Americans Elect (AE) is an organization that intends to qualify for the 2012 presidential ballot in all 50 states, then field a presidential slate through an open nomination process on the internet.

I took note of the organization when they received favorable coverage after “de-cloaking” a few weeks ago. Realistically, we can expect “Americans Elect” to have as much impact on the 2012 election as their predecessor organization “Unity08″ had on the 2008 election. Which is to say – none. They can probably be safely ignored until such time as they show some real traction.

Still, this is an organization that proposes to dramatically change the way we select our President and they appear to have the financial support and the legal wherewithal to succeed with their ballot initiative. As such, it is prudent to take a deep dive into Americans Elect representations and bylaws, ask questions, and look for unintended consequences. Some bloggers are already working this beat.

Jim Cook of Irregular Times is skeptical and has been frustrated in his attempts to get his questions answered. Sol Kleinsmith of Rise of The Center (and occasional contributor here) is more favorably inclined, has been promised an interview, and is soliciting his readers for questions to ask the organization. It should be an interesting interview.

An interesting artifact of the Americans Elect proposed process for nominating and electing our president surfaced in one of the RoTC threads. Here is the scenario – Let’s say American’s Elect has successfully obtained ballot status and fielded a credible presidential candidate in 2012. They lose the election but win a plurality in one or more states and consequently neither the Republican or Democratic candidate have a majority of electoral votes. This is a plausible scenario (unlike actually winning the presidency for an AE candidate – which has a zero probability). While there is no history of a third party candidate winning the presidency, they have on occasion won the electoral votes for one or more states. One could easily envision an AE candidate with a strong geographic appeal winning a plurality in a state and securing their electoral votes as a favorite son. In that circumstance AE would make the decision between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates for the entire country.

Americans Elect anticipated this scenario in their bylaws:

9.4.2. Coalition Agreement. The Americans Elect ticket receives fewer popular votes nationally than the ticket of at least one of the major political parties and the Americans Elect Delegates have convened in convention after the popular vote but before the Electoral College vote and endorsed a candidate of either major political party on such terms and conditions as may be reflected in the vote of endorsement, in which case the person serving as Elector shall vote solely in the affirmative for the endorsed candidate and for no other candidate.

This says Americans Elect intends to reconvene an on-line convention and through a vote of their delegates (theoretically any registered voter who opts-in – including me) decide whether the Republican or Democratic candidate will be our president. Specific details of how this AE re-convention would take place are sparse, but lets just take AE’s representations at face value and look at this through the prism of a hypothetical scenario:

It is November 7, 2012. A plurality of the people of New York state have voted to put their confidence in AE candidate Michael Bloomberg. In a close election, neither Democratic candidate Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney have secured a majority of electoral votes. New York’s 31 electoral votes will now determine who will be president.

Not all of the registered voters of New York are AE delegates. They voted in a general election for a candidate – Michael Bloomberg. Yet by AE bylaws, Michael Bloomberg is now sidelined and will not decide how to cast the New York electoral votes on behalf of the people of New York. Instead, it is the Americans Elect delegates who will decide whether Obama or Romney receive New York’s 31 electoral votes and the presidency. As a practical matter, the people of the state of New York will be completely disenfranchised in the 2012 electoral college vote. How do you think they will feel about Texans, Floridians and Californians deciding whether their 31 electoral votes will be cast to make either Obama or Romney president? If clearly understood, would any New York voter to take that risk?

These are rhetorical questions. The answer is obvious.

In their haste to put together bylaws for their ballot initiative, AE may not have thought through the political ramifications of this provision. Assuming they get on all 50 state ballots and come up with a credible candidate, they can easily be undone by this provision alone. It is just too easy to run against. If an AE candidate shows any strength in any state, the consequences of an AE win in that state will be shouted from the rooftops by competing campaigns, bloggers, pundits, partisan of both parties, and the mainstream media. The message is simple and easy to communicate: The state will be disenfranchised in the Electoral College if the AE candidate wins that state.

From a tactical political campaign perspective, this is the equivalent of leading with your chin in a boxing match. I suspect that AE has a glass jaw and it would not take much of an uppercut to put them on the canvas. I have to believe that once Americans Elect realizes this problem, they will change these bylaws if they can.

If nothing else, this is a cautionary tale on the importance of transparency and the need for a deep dive when vetting those advocating new ways to elect our president. If the top gun political public relations professionals that run AE missed something like this, you’ve got to wonder what else they missed.

The Devil is in details and the details need to be out in the open where we can look for the bugger.

^{X-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall.”}

^{You just can’t keep a good 501(c)4 corporation down.}

A “new” national organization focused on the 2012 presidential election uncloaked their semi-stealth operation over the weekend. After receiving special access to the organization, columnists Tom Friedman and John Avlon were released from their press embargo and obligingly wrote fawning reviews. Others were a bit more circumspect.

Americans Elect is a 501(c)4 corporation. This means they are not required to disclose donors. The reader may be more familiar with this particular corporate classification within the context of the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision. Citizens United was a 501(c)4 corporation.

Taken at face value, the objectives of the organization are novel, ambitious and exciting. They intend to qualify for the 2012 Presidential Ballot in all 50 states, then field a presidential slate that is nominated through an open process on the internet by means of a virtual on-line convention.

Getting on the ballot in fifty states for any third party is a Herculean task. Kudos to Americans Elect for taking the challenge on. Given the legislative roadblocks and partisan landmines used by the the two party duopoly to ambush third party electoral efforts, it is easy to rationalize the need for well-heeled donors to kick start the effort. As it turns out, Americans Elect secured some well heeled New York donors to kick start the effort. We don’t know who they all are because, you know, Americans Elect is a 501(c)4 corporation and they are not telling us.

Taken at face value and considered in a vacuum while looking at them sideways and squinting slightly, one could get excited about this new high-concept high-tech initiative to reinvent our political process. Problem being, this is really not a new organization, and we have some recent history to consider, and considering that recent history, we learn we cannot take what they say at face value.

Americans Elect is Unity08, or more precisely – they would have been Unity12 until they got the shiny new name. Unity08 started at about the same time as I started my blog. I subsequently burned a few posts chronicling the Unity08 journey through the ’06 midterms and the run up to the 2008 presidential election.

In early 2008, well before a promised internet convention to nominate a “unity ticket” for the presidential election, Unity08 suddenly went up in flames and shuttered their site. Miraculously, only days later, the DraftBloomberg.com site emerged phoenix-like from the ashes, using the same address, infrastructure, a domain purchased a year earlier by Unity08, and staffed by many of the same people. This led some to speculate that the entire enterprise was nothing more than a Bloomberg stalking horse from the beginning. Cynics. Anyway, after Unityo8′s rather unseemly demise (chronicled at the Donk here and here – be sure to check the particularly entertaining comments), I considered them dead and buried. Certainly I did not expect to see or hear from them again.

Surprise.

