1082 Michael Bloomberg is a Globalist & Warmonger; he strongly supported TPP & Iraq War

Michael Bloomberg is a Globalist & Warmonger; he strongly supported TPP
& Iraq War

Newsletter published on November 25, 2019

(1) Bloomberg lobbied Obama for TPP (2016)
(2) Bloomberg: No more important legislation to the US than passing the
TPP (2016)
(3) Bloomberg on TPP: "Yes, it will bring economic growth to all
countries involved" (2016)
(4) Bloomberg: Congress Should Pass TPP Before Next President Takes
Office (2016)
(5) Bloomberg supported Iraq War, said justified by 911 attack on WTC
(yet Iraq did not do it)
(6) Bloomberg "quiet, unambiguous support" for invasion of Iraq (2007)
(7) Editorial board of Bloomberg News joins Bloomberg for President campaign
(8) Bloomberg: Don't Raise My Taxes
(9) Bloomberg and his fellow oligarchs lay down the law: Not a penny
more in taxes

(1) Bloomberg lobbied Obama for TPP (2016)

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/TPP-obama-kasich-Bloomberg-228256

Kasich, Bloomberg and others to talk TPP with Obama

By MEGAN CASSELLA 09/15/2016 08:37 PM EDT

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a
handful of business and government leaders are headed to the Oval Office
on Friday to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The meeting will give President Barack Obama an opportunity to hear from
a bipartisan group on how the troubled 12-nation trade pact, if passed,
would benefit the country and how they might work together to implement
the deal.

During the meeting, Obama will also talk about his recent trip to Asia —
"which only underscored how important the TPP is to our leadership role
in the region" — as well as how the United States' standing in the
Asia-Pacific region will be damaged if the deal is not passed, a White
House official said.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are also expected to be in attendance
at the meeting, as well as IBM President and CEO Ginni Rometty and
former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis.

Kasich and Bloomberg are known as longtime supporters of trade deals,
including TPP. They, along with the other expected White House guests,
"are representative of the broad coalition that has come together to
support the Trans-Pacific Partnership," the White House said. ...

(2) Bloomberg: No more important legislation to the US than passing the
TPP (2016)

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/malcolm-turnbull-meets-michael-Bloomberg-as-he-steps-up-case-on-TPP-trade-pact-20160920-grjyff.html

Malcolm Turnbull meets Michael Bloomberg as he steps up case on TPP
trade pact

By Mark Kenny

Updated September 20, 2016 — 9.49amfirst published at 7.47am

Malcolm Turnbull has enlisted key American political figures including
the billionaire former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his charm
offensive aimed at saving the giant Trans-Pacific Partnership trade
liberalisation pact.

But he acknowledged that advocates of globalisation were in retreat,
having often failed to make the benefits of free trade and foreign
investment tangible for those communities most immediately affected by
the "offshoring" of jobs. ...

After touring the New York Stock Exchange and addressing media on the
trading floor, Mr Turnbull also held one-on-one talks with prominent
businessman, Michael Bloomberg.

Speaking ahead of those talks, the former New York mayor said there was
no more important legislation to the US than passing the TPP.

Mr Bloomberg said America should go further still by inking similar
agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Union.

"I don't think there's anything that is more important to this country
in terms of legislation than passing TPP," the billionaire businessman said.

"It would be a terrible shame for America, which is my main interest,
but also all of our partners, trading partners around the world."

Last Friday Mr Bloomberg had been among a group of politicians and
business leaders invited to discuss the trade pact at the White House by
President Barack Obama. ...

(3) Bloomberg on TPP: "Yes, it will bring economic growth to all
countries involved" (2016)

https://www.isidewith.com/candidates/michael-Bloomberg/policies/economic/trans-pacific-partnership

Michael Bloomberg’s policy on trans-pacific partnership

Do you support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG Yes, it will bring economic growth to all countries
involved

(4) Bloomberg: Congress Should Pass TPP Before Next President Takes
Office (2016)

https://www.newsmax.com/finance/markets/michael-Bloomberg-congress-pass-TPP/2016/09/16/id/748620/

Bloomberg: Congress Should Pass TPP Before Next President Takes Office

By Mark Swanson    |   Friday, 16 September 2016 08:59 AM

Congress should pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact this year,
before the next president takes office, Michael Bloomberg says.

