Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Michael Bloomberg is probably running for president. That's bad news.
According to the New York Times, the former New York City mayor is making preparations to file for the Alabama Democratic primary. Alabama isn’t an early voting state, but it has an early registration deadline. Key Bloomberg advisers told the Times that this doesn’t mean he’ll surely enter the race, but that he will if he thinks it’s necessary: “We now need to finish the job and ensure that Trump is defeated — but Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to do that.”
While I certainly understand the abstract appeal of the idea of adding a more moderate voice to a Democratic primary field that currently boasts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as front-runners, voters shouldn’t mistake Bloomberg for someone any more hospitable to liberty and freedom. In fact, the former mayor has made an entire career out of cracking down on individual liberty and building up the nanny state.
Don’t forget, he spent his tenure as NYC mayor fighting the problems that truly matter by ... attempting to ban large sodas? And since leaving office, he’s spent much of his time crusading against vaping despite it being much healthier than traditional smoking.
Even on more serious issues, Bloomberg shows contempt for freedom and constitutional liberties. For instance, he supports a robust anti-Second Amendment agenda, which includes everything from so-called universal background checks to all-out bans on certain types of guns to bans on entire age groups from exercising their right to self-defense. And he’s spent millions of dollars trying to elect legislators willing to whittle away at the Second Amendment.
He fairs only somewhat better on First Amendment issues.
For instance, Bloomberg openly dismisses the idea of a free press when he says he expects his reporters at Bloomberg News to never cover him critically. Imagine that attitude in the Oval Office in the hands of someone who has already displayed ample willingness to use the powers of the government to squash individual liberties. Bloomberg’s contempt for press freedom led even a Washington Post writer to decry his “disturbing attitude toward the First Amendment — and democracy generally.”
Oh, and Bloomberg thinks marijuana legalization is “the stupidest thing anyone has ever done.” That’s right, he believes we should throw people in cages for smoking a plant in their backyard. Of course, I doubt the mayor wants to play by his own rules — he has admitted to smoking weed in the past.
There are, of course, some things to like about Michael Bloomberg. He supported charter schools as mayor of New York City and is at least somewhat fiscally conservative. And in a field that included aspirants as insufferable as Beto O’Rourke and Bill de Blasio, there’s no way he’ll be the most obnoxious candidate we’re forced to hear out.
But none of this makes the mayor’s policy positions any less disqualifying.
Bloomberg’s affinity for the nanny state and antipathy toward personal liberty led a writer at the libertarian magazine Reason to dub him a “billionaire busybody who can be counted on to oppose individual freedom in almost every area of life.” Let’s hope that billionaire busybody doesn’t become our next president.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/michael-bloomberg-is-an-enemy-of-freedom