Grubstakers - Episode 03: Michael Bloomberg

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

The richest politician in history? In episode 3 we explore the life and works of the billionaire former mayor of New York City. He always said his vast wealth would prevent him from being influenced by lobbying but his Wall Street first policies and the explosion of homelessness under his watch raise questions about that. Also why didn't he fix the damn potholes? Here's the tumblr with some of the research we did and any necessary corrections https://grubstakers.tumblr.com/post/171240660062/research-for-episode-3-michael-bloomberg

This week on Grubstakers, for our President's Day special, we will be talking about former Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, the man who could have been President if only he had a little bit more money. According to Open Secrets, the combined net worth of all members of the House and Senate as of 2014 was $4.4 billion. Michael Bloomberg was worth $5 billion when he first became Mayor of New York, leaving office worth $33 billion. We'll talk about the very ethical ways in which he made all that money and the explosion of homeless people under his reign and why he says it's not his fault. All that and more this week in Grubstick. Because of my success in the private sector, I had the chance to run America's largest city for 12 years.

I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing. They taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. And that's just not true. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Hey, welcome to Grubstakers. We're talking about New York, the former mayor of New York City, one Mr. Michael Bloomberg. I'm here. Senor Michael Bloomberg.

I'm Sean McCarthy. I'm joined by my friends. Andy Palmer. What's up? Yogi Poliwog. Steve Jeffers. Yeah. And so Michael Bloomberg is an interesting story because I guess he's like, at least

compared to the first two episodes, he's a relatively self-made man. He was raised in the mexican countryside he's a bandito the first latino mayor of new york city first and last that's like uh he was like latino but he was like so concerned about the white community he was a self-hating latino um but so he was born in that forced himself to forget spanish which he spoke until he was 35 that's part of the contract for solomon brothers um so bloomberg was born in uh boston in a suburb of Boston in 1942.

Like we said, middle class parents. His father was an accountant for a dairy company. His grandparents came from Russia. And so he just kind of your general middle class upbringing. He attended Johns Hopkins. He got a BS in electrical engineering in 1964, MBA from Harvard Business in 66, and then he went to work on

Wall Street. He's got a sister, Marjorie Bloomberg. I don't know how old she is. Marjorie. Also forced herself to speak English. Forget Spanish. Bloomberg actually got his start in politics

by working for Reagan's Contras. He was the guy who pulled the trigger on the nuns. And then the Republican Party owed him a favor. So he became mayor. I'm sorry, I'm wrong. It was actually the El Salvador government that killed those nuns. La Salvador.

Yes. But yeah, so he worked on Wall Street and he eventually became a partner at Salomon Brothers in 1973. You know, started from the bottom, worked his way up. Salomonos. Salomon Hormonos.

And he worked his way up and Salomon Brothers was bought out in 1981. Bloomberg was not rehired, but he had, at that point, as a partner, he had $10 million worth of equity, which he used to establish what would become Bloomberg LP. It was originally called Innovative Market Systems. And so Bloomberg's big thing was selling data terminals to Wall Street.

He invented, they were originally called the Market Master Terminals. And so Bloomberg's big thing was selling data terminals to Wall Street. He invented, they were originally called the Market Master Terminals. They're now called the Bloomberg Terminals. His first customer was Merrill Lynch. They bought 22 of the things in 1982 and invested $30 million in equity back in 1982. They were his first customers, and the story grows from there. So basically, Bloomberg's money comes from supplying financial tools and information tools to various Wall Street and other brokerage, hedge fund, these kinds of corporations worldwide. And if you've ever temped in any kind of investment bank, as I did for a uh you'll you'll see these things all over the place they have like a keyboard with um like black keys and then they've got some orange keys for like buying and selling and then they'll have like the they'll have like eight different monitors

like up in a grid in front of them with a bunch of graphs and apparently bloomberg's software has this quirk to it where it's white on black background, which is, according to graphic designers, very not optimal for the eyes. But it's become their trademark, so they just kept it. Really? Yeah. The other financial data services companies, it's kind of like a joke of how dated and late 80s look the hard the hardware has yeah and did you know that if you you turn on the spanish settings

it'll be all broken and hilarious it just doesn't make any sense and like most of the money that that company makes is from like the charge for the terminals. Right. Well, they started out selling actual physical hardware with the software on it. And now they're doing subscriptions almost entirely to the software. Right, right. Basically, the current software. I guess it's pretty common. Microsoft does it where it's a subscription model.

It's DLC. It's downloadable content. You can still get the hardware though. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, the Bloomberg terminal loot crates. Yeah, exactly.

If you want the extra special insider trading RPG. You can get a Bloomberg mechanical keyboard and a gaming chair to go on. Please support our Patreon. We're trying to buy a bloomberg terminal if you go if you go to those trading floors though it does look like a sick gaming setup yeah but just with like graphs of how you know that's like evictions on one side and prof going like up and then profits also going up that's our pledge to our patreon is if you give us 2000 a month we will spend it all on a Bloomberg terminal. Then we'll just look at it while recording the episodes and let you know what's on there.

Just to talk about Bloomberg LP. It's a private equity company, so there's limited public financial disclosures from it. But he's the 88% owner of Bloomberg LP. This is where calculations of his wealth come from um uh essentially forbes as of february 2018 estimates he's worth 52.6 billion uh he is per company policy not listed on bloomberg's billionaire index uh because you know it might be a little awkward if uh the people he employs attempted to dig into his financials. But yes, so he's the 88% owner of Bloomberg LP, which has 325,000 Bloomberg terminal subscriptions worldwide.

Each terminal subscription costs about $2,000 a month. So I think that's like $630,000, $650,000 every month just off the subscriptions. So he makes a lot of damn money. That's like $630, $650 million every month just off the subscriptions. So he makes a lot of damn money. About 85% of Bloomberg LP's revenue comes from the terminal sales and subscriptions. So basically, the long story short... Yeah, but how many keyboards do you have that have a sell button? The long story short is these terminals are mainly sold to Wall Street, like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, etc., etc. And when 85% of Bloomberg LP's revenue and, of course, correspondingly, Michael Bloomberg's revenue and wealth is coming from Wall Street, he's very heavily involved in whether or not Wall Street is doing well.

