Bloomberg heading back to publishing business
Michael Bloomberg, the Daddy Warbucks of the gun control movement, has decided to reassume the leadership of his business empire only eight months after ending his final term as mayor of New York, according to a New York Times report.
Late Sept. 3, Bloomberg told close confidants and senior executives of Bloomberg L.P., a financial data and media company, that Daniel L. Doctoroff, its chief executive and a longtime friend and lieutenant, would leave the company at the end of the year and that he would take over.
For years, The Times said, Bloomberg had insisted that he had no intention of returning full time to the company he founded.
When he left politics, Bloomberg, 72, was expected to devote most of his time to giving away his $32.8 billion fortune. Those philanthropic efforts—on issues like gun control, immigration and public health—were supposed to take up much of his time and he would “most likely spend a few hours a day working from his new desk on the fifth floor,” at Bloomberg’s offices, according to a memo sent employees in January.
But in recent months, Bloomberg — who still owns 88% of the company — has become an increasing presence at Bloomberg’s Lexington Avenue headquarters. Those “few hours” soon turned into six and seven hours a day with Bloomberg taking a hands-on role in meetings and strategy decisions. According to The Times Doctoroff, 56, a former deputy mayor of New York, told Bloomberg earlier that he planned to resign, frustrated with how the leadership dynamic had shifted. Bloomberg urged him to stay and remain chief executive, but Doctoroff demurred.
Bloomberg reportedly said that he felt energized being back at the company, and that his increased involvement would not get in the way of his foundation work, apparently not his gun control projects, which include initiatives in several western states.
Army officer’s uniform ‘might offend someone’
From the “Badly mixed signals” file comes a strange report that may cause some concern for those who support our people in uniform.
Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker, a US Army officer with 24 years in service, was planning to meet with his high school-age daughter’s guidance counselor about her class schedule when a security guard stopped him and told him he couldn’t go inside the school unless he changed out of his military uniform. According to Personal Liberty Digest and station WJBK Channel 2 in Detroit, MI.
The guard at Detroit-area Rochester Adams High School told Baker his attire might “offend another student,” according to WJBK News. Strangely, another account offered in the same news report cites Baker’s lack of a tie as grounds for refusing him entry into the school.
“Baker’s wife Rachel Ferhadson says, ‘Before he was allowed in, the security guard stopped him and said sorry you’re not allowed in the school. Security told him men and women in uniform weren’t allowed because it may offend another student,’” WJBK reported.
“Baker says he was simply coming to the school to speak with his daughter’s counselor regarding her class schedule but was turned away at the doors because he was not wearing a tie.
“I can’t even believe they would think like that after all [our soldiers] do for our country,” one resident remarked.
Robert Shaner, superintendent of the Rochester Community Schools District, offered an apology in a letter to the TV station, saying the school district does not, in fact, “have a policy excluding individuals in uniform” and that the district would attempt to more effectively communicate its policies to the private company that handles security at its schools.
Piers Morgan takes final shot on guns
On Aug. 29, CNN host Piers Morgan signed off from his job at the network with a parting blast at gunowners, who likely helped oust him from his job by turning his interview off. Poor ratings felled Morgan, although some reports suggested he declined to take a short-term pact with the network, offered after his show was officially cancelled. Morgan’s final words, as posted on CNN’s website, but edited selectively by TGM, are in traditional form.
After a lengthy reprise of all the mass shooting incidents of recent years, Morgan began.
“I have lived and worked in America for much of the past decade, and it is a magnificent country. A land of true opportunity that affords anyone, even British chancers like me, the opportunity to live the American dream. The vast majority of Americans I have met are decent, hard-working, thoroughly dependable people. As my brother, a British Army colonel, says, ‘You’d always want an American next to you in a trench when the going gets tough.’
“But that’s where guns belong – on a military battlefield, in the hands of highly trained men and women fighting for democracy and freedom. Not in the hands of civilians. The scourge of gun violence is a disease that now infects every aspect of American life.
“As Sir Winston Churchill said: ‘If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack.’
“My point is simple: more guns doesn’t mean less crime as the NRA repeatedly says. It means more gun violence, death and profits for the gun manufacturers. And to those who claim my gun control campaigning has been “anti-American”, the reverse is true. I am so pro-American that I want more of you to stay alive.
“But I’ve made my point. I’ve given it a tremendous whack. Now it’s down to you. It’s your country; these are your gun laws. And the senseless slaughter will only end when enough Americans stand together and cry: Enough.”
Apparently, that’s the way cable news shows end, too.
