Bloomberg’s Mea Culpa Unadulterated B*******

One of the things I find com­pelling is the way politi­cians treat African-American vot­ers as a mono­lith, con­trolled by Black Pastors.
Now I do under­stand why they would want to go to Black Churches when they want to reach the African-American vot­ing core. After all, Black women are the back­bone of the black church and black women are the most reli­able vot­ing block in the coun­try.
And so polit­i­cal aspi­rants believe that regard­less of what harm they did to the African-American com­mu­ni­ty in the past, all they have to do is to vis­it a black church, offer up a mea cul­pa and all is for­got­ten.
But hold up there Busta, that ain’t gonna always fly.
The coun­ty exec­u­tive in my neck of the woods told me that my pas­tor endorsed his can­di­da­cy after I dis­agreed with him on an issue.
Okay, truth be told, I dis­agree with him on every­thing. He is white, male and Republican, hard­ly any­thing on which he and I can agree.
I flat­ly told him that my Pastor does not speak for me.

Which brings me to the cur­rent crop of aspi­rants for the Democratic Nomination in 2020.
In my esti­ma­tion, one of the rea­sons that so many white male can­di­dates have failed to reg­is­ter any sup­port in the pri­maries may be attrib­uted to their lack of appeal to Black voters.
Take con­gress­man Tim Ryan from Ohio for exam­ple, he nev­er seemed to grasp that the pres­i­den­cy is much larg­er than Ohio’s 13^th con­gres­sion­al district.
Dude, you were run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy not to remain in the con­gress, dur­ing the debates his every answer was about his dis­trict. The fact is that African-Americans make up the base of the Democrat par­ty, blacks have pre­cious lit­tle in com­mon with Ryan’s 13^th conservative/​democrat dis­trict in Ohio, and so he was out real quick.

There were sev­er­al oth­er white male can­di­dates, Bennet. Bullock. Delaney. Steyer and of course Buttigieg, nei­ther of these men have fig­ured out a way to appeal to black vot­ers despite the fact that they are run­ning on the Democrat tick­et. Bernie Sanders marched with Dr. King and still, he can­not seem to shake the nag­ging sus­pi­cion with which many black vot­ers view his can­di­da­cy.
Neither of them will be the nom­i­nee for their par­ty of choice it appears. 

This brings us to Michael Bloomberg the for­mer Democrat turned Republican, turned Independent, turned Democrat, bil­lion­aire three-term Mayor of New York City.
He decid­ed that he wants to be pres­i­dent, because the present crop of Democrats does­n’t seem to meet with his approval.
You know one fake bil­lion­aire was able to worm his way into 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, so as a real bil­lion­aire he should be able to do it quite eas­i­ly, right?
He should ask Tom Styer how his can­di­da­cy is work­ing out.

I’ll nev­er for­get that Michael Bloomberg felt that the lying decep­tive Rudolph Giuliani must have been indis­pens­able in 2003 after his sec­ond term end­ed. Michael Bloomberg and Mark Green one of the Democrat can­di­dates vying to be may­or of the city agreed that if they won the elec­tion they would allow Giuliani to stay on for an extra three (3) months as Mayor to super­vise the rebuild­ing efforts in the city. Fernando Ferrer the oth­er demo­c­rat can­di­date said no.
The pow­er-hun­gry Giuliani waged an intense lob­by­ing effort to stay in office argu­ing: “It will give peo­ple in the city who have fears about what’s going to hap­pen, and how it’s going to hap­pen, a cer­tain sense of con­fi­dence.“
What non­sense, it was an unvar­nished pow­er-grab but Bloomberg allowed his crony to do it because he had plans of his own.
Fernando Ferrer would have none of it argu­ing; “I know the pol­i­tics of the moment might dic­tate a dif­fer­ent posi­tion, but I am deeply con­cerned about the prece­dent this would set.”
Now, remem­ber it was the same Giuliani who made the deci­sion to place the city’s com­mand and con­trol cen­ter in the world trade cen­ter tow­er, even after the tow­ers were attacked ten years ear­li­er.
At the time Giuliani was lob­by­ing for more time in office in clas­sic dic­ta­to­r­i­al fash­ion, the state’s Republican Governor George Pataki was also all for it.
The New York Civil Rights Coalition was harsh­ly crit­i­cal of the plan, accus­ing Giuliani of bul­ly­ing the may­oral can­di­dates and being “dis­rup­tive to elec­toral democ­ra­cy.”
According to Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg agreed to his plan immediately.

