Michael Bloomberg

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Old News I Just Stumbled Across

May 16, 2014 by 1 Comment

Awhile back when I reported that Mark Glaze was leaving MAIG/Demanding Mommies/Everytown Moms Against Illegal Mayor, I speculated that Michael Bloomberg wanted to install his own man as head of the organization. That man would be his former Mayor’s Office chief advisor for policy and strategic planning John Feinblatt.

I missed the announcement by Erika Soto Lamb, Everytown’s communications director, that Feinblatt would indeed be the person in charge.

From Guns.com:

“All good things must come to an end and we are grateful for Mark’s leadership during a time of incredible growth in the movement to prevent gun violence,” said Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman for the group in an email.

“During his three years with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, we celebrated important advances in our fight for reasonable reforms in D.C. and in state capitals across the country,” she added.

“Everytown will continue to be led by our president John Feinblatt. He was previously chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and continues to serve as Mayor Bloomberg’s chief policy advisor on gun issues,” Lamb said.

Obviously, not a surprise. When you have a billionaire control freak who is donating big money to an effort, it should be assumed that they want their guy running it.

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Mark Glaze Out; Question Mark In

May 1, 2014 by 5 Comments

Mark Glaze was is the Executive Director of Everytown Moms for Illegal Mayors has announced he is leaving his position with the group in June according to a report out from Thompson/Reuters.

“It is time for me to hand off the fight to somebody else,” Glaze, 43, said in an interview. “The issue is unbelievably important to me. But it’s a tough issue and a tough grind. And there’s a point where you feel you’ve done all you can do.”

Glaze said he planned to do some consulting.

Sebastian offers his analysis of the move here.

In my opinion, Mark Glaze was an outsider and Bloomberg wants to put one of his inner circle into the position. Glaze is a principal in the Raben Group which is a DC political consulting firm. Now that Bloomberg is putting up some serious cash, he wants someone whom he can control in the position of Executive Director.

My guess for the next Executive Director would be John Feinblatt. He served in Bloomberg’s NYC administration as the chief advisor for policy and strategic planning and as the criminal justice coordinator. He was Bloomberg’s point man for MAIG within the Office of the Mayor. Now that Bloomberg is out of office I think he wants to continue using Feinblatt in that role. Like Glaze, he is both a lawyer and gay. However, at age 62, he is considerably older and presumably more experienced in the halls of power than the younger Glaze. I only bring up that Feinblatt is gay to point out that Glaze isn’t being pushed out over his sexual orientation.

As to the stay-at-home mother of five being the next Executive Director, not a chance in hell.

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Comment Of The Day

April 29, 2014 by 1 Comment

In response to an announcement on Facebook by Cam Edwards that 75,267 people attended the NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Bob Owens (Editor of BearingArms.com) had this to say:

That’s only 75,167 more than attended the Moms Demand Illegal Attention rally.

Not to mention that nearly all of those 75,267 who attended the NRA Annual Meeting paid their own way unlike those from Moms Demand Illegal Attention whose travel and lodging was paid for with Bloomberg’s money.

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The Houses Of “Everytown”

April 18, 2014 by 11 Comments

The world looks differently to you and me than it does to Michael Bloomberg and Shannon Watts.

Unless you live in an exclusive suburb with armed guards at the gate, I doubt your home looks like the array of homes below. It should be noted that I don’t begrudge Mr. Bloomberg his money as he earned it by taking an idea for providing financial data and ran with it. That is the American Way and I applaud his entrepreneurship. Shannon Watts took the more old fashioned way and (re)married well to the former CEO of a Wellpoint subsidiary.That, too, is OK…I guess.

