Cuomo Plans To Lead National Gun Control Campaign In 2016

From the "If I'm not under indictment, I have grand political plans" file:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo intends to take a lead role in a broad campaign pressing for a crackdown on the improper dealing of firearms, swerving into national politics on an issue that has caused him some political heartburn in New York but has become a defining subject of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has pledged to throw his weight behind the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, one of the country’s most prominent gun control groups, in an as-yet-unannounced effort demanding that the Justice Department more closely scrutinize so-called bad apple gun merchants, according to people familiar with the campaign.

Mr. Cuomo, in an interview about his plans to work with the Brady Campaign, promised that his involvement in national gun politics would continue to deepen. He said he would hit the campaign trail in 2016 to emphasize the issue of gun violence, which he repeatedly called “the big issue” in national politics.

Dunno about your reading of this, but my reading is, Cuomo's trying to ride the gun control issue to national prominence to set up future political opportunities for himself.

Of course, that dream could hit this wall.

Alex Pareene: Bloomberg Plans To Use His Money On Council Members Who Vote Against Him On Stop-And-Frisk

Alex Pareene in Salon:

There is one important thing you have to remember about Michael Bloomberg: He is an asshole. It is easy to forget this if you don’t live in New York, or if you live in New York and you are a well-off white person who is never harassed by his NYPD, but it is a fact. Thus far, the billionaire mayor has been using his fortune for nice things that everyone likes like funding ads in support of gay marriage and gun control. But he has enough money to also spend some on capricious meddling in areas Good Liberals are less likely to approve of. According to the New York Post (and admittedly they are often wrong about all sorts of things but you can generally trust their City Hall reporting), Mayor Bloomberg is now planning to spend some money to defeat City Council opponents of stop-and-frisk. Or, if not defeat them, at least scare them into changing their minds.

Stop-and-frisk is an NYPD policy in which cops stop and question and frisk residents of, primarily, very poor neighborhoods, looking for drugs and guns. The people stopped and frisked are nearly always racial or ethnic minorities. No probable cause is required for stopping and frisking. (Cops are supposed to have a reason for the frisking but, as the invaluable stop and frisk Twitter account has shown us, those reasons are so elastic as to be meaningless. One reason is “other.”) Cops stop hundreds of thousands of people each year and arrest only a small fraction of those questioned. The arrests are questionable too: New York led the nation in pointless marijuana arrests throughout Bloomberg’s time in office.

The city is currently defending itself in a class-action lawsuit charging that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional. Each Democrat currently running to replace Bloomberg, whose third and final term ends this year, has promised to reform or eliminate the program. The City Council got tired of waiting, and passed two bills last week aimed as restraining the cops. One created an inspector general to oversee the NYPD, the other allowed citizens to file racial profiling claims against the NYPD. Both bills passed with veto-proof majorities. Without the ability to veto, the mayor is looking for other avenues to getting his way, as he usually does.

With every seat in the council up for grabs this year, Bloomberg’s PAC will “cast a wide net” and try to persuade council members to flip their votes, said Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson.

“I’ve got the time to talk to all members. Basically, we’re going to recanvass as many members as we can and see what we come up with,” Wolfson said.

When loathsome flack Wolfson says “recanvass,” he means threaten to unload a small fortune on small-time city council races until one council member is scared enough to flip his or her vote, because one vote is all the mayor needs to get his veto to stick.

...

Bloomberg, as he often does, is trying his very hardest to get his many liberal admirers to notice how illiberal he is. His money can be used to browbeat gun-loving redstate hicks, sure, but he is also more than happy to use it to get his way in a fight over whether or not the police are supposed to be a full-time minority-harassment squad.

I've said this before, I'll say it again:

If anybody thinks Bloomberg is going away on December 31, 2013, they are sorely mistaken.

He has put together a PAC, he has fed that PAC millions of his dollars, and he plans to use that PAC to promote issues dear to his heart.

As Pareene notes, many liberals were happy when the Bloomberg PAC money was used against red state Dems who voted against gun control or gay rights.

But he's using that cash to promote awful policies like stop-and-frisk too.

And as a teacher, I am certain he's going to use that PAC cash against teachers in coming years, whether it's on evaluation issues, mayoral control, contracts or test scores/grad rates.

