The mayor used his office at
City Hall to increase gentrification to destroy affordable housing. At the same
time, he, and his co-conspirators with the Working Families Party (WFP) used
illegal tactics to organize the city’s increasing number gentrification
residents, to build a new ideological left-wing Tammany Hall to win campaigns. The
dark secret of this new machine is that progressive candidates like Brad Lander,
Jumaane Williams and de Blasio who campaigns on promises to help the poor and
minorities with more funds for affordable housing, while ignoring the obvious. The
billions promised for low rent housing actually went to gentrifying developers,
who destroy low rent neighborhoods, to make room for high rent gentrifying tenants
or owners who vote for progressive candidates.
Even before taking office, the mayor used progressive rhetoric like “Tale of Two Cities,” to both organize the left-wing and to cover-up the truth from the public and media that his team used illegal tactics to gain power. de Blasio and his political insiders were constantly under federal investigation. First for using illegal campaign tools, like Data and Fields Services (DFS) to win the Public Advocate office in 2009. It is important to note that both councilmen, now the city’s two highest ranking elected officials: Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and the next Comptroller Brad Lander also used WFP’s DFS. They attempted to utilize hidden union funds given to DFS, to reduce campaign costs to candidates endorsed by the WFP, until legal pressure from the Campaign Finance Board (CFB) stopped it.
During the next local
campaign cycle in 2013, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling,
team de Blasio and other progressive candidates and organizations switched to
using interlocking Political Action Committees (PACs) and organizations which
gave campaigns an even better opportunity than DFS to violate campaign public spending
limits. Why are campaign donation bundling regulated by the CFB, while PAC
bundling is not?
Also under federal and state investigation was the mayor’s pay to play shadow government , which was run by his campaign consultant Special Agent Lobbyists, many of whom also worked for the WFP endorsed candidates. Deputy Mayor Emma Wolfe, the principals of Berlin Rosen and the head of the Advance Group, all worked for ACORN, which was closed down after a lengthy voter fraud investigation by the Department of Justice. The Advance Group’s Scott Levenson who used the Anti-Horse Carriage PAC NYCLASS to destroy Speaker Christine Quinn’s mayoral campaign against de Blasio, was also investigated by the feds after it became clear that the mayor’s cousin helped fund the PAC. - More Advance
The lobbying firm Berlin Rosen who according to NY Times reporter Michal Powell worked inside the mayor’s office; worked for the federally investigated ACORN; ran all the WFP council campaigns funded by federally investigated “Data and Fields;” and for the Campaign for One NY (CONY) PAC which was also investigated by the feds and the Manhattan DA for money laundering. All the investigation were dropped after CONY PAC shut down, many with comments like this: “This conclusion is not an endorsement of the conduct at issue; indeed, the transactions appear contrary to the intent and spirit of the laws that impose candidate contribution limits,” DA Vance said. Berlin Rosen were the closest lobbyists to the mayor according to court ordered release of his emails and are lobbyist for a lot of the city’s gentrifying developers like Two Trees and dozens of others during de Blasio’s two terms. How Berlin Rosen packaged affordable housing for the press. On Inside City Hall host Errol Louis in a discussion of the stations report on Berlin Rosen admitted that he was surprised at the reach of Berlin Rosen.
Restaurant owner Harendra Singh after he pleaded guilty to bribery, testified as a cooperating witness in the corruption trial that convicted Edward Mangano, the former Nassau County executive. While giving testimony at the Long Island trail, he was asked about his pay to play relationship with de Blasio. Singh testified he used “straw donors” to skirt contribution limits — to gain better terms during lease negotiations for one of his NYC restaurants. Mr. Singh also suggested that Mr. de Blasio not only knew of the illegal arrangement, but that the mayor encouraged it and actively helped the restaurateur. Businessman Jona Rechnitz testified he bought special access to City Hall by donating $100,000 to de Blasio’s campaign and PACs, after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and turned state’s evidence in 2016, to testify at trial of union leaders Larry Seabrook. The feds conducted a probe into de Blasio’s fundraising practices that ended without charges being brought — though prosecutors said that was in large part due to a Supreme Court ruling that redefined the legal elements of corruption. U.S. Attorney Kim stated after he dropped the de Blasio investigation said, “that there were “several circumstances” in which de Blasio “made or directed inquiries to relevant City agencies on behalf of” donors seeking official favors from the city.
