Bloomberg Sworn In As President - A Look Ahead

Contributing to this story was Andrea Norwich, a psychic residing in New York City

January 20, 2009 (GBN News): Amid continuing controversy over an election that many still say was either bought or stolen, Michael Bloomberg took the oath of office today on the steps of the Capitol Building as the nation’s forty-fourth President. The inauguration came just days after the Supreme Court effectively handed the former New York City Mayor the election, agreeing with Mr. Bloomberg’s contention that his total control of the city schools extended to the polling places in the schools. State election authorities were thus forced to accept the Department of Education’s own election figures, which gave Mr. Bloomberg a whopping 94 per cent of the city vote, and the total easily enabled him to top both Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani for the State’s electoral votes. Mr. Bloomberg’s surprisingly strong vote totals in the South had also helped run up the Electoral College totals, after the massive advertising spending of his independent campaign dwarfed the entire state budgets of Alabama and Mississippi.

In his inaugural address, the President focused largely on his plans for reorganizing the nation’s schools. With Secretary of Education designate Christopher Cerf, formerly NY City Deputy Schools Chancellor and CEO of Edison Schools, looking on, Mr. Bloomberg announced that Edison Schools would be given a multi billion dollar no bid Education Department contract to provide support services upon request, to any school in the country.

The President also introduced a school security plan, which he called, “All Phones Left Behind”. This would ban cell phone possession in all of the nation’s public schools, and would be enforced by the new Homeland Security Director, former Tajik strongman Emomali Rakhmon. Any school district not in compliance with this strict ban on cell phones will lose Federal money, and, after going bankrupt, will be taken over by Edison and run at a profit.

The President said that his education plan should enjoy widespread approval, and that any opponents would be simply “incrementalist defenders of the status quo, who have no experience in doing anything”. He went on to point out it’s a “win-win” for the parents and children, since if their schools get taken over by Edison, they’ll essentially become private schools, where cell phones are perfectly legal.

Many analysts said that this statement finally cast some light on Mr. Bloomberg's longstanding but seemingly irrational policy banning cell phone possession in public schools. By banning the phones in public schools, while private schools such as the ones his children attended allow them, it would encourage parents to demand greater access to private schools so that they could keep their children safe on their trips to and from school. Thus, opposition to vouchers, and to takeovers by for-profit companies such as Edison, would be effectively undercut.

While the education plan dominated his address, the President also announced an immediate massive reorganization of the nation’s military under Defense Secretary designate Joel Klein, the former NY City Schools Chancellor. The plan, called “Soldiers First”, will hold individual unit commanders, rather than the Defense Department leadership and the President, responsible for the war’s progress, and will subject local commanders to weekly evaluations under another no bid contract by McGraw Hill.

In a related story, the Inaugural Parade had to be cancelled when sudden huge transportation cuts in the District of Columbia prevented most of the marchers from getting to the parade route. The cuts were the brainchild of corporate “turnaround” firm Alvarez and Marsal, who were hired to trim costs in the District. Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty had engaged the firm on the recommendation of President Bloomberg, who Mayor Fenty worships as a god.