Jim Cook of the Irregular Times has been obsessively stalking this particular white whale since it’s inception, and brings us up to date:

• The corporate address reported by Unity08 in the first half of 2009: 1775 Pennsylvania Avenue Suite 1212, Washington DC 20006
• The corporate address reported by the Unity12 Task Force in the second quarter of 2010: 1775 Pennsylvania Avenue Suite 1212, Washington DC 20006
• The corporate address reported by the renamed Americans Elect in the third quarter of 2010: 1775 Pennsylvania Avenue Suite 1212, Washington DC 20006
• Americans Elect is the intentional extension of Unity08, as Americans Elect Chair and Unity08 Director Peter Ackerman made clear when sitting for a deposition in a lawsuit filed by Unity08: “If Unity08 is successful in this litigation, Unity08 has a clear and definite intent to resume its activities — renamed ‘Unity12′ — for the 2012 presidential election. The ‘Unity’ mission remains as critical today for the 2012 presidential election as it was in 2006 for the 2008 presidential election.” The only matter Ackerman didn’t anticipate was the name change from ‘Unity12′ to ‘Americans Elect.’

So here we are. Americans Elect, backed by a bucket load of New York mystery money, is hiring petition gatherers, fighting expensive legal battles, and doing the hard grunt work necessary to get on the ballot in all fifty states. All in order to field a presidential candidate – To Be Named Later. So – if you are considering putting your idealistic heart and soul into this brave new political operation, make sure you understand exactly what you are getting into.

Americans Elect is almost certainly the Mike Bloomberg for President campaign. They probably need to maintain the Americans Elect facade to keep their 501(c)4 status. But if Mike Bloomberg is not heading their ticket in 2012, I expect Americans Elect will go the way of Unity08. Now, if you want to see Bloomberg run as a spoiler in 2012, by all means – sign up. As for me, my views about this organization has not changed since January, 2008:

“Unity08 had over 120,000 members and raised about a million dollars. Not much by presidential campaign standards, not as much as they wanted, but nothing to scoff at. Actually, I liked the idea of a Hagel/Bloomberg Unity08 candidacy, which is why, although dubious, I signed up as a “delegate”. I feel bad for those who put their heart and soul into the effort, as they have been treated rather shabbily by the organization. The whole thing smells so manipulative, so contrived and betrays such cynical contempt for the Unity08 supporters that I would find it difficult to support Bloomberg now.”

Look – I like Mike Bloomberg. Under the right circumstances, I might even be tempted to vote for him for President. But not as a 3rd Party candidate in 2012. He could not win but he could garner significant support and, like all “successful” 3rd party presidential candidates, function as a spoiler.

My guess is that in 2012 he would be more likely to pull votes from Obama than the Republican candidate. I’d have preferred that scenario in 2008, as we might have avoided the subsequent disastrous two years of Democratic One Party Rule. However, I am also not interested in seeing a return to equally disastrous One Party Republican Rule in 2013. The GOP will probably take control of the Senate in the 2012 election. Reelecting Obama is the only sure way to retain our happily divided government.

Sorry Mike. Let me know when you start hanging around with a better class of 501(c)4 corporations.

^{X-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall”}

Big time speech today from the guy who definitely has his eye on the White House.

Here’s the video…

I’ll offer the transcript below after my analysis.

Personally, this feels disingenuous from a guy like Bloomberg who has repeatedly used the government to regulate New York City businesses and consumer behavior six ways to Sunday. Not that I’m opposed to many of his moves, but the idea that he’s setting up this canard of “between a government that would stand on the sidelines and one that would take over the game” is pretty transparent.

Let’s remember, Bush started the bailouts. Obama merely finished them. And, by the way, the government recently sold its stake in Citigroup and turned a $12B profit. Obama doesn’t want the government to be overly involved in the private market, and his administration hasn’t taken any sort of active, day to day role in the corporations we bailed out. This is not a statism approach. And yet Bloomberg is positioning it as such. That’s unfortunate and I expected more from Mike. Oh well.

But what this type of rhetoric tells me is he wants to run in 2012. Imagine a third party candidate who is literally one of the most trusted and successful businessmen in recorded history. And he’s held elected office. And he’s a moderate Republican who is really a Dem, but who’s paying attention to labels these days.

Another theory…he wants to force Obama’s hand to adopt his policies.

Whatever the reason, Mike knows he has a seat at the table and he’s not letting that go to waste.

Here’s the transcript…

**************

MAYOR MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG OUTLINES SIX CRITICAL STRATEGIES TO TACKLE UNEMPLOYMENT, SPUR JOB CREATION AND BRING ABOUT LONG-TERM ECONOMIC GROWTH

Mayor Bloomberg’s Remarks as Prepared for Delivery at a Breakfast at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Co-Sponsored by the Association for a Better New York and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Follow:

“Thank you, Bill, for those kind words – and it’s a pleasure to welcome everyone to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which we’ve turned into one of the most successful, private sector urban manufacturing districts in the country.

“This is the place where America used to make battleships – the Maine, the Arizona, the Missouri. And now, the private companies you see out these windows make everything from the kevlar vests worn by the U.S. Army’s special forces to the Sweet and Low that you just put in your coffee.

“We’re here this morning to discuss the most pressing and immediate challenge facing our country: helping more people get back to work. The national recession that began in 2008 hit New York – like everywhere else – hard. And today, many New Yorkers are still feeling the pain.

“But over the past 12 months, New York City has been leading the nation in private sector job growth. In fact, our economy has grown twice as fast as the country’s – and eight times as fast as the rest of the state’s. Our economy has grown faster than any other major city’s in the country – and none of that growth has come on Wall Street. Since last October, we have added 55,000 private sector jobs – in industries with average salaries between $35,000 and $92,000. These are middle-class jobs – in accounting, engineering, advertising, health care, retail, tourism – even construction. Here at the Navy Yard, we’ve added 2,300 jobs over the past eight years, and we’re set to add 3,100 more over the next three.

“The economic policies that we have pursued to drive this growth have been neither left nor right, liberal nor conservative. Despite what ideologues on the left believe, government cannot tax and spend its way back to prosperity, especially when that spending is driven by pork barrel politics. Federal spending to stimulate the economy had a temporary, positive impact – but we are two years past the economic meltdown of 2008, and unemployment is still too high, the underlying economy is still too weak and the federal deficit is still rising too fast.

“At the same time, despite what ideologues on the right believe, government should not stand aside and wait for the business cycle to run its natural course. That would be intolerable, given the enormous unemployment we face, and the worsening job prospects for the 15 million people who are trying to find work.

“Government is not an innocent bystander in the marketplace, and it should not pretend to be. In the face of the current economic weakness, government must act: decisively, responsibly and immediately.

“For New York City to continue our growth, we need our federal and state governments to chart a middle way – between a government that would wash its hands of the problem and one that seeks to supplant the private sector; between a government that would stand on the sidelines and one that would take over the game.

“This is not to say that we should try splitting the difference between Democratic and Republican positions – that’s thinking too small. While it’s true there are no simple solutions to complex problems, fortunately there are solutions that can get us out of this mess, that can be embraced by those across the political spectrum, and that can start us on the road to long-term sustainable recovery.

“Common sense solutions that are straight-forward and relatively cost-free: things we can do together, to put people on private payrolls and encourage new investment; things that increase personal opportunity, instead of dependence on taxpayer bailouts and taxpayer handouts; things that encourage entrepreneurship and attract global talent and capital.

