Last Edition

This may be a premature announcement.

THE ABSURD TIMES

Carlos sees this as racism.  Maybe. For me, the real purpose is to occupy people with something other than what is really going on.  (The number of deaths from the regular flue is 20 to 40 thousand. This virus has caused about 4K.

Let’s call it a day.

By

Czar Donic

With our media going for the cheap, all news cable companies cover the primaries and nothing but.  As if there is nothing else going on? No, it’s cheaper.  Also, our population isn’t able to comprehend much more. It is so bad that even that bastion of democracy, MSNBC, has fat Chris shouting out, as usual, but this time that Bernie, like Castro, will introduce firing squads for dissenters.  It is the fist time I understood that segregationist Republican Senator who years back challenged him to a duel.  That is a Republican point of view, except they compare him to Pol Pot.  Not to get into a long discussion on this it was Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who were responsible for Pol Pot and the Dulles Brothers for Castro.

I also looked up where Carter attacked Castro for holding “Political Prisoners”. Castro said they were criminally insane, sex-traffickers, and criminals. We insisted that he release the prisoners.  So Castro did. Then we complained that Castro exported criminals, sex-traffickers, and the criminally insane.  So, who was happy with that?

All of this comes from Bernie Sanders calling himself a “Democratic Socialist”.  All that really is a shift in focus from corporate socialim to people socialism.  And in case you wonder, are not traffic signals communist? They are owned in common, everyone pays taxes for them, and they will not allow anyone else to build one and charge for passage though in the good ol’ capitalist way.

Probably, a better public relations term would be an FDR Democrat.  Less to go after, although corporate interests are, in fact, going after any and all of FDRs programs that got us out of a great Depression.  FDR was hardly a Socialist. In fact, the reason he gave for running the first time was “Well, I’ve got to go and save my friends from themselves.”  A lesson forgotten these days until we have to re-learn it.

A problem, of course, is that there may not be a next time what with the climate and all. We have never really mentioned it as it is already too late.  All that remains, now, is to point out that regressive and reactionary forces try to treat science as if it were just another ideology.  The law of gravity is not an opinion, but today it would be considered one.

So, I had contemplated in talking abuot what is wrong with the world, but that seemed overwhelming. And, there is interest overseas about what is going on in this very strange American election process. So this is an attempt to break it down.  Still, it will not seem that clear, but at least it can be summarized as a feud between corporate interests and the needs of the people, most of whom are so confused that they are unaware of it. 

Our election process right now is a contest to maintain corporate interests against Bernie Sanders and, perhaps, Elizabeth Warren.  To put it a more rememberable way: think of Kris Kristoferson’s song “Me and Bobby Mgee”. Take the most famous line in it, remember the tune, and elid the fist word to two syllables: “Mod’rate’s just another word for corporate interests.”  Remember that, and you have the primary process firmly in mind.

So now, Trump got elected because the country was finally fed up with things as usual, the corporate interests, although many did not phrase it that way. They more or less wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the whole mess and Trump certainly did not remind them of “business as usual”.  Well, against whom did he run, finally? Hillary Clinton, ex-Goldwater girl, member of the Board of directors of Wal-Mart. She had done a few good things, mainly in healthcare, non-disclosure, and so forth. None of it affected me professionally at the time as I was in drug rehab (as a therapist) and the rules already applied, but it did stir things up quite a bit. She was not what people wanted.  His bigoted and moronic rally attendees at first seemed to come for the entertainment, but soon he grew into a cult figure.  Eventually, people in his own party came to fear him. So here we are.

Now even the corporate interests are becoming tired of Trump. Only Romney was able to oppose him in the impeachment proceedings, but he is now from Utah.  Remember, Utah!  They no longer practice bigamy and such, but Trump is not moral enough for them, oh no!  Romney has nothing to fear from the likes of Trump, or anything like him. Utah HATES Trump. Sometimes Puritanism has its uses.

So now, we get down to the entire process. Ever since our money magnates caused the great depression, and FDR saved the country from it, these same interests have been trying to dismantle every program he put into place.  There have been a few impediments along the way, but there is no way this establishment is going to allow Sanders to become President. First they talk about the culinary workers union that has a great health plan, true, but it should not be needed and if one of them looses a job, the health plan goes away.  In other words, power remains in the hands of the wealthy.  The workers themselves realize this and will support Sanders, but the union heads will not.