Yeah, Bloomberg and Wall Street seem to be tethered at the dick, if you know what I mean. And isn't, like, Jeffries, weren't you saying that, like, the terminals are notoriously bad? Like, they are not user-friendly at all? That's just going back to kind of has sort of an old-school fucking feel to it. Right. And you're saying the graphic designers have... Yeah, have, like, just railed on it.

Yeah, because, you know, it's white on black. I think it's to... It's not known for its user experience. I think white lines on a black background is something that day traders can really connect to. I mean, one of the main reasons it's got really, really, really popular is it has sort of groundbreaking speed with which you can get new data and have it categorized into the appropriate fields to make trades. And, of course, the conflict of interest stuff we'll get to a little later. And I also, just on that point of graphic designers criticizing it, I would like to say that most graphic designers are white and male,

and there's kind of a resentment of a successful Latino man like Michael Boomblake. The successful Latino man, let's not forget it's michael boom blake is is he the most wealthy the wealthiest poc him and carlos slim trade spots that's right um he's up there but um so yeah michael bloomberg made his money from these terminals. And as mentioned, basically, mostly what we're going to talk about is his time as mayor. He was the mayor of New York City from 2001. I call you Bloomberg. From 2002 to 2014, he was mayor for 12 years. And a lot of stuff happened in that time.

But mostly, he spent a lot of his own money, but own money, but maybe got a pretty good return on that investment. Because, as mentioned, when elected in 2001, he was worth $5 billion. When he left in 2013, he was worth $33 billion. And as of right now, he's worth $52.6 billion. That's according to Forbes. So how did he make all that money well he he stopped being the working really hard yep he stopped being the ceo of bloomberg lp but he never sold his equity or divested himself of any of that so his uh his wealth is approximately calculated

by basically he owns something like 88 percent right Bloomberg LP. Yes, yes, yes. And essentially they just, it's a privately owned company. And so like Forbes, that kind of, when they do their analysis, they'll basically evaluate Bloomberg LP and then just translate his stocks into net wealth. And during his mayor time, he received a $1 salary. And it turns out he never cashed any of those checks. And one of the reports I read was one guy being like, why are we still writing these checks?

You'd think he would like buy one of the homeless people he threw out on the street a cup of coffee or something. That $12 should be going somewhere. It's gotta be somewhere. It was supposed to be $8. He has it framed in a bathroom somewhere

so i guess before we uh get uh too far into bloomberg's time as mayor we can talk a little bit about bloomberg lp um it's just kind of like your typical wall street adjacent firm where you know very demanding work culture you can go on glass door people talk about you know 12 hour work days being very common. They've had multiple lawsuits over not paying people for overtime. People are expected to work a lot of overtime. And they settled one of them for, I think, $3.4 million. There's a few that are ongoing. And they've had a lot of gender discrimination lawsuits. Oh, really? Yeah. And as someone who watches like bloomberg uh tv and also you know we'll talk to you about just a couple of his personal quotes that are kind of

revealing but bloomberg tv um has kind of that same you know roger ailes fox news formula where you'll have like you know very attractive women with the short skirts and that kind of stuff and so i think that actually really does come down from um uh bloomberg michael bloomberg himself like uh just uh to give you an idea of his character um he has two daughters from a woman he divorced um and not long after the divorce in 1996 he was quoted telling the heart is a tempestuous thing well he lost his amour and uh you know, the fiery passion was no longer there. But so in 1996, three years after his divorce from Susan Brown, he told The Guardian, quote, I am single. I am a single straight billionaire in Manhattan.

It's like a wet dream. And apparently he has like some embroidered pillow that's like... My dreams are filled with aqua. Like, I'm going to misquote the pillow, but the gist of his embroidered pillow is that like none of the billionaires are heterosexual. Really? Yeah. Let me see if I could look that up. There's also this thing in 2013 where apparently at one point he made a comment on a lady's ass. Right, yes, yes.

He said he was at some... All right, so a funny anecdote about Bloomberg at a fancy party where we see the aging billionaire admiring a woman's derriere. Which, by the way, derriere is the only way billionaires call asses these days. Later in the evening, the host interrupted me to point out that the mayor himself had just arrived. I want to meet him? Sure. My friend and I followed the host over, shook Bloomberg's hand, and my friend thanked him for his position on gun control. Without even acknowledging the comment, Bloomberg gestured toward a woman in a very tight floor-length gown standing nearby and said, Look at the ass on her.

Muy grande. And that's it. And that's really the mayor of New York which you want. An ass man. Because if the mayor of New York's a tit guy. I love the part of that where it's like thanking him for his position on gun control. He's like look at the ass.

It's like Mr. Bloomberg I just want to thank you for putting all those homeless people out on the street and murdering Sean Bell. You're welcome but also check out the ass. Oh and it should be noted that, oh, so I did find the quote. It is, so this is according to the Daily Mail. Before he was sworn in, a New York magazine reported that he had a needlepoint pillow

beside his bed that read, how many heterosexual billionaires are there, for Christ's sakes? Which it's like, what? That's so weird. He's got that embroidered on a pillow? I guess so. He probably got rid of it once he became the mayor. So did he just go to an embroidery person and be like, can you make me a decoration that says I'm a switch hitter?

Yeah, I think so. I think he likes getting pegged from time to time. I think a Bloomberg terminal. That is not switch hitting, Yogi. So according to Google, he's 5'8", and I don't believe it. I think that's not true at all. I think even when you're like the 10th richest man in the world, you get to put like two extra inches on your Google results.

Does that mean his ex is like six three yeah he has some really tall exes oh really i mean you look at him being interviewed by letterman and it looks like the chair's devouring him yeah he is like a very stout man like he's not he doesn't have a build really is more of just kind of like a degrading back. Yeah, so just to talk about some of the lawsuits at Bloomberg LP. And again, this kind of ties back into Bloomberg's character, is of course he owns 88% of the company. So he had one lawsuit, was an executive, Ms. Garrison. He was accused of suggesting to her that she abort her baby, saying, quote, kill it.

