"The real reason Michael Bloomberg cares about guns"

[friendly_iconoclast]

A cogent explanation of how and why Left and center-Left Bloomberg supporters are
hypocrites:

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/4/bloomberg-gun-controlnypdincarceration.html

The real reason Michael Bloomberg cares about guns
It's not the ‘gun’ part of ‘gun control’ that the ex-mayor is interested in

April 25, 2014 6:15AM ET
by Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet

During Michael Bloomberg’s three terms as mayor of New York, he loved nothing more than to lord over the nation’s largest city. Now he’s just a normal civilian multibillionaire, sitting right below the prime minister of India on the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people — a lowly position that is no doubt a source of immense personal disappointment. Short of patrolling New York’s parks in a spandex bodysuit to inflict vigilante justice on cigarette smokers and super-sized Slurpee drinkers, what’s a rich ex-mayor to do?

Luckily for Bloomberg, in American politics, controlling sublime amounts of capital is its own qualification, and lavishing it on pet issues counts as philanthropy. And this time, without an elected office to use for a pulpit, he’s going to need that money: After attacking tobacco and soda, Bloomberg is coming for guns...

...Bloomberg’s fortune and political strategies figure prominently in the description of his new hobby. But he evinces no passion for the issue unless he’s defending the racist, ineffectual and unpopular police practice of “stop and frisk.” After all, this is the mayor who, after the NYPD accidentally shot nine innocent bystanders while attempting to subdue a single armed man near the Empire State Building, angrily told a reporter, “If somebody pointed a gun at you and you had a gun in your pocket, what would you do? I think that answers the question.” He sounds more like Charles Bronson than James Brady, so why is Michael Bloomberg America’s most prominent gun control advocate?

If Bloomberg wanted to spend some pocket change to undermine any other constitutional right, liberals would quickly complain about how the nation’s elites use their money to overinfluence policy and consolidate power away from the broader citizenry. The billionaire Koch brothers, who fund numerous conservative and libertarian causes, have become archetypes of this phenomenon, to the benefit of Obama-aligned outrage sites such as Salon and ThinkProgress. But when it comes to the Second Amendment, liberals don’t see a question of freedom or liberty, even when a billionaire tries to buy it away.

Much more at the link...

[Eleanors38]

1. Yup. 'Bout sums it up. Of course I suspect the core support

of gun control/prohibition is more DNC-oriented than "left."

[MicaelS]

2. Fuck Bloomberg.

He set the NYPD on Occupy. He had the NYPD profiling, engaging in Stop and Frisk. Spying on people completely outside the NYPD's jurisdiction. Beating people. Shooting people. He had the NYPD acting like his own group of Stormtroopers.

Played games to get reelected just like Vladimir Putin did in Russia. Telling people what they should drink and eat. In short the classic Authoritarian who think he knows best for everyone else. But because he's taking on the "eeevul" guns he's got a fucking halo.

Fuck him, and everyone of his billions of dollars.