In the end, Michael Bloomberg allowed Giuliani to stay on after his term end­ed. Conceivably not out of any desire to see con­ti­nu­ity in the rebuild­ing process after the events of September 11^th, 2001, but because he had plans of his own to strong-arm the city coun­cil to change the term lim­its law.
The law only allowed for two terms up to Giuliani’s tenure.
During his tenure as Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican Mayor was a reg­u­lar lit­tle Napoleon.
Bloomberg sup­port­ed and cham­pi­oned a ban on large sug­ary drinks. Simply put, Michael Bloomberg felt that as Mayor of New York City he and his Board of Health, had the right to dic­tate to New Yorkers what size sodas they were allowed to have.
I’m not sure whether Communist nations and oth­er dic­ta­tor­ships tell their cit­i­zens how much sug­ar they can and can­not con­sume? Obviously, Michael Bloomberg had not acquaint­ed him­self with the fail­ings of the 18^th amend­ment to the US con­sti­tu­tion.
In a 4 – 2 epic smack­down of Bloomberg’s mea­sure, Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr. of the New York State Court of Appeals wrote in a 20-page deci­sion, that the city’s Board of Health “exceed­ed the scope of its reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty.”
The American Beverage Association at the time argued: “the pro­pos­al would have cre­at­ed an uneven play­ing field for thou­sands of small busi­ness­es in the city and lim­it­ed New Yorkers’ free­dom of choice.”
This issue was about (free­dom of choice), even if one agrees that maybe its not such a bad idea to con­sume less sug­ar, it is nev­er a good idea when the Government becomes the arbiter of what one should and should­n’t con­sume.
Bill de Blasio, the present Mayor of the city sup­port­ed Bloomberg’s over-reach at the time.

In a March 2007 arti­cle for New York Magazine Chris Smith wrote; Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come to Pier 76, just off the West Side Highway, on a crisp Tuesday after­noon in March to open new sta­bles for an NYPD mount­ed unit, and he’s down­right gid­dy, his voice ris­ing as he lists the fea­tures of the $8.7 mil­lion facil­i­ty. “The four-legged mem­bers of Troop B need­ed a hayloft!” he exclaims. “As well as stalls! An equip­ment room, a heat­ed exer­cise area, and their own show­er!”
At the time, fam­i­ly home­less­ness was on the rise. The sit­u­a­tion was wors­ened by a Bloomberg pro­gram called Housing Stability Plus, which shrank pay­ments to fam­i­lies liv­ing in sub­si­dized units. Yes, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican bil­lion­aire Mayor shrank pay­ments to fam­i­lies liv­ing in sub­si­dized hous­ing. It is usu­al­ly the least pow­er­ful, poor­est peo­ple who live in those sub­si­dized hous­ing units.
Smith wrote; Unemployment is down, but to me, one of the most haunt­ing images of 2006 was the thou­sands of des­per­ate peo­ple lined up in mid­town hop­ing for a chance at a hand­ful of jobs at the new M&M can­dy store in Times Square. Deaths of chil­dren “known” to the child-wel­fare sys­tem sky­rock­et­ed last year. 
And Sean Bell an inno­cent African-American man, was mur­dered by NYPD COPS on the ear­ly morn­ing of the day he was sup­posed to be married.

As Michael Bloomberg basked in his new police horse-sta­ble with equip­ment rooms, heat­ed exer­cise areas, and show­ers, a reporter asked him “What about the Bell sup­port­ers who are angry that more cops weren’t indict­ed”? 
Smith wrote that the mood soured as soon as Sean Bell’s name was men­tioned. Bloomberg retort­ed in response to the ques­tion; “We’re a coun­try of laws!” he says sharply. “The dis­trict attor­ney made his case to the grand jury, the grand jury has indict­ed three peo­ple, they will have their day in court, and jus­tice will be served, what­ev­er that is.”
Bloomberg cared much more about the new show­place for hors­es than the fact that his goons had mur­dered an inno­cent young man on the day he was to be mar­ried.
Sean Bell and many oth­ers were mur­dered, bru­tal­ized and harassed as a result of the bro­ken win­dows pol­i­cy called “stop and frisk”, start­ed by the oth­er Republican Gestapo Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.
Michael Bloomberg con­tin­ued it, and allowed Black and Brown peo­ple of the city to be sub­ject­ed to untold ter­ror by out of con­trol cops who saw the laws as a license to abuse those they did not like. 

