If you identify as "Democrat" and are enamored with Bloomberg, you're just running scared -- and you're not a "democrat."

"Swapping kakistocracy for oligarchy will not undo the damage of the Trump presidency. It will merely calcify the rot."

Kakistocracy via Trump: "government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state."

Oligarchy via Bloomberg: "a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution."

ABAT: "As bad as Trump."

It isn't only that moderates identifying as "liberal" really aren't liberal. Apparently they're also clueless and terrified, positing that "liberalism" is devoid of meaning, and something to be discarded because after all, it isn't as if there exists reasons to be "for" something instead of merely "against" something else.

Inequality borne of capital accumulation is the problem. There are far more withouts than withs. Pitchfork lube?

Now you're talking.

Michael Bloomberg Isn’t a Smug Technocratic Centrist. He’s Something Far Worse, by Ross Barkan (Jacobin)

An admirer of dictators, a lowbrow misogynist, an unfiltered bigot — Michael Bloomberg is the only Democratic contender who might actually be worse than Trump.

... Oligarchy Personified

The best way to understand Bloomberg is to study his twelve years leading America’s largest city. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: there were things to like about Bloomberg’s New York, particularly if you were white and carried a degree of wealth. He was, to his credit, an early supporter of same-sex marriage. He cared about protecting the environment. It was a good thing when smoking was banned from restaurants and bars. Bloomberg stuck up for pedestrians and cyclists. The 311 system simplified the process of lodging complaints.

All of this is easily negated by the pain and terror he wrought. If you were a Muslim in Bloomberg’s New York, the NYPD was deployed to spy, without cause, on your mosque. Bloomberg’s police infiltrated Muslim student groups and put informants in mosques. The blanket surveillance, the NYPD would later admit, didn’t produce any tangible leads. Three lawsuits were eventually settled after Bloomberg left office.

Around the time Bloomberg announced his presidential campaign, he cynically ventured to a church in a black Brooklyn neighborhood to apologize for his police department’s maniacal abuse of stop-and-frisk tactics. Under Bloomberg, police stops — which overwhelmingly targeted black and Latino men — increased from 97,296 in 2002 to a peak of 685,724 in 2011. The stops, for these young men, were traumatizing, as heavily armed police officers stalked and then aggressively searched their bodies for no justifiable cause. In 2013, a federal judge ruled the practice unconstitutional.

Rather than accept responsibility, Bloomberg fought back, appealing the ruling. “There is just no question that stop-and-frisk has saved countless lives,” Bloomberg thundered in 2013. “I worry for my kids and I worry for your kids.”

Bloomberg was unrepentant. Police power could do no wrong. In 2011, armed police stormed Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night to forcefully break up Occupy Wall Street, a movement that kicked off a public reckoning with America’s surging income inequality. The protest ultimately offended his sensibilities. “I don’t appreciate the bashing of all the hard-working people who live and work here and pay the taxes that support our city,” Bloomberg said at the time.

Bloomberg’s total lack of interest in staunching his own city’s spiraling inequality fueled homelessness and displacement. Rezonings in formerly working-class neighborhoods spurred luxury development and increasingly unsustainable rent hikes. His lavish donations to Republicans in the State Senate ensured New York’s laws protecting tenants would remain in a weakened state as long as he remained in office. Public housing further crumbled under his watch. And in 2011, Bloomberg killed a housing subsidy program for homeless families, directly triggering the homelessness crisis New York is still grappling with today ...

Open thread: Is this the worst city council imaginable?

There was a city council meeting last night, and there might as well have been a circle jerk for all the good it did for the city. Afterwards, everyone retreated to Studio’s and looked into their own personal mirrors, the ones that show the distorted reflections of wannabeens as serial in their abdication of responsibility as Larry Kochert ever was.

It’s a shame. Anyone got a novelty lighter to play with while the city rots?

I was present for eleven minutes of it before being ejected, and just as a courtesy, permit me now to inform readers that they shouldn’t hold their breaths waiting for me to apologize for telling the truth about a congenital liar, however infirm, aged and embittered she may be.

Won’t happen, folks.

But in the time afforded by my departure, and a few subsequent pints, the thought that kept returning was this council’s abject failure to achieve anything substantive.

Anything.

The excuse that is offered time and again is that times are hard, and wow, who had any idea how tough it was going to be, and damn, we have it rough! The state won’t help, and it’s someone else’s fault, and we can’t be bothered to read or to learn or to offer something – anything – that might represent a glimmer of creativity in a time of duress.

In short, we don’t know anything, we won’t learn anything, and we’d like for those of you less worldly than we are to return us to office next time, because we promise not to have a clue then, either, and we can go our merry ways.

