Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States.[3] He is the founder and 88% owner of Bloomberg L.P., a financial news and information services media company.[4] [5] [6]
A Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his registration in 2001 and ran for mayor as a Republican, winning the election that year and a second term in 2005. Bloomberg left the Republican Party over policy and philosophical disagreements with national party leadership in 2007 and ran for his third term in 2009 as an independent candidate on the Republican ballot line. He was frequently mentioned as a possible independent candidate for the 2008 presidential election, which fueled further speculation when he left the Republican Party.[7] There was also speculation that he would run as a vice-presidential candidate.[8] Bloomberg did not, however, seek the presidency nor was he selected as a running mate by any of the presidential candidates.
2008 presidential campaign speculationSee also: Draft Bloomberg movement
On February 27, 2008, Bloomberg announced that he would not run for president in 2008, and that he would endorse a candidate who takes an independent and non-partisan approach.[107] He had also stated unequivocally live on the Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve TV show, December 31, 2007, that he was not going to run for president in 2008.[108] Despite prior public statements by Bloomberg denying plans for a presidential run, [109] many pundits believed Bloomberg would announce a campaign at a later date. On January 7, 2008, he met at the University of Oklahoma with a bipartisan group, including (now former) Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel and former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, both of whom had been frequently mentioned as possible running mates – to pressure the major party candidates to promote national unity and reduce partisan gridlock. Speculation that Bloomberg would choose this forum to announce his candidacy proved to be unfounded.[110] [111] Other purported signs that he planned to run included:
In summer 2006, he met with Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group, to talk about the logistics of a possible run.[112] After a conversation with Bloomberg, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska suggested that he and Bloomberg could run on a shared independent ticket for the presidency.[113]
On This Week on June 10, 2007, anchor George Stephanopoulos included panelist Jay Carney, who mentioned a conversation between Bloomberg and top staffers where he heard Bloomberg ask approximately how much a presidential campaign would cost. Carney said that one staffer replied, "Around $500 million." According to a Washington Post article, a $500 million budget would allow Bloomberg to circumvent many of the common obstacles faced by third party candidates seeking the White House.[114] On June 19, 2007, Bloomberg left the Republican Party, filing as an independent after a speech criticizing the current political climate in Washington.[115][116] On August 9, 2007, in an interview with former CBS News anchor Dan Rather that aired on August 21, Bloomberg categorically stated that he was not running for President, that he would not be running, and that there were no circumstances in which he would, saying, "If somebody asks me where I stand, I tell them. And that's not a way to get elected, generally. Nobody's going to elect me president of the United States. What I'd like to do is to be able to influence the dialogue. I'm a citizen."[117]
Despite continued denials, a possible Bloomberg candidacy continues to be the subject of media attention, including a November Newsweek cover story.[118] During a private reception in December 2007, Bloomberg conducted a version of bingo in which guests were to guess the meaning of the numbers on a printed card. When Bloomberg asked the significance of 271, one guest answered correctly: the number of electoral votes received by George W. Bush in 2000.[119] In January 2008, CNN reported that a source close to Bloomberg said that the mayor had launched a research effort to assess his chances of winning a potential presidential bid. According to the report, the unidentified source also stated that Bloomberg had set early March as a timetable for making a decision as to whether or not to run.[120] On January 16, 2008, it was reported that Bloomberg's business interests were placed in "a sort of blind trust" because of his possible run for the presidency. His interests were put under the management of Quadrangle Group, co-founded by reported Bloomberg friend Steven Rattner, though Bloomberg would "continue to have control of and access to certain investment decisions".[121]
On January 18, 2008, the Associated Press reported that Bloomberg had a meeting in Austin, Texas, with Clay Mulford, a ballot-access expert and campaign manager for Ross Perot's third party presidential campaigns. Bloomberg denied that the meeting concerned a possible presidential campaign by him, stating "I'm not a candidate — it couldn't be clearer. Which of the words do you not understand?"[107] On February 28, 2008, Bloomberg stated "I am not – and will not be – a candidate for president." He added that he is "hopeful that the current campaigns can rise to the challenge by offering truly independent leadership. The most productive role that I can serve is to push them forward, by using the means at my disposal to promote a real and honest debate.[107]
At the same time that the presidential run was being considered, there was also some speculation that Bloomberg could be a candidate for the vice presidency in 2008. In a blog posting of June 21, 2007, The Politico's Ben Smith asked the question of whether a vice-presidential candidate can self-finance an entire presidential ticket.[122] Many believed that Bloomberg would in fact be legally permitted to self-finance a campaign as the vice-presidential candidate.
