From: Campus Reform
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday told a group of John Hopkins students that President Obama ought to sidestep the wishes of Congress and order swift new executive gun control measures.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday that President Obama should implement a series of gun control measures through executive action.“There are steps that President Obama can take without congressional approval at any time he chooses with just one stroke of the pen,” Bloomberg told the mixed audience of students and scholars, speaking at the “Gun Policy Summit” at John Hopkins University.
Bloomberg’s remarks came hours before President Obama argued in a rare press conference that executive privileges afforded him the power to implement some federal gun control measures without the permission of Congress.
“My understanding is the Vice President is going to provide a range of steps that we can take to reduce gun violence,” President Obama told the White House Press Corps. “Some of them will require legislation, some of them I can accomplish through executive action.”
Since the Newtown Massacre late last year, the White House has eyed legal options for mandating comprehensive gun control as House Republican leadership has signaled reluctance to even allow such legislation to reach the floor.
Bloomberg also recommended to Vice President Biden a four tiered plan for strengthening existing weapons laws.
Showing posts with label Michael Bloomberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Bloomberg. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Bloomberg On NYC Soda Ban: “We’re Simply Forcing You To Understand”…
Michael Bloomberg Proves That Money Doesn't Prevent Madness
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Monday, March 19, 2012
Mayor Bloomberg Bans Food Donations To City Shelters
Because, no food is better than fatty foods.
From: Jeff Stier, New York Post
So much for serving the homeless.
The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term “food police” to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.
In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.
For over a decade, Glenn Richter and his wife, Lenore, have led a team of food-delivery volunteers from Ohab Zedek, the Upper West Side Orthodox congregation.
They’ve brought freshly cooked, nutrient-rich surplus foods from synagogue events to homeless facilities in the neighborhood. (Disclosure: I know the food is so tasty because I’ve eaten it — I’m an OZ member.) The practice of donating such surplus food to homeless shelters is common among houses of worship in the city.
DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers. A new interagency document controls what can be served at facilities — dictating serving sizes as well as salt, fat and calorie contents, plus fiber minimums and condiment recommendations.
The city also cites food-safety issues with donations, but it’s clear that the real driver behind the ban is the Bloomberg dietary diktats.
Diamond insists that the institutional vendors hired by the shelters serve food that meets the rules but also tastes good; it just isn’t too salty. So, says the commissioner, the homeless really don’t need any of the synagogue’s food.
Glenn Richter’s experience suggests otherwise. He says the beneficiaries — many of them senior citizens recovering from drug and alcohol abuse — have always been appreciative of the treats he and other OZ members bring.
It’s not just that the donations offer an enjoyable addition to the “official” low-salt fare; knowing that the food comes from volunteers and community members warms their hearts, not just their stomachs.
So you can imagine Richter’s consternation last month when employees at a local shelter turned away food he brought from a bar mitzvah.
He’s a former city Housing Authority employee, and his wife spent 35 years as a South Bronx public-school teacher, so they’re no strangers to bureaucracy and poverty. But an exasperated Richter says, “This level of micromanagement is stunning.”
Says Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Ohav Zedek, “Jews have been eating chulent and kugel for a long time, and somehow we’ve managed to live long and healthy lives. All we want to do is to continue sharing these bounties with our neighbors.”
This is very different from another recent high-profile food-police case. When a North Carolina prekindergarten aide took away a 4-year-old’s home-packed lunch last month, the school defused the incident by blaming a teacher’s bad judgment.
Here, there’s no teacher to scapegoat. The ban on food donations is the direct result of work by many city agencies, all led by a mayoral task force.
Fine, the city’s making enough nutritious food available to our homeless. (Court mandates require it.) But that’s no excuse for turning away charity that brings a tiny bit of joy into these lives.
The Bloomberg administration is so obsessed with meddling in how we all live that it’s now eating away at the very best that New York citizens have to deliver.
From: Jeff Stier, New York Post
The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term “food police” to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.
In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.
For over a decade, Glenn Richter and his wife, Lenore, have led a team of food-delivery volunteers from Ohab Zedek, the Upper West Side Orthodox congregation.
