Photo: Muffett

Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying the last three mayoral elections here in NYC, is continuing his jihad against accountability and integrity on Wall St.

He threw a tantrum just because members of Congress made some token efforts to retrive the stolen bonuses of the banksters and brokesters. (New York Magazine 4/21/10)

"I just find it sort of ironic that congressmen, senators who make more than double what the average person working in finance makes — they're the rich ones and they're talking about trying to restrict bonuses and taxing the industries that are our lifeblood," he said back in January. "Maybe we should hold back their salaries for a decade or so and see whether the laws they pass work out."

This is highly misleading, given the fact that the Wall St. goons make astronomical, unearned salaries in addition to the outlandish bonuses they have received for destroying a significant portion of the world economy.

Cracking down on the banksters and brokesters will help our economy here in NYC in the long term. The only things to prevent more events like the Crash of 2008 are ending excessive bonuses based on short term financial gains, massive regulation of the financial disservices industry, and breakups of its biggest corporations.

Bloomberg doesn't care about the long term. His evil media empire preaches short term profits over corporate sustainability and pressures every company to toe the line. He already has many times over the wealth that any one person could possibly earn in a dozen lifetimes, but that doesn't satisfy his insatiable greed or the avarice of so many other speculators.

Our not so Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer isn't exactly strong on getting the banksters and brokesters under control, but even he isn't kissing butt enough to satisfy Daddy Bloombucks (Politico 4/21/10).

In an April 12 meeting in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s spacious office overlooking the National Mall, Bloomberg said that Schumer has been “AWOL,” that “this is a real problem for New York City” and that “our senators who are normally in the middle of it aren’t there,” according to a Republican senator briefed on the meeting.

Another person familiar with the meeting said Bloomberg was simply agreeing with criticism of Schumer leveled by McConnell and didn’t lash out pre-emptively: “They said that Chuck was not doing anything, that he was very unhelpful, that he wasn’t providing the ballast for New York,” the source said, adding, “Bloomberg didn’t disagree.”

Bloomberg is fond of using the talking point that cracking down on Wall St. is somehow attacking New York. This is typical of a Mayor who has worked tirelessly to drive middle class and poor people out of this city to make it an exclusive gated community of the rich. His attitude is that what is good for the banks, the brokerages, and the speculators is good for New York, or at least for the only people in New York he thinks count for anything.

This is an example of why we need public financing of campaigns and to make it illegal for rich people to buy elections through "self financing" (a ridiculous euphemism if I've ever read one). Plutocrats like Bloomberg must be made to respect real democracy.

Instead, he seems determined to prove Marxist right about class warfare.