Mayor Bloomberg’s Tearful Mosque Speech: Thanks For Not Screwing Up My Saudi Investment Strategy
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/08/11/mayor-bloombergs-tearful-mosque-speech-thanks-for-not-screwing-up-my-saudi-investment-strategy/
Whenever I can’t figure out why an intelligent person would espouse a baffling position on something, I always remind myself to follow the money. There just isn’t any other logical explanation for so many bad decisions that people in power tend to make than ‘someone’s making money on this.’ And so from the very beginning, Mayor Bloomberg’s strident support of building a mosque at Ground Zero made me think that he had to make nice with the Saudi’s for monetary purposes. In my mind there could be no other reason for Bloomberg to take such a stand as the Mayor of New York City.
In recent weeks, many of us have written blog posts on this topic appealing to Bloomberg’s sense of reason and morality, to no avail. He is steadfast on using the Constitution to cloak his position, just as the mosque developers have. But none of them have had the decency to just consider the feelings of Americans, regardless of whether they have the “right” to build the mosque or not. We all know they have the “right” to build it, and the whole Landmark Committee angle was just stupid. I’ve always hated technicalities anyway. What’s wrong with just objecting because it’s the right thing to do? The fact of the matter is that I believe the mosque developers have an ulterior political motive for building the mosque, and Bloomberg has a financial motive for supporting it.
I’ll state the obvious. I don’t know what’s in Mayor Bloomberg’s heart, but I’ll take an educated guess. His vast empire depends on current and future financial dealings with Saudi Arabia. It is in his best interest to make nice with them. In the past, the US has always been the number one financial partner with Saudi Arabia. But China is catching up, and will soon exceed us. Bloomberg can score big personally by staying in favor with the Saudis.
From an article in the Arab News on February 4, 2007 entitled “Bloomberg Holds Seminar on Middle East Stocks,” it was apparent what Bloomberg’s focus was.
“The Middle East is the fastest growing market for Bloomberg in terms of terminal sales,” Ralf Haslbeck, Bloomberg equity project manager for Europe and Middle East, said while describing various features of Bloomberg services.
Just as I didn’t like the whole phony angle of using the Landmark Commission to prevent the mosque project, I didn’t like Bloomberg’s self-righteous phony speech in front of the Statue of Liberty tearfully lecturing us about American values. I saw them as tears of relief coming from a man who was able to maintain his personal financial ties with an oppressive country that has nothing to do with American values.
Of course, this is the same problem we have with so many of our elected leaders in this country. One can’t help but think of what their personal motivations are when so many of their positions lack basic common sense. When it doesn’t make any sense, bet on it, it’s always about the money and the power.
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