He also allegedly said to her, great, number 16, which was a reference to the number of pregnancies among his staff at the time. What? Wow, what a piece of shit. Right, which is why, and so this was in the 90s. She sued him in 1997. But in 2007, the Equal equal employment opportunity commission uh sued bloomberg lp for a um systemic pattern of demoting or reducing the pay of female employees after they announced their pregnancy or took maternity leave uh eventually uh they bloomberg lp fought the

suit and beat it in court in 2011 oh wow but there's a a lot of um these kinds of uh things um oh also uh one other fun thing here's bloomberg being self-hating from the garrison lawsuit the suit accused him of referring to mexican clients as quote jumping beans and saying of a female worker who had trouble finding a nanny that quote all you need is some black who doesn't even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building. Some black. Just some black. I mean, the Mexican comments I can excuse, because, you know, he is of the Latin

heritage himself, but the some black... We'll take some questions, but first let me just try to summarize for our Spanish-speaking audience. Los vehículos que fueron abandonados en la calle Estorante nos han dificultado

la limpieza, pero estamos haciendo todo lo posible y estamos utilizando todos los esfuerzos que tenemos. Este es el esfuerzo de limpieza más grande que haismo nuestro

Speak poorly of the Latin community Being one of them Jeez, that clip is so good So perfect They should teach that in high school Spanish classes This is what we strive to Mandatory listening

In the NY public school systems. Did you know that if you hit the SAP button on your television while watching Bloomberg, he will narrate himself? So one other big lawsuit from Bloomberg is kind of horrific. So the head of Bloomberg Global Development. Bloomberg. There was a YouTube video we watched. El Chapo Bloomberg.

There was a YouTube video we watched that called the Bloomberg terminals the Bloom Bubble terminals. And I was like, got him. That's good. That guy was telling it like it is. You know, he really put some ominous music on that show. So Nick Farris was the Bloomberg Global Development business head. And he, along with Bloomberg LP and Michael Bloomberg himself, was sued in December 2016 for multiple rapes and sexual harassment.

And just to kind of summarize this, it's a New York Post story. We'll link to it. It's all horrible. But basically, the woman, identified as Margaret Doe, claims Nick Farris got her addicted to powerful narcotics after she started working in September 2012. And she says that she went to his apartment at one point where they downed vodka

and smoked pot and then she went to sleep in the guest room and woke up with him uh raping her and uh then after she was addicted to these drugs he withheld them until she agreed to go to his apartment again uh that was the second rape addicted to Oh, addicted to the pot and the liquor? No, they said powerful narcotics. I guess they didn't specify. It seems like basically what the suit alleges is that there was a drug culture at Bloomberg where how these 12-hour workdays happened is a lot of people are on speed and other stuff. Sure, sure, yeah.

Which is not surprising. It happens all the time in the financial sector. But just some weird fucking stuff from this story. So like this guy, Nick Farris, got an adult circumcision. So yeah, so here's part of the thing. In June 2013, months after the alleged rape, Farris rapes, plural, Farris underwent circumcision surgery, then showed her graphic photos of his partially exposed penis wrapped in bandages and remarked how his circumcision made him extra sensitive to good vaginas, the suit claims.

You know, when you want to fit in at a financial firm, sometimes you have to get an adult circumcision. Yeah, that's how they haze one another at Bloomberg. But it should be noted that this woman was his employee. So he was sending her pictures of his penis. He was emailing her. Oh, here's the other fucking weird-ass thing. At one point, and this is according to the lawsuit, he invited himself, through coworkers,

to the 50th birthday of the woman he raped's mother. He invited himself to her mother's 50th birthday party uh at the party in the family home ferris took pictures of the woman's family photographs and later photoshopped a childhood photo of himself into the pictures what which is just like what the fuck he later sent the photoshop photo to the woman oh my. That is pathetic on a lot of levels. That's so weird to be like, you know, I came to your house uninvited. I took photos of your family

and then inserted myself. Aren't you impressed? What is the goal with something like that? That's one take. The other one is he's an incredibly alpha move. Yeah, sure, right. You literally just write yourself into it. My take is like, oh, he's in finance. That's who incredibly alpha move. Yeah, sure, right. Right, right. You literally just write yourself into it. Oh, my God. My take is like, oh, he's in finance.

That's who can afford Photoshop. I like the idea that he just watched a David Fincher movie and he was like, this will really get in her head. I will Photoshop myself into her family photos after inviting myself to her mother's birthday party. So the woman complained. And so the idea that this is, you know, obviously Bloomberg would say this is a lone actor,

but the woman complained to HR, claims she says that requests to move her desk were ignored. In fact, the suit claims she was later reprimanded by her boss during an investigation into another male Bloomberg employee who harassed her. Nick Ferris, the guy, was fired by Bloomberg in 2015, but he went to work on a Texas financial firm, Simpler Trading

as COO, and then he was fired when the New York Post published this story. Oh, wow. But yeah, and like... Wait, so the Texas company didn't know about these allegations or this situation until it posted an article? They either didn't know or they didn't care. But allegations or this situation until the post-article came out? They either didn't know or they didn't care.

But it was just kind of the thing where it's like this happens all the time where Bloomberg only fired this guy because of him having a relationship with a subordinate, not any sort of rape. So, of course, they want to keep this all hush-hush, show him he got got some sort of settlement and some sort of no wrongdoing go away pay out and then so of course he can go get another financial job and you know be a abusive creep um and just uh one other thing from that before we move on uh so she also alleges at a 2012 christmas party um at the home of the executive editor of the news division, Ted Merz, another editor, Joe Bracelis or something, made, quote, lewd comments and propositioned her to leave in a private car. And so it's just like, you know, the point of all that is there's a real culture of harassment at Bloomberg LP. And maybe they've addressed it, maybe they haven't,

but my guess is not really. Sure, but a corporation that's raking in money from terminals and watching what the stock market is and isn't based off what their terminals say kind of lose value for people and things. Well, their company is, you know, they make 85% of their revenue off the terminal and then they make 15% their gender enforcement project they did

actually launch some sort of like gender fucking etf or something god i don't know the details so i'm not going to talk about it but it's just like all that kind of transparent marketing bullshit where it's like you know you're a financial company which generally don't have good reputations for gender equality and this kind of thing and in the case case of Bloomberg, Bloomberg LP, there have been multiple horrific lawsuits. And then, of course, there's just the comments and general demeanor of the mayor himself, the former mayor. And, you know, like this kind of fits into like a New York City political tradition, you know, where you have like Ed Koch and like Donald Trump and all these other like

outspoken blowhards giuliani for that matter so it's like this is kind of like expected of new york politics and maybe you know michael bloomberg's trying to establish you know the tell it like it is male image where he's like look or maybe he just likes looking at the ass i think he just enjoys asses i think that uh like a true hispanic man he enjoys the derriere of a booty-licious baby. All right. But so anyway, so Bloomberg LP is where he got his initial cash injection. The pittance of $5 billion.

