Mike Bloomberg Seeks to Run on "Independence Party" Line (not what you think - whackjob cultists)

[Stephanie]

From the http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/02/bloomy.php">Village Voice:

Mating Game: Bloomy Loves Fred Newman, All Over Again
Posted by Tom Robbins at 7:39 AM, February 19, 2009

==snip==

Mike Bloomberg and Independence Party guru Fred Newman are trying to patch things up, the Times reports this morning, and this time it's Bloomberg in hot pursuit. The mayor, who desperately needs a political line or two to run on this fall, dispatched his campaign manager, Bradley Tusk, to visit Newman and fellow Independence Party guru, Jackie Salit, at the Bank Street townhouse they share with numerous other devoted followers.

Newman is the somewhat quacky psychotherapist and playwright who has long presided over one of New York's wierder lefty political cults. It's a long zany story (see Dennis King's all-purpose site for details) but the former Lyndon LaRouche chum hit the political jackpot when he used his many loyal troops years ago to take over the city's Independence Party, thus giving him something every politician, right or left, covets -- an extra political line on the ballot.

Back in 2001, when a would-be pol named Mike Bloomberg was looking to launch his first mayoral race, ex-state senate leader Joe Bruno played matchmaker when he helped fix up the billionaire media mogul with Dr. Fred and company. It was political love at first sight. Newman, whose Marxist tent is big enough to accommodate everyone from Patrick Buchanan to Louis Farrakhan, was delighted to have a billionaire owe him a few favors. Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican, was ecstatic to have his name on a ticket called Independence, even if leaders like Lenora Fulani had a tendency to say some pretty wacky things.

==snip===

But having ditched his Republican membership in a failed bid to stir interest as an independent presidential candidate, Bloomberg now finds himself single and back in the dating game. Like every used and abused ex, Dr. Fred is insisting on a little courting before he jumps back in bed again with the two-timing Mayor. "He regarded us as a group of people he needed, could use, and then he could walk away from," Newman sniffed to the Times' Michael Barbaro.

==more at link==

Bloomberg's Therapist
Mayor Mike's independence party friends can put him on the couch
Tom Robbins
Tuesday, June 14th 2005

There was a post-stadium dip in the polls for Michael Bloomberg last week. But the Republican mayor still has a potential job-saving ace in the hole, the same one he had in 2001: a jowly, white-bearded fellow named Fred Newman.

Fred who? That would be Dr. Fred Newman, of course, renowned founder of Social Therapy, the psychological practice dedicated to "a new science of human development," as he modestly proclaims it. Still lost? Well, you must have heard of Fred Newman, author of half a dozen books, and considered by many (OK, by many of his followers) to be the philosophical heir to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lev Vygotsky (you know, Vygotsky, the great Soviet constructivist psychologist).

Utterly lost? What about Fred Newman the well-known playwright, whose works include Lenin's Breakdown, Risky Revolutionary, and the hilarious All My Cadre, not to mention The Therapy Plays: Newman's Postmodern Follies? That one just finished a successful month-long run at the Castillo Theatre (founded by Newman), which is partners with the All Stars Project (co-founded by Newman), which is the nonprofit youth performance organization housed in a glittering new West 42nd Street headquarters purchased and built with $8.35 million in tax-free bonds provided by the administration of, yes, Michael Bloomberg.

==snip==

Lenora Fulani, whose past anti-Semitic comments got her in hot water this spring, gets most of the ink and the airtime where the Independence Party is concerned. But she is a longtime and loyal disciple of Fred Newman.

==snip==

Bloomberg has denounced Fulani's words as "despicable." But he's otherwise stuck by Fulani and Newman, appearing at their fundraising events and donating $250,000 of his own money last year to the Independence Party. The mayor has also had an open-door policy for Fulani et al. at City Hall, and the All Stars Project is now seeking a city contract to provide after-school care ("Fulani's City Hall Push," Voice, June 8).

The Anti-Defamation League thinks that's a bad idea, as do many others who have witnessed Newman's theories at work. They say that while his neo-Marxist philosophizing and zany plays appear comical from the outside, there's very little amusing about his rigid orthodoxy when viewed up close, with the occasional anti-Semitic outburst being only part of the problem.

==more at link==

Fred Newman, the leader of the Manhattan Independence Party, wants to have a say in how your children are educated. But his views on sex and marriage may leave some parents wary. NY1's Rita Nissan has more in part three of her special series, "Psychopolitics."

NY1/November 2, 2005
By Rita Nissan

Fred Newman lives by his own rules. He says monogamy and marriage aren't for him.

"I don't think it's any of the state's business who my dearest loves are and how I relate to another human being and give to them and receive from them," he says.

Newman calls them his dearest loves, the women he lives with in his West Village townhouse. He admits some of the women initially came to him for psychological help. Newman treats patients in Social Therapy, his self-created field of psychology.

"Some of them were in therapy, yeah," he says.

But mainstream psychologists say it's unethical for therapists to have sex with their patients because it violates personal boundaries and trust.

Newman is not held to any ethical codes. As a psychotherapist, he doesn't need a license to practice in New York State, although the laws have changed and he'll need one by the end of the year.

"I think that people's sexual relationships should be something very personal between the people who are engaging in it, and I think if people love each other, care for each other, are attracted to each other and decide together that they want to have sex, they should," he says. " I think sexual relationships are relationships between human beings, not human beings under certain descriptions or in certain categories. I believe that people should fall in love as they so desire, and if they want to include in that sexuality, they should include that."

Newman controls several organizations that appear to be intertwined: Social Therapy clinics, the Manhattan Independence Party, and his youth charity the All Stars Project. All Stars introduces children and teens to Newman's ideas.

==more at link==

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/nyregion/19bloomberg.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=bloomberg%20and%20newman&st=Search

Bradley Tusk, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, has visited the West Village home of two founding members of the Independence Party, Fred Newman and Jackie S. Salit. According to Mr. Newman, Mr. Tusk’s message was, “We don’t think the campaign can make it without the Independence Party.”

[Stephanie]

1. Bloomberg is courting cult leaders in hopes of a ballot line to run on

Don't you find that rather sad?

[Stephanie]

2. Billionaire Seeks to Buy Ballot Line and NY Mayoralty

With the help of some wacky cultists.

[Stephanie]

3. Interesting, and very creepy.