Bloomberg's Fascist Plot
To Steal the U.S. Election
by Michele Steinberg
If George Washington were alive today, and President of the United States, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg would be tried and hanged for treason. Bloomberg, the financiers' candidate for a Mussolini-style fascist takeover of the United States, through a "Third Way" Presidential candidacy—a plot being implemented even as you read this—openly denounced the American Revolution to the annual conference of the British Tory Party in Blackpool, England on Sept. 30, 2007. After being introduced by fellow British-backed fascist, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who spoke via satellite, Bloomberg declared:
"We share a language. Forgive us for mangling it. We share a history. Forgive us for 1776, and we'll forgive you for 1812."
Bloomberg boasted that he has a home and company offices in Britain; that his two daughters carry British passports; and that Schwarzenegger, who was already planning the next round of brutal budget cuts in education and services in California, is his "soul mate."
Over the past week, the drive to establish Bloomberg as the "man on a white horse" has gone into high gear. On Jan. 19, Bloomberg and "soul mate" Schwarzenegger created a new Mussolini-style front to implement fascist economics (see following article). Then, on Jan. 24, Bloomberg was fêted at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, where he received an award for battling "global warming."
Lyndon LaRouche announced on Jan. 25, "We are going to oppose this fascist effort to steal the U.S. Presidency so as to remove this threat to the freedom of our citizens. Bloomberg is affiliated with a foreign power which has long been our adversary, and declares himself to be a faithful supporter of that adversary. His money—$11 billion—comes via ill-gotten gains; he has robbed us. He has ruined education in New York City—which our teachers are protesting—by privatizing schools; setting up schools that he exempts from reporting or auditing. This fascist option has to be destroyed."
LaRouche's campaign is vital to saving the U.S. Constitution, and the American System of economics.
When traitor Bloomberg spoke last September at Blackpool, the British Tories glowed with approval as he praised the Thatcherite record of public-private partnerships and privatization, and called it his model. They knew full well that they were hosting the "independent" option for the U.S. Presidency. "Benito" Bloomberg's London debut was an important step in the vetting process, which has deeply involved billionaire and media mogul Sir Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Tory-allied London Times, and the New York Post, which can make or break the Bloomberg option in the U.S.A.
Indeed, Murdoch, along with Felix Rohatyn, the fascist financier who put Augusto Pinochet in power in Chile in the 1970s; and Lally Weymouth, heiress to the Washington Post empire (which owns the Post and Newsweek, where she is a senior editor) are the key operatives behind Bloomberg and the plot to steal the Presidential election. In June 2007, Murdoch hosted Bloomberg as guest of honor at the annual Eric Breindel Awards in New York. Weymouth introduced Bloomberg, gushing: "Everybody in New York that I know thinks he's a brilliant mayor.... And everyone thinks he would be a brilliant president."
Weymouth's Newsweek put Bloomberg on the cover of its Nov. 12 issue, which featured a 7,000 word puff-piece saying that he "has the means to make one of the most significant third-party bids for the White House in American history." A few days earlier, on Nov. 1, Bloomberg spoke at the ultra-right-wing, British-model think tank, the Manhattan Institute, alongside Rohatyn, who applied the fascist economic methods to New York in the 1973 financial crisis, through the Municipal Assistance Corporation (Big MAC). Rohatyn praised Bloomberg for continuing the tradition that he, Felix, had established: busting the unions and the traditional politics of New York City's working class.
For the last several months, as Republican Presidential candidates have disintegrated before the eyes of the American electorate, and Bloomberg has demurely insisted that he is not sure if he will run for President, a nasty operation to secure ballot status for the Independence Party of American (IPOA) in all 50 states has been afoot. This "stealth" plan would relieve Bloomberg of the impossible task of getting on the ballot in all states, after the GOP and Democratic candidates are already chosen, by essentially buying up small state parties, like the Green, Reform, and Independence parties that already have ballot status.
According to Frank MacKay, head of the Independence Party of New York, and the newly annointed head of both IPOA and the Reform Party of America (both "national" parties are being disputed because of alleged irregularities): "I was in 26 states in the last 76 days.... Every single state that I've been in, we're talking ballot access." MacKay admits that Bloomberg has not agreed to run, but MacKay says that even if God came out of the sky, he would still push Bloomberg as the candidate. The IPOA has not reported any of its contributions to the Federal Election Commission, but Washington observers believe that there will be no surprises when their funding sources are made public. As MacKay once told the Village Voice, about his affiliation with Bloomberg, which began in 2000, it pays sometimes to have "a billionaire owe you a favor."