So sad. So little. So he spent over $250 million on most all his own money on three different mayoral elections. The first in 2001, he spent $74 million on three, most all his own money on three different mayoral elections. The first in 2001, he spent 74 million in 2005, he spent 85 million. And in 2009, he spent 102 million. That's according to the New York times,

which is puzzling because he's so charismatic that it, it, it doesn't make sense why he would spend so much money when he already has so many natural abilities for public speaking and uh what was the margin what was the margin of victory for each of them uh he was very close in the first one and the last one and then he kind of got a landslide in the mid one so he spent 74 million and he like eked out yeah a victory in 2001 yeah yeah um and there's arguments that that really only happened because of 9-11 was like basically the democratic primary was scheduled for september 11th in 2001 so it had to be delayed and then you know the attacks

and all that stuff primary yeah oh it was the republican he ran as a republican he switched right before you did yeah uh oh yeah he was yeah he was democrat and he switched republican yeah yeah yeah and then i think it might have been a second or third term he switched to independent but ran on the republican ticket but it was i thought it was the i thought the reason that it was an advantage was that kind of delayed the democratic primary or something oh i don't know all right well we're getting into semantics. The point is, he got elected. He's a piece of shit.

He's got shitty kids, and his company sucks. He made his net worth ten times the amount it was during the last... What? Five billion to fifty? Oh, let's get into Morrison semantics. This is what the people like. Look,

as much money as Bloomberg spent on his election, he doesn't consider that what got him into office. Because of my success in the private sector, I had the chance to run America's largest city for 12 years. Yay. So, another

fun thing. Just for the 2009, his final campaign, he outspent his Democratic opponent 14 to 1. And just a fun little quote from the New York Times. The campaign's union coordinator, Patrick Brannan, spent $520 to dine with labor leaders at Smith and Walensky, the Midtown Steakhouse. So, of course, you know, a nice little fun way to solidify the opposition is to take their leaders out for steak dinners. $500 a plate. Ah, sorry. Pennies for Bloomberg.

They didn't even go to Peter Luger. It's in Brooklyn. You know, and another thing, while we're complaining about... He's mayor of the whole city. I mean, maybe not Bloomberg, but... And another thing, while we're complaining, the roads were very bumpy on the Uber ride over here. My latte repeatedly spilled in my lap.

I did yell at the driver and we didn't tip, but really Bloomberg owes me an apology for that. But there's another thing that when you start to look at this is like a lot of his focus was on Manhattan and a lot of the outer boroughs really felt neglected by Mayor Bloomberg and I wonder

what the difference between people who live in Manhattan and people who live in say Brooklyn or Queens is. Obviously people in Brooklyn and Queens are richer. They're classier. Not like those Manhattan pigs. And that's just not true. I mean, you say that, but one of Bloomberg's signature achievements was revitalizing Brooklyn Bridge Park.

You know, the most Brooklyn part of Brooklyn. He also revitalizes a Cotty Park when he got all those protesters out of there. But so anyways, I guess so he gets elected in 2001. He starts his term in 2002. And then this is kind of like where the the conflict of interest begins because we've mentioned you know his uh net worth increased so much over his term as mayor he only took a one dollar salary uh but you know he was still making all this money from wall street so you can argue that new york is new york city's economy is like so dependent on wall street that he's you know just selflessly promoting the interests of wall street in order to support growth and stuff but in reality there's a huge incentive to allow

wall street to grow and grow and grow and in fact there were development deals we'll talk about a little bit where um uh in exchange for hiring employees many of whom would end up using and needing bloomberg terminal subscriptions they get state and city tax abatements and bonds and these kinds of things. And just like another fun thing, in 2002, right after his election, Bloomberg LP released a list of the top 100 customers of Bloomberg LP without specifying total revenue or the percentage of business that they control. So these people that had a major financial dealings with his company were still able to lobby the mayor and discuss business deals and all this kind of stuff. And there was just really no transparency as to who butters his bread, really. Right, right. So, yeah, basically, like, right after he got elected, there was, he decided that he absolutely

needed to revitalize downtown Manhattan to recover from 9-11. And in order to do that, he just shoveled money into Goldman Sachs to put their headquarters there. They got apparently 1.65 billion in city and state quote help in the deal what i'm pretty sure that was uh it may have been the city and state help the result there were um some of it was tax breaks some of it was rent help some of it was is that 1.65 billion is that in dollars or pesos sorry this is according to new york magazine that uh 11.65 billion in city and state help for this Goldman Sachs headquarters.

And, of course, they needed the money. Oh, yeah. They couldn't have done this on their own. And along with that came about 2,000 new hires, which that's a lot of Bloomberg terminals. Exactly. Every Wall Street job is basically another Bloomberg terminal sold. Right. And it's janitor bloomberg

look they can't clean the thing if they don't know like what the employees are going to be stress eating that's right as a result of that day's new market news put terminals up above the urinals when you're peeing you got to know what the stocks are doing well i mean that's like a really insidious direct relationship though between like between Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and all of them. Oh, of course. And his political rise. I can see a janitor just sitting down at the Bloomberg terminal and being like, all right, Bloomberg LP about to gain profits by laying off the custodial staff. What the fuck?

Just like another... So one last thing about Bloomberg LP is it is kind of like this same Amazon work culture where every single employee knows when every other employee enters and leaves the building and when they log into their mobile phone app or whatever. So there's a lot of incentive to... It's like... What's the name of that

prison where you can see everything facebook but yeah it's called like the not the octagon but something like that yeah something like that yeah man if we were a smart show like post would know these things panopticon that's it panopticon well so anyways the idea is like You kind of establish this Policing each other And it's, you know, like Bloomberg LP is about 10,000 employees And some of them make decent money

But it's still like 88% of this is going directly Into Mayor Bloomberg's pocket, so Which is why he owns that much Of that company You're exploiting yourself For this man who isn't even 5'8", people

Eric Chappo, Bloomberg. Yeah, I think we should talk about the homelessness is the other thing. I mean... Now, let's go to the protest. Occupy. Oh, yeah, Occupy. Let's do Occupy first. Well, so, of course, like, when all your money is coming from Wall Street,

Bloomberg has always been a defender of Wall Street, and I think we can find the audio drop where he blames the financial crisis on Congress instead of Wall Street, which is ridiculous and has been debunked multiple times. But basically, of course, when a protest movement springs up against your main customers, you might want to use your private army, the NYPD, to disperse that protest. Right, right. And you might want to do it at 1 a.m. and cordon off 10 city blocks to do it. And so you remember the timeline of Occupy? Because I think it started in 2009.