Despite the cause célèbre TPP has become — both Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton oppose it — most Americans, economists and business leaders
believe more trade is good for the economy, writes Bloomberg, former
mayor of New York City.

"Global trade opens up new markets to American businesses, creating new
opportunities to grow," Bloomberg wrote.

"In fact, the U.S. actually runs a cumulative trade surplus in
manufactured goods with our 20 trade agreement partners, and we've long
run global trade surpluses for services and agricultural products. But
you wouldn’t know that by listening to the presidential candidates."

Bloomberg co-authored the piece with Thomas Donohue, president and CEO
of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

(5) Bloomberg supported Iraq War, said justified by 911 attack on WTC
(yet Iraq did not do it)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/friedmans-Bloomberg-fetish-and-centrist-foreign-policy/

Friedman’s Bloomberg Fetish And "Centrist" Foreign Policy

APRIL 18, 2012|10:53 AM

DANIEL LARISON

It is easy (and necessary) to criticize Tom Friedman columns, so I’ll
leave that in the capable hands of Doug Mataconis. Instead, it might be
helpful to use this latest exercise in idolizing a famous "centrist" as
a reminder that many famous "centrists" have a poor record when it comes
to foreign policy. Tom Friedman’s egregious errors on this score are
already well-documented and properly ridiculed, but Bloomberg’s strong
support for the Iraq war often goes unmentioned. A 2007 New York Times
article referred to Bloomberg’s early Iraq war support:

In May 2004, a year after the invasion, Mr. Bloomberg served as host to
Laura Bush, who had come to New York in an effort to rally support for
the war effort. Mrs. Bush visited a memorial for Sept. 11th victims.
Standing next to Mrs. Bush, with the Statue of Liberty in the
background, Mr. Bloomberg, right, suggested that New Yorkers could find
justification for the war at the World Trade Center site [bold mine-DL],
even though no Iraqi is known to have had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Don’t forget that the war started not very many blocks from here,"
[bold mine-DL] he said that day in 2004.

Here you have Bloomberg repeating one of the most outrageous lies
uttered by pro-war figures during that decade. As we all know, the idea
that the Iraq war was in any way justified by the 9/11 attacks is
completely false, and it was part of some of the worst pro-war
propaganda of the first few years of the war. Even if he was nominally a
Republican at the time, Bloomberg’s support for the Iraq war doesn’t say
much for his foreign policy judgment. This episode should be yet another
a reminder that "centrists" often endorse the same bad policies favored
by other hawkish ideologues.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo
blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas
Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life,
Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a
columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of
Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

(6) Bloomberg "quiet, unambiguous support" for invasion of Iraq (2007)

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/nyregion/23about.html

A Mayor Often Ill at Ease, and Usually Muted on Iraq

By JIM DWYER JUNE 23, 2007

The mayor’s lips are pursed. The tuxedo-and-gown dinner crowd in the
Pierre hotel ballroom has fallen still, just a few spoons rattling along
the rims of dessert plates. At the very front of the room, the spotlight
has settled on Michael R. Bloomberg. Someone is reading an award
citation for his work as mayor. Mr. Bloomberg oscillates. He bounces on
his toes, nods his head. His eyes appear to be pinned open. Though he
has not uttered a word, Mr. Bloomberg’s body seems to all but scream:
Get me out of here.

It is easy to watch him going through the motions of the routine antics
of public officialdom — the giving of plaques, the issuing of
proclamations, the receiving of medals — and believe that he shows up
only because, somehow, if just through body language, he can sneer at
the ceremony. That the soul of a punk-rocker has been wrapped in
custom-tailored suits.

