“It all started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone.”
And then Congress got involved ― local elected officials, as well ― and said, ‘Oh that’s not fair, these people should be able to get credit.’ And once you started pushing in that direction, banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn’t as good as you would like.”
[Michael Bloomberg] was Speaking to the mortgage meltdown of 2008. And more to the point, endorsing the process known as redlining.
According to (Huffingtonpost) “Redlining, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said, ‘People in these neighborhoods are poor, they’re not going to be able to pay off their mortgages, tell your salesmen don’t go into those areas.’”
Huffingtonpost also detailed how Michael Bloomberg was a member of some lily-white social clubs before he decided to run for the mayoralty of New York City.
Those clubs included the Century Club, a predominantly white club in Purchase, New York, & the Brook club — an élite, secretive social club in midtown Manhattan. According to the same reporting, Bloomberg resigned his membership in both clubs but rejoined after completing his three terms as Mayor of New York City.
This seems to be standard operating practice for Micahel Bloomberg who was a strong advocate for the controversial program used by the NYPD called ‘Stop & Frisk.
The controversial practice which disproportionately targeted African-Americans was introduced by Bloomberg’s predecessor Republican Rudolph Giuliani.
The practice was widely panned and was eventually dropped by the NYPD. Even so, Michael Bloomberg praised the program and criticized those who fought to stop it, even after he left office.
The New York Times Ashley Southall said in Never of 2019; During Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor of New York City, police officers stopped and questioned people they believed to be engaged in criminal activity on the street more than five million times. Officers often then searched the detainees — the vast majority of whom were young black and Latino men — for weapons that rarely materialized.
“The temperature in the city at the time was that the police were at war with black and brown people on the streets,” said Jenn Rolnick-Borchetta, the director of impact litigation at the Bronx Defenders, one of the groups that have successfully sued the Police Department over the practice. “And that is how people experienced it.”
At the time the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLY) said, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program continues to disproportionately target, stop, and frisk people of color, especially young black and Latino men and boys, the vast majority of whom have done nothing wrong.
The New York Daily News reported that in 2011, the peak year of Stop Question & Frisk (SQF) in NYC, 84% of those stopped were either black or Hispanic — a figure well above black and Hispanic representation in the city.
Six percent of those stops resulted in an arrest while an additional 6% resulted in a ticket. This means there was no further police action taken in 88% of cases.
Despite the failure of the practice to (a) produce results that could be pointed to ‑to offset the outcry, and (b) despite the disproportionate way in which it was executed, and © despite the tensions it created between the police department and Black and Hispanic people in the city, Michael Bloomberg doubled downing on his defense of the initiative.
That, of course, was until he decided he wanted to run for the Presidency of the United States.
As soon as he saw an opening to run for President, Michael Bloomberg immediately had a come to Jesus moment and decided, “maybe stop & frisk was not such a good policy after all”. It is the very same way that Bloomberg decided to quit his memberships in the all-white clubs when it suited his interest and rejoined when he was no longer under the glare of the spotlights as a politician.
And so Bloomberg, the recent convert to civil rights, ready to sing kumbaya, has been doing the rounds in the African-America churches.
Bloomberg may be an egomaniacal opportunist but he is no fool, he knows no Democrat can win the white house without winning the black vote.
He started off with his friend A R Bernard’s church in Brooklyn which is the largest meg-church in the northeast, boasting a membership of about 40,000.
In a kind of mea-culpa tour, Bloomberg has set out to win black voters to his side, even if he has to bold-facedly lie to them.
As more and more voices have been raised about his record when it comes to Black America, Michael Bloomberg has launched an all-out charm offensive to convince African-Americans that he is a changed man.
As his redlining comments and stop and frisk policies gather steam against his presidential ambitions Michael Bloomberg told reporters in Tennessee Thursday that he intends to launch “Mike for Black America”. Hahaha.…..Really now?
Bloomberg must know that winning over Black people really does not require much more than promises and a pat on the back, unless you are also Black yourself.
“I apologized for the practice and the pain that it caused,” he said Wednesday. “It was five years ago. And, you know, it’s just not the way that I think, and it doesn’t reflect what I do every day.”
Oh my God, if only life was that simple, despite the pain he has caused he demands forgiveness on the basis that it has been five years ago.
If only the people who have been abused by Bloomberg’s police and framed could have it that easy and have their good names restored.
They too should claim it’s been five years and then some. But those privileges are reserved for the rich and powerful like Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump.
Introducing Michael Bloomberg at an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Dr. Elenora Woods, president of the city’s NAACP chapter, (a black woman) said Bloomberg would be a tireless fighter for economic justice for black Americans.
Sure thing I suppose, she is proving a negative, Bloomberg has yet bought the Democrat nomination, but she already knows that he will be a tireless fighter for Black Americans.
You simply cannot make these things up.
“Look, I know what racism looks like,” woods went on, “I know what it looks like, and that’s not Mike Bloomberg.”
I don’t know whether Michael Bloomberg is a racist or not, in fact, that is hardly the point. He has demonstrated through his policies, that he is dangerous to the interests of black people, that is the issue in front of us.
I have been thinking about joining the NAACP but Nah .….…I’m good.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, businessman, researcher, and blogger.
He is a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog chatt-a-box.com.
He’s also a contributor to several websites.
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