No, it started in 2011 in September. Oh, okay. in 09 and no it's it started in 2011 in september okay and the eviction was not that long after that actually it was in november uh middle of november in 2011 yeah it's really fast it's just almost a blip yeah uh i mean it had you know obvious profound political consequences for the u.s and bloomberg is actually instrumental in instrumental in shaping the course of those events when he evicted peaceful protesters

and they had a free library and the NYPD just ripped up the library and dumped it into the East River. Did they really? Wow. I was there for... I wasn't in the Well, I was there for...

I wasn't in the camp, but... They shot one of the books 54 times. Yeah, they all... There's a firing line for the books. It's just like somebody throws a black book in the air and suddenly it's hit with a shotgun. Yes, of course. Well, the way they evicted them

was the alien Gonzalez strategy. They planted a gun on another book. It's out of habit. Yeah. It's totally in keeping with his generally pro-Wall Street bent to have that brutal crackdown. Oh, yeah. It's horrifying. And, of course, you know, like people can argue as to how much control the city has over Wall Street as opposed to state or federal regulators. But his public comments have always been, you know, there was no fraud or no significant fraud on Wall Street.

Again, there's mountains of public evidence to the contrary. And that, of course, he buys into what is the conspiracy theory that Congress created the housing crisis, which they sort of did, but through deregulation, through lack of oversight on derivatives and other products that blew up. You know, it's like very, very small percentage of subprime mortgages actually went through Fannie and Freddie. These were private corporations, the major Wall Street players trying to sell these things to suckers, basically. And I think he has another clip where he basically like the more complex the instruments get that we are tasked with gathering data for, the more of these terminals we're going to keep selling. Yeah, it's very cyclical how he's built his net worth and it's interesting because like there's no like you can't just google bloomberg corruption money because it's like technically all legal to be like well i support

them and they support me and we all make a lot of money but a whole bunch of people get fucked in the process why would you think that? And just like another thing on the financial, so his live-in girlfriend is Diane Taylor, and he helped get her appointed the New York State Banking Superintendent from 2003 to 2007. Again, you can argue how much she could have actually done to stop the financial crisis, but certainly her incentive was not to do anything. Right. And nothing is what she did. And she testified before the Senate in 05. She didn't raise any alarm bells about any of these things she was supposed to be overseeing. I wonder why.

Exactly. You know, it's like when your fucking money comes from Wall Street profits, you're not going to harm those profits by imposing regulations that might kind of strangle growth that is inherently fraudulent and going to explode as it did in 2007. I don't know, you don't know, and the other people don't know. And sorry, just one other fun thing about his girlfriend. In 2011, she was the chairwoman of the Hudson Park River Trust, while also being on the board at Sotheby's. And at that time, Sotheby's had locked out striking union workers for four months. And some of them confronted her at this Hudson Park River Trust meeting. And, of course, they asked her.

You know, they told her stories about how they were losing their health care and these kinds of things and they asked her to use her position as board of a Sotheby's as a board member of Sotheby's to help out the striking workers and she had a very different response I have one thing to say to you I have had one conversation with Bill Ruprecht about this

and I told him that if he exceeds to any of your demands I will resign from the board so of course this is in response to a worker telling her that they are losing their health care they have been locked out of their jobs for four months they want to go back to work right and she says if you exceed to any of their demands by the way their final demand was a one percent pay increase per year over three years yeah and this is a person who like if she resigned nothing nothing controversial happens if

she leaves this group she is not really benefiting it outside of her affiliation with bloomberg and these are uh the sotheby's employees are kind of the um more manual labor that helps move around the paintings you hear sell for $500 million or whatever. You know, so it's like these are blue-collar workers not making a lot of money. She's married to, like, the 10th richest man on earth. Or not married. Living girlfriend. To the 10th richest man on earth.

And it's like, you know, the thing with rich people is they assume any kind of criticism is like an attack on them personally. You've got to really admire her ideological purity. She's really principled. Her commitment to class warfare. You can't say that about plenty of politicians. Fuck me. Good news, guys. Drops are back.

Great. Yeah, they're asking for a 1% raise. Right. She's willing to resign. It's people who are like, hey hey I don't know if I have healthcare anymore I could be dying soon I don't know where I'm going to fucking live if you guys want a livable

wage I will resign like it's like shut the fuck up I don't know I'm so pissed at her that's like we need that extra.003% in our bank accounts we need it to sit up there so we can look at it and move a little bit up on the Forbes list buying one zero zero three percent in our bank accounts right right we need it to sit up there so we can look at it and move a little bit up on the forbes list yeah buying one painting holding it for a year

and then selling the same painting again would like it's a larger margin than their entire demand yeah exactly and it's like it's a decision it's just a yes or no and they're like we're gonna say no because we don't know how much more human dignity you're going to ask for afterwards. It's just fucking ridiculous. By the way, I made the assertion earlier that the idea that Congress created the financial crisis and not Wall Street was ridiculous. We're going to do another episode going more into that on the future. Yeah, sounds great. I know somebody's going to get pedantic in our comments section.

I'm going to talk about... It's insulting to America.antic in our comments section. I'm going to talk about... It's insulting to America. The Bloomberg family is interesting. He has a sister that I mentioned earlier, Marjorie Bloomberg Tyven. Tyven? Yeah. Of House Lannister. Yes, right.

She is the commissioner for the UN Council of Corps and Protocol. According to a New York Times article article an important but little known job as new york city's liaison to the un overseeing a staff of a dozen all right so here's the thing she doesn't get paid to do this job so it's not a job uh it's a volunteer program that she uh has a great title for but more importantly there's like no information on this sister like you can look up the world of how bloomberg uh lived and did his shit and what school he went to and stuff but marjorie's got zero information and it's one of those things where the rich continue to hide their secrets which is bullshit um i i always just assumed they had a

massive anti-pr campaign that just turns them visible they're're like, what if I told you I could make you completely meaningless to the outside world? He has two daughters, Georgina and Emma. And Emma is like kind of smarter than Georgina, according to Georgina. Why would you think that? But Georgina, what's interesting is she's a philanthropist like everyone else in the Bloomberg family. She rides horses a whole bunch. She calls it being a professional equestrian. One of her charities is like basically if you want to ride horses, you've got to buy some rich-ass, bitch-ass clothing.