And while the Democratic Party remains oblivious to the real danger of this Mussolini option, because of its toleration of Bloomberg backers such as Rohatyn, LaRouche is leading the national movement to defeat this British traitor. On Jan. 18, EIR published its cover story on Bloomberg. LaRouche wrote that "the intention ... by certain very powerful international financial interests is the election of a man-on-a-white-horse, New York City's Mayor Bloomberg, to become what historians would describe with a shudder as the American Mussolini dictator or, perhaps, even worse, of January 2009."
The EIR feature was the result of an investigation begun in August 2007, of the financier oligarchy's plans to steal the U.S. elections, and impose a dictatorship which will squeeze the blood out of the lower 80% income bracket of the U.S. population. The financial system is gone, LaRouche had warned on July 25, 2007, and he anticipated that the GOP's so-called front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, would go down in flames because of his organized crime links, both family and business, leaving the Democrats to be ambushed by a so-called "man on a white horse," after the super-wealthy financial parasites had succeeded in playing the Democrats against one another.
And what better candidate than one of their own, the "$11 billion man," Bloomberg, a political chameleon promoted by financier fascists Michael Steinhardt and Felix Rohatyn of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), who has morphed from Democrat (until 2000) to Republican (2001-06) to Independent (2006-present).
The financiers will move quickly, said LaRouche, because they are determined to never allow the emergence of another Franklin D. Roosevelt to defend the General Welfare during a financial collapse. In the oligarchy's mind, this time—unlike the 1930s—the United States would not be saved from fascism, as FDR had saved the country. When he sounded the alarm on Bloomberg, LaRouche was already in the midst of the battle for his Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, Federal legislation to erect a firewall to protect the real economy and legitimate banks from the already destroyed system of financial speculators, and to prevent the eviction of millions of families from their homes in foreclosures. The HBPA is precisely the kind of FDR policy that the Anglo-Dutch oligarchs are determined to prevent.
Bloomberg's Strange Bedfellows
Although Mayor Bloomberg has surrounded his bid for an independent Presidential candidacy with star-studded political personalities, like Schwarzenegger, former Senators David Boren (D-Okla.), Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), and John Danforth (R-Mo.); current Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.); and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R), in his past two campaigns for mayor of New York City, he has relied on Lenora Fulani and the Independence Party for crucial backing. And if past is prologue, he is once again counting on the Independence Party to put him on the ballot, should he decide to pony up a billion dollars and take the Presidential plunge.
At the grassroots level, Bloomberg is dependent on truly "strange bedfellows" from the New York and New York City Independence Parties (two separate, currently feuding, political operations): Frank MacKay, a former nightclub owner and heavy metal rock group promoter, who owns a PR company with his brother Gordon, which books circuses and daredevil entertainment; and Fulani, the two-time independent President candidate, who is described as the "greatest creation" by Fred Newman, the sex-cult founder of the late "Centers for Change" psychiatric commune, which grew up in Manhattan in the early 1970s. Newman, Fulani, and a handful of other Newmanites, Jackie Salit, Harry Kresky, and others have been the core of Bloomberg's Independence Party backing in New York City since the 2001 election when, without the Independence "Line C" ballot, he would have lost to Democrat Mark Green.
MacKay just completed a 23-state tour, lining up party backing for Bloomberg's "independent" Presidential bid. It seems that Bloomberg's money, alone, cannot buy the White House. At least 13 states, according to LaRouche PAC sources, have very restrictive requirements for independent ballot access, so Bloomberg's man MacKay is touring the country, attempting to pressure state parties to lend their ballot access to Hizzoner. According to the Daily News, MacKay's lust for the Reform Party's ballot status in four states is a matter of survival for his effort. These states—Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kansas—represent 15% of the signatures required for a Presidential candidate to be placed on the ballot nationwide, and would be a significant problem for a late-entering candidate.