“By taking these steps, we can do a far more effective job of unleashing capitalism’s most powerful force – innovation. Unless we innovate, we cannot hope to succeed. And if we do innovate, there is no way we can fail.

“The current barriers standing in the way of innovation and job creation are much more political than economic. We need change, and whether the recent elections will be a cure for America’s economic problems – or just another symptom of our dysfunctional politics – remains to be seen.

“What is clear is, though, is that the country is growing more and more frustrated with government’s inability to keep America prosperous and fair and more skeptical that the jobs we need are coming soon. As families struggle to get by, they have seen little but partisan gridlock, political pandering and legislative influence-peddling. Finger-pointing, blame games, and endless attacks. Put simply: when it comes to creating jobs, government hasn’t gotten the job done. The central defining issue of the day is jobs, and that is what government at all levels must be focused on. Washington and Albany are not working, and as a result, too many Americans are out of work, out of savings and out of patience.

“Last month, voters turned against Democrats in Washington for the same reason they turned against Republicans in 2006. Democrats now, and Republicans then, spent more time and energy conducting partisan warfare than forging centrist solutions to our toughest economic problems. This abdication of responsibility has many causes, including party primaries that take place in gerrymandered districts where moderates are out-numbered and independents are often excluded. Bloggers and partisan pundits feed a 24-hour news cycle that values conflict over consensus, rewarding people at the extremes who scream the loudest.

“The result? Both parties follow the mood of the moment – instead of leading from the front. They incite anger instead of addressing it – for their own partisan interests. They tell the world about every real or imagined problem in America – and not what is right with America. Especially in these tough times, we need our leaders to inspire the whole country – not criticize half of it.

“It’s time to take a step back and ask ourselves: when did success become a bad word in America? When did cooperation in government become treason? The new ‘politics as usual’ is making a mockery of our democracy – and a mess of our country. We’ve got to stop it – because we’re paying a heavy price. In fact, right now, we are falling behind the world in education, technology, economic opportunity – even life expectancy.

“This can’t go on. We’ve got to pull together, and focus on what’s important for America – and then roll up our sleeves and fix the things that need fixing. This is the greatest nation on earth – the Shining City on the Hill as Ronald Reagan called it. And I believe, as Bill Clinton said, that there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

“Our freedom, our ingenuity, our work ethic, our creativity, our openness to new ideas and new people, our belief in a better tomorrow – these are the qualities that have allowed us to confront and overcome the toughest of challenges. And these are the qualities that elected officials at the local, state, and federal levels must work to unleash right now. To do that, we need to shift course. We need those in government to stop demagoguing and start delivering.

“The conventional wisdom that the two parties hold diametrically opposed beliefs on how to promote economic growth is simply wrong. It’s very encouraging that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have reached a compromise agreement to extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits – and it’s proof that bi-partisanship really is possible in Washington. But this cannot be the end of bi-partisanship – it must be the beginning. Cutting taxes is easy enough – cutting the deficit is another story. The Deficit Reduction Commission offered a good start, but it’s disappointing that Congress is choosing not to debate its recommendations. We can’t afford to keep pushing these tough decisions off. We need more than a commission, and more than lip service. We need results. And not next year or the year after – but now.

“Forging bi-partisan agreements around economic issues is not easy, but I believe common ground exists not only on tax relief and not only on deficit reduction but on many other areas that drive job creation. Lying at the heart of that common ground is an idea that has the potential to fire our economic engines by sparking the powerful economic force I mentioned at the outset: innovation.

“Throughout American history, innovations combined with government investment have created fundamental and lasting structural changes to the economy that spurred new private sector investment, new jobs, and new prosperity for the country. For instance, after the financial panic of 1819, it was New York Governor DeWitt Clinton who built the Erie Canal – ushering in a new era of westward development and growth. In the 1860s, with the Civil War tearing the country in two, Lincoln’s transcontinental railroad set the stage for America to fulfill its manifest destiny, by opening new markets and allowing private sector innovations – in industries like steel and oil – to drive a new era of national growth. When the country was seemingly near collapse in 1907, it wasn’t long before people like Henry Ford pioneered mass production techniques that ushered in a new age of industrial growth, with government building new roads, bridges, and tunnels to support it.

“President Roosevelt’s New Deal helped mitigate the Great Depression. But it was the aftermath of World War II – which saw the development of new industries like aircraft technology and nuclear energy – that gave birth to the modern economy. When the G.I. Bill of Rights opened college to the working class for the first time in history, ‘The Greatest Generation’ – using the infrastructure created by FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower – built the strongest, most advanced economy the world has ever known. Then, when recession came in the late 70s early 1980s, we climbed out of it with the help of technologies – like microchips and lasers – that gave rise to entirely new industries, and millions of good-paying, high-skilled jobs. At the same time, America made big investments in basic science and let the free market work its wonders.

“After the recession of the early 1990s, the internet – which originated from both public and private investment – launched a boom that has revolutionized the world. And today, cell phones have shown the potential to alleviate more global poverty – by empowering users to tap into commerce, education, health care, and information – than any government or private aid program in history.

“What are we doing to unleash innovation today?

“The answer is, unfortunately: not enough. Unfortunately, very little of the stimulus package passed in Washington promotes innovation. Very little of the health care bill passed in Washington promotes innovation. And the Obama administration will have to be very careful to make sure that the financial services bill passed this year doesn’t hinder innovation.

“Creating an innovation-based economy means linking our policy and spending decisions to economic goals – not political goals. ‘Shovel-ready’ projects is a nice political slogan, but it is not an effective long-term economic recovery strategy – or even a strategy for addressing unemployment. Most of those shovel-ready projects require physical skills that the unemployed don’t have – and in most cases, those jobs are only open to members of trade unions. The same is true for many of the so-called “green jobs” that the stimulus bill supported.

“We need strategies for putting people in all industries back to work, doing jobs they have the skills to do – or that they can learn. And that means the federal government must do more – right now – to create the conditions, and pursue the strategies, that will lead to more private sector investment.

“The good news, I believe, is that these engines for growth are not liberal or conservative – left or right. They are made-up of centrist, fiscally-responsible measures that majorities in both parties should support – and I’ll briefly touch on six of them. You might call them the Six Steps to Economic Recovery and Job Creation. And they are the very same six steps we are using here at the Navy Yard and across the five boroughs.

“First – and this is an easy one – instill confidence.

“Building confidence is a big part of getting the private sector to invest. There is much pessimism in the system because there is much uncertainty about what Washington might or might not do – on taxes, regulations, and policies. And that uncertainty breeds economic paralysis. Banks have money but are reluctant to loan. Businesses have money but are reluctant to invest in new equipment or new hires. Families, fearing a double-dip recession, are reluctant to spend. The potential for progress is there but nothing is happening. Why? Because government solutions ooze ambiguity.

“Right now bureaucrats in Washington – at the direction of lobbyists – are writing thousands of regulations over the health care and financial services industries – the ‘fill in the blank’ sections in the bills that Congress passed this session. Writing these regulations will probably create more jobs for lawyers and accountants to interpret, explain, and evade than the number of real jobs created by the legislation itself. With billions of dollars at stake, this process has chilled economic activity. We need certainty, rationality, consistency and predictability in the rules of the game. Improving individual business confidence is the most powerful way to stimulate the economy – and best of all, it’s free.