Bloomberg’s Upper East Side Townhouse
Bloomberg’s Long Island Estate
Bloomberg’s Bermuda vacation residence
Bloomberg’s London apartment in Cadogan Square

Bloomberg’s North Salem, NY Farm
Bloomberg’s Vail, Co “Mountain Haus” condo

Aerial view of Bloomberg’s Wellington, FL horse farm & estate
Watt’s Indiana home – street view

When you live in a million dollar plus home in a plush neighborhood, your view of the world is just different. You don’t have crime at your doorstep and you really don’t have to worry about home invasions. And if you are Mr. Bloomberg, you have your own private armed security detail made up of ex-NYPD cops. I don’t know if Mr. Bloomberg provides armed security personnel to Mrs. Watts when she travels around the US on behalf of the Demanding Mommies but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

However, the populist streak in me is offended about being told that I should support gun control for my own good by people who live in a well-protected environment. Moreover, my liberal arts education makes me cringe at the perversion of the word “safety” by those who really mean prohibition and control by it. If you are going to be for gun control, at least be honest about it, like it was when the Brady Campaign was called Handgun Control, Inc.

When it comes to real gun safety, it is the NRA, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and other gun rights organizations AND their members who do the grunt work of promoting gun safety. We are the ones running the Eddie Eagle classes, we are the ones teaching kids how to handle a firearm safely at home and at camp, we are the ones who invest our hard-earned money into safes, locks, and other security devices, and we are the ones providing classes to abused spouses so that they can learn how to protect themselves. And we are doing it every day in everytown at the grassroots level.

So my advice for Mr. Bloomberg and Mrs. Watts is that they should stay in their palatial homes and worry more about the next gallery opening, the next society event, or the next cocktail party than how the rest of us in Everytown America provide for our own self-defense. In other words, they should mind their own damn business and leave us in the real grassroots the hell alone.

UPDATE:  Little did I realize when I wrote that Bloomberg and Watts should worry about the “next gallery opening” that Shannon Watts and her husband John actually owned an art gallery. Thanks to “Dirk Diggler” for pointing it out. The gallery, Watts Fine Arts, was located in Zionsville, Indiana. They said their goal is to be a destination for art collectors around the Midwest. The Watts wanted to bring contemporary masters to the Midwest saying in the press release, “Watts Fine Art represents living American artists who create exceptional
paintings, sculpture and photography previously only available on the East and
West Coasts and in the American Southwest.”

The funniest thing about all of this is not the pretentiousness of it but that I found the press release on bloomberg.com. Go figure.

UPDATE II: After I wrote about the Watts’ gallery, I find that it closed its doors in October 2012.

John Watts, owner of Watts Fine Art, said despite several marketing efforts, the store will close in October because business has been slow and the shop isn’t getting enough foot traffic and sales.


“After over three years in business, it became clear to us that our strategy of bringing museum quality national artists to Indianapolis was not a fit for the local market and especially Zionsville,” he said. “We don’t see this changing for a variety of reasons and did not want to compromise on the type of art we sell or the artists we represent.

Obviously, their heathen neighbors in flyover country just didn’t appreciate the efforts of the Watts to bring them culture. 

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The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

April 17, 2014 by

When you are a billionaire rolling out a new so-called grassroots organization funded with $50 million of your own money, you expect your underlings to have taken care of all the details.

Splashy story in the New York Times? Check.

Fancy new website? Check.

New YouTube video to get the message out? Check.

Facebook page for the new organization? Uhh….

It seems that if you go to Facebook and look for Everytown for Gun Safety you will go to a page actually devoted to gun safety and not gun control. The page lists the Four Rules in its header and it includes links to the real grassroots gun safety organization: the National Rifle Association and its Gun Safety 101 page.

Buzzfeed even did an article on this move. And how did Mark Glaze, former Executive Director of Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors and current Executive Director of Everytown for Gun Safety react? With the predictable violent rhetoric of the gun prohibitionists:

When alerted to the presence of the page, a representative at Everytown for Gun Safety said that it wouldn’t be long before it disappeared from Facebook.

“Maybe they’d like to duel for it,” said Mark Glaze, the executive director of Everytown for Gun Safety. “I hear every person on our staff of 85 is a better shot than Wayne LaPierre. Or maybe a bidding war!”

