately consulted. Others were local, including lingering tensions over the union’s endorsement of and spending on a losing 2019 mayoral candidate. -- Chalkbeat

Barbara Duffield, the Executive Director of SchoolHouse Connection

"The record number of children and youth experiencing homelessness nationwide is alarming. But for many of these children and youth, public schools are their best — and often only — source of support." -- CBS News

Robert Reich on Bloomberg

The word “oligarchy” comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning “few to rule or command”. It refers to a government of and by a few exceedingly rich people or families who control the major institutions of society. Oligarchs may try to hide their power behind those institutions, or excuse their power through philanthropy and “corporate social responsibility”. But no one should be fooled. An oligarchy is not a democracy. -- Guardian

👀 https://t.co/QFXIQWKk3x

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 10, 2020

If Biden's toast, who's the new chosen one?

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We took a gut punch in Iowa." -- Joe Biden

It's now Wednesday evening and I still don't have the final Iowa vote count. With 86% of the vote in, Buttigieg leads Sanders by a point. I'm told, they're still trying to find my friend Burt's vote. You know Burt. He's the guy in the plaid shirt that caucused over at the Shell station in Dubuque.

But given all that, let me say I'm startled at how badly Team Biden did. Remember, JB was touted by DNC leaders as the most likely to beat Trump in a head-to-head. That claim was made with no polling evidence to back it up. But it was repeated over and over until it was accepted by many Democrats on faith, who felt, and still feel that Sanders will fall victim to Trump's red-baiting.

Now it's a desperate Biden that's using Trump's McCarthyite tactics to play on fears about Sanders. Today he told a crowd in New Hampshire:

"If Senator Sanders is the nominee for the party, every Democrat in America...will have to carry the label senator Sanders has chosen for himself,” Biden said of Sanders’ self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" label.

On last week's show, I actually told Brother Fred I thought Biden would win Iowa in a close race with Sanders. I thought the intense infighting between warring factions would divide the progressive vote and demoralize voters so badly that Biden would slip in front.

I was wrong as I'm sure my brother will remind me this Friday.

Instead, after spending months and practically his whole war chest in Iowa on stupid Iowa caucuses that helped few and hurt many, Biden now sits holding his gut and grimacing, in fourth place. He trails behind Buttigieg, Sanders (11 delegates each), and Warren (5), with zero delegates, slightly ahead of Klobuchar (also with zero).

With five months to go before the convention in Milwaukee and less than a month 'til Super Tuesday, Biden's campaign is in deep doo-doo. The DNC's anybody-but-Bernie campaign is proving to be a bust.

According to the New York Times which endorsed Warren and Klobuchar:

...he now faces jittery donors, an uncertain landscape in upcoming Democratic contests and a sharp challenge to the central argument of his campaign message: that he is the party’s strongest candidate to win a general election.

I may be getting ahead of myself on this, but if he's no longer the DNC's chosen one, then who is?

I know some of those jittery donors and they don't want to piss away billions on a loser again. One party bundler told me she's now backing Buttigieg. But it's hard for me to believe that many will ride a candidate who has no visible black support.

Another Dem donor told me that party leaders are now in meetings with Bloomberg's team and that with a few concessions on his part, a Bloomberg/Harris duo could be DNC-knighted. That assumes he wants their official support.

Take note of how they've been slamming Bernie for the past four years for not being a bonafide Democrat. One wonders how they will rationalize supporting a Republicrat oligarch like Bloomberg, should it happen?

My take at this point is that Democrats may or may not be able to beat Trump with Bernie as their candidate. No one knows for sure. But I doubt they can win without him and his young, activist base.

In other words, they're meeting with the wrong team.

Last night, they somewhat, actually debated the war.

Bloomberg on Colbert: "We are the superpower of the world.” 

I missed the beginning because the Duke/Clemson basketball ended late. Clemson pulled the exciting upset over #2 Blue Demons (fallen angels?)

But I did catch the war debate.

Bernie Sanders and to a lesser degree Elizabeth Warren were the only candidates who took a forthright anti-war stance following Trump's assassination of Gen. Soleimani.