“One of the reasons why New York City has been leading the nation in job growth over the past year is that people have confidence in our City’s future. In fact, fewer people left New York City in 2009 than in any other year since these records first started being kept in 1991. Why are more people staying – and coming? Because they believe in New York. They believe in our future. They want safe streets, good schools, beautiful parks, exciting cultural opportunities – and mostly, they want career opportunities. And they know that no other place in the country is delivering as much in all of these areas – as consistently and effectively – as New York City. And so – even through the worst national recession America has faced in decades – people are continuing to move to and invest in our city.

“Second: Promote trade.

“New York City was founded on international trade, and it is the reason why we became the country’s largest and strongest economic engine. The more trade we do with foreign partners, the more markets we create for domestic producers, the lower the prices we pay for the goods we buy, and the better off we all are.

“I was glad to see President Obama travel to India to make the case for investment here. We need our federal representatives to be salespeople for America – not just in India, but in China, the Middle East, Latin America, and all over the world. Most governments around the world take attracting foreign investment, and selling the products they make at home, to be one of their primary responsibilities. Our state and federal governments, too often, take it for granted. And too often governments do even worse: they block overseas companies from investing here, and selling their products here.

“Protecting domestic industries from foreign competition is a sure way to stifle innovation and job creation, as our experience protecting the American auto industry sadly attests. The trade agreement the Obama Administration has hammered out with Korea, which should win support from a majority of both parties, would help create jobs in our most promising industries, while also allowing American consumers to save more of their paychecks.

“America is still a nation of producers – but what we manufacture has changed. Instead of making t-shirts and televisions, we now make products that require greater skill – from designing fashions to writing software to creating content for the media and arts, like here at the Steiner Film and TV Studios. The more international markets we can open up for these products, the more jobs we can create here at home. And if we don’t get into those markets, other countries will. Already, more and more of those who have been competing on wages are now competing on skill, and that’s a competition we can’t afford to lose.

“Third: Reform regulations.

“It’s not that we need more regulation or less regulation – it’s that we need smarter regulation – regulation based on what companies do today, not what their industries have been called for decades.

“Today, derivatives are as important to agricultural and insurance companies as they are to banks. But they’re all regulated by different government agencies that are dominated by lobbyists, guided by partisanship, and overseen by a laundry list of legislative committees. And as we all know, government agencies inevitably become more consumed with their turf and their power than with the quality of service they provide to their customers. Legislatures inevitably layer more and more rules and regulations on the agencies, carefully tailored around the needs of industries that support their re-election campaigns.

“Here in New York City, we’re tackling the challenge head-on, by re-thinking the entire way our agencies interact with the public – so that an agency’s work is focused around its customers, not its rules.

“We need more of this approach at both the state and federal level. We need to re-think and re-build government with the consumer in mind – that is, the American workers and taxpayers, not bureaucrats and special interests.

“Four: Cut business taxes.

“High federal business taxes can lead companies to move operations overseas – look at how tightly Ireland is clinging to its low corporate tax rate. Similarly, high local taxes can lead businesses, and business leaders, to move out of state.

“It’s very encouraging that this week’s compromise agreement between the White House and Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts also cuts taxes for companies that invest in new plants or equipment. It’s critical that Congress pass these cuts so that new spending and new investments can create new jobs.

“In New York City, we’ve cut taxes for 17,000 small businesses and sole proprietors, which has given a real boost to businesses just getting off the ground and it helps encourage more out-of-work New Yorkers to launch their own start-ups.

Five: Invest in job training.

“We’ve seen what a difference it can make here in New York City. Up until 2004, our Workforce One Career Centers were placing about 500 New Yorkers in jobs a year. Last year, in the depth of the national recession, we made 25,000 job placements – a fifty-fold increase. And this year, we’re on track to reach 30,000 job placements. How did we do it? We did it by completely revamping our Workforce centers, by connecting our job-training programs to our economic development programs and offering training in the skills that companies are looking for now – not five years from now. By doing this, we’ve been better able to connect the supply of labor to the demand for labor. And we’ve also improved access to our training and placement services, by expanding the number of centers and their hours of operation.

“Today, we are announcing that we will open 10 new Workforce One Express Centers across the City over the next year. The Express Centers will focus exclusively on screening and matching jobseekers to jobs – and they will partner with community colleges, public libraries, and neighborhood organizations in areas where there are high concentrations of unemployment. Our goal is to increase job placement to 35,000 in 2011, and to 40,000 in 2012.

“Cities across the country have expressed interest in our approach – and the federal government is wisely funding the replication of our approach in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and parts of Ohio. But it could help many more unemployed people by opening more centers like ours around the country, especially in areas with high concentrations of unemployment.

“Making sure that companies are able to hire the people they need brings us to our sixth and final step: Fix immigration.

“There is nothing we could do to unleash innovation and job growth that would be more powerful than fixing our broken immigration system. Right now, our immigration policy is a form of national suicide. We educate the best and brightest from around the world, and then we tell our companies that they can’t hire them. We ship them home where they can take what they learned here and use it to create companies and products that compete with ours. The rest of the world is thanking us! They’re doing everything they can to attract those very people – and we’re doing our best to help them.

“Any person with the skills our companies need ought to be able to work here. And any entrepreneur with capital to invest ought to be able to immigrate here. Immigrant-owned companies have created over 400,000 jobs nationwide since 1990 – and one-quarter of high-tech companies founded in the U.S. since 1990 have had immigrants as founders. The next generation of immigrant entrepreneurs is waiting in the wings – and letting them in would be one of the best ways to start solving our unemployment problem.

“In New York, we know the economic power of immigration – because we see it every day. Nearly 40 percent of city residents were born outside the U.S., and beyond the cultural, religious, and civic contributions they make to our city – they do something else: they work. They start businesses. They create jobs. They pay taxes. We need more of that, not less.

“Here at the Navy Yard, we took advantage of a federal program that provides a green card to anyone who is willing to invest more than $500,000. That helped the Navy Yard attract $60 million in new investment – and now Steiner Studios has used the same program to attract another $65 million to fund its expansion.

“We want even more foreign capital to come here – so that more jobs are created here. The federal government could do that very simply: by making it easier to qualify for the program. And it should go further, by creating a new visa that allows immigrant entrepreneurs who have U.S. investors to come to America to launch their businesses. Any elected official who says he or she is pro-business ought to be able to get behind this idea.

“Even if the road ahead for comprehensive immigration reform may be tougher in today’s climate, the two parties ought to be able to join together in making it easier for businesses to hire the people they need. Right now, there are many high-skill jobs that American companies cannot fill, because they cannot find the workers – and other companies are struggling to fill low-wage jobs that Americans will not take. Family reunification is a compassionate goal, but when it comes to assigning visas, we can no longer afford to disregard the needs of our businesses. Allowing companies to far more easily hire and keep the best and the brightest and the hardest-working would be perhaps the most powerful economic stimulus package Congress could create. It would not cost a nickel, and most importantly, it would help businesses expand and hire more unemployed Americans.