This loathsome little man - this "asshole" as Pareene calls him - is going to be with us for a long time because he has a lot of money and he plans to use it as a bludgeon to bolster his reputation, his "legacy" as mayor and the policies he wants to see perpetrated in perpetuity.

Don't Weep For Him, Bloomberg

Two different gun deaths - one bad in Bloomberg's estimation, one that can and should be ignored.

First the one that makes Bloomberg sad:

Alphonza Bryant III could not, in the end, escape his father’s fate. At the age of 17, his life was extinguished by a hail of bullets on April 22 as he hung out with friends on a street corner in the South Bronx, just four blocks from where his father was murdered. Police officials believe that Mr. Bryant was a victim of mistaken identity in an act of retaliation by gang members.

“It wasn’t even curfew time,” his mother, Jenaii van Doten, said in an interview Wednesday at a laundry near their home. “You would think that all the violence happens after midnight, but they fooled me this time.” 

Mr. Bryant’s life and death came into the public spotlight on Tuesday when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg singled him out as a casualty of gun violence, using the teenager to illustrate the toll that illegal guns can have on New York, and the value of the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics. Mr. Bloomberg criticized civil rights groups, saying they expressed no outrage about Mr. Bryant’s shooting, and suggested that The New York Times had failed to cover the killing because the teenager was black.

Now the one Bloomberg ignored:

NEW YORK -- A week after police shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old in his grandmother's Bronx apartment, questions continue to swirl around the aggressive police tactics that led to the fatal confrontation.

Ramarley Graham died last Thursday after Richard Haste, 30, a New York police officer, entered his grandmother's apartment and shot Graham in the chest while he attempted to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Graham was unarmed and police did not have a warrant to enter the home.

Graham's death has sparked street protests in Wakefield, a low-income neighborhood with a large African-American and Caribbean immigrant population. "They had no business kicking down the door. They went too far," said Tyrone Harris, 27. "They need to go to jail just like any other citizen."

Jeffrey Emdin, an attorney representing Graham's mother, called the police tactics unlawful. "They illegally entered the home," Emdin said. "They had no right to be inside. They had no right to use force."

Protesters linked the shooting to the NYPD's aggressive street policing program, called "stop-and-frisk," which predominantly targets low-income minority neighborhoods. In 2011, the program stopped and searched more than 500,000 New Yorkers, 85 percent of them black or Latino. The searches contributed to a record number of misdemeanor marijuana arrests last year.

"The public has every reason to question whether this shooting was the product of the NYPD marijuana arrest crusade, or whether it's the product of their hyper-aggressive stop-and-frisk program," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. 

Gee, where is Bloomberg's press conference to state publicly how stop-and-frisk saved Ramarley Graham's life?

Oh, right - the program actually caused his death.

And where is the mayor's hand-wringing over the senseless gun violence that killed Graham?

Oh right - his "own army" killed Garaham, so everything's cool.

What happened to Alphonza Bryant III is awful, but so is what happened to Ramarley Graham.

How come nobody in the news media points this out?

How come nobody in the news media points out the disconnect between the mayor's reaction in the tragic Bryant case to the mayor's reaction in the tragic Graham case? 

Bloomberg Full Of It On Guns

Even as his own NYPD army continues to gun down people with near impunity in NYC, Michael Bloomberg is going on an anti-gun offensive all across the nation:

The mayor’s advertising blitz, which will saturate television screens in states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona, represents by far the biggest escalation of Mr. Bloomberg’s attempts to become a one-man counterweight to the National Rifle Association in the political clash over guns.
      

“The N.R.A. has just had this field to itself,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s the only one that’s been speaking out. It’s time for another voice.”

Bloomberg's PAC will target politicians all across the country:

Given the mayor’s role in contributing to the ouster of an N.R.A.-backed candidate in an Illinois Congressional race a few weeks ago, his push carries an unmistakable threat to those who vote against the bills.
       

The ads are directed at Democratic and Republican senators in both swing states and partisan precincts. Among Mr. Bloomberg’s targets are some of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats, including Kay R. Hagan of North Carolina, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark L. Pryor of Arkansas, for whom the gun issue is particularly problematic because they will need Republican votes to win re-election.