According to the New York Daily News, In 2013, a judge ruled the prac­tice had been applied in an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al way and a fed­er­al mon­i­tor was appoint­ed to over­see reforms. 
Michael Bloomberg railed against the judge’s deci­sion at the time and sup­port­ed its con­tin­u­ance despite the fact that the NYPD had start­ed reduc­ing the use of stop-and-frisk on its own, an effort cham­pi­oned by Mayor de Blasio when he took office in 2014.
Bloomberg sup­port­ed the prac­tice for years even after he left office.

Nevertheless, on Sunday, November 17^th, 2019 the same Michael Bloomberg was at his friend A R Bernard Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. The afore­men­tioned is the largest mega-church in the tri-state area boast­ing a mem­ber­ship of forty thou­sand peo­ple.
No par­tic­u­lar group votes with more depend­abil­i­ty than African-American women. There is no bet­ter place to find African-American women than the black church.
And so Michael Bloomberg, oppor­tunis­tic for­mer Democrat, turned Republican, turned Independent, is now con­ve­nient­ly a Democrat again try­ing to weasel his way into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He is at least polit­i­cal­ly savvy enough to know that you are going nowhere in the Democrat par­ty with­out win­ning the black vote.
So here he was address­ing the largest black con­gre­ga­tion between here and Texas.
The oth­er con artist now occu­py­ing the white house is no genius, despite his claim that he is a sta­ble genius. Nevertheless, he was savvy enough to rec­og­nize that there is a rough­ly 35% of dis­af­fect­ed, racist whites some­where out there who need­ed some­one with a mega­phone.
By virtue of his name and for­tune Michael Bloomberg has a loud mega­phone, what he needs is a fol­low­ing and that is the rea­son he was in A R Bernard’s church on Sunday morning.

Bloomberg: “I now see that we could and should have act­ed soon­er, and act­ed faster, to cut the stops.”
“I wish we had and I’m sor­ry that we didn’t, but I can’t change his­to­ry,” he con­tin­ued. “However, today I want you to know that I real­ized back then that I was wrong and I’m sor­ry.”
“The fact is, far too many peo­ple were being stopped while we tried to [reduce crime] and the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of them were black and Latino.”
“Because of the num­ber of stops of inno­cent peo­ple, because it had been so high, resent­ment had built up.” “We erod­ed what we had worked so hard to build: trust. Trust between police and com­mu­ni­ties, trust between you and me”.
“And the ero­sion of that trust both­ered me deeply. And it still both­ers me. And I want to earn it back.”
I call Bullshit on Michael Bloomberg’s mea cul­pa.
Decades after his con­tin­ued stri­dent defense of a pol­i­cy that brought untold agony and hurt to so many.
All of a sud­den this oppor­tunis­tic con artist is sor­ry?
I don’t think so. It is cyn­i­cal, trans­par­ent, and it is reprehensible.

But there is one threat greater to our peo­ple than these devi­ous self-serv­ing politi­cians. It is the pas­tors who allow these weasels to come into their church­es, know­ing that the major­i­ty of the con­gre­ga­tions look to them not only for spir­i­tu­al lead­er­ship, but polit­i­cal guid­ance.
On Sunday morn­ing, in bring­ing his friend Michael Bloomberg to the stage A R Bernard told his con­gre­ga­tion; “Come on, CCC, show some love and appre­ci­a­tion.”
Appreciation for what?
Years of police bru­tal­i­ty which brought death, pain, and despair to count­less African-American and Caribbean-American fam­i­lies?
In the 60s the Black church was at the fore­front of the civ­il rights strug­gle. Since then, church­es pay no tax­es on their mon­e­tary intake, as long as they stay out of the polit­i­cal are­na.
It was an inge­nious way for the sys­tem to neu­tral­ize the black church.
Today, except for a few instances, black church lead­er­ship is all about the tithes and offer­ings and not about the inter­est of their con­gre­gants.
It is time for black vot­ers to tell the Michael Bloombergs of the world that their pas­tors do not speak for them.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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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