“In New York City, we have made innovation the centerpiece of our economic development and job creation strategies. Whether it’s the small business incubators we’ve created in industries ranging from food service to fashion or the investments we’ve made in large bioscience labs or the infrastructure we’ve funded here in the Navy Yard and around the City, we have created the conditions that incentivize private investment, encourage entrepreneurship, and attract global talent.

“That is not a liberal or conservative approach to job creation – it’s an effective approach. And it’s an approach we need more of at the state and national level.

“We don’t have all the answers here in New York City. But we do understand that if we embrace our strengths as a country – our entrepreneurial foundation, our culture of innovation, our world-class higher education system, our freedom and social mobility, and our diversity – if we embrace these strengths, we can grow our economy, create jobs, and reconstitute our broken system. If we make the choice to commit to these goals, we will have the change we want.

“We all know that hard choices await us – at every level of government. Here in New York we faced similar tough fiscal choices following the devastating attacks of 9/11. Back then, we made the tough decisions. They weren’t always the popular decisions – but they were the right decisions. And they laid the foundation for the City’s resurgence.

“Today, we again have our future in our own hands. We can blame others or we can put our nose to the grindstone and get back to work. We can keep kicking the can down the road and allow the country to fall farther behind, as we have in recent years or we can face up to the hard choices and do what Americans have done so well in the past: Pull together, remembering who we are, and why our ancestors came here.

“Hard-working New Yorkers inspire me every day – and I believe in the American work ethic and the American Dream more than ever. We are strong as a nation and resolved as a people and if we act and seize this moment, we can continue to be the greatest country ever brought forth in this world.

“Thank you.”

I suspect that I am the only political blogger who has not yet posted about the mosque/not mosque expected to be built/not built in a location somewhere near/not near ground zero in New York.

I have avoided this issue thus far because I feel a lot like this guy – or this guy – or perhaps like William Shakespeare – “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.“ I see this as little more than a excuse by partisans and bloggers on both the right and left to flog their favorite bogeymen in the hope of securing a minor political advantage. The significance of this story is just not worth the ink and electrons spilled on it.

But, that has not stopped anyone else, so let me make my position on this question perfectly clear – This blogger stands firmly with Michael Bloomberg, Grover Norquist, Chris Christie, Joe Scarborough, Michael Gerson and Barack Obama (Friday, 8/13/10 version) in support or indifference to the location of the Cordoba project mosque – and stands in opposition to Harry Reid, Howard Dean and Barack Obama (Saturday 8/14/10 version) who do not explicitly support the location of the Cordoba project mosque.

In America, in matters of religious tolerance, there should be no close calls, no qualification of primary principles, and the first amendment should not be location dependent. I am not sympathetic to the distinction of “rights” vs. right which strikes me as a Clinton-esque parsing for those looking to rationalize forcing the Cordoba Project to move the mosque/cultural center.

I”m going to make this easy on myself and crib extensively from a previous post invoking the views of a founding father whose words are as relevant now as they were 230 years ago.

Thomas Jefferson writing in the third person, in a letter to Dr. Jacob De La Motta on the occasion of the 1820 dedication of a synagogue in Savannah, Georgia:

His short letter speaks to both the intent and core convictions of an architect of our country and constitution. Consider the pride and importance that Jefferson invests in the principle of religious freedom and diversity in this letter. He finds it “gratifying” that our country was the “first to prove to the world” the “two truths” that are the most beneficial to human society - “that man can govern himself”, and absolute “religious freedom” is the only answer to “religious dissension”.

Andrew Sullivan reminds us that Islam was explicitly included in Jefferson’s message of tolerance. He quotes from Jefferson’s autobiography where Jefferson expands on the intent of the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom – “Jefferson On The Toleration Of Islam”:

Finally in a letter to Moredcai Manuel Noah, Jefferson notes that while protection of religious freedom under the law is a necessary condition, it is not sufficient to ensure tolerance and the fair and equitable treatment of all religious belief.

The work of religious tolerance was incomplete in the time of Jefferson, and remains incomplete today. Religious intolerance is an issue that every generation of Americans must face anew. As Americans of good will fought for the principle of religious freedom at the beginning of the American experiment, it falls to Americans of good will in each generation, of every religion, race and creed, to ensure that in their own time their generation remembers and understands that – as regards religion – “divided we stand.”

To wrap this up I will invoke a poet/philosopher of our own time – Mojo Nixon. While these lyrics were written in response to another civil libertarian challenge, I don’t think Mojo would mind my applying them here…

^{Cross-posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall}

UPDATED & EDITED: I added one word to the body of the post. You find it.

You’ll never see what happened last Tuesday looking through a two-party microscope! Nope. You need an independent historyscope to get this one!

I had the pleasure of hearing independent strategist Jackie Salit give her analysis of the November elections on Sunday night on her regular national conference call which is attended by around 150 activists around the country every six weeks.

Jackie is a long-time independent activist based in New York City, the president of the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (aka IndependentVoting.org), the executive editor of the Neo-Independent Magazine, and the campaign manager of Mike Bloomberg’s Independence Party campaign. She’s someone I follow very closely — and so should you if you care about independent politics.

A statement released by the campaign via email on Wednesday after the election said: This year, the IP delivered 13% of the total votes cast – the largest percentage ever by a minor party for a cross-endorsed mayoral candidate.

The Hankster (my blog) and Donklephant (where I am a guest blogger), in addition to The Independent View (NYC IP activist Michael Drucker’s blog) and the NY Daily News’ Brawl for the Hall blog seemed to be the only media outlets that even referenced this astounding result from the election. And then today, I caught Maine’s independent mayoral candidate Alex Hammers’ post on The Moderate Voice “Independents are a Sleeping Giant“, and a note by Robert Steele on his Public Intelligence Blog.

In the CUIP conference call, Jackie emphasized that, far from being the “margin of victory” for Bloomberg’s win as an independent in NYC, the vote on the IP line was the foundation of the campaign. At a time when the votes of both major parties Dems and Repubs went down, the 15 year old grassroots Independence Party doubled its vote.

It is indeed wonderous that no other media picked this up.

But if your framework is a bipartisan — indeed partisan — system, you don’t pay a lot of attention to the margins, no pun intended! You don’t see what’s happening on the horizon. You’re not looking to the future — you’re looking to the past and how pollsters have been able to parse the vote based on prior elections. Polls are supposed to be predictive. They’re interesting, and we all follow them. But predictive?

You’d have to have a 6-billion-person polling operation to figure that one out. And still, you’d get it wrong because what the NYC mayoral race points to is the power that independents have as an organized force. It’s something like what the unions used to call “strength in numbers” when we still sang Solidarity Forever and meant solidarity forever for everyone.

Old-fashioned as it may be, independents in NYC have banded together, we have talked with each other, we have made endless phone calls night after night year after year, we have fought back against a stupid and vicious state party chair, we have constituted 5 county committees under state law that are directed by a collective 94-person executive committee, and have inched our way forward into NYC politics as players.

We just led New Yorkers to elect our first independent mayor.

In my book this is something that ordinary people can be proud of. And that ordinary people — nonpartisans — all over the country can learn from and emulate.