Adding more fuel to the speculation that Bloomberg might consider a VP slot were a series of meetings he had in mid-August 2007 with former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn and later with Barack Obama on November 30, 2007.[123] A May 17, 2008, breakfast meeting with John McCain led to speculation that Bloomberg might be on McCain's short list of possible VP candidates.[124]
THINGS FALL APART
The late-2000s financial crisis, also known as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) or the "Great Recession” is considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.[1] It resulted in the collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market also suffered, resulting in numerous evictions, foreclosures and prolonged unemployment. It contributed to the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in the trillions of U.S. dollars, and a significant decline in economic activity, leading to a severe global economic recession in 2008.[2]
The financial crisis was triggered by a complex interplay of valuation and liquidity problems in the United States banking system in 2008.[3][4] The bursting of the U.S. housing bubble, which peaked in 2007, caused the values of securities tied to U.S. real estate pricing to plummet, damaging financial institutions globally.[5][6] Questions regarding bank solvency, declines in credit availability and damaged investor confidence had an impact on global stock markets, where securities suffered large losses during 2008 and early 2009. Economies worldwide slowed during this period, as credit tightened and international trade declined.[7] Governments and central banks responded with unprecedented fiscal stimulus, monetary policy expansion and institutional bailouts. Although there have been aftershocks, the financial crisis itself ended sometime between late-2008 and mid-2009.[8] [9] [10]
Many causes for the financial crisis have been suggested, with varying weight assigned by experts.[11] The United States Senate issued the Levin–Coburn Report, which found "that the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street."[12]
Critics argued that credit rating agencies and investors failed to accurately price the risk involved with mortgage-related financial products, and that governments did not adjust their regulatory practices to address 21st-century financial markets.[13] The 1999 repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 effectively removed the separation that previously existed between Wall Street investment banks and depository banks.[14] In response to the financial crisis, both market-based and regulatory solutions have been implemented or are under consideration.[15]
Stabilization
The recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009, according to the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) [210] and the financial crisis appears to have ended about the same time. In April 2009 TIME Magazine declared "More Quickly Than It Began, The Banking Crisis Is Over."[8] The United States Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission dates the crisis to 2008.[9] [10] President Barack Obama declared on January 27, 2010, "the markets are now stabilized, and we've recovered most of the money we spent on the banks."[211]
The New York Times identifies March, 2009 as the "nadir of the crisis" and notes that "Most stock markets around the world are at least 75 percent higher than they were then. Financial stocks, which led the markets down, have also led them up." Nevertheless, the lack of fundamental changes in banking and financial markets, worries many market participants, including the International Monetary Fund.[212]
THE ROAD TO AMERICAN DECLINE LED BY THE NEOCONS AND PAVED WITH NEO-CONSERVATISM
Martin Jacques tells a more detailed story in When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (2009). Sovereign wealth funds acquired powerful new leverage as a result of the credit crunch, commanding resources which the major Western financial institutions palpably lacked. The meltdown of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions in September 2008 underlined the shift in economic power from the West, with some of the fallen giants seeking support from sovereign wealth funds and the US government stepping in to save the mortgage titans Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae partly in order to reassure countries like China, which had invested huge sums of money in them: if they had withdrawn these, it would almost certainly have precipitated a collapse in the value of the dollar. The financial crisis has graphically illustrated the disparity between an East Asia cash-rich from decades of surpluses and a United States cash-poor following many years of deficits.
Following 9/11, the United States not only saw itself as the sole superpower but attempted to establish a new global role which reflected that pre-eminence. The neoconservative think-tank Project for the New American Century, established in 1997 by, amongst others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, adopted a statement of principles which articulated the new doctrine and helped prepare the ground for the Bush administration.
The new century dawned with the world deeply aware of and preoccupied by the prospect of what appeared to be overwhelming American power. The neoconservatives chose to interpret the world through the prism of the defeat of the Soviet Union and the overwhelming military superiority enjoyed by the United States, rather than in terms of the underlying trend towards economic multipolarity, which was downplayed.
The new doctrine placed a premium on the importance
of the United States maintaining a high military lead
over other countries in order to deter potential rivals,
and on the US pursuing its own interests rather than
being constrained either by its allies or international
agreements.
The Bush presidency’s foreign policy marked an important shift compared with that of previous administrations: the war on terror became the new imperative, America’ relations with Western Europe were accorded reduced significance, the principle of national sovereignty was denigrated and that of regime-change affirmed, culminating in the invasion of Iraq. Far from the United States presiding over a reshaping of global affairs, however, it rapidly found itself beleaguered in Iraq and enjoying less global support than at any time since 1945.