By quitting the Republican Party, Mr. Bloomberg has made himself
available for a presidential campaign, ready for voters who like their
coffee strong. Yet for all his bluntness, Mr. Bloomberg has kept his
lips pursed on the defining exercise of American power in the 21st
century — the invasion of Iraq — except to offer quiet, unambiguous support.

At the Pierre on Thursday, as the gold medal of the Foreign Policy
Association was draped around his neck in honor of his efforts at
education reform, Mr. Bloomberg ducked his head and managed the barest
of smiles.

Mr. Bloomberg combines frank indifference to ritual with what seems like
a full-brained embrace of problems: Here are 158 pages on how the city
can cut the amount of carbon fuels it burns. Here’s a new telephone
number for all city services. Here’s a reorganized school system.

He raced through his speech Thursday evening without bothering much
about the oratory, but still managed to offer a panoramic view on a few
topics. He noted that in a global economy, a weak education meant
second-class citizenship. Without 400,000 to 500,000 immigrants every
year, he said, the country would not have enough people to pay for
Social Security, to start new businesses, or to refresh the culture. And
how, he asked, could the United States have visa rules that forced
brilliant foreign graduate students who had gotten American degrees to
leave the country?

"We just have to stop this craziness, and understand who we are, and not
be so threatened by terrorism that the terrorists win without firing a
shot," he said.

Although he was speaking to a foreign policy group, Mr. Bloomberg barely
mentioned Iraq or the central role that the city was assigned in the
justification for the war.

In May 2004, a year after the invasion, Mr. Bloomberg served as host to
Laura Bush, who had come to New York in an effort to rally support for
the war effort. Mrs. Bush visited a memorial for Sept. 11th victims.
Standing next to Mrs. Bush, with the Statue of Liberty in the
background, Mr. Bloomberg, right, suggested that New Yorkers could find
justification for the war at the World Trade Center site, even though no
Iraqi is known to have had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Don’t forget that the war started not very many blocks from here," he
said that day in 2004.

Apart from these remarks and other comments about the cruel history of
Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bloomberg has said little about the war or other
foreign affairs; to do so, he and his aides have said, would be a form
of grandstanding for which he has no taste.

A few hours before the mayor gave his speech on Thursday night, American
military officials announced that 14 more soldiers had been killed in
two days. And for Iraqi civilians, the death toll of 9/11 is not a
once-in-an-epoch moment, but often the monthly body count in the
morgues. In his speech, Mr. Bloomberg remarked on the sacrifice of
soldiers and what he implied was the ingratitude of people opposed to
the war.

"We shouldn’t forget that we have young men and women overseas fighting
and dying, sadly, so that we can protest," he said. "I sometimes think
young protesters don’t realize that their right to protest is not
something that they would have elsewhere, and it’s a right that has to
be fought for continuously."

As for those who made the decision to go to war, Mr. Bloomberg’s lips
remained firmly sealed.

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New
York edition with the headline: A Mayor Often Ill at Ease, And Usually
Muted on Iraq.

(7) Editorial board of Bloomberg News joins Bloomberg for President campaign
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/25/bloo-n25.html

Billionaire Bloomberg enters race for Democratic presidential nomination

By Patrick Martin

25 November 2019

Billionaire media and financial services mogul Michael Bloomberg
announced Sunday morning that he was entering the contest for the
Democratic presidential nomination, two days after his campaign
purchased $37 million worth of television time for an unprecedented
two-week advertising campaign to begin Monday.

Bloomberg, elected to three terms as mayor of New York City as a
Republican and an independent, who registered as a Democrat only in
2018, aims to use his massive wealth to influence the outcome of the
2020 presidential election. He had previously pledged to spend at least
$500 million to defeat Trump. He could spend far more than that in a bid
to get himself elected.

The scale of the advertising campaign is truly staggering. The $37
million advertising "buy" completed Friday is more than the combined
advertising carried out by all other Democratic candidates since the
campaign began, with the exception of fellow billionaire Tom Steyer, who
has pumped $32 million into promoting his own campaign over the past few
months, with no noticeable result.