And indeed they are. Take Joelle Riddle in Durango CO, a former chairwoman of the La Plata County Democratic Party who won her post in 2006 with party support and decided to go independent in August, would have to run as a write-in candidate after inadvertently missing a deadline to change her registration.

“I seek to remedy this burden that falls unequally on small political parties and independent or unaffiliated candidates, unfairly discriminating against them and not affording them the same privileges as the major political parties,” she wrote in a statement announcing her decision Tuesday.

Partisan politics isn’t the future of our country, but the search for an independent alternative might be.

You/we independents can do it. If we’re organized.

-NH

As we head to Election Day 2009, everyone is talking about the Yankees and the Phillies. And a few people are talking about the Mayoral race in NYC, where independent candidate Mike Bloomberg is poised to become the first independent mayor of New York, running on the Independence Party (Column C) and Republican lines. But not Karl Rove. Kind of a big omission, don’t you think? Check out Jon Noltie’s Examiner article. However, other independent and Independence-backed candidates in New Jersey, New York and Virginia are soaking up the ink. See today’s news for independent voters below:

• Tuesday’s Elections and the Democratic Agenda (By KARL ROVE, Wall Street Journal) A year ago, Democrats crowed that Mr. Obama had reshaped the political landscape to their advantage. Voters have lived under Democratic rule for nine months, and many of them, especially independents, don’t like what they’re seeing.
• Strength of independent candidates indicates GOP missing opportunity (Columbus Republican Examiner, by Jon Noltie) In 2 of the 3 most watched electoral races this year, the GOP stands a good chance of losing due to the strength of independent candidates, in addition to not even fielding a candidate in the New York City mayoral race.
• Dividing And Conquering In State Races (John Zogby, Forbes)
• Quinnipiac Sees a Different New Jersey Race Than Rasmussen, PPP (National Review)
• Corzine Up 5 Points In New Jersey Gov Race, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Governor Tops Christie On ‘Honesty’ Score (Quinnipiac) Corzine leads 79 – 8 percent among Democratic likely voters, with 10 percent for Daggett. Christie leads 79 – 7 percent among Republicans, with 9 percent for Daggett, and 45 – 30 percent among independent voters, with 20 percent for Daggett.
• NJ Gov Poll: Corzine Takes 5-Point Lead (RealClearPolitics)
• Daggett: Republican urged him to quit gov’s race (The Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer)

More news for independent voters at The Hankster

Commentary by Jackie Salit

NOTE To Donklephant Readers: This article by independent strategist Jackie Salit came across my desk and I thought it was too good not to share in full with you. -Nancy

When we finally get far enough down the road on health care reform, it will become clear that a driving force in the intensity of the fight was a heart attack. Not the medical kind. The political kind.

Independents swung decisively to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And it is this shift by independents – who repositioned themselves from center-right to center-left – that gave the Republican right the political equivalent of cardiac arrest.

In 1992, 19 million independents voted for Ross Perot. In 2008, 19 million independents voted for Barack Obama. Over the span of 15 years, the largely white, center-right independent movement re-aligned itself with Black America and progressive-minded voters.

This did not happen out of the blue. It did not happen by magic. It happened because the progressive wing of the independent movement did the painstaking and often controversial work of bringing the Perot movement and the Fulani movement together at the grassroots. The Fulani movement refers to the country’s leading African American independent, Dr. Lenora Fulani, who exposed the black community to independent politics and introduced the independent movement to an alliance with Black America.

No doubt the dramatics that the right wing brought to the Town Hall meetings this summer were intended for the television cameras. But the organizers, strategists and radio personalities who orchestrated the theatrics had a particular audience in mind: Independents. If they could tarnish Obama’s image with indies, they could damage the black and independent alliance and re-establish the Republican Party as an influential force amongst independents. Some of that could be accomplished, they felt, by claiming Obama’s health plan would drive up the national debt – a concern that animated the early Perot movement. Some Republican strategists felt that if they simply branded Obama a socialist, it would scare independents away – not from the health care plan (everyone recognizes a plan of some kind will get passed) but away from the center-left coalition that elected him.

If indies are feeling somewhat disillusioned with President Obama over the health care reform fight, it has more to do with fears that he is being overly influenced by the partisans in Congress. Since independents voted for him to be a more independent president, it’s easy to see how some felt disappointed by his handling of the Republican onslaught. Obama’s independent appeal was based on his challenge to the prevailing culture of Clintonian opportunism in the Democratic Party and partisanship inside the Beltway. Put another way, the independent vote for Obama was an effort to define a new kind of progressivism, one that was not synonymous with Democratic Party control.

After years of hard work and organizing, independents have become a sought-after partner in American politics. They elected President Obama and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, arguably the country’s two most independent and pragmatically progressive elected officials. No wonder the Republican Party right wants a clawback.

Independents are vulnerable to being peeled away by the Republican right. The Pew Research Center reports that were the 2010 midterms to be held today, independents would lean towards Republicans by a 43 to 38 percent margin. But, the evolution of a 21st century independent movement is not that simple. First, the movement is very fluid and very new. Historical movements develop through twists and turns, not in a straight line. The far right has attempted to take over the independent movement before. In 1994, Newt Gingrich crafted the “Contract with America” to woo Perotistas back into the Republican tent. And in 2000, social conservative Pat Buchanan hijacked the Reform Party presidential nomination, though he was roundly repudiated by independents in the general election.

If Republicans are increasing their influence among independents, it’s also because the Democratic Party Left has not been a friend to the independent movement. Sure, Democrats were happy that indies broke for Obama. But they were disappointed that we didn’t become Democrats. They equate progressivism with being in the Democratic Party. But they’re wrong.

Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic about the development of indies as a third force. For different reasons, surely. But they share a common goal: to maintain the primacy of two-value logic (where there is only one or the other, never neither) and make sure independents are passive companions. That’s one reason that the fight for open primaries – which allow independents to cast ballots in every round of voting – and the campaign to appoint independents to the Federal Election Commission are so important. Those fights are about our right to participate and our right to represent our interests in changing the political culture.

The independent movement went left in 2008, after many years of grassroots organizing to link it to progressive leadership. Now the right wants to peel it back. Obama, presumably, wants to hold on to the partnership, but must also privilege his own party, which turns independents off and makes them more susceptible to Republican attacks. Meanwhile, independents are working hard at the grassroots to hold our own.

Jackie Salit is the president of IndependentVoting.org and the campaign coordinator for New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s mayoral campaign on the Independence Party line.

Independent Voters

• On healthcare and other hot issues: Follow the independents–The number of voters not tied to Democrats or Republicans is expanding fast. Both parties need to adjust. (By the Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board) Were the 2010 elections to occur today, 43 percent of independents say they would vote Republican (in a generic congressional ballot), while 38 percent would vote Democratic, the Pew Research Center finds. That’s quite a shift from 2006, when independents favored Democrats over Republicans, 44 to 33 percent.