The precondition for being a hegemonic power, including the ability or otherwise to preside over a formal or informal empire is economic strength. In the long run at least, it is a merciless measure. Notwithstanding this, imperial powers in decline are almost invariably in denial of the fact. That was the case with Britain from 1918 onwards and, to judge by the behavior of the Bush administration (though perhaps not Obama’s)—which failed to read the runes, preferring to believe that the US was actually in decline and on the eve of a world in which it would find its authority considerably diminished—the US may well make the same mistake, perhaps on a much grander scale.
The credit rating agency Moody’s warned in 2008 that the US faced the prospect within a decade of losing its top-notch triple-A credit rating, first granted to US government debt when it was assessed in 1917, unless it took radical action to curb government expenditure. And this was before the financial meltdowns in 2008, which with the huge taxpayer-funded government bail-out of the financial sector, will greatly, increase the size of the US national debt. This is not to suggest that, in the short run, the US will be required to reduce its military expenditure for reasons of financial restraint: indeed, given the position that the US military occupies in the national psyche, and the primary emphasis that US foreign policy has traditionally placed on military power, this seems most unlikely. Being an imperial power, however, is a hugely expensive business and, peering into the future, as its relative economic power declines, the United States will no longer be able to sustain the military commitments and military superiority that it presently enjoys.
2008 ANTIDOTE ~ BARACK OBAMA
THE NEOCONS ARE BACK ~ Robert Kagan
Robert Kagan --Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Historian, founder of the Yale Political Monthly, adviser to Republican political campaigns.
No Doubt: U.S. Remains 'Tremendously Influential'
February 3, 2012
Listen to the Story
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/03/146330699/no-doubt-u-s-remains-tremendously-influential
Some believe America is in decline. But author Robert Kagan disagrees. He talks to Steve Inskeep about his new book The World America Made." President Obama recently discussed an article Kagan wrote for The New Republic called "The Myth of American Decline."
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/03/146330699/no-doubt-u-s-remains-tremendously-influential
Jacob Heilbrunn in They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (2008) stated emphatically that the Neocons would return. He posited that the Neocons’ liberal detractors persist in acting as though neo-conservatism were a phenomenon that has run its course. Liberals crowed, for example, when the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) closed down in the summer of 2006. But don’t be fooled. Prophets are not easily dissuaded from their crusade. They may regroup, reassess, and retrench. But these reckless minds, to borrow a term from Mark Lilla, aren’t going away. Quite the contrary. (280)
Why the Neocons Love Mitt Romney & Hate Obama
Will Trump's Endorsement Get Romney Hired?
by Ari Shapiro
February 3, 2012
Listen to the Story
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/03/146326750/will-trumps-endorsement-get-romney-hired
Real estate mogul and Apprentice star Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney for president in Las Vegas Thursday. Analysts suggest Trump's endorsement could hurt Romney since he is trying to fend off accusations that he doesn't care about the poor.
Nell Irvin Painter in The History of White People (2010) explains why a politician like Mitt Romney would appeal to white people in general. She writes that back in the twentieth century, white people were assumed to be rich or at least middle-class, as well as more beautiful, powerful, and smart. As citizens and scholars, they said what needed to be known and monopolized the study of other people—with themselves hardly being marked or scrutinized in return. Think of Francis A Walker and William Z. Ripley [two notorious “race scientist” and rabid anti-Semites], for whom formal education, New England ancestry, and useful connections assured authority. Half a century later, the upheaval of the civil rights era turned the looking glass around, bringing white people under scrutiny. Think of Malcolm X and James Baldwin. (387) In other words the 1950s, that Romney and the Nash Rambler represent, was the golden age for white people, including Jews.
JOHN MCCAIN A LOYAL NEOCONSERVATIVE
Heilbrunn writes that the sheer scale of the neoconservative network, which includes the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Weekly Standard, the Committee on the Present Danger, and the Foundation for Defense o Democracies, means that it has become part of the Washington establishment.
In February 2007, at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Senator Joseph Lieberman declared, “What we are fighting is an ideology—the totalitarian ideology of radical Islam, as brutal and hostile to personal freedom as the communism we fought and defeated in the last century.” The Problem with such apocalyptic statements is that they endow a disparate group of terrorists with an importance that they simply do not deserve. Owen Harries, the former editor of the National Interest, had it right when he said it trivializes the cold war to make such overblown comparisons.
Sen. John McCain, right, as he endorsed Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency earlier this month.
