Typhoid Mike Bloomberg Strikes Again

by Jeff Knox

New York City's controversial billionaire mayor was slapped down again in races in Colorado and Virginia on Tuesday, November 5. Unfortunately, in Virginia, the slap was only symbolic as Bloomberg’s chosen gubernatorial and Attorney General candidates actually won their elections. The fact that the races were so close and some Democrats are blaming the razor-thin margin of victory on Bloomberg's "help." Democrat Terry McAuliffe, whom Bloomberg supported to the tune of about $2 million, eked out a win over Republican Ken Cuccinelli. This in spite of the fact that all of the polls had the former Clinton fundraiser ahead by double digits just a couple of weeks ago, before Bloomberg started flooding the airwaves with anti-gun, pro-McAuliffe TV ad's. At least one Democrat leader has suggested that Bloomberg and his ads helped to drag McAuliffe down and almost cost him the election.

Bloomberg also spent a million dollars on advertisements targeting Republican Mark Obenshain in his race for Virginia Attorney General. At this point it looks like, Obenshain has lost that race by a total of 32 votes out of over 2 million cast. While both Virginia races go in the Win column for Bloomberg, the speculation among Democrat campaign pros that Bloomberg and his money cost votes rather than buying votes is significant.

On the other side of the country, Bloomberg didn't come anywhere close to winning. For the third time this year he suffered a crushing defeat in the state of Colorado. Only a month ago two of his minions were defeated in the first ever recall of State Senators in Colorado's history, then, on November 5, Bloomberg was heavily invested in an effort to pass an education initiative. Coloradans saw the initiative as a massive tax increase and rejected it overwhelmingly in spite of – or possibly to some degree because of – Bloomberg spending a million dollars in support.

The upshot is that voters are so annoyed by Bloomberg and his arrogant, busybody attitude, that it looks like he is no longer able to buy his way past his own negative image. As predicted several weeks ago in this column, Bloomberg is becoming, not only his own worst enemy, but also an enemy of everyone and everything he supports. He is becoming a pariah in politics – a self-funded poison pill, killing all that he touches. He has started funneling money through his various front organizations, but for now, the money is still easy to trace back to him. I suspect he will soon make a greater effort to hide his contributions, much as George Soros has done over the past decade. No matter. We and others will be watching and making every effort to expose his expenditures and defeat his causes.

As I've said before, I think Mike Bloomberg is the most dangerous man in America, because he has virtually unlimited financial resources and he's willing to expend vast amounts of those resources to impose his will on the American public. He has sworn to give away his $25 billion (and growing) fortune by the time he dies, and he’s set up a foundation to administer that process. Presumably, much of that money will go toward endowing other foundations whose mission wi'l be to dole out grants to researchers and organizations advancing Bloomberg's social agenda – like gun control and government supervision of individual diets.

One certain recipient is the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and their Center for Gun Policy and Research which has been churning out anti-rights junk-science for decades. The position of the university and its various schools, centers, and institutes is to treat guns like a disease, applying epidemiological protocols to eradicate the threat to public health they say guns represent. Of course their "research" never factors in the 2 million times every year that a gun is used to stop a criminal attack, or the deterrent value of armed citizens.

Since he graduated from John Hopkins with an engineering degree in 1964, Bloomberg has contributed over $1.1 billion to the school. Bloomberg's fingerprints can be found in every corner of the university’s various campuses and facilities, from the Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center at Johns Hopkins Medical Center to the choice of artworks in the main campus quad. As the "most generous living donor to any US educational institution," Bloomberg wields significant influence on the Johns Hopkins campuses. His latest donation - $350 million - is earmarked for the School of Public Health; $100 million to go toward scholarship programs, and the rest to fund 50 new faculty research positions. While much of that endowment may fund worthy, even lifesaving efforts, it's a safe bet that the Center for Gun Policy and Research will receive its cut of the bounty to crank out more of their trademark anti-rights propaganda disguised as research.

While the 70-year-old Bloomberg may have become a political Typhoid Mary in person, his legacy will be a dangerous opponent to liberty long after he is gone. His funding has attracted other anti-liberty foundations such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and of course, the Joyce Foundation, all of which also provide funds to the Center for Gun Policy and Research.

Unfortunately, there are few such foundations bankrolling the work of pro-liberty researchers like Professor John Lott and his new Crime Prevention Research Center. Pro-rights organizations tend to have to rely on folks like you and me for their funding.

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