Fall-Out From Spying Scandal

Mayor Mike's company takes a hit:

A number of Wall Street firms are hoping to cut back on at least some of the popular features offered by Bloomberg LP — moves that could crimp the data distributor’s bottom line.

The firms, Citigroup, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and at least one other, are making the move after The Post broke the news that Bloomberg reporters had access to some proprietary client information.

They are looking to pull back on features such as chat and instant messaging in favor of their own more secure, proprietary services.

Barclays is considering creating its own Bloomberg-like products, such as messaging, sources tell The Post.

A Barclays spokesman wasn’t able to comment.


One major bulge-bracket New York-based bank, which declined to be identified because its plans are in the formative stage, also is exploring creating similar features for its staffers.

The moves by the banks are aimed at lowering the $20,000-a-year per terminal rental fee — or, in some cases, cut the number of terminals they rent.

Citigroup plans on rolling out both an instant messaging and an internal newsfeed known as CitiFX Wire for its foreign exchange traders and clients.

Citi’s wire service is internally created but also aggregates some news through an agreement with Dow Jones, a person familiar with the situation told The Post.

Both Dow Jones and The Post are owned by News Corp.

Depending on how well the product is received, the bank might roll it out more broadly and be able to offer it to new staff members instead of turning to Bloomberg.

Citi hopes it can introduce the products to new employees or those who don’t have Bloomberg terminals, a source familiar with the situation said.

A Citi spokesman said that the bank’s plans, in the works for the past two years, aren’t related to Bloomberg’s recent SpyGate.

Criminal banks and Wall Street firms moving their scummy business from one company engaged in spying and hacking owned by an oligarch (Bloomberg) to another company engaged in spying and hacking owned by an oligarch (Murdoch).   Well, at the very least Mayor Mikey will lose some money from this.   That means less money for his PAC to throw around post-City Hall.

Questions For The DOJ and FBI In The Bloomberg Spying Scandal

From a comment in an earlier post:

Were any civil laws broken with the unauthorized surveillance?

Did this activity violate any wiretap laws?

Were any criminal laws violated?

Was the information gathered for the use of insider traders?

How long has this unauthorized surveillance taken place?

Who knew about this surveillance using the Bloomberg monitors?

Is their a culture of illegal snooping taken place at Bloomberg ?

What other unauthorized surveillance capabilities does Bloomberg news have at its disposal?

Have any records or documents been destroyed?

Is Bloomberg like Murdoch unfit to manage a major corporation?

Were any financial losses incurred by those who were spied upon?

And from another commenter:

Federal Wiretap Laws prohibit the interception of voice, wire or electronic communications. There are criminal penalties for wiretapping that is not authorized by a court order. It seems that the Bloomberg employee surveillance falls within the purview of Federal wiretap laws since the Bloomberg employees were engaged in the unauthorized interception of electronic/wire data and communications.

More clients are asking questions about what Bloomberg reporters were doing:

With new concerns emerging about practices at its news division, Bloomberg L.P., the sprawling financial services company founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, scrambled to shield its lucrative terminal business and appease nervous customers.

The report on Friday that a Bloomberg reporter had used the company's financial data terminals to monitor a Goldman Sachs partner's logon activity has set off a ripple effect of inquiries from other worried subscribers, including JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and the European Central Bank.

The revelations now stretch back to 2011, when UBS complained after a Bloomberg Television host alluded on air to his monitoring of the London-based rogue UBS trader Kweku Adoboli's terminal logon information to confirm his employment status at the bank. Then, last summer, executives at JPMorgan Chase questioned Bloomberg reporters' techniques after they were among the first to report on the trader Bruno Iksil, nicknamed the London Whale. ''I'm unaware of any record of a complaint from either bank on this issue,'' said Ty Trippet, a Bloomberg spokesman. The fallout continued on Monday. Bloomberg has now received roughly 20 inquiries about whether reporting practices violated the company's policies about getting access to subscriber information, including one from Bank of America. The bank also contacted Bloomberg to raise questions about the security of its employees' private information, people briefed on the matter said.