President Obama has made the case that his administration spoke out forcefully when Iran's government used deadly force to suppress protests in the spring of 2009."As soon as violence broke out — in fact, in anticipation of potential violence — we were very clear in saying that violence was unacceptable, that that was not how governments operate with respect to their people," he told reporters at the time.
Obama's opponent in the 2008 presidential election
reaches a very different conclusion.
Much more from Steve's conversation with the senator is due on Friday's Morning Edition. Click here to find an NPR station that broadcasts or streams the show. After the interview airs, we'll add the audio to the top of this post. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/01/27/145927439/mccain-says-history-will-judge-obama-harshly-on-policy-toward-iran
Senator John McCain, a close friend of William Kristol’s, has essentially the same message as Lieberman. No one could do more than McCain to revive the neoconservative cause.
It’s also the case as a prominent New York neoconservative observes, that being “beleaguered plays into all the old psychological reflexes. Everyone’s decided the Neocons are wrong. That’s vindication.” The Neocons are thus unbowed. The Neocons did not break ranks; they closed them.
CHURCH AND STATE MAKE A NASTY MIXTURE EVEN IN ISRAEL
Avraham Burg warns in The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise From Its Ashes (2008) that the mixture of church and state can be lethal to a liberal democracy.
Berg writes that despite the artificial claims of fundraising campaigns, most of the Jewish people no longer need salvation. We have actually never been in better condition. Israel’s centrality is eroded due to the constant embarrassments that it produces, which lowered its status in the eyes of many.
BBC WORLD NEWS
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=orthodox%20jews%20vs.%20secular%20jews
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27 December 2011
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Middle East / 27 December 2011… or any person in any way." Tensions have been growing in recent years between Israel's secular Jews and members of the ultra-orthodox Jews who…
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27 December 2011Ultra-Orthodox Jews have clashed with police in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem.
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Middle East / 27 December 2011… of Orthodox Jews detained, say reports. The town has become a focus of friction between secular Jews and ultra-Orthodox men demanding strict gender…
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5 April 2010
- Middle East / 5 April 2010
Religious-secular rows have blown up over a range of other issues. Orthodox Jews have protested against the secularisation of Israel For example,…
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16 July 2009
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Middle East / 16 July 2009Haredi grievance has been the Sabbath opening of a private car park near the religiously sensitive Old City area, when Orthodox Jews abstain from…
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12 September 2008
- Middle East / 12 September 2008
… heard, the Ultra Orthodox are missing out on a fundamental tool which could be used to bridge the gap between religious and secular Jews. Maya…
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21 May 2008
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UK / 21 May 2008… born to them. He calculates that at current trends strictly orthodox Jews will outnumber their more secular counterparts by the middle of the…
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5 April 2008
- Middle East / 5 April 2008
… of civilisations. a cultural battle between Orthodox and secular. The religious Jews aren't prepared to accept that some people live their lives…
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21 January 2008
- Middle East / 21 January 2008
… large family that are the badges of the orthodox Jew. Mr Goldstein is the mayor of Gush Etzion, one of the biggest settlement blocs in the West....
Bitter identity struggles in the 1970s, 1980, [and now the 2000s] centered around the “Who is a Jew?” controversy, and the lasting attempts of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox to narrowly define a “Jew,” did not bring hearts closer. The rise of the ultra-Orthodox streams of Judaism is how an unappreciative Israel reciprocated the warm embrace of American Jews.
Jewish influence sometimes causes American political candidates to sound like Shoah (Holocaust) victims. “Never again” speeches, Auschwitz themes, and black skullcaps during memorial ceremonies, complete with God Full of Mercy prayers, are frequent. The inevitable outcome of this attitude is a feeling of power, and the further erosion of the Jewish idea of revival that was the basis for the American Jewish autonomy. American Jews, like Israelis, are stuck in Auschwitz, raising the Shoah banner high to the sky and exploiting it politically. (40-1)
NEOCONS PLANS TO INSURE A RIGHT-WING ISRAEL BACKFIRES
The Neocons help support the Right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who was forced to unite with several Orthodox religious parties to form and maintain his veto proof governance.
Moshe Arens writes on Haaretz.com that Israel is a parliamentary democracy whose electoral system is based on proportional representation. This provides a fair representation for the different groups and parties in Israeli society and produces coalition governments, whereby a number of parties agree on common guidelines that will determine government policy. The process of coalition building, guided by the president, usually takes a few weeks, which naturally makes many impatient, but it is quite common among parliamentary democracies around the world. It is true that coalition governments are necessarily governments of compromise, and are accused of being in a state of paralysis. But this accusation comes from people who call for action, any action, at all costs. Do something, do anything, they say. Not very good advice.