Last night, the rest were wavering on the war issue. You know, keep our embassy in Baghdad. Leave special forces in place. OK to use mercs, drones or even all-out war with congressional approval. All especially seemed agreed on that last point -- no spending on war with Iran without a vote in Congress. That's a good thing, given the current situation.

However, it belies the fact that congress (including most Democrats), has already given Trump and the Pentagon the trillions they need to carry on their eternal war to protect the oil.

But you could watch, especially Joe Biden, wriggle around the question,

BIDEN: Well, I tell you what, there's a difference between combat troops and leaving special forces in position.

Biden admitted he "mistakenly" voted for the war in Iraq (Oops!). But then tried to hide behind Obama.

I said 13 years ago it was a mistake to give the president the authority to go to war if, in fact, he couldn't get inspectors into Iraq to stop what — thought to be the attempt to get a nuclear weapon. It was a mistake, and I acknowledged that.

But right — the man who also argued against that war, Barack Obama, picked me to be his vice president. And once we — once we were elected president, he turned — and vice president, he turned to me and asked me to end that war.

Huh?

But, only a few days ago, Biden had John Kerry arguing he hadn't really voted for the war. Or if he did, it was because Republicans tricked him into it.

“It was a mistake to have trusted them, I guess, and we paid a high price for it,” Kerry added. “But that was not voting for the war.”

These two need to get in a room together and get their stories straight.

Today's Washington Post summed it up best:

With tensions with Iran and controversy over President Trump’s decision to kill Qasem Soleimani big in the news, Democrats had a chance to define their party on the issue. And the debate began on that subject, with the candidates talking at some length. What we got instead was a lot of general talk about taking out combat troops but leaving in other troops who would be tasked with other missions.

As for the rest of the debate, again it was Sanders and Warren standing up for real reform on healthcare and education and the rest arguing “How we gonna pay for it”? (on everything but war).

Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar want Medicare for some, college for some, daycare for some, bring some troops home. It’s the Some Party.

Some of the craziest moments came from Buttigieg, who argues against Bernie's call for tuition-free college. PB doesn't think the wealthy should be allowed to send their kids to tuition-free public universities (and I assume to public schools in general).

And I don't think subsidizing the children of millionaires and billionaires to pay absolutely zero in tuition at public colleges is the best use of those scarce taxpayer dollars. 

Mayor Pete, I believe that's why they call it PUBLIC EDUCATION, public healthcare, public parks, and public space in general. Public schools would be much better funded if white parents and yes, rich white parents sent their kids there. You should be about taxing the wealthiest the most. Not excluding them from tuition-free public space.

The real winner of the debate may have been a candidate who didn't even take part. Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” immediately after the debate, Billionaire Michael Bloomberg got more unchallenged talk time than any of the six.

Bloomberg echoed the neocon line, promising that he would lead the U.S. to war if the national security of America is directly threatened,

“and if the rest of the world is threatened, we have an obligation to go and help. We are the superpower of the world, and with superpower status comes responsibility.” 

When you're as rich and powerful as Bloomberg and the leader of the "superpower of the world," I don't suppose you need congressional approval to do anything, invade or bomb anyone. Just ask Donald Trump.

QUOTABLES

COUNTING VOTES -- 81% of the teachers who voted backed the contract.

CTU Prez Jesse Sharkey

...called the contract, "a powerful advance for our city and our movement for real equity and educational justice for our school communities and the children we serve." -- Channel 3000

Ald. Ed Burke "Diminished and preoccupied"

That's how Sun-Times Fran Spielman describes indicted Ald. Edward Burke. "He's no longer the center of attention at council meetings he once dominated. He occupies the front-row seat closest to the door, arrives late, leaves immediately and seldom if ever, speaks." --Illinois Playbook

Barack Obama vs. the party's 'left activist' wing

He tells wealthy donors: “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.” -- New York Times

Now contrite former N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg 

“I got something important wrong. I got something important really wrong. I didn’t understand back then, the full impact that stops were having on the black and Latino communities.” -- New York Times

Under Bloomberg, NYPD increased stop and frisk from 100,000 stops to nearly 700,000 stops per year. 90% of those impacted were people of color - overwhelmingly black and brown men. Bloomberg personally has the money to begin paying reparations for this harm. “Sorry” isn’t enough. https://t.co/kF1n9nLhfT

— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) November 17, 2019

Bill Russell accepts HOF ring 44 years after his induction

In a private ceremony w/my wife & close friends A.Mourning @AnnMeyers @billwalton & others I accepted my #HOF ring. In ‘75 I refused being the 1st black player to go into the @Hoophall I felt others before me should have that honor. Good to see progress; ChuckCooperHOF19 @NBA pic.twitter.com/2FI5U7ThTg

— TheBillRussell (@RealBillRussell) November 15, 2019

Billionaire Bloomberg says he's running. But why?