CNBC reports Bloomberg may have some legal problems over this:

The company also began to discuss possible legal ramifications. While people close to the company doubted that clients would threaten legal action, Bloomberg hired outside lawyers on Friday to steer it through the crisis. The lawyers, according to the people close to the company, have assured Bloomberg that there is no basis for a lawsuit, since the subscribers did not suffer any damages and the information obtained was more trivial than confidential. An early analysis conducted by Bloomberg further suggested that reporters rarely, if ever, published stories based solely on information gleaned from the terminals.

The people close to the company also noted that Bloomberg's sales agreement with subscribers disclosed that company employees had access to certain private information. While the agreement did not specify that Bloomberg News reporters were among those with access, the journalists are technically employees of Bloomberg L.P.

But some bank executives said the snooping could have violated a common confidentiality clause in their contracts with Bloomberg. In the clause, Bloomberg promises to keep large swaths of information ''in confidence,'' meaning that it won't be shared with ''third parties.''

One Wall Street executive, who asked not to be named because of a firm policy prohibiting employees from speaking to the media, said his company was involved in a sensitive situation last year and he now wondered if reporters were monitoring his activities.

''Looking to see who is in or not is sleazy but hardly earthshaking,'' he said. ''But if they knew what stocks I was clicking on and what yields I was looking at, that is spying.'' (Bloomberg officials have repeatedly said the functions used by reporters did not provide information on specific trades or securities.)

Another top Wall Street executive, who also asked not to be named, said although he did not know if his firm would take action, he planned to raise this issue with his board. ''I don't like it when something happens that hasn't occurred to me, and this had not occurred to me,'' he said. ''I feel violated.''

Of course the Obama DOJ may not be able to investigate the Bloomberg spying allegations because they are too busy spying on journalists themselves, as the Associated Press alleges.

Bloomberg Reporters Were Trained To Spy On Bloomberg Terminal Subscribers

More and more criminal by the day:

Reporters at Bloomberg News were trained to use a function on the company’s financial data terminals that allowed them to view subscribers’ contact information and, in some cases, monitor login activity in order to advance news coverage, more than half a dozen former employees said. 

More than 315,000 Bloomberg subscribers worldwide use the terminals for instant market news, trading information and communication. Reporters at Bloomberg News, a separate division from the terminal business, were nonetheless told to use the terminals to get an edge in the competitive world of financial journalism where every second counts, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the company’s strict nondisclosure agreements. 

The company acknowledged that at least one reporter had gained access to information on Goldman Sachs after the bank complained to the company last month. On Sunday, Ty Trippet, a Bloomberg spokesman, said that “reporters would not have been trained to improperly use any client data.”

Matthew Winkler, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, underscored that the practice was at one time commonplace. In an editorial published on Bloomberg View late Sunday night, he said the practice of allowing reporters access to limited subscriber information dated back to the inception of the news arm of the giant financial information company founded by Michael R. Bloomberg. 

...

Bloomberg reporters also are accused of monitoring JPMorgan Chase executives’ login information last summer, when the bank suffered a multibillion-dollar trading loss, according to people briefed on the situation. The bank never formally complained to Bloomberg representatives about the practice.

The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department are also investigating whether reporters tracked employees. Bloomberg terminals sit in the highest echelons of power — including central banks, rival news organizations, Congress and even the Vatican. 

...

 

Bloomberg executives have not denied that they knew some reporters turned to the terminals to monitor when subscribers, who are mostly traders and finance executives, had logged on. On less frequent occasions, reporters also monitored chats between those subscribers and customer service representatives. Reporters could not see a subscriber’s specific securities, trades or which news articles they had read. 

Mr. Winkler did not expand on who may have been affected. He said the practices were a legacy left over from when reporters were considered part of the sales operation. Nearly 85 percent of the company’s $7.9 billion in 2012 revenue came from its terminal business. 

The news operation was assembled in the 1990s primarily as a way to sell more terminals. Reporters regularly accompanied sales representatives to sell subscribers on the wonders of the terminal, the desktop computers that provide a constant stream of headlines and data and sit upon many traders’ desks. 

The company has said the close relationship between journalists and the sales team meant there was a reason to allow reporters access to limited subscriber data to help with customer service and to customize news to subscribers’ needs. 

