Payola gone mad with Michael Bloomberg, Should those endorsing candidates hide that they have been paid by them?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign is hiring hundreds of workers in California to post regularly on their personal social-media accounts in support of the candidate and send text messages to their friends about him. . . . 

To staff the effort, the campaign is hiring more than 500 “deputy digital organizers” to work 20 to 30 hours a week and receive $2,500 a month, the documents show. Those workers are expected to promote Mr. Bloomberg weekly to everyone in their phones’ contacts by text message and make daily social-media posts supporting him, the documents show. . . .

The whole Payola scandal was that radio stations played songs without letting people know that they were being paid to run those songs. The irony is that the Democrats who pushed for banning Payola and yet they haven't attacked Bloomberg.

Michael Bloomberg is flip-flopping on lots of issues.

While people are focusing on Michael Bloomberg's changing positions on "Stop & Frisk," there are actually a lot of other issues and as I have time, I will add to this list.

Marijuana -- 

Then: "Three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg harped on the importance of vocational education and blasted Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana as stupid Friday evening before a sold-out crowd at the Aspen Institute.When an audience member asked the 72-year-old Bloomberg about Colorado marijuana, he responded that it was a terrible idea, one that is hurting the developing minds of children. Though he admitted to smoking a joint in the 1960s, he said the drug is more accessible and more damaging today." 

Now: “Mike believes that further scientific study is required to assess the health effects of marijuana. In the meantime, he believes that no one should go to jail for smoking or possessing it,” the Bloomberg campaign said in a 13-page policy brief.

Minimum wage -- 

Then: "I, for example, am not in favor, have never been in favor of raising the minimum wage." 

Now: "If you work full-time, you should earn enough to live on a living wage. There is dignity in every job and there should be dignity in every paycheck as well," he said at a news conference.Bloomberg released new proposals to create economic opportunity for all Americans. Among the ideas: raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025."To fight poverty, we need to do something even more basic, and that is raise incomes. And we should start with the most straightforward change: raising the minimum wage," Bloomberg said.

Financial Transaction Tax --

Then: "When Washington attacked Wall Street, Bloomberg “stood up for the financial-services industry,” without any prodding from the business community" 

Now: "Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday proposed a financial transaction tax (FTT) as part of a wide-ranging financial reform plan the billionaire former New York City mayor unveiled ahead of Wednesday's debate.Bloomberg is proposing to work with Congress to implement a 0.1 percent tax on transactions for stocks, bonds and derivatives. He is calling for the tax to be phased in over time, starting at 0.02 percent, to limit any unintended consequences, according to a document from his campaign.

Marijuana legalization

Then in 2019: legalizing marijuana “perhaps the stupidest thing anybody has ever done.” 

Now: wants to decriminalize the possession of “small amounts” of marijuana and commute the sentences of certain convictions.

Social Security --

Bloomberg is now advocating for small targeted increases in Social Security benefits after repeatedly calling for cutting benefits over the past eight years. As recently as 2015, he compared AARP’s opposition to Social Security cuts to the National Rifle Association’s opposition to gun control, . .  .

“So does the AARP. Somebody suggested we change the age when Social Security kicks in in the year 2050. They went crazy, it would hurt their members. How many members of the AARP are going to be around in 2050? Come on.” . . .

Any additional examples are appreciated.

Bloomberg really is clueless: his latest comments on farming

Bloomberg's quote on Farming

"I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer. It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that. Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98 percent of the world worked in agriculture, now it's 2 percent in the United States. Now comes the information economy and the information economy is fundamentally different because it's built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter."

My write up at Fox News:

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign slammed Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt. for circulating a 2016 video of Bloomberg’s comments on farming in which he said, “You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.” Bloomberg’s campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said that the comments were “completely out of context.”

The problem is that the rest of Bloomberg’s comments don’t help him. Take his comparison to the information economy.

“Now comes the information economy and the information economy is fundamentally different because it’s built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.”

Despite what Bloomberg might think, the notion of replacing people with technology is not unique to the information economy. It has been true with farming from the beginning. When someone learned to harness animals to help plow the field that was a technological advance that made it so you didn’t need as many people to plant the crops. Bloomberg cavalierly says, “you dig a hole,” but there is technology behind that. In 1566 in Italy, Camillo Torello patented the first seed drill for planting seeds. Jethro Tull refined it in 1701 in England.

There are also other issues in harvesting a crop. In 1793, Eli Whitney had the invention of the cotton gin, which allowed one to remove the seeds from the cotton fibers, and it dramatically revolutionized cotton farming. No longer did you have to employ armies of people to remove the seeds from the cotton fiber by hand.

When Cyrus Hall McCormick invented the mechanical reaper in 1831, he revolutionized harvesting grain, which became much faster and easier. Even for these inventions, it wasn’t like there was just a one-time change as people were constantly figuring out ways of improving on them. People went from using sickles to reapers to harvesters, which is a machine that heads, threshes, and cleans grains all while continuously moving across the field.

Despite what Bloomberg might think, all these inventions replaced people with technology.

Bloomberg might believe that his business is unique in requiring “you have to learn how to think and analyze,” but, whether one is talking about farming today or a hundred years ago, farmers need many skills, and a great deal of analysis is involved. To say you just “add water” sounds more straightforward than it is. The process may involve irrigation, which in turn requires engineering skills. Figuring out how to fertilize crops, guard against disease, and pests all involved creativity. Farmers had to be able to fix their machinery, take care of their animals, manage books, and run a business.

Sheekey also attacked Sanders because he needed to recognize that Bloomberg was talking about an “agrarian society.” Today’s farmers might have to have many different skills than those from a couple of hundred years ago, but that doesn’t make the problem any different. So today’s farmers might have a greater knowledge of chemistry and biology, but that doesn’t mean that the same challenges didn’t previously exist and that even if a farmer couldn’t tell you the exact chemical content of a fertilizer back then, he would still have to figure out what worked best for his soil and how to change things over time as certain nutrients were used from the soil over time.

Indeed, in many ways, technology has made being a farmer much easier today than it used to be.

But there is a simple response to Bloomberg’s claim. If Bloomberg were somehow transported back to living on a farm in 1700 or 1800, without any help, could he have successfully known how to grow crops and handle livestock? Unless he secretly took classes at Johns Hopkins on animal husbandry, it is doubtful. I certainly wouldn’t know what fertilizers to use and how to rotate crops or take properly take care of the horse that pulled my plow. And I doubt that Bloomberg would understand that either.

“I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer…you could learn that,” Bloomberg claims. But, ironically, despite his boasting, if Bloomberg got transported back to run a farm a few hundred years ago, he would likely fail. He would end up working for someone else on their farm.

"Survivors of Church Shootings Run as Gun-Rights Candidates: Three men in Texas are seeking public office in March’s Republican primaries"

Stephen Willeford who stopped the 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs Church shooting.
Pastor Frank Pomeroy, who lost his teenage daughter, in the Sutherland Springs Church shooting.
Jack Wilson who stopped the West Freeway Church of Christ shooting near Fort Worth.

All three are Republicans. They are following in the footsteps of Suzanna Hupp, who served in the Texas state House.
In Colorado, the state House minority leader, Patrick Neville, was a student at the Columbine High School attack.

Here is a Wall Street Journal article on the top three and a long list of Democrats who have run for public office after these types of attacks.