What is Bloomberg doing there? In the last poll I’m aware of, he finished second, next to Sanders.  He makes Trump look like a pauper, and that will give you an idea. 

What needs to happen, the strategy now is, that we have a ‘brokered’ convention.  In other words, nobody gets enough delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot.  That will release the old “Super Delegates” to enter and then nominate whomever the party wants, and it will not be Bernie.  There is no doubt that Trump has to go, but to replace him with Sanders would be too beneficial to ‘working people’ and that simply will not be allowed.  Word is also being spread that Sanders would win too few states, despite the fact that he won the primaries in all of the closer states that did give Trump a winning edge over the DNC.

I know this sounds pessimistic and I hope we are wrong. All evidence right now leads to more of the same.  It is no reason to give up, of course, or else they have no idea of where we stand. Many Trump voters voted that way simply because he was not like the “typical” politician and it is clear that Sander’s would have beaten him.  That is why the field is now so stacked. Even though Hillary won by 3 million votes, this is hardly a democracy in the literal sense. We still have the Electoral College. 

Super Delegates? Where did they come from? Well, it has been told enough, but one more time: John Kennedy was angry at the way things were being run, so he was killed. His brother was against Vietnam by the time he ran and showed a good chance of winning, so he was killed. Martin Luther King gave an ill-fated speech against the same war, so he was killed.  People were angry and they nominated George McGovern who lost almost every state. A great deal went on, but mainly, he was nominated because of the people and defeated because of the Ayatollah.  That’s right, Iran was promised many missles and bombs if only he held the prisoners until the election was over.  Both kept their words and Ronald Raygun became President, and he even looks like a flaming liberal in contrast to what is going on today. Who’s next to die?  Probably the next public figure who mentions that this is still black history month. (When was the last time you heard that?) 

I am holding this back until the debate is over, but interesting things are happening all over again.  First of all, Trump actually commuted the sentence of Blagojevich.  So many people were surprised that there was corruption in Illinois politics?  Really.  How many can name an Illinois governor that did not wind up prosecuted?   I can think of a couple, but then I grew up there so I’d have an unfair advantage.  I had ending this publication over all of the stupidity involved, especially as it was Republican motivated and driven to that action out of sheer lack of interest in any further activity.  I tried to stop when Donald got elected, but then things became even more insane.  I actually thought everyone would realize how absurd things were and that there was no point in my pointing them out.  Well, here we are again. 

Still on debate night, Blago walked out of prison.  In true Chicago spirit, he could not bring himself to use the word (pardon the expression) Republican, but he did have to thank the guy who freed him.  He announced he was a Trumpocrat, and that was the end of it.  He went on to quote Martin Luther King and the truth set free, and a crusade to free those who have been prosecuted wrongly and non-violent offenders who “might have made a mistake" and were over-sentenced (remember this tough on crime crap).  He was of the same spirit and ready to fight already.  Go Blago!  I’ve said this before, but he was a political prisoner and now he is free to rub it in, and he will. We have not heard the last of Blago, that’s for sure. Trump may regret this, I don't know. But Blago has had eight years to think about this. I’ve already said this, but it bears repeating, I find myself in very strange company! 

I have to finish this up and upload it tomorrow, but future editions will be quite different. I’ve found myself covering the scum and the swamp too much and am tired of it.  It is time for some new directions and I'm going to take them. I don’t know where yet, but there is time to think about it.

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg has bought himself into second place, we might as well take a look into him.  He has met nobody, did no campaigning, and is on no ballot, yet is is beaten only by Bernie Sanders who leads him by double digits in polling.  This was presented on Democracy Now, a few days before the last poll was published and Bloomberg qualified for the debate.  (Before that, all those commercials you see with Obama praising him were done years before now, not this year at all.  That is a scam.  Barack has had nothing to do with this race, but we are used to commercials that lie. (Why should Bloomberg be any different than a soap or insurance agency?)