De Blasio slammed by ethics panel for 'coercion and improper access' over donations
When Bill de Blasio first took office as mayor of New York in 2014, he called two powerful real estate developers who had active projects in the city, and asked them to donate money to a nonprofit organization that he had created to advance his political agenda.
The request to help his nonprofit, the Campaign for One NY, seemed to violate the city’s ethics law, and a ban against asking for contributions from people who had business pending with the city. Within months of his solicitations, Mr. de Blasio was formally warned by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board — in a previously undisclosed letter — not to repeat the behavior.
But even after that warning, the mayor continued to hit up well-connected donors for money, according to documents that the city has now released after years of an extraordinary legal campaign by the de Blasio administration to keep the documents secret. NY Times
Every City Suffered During the Lockdown Damage Done in NYC Felt More Permanent. Why?
When, in the future, people ask how New York City fell to pieces, they can be told—quoting Hemingway— “gradually, then suddenly.”
It was the anarchy and lack of city leadership which occurred during COVID that awoke New Yorkers to the reality their government had changed. During the lockdown residents who loved NYC understood for the first time that City Hall no longer represented their interests. They witnessed looting, anarchists taking over city hall park, businesses where they shopped or ate boarded up, violent clashes between protesters and police all over the city, increased crime and the City Council answering the violence by defunding the police, while the city’s top elected officials went silent and hid from the public’s fear.
Many long-time city residents remember Mayor John Lindsay walking the streets of Harlem with community leaders after Martin Luther King was murdered. They also remember Mayor Ed Koch standing on the Brooklyn Bridge giving out coffee when the subway workers went on strike; Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s news conferences after the World Trade Center was attacked, while the president was out of touch; Our grandparents telling us stories about how Mayor Fiorello La Guardia raced to fires, accidents, crime locations even serving as an air raid warden during WWII. New Yorkers are used to their leaders stepping up during a crisis.
Right after he was elected
mayor de Blasio started helping left-wing candidates win campaigns. His ideological
candidates are ill-matched from long-time New Yorker’s way of life and the
city’s economy: interests, culture, heritage, and traditions. Barron’s book
showed how progressives believe in ideological goals, not providing proper city
services or leadership to address the concerns of the public. As the out outmaneuvering
of Speaker Pelosi in Congress indicates, progressives do not need a majority to
control government.
Many of the city’s clueless elected leaders who are not part of this new left-wing machine, adopted their policies. The quisling local elected democratic representatives who understand the city has been hurt by the left-wing take-over, hid to keep their jobs. There is no Joe Manchin or even a moderate with the ability to lead, in NYC politics. Nobody in the city’s democratic party has taken on the fight against the single-minded ideologies, taking over of city’s politics. Real opposition or dissent leadership beyond a twitter tweet are gone in NYC politics, it is not even expected or tolerated anymore. Most New Yorkers today do not know who Jane Jacobs is, or what she accomplished to save democracy in NYC?
There is no real republican party in NYC. Those still in the party rather fight over scraps, control of the party and work with democratic leadership in Albany or City Hall, than take on this important fight. The media never covered the consequences of the changes in who holds power in NYC. They lack the institutional memory or political knowledge to understand what is going on and why it matters. Instead, they offer the public puppet shows by two disturbed elected officials whose goal it seems was to be on TV during the pandemic, pretending they were kings, offering rulings and edicts to the commoners.
De Blasio and his left-wing
fellow progressive leaders to this date have not offered fixes to the loss of
jobs, closing of one-third of the city’s small businesses, empty office
buildings and subways, failing schools with missing students and increase in crime
interconnected with liberal no bail laws. All of which caused hundreds of
thousands of New Yorkers and their businesses to leave the city.