      

Some of the senators, such as Dean Heller of Nevada, Rob Portman of Ohio and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, all Republicans, represent swing states where voters are divided over guns. Other Republicans would seem to be out of reach for Mr. Bloomberg: Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Daniel Coats of Indiana and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

      

In each case, the commercials urge support for the measure requiring background checks for nearly all firearms purchases, not just those in gun stores, the most debated element of the legislation and a coveted goal of gun control advocates.

      

Mr. Bloomberg has singled out Mr. Flake, who already voted against the expansion of background checks in the Senate Judiciary Committee, by producing a special, scolding commercial aimed at Arizona. “Flake’s vote,” the ad declares, equals “no background checks for dangerous criminals.”

      

The mayor, who has spent tens of millions of dollars to support his favored candidates, intends to wield his “super PAC” to influence the midterm Congressional elections next year and beyond. He said he would prefer “candidates who will stop people from getting killed.”

 

The mayor's desire to stop people from getting killed does not extend to putting an independent monitor in place to be a watchdog over the NYPD, of course, even though the NYPD have been  trigger happy over the course of Bloomberg's three terms in office, shooting both unarmed suspects and innocent bystanders.

The mayor was on Meet The Toadies this morning to be fellated by David Gregory over the gun control issue, but not once did Gregory ask him if he's troubled by the shootings in NYC by the NYPD.

Like this one.

Or this one.

Or this one.

Or this.

Or these shootings.

It's hard to take Bloomberg's anti-gun offensive seriously when he clearly has no problem with his police department shooting people all the time - either suspects or innocent bystanders.

If Bloomberg wanting to put in place laws that will "stop people from getting killed," he would agree to putting an independent monitor in place.

But he refuses to do this and has spoken out quite forcefully against any NYC politician who is promoting such a monitor.

It would be nice if he the press would put these two issues together when they put him on their shows to sell his anti-gun offensive.

Because they are linked.

Bloomberg Threatens Congress

Herr Mayor wants his gun control bill passed into law - or else:

Vice President Biden and three Newtown families teamed up with Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday to demand that Congress do the right thing about getting guns off the streets.

“What Congress has to decide is if it’s politically popular, or is in in their hearts the right thing to do,” the mayor said at City Hall.

“Congress just has to get some courage,” Bloomberg said, “and it’s up to us to sort of give them that courage.”

You can read that as "Give Me What I Want Or I Target Some Of You In Your Next Campaigns".

Since he's already bagged at least one Dem for not supporting his gun control policies, and since he's made it clear that he plans to drop millions into campaigns to promote his pet policies on gun control, health issues and education reform, you can bet some in Congress will listen.

You know, I used to be a big supporter of gun control over the years.

But the older I get and the more I see the police outfitted as paramilitary armies, the more I hear Bloomberg call the NYPD his own "private army," the more I hear NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly brag about having missiles to take down aircraft and spies to take out terrorists, the more I see our rights to assembly and speech eroded in this post-9/11 world, the more I wonder why it is that an oligarch says that the only groups who should have guns are the police and the military.

It's frankly a little worrisome.

I've never owned a gun, don't want to own one, don't want to go hunting or shoot anything ever.

I find all of these shootings across the country horrific.

But I also worry about an oligarch like Bloomberg using his billions to promote his political agenda, to scare politician into doing what he wants, to push through these policies in a very anti-democratic way.

On top of that, I worry about a policy that looks to take all the guns away from people and ensure that only the cops and military have them.

After watching Occupy Wall Street when the cops ran rampant, I no longer like that idea so much.

Seriously, these guys are armed to teeth and they're dying to use that military-style equipment.

Isn't it time we question why local police forces have so much military equipment at their disposal and just who they think they're going to use that stuff against?

Bloomberg and Biden want to get guns off the street - great, I'm all for it.

Let's take the unpiloted drones away from the NYPD and the armored assault vehicles away from the cops in Tupelo, Mississippi while we're at it.

One final thing - Biden used "those twenty dead babies" as the emotional blackmail to get the gun control bill passed.

The deaths of those 20 children in Newtown was a tragedy.

But Joe Biden and his boss Barack Obama have killed way more than 20 children with their drone bombing campaigns.

Seriously, you can look that up and see.

I even blogged about it and put up some pictures of the children slaughtered by the U.S. government drones.

If Biden is so concerned about dead children, he ought to get Barack Obama to stop killing them in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

Those children deserve as much concern as the children in Newtown who were killed in that awful, awful event.