I have no doubt the Little Mayor and his company of criminals will get away with this.

That's what happens to companies as powerful as Bloomberg LP and people as power as Michael Bloomberg.

But it's becoming clear that everybody at Bloomberg knew this was happening - including Mike Bloomberg.

It would be nice if reporters would ask him about this pointedly at his next presser and not stop asking him until he answers.

Bloomberg News Reporters Spied On Bernanke And Geithner Through Bloomberg Terminals

Reporters at Bloomberg News channeling the hacks in the Nixon administration:

Both the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department are examining the extent to which Bloomberg-terminal usage by top officials might have been tracked by Bloomberg journalists, CNBC has learned.

A Fed spokesperson told CNBC that the central bank is looking into the situation and has been in touch with Bloomberg to learn more. A source said the Treasury Department is taking similar action.

Meanwhile, CNBC has learned from a former Bloomberg employee that he accessed usage information of the company's data terminals of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

The information appeared to concern general functions used by the officials and the frequency with which those functions — such as looking at a bond, equity markets or news — were accessed. The source said all Bloomberg journalists who knew of this capability of the terminal would have had access to the usage information of the officials.

The issue of Bloomberg journalists' access to individual data from the terminals was revealed in recent days when a reporter called a Goldman Sachs Group employee inquiring about a partner's employment status and noting the partner had not logged on to the terminal lately. The incident prompted a complaint from Goldman and led Bloomberg to terminate the ability of reporters to monitor subscribers.

In a statement on its website, Bloomberg said, "Having recognized this mistake, we took immediate action. Last month we changed our policy so that all reporters only have access to the same customer-relationship data available to our clients."

The former Bloomberg employee who worked in the editorial section recalled calling up the information on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner "just for fun" and displaying the information to new recruits "to show how powerful" the Bloomberg terminals were.

The former employee said he recalled seeing the functions used by the Fed Chairman and Treasury Secretary and the number of times those functions had been used. The person did not recall which specific functions he saw, but said it would have been at a broad level.

For example, he said it would likely have been information that the official accessed a page such as global equity indexes, though not which markets specifically. He said it also could have included information that the user looked up bond spreads, but the information would not have shown what specific bonds were searched by the user.

Still, with thousands of functions, the information could apparently get quite specific. And knowing how often a user looked up individual information and how often the user was logged in could provide valuable information.

A JP Morgan Chase source told CNBC that, "Multiple Bloomberg reporters very openly were using terminal login data to determine when traders were suspended and/or let go — during the London Whale situation, as well as during other rounds of layoffs."

A Quartz story (www.qz.com) said Bloomberg employees had accessed a transcript of a call of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to the company's help desk. The story said the information was not used in any editorial pieces written by journalists.

Did The Little Mayor know about this when he was still running the day-to-day operations of Bloomberg LP?

Did The Little Mayor know about this activity once he left the day-to-day operations at Bloomberg to somebody else and started running the city?

What does The Little Mayor think now that the word "Bloombergian" has some of the same associations as "Nixonian"?

Why The Bloomberg LP/Bloomberg News Data Breach Matters

From the NY Times:

A shudder went through Wall Street on Friday after the revelation that Bloomberg News reporters had extracted subscribers’ private information through the company’s ubiquitous data terminals to break news. 

The company confirmed that reporters at Bloomberg News, the journalism arm of Bloomberg L.P., had for years used the company’s terminals to monitor when subscribers had logged onto the service and to find out what functions, like the news wire, corporate bond trades or an equities index, they had looked at. Bloomberg terminals, which cost an average of more than $20,000 a year, are found in nearly every banking and trading company. 

Bloomberg said the functions that allowed journalists to monitor subscribers were promptly disabled after Goldman Sachs complained that a Bloomberg reporter had, while inquiring about a partner’s employment status, pointed out that the partner had not logged onto his Bloomberg terminal lately.

The incident led to broader concerns about the line at Bloomberg between its lucrative terminal business and the hypercompetitive newsroom, threatening to undermine the credibility of both. In a secretive world that thrives on opacity, traders and financial firms jealously guard every speck of information about their activity to avoid tipping their hand on their trades and investments. 

...