The $37 million Bloomberg spent last week is less than 0.1 percent of
his estimated fortune of $53 billion, and yet it exceeds the $33 million
war chest accumulated by Senator Bernie Sanders over the eight months
since he launched his campaign. Sanders has the largest amount of cash
raised from campaign contributions, almost entirely over the internet,
but both Steyer and now Bloomberg have surpassed him in the size of
their campaign kitty.

According to press reports citing advertising industry sources,
Bloomberg’s campaign has bought up television time on an unprecedented
scale. The New York Times called it "a show of financial force that
signals his willingness to use his vast personal fortune to reshape the
Democratic presidential race." [...]

His top campaign strategist, Howard Wolfson, has already tried to debunk
criticism that Bloomberg’s campaign was driven by concern over a
potential Sanders or Warren nomination. "He didn’t just wake up and say,
‘Oh my God, the socialists are going to be running the country; I better
run for president,’" Wolfson said. "He woke up and said, ‘Oh my God,
Donald Trump is going to be reelected; I better run for president.’"

Campaign aides cited a series of polls showing that Biden’s campaign was
falling behind in Iowa and New Hampshire, and that Trump was now even
with Warren and Sanders in many of the Midwest battleground states,
including Wisconsin and Michigan.

It is clear that two factors have combined to spur Bloomberg to join a
contest which he publicly disavowed last February. The first is the
damage done to the Biden campaign by the revelations of the actions of
his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine, where he raked in $50,000 a month
serving on the board of a corrupt gas company, Burisma. While the
Democrats intend to impeach Trump for seeking a Ukrainian investigation
of the Bidens, the reporting on Hunter Biden’s role may have dealt his
father’s presidential campaign a fatal blow.

The second factor is the rise of Elizabeth Warren in polls in all four
of the February contests, and in national polls as well, and the
recovery of Sanders since his heart attack in September. The combined
support for the two candidates stands at close to 40 percent in most
states, a clear signal that large numbers of voters are attracted by
their attacks on social inequality and against the domination of
American politics by corporations and billionaires.

Even though Sanders and Warren themselves are fervent supporters of the
profit system—Warren says she is "capitalist to my bones," while
Sanders’ "socialism" is purely rhetorical—the financial aristocracy is
fearful that even their watered-down appeals against corporate greed are
too dangerous, under conditions of mounting struggles of the working
class against big business.

In addition to his vast wealth, initially accumulated through the sale
of data terminals used in every stock brokerage and financial office,
Bloomberg has a thoroughly reactionary record as mayor of New York City
from 2001 to 2013. He was particularly identified with the police-state
tactic known as "stop and frisk," under which working people,
particularly blacks and Latinos, were subjected to arbitrary police
harassment.

At the peak of "stop and frisk," in 2011, police made 685,724 stops
without a warrant or probable cause, nearly all involving men, and
nearly 90 percent black or Hispanic, most without any result in terms of
criminal prosecution. In only 0.15 percent of the cases, about one in
700 stops, was a weapon found.

Bloomberg adamantly upheld stop and frisk throughout his terms as mayor,
and as recently as earlier this year, when he defended the program from
criticism by civil liberties and anti-racist groups. But last Sunday, a
week before he announced his presidential campaign, he visited a black
church in Brooklyn to publicly "apologize" for stop and frisk and
declare that he had been wrong.

According to press accounts, Bloomberg followed up the church service
with a phone call to the Reverend Al Sharpton, who is always willing to
provide a bit of absolution to a high-profile offender against workers
and youth, provided a check is in the mail.

The ex-mayor’s financial empire will help his campaign with more than
money. The entire editorial board of Bloomberg News has resigned, with
seven of them taking lucrative positions on the staff of the Bloomberg
for President campaign, in what amounts to a devastating exposure of the
real nature of the capitalist press.

Bloomberg can also expect a friendly reception from the New York Times.
Two members of its stable of columnists have already declared their
gushing support, neoconservative Bret Stephens and Thomas Friedman, the
leading editorial cheerleader for the Iraq War.