We’re going through the proper process for transitioning our Demand Action page to ‘Everytown,’ which takes a few weeks, and acquiring trademark protection for both Everytown and Everytown for Gun Safety. Once that happens, we expect Facebook to shoo these cybersquattters politely off this name/page.”

Staff of 85? Shoo these (peon) cybersquatters? So much for their image of being a grassroots organization even though the mainstream media will try to push it for them.

So how do you fight a billionaire who wants to be king and impose his rules? If you are part of a grassroots movement that is willing to fight for its rights you use guerrilla tactics just like these guys did.  Kudos to them on their preemptive strike against the Bloomberg Death Star.

UPDATE: Sebastian has more on this here. There are now many state specific sites dealing with real gun safety.

In addition, let me point you to two new blogs. The first is by Rob Morse and is called Everytown for Gun Safety. The second is by yours truly and is named Everytown for (Real) Gun Safety. They were there for the taking. As that famous Tammany Hall politician George Washington Plunkett said, “He seen his opportunities and he took ’em.” It works for me.

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John Morse: Guns And Gun Control? Hey, Look Over There – Squirrel!

August 1, 2013 by 1 Comment

The one thing Colorado Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) does not want to talk about is the one thing that has him facing a recall election in September. That is namely Morse’s votes for gun control and the role he played in shoving gun control through the Colorado State Senate.

As the Denver Post notes:

The reason Senate President John Morse faces a recall election that could end his political career is simple: He’s from a swing district, and he supported controversial gun-control laws.

But in the days since the recall battle began in earnest after a July filled with legal spats, Morse and a group backing the El Paso County senator — A Whole Lot of People for John Morse — have unveiled a strategy focused on everything but his gun votes.

Below is his campaign’s first TV ad. Notice that he is blaming “groups in Denver” rather than the grassroots efforts of local gun owners for the recall. Notice also that he says he wants to bring more jobs to Colorado despite the impact the gun control laws he pushed have had on the Colorado economy.

You have to wonder if Morse survives the recall effort  will he credit New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for providing the financial resources need to fund ads like the one above. After all, Bloomberg has indicated he plans to support both Morse and Sen. Angela Giron (D-Pueblo) in their fight to remain in office.

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Shocked, I Am (Not)

July 3, 2013 by 1 Comment

As a “reward” for Sen. Joe Manchin’s conversation to the dark side, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be hosting a fundraiser for him. It is to be held at his home in Manhattan. I presume that means his private home and not Gracey Mansion. The minimum to attend is $1,000.

From Buzzfeed:

The fundraiser, scheduled for July 22, marks Bloomberg’s efforts to reward those who supported the gun control campaign and punish those senators who voted against it, including four Democratic senators: Montana’s Max Baucus, Alaska’s Mark Begich, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, and Arkansas’ Mark Pryor. Last month, the New York City mayor appealed to state donors to cut off contributions to the four lawmakers.

It is no wonder that Beretta scratched the state of West Virginia off the list for possible expansion. I’m sure events like this will play well in the coalfields and factories of West Virginia.

UPDATE: It turns out that Mike Bloomberg not only hates guns but hates coal. Thanks to Sebastian for this link to Bloomberg’s commitment of $50 million to close down coal burning power plants.

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A Coalition Serves Freedom Of Information Request On Bloomberg

June 27, 2013 by 3 Comments

A coalition consisting of the Second Amendment Foundation, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and Tom Gresham of Gun Talk have served a Freedom of Information Law request on the City of New York to provide all records concerning Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors and the use of city funds to support the group. It is an effort to smoke out just how much the citizens of the City of New York are paying for Bloomberg’s pet project.

From the SAF release:

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today has filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the City of New York for all records relating to Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, after newspaper allegations that city resources have been used for MAIG’s gun control efforts.

SAF is being joined in the request by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and Tom Gresham, host of the nationally-syndicated “Gun Talk.”

“It was bad enough to learn via CBS News that the MAIG website was being hosted on a city-owned server, and administered by city employees,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, “but it also appears that a special counselor in the mayor’s office was sent to lobby in Nevada on behalf of MAIG’s gun control agenda.”