Amy:

With the Nevada caucuses less than a week away, many Democratic candidates are courting voters in state and increasingly targeting their attacks on a new challenger — billionaire Michael Bloomberg — whom they are accusing of buying his way into the election. In the lead-up to Super Tuesday on March 3, when voters in 14 states go to the polls, Bloomberg has spent an unprecedented $417 million of his own $60 billion fortune on advertising. He’s also paid meme influencers to share sponsored content on Instagram, and hired thousands of on-the-ground political operatives to work in more than 125 offices around the country. The Washington Post reports several lawsuits have been filed over the years alleging that women were discriminated against at Bloomberg’s business-information company, including one case filed by a former employee who blamed Bloomberg for creating a culture of sexual harassment and degradation. But a major investigation in Sunday’s New York Times, headlined “In Bloomberg, Liberals See a Wallet Too Big to Offend,” lays out how Bloomberg established a foundation for potential critics to stay silent during his presidential bid by making major donations to progressive causes and advocacy groups in dozens of states and cities. The Times estimates Bloomberg has spent at least $10 billion on his charitable and political pursuits related to his political ambitions. We speak with Blake Zeff, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who has covered New York politics and Michael Bloomberg’s terms as mayor.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: With the Nevada caucuses less than a week away, many Democratic candidates are courting voters and increasingly targeting their attacks on billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who they’re accusing of buying his way into the election. This is leading Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaking Sunday at a rally in Carson City, Nevada.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: We will not create the energy and excitement we need to defeat Donald Trump, if that candidate pursued, advocated for and enacted racist policies like stop-and-frisk, which caused communities of color in his city to live in fear.

AMY GOODMAN: In the lead-up to Super Tuesday on March 3rd, when voters in 14 states go to the polls, Bloomberg has spent an unprecedented $417 million of his own $60 billion fortune on advertising. He’s also paid meme influencers to share sponsored content on Instagram, hired thousands of on-the-ground political operatives to work in more than 125 offices around the country.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports multiple lawsuits have been filed over the years alleging that women were discriminated against at Bloomberg’s business-information company, including one case filed by a former worker who blamed Bloomberg for creating a culture of sexual harassment and degradation. Bloomberg and his organizations have been defendants in almost 40 sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits.

But a major investigation in Sunday’s New York Times, headlined “In Bloomberg, Liberals See a Wallet Too Big to Offend,” lays out how Bloomberg established a foundation to silence potential critics during his presidential bid by making major donations to progressive causes and advocacy groups around the country. The Times estimates Bloomberg has spent at least $10 billion on charitable pursuits related to his political ambitions. In 2019 alone, the year he declared his presidential candidacy, The New York Times reports “Bloomberg’s charitable giving soared to $3.3 billion — more than in the previous five years combined.”

Well, for more, we’re joined in Philadelphia by Blake Zeff, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who has covered New York politics and Michael Bloomberg’s terms, three terms, as mayor.

Blake Zeff, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you — last week, you had a fascinating kind of Twitter thread about what Bloomberg’s strategy is. And it’s not just the unprecedented massive amount of money that he is spending, but it’s also how he spends that money. And this has been going on for many years. Can you lay out Bloomberg’s strategy?

BLAKE ZEFF: Absolutely. I think there’s this kind of idea that he’s spending so much money on ads and that that enables him to get his message out a little bit more than other candidates, and that’s kind of where the big advantage lies. And yes, he’s doing that, but there is a lot more to it than that.

You talked a little bit about how much he’s spent in recent years supporting causes and leaders and things like that, but let’s talk about that a bit more. I think a lot of people might be surprised to see how many endorsements Michael Bloomberg has been racking up in his presidential campaign as kind of a former local mayor. He’s got congressmembers throughout the country. He’s got mayors throughout the country. Well, he spent about $110 million last year — sorry, last cycle alone, in 2018, supporting House candidates, 24 of whom won. So you’ve got 24 members of Congress getting $110 million. That’s, you know, some of them are getting $2 million, some of them are getting $4 million. And then you have that person come to you a year later and say, “Boy, I’d really love it if you could help me out.” It’s hard for them to say no, right? Then you’ve got mayors. You might be surprised to see how many mayors he’s getting throughout the country. Well, he’s got a philanthropy that gives out grants for urban programs. If you’re a city that’s struggling and you want to get some sort of big grant from Bloomberg philanthropies, that puts you in a tough spot.