The prototype for the Rahm Emanuel mayoralty was Michael Bloomberg's New York. -- Crain's

The oddsmakers in Vegas put the odds on Michael Bloomberg winning the presidency at 14/1. That puts him even in their minds with Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg and trailing only Donald Trump 7/5, Elizabeth Warren 3/1, and Joe Biden 8/1 in the eyes of bookies.

I follow this stuff only because the bookies usually have a better handle on things than do the pollsters. That's why the house always wins.

Why is this billionaire Republicrat media tycoon and former New York mayor even considering jumping into a crowded Democratic primary as a 14-to-1 longshot? He knows the odds as well as anyone. One, because he can afford to, and two, he wants to be a hedge against the progressive insurgents like Warren and Sanders.

If either of them won the primary, I could even imagine Bloomberg running as an independent or third-party candidate in key battleground or swing states to draw away votes. Bloomberg is worried much more about the progressive ascendency than about his off-and-on frenemy Trump (who calls Bloomberg "Little Michael").

Known as the stop-and-frisk mayor in New York, Bloomberg once claimed that the biggest problem was his cops "over-stopping whites", and that he was just evening the score.

During his time in office, Bloomberg wielded his personal power against New York's communities of color and their public schools. He imposed a tidal wave of privatization on the city, including a big swing towards privately-run charter schools. What pissed me off most was how he used our "small schools" rhetoric to promote charters.

He was an advocate of using standardized testing results as the main vehicle for evaluating school and teacher performance.

He thought poor and especially immigrant parents were too ignorant to have much to say about their children's education.

Bloomberg once claimed:

“Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from — they never had a formal education, and they don’t understand the value of education...The old Norman Rockwell family is gone.”

That last part is true, and good riddance.

All this reminded me of this great quote from NYT's Michael Powell back in 2011:

"There is an 'autumn of the patriarch' feel to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg these days."

He's an outspoken enemy of organized labor and even compared the teacher unions to the NRA and used the big-lie technique to charge the unions with protecting child molesters.

Bloomberg's charter school cronies, Eva Moskowitz and Joel Klein. 

He hired corporate-style reformers like of Joel Klein and the totally incompetent (thank goodness) Cathie Black to replace public schools with charters and erode public space and public decision-making. Among his partners in crime was the city's supreme charter hustler, Eva Moskowitz, who enriched herself running the so-called Success Academies.

Bloomberg is a horrible politician who was only elected because of his bottomless war chest. You need only go back to his paper-thin 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative political unknown Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum unequaled in the history of municipal politics, that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. Yet he won by only 5%.

So, is Bloomberg's announced candidacy a bluff, a real threat to anti-Trump forces, or neither? One thing is for sure: Michael Bloomberg offers no positive alternative to Trump or to the current field of candidates in the Democratic primary.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

President Robert Kelly of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 announces the organization's endorsement of Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for mayor of Chicago. | Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times

ATU Local 308 Pres. Robert Kelly 

“I’m a citizen of the city of Chicago. I’m tired of reading the papers and hearing about murders and school closings and transit issues,” said Robert Kelly, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, which represents CTA train operators. “It just makes me sick to my stomach. I’m tired of it, and so is everybody else. 

Kelly’s remarks came as the local he presides over endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, one of Emanuel’s most prominent challengers in the upcoming February election. -- Early & Often

George Will

Bush’s support of Common Core is much less nuanced and persuasive, and there seems to be condescension in his impatience with the burden he bears of taking seriously the most important reason for rejecting Common Core. It is not about the content of the standards, which would be objectionable even if written by Aristotle and refined by Shakespeare. Rather, the point is that, unless stopped now, the federal government will not stop short of finding in Common Core a pretext for becoming a national school board.

