Liberal billionaire Michael Bloomberg is not on the ballot in early-voting South Carolina this week, which is probably a good thing for him. After all, black Democrats casting their votes en masse in Saturday’s “First in the South” presidential primary probably aren’t on board with his candidacy, which is taking all sorts of heat for the controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy Bloomberg implemented as mayor of New York City in 2002.
“It was about profiling people based on their race,” Bloomberg’s 2020 rival, Pete Buttigieg, said of the program during a debate on Tuesday evening in Charleston, S.C.
Is that true? Yes.
And while stop-and-frisk was ultimately ruled constitutional, the racist way in which Bloomberg administered it was struck down.
Aside from targeting blacks for questionable searches, Bloomberg has made other comments about them in the past … including 2015 remarks about how black youths are responsible for “95 percent” of America’s gun violence.
He also told a PBS interviewer in 2011 that black and Latino males “don’t know how to behave in the workplace.”
Bloomberg does have one prominent black supporter in South Carolina, though – mayor Steve Benjamin of the capital city of Columbia, S.C. (a man who has his own issues with workplace behavior, we are told).
Back in December, reporter Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post penned a positively gushing review of Benjamin’s decision to endorse Bloomberg ahead of the 2020 presidential primaries.
“In a state where 60 percent of Democratic voters are black, having Benjamin’s support would be akin to winning the Powerball lottery,” Capehart wrote. “That’s why it was a political earthquake when Benjamin swung his support to Mike Bloomberg before the billionaire former mayor of New York City jumped into the race.”
Powerball lottery? A political earthquake?
Not hardly … Benjamin’s backing of Bloomberg has barely registered as a blip.
Here is another excerpt from Capehart’s obsequious piece …
“What I see in Mayor Bloomberg is a unique set of gifts,” Benjamin told me on Nov. 25 while picking blueberries from a white bowl at a restaurant in downtown Columbia that matched his crisp white shirt and blue suit and tie.
Wait … is this a news story? Or a food and fashion piece?
Anyway, Benjamin told Capehart he was trying to convince Bloomberg to revisit his strategy of skipping South Carolina, espousing the belief that the 78-year-old white billionaire had the potential to resonate with black voters in the Palmetto State.
“On any number of issues, black voters have some very sharp and distinct opinions, sometimes adverse to one another, and I think he’ll play well,” Benjamin said of Bloomberg.
Again … really?
(Click to view)
(Via: @MikeBloomberg)
Bloomberg (above) is “playing” about as well with blacks as he is with farmers … which is probably why he wisely dismissed Benjamin’s advice and stuck with his original decision to skip South Carolina.
What is really driving this relationship, though?
According to our sources, the Bloomberg-Benjamin bond centers around their ongoing collaboration in a national campaign to disarm the American citizenry in direct contravention of their Second Amendment liberties. A “great American gun grab,” if you will.
Specifically, we are referring to the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” organization formed by Bloomberg in 2006 (now operating under the Everytown banner).
As our readers are well aware, Benjamin has led repeated attempts by the city of Columbia to impose unconstitutional firearm restrictions on its residents. Despite being warned for years that such actions would invite costly litigation – exposing city and state taxpayers to potentially millions of dollars in legal costs – Benjamin and his supporters kept pushing (and passing) the laws anyway.
Last month, the hammer finally fell.
As this news outlet exclusively reported, S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson was forced to sue Benjamin over several of the latest gun grabs. In addition to violating the Second Amendment, Wilson argued these ordinances ran afoul of state sovereignty.
Is he correct? Absolutely …
S.C. Code of Laws (§ 23-31-510) explicitly prohibits municipalities in the Palmetto State from passing “any ordinance that regulates or attempts to regulate … the transfer, ownership, possession, carrying, or transportation of firearms, ammunition, components of firearms, or any combination of these things.”
The authority for such regulations is left exclusively to the state …
As we have argued on multiple occasions, stripping law-abiding citizens of their ability to protect themselves is not going to make Columbia (or any town) any safer. Irrespective of their legality or constitutionality. Actually, the real problem Columbia is facing is Benjamin’s ongoing insistence on shortchanging core government functions like law enforcement in the name of speculative real estate boondoggles.
“Benjamin is the latest in a long line of grandstanding, liberal politicians pimping the fantasy that tougher gun laws will reduce gun violence,” we noted in a column two years ago.
Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that his wife – S.C. circuit court judge DeAndrea Benjamin – and so many of her judicial colleagues keep putting violent criminals back on the streets in the name of “justice reform.”
“Those are the real dangers to public safety, not law-abiding gun owners,” we noted last month.
Nonetheless, Benjamin and Bloomberg are seeking to nationalize this debate – just as Benjamin is seeking to nationalize his city’s failure to adequately maintain its water and sewer network (attempting to shift the blame for that to U.S. president Donald Trump).
Five years ago, this news outlet exposed the extent to which Benjamin was neglecting core functions of government in pursuit of command economic glory. Specifically, we slammed him “for blowing millions of city tax dollars on baseball stadiums and speculative real estate deals while skimping on long-overdue upgrades to the city’s water and sewage system.”
How are those boondoggles working out?
Should we be surprised Benjamin is such a disaster? Of course not. After all, his administration was conceived in disaster (and cover-up). And everyone knew of his affinity for failed speculative real estate deals long before he became cheerleader-in-chief for the botched Bull Street redevelopment project.
The only question is why city voters handed him the reins in the first place? And how much longer they are going to tolerate his costly mismanagement?
Earlier this week, our news outlet published a solicitation for information related to “Midlands-area corruption.”
“If you have a tip on incompetence, embezzlement, malfeasance, misappropriation, misconduct, nepotism, favoritism, cronyism … or any other corrupt, unethical or inappropriate behavior being undertaken by local government agencies/ officials in the Midlands region of the state … please let us know,” we noted.
Frankly, we cannot think of government more deserving of such scrutiny than the city of Columbia and its ethically challenged, gun-grabbing “leader,” mayor Benjamin.
-FITSNews
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