A $50 Million "Grass Roots" Howler

New York City’s miniature former Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a very important man.

Bloomberg is so important, and so smart, that he spent most of his time in office attempting to tell New Yorkers what they could eat and drink (and in what amounts), and what habits they were allowed to have. It was all in their best interests, of course, and he was going to drag them kicking and screaming to the promised land, like a Napoleon Moses herding cats.

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Bloomberg thinks that he has done such a good job of telling others have to live that he’s earned his way into Heaven, and he insists that he’s going in, no matter what.

“I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”

Apparently, Bloomberg thinks Heaven is a co-op that he can buy, bluster, or bully his way into, the same way he’s used his massive fortune to try to force those of us here on Earth to alter our lives and give up our liberties to complete his version of Bloombergtopia.

The latest focus of his efforts in the last half-dozen years is the destruction of the Second Amendment, at least as it applies to those of us who can’t afford a full-time armed security staff as he does.

Bloomberg has made several attempts to make his desire for a “guns for no one but my bodyguards” fantasy into a reality.

He first created Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which started flopping when many of the mayors that joined the group suddenly realized that the group was actually against all firearms. Many of the rest who stayed with the group went to prison on a variety of felony charges, and the group is on life support.

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moms demand

He then hired Monsanto public relations executive Shannon Watts to start the “grass roots” gun prohibitionist group Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America, which sadly adopted the abbreviated “Moms Demand Action.” The astroturfed group sounds like a hook-up site for loveless harridans… which, in looking at its members, it may very well be.

When Moms Demand Action quickly foundered do to Watts’s clear ignorance of anything related to firearms and her authoritarian zeal to ban even her own fellow travelers if they didn’t exactly mimic the script she was botching at every term, Bloomberg then attempted a third group, combining Moms Demand Action with the remains of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. For a brief, shining moment, was something called “Demand Action.”

Demand Action was formed just months ago, and yet appears to have lasted roughly as long as a depressed lemming on a cliff.

Bloomberg is now hoping that the fourth time is a charm, as he’s launched a $50 million vanity project, Everytown for Gun Safety. The prevailing theory behind the effort seems to be an attempt to market gun prohibition as “gun safety,” while attempting to destroy the number one gun safety organization the world has ever known, the National Rifle Association.

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Bloomberg has even had the temerity to call this $50 million “guns-for-no-one-but-my-bodyguards” effort a “grass roots” project, which CNN dutifully reported without a hint of irony.

The former New York City mayor pledged $50 million to his new group Everytown for Gun Safety, an umbrella organization for his two other gun control groups: Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. It aims to make the political climate more supportive of gun control.

In its grass-roots operation, Everytown plans to increase its membership from 1.5 million to 2.5 million this year to implement its education and mobilization efforts. The group will focus on 15 states that have liberal gun laws, including Texas, Montana and Indiana. States that have advanced gun control initiatives will also receive attention, including Colorado and Washington.

Ed Morrissey was unimpressed:

The common understanding of grassroots efforts is that they work from the bottom up. That phenomenon is what created the term “grassroots” in the first place. Having a billionaire spend $50 million to start a group is the antithesis of a grassroots movement, and usually ends up derided as “AstroTurf” – fake grass. Instead of the common people speaking truth to elites in power, Bloomberg’s latest project reverses the dynamic into the common nanny-state model of elites telling the hoi polloi what to think and how to live.

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The nanny state mayor simply can’t stop helping you. He knows what’s best for you, whether you’re a mere man… or God himself.

Image credits to HaSoGCA

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