Bush says “standards are different than curriculum” and: “I would be concerned if we had a national curriculum influenced by the federal government. My God, I’d break out in a rash.”  -- Washington Post

"Public school bashers"

David Sirota

Taken together with the new Department of Education numbers, we see that for all the elite media’s slobbering profiles of public school bashers like Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Michael Bloomberg, for all of the media’s hagiographic worship of scandal-plagued activist-profiteers like Michelle Rhee, and for all the “reform” movement’s claims that the traditional public school system and teachers unions are to blame for America’s education problems, poverty and economic inequality are the root of the problem.  -- Salon

 Palm Beach Cty. Board member Debra Robinson

"We're not going to approve these charters that just fill out the paperwork properly and don't have anything special to offer our children. This is an act of civil disobedience, because some of this stuff we're told to do is crazy." -- Sun-Sentinel

Author Anne Farrow

Slavery in America was not a footnote, not "the sad chapter" of our history but the cornerstone of our making. -- Philly.Com, Shrouded History of Slavery

Lesson from Teachout: It won't be as easy for Rahm to buy the next election

You've really got to go back to Bloomberg's narrow escape in his 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative unknown, Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum without equal in the history of municipal politics that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. He won by only 5%.

Without Bloomberg's billions in the race, money wasn't a big factor in Bill de Blasio's landslide victory last year. BdB won because he ran as a progressive and had strong organization on the ground in the form of the Working Families Party.

Teachout a winner.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT just ran a strong race for governor against Republicrat Gov. Cuomo despite the fact that she was outspent 100-to-1 by Cuomo's Wall Street patrons. Cuomo raised $40 million to Teachout's $40,000 and political neophyte Teachout sill got 35% of the vote.

The New York Times described Teachout's strong performance as "an embarrassing rebuke to Mr. Cuomo, and it could put a dent in any national aspirations he may hold." I have no doubt that Cuomo, the favorite of the charter school hedge-funders and school profiteers like Eva Moskowitz, could have been beaten had Teachout received support from N.Y.'s chicken-poop teacher union leaders who are tied to Cuomo and the Democratic Party leadership by a thousand threads. Her defeat was also a defeat for the WFP which lost credibility when they endorsed Cuomo.

Lincoln Mitchell writes in the New York Observer:

Ms. Teachout’s strong showing, however, demonstrates the enduring relevance of the activist wing of the Democratic Party, reinforces the ability of a smart but poorly resourced candidate to use social media and less expensive forms of communication to significantly balance out a huge fundraising disadvantage, and shows that establishment Democratic candidates would be well served to run with clear and compelling messages, rather than simply on inevitability and incumbency.

In Illinois...The more of his own money billionaire Bruce Rauner pours into his campaign for governor, the worse he seems to be doing. Latest polls show him blowing his lead and now trailing incumbent Pat Quinn. It seems that the more money Rauner spends on TV ads, the more people remember how much they dislike him and what he stands for. Quinn's biggest problem isn't lack of money. It's the fact thousands of the state's rank-and-file union members and retirees (who all vote) still remember his sellout on the unconstitutional pension-robbing bill and want to punish him for it. He can still squeeze out a win simply because so many IL working people righteously fear devil, Rauner.

Similar problems exist for Rahm Emanuel even with his $11 million war chest and his huge army of professional media spinners. The more press he gets, the more his ratings suffer, especially in minority communities. Even as he tries to slide to the left, cut last-minute deals with ministers, the police union, and his few council opponents, Rahm seems vulnerable in the face of two likely credible, progressive opponents, Karen Lewis and Bob Fioretti -- no matter how many TV ads he buys.