De Blasio New Left-Wing Machine Functions in Two Parts that Both Enabled, Contradict and Exploited Each Other: He is Playing One Group Against the Other for Power
The Barron book exposed what
the NYC media pathetically missed, that de Blasio conspired with the Working
Families Party, lobbyists campaign consultants, and their clients to create a
private shadow government interconnected to a new left-wing political machine, that
caused the distraction of the greatest city in the world. Operating like a CIA
black box operation, de Blasio’s machine claimed the moral high ground, while
they lie, cheat and steal, behind the back of most New Yorkers understanding.
Political boss de Blasio’s political
strategy was to increase gentrification to use the young progressives from out
of town moving into the city, to build a left-wing movement in low-voting NYC. Their
plan worked as they started winning elections
against the party bosses and knocking off elected officials.
The second part of de Blasio machine included pay to play developers and city contractors who make what the late journalist Jack Newfield called “the city’s permanent government,” that needed help from the government. The mayor created a lobbyist shadow-government that delivered City Hall for their clients’ interests. The beauty of the de Blasio plan was that he used his shadow lobbyists as a pay to play collection agency. Developer and city contractor clients who wanted favors from City Hall, donated to the mayor’s campaign or PACs, which de Blasio used as a slush fund for his political machine, to run his political operation or seed money for his short-lived presidential campaign.
De Blasio promised to fix NYC’s ‘Tale of Two Cities’ — but critics say he failed when it came to housing and the homeless
Examples: The Advance Group acquired Edison Parking as a client seven days after de Blasio won the primary. After Advance helped Edison parking, real estate company then owner Steve Nislick and co-founder of anti-horse carriage PAC NYCLASS, destroy de Blasio’s main mayoral opponent, Speaker Quinn with a million dollars in negative TV commercials. Nislick contributed over a half million to the mayor’s campaign, Campaign for One NY PAC (CONY) and the NYCLASS PAC. Lobbyist James F. Capalino, individually and on behalf of his business, James F. Capalino and Associates, Inc., agreed to pay $40,000 to settle the NYS JCOPE Ethics Commission’s investigation into allegations of Lobbying Act violations. Capalino admitted to state investigators that in or about April 2015, Blasio directly solicited his support of the work of CONY PAC and advised Capalino that then-CONY treasurer and de Blasio campaign fund raiser Ross Offinger would contact him. In May 2015, Capalino contributed $10,000 to CONY and obtained a further $90,000 in contributions to CONY from nine of his lobbying clients. Capilano was hired by the building's owner, Village Care, which had operated an AIDS-care facility there for years that was sold to luxury developers after an illegal deed change by the city.
Progressive de Blasio Gained Power by Pushing Minorities and Poor Out of their Low Rent Neighborhoods
Barron showed de Blasio as a Svengali like con man liar, who used Left-Wing moral positions and promises to win progressives support, while at the same time, running campaigns and City Hall more corruptly than any mayor since Jimmy Walker. During the 2013 campaign, manager Bill Hyers of Hilltop Public Solutions helped coordinate the de Blasio arrest to protest the closing of LICH Hospital which treated both Brooklyn’s minority, poor and middle class communities, promising to keep the hospital open if elected. The year he became mayor, the hospital was closed and soon after his campaign manager Hyers’ the Hilltop lobbyist went to work for the luxury building developer of the site, which has a view of lower Manhattan.
Closed Black Churches
De Blasio’s progressives’
promises were only propaganda to win over the left-wing and media to cover up
the harm he was doing to people he was promising to help. In fact, his housing
and rezoning policies promised to build more affordable housing was designed to
fail. In fact, the housing he built,
attracted gentrification progressives to the city to use for his political
power grab, while toppling minority majority neighborhoods like dominos.