Jonathan Corpina, a managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, said the incident was a reminder that nothing — not even the seemingly secure Bloomberg terminal — was private. “It concerns people that what they are doing is being watched and monitored by people who shouldn’t be watching and monitoring it,” Mr. Corpina said.

Indeed it does concern people that what they're doing is being watched and monitored by people who shouldn't be watching and monitoring it.

Which is why people don't want the state collecting all that data on their kids and handing it over to Murdoch and Gates.

It's that simple.

Bloomberg LP/Bloomberg News Data Breach Story And InBloom

There's an inBloom connnection to this Bloomberg LP/Bloomberg News data breach/spying story that I'm going to get to in a moment.

First the latest on the Bloomberg LP/Bloomberg News data breach/spying story from The Guardian:

The financial services news group Bloomberg was facing questions on Friday about how reporters used information about clients gleaned from its widely-used terminals.

The New York Post reported that journalists at Bloomberg had been caught using the financial news service's $20,000-a-year terminals to "spy" on Goldman Sachs bankers.

The Guardian also understands that JP Morgan also has concerns about how Bloomberg used information from its terminals while pursuing stories about Bruno Iksil, the trader known as the London Whale, who was blamed for massive losses at the bank last year.

Bloomberg said it had blocked journalists' access to client data within 24 hours of receiving a complaint from Goldman.

The concerns raised by Goldman could be a major headache for Bloomberg, which makes most of its money from renting the terminals to traders. It now faces complaints from other Wall Street banks that believe they too were spied upon by reporters in a breach of confidentiality.

The Post said that a Bloomberg reporter asked a Goldman executive if a partner was still with the firm, saying that he had not logged into his terminal for some time.

More than 300,000 of the world's most influential people in finance including top bankers, treasury officials and hedge fund managers have access to a Bloomberg terminal. Almost all users are identified by name and their terminals are often highly tailored to give them access to the financial information they need. Access to the types of information those users are looking up would give a reporter invaluable insight.

"Limited customer relationship data has long been available to our journalists, and has never included clients' security-level data, position data, trading data or messages," Bloomberg said in a statement. Bloomberg has now blocked journalists from accessing that data.

In a memo to staff Friday, Bloomberg chief executive Daniel Doctorof
said it had been a "mistake" to allow reporters to have access to
"limited customer relationship management data". "Since our founding
more than 30 years ago, the proper safeguarding of customer data has
been a central tenet of Bloomberg's culture," he wrote.

He said the company had appointed Bloomberg executive Steve Ross to
the new role of client data compliance officer, to review how clients'
data is handled. "Client trust is our highest priority and the
cornerstone of our business, and we are deeply committed to ensuring
the complete integrity and confidentiality of our clients' data in all
situations and at all times," he wrote.

Bankers said they believed the reporters had access not only to log-in information but also to whether the users had called the help desk and what information they had wanted help with. "I don't think anyone realised how much information the news desk had access to," said one Wall Street executive.
Goldman confirmed that it had recently confronted Bloomberg executives after it emerged reporters could determine which of its employees had logged into Bloomberg's terminals and how many times they had used particular functions.

"We brought this matter to the attention of the news organisation, and senior management at the company assured us that they were taking immediate measures to address the problem," a Goldman spokesman said. He declined to comment on specific incidents.
Bank sources told the Post that in one incident a Bloomberg reporter asked a bank executive whether a Goldman partner had left the firm, noting that he had not logged into his Bloomberg terminal in some time.

Former Bloomberg staff, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the company's culture as "porous". In early years Bloomberg reporters would assist on the help desk and even go on client pitches. "They didn't grow up in a culture where you walled off information," said one former insider. "I don't think it's a deliberate policy, I just think that it was something no one was really concerned about."

But Wall Street executives said the company had been far too big for too long to allow its past to be an excuse for what they see as a clear breach of confidentiality. Bank executives were not keen to talk on the record while they continue to discuss the issue with Bloomberg. "Every terminal comes with a boiler-plate contract that clearly talks about confidentiality. They know they are collecting extremely sensitive and private information," said one banker. "Privacy is privacy. The fact that an organisation can, at the very least, monitor the whereabouts of our staff is clearly a concern," said another.

