Why Bloomberg will and should be Obama's VP.

Here's Why Bloomberg should be Obama's VP!

1. Economic Genius - Bloomberg worked his way up from having next to no money to being one of the richest men in the world. After graduation, he took a $9,000-a-year job as a Salomon Brothers clerk, made sure to arrive earlier and leave later than anyone else and worked his way up to partner. Then he started Bloomberg LP with 10 million dollars and grew it into a 20 billion dollar juggernut. He earned 20 billion dollars through smart investments and a brilliant understanding of the economy. He predicted the oil shortage, housing and mortgage crisis years before others did, unfortunately no one was listening. This is a great selling point considering our recession. Just having Bloomberg on the ticket would add a lot of financial chops and feasibility to Obama's plans.

He used this tremendous wealth to create the world's second largest charity. He also raised $50 million in private money, including some of his own millions, to fund a pilot workfare program.

Yet he gave up control of his billion dollar company in order to take over as New York's Mayor after 9/11 and Guliani left New York with a defecit, a debt, a looming recession and high unemployment. His policies turned the city around from the economic hit it took on 9/11.

Major crime has dropped 30% in New York in the Bloomberg era, without the racial antagonisms of the Giuliani era. Test scores and graduation rates are up, unemployment is at a record low, welfare rolls are at a 40-year low, construction is booming, the deficit has become a surplus, and the city's bond rating just hit an all-time high of double-A. As Mayor, he has driven crime down, rebuilt neighborhoods, kept the streets clean, overhauled the schools and more. New Yorkers are even living longer than they used to.


2. He has a long history of implementing Innovative Brilliant Ideas That People Though Couldn't Work but Wound Up Working...

a.) Years ago, he said that gas prices were going to explode, and introduced a controversial plan to switch all of New York's cabs with hybrid that get excellent milage. And he pulled it off! Now New York City's cabs are all hybrids!

b.) He saw obesity and heart disease as major problems and introduced what many people at the time claimed was an unfeasible plan that gradually banned ALL transfats in all foods sold in New York. New York is such a huge corporate market, that by implementing this, Bloomberg forced McDonalds, Burger King, Fritos Lays potato chips and all other junk food companies to switch away from all transfats, if they want to be able to sell their product in New York. Whether you realize it or not, thanks to Bloomberg, regardless of where you live, you have been eating all junk food and fast food that are free of transfats. Have you noticed any difference in taste? Didn't think so. But you've been eating healthier without even realizing it.

c.) He passed a similar plan banning smoking in all public places in New York. Air pollution went down, and when other key cities saw from Bloomberg how large scale smoking bans can feasibly be implemented, they adopted his identical plan in London, Paris and other cities. They are also now following his same model to replace all public transportation with hybrids in their cities.

d.) Similarly, Bloomberg implented very targeted gun laws to reduce violent crimes that republicans initally oppposed through out New York. And now violent crime in New York is lower than it has been in decades!

e.) He's recently started implementing brilliant new plans to provide housing and employment for the abject poor and the homeless, and implementing what was at the time a merit based plan to improve student's performances in school. Both plans are showing early signs of success.

f.) He broke with 200 years of tradition by rearranging city hall into a bullpen modeled on a trading floor, with his desk in the middle of 50 aides. (Perhaps transparency breeds loyalty, because his senior staff has barely changed in six years.) His office also seems to be the most productive mayor's office in New York City's history.

g.) He has been making many efforts to reduce emissions. "The naysayers who think global warming is too big a problem just don't have any vision," he repeatedly says. Washington rejected the Kyoto Protocol, but more than 500 U.S. mayors have pledged to meet its emissions-reduction standards, none more aggressively than Bloomberg who initially led this Mayors initiative. His PlaNYC calls for a 30% cut in greenhouse gases by 2030. It will quadruple the city's bike lanes, convert the city's taxis to hybrids and impose a controversial congestion fee for driving into Manhattan.

All of the above were controversial plans when introduced. Bloomberg inherited a tough situation. The city was hemorrhaging jobs after the Sept. 11 attacks, and Giuliani's second-term spending spree had left the city in a financial hole. Bloomberg raised property taxes 18% to attack the deficit, and he made some modest but politically difficult spending cuts, including the closing of several firehouses. He also engineered a hostile takeover of the city's troubled schools and banned smoking in the city's restaurants and bars. His approval ratings sagged into the 20s; his constituents booed him at parades. "They'll come around," he told aides.

And just as he said, he bounced back from poison-ivy approval ratings to easy re-elections in influential places when his controversial policies began to work exactly as he said they would. He now reportedly tells his advisors when introducing these plans, "What good is a 70% approval rating if we don't take risks?" So far, that rating hasn't budged. Bloomberg isn't just a technocrat, he's an extraordinarily good one, a quality that you see all to rarely.

He took on predatory lending in New York years before politicians realize how big a problem it was. As a philanthropist, he's funding research designed to eliminate malaria by building a better mosquito.

After he announced new restrictions on campaign donations ?- the tightest in the nation ?- Bloomberg was asked if he was being hypocritical, since he had spent more than $150 million of his own money to win two elections. "I would suggest that before anyone runs for office, they should go out and become a billionaire," he replied. "It makes it a lot easier."

As you can tell from above, he has a long history of fighting for and getting implemented results-oriented, merit-based arguments. Which is exactly what the next President will need in developing plans for, say, health care or Social Security reform.

He adds to the ticket instant economic credibility, a deep résumé and a claim to results.

There's a good view of Bloomberg's problem solving from the roof of the 123-unit building Ken Haron just developed in Harlem. That neighborhood was once a national symbol of urban decay ?- drugs, violence, all the classic inner-city problems ?- but now its main problem is that it's so desirable, its housing is unaffordable. And in recent decades, the feds have stopped building subsidized housing. So Bloomberg has leveraged private money for a $7.5 billion effort to create 165,000 affordable apartments, enough to house the population of Atlanta. It's already one-third complete. Haron charges some tenants market rents of about $3,000 a month, but he has to reserve 80% of his building for lower-income families that won lotteries to pay as little as $700 for apartments with the same granite countertops. On the roof, Haron points out similar mixed-income projects in every direction: "That one's in the program. So is that one. That one's condo; it's ours too." Its penthouse is for sale for $1.7 million, but moderate-income families will pay $250,000 to live in the same building. "There's stagnation at the federal level, so we had to get creative," says Bloomberg's housing commissioner, Shaun Donovan.

To Bloomberg, Washington means gridlock, extremism and pettiness. It's the place where homeland-security funds were "spread out like peanut butter" for political reasons, so that rural states got more per capita than New York. And it's the place that's blocking him from cracking down on illegal guns. In 2005, after a rash of shootings, Bloomberg's aides told him that 90% of the illegal guns used in local crimes came from out of state and that 1% of U.S. gun dealers supplied 60% of its crime guns. And the Bush Administration had stopped tracking the problem; in fact, the G.O.P. Congress had enacted N.R.A.-backed language restricting federal officials from sharing gun-trace information with local police. Bloomberg appealed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales but got the brush-off. So the mayor hired investigators to run stings in gun shops nationwide and sued 27 of the shadiest dealers; a dozen are now under court supervision. He also started Mayors Against Illegal Guns to fight the information-sharing restrictions; the group has recruited more than 220 mayors in a year, but Congress has not reversed the policy. "Ultimately, you have to blame the public," Bloomberg says. "They're not holding Washington accountable."

If not Bloomberg, Jim Webb would make an excellent choice too imo.