A REVOLUTION OF VALUES...With the latest run-up to war, I'm remembering to words of Dr. Martin Luther King who spoke continuously about the "triple evils" of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM

“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King (1967),  “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Hobnobbing with masters of the universe has its limits..." --  Crain's

Greg Hinz

The prototype for the Emanuel mayoralty was Michael Bloomberg's New York: rich guys, bicycle lanes, central control, the whole schmear. Mr. Bloomberg's popularity waned dramatically after his first two terms and his successor, Bill de Blasio, is a liberal who has good relations with unions and minorities. The message to Mr. Emanuel is clear: Hobnobbing with masters of the universe has its limits, however good their advice seems. Running a city takes a wider reach. -- Crain's Chicago Business

Times Editorial

Studies have shown that suspensions and expulsions do nothing to improve the school climate, while increasing the risk that children will experience long-term social and academic problems. Federal data also indicates that minority students are disproportionately singled out for harsh disciplinary measures. -- Zero Tolerance, Reconsidered

Bill de Blasio

 “We start with our values. We start with the positions we took and made public throughout the last year. We will drop the appeal on the stop-and-frisk case, because we think the judge was right about the reforms that we need to make. We will settle the Central Park Five case because a huge injustice was done.” -- N.Y. Times

Carmen Fariña 

“Once I was about to visit a principal who told me, ‘You’re going to love coming here because you can hear a pin drop.’ I said, ‘I better not come because that isn’t going to make me happy.’ ” -- N.Y. Times

PARENT ENGAGEMENT

CPS parent volunteers

Latest from CPS -- All parent school volunteers will now be required to be fingerprinted. Accurate Biometrics has been given the $650,000 contract (no board approval required) to do the fingerprinting and parents will have to travel to one of their four centers in the city to have it done. 

According to Brother Fred, 

Accurate Biometrics' President is Peggy Critchfield. Her previous experience in security work was running the ice pro shop at Marshall Fields. She was Marshall Field's crystal buyer before that. Her other major client is Teach for America.

When asked if parents would also be required to assume the position and take the perp walk? CPS Liar-in-Chief Becky Carroll offered no comment.

ELECTION NOTES

Yes, election victories are possible even in this era of Citizens United, ALEC, the Koch Bros. and Bloomberg billions. Aside from the de Blasio landslide victory in New York, there was the victory of the grassroots school board campaign in Bridgeport. The campaign, led by the Working Families Party, won out over the corporate-backed forces who were pushing a horrific school privatization and corporate reform initiative.

Vallas is toast in Bridgeport

The victory means that the nine-member school board will now have a five-member voting bloc that opposes charter-hustling, union-busting Supt. Paul Vallas.  The election victory should pave the way to finally get rid of Vallas much in the way the D.C. mayoral election got rid of Michelle Rhee in 2010. The bad side is that he may decide to return to Chicago. That's probably only fair since we sicked him on the rest of the country in the first place.

An election-day stumble took place in Colorado where Amendment 66, a ballot initiative to fully fund public education, reduce class size and institute full-day kindergarten, went down to defeat.

Ironically, the measure was supported by Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg and opposed by the Koch Bros. Corporate contradictions. Yes they exist and are worth noting.

BELAFONTE

Harry Belafonte

Speaking of the Koch Bros., despite their gazillions, they may have bitten off more than they can chew when they attacked veteran civil rights hero Harry Belafonte. Harry spoke truth to power, as usual, and called out the Brothers Koch on the final Sunday of the N.Y. mayoral campaign. The Koch's poured money into the campaign of de Blasio's opponent, whatshisname.

“They make up the heart and the thinking in the minds of those who would belong to the Ku Klux Klan. They are white supremacists. They are men of evil. They have names. They are flooding our country with money.

Perfect.

The Koch Bros. flack, Rob Tappan responds:

 “It is unfortunate that he and others choose to make such false comments about Charles Koch and David Koch, who have devoted their lives to advancing tolerance and a free society — where every individual is judged on his or her individual merits and they are free to make decisions about their lives.”

Hilarious.

Good riddance Bloomberg (and Carlos Danger)

Bill de Blasio wins NY primary.

There's a couple of reasons why I woke up on the right (left?) side of the bed this morning.

One: We are not lobbing missiles into Syria, much to joy of 90% of Americans, 100% of families and children living in Damascus, and the chagrin of war mongers in both countries and on both sides of the aisle.

Two: It looks like a progressive mayor has been (or will be -- still waiting on the final count) elected in NYC. Congrats to primary winner Bill de Blasio who had to overcome vicious, racist attacks on him and his family by stop-and-frisk mayor Bloomberg. De Blasio offers some hope to a NY's public school system which has been devastated by Bloomberg's charter school and privatization fanaticism.