Okay, so here we have this large conglomerate called Bloomberg with lots of separate entities within that conglomerate.

The news entity is not supposed to have access to the data that is being collected by the financial services entity.

But somehow they are given that access and use it without the knowledge of the company's clients to their advantage.

Now let's think about another large conglomerate called News Corporation.

As part of a deal with a bunch of states, News Corporation, along with the Gates Foundation, is going to develop a data storehouse for the confidential information of students all over NY State.

News Corporation will have a for-profit education entity that will be separate from this data storehouse entity called inBloom Inc. and the data will not be shared between the two.

But can you imagine how employees from one part of the News Corporation conglomerate, say the for-profit education part, magically get access to the data from the part that helps out with the data storehouse?

Or how the reporters from the news part get access to the data, just the way the reporters from Bloomberg News got access to the Bloomberg LP data?

I bet you can.

If Bloomberg News can get confidential info and data on Bloomberg LP's clients' terminals, you can bet Murdoch's hackers and data breachers are going to be able to get their hands on the student data and use it to their advantage too.

The blueprint for this is contained in this Bloomberg LP/Bloomberg News data breach/spying incident.

Mark down the day - May 10, 2013.

We got a glimpse of the future at inBloom Inc.

Bloomberg LP Terminals Used To Spy On Users

The spymaster is at it again:

Irked Goldman Sachs brass recently confronted Bloomberg LP over concerns reporters at the business news service have been using the company’s ubiquitous terminals to keep tabs on some employees of the Wall Street bank, The Post has learned.

The ability to spy on Bloomberg terminal users came to light recently when Goldman officials learned that at least one reporter at the news service had access to a wide array of information about customer usage, sources said.

In one instance, a Bloomberg reporter asked a Goldman executive if a partner at the bank had recently left the firm — noting casually that he hadn’t logged into his Bloomberg terminal in some time, sources added.

Goldman later learned that Bloomberg staffers could determine not only which of its employees had logged into Bloomberg’s proprietary terminals but also how many times they had used particular functions, insiders said.

The matter raised serious concerns for the firm about how secure information exchanged through the terminals within the firm actually was — and if the privacy of their business strategy had been compromised.

“You can basically see how many times someone has looked up news stories or if they used their messaging functions,” said one Goldman insider.

“It made us think, ‘Well, what else does [Bloomberg] have access to?’ ”

Bloomberg’s terminals have become the lifeblood of Wall Street trading shops, particularly those that mine the terminals’ reams of data to help make daily trading decisions.

Wall Street firms pay about $20,000 a year to rent each terminal — allowing the company founded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to ring up annual revenue of more than $6 billion.

The little man wants to control everything, doesn't he?

Shame he won't use that information to hold the criminals at Goldman accountable.

Bloomberg Philanthropies: The Post-Mayoral Agenda

The mayor has spent the past two days talking smack about teachers, scolding his potential successors running for mayor that teachers should in no way be given retroactive raises for the years they have gone without a contract.

This two day campaign the mayor has embarked upon, continued on his radio program today on WOR, got me thinking that he's going to use Bloomberg Philanthropies as a propaganda tool against teachers in NYC long after he's gone from office (and perhaps even long after he's gone from this mortal coil...foundations have a longer life than their founders...)

Take a look around the glossy new Bloomberg Philanthropies site and see what you think.

Will Bloomberg continue to hammer NYC teachers long after he leaves City Hall and use Bloomberg Philanthropies to do it?

Will he punish a successor who doesn't follow his wishes on teacher contracts, evaluations, school closures, etc. by using his PAC against her/him the way he has for pols who do not support gun control?

Will Bloomberg, one tiny man with an ego so large and fragile that he needs to put his name on everything he owns, continue to have such an undue and enormous influence on education policy, schools, students and teachers simply because he's got more money than almost everybody else?

Bloomberg Wants To Demolish Public Libraries Before He Goes

All in the name of "progress," of course:

Mayor Bloomberg refuses to adequately fund our public libraries unless they sell off assets including crown jewels of the system, a plan that is wrong-headed and counterproductive.
 