De Blasio’s closest lobbyist Berlin Rosen convinced their client Forest City Ratner to loan another client of theirs, ACORN, $1.5M. Ratner received over a billion dollars in city, state, and federal money to build a stadium and affordable housing. Today the neighborhood surrounding the Nets Stadium built by Forest City, Prospect Heights, sold to a Chinese firm, is the most gentrified and racially changed area of the city. All of the areas elected officials, even a possible future county leader have been defeated by far-left socialists candidates. Almost all the left-wing recent gains, even with AOC, and the anti-IDC winning candidates, have been powered by gentrifying districts like Prospect Heights where the poor and minorities have been replaced by young progressive white voters from all over America. What happened to the neighborhoods around Barclays’ stadium is one of the major reasons that Brooklyn lost 10% of its Afro-American population in the last fifteen years.
The de Blasio Left-Wing Machine
is Not Only a Danger to NYC: It is A Danger to Democracy
Progressives like de Blasio view politics as a cross between a religion and a war. They believe their views on policies or beliefs are the only positions that are morally right. Those that oppose them are the enemy. de Blasio declared the NY Post an enemy of the people, for reporting that homelessness was increasing in NYC. To compromise for them is immoral. The founding fathers created a system of government that requires comprise or balance or shared power, so we are not run by someone with king like power.
De Blasio used the woke culture, one party NYC and intentionally increasing racial tensions to gain power: Barron writes, by making “every policy in New York — education, housing, health, transit, park access, statues and monuments, environmental sustainability, sanitation infrastructure — about the rectification of racial grievances.” When the mayor failed to fix the failing schools after increase spending a billion dollars during his first terms in office, he started to attack the specialized schools and gifted programs, testing system to enter those schools as racist, to distract from his failure to turn around failing schools. The mayor plans to phase out gifted programs in all schools. This is to distract the public and media from the fact that the mayor despite his campaign promises to turn around the bad schools after two terms has failed.
Before COVID: A Perfect
Storm Increased the Powers of the NYC Mayoralty
The destruction of the newspaper business has almost eliminated local investigative journalism. Over the last decade this has given de Blasio the ability to hide the real goals of his policies and the effects of them on the city and its people. The privately funded lobbyists/campaign consultant’s take-over of running campaigns in the last 15 years, from the elected decentralized political party leaders contributed to the further weakening of the political party machines. Tradition county leaders-controlled council speaker elections. In 2013 de Blasio and his lobbyists outmaneuvered the county leaders to elect their own council speaker. This meant he had complete control of City Hall, for his first term. The transfer of power to lobbyists from neighborhood power brokers not only cut off New Yorkers from City Hall, it, also gave him the opportunity to become his own political boss. He built his own centralized private lobbyist controlled political machine right under everyone’s noses.
Also contributing to increasing
NYC’s mayoral power is the fact we live in a one-party city with no reform
movement, in our Woke era, which discourages or ignores dissent and opposition,
even inside the democratic party. Twenty years ago, the late reformer Congressman
Major Owens who
beat the Brooklyn Democratic Machine corruption to win office, said he “only fought
democrats, until he arrived in Washington.” Even the media that ignores
different views while it follows its narrative is part of the woke culture,
which is anti-journalism. Following one’s narrative when reality, morality and
common sense tells you not to is today’s McCarthyism.
Clinton's Campaign Manager
De Blasio who ran campaigns for a living before running for political office, understands how NYC’s power structure works. He knows how to take advantage of the increased power of the mayoralty, the changing demographics, the weakened media, and the political party bosses to empower himself and his fellow political operatives. Sadly, not all the political power he has acquired using the City Hall will go away when he leaves office on January 1st, 2022. He will still have a lot of lobbyists that owe him and be one of the heads of the left-wing political machine that he helped build.
The Mayor’s Legacy: Left-Wing
Ideological Minority Running NYC into the Ground
If you’re following what is
going on in Congress, you know that progressives know how to gain control of government,
without voting majorities.
Red Sox–supporting, and not-that-hard-working mayor, Warren
Wilhelm — a.k.a. Bill de Blasio who grew up in Boston, systematically
undermined every major institution and New Yorkers that helped build and kept the
city strong through the generations. He murdered the greatest city in the world
for political power, control, and greed. In 2022 St Louis’ Comptroller Brad Lander will
become the city’s highest elected socialist organizer along with his fellow
comrade AOC who grew-up in well-to-do Westchester County. Few understand that AOC has more power on the streets of Brooklyn and in the
City Council because of the number
of winning candidates she backed in 2021 Brad Lander Will Do Anything; Say Anything for the Sake of
Power.