In the past, Bloomberg has used the power of the purse to secure Independence Party backing. Indeed, in his first mayoral bid, in 2001, it was the 59,000 votes that Bloomberg received on the New York Independence Party line, that put him over the top. Along the way, Bloomberg had to swallow a lot. On Sept. 20, 2001, Fulani wrote a New York Post op-ed, saying that the United States was to blame for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, due to American aggression abroad. She described the attacks as "revenge" for American evil. When Bloomberg demanded that she retract the statement or he would bolt the Independence Party ballot line, Fulani and company stood their ground, and even sued Bloomberg to take his name off the ballot over his criticism of Fulani. But the wannabe mayor backed down, for fear of losing the tight November race, and the Newmanite suit was withdrawn, the Village Voice reported.
After his victory, Bloomberg, according to the Voice and other news outlets, teamed up with Gov. George Pataki, another beneficiary of the Independence Party ballot line, to secure Fulani and company an $8.7 million municipal bond, to finance the construction of a new arts center. In 2005, when Bloomberg ran for reelection as mayor, he was once again endorsed by Fulani and appeared on the Independence Party ballot line: In turn, he kicked in $270,000 of his own money to the party, according to an Oct. 4, 2005 story in the Voice. Independence Party lawyer Harry Kresky has also been a Bloomberg appointee to the City Charter Revision Commission, attempting to push through a non-partisan election reform. Despite efforts by MacKay—still being contested in court—to purge Fulani and the Newmanites, and shut down their New York borough chapters—Bloomberg was still attending and being photographed at major Fulani events such as the NYCIP's "Anti Corruption Award" event. The list of perks is, according to a number of city newspapers, quite long.
As Bloomberg moves closer to his Mussolini-modelled "anti-partisan" Presidential campaign, MacKay is attempting damage control on the Fulani ties—with only limited success. Beginning in 2005, he has tried to purge Fulani and four of her close allies from the central committee of the New York State Independence Party, citing 1989 statements accusing Jews of committing genocide against African-Americans. This, despite the fact that MacKay has been a longtime Fulani ally inside the party. But recently, Fulani herself repudiated those remarks—during a press conference announcing possible plans to run for mayor of New York in 2009, when, one way or the other, Bloomberg leaves City Hall.
MacKay himself is a well-connected low-life, whose nightclub-owner friends include owners of heavy metal "mosh pit" dives. In the 1980s, the MacKay brothers started a heavy metal promotions company, which ran into money difficulties. To solve that, they set up a heavy metal promotional newspaper called The Network, which was eventually bought out after the it secured "financing and distribution." Who put up the money for this effort, begun by an 18-year-old go-getter, remains a matter of investigation. One anomaly is that when MacKay got married, it was Mayor Giuliani who officiated. It should also be noted that Mark Green, the Democratic mayoral candidate in 2001, was hated by Giuliani, according to the New York Times. Was Giuliani involved in the Bloomberg party-switch/Independence Party endorsement that MacKay helped to orchestrate?
MacKay's background made him a perfect "coalition builder" for the alliance with Fulani and her guru, Fred Newman. MacKay says he himself introduced Newman to Bloomberg, to convince Newman to back Hizzoner in the 2001 election. MacKay also attended dozens of meetings with Newman and his Independence Party followers, often engaging in intense one-on-one discussions with Newman, MacKay told the Village Voice. But what passes for politics in New York has to be swept under the rug—at least temporarily—for a national campaign. Thus, MacKay is battling in the courts and in the press to keep Fulani as far away as he can from the national effort.
Bloomberg's Bloody Cuts
When he first became Mayor of New York, out of the smoke and panic of the 9/11 attacks, one of the first things that "$11 Billion Man" Bloomberg did, was sit down with fellow-Wall Street fascist Rohatyn, to discuss what to do about the economic breakdown in New York City, picking Rohatyn's brain for how to his sell his austerity policies. Bloomberg had already been in Felix's political orbit through Michael Steinhardt, the hedge fund plutocrat, who, with Rohatyn, financed the Democratic Leadership Council, which has been trying to create a third party, "Bull Moose" option against the Democrats since at least 2002. In those days, the DLC floated a John McCain-Joe Lieberman ticket, but now, Lieberman, who had to become an Independent after being crushed in a Democratic primary in 2006, and who was financed by Bloomberg, has said that he favors Bloomberg, not McCain, if he were to consider a Vice Presidential run.