We are in a period of steadily increasing use of libraries by all sectors of New York’s population, attendance is up 40% and circulations are up 59%, while the amount required to properly fund libraries is a pittance compared to other city expenditures.   
 
Public libraries enrich their communities and are an important part of the tax base and a stable economy, providing jobs, community space and serving as a buffer against economic downturn.   They provide a safe haven for seniors during the day, teens after school, for parents with young children, for job seekers needing computers, for the growing number of freelance professionals, and for those needing literacy and technical skills.
 
Bloomberg’s plan would eliminate irreplaceable and historic crown jewels, such as the research stacks underneath the main 42nd Street library, and demolish Brooklyn Heights Art Deco style building, housing 62,000 square feet of library space replacing it with only 15,000 square feet of space in a developer’s high rise.  The removal of the Brooklyn Business Library from Brooklyn’s central business district in downtown Brooklyn, the hub of commerce, transportation, and next to universities is a travesty.  These are just two examples of a scheme to shrink New York’s public library system, eliminating resources that communities depend on.
 
We need to immediately halt real estate deals that involve selling any more branches to private developers until the libraries have been properly funded and until the needs of the public’s library system are the first priority.

Libraries should not be hostages for development.  The city should cease the practices of bribing the public into approving bigger and denser development and pressuring communities into accepting libraries housed in smaller spaces with fewer services.

Developer-driven partnerships that put developers in the driver’s seat and render competitive bids meaningless are bad public policy that must be avoided.  The practice of using developers who specialize in insider deals, who treat the communities poorly and have a record of failing to deliver promised benefit violates the public trust.

There should be no elimination or sale of irreplaceable assets such as the crown jewel research stacks under the 42nd Street main library or elimination of the Business and Career Center Library on the border of Brooklyn Heights and downtown Brooklyn.

There should be no premature library closings such as Donnell library, closed in 2008 and still awaiting a replacement.  Any library closing should have a binding contract for its prompt replacement with solid assurances, including full up-front payments and financing in place.
 
There should be no mass sell-offs of libraries.  Sales of library properties, if any, should be sequenced so that multiple libraries are not closed at the same time and only when it is in the best interest of the public's library system.

“The knowledge of different literature frees one from the tyranny of a few”
 -Jose Marti   Plaque on 41St Library Walk
 
New York’s libraries, the lifeblood of a democracy, have contributed to making our city economically vital and a cultural powerhouse.  We must not sacrifice it to shortsighted planning and the interests of powerful developers. We demand protection for public libraries, the city’s trusted place to learn, grow, be inspired, and connect with great minds.
 
Relevant articles:

• New York Times: Critic’s Notebook- In Renderings for a Library Landmark, Stacks of Questions, by Michael Kimmelman, January 29, 2013. 

• Wall Street Journal: Undertaking Its Destruction, by Ada Louise Huxtable, December 3, 2012.

• Noticing New York: New City-Wide Policy Makes Generation Of Real Estate Deals The Library System’s Primary Purpose, by Michael D. D. White, January 31, 2013.
 
• Center For An Urban Future: Report - Branches of Opportunity, by David Giles, January 2013

I tried to get a copy of Gone With The Wind at the NYPL last week - there were 55 holds on the four copies the NYPL still has in circulation.

That's right - 55 holds.

Not only does NYC have Third World income inequality, a Third World infrastructure and a Third World ruling class, we have a Third World library system too.


And if Bloomberg gets his way on the additional destruction before he goes, it will only get worse.

I put a hold on that book and I should be able to get it in a little under 42 weeks if all goes well.

And that's Gone With The Wind we're talking about.

Try finding a copy of something a little more obscure at the NYPL.

It's like trying to find a warm heart at Bloomberg LP.

Just another legacy from our Mayor of Money.

Bloomberg Show His True Colors Once Again

New York Magazine publishes a revelation about Michael Bloomberg today:

Mayor Bloomberg was focused on bums rather than guns at a recent Christmas party, where he ignored a compliment about his work on gun control to admire the “ass” of a female guest.

In a New York Magazine profile about Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker and candidate for mayor, the author recalled being introduced to Bloomberg at what he described as “a Christmas party for the rich” on the Upper East Side.