Then he’s got nonprofits and charities. When Bloomberg ran for mayor in New York City, he tried to get himself a third term, which was, at that time, not really allowed in New York, because the voters had had a term limits referendum. Well, Bloomberg engineered a backroom deal, and, amazingly, a lot of the big nonprofits in the city supported him on that. Why? We later found out that he had given them millions of dollars. So, that money goes to lots of different places beyond just merely TV commercials.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what you mean. For example, for people outside of New York City, for people to understand, I mean, it was Mayor Mike Bloomberg himself who also supported term limits. Explain what the policy was in the city and how he ended up flipping it and going for a third term, with, as you said, these good government groups who were absolutely opposed to a third term. It’s not that he thought he could get them to say, “We support this,” but his strategy of neutralizing critics, using money.

BLAKE ZEFF: Right. So, two points. On term limits, in particular, this was fascinating. The voters of New York had said, “We don’t want more than — we don’t want our mayors to have more than two terms or be able to even run for it.” There was a voter referendum. This was on the books. Bloomberg decides, towards the very end of his second term, that he’d like to be mayor again. They come up with a rationale, which is that, you know, the city has been recovering from hard times. You know, this was right around the time of the Great Recession, if you will, kind of the housing crash, 2009. And they come up with this rationale that we need his economic expertise so badly that he needs to run again. Of course, later it’s revealed by some of his allies, years later, that this was just an excuse to come up with some way for him to stay in office because he really wanted to do the job.

So, what does Bloomberg do? It’s not just that he gave money to groups to kind of not make a big fuss, although he did. He also was able to use his status as a billionaire to go to the billionaire publishers of the big newspapers in New York City. So, you got the Daily News, you got the New York Post, you’ve got The New York Times, all run by these very wealthy families. They rarely agree on anything, these newspapers, these editorial pages in particular. But they all met with Bloomberg, decided to sign on to this plan for him to go for a third term. All put out editorials, kind of in unison, in lockstep, saying this is a great idea for the city. And that was a big part of that, you know, developing and sort of laying the groundwork for the support for Bloomberg to do that.

To your other point about him getting typical critics or potential critics to be silent on stuff, he changes his Republican voter registration to being an independent in the middle of his mayoralty. And you would think at that point, “OK, the state Republican Party is now free to attack him for the rest of his term, because he’s not a Republican anymore.” But they never did. And people were curious: Why is that? Well, then we learned that he gave a record $1 million to the Republican state Senate fund to kind of, you know, not say too much. So, the money works in all these different ways.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to our conversation. We’re talking to Blake Zeff, journalist, documentary filmmaker, covered New York politics and Michael Bloomberg’s term as mayors — terms as mayor. His forthcoming film is Loan Wolves, investigating the origins and effects of the student debt crisis in America. We’ll be back with him and more in a moment.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at how billionaire Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg wields the power of his money in different ways. There was a major front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times headlined “In Bloomberg, Liberals See a Wallet Too Big to Offend.” The piece lays out how Bloomberg has kept potential critics quiet by making major donations to progressive causes and advocacy groups around the country. The Times reports, quote, “That chilling effect was apparent in 2015 to researchers at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group, when they turned in a report on anti-Muslim bias in the United States. Their draft included a chapter of more than 4,000 words about New York City police surveillance of Muslim communities; Mr. Bloomberg was mentioned by name eight times in the chapter, which was reviewed by The Times. … When the report was published a few weeks later, the chapter was gone. So was any mention of Mr. Bloomberg’s name.”

Well, for more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Yasmine Taeb, one of the authors of the report. She says they were told to make major changes to the chapter or remove it. Other officials told The New York Times they revised the report to make it focus on right-wing groups targeting Muslims. When the report came out, Bloomberg had already given the Center for American Progress three grants worth nearly $1.5 million and contributed $400,000 more in 2017. Yasmine Taeb no longer works at the Center for American Progress, but she is now a member of the Democratic National Committee. And still with us in Philadelphia, journalist Blake Zeff, who covered New York politics and Mayor Bloomberg’s three terms.

Thank you so much, both, for joining us. Yasmine Taeb, tell us what took place when you worked for the Center for American Progress. Tell us about this report.

