It’s all so interesting that the corruption case involving NYC Mayor de Blasio is like something you’d think the Obama administration would do. Chicago politics in the Big Apple! But then what would you expect from a guy who changes his name from Warren Wilhelm to de Blasio:
Bill de Blasio, who was born Warren Wilhelm, said on Monday that he took his mother’s last name because it “represents” who he is, not as a political decision to help him curry favor with Italian-American voters in Brooklyn. Read more: Hello Brooklyn
Sure! He just changed his name for sentimental reasons and not for politics. Barry Sotero changed his name too…to Barack Hussein Obama. Birds of a corrupt feather flocking together…these two phony politicians couldn’t be more alike!
The FBI is investigating corruption within the de Blasio administration that targets fundraising:
The investigation began with an unrelated deal-gone-awry involving the two businessmen — Mayor Bill de Blasio buddies Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg, well-placed sources said.
They gave a large sum of money to a third party who was supposed to buy discounted liquor for them to sell at a profit, but investors lost their money and the feds opened a fraud probe, sources said.
It’s interesting that one of the key people in this was part of the planning for the lavish inauguration of de Blasio that costs the taxpayers millions.
With subpoenas issued, investigations spreading and at least one federal grand jury at work, the question isn’t whether Bill de Blasio’s administration has a corruption problem. The questions are how big is the problem, how many agencies are tainted and how high up the pecking order does it go?
The preliminary answers are worrisome. A small army of investigators, including the FBI, is on the hunt, and all roads appear to lead straight to Mayor Putz.
The two biggest and most recent scandals involve lucrative gifts and cash given to current and former top officers in the NYPD, and the removal of a deed restriction and sale of a city-owned Manhattan building that netted private investors a cool $72 million profit.
The rub is that both cases feature donors who contributed large sums to the mayor’s campaign and his slush fund. That would suggest the fish stinks from the head.
That pattern isn’t new. There were red flags when de Blasio went to extraordinary lengths, including the approval of huge raises for the City Council, to do the bidding of donors who demanded the end of the beloved horse carriages. He also used phony traffic statistics to try to crush Uber, a move that would have meant a windfall to the yellow medallion kings who donated more than $500,000 to the mayor.
The possibility that de Blasio presides over a pervasive pay-to-play culture cannot be dismissed. To cite yet another example, the teachers union piled cash into his political fund, and came away with an excessively generous contract.
All those suspect exchanges demand the strictest scrutiny because even a suggestion that City Hall is for sale is intolerable. As the incidents multiply, with the mayor’s city and state Democratic allies joining the probes, we are long past the suggestion threshold. A little more than two years into de Blasio’s term, an integrity reckoning is overdue.
Yet as bad as the corruption problem is, it is only part of a larger failing. From the moment he announced his 2013 campaign, de Blasio never pretended to speak for the whole city.
In his mind, he had sliced and diced 8 million New Yorkers into factions. Race and ethnicity here, class and geography there. It was always us against them, with “us” being anyone who had a grievance and supported him, while “them” were critics and supporters of others.
Read more: NYP