Forbidden: Shelters must turn away synagogue goodies like gefilte fish and pastries, thanks to Bloomberg.
DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers. A new interagency document controls what can be served at facilities — dictating serving sizes as well as salt, fat and calorie contents, plus fiber minimums and condiment recommendations.
The city also cites food-safety issues with donations, but it’s clear that the real driver behind the ban is the Bloomberg dietary diktats.
Diamond insists that the institutional vendors hired by the shelters serve food that meets the rules but also tastes good; it just isn’t too salty. So, says the commissioner, the homeless really don’t need any of the synagogue’s food.
Glenn Richter’s experience suggests otherwise. He says the beneficiaries — many of them senior citizens recovering from drug and alcohol abuse — have always been appreciative of the treats he and other OZ members bring.
It’s not just that the donations offer an enjoyable addition to the “official” low-salt fare; knowing that the food comes from volunteers and community members warms their hearts, not just their stomachs.
So you can imagine Richter’s consternation last month when employees at a local shelter turned away food he brought from a bar mitzvah.
He’s a former city Housing Authority employee, and his wife spent 35 years as a South Bronx public-school teacher, so they’re no strangers to bureaucracy and poverty. But an exasperated Richter says, “This level of micromanagement is stunning.”
Says Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Ohav Zedek, “Jews have been eating chulent and kugel for a long time, and somehow we’ve managed to live long and healthy lives. All we want to do is to continue sharing these bounties with our neighbors.”
This is very different from another recent high-profile food-police case. When a North Carolina prekindergarten aide took away a 4-year-old’s home-packed lunch last month, the school defused the incident by blaming a teacher’s bad judgment.
Here, there’s no teacher to scapegoat. The ban on food donations is the direct result of work by many city agencies, all led by a mayoral task force.
Fine, the city’s making enough nutritious food available to our homeless. (Court mandates require it.) But that’s no excuse for turning away charity that brings a tiny bit of joy into these lives.
The Bloomberg administration is so obsessed with meddling in how we all live that it’s now eating away at the very best that New York citizens have to deliver.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Bloomberg blasts lawmakers for “theatening” owners of Zuccotti Park over Occupy Wall Street rally
From: NYPOST.com
An angry Mayor Bloomberg blasted local politicians yesterday for strong-arming the owners of Zuccotti Park into reversing a decision to clear out encamped Wall Street protesters -- and allowing the activists to claim a victory over the city.
“My understanding is Brookfield [Properties] got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying if you don’t stop this, we’ll make your life more difficult,” the mayor said on his weekly radio show, referring to the company that owns the plaza.
“If those elected officials had spent half as much time trying to promote the city to get jobs to come here, we would [be further along] towards answering the concerns of the protesters. I’m told they were inundated by lots of elected officials.”
One source said Brookfield caught the city off guard when it first requested help Tuesday night from the NYPD to clear the park, which is open to the public 24 hours a day.
“They sent the letter without checking with anyone at City Hall or the Police Department,” the source said. “The city had no choice but to respond.”
The mayor declined to say which politicians applied the pressure, but without naming him, Bloomberg appeared to single out Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan), who earlier this week said the right of free expression outweighed the concerns of local shop owners who complain their businesses are suffering because of the protests.
“We had a congressman, I gather, who said it’s much more important than that. In the end, I’m not sure it’s more important than that,” the mayor said yesterday. “The First Amendment applies to everybody.”
Aided by the NYPD, Brookfield personnel had been scheduled to start cleaning the park at 7 a.m. yesterday. A confrontation seemed inevitable, since many protesters vowed to stay put.
On Thursday, “as of 8 o’clock at night, they were going ahead to do it, but as of midnight, they called and said they wanted to postpone the cleaning operations to see if they could work out an agreement with the protesters,” Bloomberg said.
Some of the protesters had even started to clean up after themselves, bringing in mops, brooms and cleaning supplies.