And people that are broke can't afford it. So she basically donates her old clothing uh to an organization uh i can't remember the name of it because uh why would i remember the name of a piece of shit like that but the best thing about georgina imagine like a family and a shelter that's trying to get pushed out by like mayor bloomberg and like a little girl just has like a a bloomberg uh riding helmet on she's sitting on a spring cot. Yeah, right. While her parents sob over eviction papers.

The best thing about Georgina is that between 2011 and 2013, four books were released, and they're young adult horse fiction. Is it the erotic kind? The covers make it look like they're fucking a horse. I'll tell you that right now. My favorite thing is like there's a lot

of Amazon reviews and a good chunk of them are like this book sucks. Maybe she got into horses because her dad is the height of a jockey. In like a few videos of her bloomberg um just like talking about her horses it's very like this is matrisimone uh she's a horse from europe and it's like she's describing horses with more love than her father's ever shown for her like it's very very apparent um oh just one other thing on bloomberg's kind of conflict of interest so after the financial crisis uh senator jim webb um circulated an amendment to slap uh a 45 tax

on wall street bonuses in excess of 400 000 from any firm that dipped into the uh tarp fund you know the wall street relief program from the federal government after the financial crisis so of course bloomberg circulated a memo to members of the New York congressional delegation urging them to oppose this. And he said, quote, While I understand the emotional and political appeal of such an amendment, a dispassionate analysis, dispassionate, of course, doesn't include how much he benefits from Wall Street promises

and these kinds of things. A dispassionate analysis reveals just how unfair it would be to New York and how badly we would be hurt at a time when we can least afford to lose jobs and tax revenue. And of course, this is... That's one of my favorite things to hear from like a billionaire is you'll see it a lot.

Like Bill Gates says it too, is just sort of the thing where it's like, everyone says things are so bad now, but they're just being emotional right it's a guy in a car with heated seats and a full jacket being like why is everyone cold outside yeah even the pinker type like uh the world uh violence has decreased you know oh yeah since since 100 000 years ago yeah yeah it's really great now meanwhile he just bloomberg is wiping his ass with 500 euro notes like this is just a lot of emotion going on right now and again this is like 45 tax on bonuses in excess of 400 000 this is a

tax on the richest of the rich only at firms that are receiving bailout money. The people who need it most. Exactly. The real victims of the financial crisis. Webb's amendment was eventually defeated because, you know, it's the United States Senate. What do you expect? But anyways. So I guess we can talk about homelessness as well, because that's really the other part

of the conflict of interest, where homelessness drastically increased under Bloomberg's term. I think it doubled. It increased, I believe, by 66. Oh, wait. It increased 69%. Oh, my God. Nice. Since Bloomberg took office.

That's where he stopped it? Yeah. I think it was in his final year, and it was like, you know, 45%, and he's like... We can do this. Come on, guys. He was like, he sent out a department-wide directive, like, let's get it up 420%. Wall Street bonuses have increased 420 puff puff pass. Oh, man. All street bonuses have increased 420 puff puff pass.

Oh, man. So, yeah, Bloomberg's homeless policy, like he's had plenty of controversial policies, you know, stop and frisk, all that kind of stuff. And he likes to take credit for making New York prettier and such. But really the most, I think, atrocious aspect of his uh tenure as mayor was establishing the 3-1-1 hotline that's actually there's actually a little interesting tidbit about that i'll get to in a minute but um is so yeah there was just an explosion of homelessness under bloomberg and i think people can argue and i'm sure the bloom Bloomberg administration did argue that it had to do with the recession. That we wish it was a literal explosion. Right.

There was the recession and there's, of course, rising property values. So it's like before we started researching this episode, I thought Bloomberg was at, you know, kind of more like a negligent actor. Like homelessness increased. He didn't really give a fuck but it's like once we started researching this it's like no he actually pursued policies that exacerbated homelessness because the bloomberg administration believed homelessness was caused by laziness right yeah if you look at most of bloomberg's like homelessness quote initiatives uh they occur before and after the uh i mean everything occurs before and after something but like they occur either in the years before the um the housing crisis or significantly after the housing crisis like after

2010 when we were in a quote recovery like homelessness kept going up in new york city and it was definitely deliberate policies by bloomberg like he he basically when he came to office um he wanted to get people out of shelters because apparently keeping someone in a shelter uh costs 36 000 a year and he was known as kind of this this strong um this strong kind of like fiscal guy who you know fixed up the budget for socially liberals fiscally conservative right yeah yeah very fiscally conservative um and you know apparently he put some of his own money into the new york budget uh but also he just like along with that he just in the name of helping the budget, just gutted a bunch of homelessness programs.

Let's see. He also initiated the program where he would pay for you to fly, if you're homeless, to a family that would take you in anywhere in the world, basically. So if you're like, I'm homeless, but I've got family in Wichita. He would pay to fly you out there. And it's like, hey, if homeless people have people willing to take them in, like a flight helps, but also, I don't know, how about just taking care of them and then letting their family come and pick them up type of thing. Like, what are you doing? It's sort of displacing poverty.

He's like, oh, okay, well, you know, there's a homeless problem in New York, so let's make them a burden on someone else. Right, right. That's one of their chief exports. Yeah, homelessness export. Say what you will about Bloomberg, but... And also, these were first-class tickets he was offering. I just wanted to...

This is bringing a lot of business. Giuliani was known for busting homeless people, but Bloomberg took them to the skies. It ruined the MTA, but... So when Bloomberg came into office he claimed that um the shelter program what one of the big problems of it was that it was available to everybody and a quote from him was you can arrive in your private jet at kennedy airport take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system and walk in the door and we've got

to give you shelter which it turns out that's a huge problem yeah yeah and people say being worth 52 billion dollars detaches people from reality and during this time he bloomberg said that the city's taxpayers just cannot go subsidize everybody's rent uh and he then urged uh city residents to call their lawmakers and have um and get them to end uh end a lot of the payment for shelters, just telling their lawmakers, we ain't going to do this anymore. That was his thing. The thing is, when he says the city taxpayers

can't go subsidize everyone's rent, at the same time under Bloomberg, there was a massive building boom, which if you visit New York City, it's just staring you in the face. There's massive skyscrapers everywhere that basically function as money laundering vehicles for Russians or basically any kind of billionaire

who wants to stash their money away. Okay, Rachel Maddow. It's, apparently the Census Bureau estimates that 30% of all apartments in the quadrant from 49th to 70th Street between Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue are vacant at least 10 months a year. this and sean knows a lot more about it is that like uh when people buy condos in these massive like you know money laundering places they end up paying about 100th of the property taxes that regular people do so they pay almost nothing in property taxes like these one of them in um i forget the one of the massive towers 157, which has a roof that's higher than the World Trade Center. The 89th and 90th floor condo split between the two sold for something like $100 million or $90 million. And they paid $17,000 in property taxes, which is an effective tax rate of 0.017%.