Friedman wrote that it was "nonsensical" that "‘billionaire has become a
dirty word and a disqualifying status for many in the left of the
Democratic Party." He added that he wanted a Democratic candidate who
would promote capitalism, "not one who tries to rile up the base by
demonizing our most successful entrepreneurs."

(8) Bloomberg: Don't Raise My Taxes

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lindsey-graham-on-gaddafi-mccain-on-nato-Bloomberg-and-more-sunday-talk

Bloomberg: Don't Raise My Taxes

See, billionaires are just like regular people. New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg doesn't want his taxes raised, unlike some other
billionaires. On Fox News Sunday, Bloomberg said if there were to be a
tax hike, it would have to be done with "meaningful cuts" in a
"believable timeframe."

(9) Bloomberg and his fellow oligarchs lay down the law: Not a penny
more in taxes

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/14/pers-n14.html

14 November 2019

Many of the billionaires who own America and consider it their fiefdom
have rallied behind one of their own, Michael Bloomberg, who last week
announced a potential run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bloomberg, the three-time former mayor of New York and founder of
Bloomberg News, is himself worth an estimated $53 billion, placing him
ninth on the list of wealthiest Americans. He let it be known that he
was taking steps to enter the race pending a final decision to run,
reversing his announcement last March that he would not run because he
believed former Vice President Joe Biden had a lock on the nomination.

The immediate developments that triggered his announcement were the rise
in the polls of Elizabeth Warren at the expense of Biden, the
right-winger favored by the Democratic Party establishment and Wall
Street among the current field of candidates. Polls show Warren leading
in the first two primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, while Biden has
dropped into fourth place behind Buttigieg and Sanders.

The second event was Warren’s announcement November 1 of a six percent
tax on wealth holdings above $1 billion as part of her "Medicare for
All" plan. That tax is on top of a previous proposal to tax holdings
above $50 million at two percent.

Neither of these taxes would be passed by either of the two big business
parties, and Warren knows it. The same is true for Bernie Sanders and
his similar plan to finance "Medicare for All" in part by increasing
taxes on the rich. The two candidates are engaging in populist demagogy
in order to divert growing working-class resistance and anti-capitalist
sentiment behind the Democratic Party, where it can be dissipated and
suppressed.

But the modern-day lords and ladies who inhabit the world of the
super-rich are indignant over any possibility of having to give up a
part of their fortune to pay for things such as health care, education,
housing and a livable environment. And they are petrified at the
prospect of popular anger against the staggering levels of social
inequality erupting into revolutionary upheavals.

They do not fear Warren, a self-described "capitalist to my bones," or
Sanders, a long-standing Democratic Party operative, so much as the
possibility of reform proposals encouraging social opposition. They want
to block their candidacies so as to exclude the issue of social
inequality from the 2020 election.

The levels of wealth wasted on this parasitic elite are almost beyond
comprehension. Here is how economist Branko Milanovic put it in his 2016
book Global Inequality:

It is very difficult to comprehend what a number such as one billion
really means. A billion dollars is so far outside the usual experience
of practically everybody on earth that the very quantity it implies is
not easily understood—other than that it is a very large amount
indeed... Suppose now that you inherited either $1 million or $1
billion, and that you spent $1,000 every day. It would take you less
than three years to run through your inheritance in the first case, and
more than 2,700 years (that is, the time that separates us from Homer’s
Iliad) to blow your inheritance in the second case.

And yet, there are 607 people in the United States with a net worth of
over a billion dollars.

Bloomberg, a liberal on so-called social issues such as abortion, gun
control and the environment, is a vicious enemy of the working class. As
New York mayor from 2002 to 2014, he attacked city workers, laid off
thousands of teachers, cut social programs and presided over the biggest
transfer of wealth from the working class to Wall Street in the history
of the city. He expanded the hated "stop and frisk" policy that
encouraged police to brutalize working class youth.

