Two Bloomberg Stories That Should Scare You

The first, from Fred Dicker in the Post, says that Bloomberg is now giving campaign contributions to Shelly Silver and the Assembly Democrats after long shutting them out from his financial largesse.

That ought to open a few eyes - what's Bloomberg going to want in return for the money and the promise of more money?

The second story that ought to terrify you is a puff piece on Bloomberg from the Washington Post where Bloomberg gets to tell us how he's going to single-handedly save us all from the NRA:

On Monday, Bloomberg will headline a summit on guns at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, another opportunity for the outspoken mayor to deliver an indictment of Washington’s failure to do anything meaningful on the issue. Although the Democrat-turned-Republican- turned-indepen­dent says he practices a “noble and practical” brand of post-partisan politics, when it comes to gun laws, he is more aligned with one party than the other.

...

 “I’m going to prove a counterweight” to the NRA, said Bloomberg, who spent about $10 million in five congressional and statewide races against NRA-supported candidates last year, winning four of those contests. “It seemed effective, and I’m certainly going to take a good, hard look at next time. . . . You can organize people, I can write checks.”

Both these articles indicate what Bloomberg plans to do post-City Hall - influence as many policies as he can by throwing around as much money as he can.

Now I understand some of you out there might say, well, the NRA is a toxic organization and we need some counterweight to their money and influence, so even if that counterweight is Bloomberg, it's important on this issue that we have that.

I agree the NRA is a toxic organization that has a lot of money and influence, but I worry when one guy with more money than God suddenly decides he is going to single-handedly buy elections with his cash.

Make no mistake, Bloomberg plans to do this not just with gun laws and the NRA, but also with education reform.

That's why he's funding his lobbying group StudentsFirstNY and that's why he put his former City Hall toadie Micah Lasher in charge.

The plan is to demonstrate to many politicians both here in NY and around the country that the Bloomberg corporate education reform policies are the ones they will hold dear to their hearts or they're going to have Bloomberg throwing millions in cash to their opponents.

Now maybe Bloomberg is suddenly giving cash to Shelly Silver and the Assembly Dems because he wants them to push the gun control issue in Albany.

But you know that he's also going to want to push education reform there too and with Silver and the Assembly Dems on the receiving end of his cash, who knows how that plays out?