WaPo reports:

Bloomberg’s dreamscape became the Democrats’ dystopia. In their telling, he was not a refreshing, fearless leader but an overbearing father who thought he always knew best. “The mayor,” de Blasio said Tuesday, “has been increasingly unwilling to address inequality in this city and that this is the central issue of our times.”

I, along with many other progressive educators, are still puzzled by the teachers union leadership's lack of support for de Blasio. I still have to analyze the vote count but it's already clear that many of UFT's own rank-and-file voted for him. Big disconnect there.

De Blasio is a pro-union guy with a good line on public education.

DeBlasio has made universal pre-K a centerpiece of his campaign, pushing for a tax increase on the wealthy in order to pay for it. He’s also the foe of charter schools — he’s said several times that the city has enough charter schools and that they should have to pay rent to use public property. -- Politico

GothamSchools has more on DeBlasio’s views on education issues: http://bit.ly/1dDGOjQ

Animal Farm -- The Bloomberg/Daley Alliance

Moreno: "I just want to be a pig."

One of the reasons I love Chicago politics so much is that our politicians are so out there.  For example, here's my quote of the day. It comes from former Cook County Commissioner Joe Moreno, who is about to be sentenced for taking bribes, but who refuses to roll over on his machine/mob pals.

“I don’t want to be a hog, I just want to be a pig,” Moreno famously said in the course of trying to negotiate a bribe from FBI mole Michael DiFoggio. “Hogs get slaughtered, pigs get fat.”

A real stand-up guy.

Speaking of hogs, most of my political-junkie expert pals write off Billy Daley in the IL gov's race. But I think he can win. Why? Not because his name is Daley, but because it's not Quinn (Eddie Burke) or Madigan (Rahm). Now it even looks like Lisa Madigan may not run even though she has raised more money than Daley. She's also running away from the hated Mike Madigan name.

Secondly, Daley, the man from J.P. Morgan, now has Michael Bloomberg's SuperPac behind him. Bloomberg money was already successful in paying for Robin Kelly's victory in the race for prison-bound Jesse Junior's congressional seat.

As Chicago Mag's Carol Felsenthal put it,

The “race” for Jesse Jackson Jr.’s congressional seat wasn’t a race. Yesterday’s election in the 2nd District of Illinois wasn’t even an election; it was a transaction.

And with Bloomberg jumping in and billionaire Republican Bruce Rauner in the game, that's what this race will be -- a transaction.

There's really not a dime's worth of difference politically between Daley, Quinn, Madigan or Rauner. They all agree on the need to bust unions and whack state retirees with so-called "pension reform." But this election will not likely be about issues. It's a pure power grab with low voter turnout and huge cost-per-vote ratio.

Daley/Bloomberg

One problem for the new Daley/Bloomberg alliance is the N.Y. mayor's continuous spewing of vile racist remarks. Before announcing his support for Daley, MB might have at least let the dust settle on his latest complaint about his city's stop-and-frisk policies. Bloomberg thinks they over-target whites.

In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” -- NYT

That topped his earlier comments about poor and immigrant parents.

“Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from — they never had a formal education, and they don’t understand the value of education,” -- NYT City Room

Bloomberg's blatant anti-unionism could also hurt Daley. Remember when Bloomberg compared the teachers union to the NRA?

Bloomberg, -- like Rahm -- is a poster child for doing away with mayoral control of the schools. But his SuperPac could still rule on election day.

An opportunist mayor compares teachers union with the NRA

Bloomberg's anti-union rant. (Daily News)

“Teachers want to work with the best, and most of them are not in sympathy with the union,” he said on Friday. “…The NRA’s another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.” -- Mayor Bloomberg

Remember back in '04 when Bush's Sec. of Education Rod Paige was calling the teachers union, a "terrorist organization"? Now N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg is playing the same anti-union card, comparing the teachers union with the NRA.  Is anyone buying this crap?

Opportunist Bloomberg is trying to ride the Newtown school shootings to bolster his plummeting ratings the same way that his predecessor Rudy Giuliani rode the post-9/11 hysteria to carve out a new consulting career for himself.  MB knows that being against the NRA in New York City is like being against hemorrhoids. But the only thing the NRA and UFT have in common is three initials.