YASMINE TAEB: Sure. So, as you likely know, Amy, “Fear, Inc. 2.0,” which was released actually exactly five years ago today, and I was on your show five years ago talking about the findings, it was a follow-up to Center for American Progress’s blockbuster “Fear, Inc.” first report, which was released in 2011. And the report was simply a follow-up to discuss the tightly knit network of anti-Muslim activists, politicians, organizations and funders who are, you know, fanning anti-Muslim sentiment. And the report additionally was to chronicle and detail anti-Muslim policies that were being promoted. And in particular, this is racial and religious profiling by law enforcement across the country.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about your chapter on surveillance of the Muslim community during the Bloomberg administration by the NYPD police and bias against the Muslim community. What did you say there? And what happened to this chapter? Why didn’t we see it?

YASMINE TAEB: So, there was a very detailed chapter about the NYPD’s Demographics Unit. So, the Demographics Unit was established shortly after 9/11, and it was operating for more than 10 years or so. And the Demographics Unit was tasked with mapping the Muslim community in New York City. And that entailed, you know, following, monitoring, surveilling Muslims, of where they prayed, shopped and ate. The program was later ruled unconstitutional. Mayor Bloomberg and his administration, throughout the entire period, defended this program. This program, as you likely know, resulted actually in zero terror leads. This program was unconstitutional. It had a chilling effect on the local Muslim community there.

And my colleagues and I, the co-authors, which included Ken Gude, Ken Sofer and Matt Duss and I, we simply detailed exactly what happened, and purpose and impact of this discriminatory program. And, you know, while we were in the final stages of this report being released — and this is literally within a week of the program, the project being launched — we had to get approval from senior officials at the Center for American Progress. And that’s when the chapter was flagged by a member of the executive committee who actually previously had worked for Mayor Bloomberg. And he said that there would be a strong reaction by Bloomberg World if this report was released as it was. And so, you know, we went back and forth multiple times with the executive committee, defending the importance of the inclusion of this chapter. And unfortunately, the executive committee ultimately decided to remove it, because — in my view and my colleagues’ views, because of how it was going to be perceived by Mayor Bloomberg.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about the significance of this. And I want to bring Blake Zeff in here to talk about the pattern here that you see. That was a report by the Center for American Progress. We didn’t see that particular chapter. In The New York Times, the Center for American Progress responds and says that they had focused on — that they disputed the account, arguing there had been substantive reasons to revise or remove a section on police surveillance. Why did you, Yasmine Taeb, decide to remove it entirely rather than revise it?

YASMINE TAEB: So, because it was so clear that they wanted us to produce an inaccurate portrayal of the Demographics Unit’s egregious actions, we absolutely did not want to whitewash what the NYPD did. And, I mean, again, this is a program that was later ruled unconstitutional. This is a program that infringed on the First Amendment rights of Muslims in the local community. This is a program that, again, was disbanded by Mayor de Blasio because it was a complete failure. Not only was it unconstitutional, a complete failure and led to zero terror leads, it — for me, it was incredibly frustrating, it was incredibly disconcerting, because of the amount of work that we had put into this report and project. This was an ongoing report that we had worked for more than a year. And within days of launching the project and the interactive, being told by senior officials, unfortunately, at the Center for American Progress to remove it.

AMY GOODMAN: Blake Zeff, the issue of the pattern and practice here?

BLAKE ZEFF: Yeah, look, if you see that New York Times article that you were referring to, Amy, there’s a really interesting quote in there, where former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, who was really one of the most prodigious fundraisers for the Democratic Party over the last couple of decades, you know, first for the Clintons, then for the Democratic Party, then, later, for his own races, he basically says that Michael Bloomberg was one of, if not the most, important fundraisers for the Democratic Party during that time. And as a result of that, I mean, he really has been — Bloomberg —  a towering, a prodigious, towering figure in Democratic circles because of his pocketbook and the fact that he has been bankrolling a lot of these groups, a lot of these causes. And as a result, that enables him to wield a tremendous amount of influence.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the beginning of this blockbuster New York Times piece, starts on the front page, goes to two other pages. This is the opening paragraphs. The New York Times writes, “In the fall of 2018, Emily’s List had a dilemma. With congressional elections approaching and the Supreme Court confirmation battle over Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh underway, the Democratic women’s group was hosting a major fund-raising luncheon in New York. Among the scheduled headline speakers was Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor, who had donated nearly $6 million to Emily’s List over the years.