“My friend and I followed the host over, shook Bloomberg’s hand, and my friend thanked him for his position on gun control,” the author writes. “Without even acknowledging the comment, Bloomberg gestured toward a woman in a very tight floor-length gown standing nearby and said, ‘Look at the ass on her.’”

This is not the first time Bloomberg has been accused of harassment.

In fact, he has a rich history of both harassment and discrimination claims made against both him individually and his company, Bloomberg LP.

 

Bloomberg has settled these sexual harassment and discrimination suits in the past and gotten non-disclosure agreements from the alleged victims, so we don't know many of the details of the claims made against him.

But we do know that three women brought suit against Bloomberg for creating "a hostile environment of persistent sexual harassment and the general degradation of women" at Bloomberg LP.

In one case, Bloomberg is alleged to have twice suggested to a pregnant employee that she "kill it" (her baby) if she wanted to remain with the company.

In another case, Bloomberg was alleged to have protected a senior male Bloomberg LP employee who was accused of raping a female employee of the company, going so far as to say that the female employee was simply trying to extort money from the male Bloomberg LP manager and having other Bloomberg LP employees try and dig up dirt on the female employee in order to discredit her.

The depositions in those cases described the atmosphere and environment Bloomberg created at his company:

The Olszewski and Garrison cases combine to depict a sales floor where, as two men who formerly worked there, Jim Feingold and Rowland Hunt, put it in court documents, women "wore very short skirts, racy, unbusinesslike." Sexual comments and body-shot drinking games at company parties were reportedly commonplace, as were incidents like the office display of a brochure for sex toys, a female blow-up sex doll, and rubber breasts that squirted liquid from the nipples.

The Olszewski and Garrison cases are old news and Bloomberg long ago put those behind him with settlements and non-disclosure agreements.

But I revisit these cases because they give you a glimpse into the pathology and misogyny of Michael Bloomberg.

This is a man who does not respect women, seems to have a need to sexually objectify them publicly like the frat boy he once was (I will leave where that need comes from to the Freudian analysts among you), and seems to have a need to publicly humiliate women.

The New York Magazine article goes on to describe how Bloomberg treats Christine Quinn with thinly veiled disdain and misogyny:

According to the article, Bloomberg also has strong opinions about Quinn’s appearance – turning up his nose when she wears flats or waits too long before coloring her hair.

“The mayor has no use for flat shoes,” Quinn told the reporter.

“I was at a parade with him once and he said, ‘What are those?’ and I said, ‘They’re comfortable,’ and he said, ‘I never want to hear those words out of your mouth again,’” she recalled. “He likes me in high heels.”

“Another big thing with the mayor, when I am rooting … like, the couple of days a week before I need to get my hair colored, he’ll say, ‘Do you pay a lot to make your hair be two colors? Because now it’s three with the gray,’” Quinn continued. “And I’m like, ‘Did you wake up being this big of an a--hole? Or did it take, like, all day to ramp up to it to be able to insult me like that?’”

Is it any wonder that the kind of man who set up the frat boy atmosphere of Bloomberg LP, publicly ogles women at UES parties, and tells a political colleague she needs to always wear high heels has such disdain for teachers?

While there are more men working these days as teachers, teaching is still seen as "women's work" and there are still many more women working as teachers in NYC than there are men.

While some of the hostility and vindictiveness Bloomberg exhibits toward teachers is class-based - he despises working people, he despises union members, he despises government employees -  much of it comes from the misogyny, anger and fear he has for women.

This is a man with a documented track record of harassment, discriminatory practices and boorish behavior.

Today at school we were forced to sit through a one hour discrimination workshop from the DOE.

While there's nothing wrong with informing employees of their rights and their responsibilities when it comes to harassment and discrimination, it seems that the Big Boss Man of the City of New York and Bloomberg LP is the guy most in need of this workshop and the lessons contained therein.

He won't get that, of course - rich, arrogant, misogynistic elites like himself rarely get held accountable for their behavior.

But the New York Magazine article today reminds me again of two things:

1) Bloomberg's an ass

2) The hostility and tyranny that Bloomberg shows toward teachers is much more deeply rooted in misogyny than education policy