Billionaire Bloomberg would have us believe that the majority of New York teachers support him in current negotiations over teacher evaluations, rather than their own union. He sounds a lot like the deluded Rahm Emanuel on the eve of last year's Chicago teachers strike.

Of course, Randi Weingarten is no Karen Lewis. Here Randi offers the mayor a mild scold and ever so politely, asks him for an apology.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

A man plays violin along Church Rd. in Newton.

Stephen Landman (Global Research)

US civilian gun ownership is the highest worldwide. Yemen ranks second. America doubles the Yemeni level.  Gun related violence follows. In America it’s endemic. In Chicago alone, gun-related deaths exceed one a day. More Chicagoans are shot and killed than US forces in Afghanistan by any means.  -- Gun violence in America

Rev. Jesse Jackson

What more "do we require?" before something is done to stop such events from occurring again. "We are the most violent nation on earth. We make the most guns and we shoot them, we make the most bullets and we fire them." -- FOX News

Rahm to Holder on guns

“Emanuel was furious. He slammed his desk and cursed the attorney general. Holder was only repeating a position Obama had expressed during the campaign, but that was before the White House needed the backing of pro-gun Democrats from red states for their domestic agenda. The chief of staff sent word to Justice that Holder needed to ‘shut the fuck up’ on guns…” -- ABC Political Punch Blog 

More Rahm 

Children in the Chicago public school system with an interest in nutrition will benefit from a million dollars in unspent NATO funds.

“I saw the kids that were planting there, garlic,” said Emanuel. “And they were planting garlic and they were doing it by how much distance do you need, how you put it outside, what is the best way to nurture it.”

The tour was interrupted by a small, but loud group of protesters, claiming this was a diversion from the bigger picture, that a budget deficit could force dozens of schools to close. -- CBS News

Father Michael Pfleger

"When are we gonna draw the line and say this proliferation of guns, and this sense of violence has become a norm of American culture?" --  Huff Post Chicago

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

“I honestly think everybody won. No one wanted the strike, teachers didn’t want that, the administration didn’t want that,” said Duncan. But wait.  Rahm said ithis was a "strike of choice." Who's writing the script?

Arne Duncan

"Everybody won in Chicago teachers strike." -- Daily Caller

Paul Ryan

"Let's make this country a tax shelter..." Mother Jones

The Notebook

The term “portfolio management” is borrowed from Wall Street, where the idea is to buy winning stocks and sell losers. -- "A new blend of public and private." 

Rupert Murdoch's N.Y. Post 

Michael Bloomberg wants history to judge his mayoralty based, in large part, on what he did for the city’s schools. But his system for grading those schools is eroding confidence in his leadership. -- Mike's Murky Marks

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Jesse Sharkey

CTU's Jesse Sharkey

As the threat of a teachers strike looms larger in Chicago, the result of Rahm's unwillingness to bargain seriously over job security and longer school day, Sharkey says:

“There’s still some more runway left where we can land this plane.”

Sharkey says a key to unlocking the stalemate is the hiring back of "effective veteran teachers" who currently are being replaced with lower-paid teachers who are just starting out, many of them TFAers. 

“We know that teachers just starting out have a 50 percent [dropout] rate. It’s actually a job that lot of people can’t do. This is something that would not only be the right thing to do, it would help settle the contract” with a smaller pay increase.

Bloomberg's perverse view of teachers

“The union keeps protecting people that shouldn’t be in the classroom that touch, have sex, whatever it may be.” -- School Book, "Question of the Week (Decade?): Are Charter Schools Better?"

Remember when Michelle Rhee took the same course in attacking D.C. teachers and then had to backtrack? She lied to the media, bragging:   

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school."

I suspect this is all in the Eli Broad union-busting playbook.

Bloomberg's new schools are a complete bust, according to a Daily News review.

 “This is additional evidence that these (new) schools are not performing better than their peer schools,” said NYU Prof. Robert Tobias, who led the city’s testing program before Bloomberg took office.

He can't blame the unions, since nearly all of his new schools are privately-managed charters which ban unions and would rather close or move their operations than have union teachers.