Bloomberg's first target of destruction was education, and here the parallels to Mussolini's economic structures (see article below) are chilling. Bloomberg came into office not only determined to impose budget cuts against poor people, but to break the New York Board of Education and the Teachers' Union, as the major obstacles to his privatization of education. Once the education tradition was busted up on the idea that he could "reform" the school system, so that it would operate on "market principles"—i.e., making a profit and putting money, not education first—then, busting the remaining city services and infrastructure—police, firefighters, health care, public housing, and urgent services for the large number of HIV-positive residents—would be simple.
The education case study, briefly described here, is not only a deadly failure—but is "Made in Britain."
The designers and implementers of this Bloomberg education reform include three sets of personalities who are in the forefront of the global fascism being pushed by the oligarchy: Tony Blair, and his personal director of the ruinous educational reform in Great Britain, Sir Michael Barber, who became a full advisor to Bloomberg; Bill Gates, whose educational expertise comes in designing and pushing the murderous killer-training video games, and who has poured some $50 million into New York City education "reform"; and the Murdoch-Rohatyn Anglophile fascist network, through the Fund for Public Schools (see below), and other education reform fronts.
On June 12, 2002, Bloomberg abolished the City's Board of Education, and replaced it with a Department of Education, which gave him dictatorial control over education. He then set out to use "charter schools" and other privatization schemes as a sledgehammer against the New York teachers, with the aim of breaking contracts, tenure, and pensions.
In October 2002, Bloomberg and the Department of Education opened the Office of Strategic Partnerships, which oversees PPPs (public-private partnerships) and the philanthropic "investment" in schools. By 2003, a private organization for the super-rich, the Fund for Public Schools, a tax-exempt so-called charity, became a private means for Bloomberg to fund his "reforms." Not accidentally, two of the super-rich heavies on the Board of Directors of the Fund for Public Schools are Elizabeth Rohatyn (Mrs. Felix), and Wendi Murdoch (Mrs. Rupert).
In November 2002, Bloomberg announced $215 million in cuts to the school budget to reduce the deficit; this time, there was no outcry against the cuts, as the privatization plan had alread succeeded in closing many public schools and replacing them with dubious "charter schools"—32 in New York City. The New York Times applauded Bloomberg for his Board of Education-busting scheme, and crowed that fiscal crisis "can drive managerial innovation."
What kind of management? In January 2003, Bloomberg announced he was eliminating the city's 32 community school boards. From now on, Bloomberg said, "the chancellor [his appointee, Joel Klein] will dictate the curriculum and pedagogical methods." Even the Bloomberg-loving Manhattan Institute was skeptical; its Sol Stern said, "dictate"; Klein did—telling teachers how to arrange desks, chairs, rugs, and bulletin boards, while he also imposed a new reading program despite no evidence that it worked.
In 2005, Sir Michael Barber arrived from London, with a seven-year record of shutting down schools so infamous, that his henchmen were known in the British press as "Barber's hit squad." Barber now works for Bloomberg's New York Board of Education, as a highly paid consultant, overseeing the next phase of Bloomberg's school "reform." Barber has been known to say that George Bush's disastrous "No Child Left Behind" program is the best education legislation to ever be passed in the United States.
The record of Bloomberg's 32 charter schools was thoroughly exposed in the December 2006 report, "Broken promise: How the charter school experiment is falling short," put out by New York State United Teachers, the federation of 1,200 New York State local teachers' unions.
A few months ago, drawing on state legislation, the New York State Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, announced that he would conduct an audit of the 32 charter schools in New York City, and the 29 charter schools in other locations in the state, to establish accountability for how they spend their tax dollars (these schools receive Federal, state, and local tax dollars). In response, a coalition of the major New York city charter schools filed a law suit against the Comptroller seeking a permanent injuction to prevent him from carrying out this legal audit. On Jan. 17, the New York State United Teachers declared that it would soon file a friend of the court brief supporting the Comptroller, charging that 16 city charter schools get 91% of their funds from public sources. Still, aside from unreliable "private" audits, it is not known what the schools do with the funds, nor what standard they use to "pass" students.
Richard Freeman, Mary Jane Freeman, Anton Chaitkin, and Jeffrey Steinberg provided research for this article.