Yeah, it's nuts. What? Which is an effective tax rate of 0.017%. What? Yeah, it's nuts. There's like a system of abatements and exemptions, particularly for developers, that almost always they're touted as helping, you know, keep low-income residents or whatever. But there's really no enforcement system that checks to make sure that developers are actually providing these low-income units. So they just say they're providing this or that low-income unit, and in reality, it's just this huge giveaway to building developers in the form of tax abatement, tax exemptions. And then there's the whole tax class system, which we'll get into in a future episode. But the long and short is like a tax class one property is a single family or one to three family residential that has caps on how much property tax assessments can go up. But the thing is a one to three family residential in Manhattan has these same caps as one in East New York. So it's like a lot of properties in very high value areas are getting undervalued by these kinds of uh classifications and they uh like a lot of these

investors and developers are essentially like when they make a decision to buy and hold a property and have thus have no one actually live there there's sort of like uh there's like an option price for real estate like it's not as simple as a supply and demand argument where they where you say like well there's not enough supply so uh that's the reason why price is increasing like no they're just holding it because they want the political situation to to turn in their favor and have it be rezoned right and then that has the effect of like well now there's less housing for everyone else exactly there's plenty of housing stock it's just yeah it's not being used right yeah you were saying that uh play uh that there's like that block that's vacant 10 months a year or something or what were you saying on that

because i've heard stuff like that where there's just like blocks in manhattan where the majority of properties are vacant for most of the year 30 percent have um uh are vacant 10 months a year right and that means that a higher percent could be like you know six months a year this is in the middle of the homeless crisis and like in my perfect world you would just seize these and put homeless people in them but at minimum you can tax uh non-vacant or non-primary residence properties you can slap taxes on it which is what a lot of jurisdictions do but of course this was never pursued by Bloomberg or to the best of my knowledge de Blasio has not either and under Bloomberg rents went from about two thousand per unit in 2002 to three thousand when he left office so that's 50% increase and also wages dropped and so people weren't able to

keep up with rent and that also drove the homeless problem uh on top of that uh there were several programs that were instituted by bloomberg that also pushed the homeless problem one of them was that he um in 2004 he promised to decrease homelessness by two-thirds in five years and instead it increased by 60 wow fuck. Fuck yeah, dude. What a fucking piece. But so I got to find some of the programs. Well, something we could talk about is Advantage, which was a subsidy for subsidized rent that I believe Bloomberg implemented in 2007 as a way of shifting away from the shelter system because, as we've mentioned, Advantage would give people, I think, $10,000 a year, whereas shelters cost like $36,000 a year approximately. So they pushed this Advantage in 2007, but then, of course, he defunded it.

So as of 2014, according to the Gotham Gazette, 8,500 families were pushed back into the shelter system as a result of the collapse of Advantage. Overall, it's like a much less efficient system, even on his own terms of trying to shore up the budget. Exactly. So it's like because – do we have the clip of the director of homeless policy? Yeah. But it just kind of like shows you their attitude, which is that homeless people are lazy or not working.

When, of course, you know, many of the Advantage recipients were working and many homeless people are working. Well, it's really, it's especially insidious since now they have to say, well, we now spend almost a billion citywide on homeless programs, whereas before we spent much less and got much more now so weren't you saying steven that um uh they kind of transferred control from the federal government to the state and city government for the homeless problem or at least they did something with the fha well they um the original case for getting onto the short-term rent assistance program that you're talking about was that the fha program was too uh it wasn't well i mean this is the real reason this probably wasn't in line with his ideology yeah yeah i'm trying i mean if you just give someone a house well it's yeah it's uh you know one of the fha properties right uh yeah and it's kind of a thing where uh the state and local government move away from this federal assistance which of course you know the federal government has a lot more money

they can print money as well and it goes to the state and local governments which had to slash their budgets as a result of the recession um so a lot of people were left stranded so one of the things that uh bloomberg trying to implement was a strategy called rapid rehousing, which would essentially move people from shelters to permanent if they didn't place a certain number of people in permanent housing, it would cut their funding by up to 5%. Alpha. Basically putting them under the gun. which is basically a reference to halfway homes, which are these for-profit housing complexes that will just get filled with people who are coming from shelters. They're generally not much better than shelters.

They're falling apart, a lot of them. They're rife with basically grifters who will take people's government checks and then not pass them on to the landlord and then skip town stuff like that and people who are operating these houses will throw out tenants for such things as

calling 311 what really? if they call 311 to report the heat's not on or that kind of thing yeah yeah and basically the idea is after I think it's two years, their Medicare reimbursements will run out. And so, oh wait, six months or nine months.

And so that gives them incentives to push people out. And essentially people just go into these houses, get kicked out of them and have to go back into the shelter system. Almost in a revolving door kind of way. Well, and the whole thing is just a lack of empathy. Did we find the clip yet? This is Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond speaking at the new school.

We must reject the misconception that a rental subsidy is the only ticket out of shelter. The evidence is clear. Most families can work and want to work. I think by evidence, he means the ideology. Bloomberg also said at one point, you never know what about his like, he tried to shut down the Advantage advantage program which also would help like secure people in um in their own apartments after leaving shelters but he would say you never know what

motivates people uh one theory is that some people have been coming into the homeless system the shelter system in order to qualify for a program that helps you move out of the homeless system wow so in his mind people are taking advantage of homeless resources to stop being homeless you know those freeloaders he said that quote while he was wearing platform shoes while standing in line to ride a roller coaster that he wasn't tall enough for um oh just another horrifying thing on the homeless stuff so he uh basically proposed uh slashing advantage and all these other cuts in the homeless stuff in uh 2010 um and uh there was a rally that i watched but basically a bloomberg administration report at that time as of 2010 found there were 3 800 minors homeless in new york as of 2010, with hundreds of them prostituting themselves in order to survive.