Really? That’s inspiring, isn’t it?

Am I reading them incorrectly? Let me know, and I promise not to call you a liar. Unless, of course, you are.

Council Thursday "live blogging, 4th installment, with the theme now being a new dawning of Coffey-inspired accountability ... and Erika!

COMMUNICATIONS – PUBLIC, continued

12. Sherry Dallman - "I know who owns" the retention lot to buy; there should be no building at 912 Mellwood until drainage is addressed in the area. She's been through this before, and it gets worse. "Keep this lot open." Benedetti chimes in, but I can't hear her.

Price: When you see someone building something, "call us." It "hurt to tell us," because someone told hikm once that "unchecked development would be the ruination of New Albany." He says: "I won't vote for it" (development).

Coffey: "Let your council members know," and call anyone, not just the district representative ...

... because after all, we can't butt in unless we get all the information. The grandstanding tonight is as sickening as I've ever seen it. These people are well-meaning, and Coffey is doing the imperial shuck and jive. He's having "Papa Dan" dialogues with these people.

Coffey: "We depend on what people tell us, but what we've seen tnight and been told it totally different."

Times Coffey has promised a new era of accountability: 4 so far that I remember.

She asks: Who is responsible for these things here:

Coffey: "Well, it's the planning commission."

Stan Robison: "Meaning nobody."

Malysz dispassionately outlines the varying responsibilities of the commissions.

Coffey blames developer payola for something, and he and Carl argue. Coffey checks himself and we lurch forward.

13. Vicky Denhart - She's "president of Citizens for Accountability" and lives on Country Club Drive. "Sewers, sewers and stormwater" the problem. $60 million spent on sewers ... "we still got problems." In December, $5 million in EDIT. $3 million left ... "give it to them people" to fix their homes (she gestures to the crowd). "You have the power, you have control over the money." She mentions the elderly. "It's time to use it" (money in EDIT and TIF). "There's no reason why New Albany is having the problems" with sewers that it's having. She calls out Gahan and flashes a stack of papers: "Every department is in the red." Says: "I'm not against the police." Addresses the council again: "You guys hold the money -- they're just the mayor and deputy mayor." She almost cries at this point. "This is a moral issue."

Gloom, doom ... populism ... performance art -- gimme a hankie.

14. Cliff Staten - back for more from last meeting (Woodfield Drive), about drainage. "You" (council) need to make the "tough decisions", and "act." Neighbors will be watching.

15. (missed name) - she lives near falling Run Creek, perhaps near apartments. Has photos: "Not just cleaning out the creek." Denounces new development. Mentions Ohio, Mississippi and the ocean as being unable to hold the rainfall. Now there is current to overflow, and children could be washed away. They could be in the river. "No way to fix this with a new drain pipe."

Coffey, Robison and the speaker argue over whether it used to flood. Coffey notes that he was always against development in the vicinity. Robison calls out Carl. This is getting borderline testy.

Why am I here again? Is there cold beer at my house? It would have helped to enforce the time limit tonight, but it would not have suited Coffey's grandstanding notions. Note that after almost two hours, we haven't had a serious discussion yet about the police funding.

16. Greg Burden - Woodfield Drive. Will install a check/shutoff valve and has the money to do it, but not everyone does. 90-year-old woman next door wouldn't be able to handle it. Paid $8,000 for the last clean-up of sewage damage.

17. Officer Miller - captain and commander of second shift. Been there forever. Most demanding shift. Has only 7 of the 10 people he needs right now. "We run and chase our tails 90% of the time," and not much time to cruise the neighborhoods. "If you haven't been the victim of crime in the past few years, you will be soon," because there's too much to do to go out in the neighborhoods and cruise. Goes on a bit, describing his days.

Coming back for city official communications.

Erik(a) at FOS stealing again? Say it isn't so.

In which we pillage the mailbag ...

Mark, you bring up a good point.

The forever faux perfesser’s “Obama’s kitchen” post, while credited to Brad, actually appears to have come from yet another cowardly unattributed source, Hoosiers for Fair Taxation, where I can’t find anyone taking credit for the slander and innuendo. My guess is Brad cribbed it from the anonymous cretin therein.

And, the most recent Freedom to Screech posting about “a few more simple rules” appeared first on the Indiana Barrister blog, which attributes it to Jennifer Wagner.

I hope that helps. As we’ve noted many times before, you’d think a self-proclaimed academic would know the few simple rules of intellectual honesty, but when the poseur's foundation is intellectually dishonest – not to mention as rotten as termite-infested wood – then you can’t expect the rules to be followed (or even known, for that matter).

That’s fiar and open debate, Open Air Museum style, and another reason why we make so very little progress in these benumbed parts.