Sunday, December 15, 2019

Bloomberg's Political "Innovation:" Money Heavy

"Money talks."
-- Mike Bloomberg

‘Mayors for Mike’: How Bloomberg’s Money Built a 2020 Political Network Michael Bloomberg is relying on powerful city leaders as allies in his presidential campaign. Several have received grants, training and support packages totaling millions from his foundation. ...... Mr. Tubbs had reason to feel kinship with Mr. Bloomberg. Last year, he graduated from a mayoral training program that Mr. Bloomberg sponsors at Harvard University. Mr. Tubbs had attended a conference co-sponsored by Mr. Bloomberg’s philanthropic foundation in Paris in 2017, and was featured in its 2018 annual report. And this past June, Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation donated $500,000 to an education reform group based in Stockton, a struggling inland city in Northern California......... Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has assets totaling $9 billion, has supported 196 different cities with grants, technical assistance and education programs worth a combined $350 million. Now, leaders in some of those cities are forming the spine of Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign: He has been endorsed so far by eight mayors — from larger cities like San Jose, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., and smaller ones like Gary, Ind., representing a total of more than 2.6 million Americans............

the extraordinary nature of Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy

...... After an onslaught of self-funded television ads, he reached 5 percent support in two national polls this week........... Mr. Bloomberg is one of the richest people in the world, with a net worth estimated at more than $50 billion....... “Unlike Donald Trump, Mike Bloomberg has a real foundation that does real work addressing people’s serious needs ........ One graduate of the Bloomberg program at Harvard is a leading opponent in the presidential race — Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., whose city also received $1 million from a Bloomberg program in 2018.



To skip the first four contests entirely, that is something. That has never been attempted before.

When you are Mayor of NYC, you are already holding the second most high profile political office in the land.

He was a Democrat. Then he was a Republican. Then he was an Independent. Now he is a Democrat. The claim to being "basically nonpartisan" rings true.

He is formidable. No doubt. As to how this will play out, we will just have to wait and see.

Mike Bloomberg’s money buys him a very different kind of campaign. And it’s a big one. After two weeks in the presidential race, Mike Bloomberg now employs one of the largest campaign staff rosters, has spent more money on ads than all the top-polling Democrats combined and is simultaneously building out ground operations in 27 states........ with the Bloomberg campaign, it is not at all clear what established rules apply, if any. Everything he is doing is so unlike what has been done for decades that it is difficult to decipher how voters will react............ Rather than focus on the early states, he is campaigning for votes deep in the 2020 calendar, in places where voters are less tuned in to the nominating process. Rather than worry about a budget, he has put no limit on the money he is prepared to spend. Rather than run in a Democratic primary by appealing to ideological die-hards or partisan flag bearers, he describes himself as “basically nonpartisan.” ........ As a former three-term New York mayor, he comes to the race with more executive governing experience and has represented more voters than most of his competitors, as well as a philanthropic record he has emphasized in campaign ads while pushing several core liberal priorities, including increased gun regulation and the reduction of carbon pollution. His campaign message is focused on his own competence and electability............ no one has ever run a national primary campaign since Kennedy in 1960.” ........ there are hundreds of staff members working remotely or out of the temporary campaign headquarters in one of Bloomberg’s Beaux-Arts limestone mansions on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the blinds rise and fall with time of day, the food is free ......... The campaign has been offering field organizers salaries of $6,000 a month, a 70 percent premium from the going rate of $3,500 paid by the campaigns of ........ and Gary Briggs, a former top marketing executive for Facebook and Google......... Since his campaign launch on Nov. 24, Bloomberg has spent or reserved about $60 million in television and radio ads, with no sign of slowing down. Taken together, the top four polling Democrats in the race — former vice president Joe Biden; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sanders and Warren — have spent about $28 million on similar ads all year.......... He has also purchased $4.6 million of Google ads ...... On Facebook, his spending over the past week ran at more than $170,000 a day, 2½ times the level of President Trump’s reelection campaign and about three times more than Tom Steyer, the other billionaire Democrat seeking the nomination. All of his digital ads are focused on increasing his support and recruiting staff........... When he entered in November, he decided to skip the first four contests, which tend to pick presidential nominees by showing early momentum and redirecting the national focus.......... Instead, his operation is aimed at the 25 states that will award nearly two-thirds of the available convention delegates over a 15-day period that begins March 3........

it is something no one has ever tried to do before.”

