I guess Bloomberg plans for a formal announcement on Tuesday that he is running for president on the Democratic ticket. I would not recommend voting for him – but that is a whole other discussion.
Either way, there has been a ton of discussion about how he will use his money to win the primary. While I understand the nervousness of the other candidates about that, my bigger fear is how he will use the data he has been collecting on cities.
As you know, Bloomberg launched the American Cities Initiative, and mayor TenHaken and others in his administration have been working closely with the Bloomberg organization as well as many other cities across the country. Bloomberg has been building a network of ‘Data’ that would be invaluable in running for president.
Is it legal to use this data? I’m not sure, and I don’t even know where I would look up something like that, but some things are clear. This is ‘commercial’ data that anyone can use, so that may be the legal ‘loophole’ here.
Bloomberg has been financing this initiative and our city leaders and other city leaders across the nation have justified that it is okay to collect this data on us because Bloomberg is paying for it and it isn’t costing the taxpayers a dime.
Don’t be fooled by this Trojan Horse. Bloomberg and his organization isn’t built of dummies. Having valuable information about our city (that is in a very red state) like transportation, codes, voter addresses, housing, employment, taxation, politics, etc. is invaluable to Bloomberg.
I never assumed that Bloomberg was doing this out of the ‘goodness of his heart’. It is clear to me now that is a bigger part of his run for the presidency.
If he announces on Tuesday, if I were the mayor of Sioux Falls, I would immediately cut ties with the organization and request that any data collected on us be turned over (even if they probably have it backed up somewhere).
It is one thing to learn how to innovate in our city – it’s entirely different thing to help someone run for president. I always knew our association with this organization smelled very fishy, and now I know why.