“Days before the event, Mr. Bloomberg made blunt comments in an interview with The New York Times, expressing skepticism about the #MeToo movement and questioning sexual misconduct allegations against Charlie Rose, the disgraced news anchor. Senior Emily’s List officials seriously debated withdrawing Mr. Bloomberg’s invitation, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“In the end, the group concluded it could not risk alienating Mr. Bloomberg. And when he addressed the luncheon on Sept. 24 — before an audience dotted with women clad in black, to show solidarity with Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault — Mr. Bloomberg demonstrated why.”

He said, “’I will be putting more money into supporting women candidates this cycle than any individual ever has before,’ he declared

“It was not an idle pledge: Mr. Bloomberg spent more than $100 million helping Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Of the 21 newly elected lawmakers he supported with his personal super PAC, all but six were women.”

Blake Zeff?

BLAKE ZEFF: Yeah, I mean, that’s a perfect example of this larger pattern and trend that we’ve been talking about. Also in the story, you know, just to come back to this Terry McAuliffe quote that I just mentioned, what’s interesting about that is, when Bloomberg first ran in 2001 and McAuliffe was the head of the DNC, he railed against anyone who had been part of the Democratic Party but was helping Bloomberg, whether that was consultants, endorsers, groups and whatnot. And then it shows that, 20 years later, McAuliffe is talking about him almost with a sparkle in his eyes about what a great donor he’s been and how important he’s been and how he helped fund some gun control work that he had done.

And this is something that you see, as you just mentioned, with Emily’s List, you see with McAuliffe, you see with all these groups who face these big dilemmas, just like the mayors I was mentioning before, just like the members of Congress that I was mentioning before, the charities, the nonprofits. All these groups that we’ve just been talking about all face the same dilemma, where they’re either underfunded or they need money for a good cause. Bloomberg comes in and offers it to them. But then, as a result, they’re put in this position where it’s very, very difficult to criticize him. In many cases, they’re being told that they need to support him. That’s a really, really difficult and, frankly, unprecedented situation in American democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Several prominent African-American lawmakers have endorsed Bloomberg in recent weeks. This is New York Democratic Congressmember Gregory Meeks on MSNBC.

REP. GREGORY MEEKS: Look, I’m from New York. Michael Bloomberg ran three times. I didn’t support him three times, primarily because of stop-and-frisk. It was a bad policy. At the same time, I also understand that Michael Bloomberg wanted to get guns out of the community so that innocent people did not get killed. … African-American voters are always — they are very sophisticated voters. You know, they vote their interests. They know that their interest is making sure that Donald Trump is defeated. That’s absolutely their interest. And so they’re going to move in the direction that they think, “Who is the best person to defeat Donald Trump?” And then, who is also going to talk about their agenda?

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Mayor Bloomberg has also formed Mike for Black America. Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote a new opinion piece, quote, “Let me plant the stake now: No black person — or Hispanic person or ally of people of color — should ever even consider voting for Michael Bloomberg in the primary. His expansion of the notoriously racist stop-and-frisk program in New York, which swept up millions of innocent New Yorkers, primarily young black and Hispanic men, is a complete and nonnegotiable deal killer.” Blake Zeff, what has just happened in these last few weeks?

BLAKE ZEFF: Yeah, there’s been a bit of a rewriting of the stop-and-frisk legacy by Michael Bloomberg and some of his supporters. I mean, what we’ve seen Bloomberg do lately is say, “Look, I inherited this policy. I apologized for its excesses, and I reduced it 95%.” In fact, let’s go through each one of those claims one by one.

Yes, the policy did exist initially under Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and we all know who that is. But a new mayor can come in and decide whether they want to continue that or not. Not only did Bloomberg continue it, but he expanded it to record levels. When he first came in, the number of stops per year was under 100,000. It then rose steadily under Bloomberg until 2011, when it reached its apex, and almost 700,000 stops were made that year. So, to say he inherited it factually is true, but he also greatly, greatly expanded it.