Open Primaries

• South Dakota Democrats Will Allow Independent Voters to Vote in their Primaries (Ballot Access News)
• Re-enfranchising New Yorkers (by Richard Flanagan, Gotham Gazette) Voters overwhelmingly rejected Macchiarola’s plan for nonpartisan elections, 70 percent to 30 percent. But only 13 percent of registered voters bothered to show up for the off-year election of 2003, and many had ties to the unions, interest groups and political clubs that benefit from the status quo and know how to pull the levers of the current system to their advantage. They were loathe to expand the electorate and risk the surrender of power.

Independent Gov Races

In an unsettled political environment where voters are exercising independent options, independent candidates like NJ gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett pick up support….

• Poll: New Jersey gubernatorial race a virtual tie (From CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart)
• Daggett gets little help from ballot position (Press of Atlantic City) New Jersey laws reserving the top two spots on any ballot for the two major-party candidates. Last month, Daggett – along with Libertarian Party candidate Kenneth Kaplan – took the step of filing suit against the practice.
• Daggett for guv? Why not? (By ALEX GECAN, For The Trentonian)

Bloomberg 09

NYC Dem machine targets independent run by Mike Bloomberg with 2 darts: money (the Mayor is very wealthy…) and term limits (which the Dem-controlled City Council extended….) Good luck with that! Meanwhile, it’s the NYC Independence and the Working Families Parties that are supplying the spark in this year’s city-wide elections. In a city of 5-1 Dem registration, that’s not good news for clubhouse politics…

• Bloomberg’s Line Dance (BY ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Daily News/Daily Politics)
• Voters Like Mayor, but Not His Path to 3rd Run (By MICHAEL BARBARO, NY Times)
• New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg received the endorsement of the Hotel and Motel Trades Council (From msnbc’s First Read with Chuck Todd)
• After term limit tiff, Bloomberg still gets hotel endorsement (ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, NY Daily News/Brawl for the Hall) The only union with a major field operation that remains unpledged is 1199, which voted for Thompson during the WFP endorsement process. Neutrality is not out of the question for 1199, a union source said.

For more news headlines for independent voters, see The Hankster

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Never one to miss an opportunity, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg may run on the Republican ticket next mayoral election while still remaining a declared independent. Apparently, despite being an apostate to the national party, local borough GOP leaders are willing to let the still-popular mayor put his name on their line.

If you’re keeping score at home that makes Bloomberg a former Democrat turned Republican turned Independent turned quasi-Republican again. In a nation of rigid partisanship, Bloomberg’s ambiguous party affiliations seem almost refreshing. That is if you don’t think they seem downright opportunistic.

I’ve always been rather ambivalent about Bloomberg. He’s smart and a capable manager — party hopping aside, he’s provided stable, middle-of-the-road leadership for New York City. But there’s something uninspiring about the man, a truth even he probably realized when he failed to build grassroots support for an independent run for president. Even those of us in the centrist frame of mind barely gave Bloomberg two looks.

Still, a mayor doesn’t need to play well nationally. New Yorkers like him enough to make his quest for a third term realistic and I doubt many will hold it against him if he shifts (or kinda shifts) party affiliations once again. After all, no matter what letter has sat beside his name, he’s always been the same straight-forward, if not particularly vibrant, guy.

Some tough cuts and tax increases are coming to The Big Apple.

From WCBSTV.com:

“This is a very tough time for our city and nation,” Bloomberg said. “We have a $4 billion budget gap. It is serious, I think it is manageable.” [...]

For now, Bloomberg is proposing $894 million in new sales taxes, including:

-Increasing the sales tax by one quarter of one percent from 8.375 percent to 8.625 percent
-Repealing the sales tax exemption on clothing purchases under $110
-And new taxes on lots of things that are now tax-free, like music downloads. [...]

“I would love to not have any sales tax, it’s not good for business here,” he said.

That’s the mayor’s plan for now, except even he admits it might not be his plan in the end. If the Legislature decides to put a surcharge on the personal income tax for taxpayers who make over $500,000, he told CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer he might piggyback on that.

“We’d have to find a billion dollars more revenue,” he said.

This is obviously risky business. Increasing taxes during a deep recession isn’t necessarily a good strategy because it depresses consumption and makes people save.

But then again, we’re talking about Bloomberg, one of the most successful business men in the world. If he thinks this is the way to go, we may want to pay attention.

More as it develops…

If you thought $700 billion was a lot of money, well..

It is.

But $2 trillion is.. ridiculous.

This is Danielle Ivory from ANP.

Congress and the new administration have been focusing their attention on strengthening oversight for the Treasury’s TARP program, but meanwhile few are paying any attention to the Federal Reserve.

Since September, the Fed has lent out about $2 trillion (Bloomberg reported 1.2 trillion in November), but it’s keeping the names of its recipients a big secret.

And while the Treasury’s bailout package has a $700 billion cap, there’s no limit to how much money the Fed can lend.

The American News Project sat down with Washington newcomer, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), who actually used his five minutes of valuable Q & A time in a Financial Services hearing to do some serious Fed fact-finding.

You can see the story or get the embed code here.

Or follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter here.

And visit Acorn Project for more music like this.

All hail the new Tammany Hall!

From NY Times:

After a spirited, emotional and at times raucous debate, the New York City Council voted, 29 to 22, on Thursday afternoon to extend term limits, allowing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to seek re-election next year and undoing the result of two voter referendums that had imposed a limit of two four-year terms. (Please refresh this post for latest updates.)

The vote was a major victory for Mayor Bloomberg — a billionaire and lifelong Democrat who was elected mayor as a Republican in 2001, won re-election in 2005, became an independent last year, and decided just weeks ago that he wished to seek a third term for himself in 2009 — and for the Council’s speaker, Christine C. Quinn. But the intense acrimony surrounding the decision left a sharply divided Council and could ultimately damage the mayor’s popularity.

After Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who presides over the Council, announced the final result at 4:35 p.m., the balcony erupted in shouts of “The city’s for sale!” and “Shame on you!”

I guess Bloomberg isn’t eyeing a 2012 prez run, eh?

And given the current circumstances on Wall Street, my bet is he’ll get.

MarketWatch has the details…

Bloomberg announced Thursday he supports changing the term limits law to run for a third term. Observers have respected Bloomberg for restoring a sense of optimism to a post-9/11 New York City while encouraging tourists to visit, keeping crime low and bolstering the city’s finances.

Bloomberg’s biggest asset in his audacious quest is the fact that nobody else has emerged as his heir apparent. Plus, he can be seen as a soothing influence on a city that is reeling from the financial markets’ meltdown. He offers practical experience from his years of working on Wall Street. It is a great asset to be able to tell voters that you understand their economic problems and can solve them.

Earlier in the year, Bloomberg professed to be studying a run at the White House. When his term expires, he’ll need a job — and a challenge. He’d love to keep the one he has.

What do you think? Smart move? Is he setting himself up for a 2012 run for President?

(UPDATE: Both campaigns rejected the offer because they don’t want to limit it to just one network. Hmmm…)

Now this is a pretty brilliant move…

The guy who has some of the deepest pockets in the world, and could be a VP for either candidate, wants to use that leverage.

From Politico:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and ABC News on Sunday proposed that the presidential nominees hold a joint town hall as a 90-minute network special from Federal Hall, on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.