Last January he denounced Warren’s proposal to tax wealth above $50
million as "probably unconstitutional." Echoing Trump’s anti-socialist
propaganda, he warned that seriously pursuing the plan could "wreck the
country’s prosperity" and pointed to Venezuela as an example of the
supposed failure of "socialism."

Over the past several months, at least 16 billionaires have gone on
record opposing proposals for a wealth tax. This chorus has grown more
shrill since the release of Warren’s Medicare plan.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, declaring that "freedom and free enterprise
are interchangeable," complained on CNBC last week that Warren "vilifies
successful people."

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose personal fortune of $108 billion
places him second in the US behind Jeff Bezos (whose Washington Post has
run a string of editorials denouncing wealth taxes, the Green New Deal
and other proposed reforms), said last week, "I do think if you tax too
much you do risk the capital formation, innovation, the US as the
desirable place to do innovative companies."

Billionaire Mark Cuban tweeted that Warren was "selling shiny objects to
divert attention from reality" and accused her of "misleading" voters on
the cost of her program.

Hedge fund owner Leon Cooperman, worth a "mere" $3.2 billion, appeared
on CNBC and said, "I don’t need Elizabeth Warren or the government
giving away my money. [Warren] and Bernie Sanders are presenting a lot
of ideas to the public that are morally and socially bankrupt." A few
days later he announced his support for Bloomberg’s potential candidacy.

The New York Times, the voice of the Democratic Party establishment, has
run a number of op-ed pieces denouncing Warren’s wealth tax proposal,
including one by Wall Street financier Steven Rattner, who headed up
Obama’s 2009 bailout of GM and Chrysler until he was forced off of the
Auto Task Force because of corruption charges laid by the Securities and
Exchange Commission. While he was on the panel, he imposed a 50 percent
across-the-board cut on the pay of newly hired GM and Chrysler workers.

But for fawning toward the oligarchs, viciousness toward the working
class and yearning for an authoritarian savior from social unrest, it is
hard to beat this week’s column by the Times ’ Thomas Friedman,
headlined "Why I Like Mike."

Calling for "celebrating and growing entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurship," he writes: "I want a Democratic candidate who is
ready to promote all these goals, not one who tries to rile up the base
by demonizing our most successful entrepreneurs… Increasingly the
Democratic left sound hostile to that whole constituency of
job-creators. They sound like an anti-business party… The Democrats also
need a candidate who can project strength. When people are stressed and
frightened, they want a strong leader."

This is under conditions of record stock prices on Wall Street and ever
rising levels of social inequality. A recent study by economist Gabriel
Zucman showed that the richest 400 Americans now own more of the
country’s wealth than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60 percent of
the wealth distribution. The oligarchs’ share has tripled since the 1980s.

In their new book, The Triumph of Injustice, Zucman and Saez show that
in 2018, for the first time in US history, the wealthiest households
paid a lower tax rate—in federal, state and local taxes—than every other
income group. Since 1980, the overall tax rate on the wealthy in America
has been cut in half, dropping from 47 percent to 23 percent today.

The United States is not a democracy in any true sense. It is an
oligarchic society, economically and politically dominated by a slim but
fabulously wealthy elite.

The ferocious response of the oligarchs to the half-hearted proposals of
Sanders and Warren to cut into their fortunes underscores the bankruptcy
of their talk of enacting serious reforms within the framework of
capitalism. The same goes for the pseudo-left organizations such as the
Democratic Socialists of America and Socialist Alternative that have
jumped with both feet onto the Sanders bandwagon, and will no doubt
shift over to Warren should she win the nomination.

There is no way to address the urgent problems of health care,
education, housing, the environment and war without directly attacking
the stranglehold over society exercised by the corporate-financial
aristocracy. Their wealth must be expropriated and put toward the
satisfaction of the social needs of the working class, the vast majority
of the population.

The corporations and banks must be taken out of private hands and turned
into publicly owned utilities under the democratic control of the
working class, so that the production and distribution of goods can be
rationally and humanely organized to meet human needs, not private profit.

1