The New York Post and Politico both published reports that Mayor Bloomberg sent Christopher Kocher to Nevada, and that in an apparent attempt to conceal who he worked for, Kocher “scrubbed his City Hall e-mail address from the state of Nevada lobbying-registration Web site early this month.”

“The public has a right to know what’s been going on between Bloomberg, the city and MAIG,” Gottlieb explained. “Gun control is Bloomberg’s pet peeve, and he’s been pushing an anti-gun agenda since sending so-called private investigators on a sting operation to gun shops all over the country, which got him in trouble with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”

“There certainly appears to be a serious problem in Bloomberg’s administration,” Gresham added. “Evidently, the mayor and his staff have a gross misunderstanding of how the taxpayers’ money should be spent, and that should not include sending New York employees around the country to lobby for Bloomberg’s pet projects.”

The request was filed by SAF Special Projects Director Philip Watson, for the following information:

1. All electronic records related to Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the website MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org, including, but not limited to:


  • a. All electronic files saved on city servers

  • b. All Emails to or from users at the domain MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org

  • c. All current and former employees, officials, outside contractors, and volunteers with access to the website MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org

  • d. All current and former Email users and usernames that have had access to send or receive Email from @MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org


2. Any and all records related to Mayors Against Illegal Guns electronic files, including, but not limited to:


  • a. Emails

  • b. Any written documents

  • c. Any records describing processes for cooperation with this group

  • d. Any records describing how received communications with this group are processed

  • e. All employee pay or overtime related to cooperation or time spent with this group

  • f. Official names, titles, and contact information of all employees, officials, outside contractors, and volunteers involved with domain hosting, creation, maintenance, and communication for MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org

  • g. All costs incurred by the City of New York for creation, maintenance, domain hosting, and communication for MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org


3. Any and all records of communication since January 1, 2002 between any city official, employee, or volunteer and any gun control advocacy organization, including, but not limited to:


  • a. Mayors Against Illegal Guns

  • b. Demand A Plan

  • c. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

  • d. Center for Gun Policy and Research

  • e. Ceasefire

  • f. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

  • g. Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

  • h. Joyce Foundation

  • i. Violence Policy Center

  • j. Legal Community Against Violence

  • k. Million Mom March

“The man is obsessed,” Gottlieb continued, “and if he’s spent so much as a dime of public money on what amounts to a private crusade, Mayor Bloomberg needs to be held accountable for that.”

Gottlieb has called on New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to launch a full-scale investigation into the mayor’s potential misuse of public resources for his own private war on gun owners. He renewed that call today.

“If Eric Schneiderman won’t investigate Bloomberg for possible misuse of public funds,” Gottlieb said, “we will. The mayor has been acting increasingly like a self-appointed monarch, but this still the United States, not Bloomberg’s personal fiefdom.”

Given that other states and cities have strong freedom of information laws and given that there are a number of cities with a mayor belonging to MAIG, I think this provides a nice template for a grass roots effort to smoke out the use of public funds to promote gun control efforts. These politicians are like cockroaches and hate to see the light of day shone on their activities.

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Bloomberg Loses In Nevada

June 14, 2013 by 1 Comment

While Bloomberg’s billions were enough to “persuade” both houses of the Nevada Legislature to pass SB 221, it wasn’t enough to “convince” Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV) not to veto the bill. SB 221 provided for universal background checks on all transfers in Nevada.

Bloomberg had blanketed Nevada with his lobbyists and spent a lot of money on ads pushing Sandoval to sign SB 221. However, Gov. Sandoval, who had pledged to veto the bill even before it passed, seems to have listened to callers to his office instead.

It is a significant defeat for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control advocacy group, Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars working to get the bill passed.

The group bought numerous ads on social media sites, news websites and television, in addition to mailing out materials attacking select lawmakers who voted against the bill during the session. Video ads pressuring Sandoval to sign the bill surfaced immediately following the Assembly nod of approval.