......... Rival Democratic strategists remain skeptical of the effort, as they focus on finding a way for their candidates to catch fire in the early states. Bloomberg’s campaign skills are rusty ....... The Trump campaign, by contrast, has chosen to attack Bloomberg early, with Trump tweeting about “Mini Mike Bloomberg” and announcing he would bar reporters for Bloomberg’s eponymous news organization from his campaign events....... Through the Bloomberg campaign and a separate anti-Trump digital effort he is funding, a campaign adviser said, Bloomberg has already spent more than $8.3 million in television and digital ads in six core swing states: Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina............ since then, Bloomberg, who has always cast himself as a competent manager able to build and run large organizations, decided that Biden and the rest of the field were not up for the job of beating Trump........ “He is not afraid of them winning,” said Howard Wolfson, another top political adviser. “He is afraid they are not going to win.” ......... In 2018, he said, he gave away $767 million. Recipients have included groups such as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, smoking-cessation efforts and a number of grant projects for cities and mayors around the country........

Bloomberg used the platform to assail Trump — saying he was the only New York billionaire in the race

....... “The way I see it, Texas is the biggest battleground state, and I’m going to fight like hell to win its 38 electoral votes,” Bloomberg said.



P.S. I got to meet him once. Him, and one other billionaire standing next to him. This was an event at the Bloomberg Foundation on the Upper East Side where the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman was the featured speaker. Curiously the person I talked to most at the event was Arianna of the Huffington Post, a sleep specialist and crusader.



Late in 2015, I wrote a long memo that I dropped off in person at that same location urging him to run. About 20 pages.
at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Trade War: US, EU, China, Japan

The trade war is a proven recipe for a global recession or worse and possible political mayhem. Trump's trade war with the EU bores ill for global trade because the EU has none of the China issues, supposedly. Bilateral trade is a primitive concept. It is like ditching digital money and going back to silver coins.

A global depression would create a new wave of fascism across the planet. Irrationality will come to rule.

The only hope is that all this saber-rattling is posturing and will soon give way to common sense. But there are no such signs yet on the horizon.

The idea that every country and every group of countries have been unfair to the US on trade ...... the whole idea of "fair trade" has been that the US has been unfair to the rest of the world, especially to the poorest countries. Racist white nationalism will also have you believe that you feel sorry for the whites because they have suffered so much from racism.

Brexit? Aexit?

The sensible thing to do would be to attempt WTO reform. Killing the WTO takes us back to the 1930s. So far the global economy's resilience built through trade has held. But that resilience can stretch only so much.

Trump's trade temper tantrums are insanely destructive. And his traditionally pro-trade party is going all the way with him. It is strange. This might not be the first time politics trumps sound economic theory.

A trade war with Europe would be larger and more damaging than Washington’s dispute with China Data from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative shows that in 2018, the U.S. imported $683.9 billion of EU goods and $557.9 billion from China. ..... There have already been tariffs on European steel and aluminum — which led the bloc to impose duties of 25% on $2.8 billion of U.S. products in June 2018, and, there’s an ongoing dispute regarding Airbus and Boeing — but experts believe a wider spat with Europe would be much more damaging than the current tit-for-tat with China. ....... “In 2018, the U.S. exported more than three times more to the EU than to China,” Hense said, adding that the region could therefore hit back hard against Washington. ..... “The rules of international trade, which we have developed over the years hand-in-hand with our American partners, cannot be violated without a reaction from our side” ...... Both economies are slowing down, and the cyclical effect of the tariffs is likely to be pretty strong ..... Speaking at the U.S. Senate in mid-July, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that “crosscurrents, such as trade tensions and concerns about global growth, have been weighing on economic activity and the outlook.” .......

the business models of multinational firms is in danger as a result of a potential U.S.- EU trade war

...... “Much of the (EU-U.S.) trade takes place within firms rather than between them … (as a result) when you impose tariffs between the U.S. and Europe, you end up raising the prices for consumers and complicating the way goods are assembled in both places, as in the U.S.-China case, but you also end up disrupting the profitability of the business models for large multinationals,” he said. ...... “Since many, if not most of those large multinationals are American, this is going to put a further drag on the U.S. economy” ....... “A trade war between the U.S. and Europe would be more challenging than a trade war between the U.S. and China because it would weaken U.S. multinationals, reduce the size of the markets U.S. firms can access, and create incentives for U.S. firms to divest from their foreign assets and so unleash further foreign competition”.....“In other words, it would undo all the structural advantages that successive U.S. administrations created since the end of the Second World War”

How Trump May Finally Kill the WTO

at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)