Brookfield confirmed that it had changed course late Thursday at the “request of local political officials” who were urging a negotiated settlement.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) and state Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-Brooklyn) all acknowledged having discussions with Brookfield, but they insisted no threats were made.
“It was a totally positive conversation,” Stringer said. “I made the case with more dialogue and more discussion there could be movement on a number of issues.”
Council spokesman Jamie McShane said “Speaker Quinn was concerned about an unnecessary confrontation and had numerous conversations with Brookfield Properties over the course of Thursday night urging them to give more time in an effort to move towards negotiations.”
Brookfield’s about-face has strained its relations with the administration, said one insider, even though the mayor’s longtime partner, Diana Taylor, sits on the company’s board of directors.
Bloomberg has stressed that the city’s options in dealing with private property are limited.
“In the end, it is Brookfield’s decision,” he said, uttering a mantra he repeated three times during the broadcast.
An angry Mayor Bloomberg blasted local politicians yesterday for strong-arming the owners of Zuccotti Park into reversing a decision to clear out encamped Wall Street protesters -- and allowing the activists to claim a victory over the city.
“My understanding is Brookfield [Properties] got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying if you don’t stop this, we’ll make your life more difficult,” the mayor said on his weekly radio show, referring to the company that owns the plaza.
“If those elected officials had spent half as much time trying to promote the city to get jobs to come here, we would [be further along] towards answering the concerns of the protesters. I’m told they were inundated by lots of elected officials.”
One source said Brookfield caught the city off guard when it first requested help Tuesday night from the NYPD to clear the park, which is open to the public 24 hours a day.
“They sent the letter without checking with anyone at City Hall or the Police Department,” the source said. “The city had no choice but to respond.”
The mayor declined to say which politicians applied the pressure, but without naming him, Bloomberg appeared to single out Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan), who earlier this week said the right of free expression outweighed the concerns of local shop owners who complain their businesses are suffering because of the protests.
“We had a congressman, I gather, who said it’s much more important than that. In the end, I’m not sure it’s more important than that,” the mayor said yesterday. “The First Amendment applies to everybody.”
Aided by the NYPD, Brookfield personnel had been scheduled to start cleaning the park at 7 a.m. yesterday. A confrontation seemed inevitable, since many protesters vowed to stay put.
On Thursday, “as of 8 o’clock at night, they were going ahead to do it, but as of midnight, they called and said they wanted to postpone the cleaning operations to see if they could work out an agreement with the protesters,” Bloomberg said.
Some of the protesters had even started to clean up after themselves, bringing in mops, brooms and cleaning supplies.
Brookfield confirmed that it had changed course late Thursday at the “request of local political officials” who were urging a negotiated settlement.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) and state Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-Brooklyn) all acknowledged having discussions with Brookfield, but they insisted no threats were made.
“It was a totally positive conversation,” Stringer said. “I made the case with more dialogue and more discussion there could be movement on a number of issues.”
Council spokesman Jamie McShane said “Speaker Quinn was concerned about an unnecessary confrontation and had numerous conversations with Brookfield Properties over the course of Thursday night urging them to give more time in an effort to move towards negotiations.”
Brookfield’s about-face has strained its relations with the administration, said one insider, even though the mayor’s longtime partner, Diana Taylor, sits on the company’s board of directors.
Bloomberg has stressed that the city’s options in dealing with private property are limited.
“In the end, it is Brookfield’s decision,” he said, uttering a mantra he repeated three times during the broadcast.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Mike Bloomberg’s Irresponsible Riot Tactic
From: National Review Online
He’s got a personal agenda.
For Bloomberg to come out with this statement is irresponsible and incendiary. But you know what? He’s got a personal agenda. This is a desperate talking point to sell Obama’s jobs plan, which Bloomberg favors as a solution to high unemployment and zero growth.
There’s a whole history here of liberals threatening riots if they don’t get their way. WABC radio host Mark Simone reminded me that back in 1994, Matilda Cuomo warned there would be race riots in New York if her husband Mario weren’t reelected governor in his race against George Pataki.
So now the liberal Mike Bloomberg is trying to go to bat for his pal Obama. And he’s doing so in a very clumsy and inappropriate way.