This is the position that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found himself in as AIPAC and his other supporters urged him to take hard-nose stances against the Palestinians. The Shas and Habayit Hayehudi religious parties do not want compromise with the Palestinians under any circumstances. This led to the American media crisis when ads were placed on television and on billboards aimed at Israeli Expatriates.
Isabel Kershner and Joseph Berger wrote in the December 3, 2011 edition of the New York Times, “After American Jewish Outcry, Israel Ends Ad Campaign Aimed at Expatriates,” For many American Jews, the Israeli government-sponsored ads, intended to cajole Israelis living in the United States to come home, smacked of arrogance, ignorance and cultural disrespect of America. Jewish groups in the United States expressed outrage, saying they were causing a rift with American Jews who support Israel. On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aborted the campaign.
The ads -- short videos and billboard posters -- were intended to touch the sensibilities of Israeli expatriates and tap into their national identity, according to the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, which oversaw the campaign.
But critics said the ads implied that moving to America led to assimilation and an erosion of Jewish consciousness. The Jewish Federations of North America called them insulting. Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, called the videos ''heavy-handed, and even demeaning.''
Israeli officials defended the desire to encourage Israeli expatriates to return, but the reaction of American Jewry, a crucial mainstay of support for Israel, clearly caused alarm.
''We are very attentive to the sensitivities of the American Jewish community,'' said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu. ''When we understood there was a problem, the prime minister immediately ordered the campaign to be suspended.''
Beckoning the Jewish diaspora, of course, has always been a component of Zionism, a foundation for the Jewish homeland. Immigrants are referred to almost reverentially as ''olim,'' Hebrew for ''going up.'' Israelis who leave are ''yordim,'' Hebrew for ''going down,'' often uttered disdainfully.
The videos ran on Web sites popular with expatriates. Billboard versions went up in American communities where expatriates live.Some Israeli officials were mystified by the belatedness of the reaction; the campaign is a few months old. Attention increased after an item on it appeared on the Jewish Channel, a cable station, and a blog was posted this week by Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for The Atlantic.
''The idea, communicated in these ads, that America is no place for a proper Jew, and that a Jew who is concerned about the Jewish future should live in Israel, is archaic, and also chutzpadik, if you don't mind me resorting to the vernacular,'' Mr. Goldberg said.
“The message is: Dear American Jews, thank you for lobbying for American defense aid (and what a great show you put on at the Aipac convention every year!) but, please, stay away from our sons and daughters.” Aipac stands for the American Israel Public Affairs committee, a powerful lobby group.
On Thursday, the Jewish Federations of North America issued a memo that said: ''While we recognize the motivations behind the ad campaign, we are strongly opposed to the messaging that American Jews do not understand Israel. We share the concerns many of you have expressed that this outrageous and insulting message could harm the Israel-Diaspora relationship.''
Steven Bayme, director of contemporary Jewish life at the American Jewish Committee, said that the campaign's skepticism of Jewish life in the United States contributed to the angry reaction, particularly the message that Israelis should not marry American Jews. ''We're talking about one Jewish people, and certainly encouraging marriage within the Jewish people is something everyone would sign on to,'' he said.
Mr. Foxman called the campaign ''a reflection of the ignorance that exists in Israel of Jewish life in America, its vitality, its creativity.'' Still, he said, Israel's decision to stop the ads showed ''that they're listening and it does matter how we feel.'' Late Edition – Final.
No good deed goes unpunished, especially when you
encourage people living in the war zone that Israel is,
to be belligerent and intransigent when it comes to
making peace with the Palestinians: Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu criticized on Monday the
agreement reached between Hamas and Fatah,
according to which Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas will head a unity caretaker cabinet.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-pa-president-must-choose-between-peace-with-israel-and-peace-with-hamas-1.411414
HAVE THE NEOCONS MET THEIR MATCH IN AXELROD?
Axelrod Argues Obama Economic Policies Worked, Though There's More To Do
Categories: 2012, White House
David Axelrod
David Axelrod, President Obama's political strategist, has what appears to be — from outside the president's re-election campaign, at least — a problem.
Back in early 2009, when the Obama presidency was still brand new, the president gave that NBC News interview in which he talked about his administration being a "one-term proposition" if the economy didn't snap back in time for his re-election.
Three years later, and the U.S. economy, while improved, still feels to too many Americans like it's still in recession. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, keeps reminding voters of Obama's "one-term proposition" comment every chance he gets.
DEFORMATION OF OCCUPY BY THE NEOCONSERVATIVES
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