In terms of reducing it 95%, well, as I just mentioned, it just kept expanding, until, eventually, in 2013, it does get rolled back considerably. But that’s the year that a federal judge rules the policy unconstitutional. And Bloomberg was the subject of a lawsuit, a class-action lawsuit. And so, that clearly had something to do with that.

And in terms of the apology, this is really egregious, because there were so many groups that were up in arms about this policy for many, many years, and Bloomberg and his defenders remained defiant, constantly saying, “We need this in order for crime to go down,” and sort of suggesting that if you opposed it, that you were basically opening the doors to the bad old days of crime, terrible crime, coming back. Well, after the policy was really, really curtailed after Bloomberg left, New York continued to see these reductions in crime, and he was really proven wrong on that, again did not apologize. Years go by. The Daily News, one of his big editorial supporters, in general and also on stop-and-frisk, issued a big apology a couple years after Bloomberg left, saying, “We were wrong on stop-and-frisk.” Bloomberg did not do that. Then let’s go to 2019. January 2019, he’s at a big event for the U.S. Naval Academy. He continues to defend the policy. Finally, in November of 2019, he talks to an audience in Brooklyn and says — it was a black audience, and he says, “I’m sorry. I was actually wrong about that.” Seven days later, he declares his candidacy for president of the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, he had said a year before, if he did run for president on the Democratic ticket, he would have to do a long apology tour. Yasmine Taeb, I wanted to go back to you. You’re no longer with the Center for American Progress, but you are on the Democratic National Committee. You recently received a phone call from Mike Bloomberg. Can you tell us what that was about?

YASMINE TAEB: Sure. So, this was at the end of December of 2019. This was, I think, shortly after he launched his presidential campaign. And he said he was calling as a courtesy, to sit down with me to introduce himself, to tell me why he’s running, why he’s able to win, and what he’s done for the Democratic Party. I did not call him back, simply because I wanted to kind of avoid an uncomfortable conversation where I assumed he wanted to ask me to support him. As you noted, I am a DNC — an elected DNC member, which means, during a brokered convention, on a second ballot, I will have a vote, you know, to decide our next nominee. And I identify as a progressive activist. And I hope that whoever our nominee is is able to excite the grassroots and increase voter turnout and fight for a progressive platform.

AMY GOODMAN: So, why wouldn’t you want to talk to Michael Bloomberg?

YASMINE TAEB: I mean, if they reach out to me now, I’m happy to offer him the courtesy and sit down with him. At that time, honestly, because of what happened at CAP, because of the policies he supported, because of the way he kind of entered the race and is now essentially bankrolling his campaign and buying an election, I felt very uncomfortable. And, you know, if he or a member of his team reached out to me now, I’m happy to kind of offer them that courtesy and sit down with them, but at the time I just — I didn’t feel comfortable doing that.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, let’s talk about what could happen in the future, this whole idea of a brokered convention, and then the role you would play, Yasmine Taeb, as a member of the DNC. Explain what this would look like.

YASMINE TAEB: Sure. So, as you may know, we passed reforms in the DNC that eliminated the vote of superdelegates on the first ballot. So, at the time when we passed these reforms — and these were the most progressive reforms the DNC had passed, from my understanding, and the grassroots was incredibly excited. These were reforms that I advocated for and lobbied for all across the commonwealth of Virginia, talking to Democrats and telling them why these reforms are needed. At the time, unfortunately, when they passed, we were incredibly ecstatic, thinking that now the process in 2020 will become more fair and impartial, and the grassroots would be more kind of excited about this and less inclined to attack the DNC and kind of leaders in the party.

Unfortunately, because of how I do believe this nomination fight is going to move forward, I believe we’re still going to have at least four to five candidates that are viable heading into the convention. I don’t believe we’ll have a single candidate that’s able to receive a majority of delegates. So, in order to avoid heading into a second ballot, we need to have at least one candidate that has at least — I believe the number is about 1,990 delegates. And honestly, I don’t think that’s going to happen. And this is particularly important and why candidates like Mayor Bloomberg are doing their homework. I mean, the fact that he reached out to me — this is in the very initial part, the first couple weeks that he entered the race — shows that he knows it will likely be a brokered convention, and he’s probably been reaching out to DNC members, trying to ensure that he has as many supporters on the DNC as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Blake Zeff, this issue of superdelegates weighing in on the second vote, what do you foresee here? And the significance of this?