In fact, Bloomberg is pitching for the whole Obama jobs package — the $450 billion stimulus plan and the $470 billion tax hike. The package is totally unpopular. A recent Bloomberg poll (how ironic) showed that voters disapprove of more Obama stimulus by 51 to 40 percent, and that 56 percent of independents oppose it. Other polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy.
Memories are long. The $800 billion stimulus package nearly three years ago didn’t work. So why do it again? Large dollops of government spending combined with temporary tax cuts do not promote investment or entrepreneurship, which are the true job-creators. Tax-rate incentives must be permanent in order to grow the economy. Digging holes for infrastructure may be necessary, but it’s no job-creator for the private sector.
And that $470 billion tax-hike bill, due in 2013, comes on top of other scheduled tax hikes, such as higher personal tax rates on successful earners and small businesses and the Obamacare payroll-tax increases that encompass investors.
The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore calls this a steep tax cliff. It’s exactly what the economy doesn’t need for the simple reason that business people today have at least a three-to-five-year time horizon when it comes to making decisions to invest and employ. They know a temporary-tax-cut red herring when they see one.
As a formerly successful entrepreneur, Mike Bloomberg should know this. But he supports Obama’s tax increases along with the rest of the futile stimulus package. And he has taken to the radio airwaves to support these policies in an incendiary and self-defeating fashion.
Some political insiders I spoke to believe Bloomberg desperately wants Obama to win a second term. They say the New York City mayor wants to be Obama’s new treasury secretary. Therefore, Bloomberg is hammering Republicans today and absolving Obama from taking any blame or ownership of the current economic mess, which has placed the nation on the front end of yet another recession.
He’s got a personal agenda.
New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, in a radio interview on Friday, warned that high unemployment could lead to widespread rioting. That’s right. He actually said that. At a time when European cities have suffered massively from hooliganism, and at a time when U.S. towns like Philadelphia and Kansas City have suffered huge human and commercial tolls from so-called flash riots.
There’s a whole history here of liberals threatening riots if they don’t get their way. WABC radio host Mark Simone reminded me that back in 1994, Matilda Cuomo warned there would be race riots in New York if her husband Mario weren’t reelected governor in his race against George Pataki.
So now the liberal Mike Bloomberg is trying to go to bat for his pal Obama. And he’s doing so in a very clumsy and inappropriate way.
In fact, Bloomberg is pitching for the whole Obama jobs package — the $450 billion stimulus plan and the $470 billion tax hike. The package is totally unpopular. A recent Bloomberg poll (how ironic) showed that voters disapprove of more Obama stimulus by 51 to 40 percent, and that 56 percent of independents oppose it. Other polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy.
Memories are long. The $800 billion stimulus package nearly three years ago didn’t work. So why do it again? Large dollops of government spending combined with temporary tax cuts do not promote investment or entrepreneurship, which are the true job-creators. Tax-rate incentives must be permanent in order to grow the economy. Digging holes for infrastructure may be necessary, but it’s no job-creator for the private sector.
And that $470 billion tax-hike bill, due in 2013, comes on top of other scheduled tax hikes, such as higher personal tax rates on successful earners and small businesses and the Obamacare payroll-tax increases that encompass investors.
The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore calls this a steep tax cliff. It’s exactly what the economy doesn’t need for the simple reason that business people today have at least a three-to-five-year time horizon when it comes to making decisions to invest and employ. They know a temporary-tax-cut red herring when they see one.
As a formerly successful entrepreneur, Mike Bloomberg should know this. But he supports Obama’s tax increases along with the rest of the futile stimulus package. And he has taken to the radio airwaves to support these policies in an incendiary and self-defeating fashion.
Some political insiders I spoke to believe Bloomberg desperately wants Obama to win a second term. They say the New York City mayor wants to be Obama’s new treasury secretary. Therefore, Bloomberg is hammering Republicans today and absolving Obama from taking any blame or ownership of the current economic mess, which has placed the nation on the front end of yet another recession.
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