But an automated system set up to field the flood of calls to the governor’s office about the bill showed an overwhelming majority of calls wanted Sandoval to veto the bill. The system did not record names, so it was possible for callers to call multiple times and distort the numbers.

 The gun prohibitionists are still clinging to their mythical 86% of Nevadans in favor of the bill and are castigating the governor for ignoring their push poll.

Repeating an oft-cited result of a poll showing 86 percent of Nevadans favor background checks for private party gun sales, critics said Sandoval has made an unpopular decision.

“Clearly Gov. Sandoval is going against the will of the people,” said Brian Fadie, executive director of ProgressNow Nevada, a group that favored the bill’s passage. “He is standing with extremists who are mostly filled with paranoid fears of the government taking away their guns.”

 Gov. Sandoval, in his veto message found here, said that the bill’s measure on the reporting of mental health issues were very good. However, he goes on to say that that bill’s background check provisions “constitute an erosion of Nevadans’ Second Amendment rights under the United States Constitution and may subject otherwise law-abiding citizens to criminal prosecution.” He adds that the bill would also alter the burden of proof for illegal sales of firearms under Nevada.

I congratulate Gov. Sandoval for vetoing the bill and for recognizing the “flypaper” nature of this bill written by Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors. These transfer provisions were never meant to stop crime but are intended to create a new class of inadvertent criminals ultimately leading to the loss of their rights under the Second Amendment.

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Has Bloomberg Bought Another Western State?

June 4, 2013 by

Yesterday, the Nevada State Assembly passed universal background checks by a vote of 23 yea to 19 nay and sent it to Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV) for his signature or veto. The text of the bill as enrolled can be found here.

One of the most contentious bills of the day was Senate Bill 221, sponsored by Sen. Justin Jones, D-Las Vegas, to require background checks on private gun sales.

The bill appeared dead early Monday, but in an unexpected move, the Assembly Judiciary Committee approved it on a 7-5 vote.

The full Assembly then voted 23-19 to send it to Sandoval despite his promise to veto the measure. Four Democrats joined with all 15 Republicans in opposing the measure.

The bill previously passed the Senate on an 11-10 party-line vote with Democrats in support.

Multiple reports indicate that Gov. Sandoval will veto this bill. That has not stopped Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors from running ads asking people to call the governor and asking him to sign it. Moreover, they are saying that “86% of Nevada voters” support the bill.

The other day I wrote about how certain legislators were expecting substantial campaign contributions as a result of pushing Bloomberg’s bill.

It is obvious from the lists below, that Bloomberg saturated Carson City with lobbyists. There are a total of 63 legislators in both houses of the Nevada Legislature. Examining the list of lobbyists below for Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors, I see a total of 13 paid lobbyists or one lobbyist for every 4.85 legislators. An asterisk after the lobbyist name indicates that he or she is a paid lobbyist. Bloomberg had no volunteer lobbyists.

By contrast, you have three paid lobbyists and three volunteer lobbyists for the pro-rights side. Besides the NRA, you had the Nevada Firearms Coalition and the Stillwater Firearms Association. The Nevada Firearms Association is the state affiliate of the NRA. As they themselves note, they relied on the NRA-ILA to handle things in the legislature until recently. The Stillwater Firearms Association is a non-profit that puts on classes, organizes shooting competitions, and manages a shooting range in Fallon, NV.

From an outsider’s perspective, it appears that Mayor Bloomberg overwhelmed the grassroots organizations with money, ads, and paid lobbyists just like he did in Colorado. Unlike Colorado, having a Republican governor may be enough to stop this in its tracks. A veto of the bill cannot be overriden by either house of the Nevada Legislature.

While it is past time to have made your voice heard, we still have a chance with Gov. Sandoval. I’d emphasize that this measure won’t stop crime and would not have prevented the Newtown shootings. Moreover, if you are not a state resident but have visited Reno, Las Vegas, or other gambling locations, make that known along with your determination not to spend your money in a state that doesn’t believe in your civil rights.

Contact information for Gov. Sandoval is located here.

One final reminder: be firm but respectful.