YASMINE TAEB: Sure. So, unfortunately, if —

AMY GOODMAN: Let me put that question to Blake.

BLAKE ZEFF: Oh, I was going to say, I think this really speaks to another key point about Bloomberg that’s worth getting into, because if it was just that he had billions of dollars and a ton of money — you know, Tom Steyer has a lot of money. Howard Schultz had a lot of money, right? That alone is not really the entire story here. For me, it’s the — the story about Bloomberg and what makes his candidacy potentially very potent is that it’s a combination of endless resources, but also an extremely smart team that he has. They’re very canny and clever, and also what I would call their Machiavellian approach to winning. And the fact that they’re calling all these members to try to see if they can get that support this early on really speaks to that. They are going to understand — and, look, Mike Bloomberg made his fortune. He didn’t inherit a fortune from like an oil family, right? It was from data, analytics, communications, media. He really understands these areas. And they are looking at the numbers, and they know what they need to do. And they are starting that this far out. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Blake Zeff, the role of President Obama? He is in so many of these national ads that are blanketing the networks across the country for Bloomberg, though he doesn’t specifically endorse him. Clearly, it seems like Bloomberg must have said, “Can I use you talking about me in these ads?” What do you think Obama’s role is here?

BLAKE ZEFF: I’m not so sure that they got permission. You know, look, very quickly, the history between Bloomberg and Obama is not that they’re some great friends at all. As everyone knows, Bloomberg was a Republican for a long time, endorsed George W. Bush in 2004, when Obama was giving his classic speech for John Kerry that year for the Democrats. Then, in '08, Bloomberg does not endorse Obama. In 2012, he endorses Obama at the very second in an op-ed, almost halfheartedly, in which he criticizes Obama as being divisive and partisan and overly populist. So, they worked together on some issues, like gun safety reform, the environment, things like that. And I'm sure that Obama, like others that we’ve talked about, is appreciative of the fact that Michael Bloomberg gave a lot of money for Democratic causes. But they were not best buds who have worked together on a lot of things, so that the ad gives a little bit of a misleading impression. And I’m not so sure that Obama is secretly behind the scenes pulling for Bloomberg and gave him permission to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I wanted to go to a clip of seeing Michael Bloomberg at the U.N. climate summit in Madrid. We caught up with him after, well, what we thought, he was holding a news conference at the U.S. Climate Action Center, which he funds, where journalists would go to ask politicians questions. He even shocked the people who worked at this “We’re still in” conference room, when he, after speaking, wrapping up his comments, after he called all the press — and there are pictures of, you know, him standing at the U.N. climate summit sign — he was surrounded by his officials and security, and walked out. So I tried to follow him to get my question to him.

AMY GOODMAN: Mayor Bloomberg, will you be taking questions from the press? … If you could just answer a question? We all packed in there to ask you questions.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: Careful. You’re going to trip.

AMY GOODMAN: But the U.N. has said that economic and climate inequality is driving protests around the world. You’re a billionaire running for president. You’ve spent tens of millions more dollars than the other presidential candidates. Will that be your strategy to win the presidency?

KEVIN SHEEKEY: We’re here to talk about climate this week.

AMY GOODMAN: That was his campaign manager saying, “We’re only talking about climate.” Of course, that night, he had a long interview with Christiane Amanpour, and he was talking all about the election. But calling a news conference and then walking out before the journalists got to ask the question, but having that photo op of hundreds of journalists around him. Blake Zeff, your last 20 seconds?

BLAKE ZEFF: Look, that’s just another example of their strategy, which is to try to control every aspect of the campaign they can. And that’s what the commercials enable him to do. If you run so many commercials and that’s how you get your message out, you don’t have to submit to interviews, you don’t have to submit to scrutiny, because you’re already getting all the media coverage that you want. And that’s a perfect example of their desire to really control every single aspect of this. And the money enables them, in large part, to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Blake Zeff, I want to thank you for being with us, journalist and documentary filmmaker, and Yasmine Taeb, a civil rights lawyer, elected member of the Democratic National Committee.