Wow. And knowing that, this was the Bloomberg administration's own in-house report, he still proposed cutting street outreach in half, later completely eliminating it, drop in centers in half, and then, of course, he slashed the Advantage rental voucher, which, as we've mentioned, threw 8,500 families back into the shelter system. He also tried to limit emergency sheltering, which, you know, when you need to go to a homeless shelter, it shouldn't be an emergency. But that was actually struck down by the New York State Court of Appeals, which, when a state court... They were like, like you know i haven't really looked at the constitution

but i don't think you're allowed to let people freeze to death so he went from some of the lowest cost options that got people homes quickly like the fha units right or even the temporary assistance and like a lot of those to like the highest cost which And then went to the highest cost. Yeah, it's so stupid. It's a reflux back to the shelter system. It's just based on hatred of the homeless, where it's like it didn't even save the city or the state money. It cost them more to increase the homeless problem. Because with the FHA, I don't have the budget in front of me,

but I'm sure some of those costs are taken on by the federal government. It'll be on our Tumblr. Yes. Yeah. We'll look this up later guys we did too much research no but it's crazy though that like once again bloomberg's uh altruistic nature seems to be that oh he put efforts into making society in new york better but then very quickly after a little bit of research you go oh no he just kind of halted it and then propped it up and then

re-halted it. Right. It ultimately comes down to, in his mind, he's a billionaire. He's a, quote, self-made billionaire. So to him, it's like, oh, everyone responds to these pure capitalist motives. If you give people incentives, they will respond to this incentive. Basic behaviorism type stuff.

Like if the rat gets zapped, it won't, it won't bite the thing that zaps it anymore. Right. And then he, you know, extended that to, cause that's basically how he sees homeless people.

Yeah. If you're walking around, we should be able to stop and frisk you. And if you don't like it, I mean, that's on you. I mean, I don't see what's wrong with invading your personal space because you could be a criminal,

especially if you're black or brown. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that also took off. We haven't talked about that yet, the Stop and Frisk, where it was kind of a program that existed before Bloomberg but just took off under him. And he claimed it was for firearms, though he later had a quote towards the end of his reign as mayor

that was like, there's no way of knowing just how many firearms we took off the street from stop and frisk go fuck yourself and it's like yes but i don't think that means what you think it means yeah and there's a great news report where he's talking about stop and frisk and he's like defending it to the nth degree you want to play the drop yeah also he didn't allow the creation of new shelters i believe just to tie into the yeah of course yeah you're fine you're right you know so here's we did the research i wanted to get into the microphone i get it i understand here's here's what bloomberg had to say about stop and frisk and uh it's targets in that caseally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities

too little. Thank you very much, Yogi in the post. But like, I mean, what's crazy is how he is a megalomaniac and also is a piece of shit and also his daughters aren't that hot

and it's like, if you got that money yeah sex them up well yeah so uh we're kind of wrapping up and there's again like with all these guys there's too much to talk about but um real quick i want to do one last thing uh there's the news uh uh report of like he would use this helicopter dock that was supposed to be closed on the weekends but uh and it's funny because, like, yes, okay, that's wrong and Bloomberg shouldn't do that, but the people complaining also have a view

of a helicopter dock in the water. It's like rich people complaining about rich people. Oh, yeah, no. On the news report, you could tell these people were worth millions. Yeah, right, right.

Just bitching about Bloomberg making helicopter noises while they're trying to fucking enjoy their Charlie Rose program or whatever. But so one thing is like a lot of defenders of Bloomberg will point to his philanthropy. And he's one of the billionaires who signed the giving pledge, which is the idea to give away at least half their wealth, which would still leave him with $25 billion, but whatever. A measly $25 billion. Just enough to live on.

But there is something inherently insidious, especially during the time he was mayor, about that giving, where there are lots of nonprofits in New York City, including Coalition for the Homeless, which was very brave of them to criticize him so vociferously and bring such attention to the problem of his homeless policies because nonprofits do take money from the Bloomberg philanthropies.

And, of course, when the mayor, when so many of these nonprofits rely on that money in New York, they're not going to criticize the mayor because that's biting the hand that feeds them. So his philanthropic givings become another lever of his power. And there's just all these corrupting effects that money has that, you know, is not really talked about in these contexts. Bloomberg is the richest politician in the world, probably in history. the reason that he is able to you know multiply his net worth so much is because who would criticize him

how could they survive and on top of that like you know when his biggest criticizers are people that have less than a percent of his net worth he's bulletproof I mean like you can't stop that why would you think that well I guess just to wrap up, I think everyone here should check out Coalition for the Homeless.

They do a lot of great work. Yeah, they were a great resource. Yeah, they definitely highlighted just what Bloomberg has done in this administration. And, you know, we didn't even really get to Bloomberg's promotion of charter schools. You can look up all the criticisms of Success Academy and how basically education is being privatized throughout the country. But New York City with Success Academy was really the, what do you want to call it, the lab in which this kind of experiment spread. You know, there's these charter school boards that are private boards that are controlling education instead of public input for however flawed the public school system is. But they're using public money for it. Of course, of course. Private control with public money.

The socket to me? And also, just like one other fun thing, as we mentioned, his administration definitely neglected Queens and Brooklyn and some of the other poorer areas. 19 hospitals in the city closed during his time as mayor. He didn't get involved saying, quote, the reality is you can't have a hospital on every corner. What? And just one other thing, The average wait time in Queens for a hospital bed is 17 hours. Oh my God.

I know. That's one problem we have is having too easy of access to healthcare. You can't have a hospital on every corner, but you could have a Starbucks. Yes, of course.

And a Citibank. And a Chase Bank. And a Duane Reade. Right. And certainly a Bloomberg Terminal. And we didn't talk... I mean, anything else to really get through when we wrap up here? Well, I think lastly, I do want to mention, I'm pretty sure Bloomberg does not eat the butt. He's a good admirer.

I don't think he can even get up that high. Nope. He eats the toes. Yes. So on that, buenos noches. We'll be back next week. Thank you for listening.

Toodles. Thanks. Suck it, dude. The mayor's comments infuriated many. They couldn't believe what he said. The asshole Michael Bloomberg crippled the whole city by closing down the subway.

No businesses could open because nobody could get to work. Overkill. Very big mistake. Another blunder by Bloomberg.