Bloomberg has navigated the perilous shores of politics possibly by changing his political affiliation not once but three times in the last decade. He has avoided any consequences from the Bush years financial catastrophes. In fact:
In 2009, Bloomberg enjoyed Earth's greatest wealth increase, which Forbes reported at $4.5 billion, giving the mayor an overall $16 billion stash. As of March, that stash stands taller than Zuccotti Park at over $22 billion, making him the 20th richest person in the world.
(Scott Thill article link below squirrelly thing.
This was a Bush presidency he espoused:
"I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world," the 69-year-old Independent -- who used to be a Republican that used to be a Democrat -- explained in a late November speech at MIT. "I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom's annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have... Unfortunately, people at the federal level or the state level typically spend their whole lives in politics, and they've never been an executive and it shows."
This from an article by Scott Thill
in Huffpost
Bloomberg's handling of the arrests for that 2004 Republican convention was nothing short of shock and awe. There were 1800 arrests during that protest.
Seven months after the mass arrests of over 1,800 protesters at the Republican Convention in New York City last summer, 91 percent of the nearly 1,700 cases that have been concluded have resulted in acquittals or the dismissal of charges. Four hundred cases were dismissed after video recordings made by volunteer observers and others showed that there was no reason for the arrests, the New York Times reported last week. Some of the videos also exposed false testimony by the police.
Quote from
World Socialist Web Site
In the fall of 2008, Bloomberg successfully campaigned for an amendment to New York City's term-limits law, in order to allow him to run for a third term in 2009. Bloomberg won the election on November 3, 2009.
Wiki
So Bloomberg is riding high but the current term limit for a NY mayor is three terms. He was elected in 2009 so we can expect him to be around until 2013.
How has he managed to get elected to three terms? Especially since he is a billionaire? AND associated with the big financial king pins?
"Bloomberg is good at creating the illusion that he's a moderate," award-winning New York-based journalist Steven Wishnia concluded. "But he's really a hardline plutocrat."
Quote from Thill's article.
Matt Taibbi's Article from Nov.3, 2011 is still timely, imo.
Bloomberg’s great triumph as a politician has been the way he’s been able to win over exactly the sort of crowd that was gathering at the HuffPost event that night. He is a billionaire Wall Street creature with an extreme deregulatory bent who has quietly advanced some nastily regressive police policies (most notably the notorious "stop-and-frisk" practice) but has won over upper-middle-class liberals with his stances on choice and gay marriage and other social issues.
..snip Bloomberg’s main attraction as a politician has been his ability to stick closely to a holy trinity of basic PR principles: bang heavily on black crime, embrace social issues dear to white progressives, and in the remaining working hours give your pals on Wall Street (who can raise any money you need, if you somehow run out of your own) whatever they want.
And Bloomberg's army at least has been aided by his friends:
JP Morgan
Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD On Eve Of Protests
And not just JPMorgan bank either:
Goldman Sach and others
As it turns out, JPMorgan is not the only financial institution that has been generous to the police foundation. In the 2009-10 year, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, investment bank Jeffries and Co., investor Carl Icahn, and investment firm The Renco Group each gave over $100,000 to the foundation, putting them in the top-tier of donors, according to the foundation’s website. Bank of America also gave over $75,000 that year. (Another $100,000+ donor was Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.)
And Bloomberg is loyal to his friends:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning that if there is anyone to blame for the mortgage crisis that led the collapse of the financial industry, it's not the "big banks," but congress.
Speaking at a business breakfast in midtown featuring Bloomberg and two former New York City mayors, Bloomberg was asked what he thought of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
"I hear your complaints," Bloomberg said. "Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I'm not saying I'm sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn't have gotten them without that."
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/...
(Again from the Matt Taibbi article)
And the feds put out big chunks to the Bloomberg army as well:
Federal Anti-Drug Grants Paid for NYPD Muslim Surveillance
Press Secretary Jay Carney adds that the White House drug policy office has no authority to direct, manage or supervise law enforcement operations, including NYPD surveillance of Muslims. "This is not an administration program or a White House program," says Carney. "This is the New York Police Department." NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly is unapologetic, claiming that local politicians who questioned NYPD methods are pandering to voters. The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union yesterday called for a federal investigation.
So Bloomberg has his own fiefdom to some extent thanks to the feds. Nobody has touched a hair of anybody on wall street despite the wide spread corruption and criminality. Wall street has purchased the NYPD's loyalty with cold hard cash. He's managed to keep his power AND increase his portfolio at the same time. Again from the Thill article
..since it is during Bloomberg's three mayoral terms that Wall Street has destroyed not just our economy but what remains of last century's American exceptionalism. That he walked away from this insanely securitized screw job richer than ever tells you all you need to know about his ability to profit off of misery created by those on his watch, which includes conscienceless banksters, brutal cops and worse.