Mike Bloomberg on Families & Children Mayor of New York City (Independent)

Suicides & family violence reduced with 24-hour gun wait

This year, 40,000 people will be shot with illegal and legal handguns. Out of the 40,000 people that are going to get killed, a majority of them are suicides.

And one thing about suicides, the psychiatrists will say, generally, if you want to commit suicide, and you can't do it right away, you forget about it. And so they would say, the first thing to save lives with suicides is just to stop people from doing it for 24 hours. And that's what the background check does. And if they can't get a gun, they don't change and go to another kind of ways to kill themselves. They just don't.

And in the 20 states where we have background checks, the suicide rate with guns has come down dramatically, and it has not gone up with other ways of killing yourself.

Create good alternatives for kids so they avoid guns & crime

NYC teachers don't experience pregnancy discrimination

The principal wished me luck and gave my job to someone else. Pregnancy discrimination, you bet. But I was 21 years old. I didn't have a union to protect me. And I didn't have any federal law on my side. So I packed up my stuff, and I went home. At least I didn't have a boss who said to me, "Kill it," the way that Mayor Bloomberg is alleged to have said.

Mayor Mike BLOOMBERG: I never said that. Oh, come on. And for the record, if she was a teacher in New York City, she would never have had that problem. We treated our teachers the right way, and the unions will tell you exactly that.

WARREN: Then let the women have an opportunity to speak. They are bound by nondisclosures so that they cannot speak.

I support the #MeToo movement; my employees are happy

BLOOMBERG: I have no tolerance for the kind of behavior that the "Me, Too" movement has exposed. And anybody that does anything wrong in our company, we investigate it, and if it's appropriate, they're gone that day. In my foundation, the person that runs it's a woman, 70% of the people there are women. In my company, lots and lots of women have big responsibilities. They get paid exactly the same as men. And in City Hall, my deputy mayor was a woman, and 40% of our commissioners were women. Two weeks ago we were voted the second best place to work in America. That says something about our employees and how happy they are.

Expand Head Start; and at-home care for at-risk infants

In an effort to improve the health of at-risk infants and children, Mike's plan will increase the numbers of low-income families who receive free, voluntary nurse home visits by boosting funding for the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program. This program has been shown to lower maternal mortality rates and increase the self-sufficiency of families down the road.

Guarantee 12 weeks of paid family leave

Get cities to hike taxes on sugary drinks

He's also funded campaigns to get cities to hike taxes on sugary drinks, cigarettes, and trans fats-- efforts that have earned him praise from public health advocates, but also scorn and mockery from others as a "stereotypically laughable example of a liberal nanny state," as Time magazine once put it.

Cut teen smoking by 50%; now focus on e-cigarettes

In NYC, we:
• improved graduation rates by 42%
• banned smoking in bars & restaurants
• cut teen smoking by 50%
• cut murders in half
• cut incarceration by 40%
• created new programs to fight poverty

Ban flavored e-cigarettes used to entice kids to smoke