Such a joint meeting would be a new twist in the rituals of a national campaign, and would help both candidates promote the message that they want to help put an end to a divisive era in national politics.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has challenged Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to a series of 12 joint town halls, which would be a more casual version of the formal debates that are a traditional part of general-election campaigns. The partners propose ABC’s Diane Sawyer as a moderator.

Obama’s campaign has indicated interest but has committed to nothing.

My guess is that these town halls will happen. Maybe not as many as McCain wants, but quite a few of them and that’s a ultimately a great thing for democracy.

As previously reported, John McCain may be considering New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the vice president spot. One issue: he may be on Barack Obama’s list as well.

The very fact that the exact same man is possibly being considered by both the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees tells us that both sides’ attempts to paint the opposing candidate as an ideological radical are rather disingenuous. While Obama is strongly liberal on many issues and McCain is strongly conservative on just as many, the two men both actively court an image of pragmatism and moderation that makes it hard to believe either is particularly outside the general mainstream. Mayor Bloomberg would give either of the nominees a boost among the large numbers of independents who care more about results and practical programs than about ideological purity.

But who would benefit more from Bloomberg’s presence? I think McCain would. While it’s true that Bloomberg could help Obama shore up the Jewish vote (which he’s struggling to secure), he doesn’t add any foreign policy credentials to Obama’s flimsy resume. Bloomberg would, however, give McCain much needed economic credibility as well as signaling to the nation that this is not a ticket running for George Bush’s third term. Furthermore, since McCain trails Obama in fundraising, it wouldn’t hurt to have a billionaire on the ticket.

One more thing to consider: Bloomberg has a history of supporting the conflict in Iraq, a position that would make him an easier fit with McCain than with Obama and might help mollify the conservatives who’d choke on their coffee over Bloomberg’s socially liberal views.

Nevertheless, despite Bloomberg’s obvious appeal, the reality of politics may end up keeping the mayor on the sidelines. His Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Independent history will disturb power brokers of both parties and his rather managerial personality would make him an even less effective attack dog than was John Edwards. Personally, I’d be surprised to see him turn up on either ticket, but I do expect his endorsement to be strongly courted by both campaigns.

I seriously doubt that McCain would pick Bloomberg, given his many liberal stances.

Still, NY Mag speculates that he’s being actively courted by Arizona senator:

The morning before John McCain’s sprightly turn on Saturday Night Live on May 17, the de facto GOP presidential nominee had breakfast at Sarabeth’s on Central Park South with Michael Bloomberg and his girlfriend, Diana Taylor. [...] A McCain spokesman quoted by the Post added that “discussing a vice-presidential slot for Bloomberg was not on the agenda.” But a source close to the mayor informs me that the topic of McCain’s V.P. search was very much on the menu. One of the participants, in fact, came away from the conversation under the distinct impression that Bloomberg is on McCain’s short list. [...]

“The GOP is losing on the economy by 10 to 15 points,” says Doug Schoen, who served as Bloomberg’s pollster in his mayoral runs. “With Mike on the ticket, that gap would quickly, dramatically close.”

Schoen argues that Bloomberg would help McCain in numerous other ways, too. He would bolster McCain in critical swing states such as Florida, New Jersey (a state the Republicans have hopes of putting into play), and Pennsylvania—and also in California, where the McCain–Bloomberg–Arnold Schwarzenegger troika might compel Obama to spend time and money in a state that should be a gimme. He would enhance McCain’s image as a moderate, a maverick, and provide him with a riposte to the charge that he’s a clone of George W. Bush. (Is there any human being on Earth less like Dick Cheney than Bloomberg?) And if the mayor were willing to plow some of his fortune into the race—assuming election law allows it—he would let McCain close or, if he were feeling generous, eradicate completely the vast disparity between the two sides when it comes to moola.

I still don’t see it. Because if you thought the hue and cry about McCain from conservative circles was starting to get bad now, just wait until he appoints a statist as his 2nd in command.

He’s arguably THE most business savvy politician ever, and here’s his opinion on the Clinton/McCain proposal…

“It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view. I don’t understand why you think there’s any merit to it whatsoever. We’re trying to discourage people from driving and we’re trying to end our energy dependence. We don’t do that — oh, and incidentally, we’re trying to have more money to build infrastructure. All three of those things go fly in the face of giving everybody $30 a year. The $30 bucks is not going to change anybody’s lifestyle. The billions of dollars that we would otherwise have in tax revenues can make a big difference as to what kind of a world we leave our children.”

Bloomberg praised officials who opposed the “summer break on gasoline taxes which would help Chavez, Qaddafi and other people like that. I don’t know why anybody would want to do it.” He went on to say critics like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver were right. “And,” he added, “[Barack] Obama was right on this one, and that [John] McCain and [Hillary] Clinton were wrong. The last thing we need to do is encourage people to drive more and to take away the monies we need for infrastructure in this country.”

But hey, $30!!!

Well, looks like Bloomberg keeps popping up in the conversation…

From NY1:

In an interview on “Inside City Hall” Friday night, Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey promoted the idea of an Obama-Bloomberg presidential ticket – and revealed that Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke Thursday with the Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama.

“Certainly you could joke that Obama’s call was a fundraising call yesterday,” Sheekey told political anchor Dominic Carter. “The man [Bloomberg] has the ability to finance a campaign. I don’t think that’s why you choose a vice president. I do think that people are going to be very concerned about the influence of special-interest money in this campaign going forward,” Sheekey said.

“I think it was a reasonably short call, you know, I was briefed. I was told they had a nice call and I spoke to the mayor after they had breakfast a few months ago. Back to Obama — you were the one asking about an Obama ticket. I think the mayor is the ultimate swing voter. He is someone who the country is looking at to find out where they will go. He is one of the true independents in the country,” said Sheekey, who pointedly did not rule out the mayor as Obama’s running mate.

I think a lot will say this story is nonsense, but why would the Deputy Mayor of NYC be talking so openly about this if it weren’t a possibility?

And I don’t think anybody can deny that if the economy is the #1 issue this election, Bloomberg is one of the best VP choices for either candidate. After all, he is a billionaire, a media mogul and one of the most popular mayors of one of the richest cities in the world.

Also, let’s not forget that a Bloomberg pick would immediately demonstrate that Barack is sincere in delivering a post-partisan style of politics to Washington on day one. It would be action, not talk, and that’s important.

Question is…would the party really allow it? Would they let a former Republican walk into their convention and claim the seat that’s a heartbeat away? I certainly have my doubts, but it would be bold move for Democrats and one that I don’t think the Republicans could match.

More as it develops…

I wonder what Doug Bailey and Gerald Rashfoon are gonna do now?

From MSNBC:

NEW YORK – After two years of playing coy about his presidential ambitions, Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared in a newspaper editorial Wednesday that he will not run for president as an independent and said he might support the candidate who “takes an independent, nonpartisan approach.”

The 66-year-old billionaire businessman, who aides had said was prepared to spend $1 billion on his own independent campaign, wrote in an opinion column posted on the New York Times’ Web site that he will be working to “steer the national conversation away from partisanship and toward unity; away from ideology and toward common sense; away from sound bites and toward substance.”

Honestly, I think we’re going to have a candidate like that on both sides of the debate this year, and that should hearten many.