Barron’s book made it clear that we now have a city where elected officials who knew how to keep the city’s economy strong, attract jobs, help small businesses to grow and delivered proper city services to all New Yorkers, are no longer elected to office. The city has been taken over by left-wing ideological zealot political operatives, who want to reimagine or reinvent everything the city does, not just defund the police. AOC & the Progressives’ Interlocking Directorates are the New Bosses of Brooklyn & the 2022 City Council
We live in a one-party city.
There has been no one elected to our city government in a while that has run a
business, worked in law, the medical field, or is a veteran, Still the local
media which has lost its instructional memory by hiring reporters inexperienced
with NYC politics, calls the results of recent 2021 elections the most diverse
city government ever. On January 1, 2022, if elected, Eric Adams will be the
only diversity left with power in NYC government and it is not because he is
black.
In any event, the next mayor will have to negotiate with a growing left-wing controlled or influenced City Council and interlocking left-wing political organizations and PACs controlled by de Blasio, WFP, AOC, Lander and Democratic Socialist of America (DSA). As the progressive power grab in the Congress, tripping up both Pelosi and Biden indicate, no mayor or governor deal with them will last.
AOC, DSA and the new kid on the block Brad Lander have copied de Blasio/WFP and built their own left-wing machine to win elections, sometimes competing with de Blasio/WFP other times going it alone. The new AOC/Lander machine connected his comptroller winning campaigns with 7 or 8 council candidates (all winners) in Northern Brooklyn who all worked together to help left-wing Councilman Antonio Reynoso win a surprise victory for Brooklyn Borough President.
In order to govern to save NYC, Adams will have to defeat progressives and socialists who support tax increases for the city’s wealthy and businesses like Wall Street. Progresses who ignore or do not understand the fact that 65,000 of the city’s rich pay 51 percent of city’s income taxes. And if you say to those 65,000 to leave if they do not want to pay higher taxes, then we’re not going to have the firefighters, 18 city hospitals, small classrooms, all of the city’s basic services will have to be cut.
Old NYC Helped Millions of Immigrants, Poor and Minorities Achieve the American Dream
What the new left-wing leaders of the city do not understand is the history of how well the “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” have done once they reach NYC shores. Progress ignores the fact that the past generations of leaders of NYC built a city that empowered minorities, immigrants, and the poor to move up the economy ladder. The old leaders of NYC who are called the leftovers by the city’s gentrifies, built a city that provided immigrants, the poor and minorities jobs, affordable housing, business opportunities and good schools for their children through the generations; allowing millions of New Yorkers to achieve the American dream.
The new machines have pushed
neighborhood leaders aside for left-wing ideological political insiders who
have worked for elected officials or insiders connected to the new left-wing
political class, some achieving elective office as their first job.
Not Every Vote Counts in NYC
When It Counts
The probable next mayor,
moderate Adams’ and even his main opponent Curtis Sliwa’s backgrounds,
supporters and associates are closer to old style NYC politics, before the left-wing
take over. It is an important understand that city-wide NYC voters are not as
progressive as the internet media says they are. If the city held open
primaries that allowed the
two million mostly moderate non-democratic registered voters to vote in the
next mayor election, the progressive growing control over elections and internet
generated left-wing issues like defunding the police that the city government
accepts, would be greatly reduced.
THE LAST DAYS OF NEW YORK is the story of how a lifelong political operative with no private-sector experience assumed control of the greatest city in the world and dismantle it: Through reckless power grabs; by sowing racial discord, resentment and policies that are turning New Yorkers against each other; by enshrining a corrosive pay-to-play political culture that increased corruption and costs; and by using his office as a platform to advance himself and make money for those that helped him.
de Blasio’s new political machine that destroyed a special city
was built on lies - much of the book
reads like an urban-policy version of Jonah Goldberg’s underrated The Tyranny of Clichés, with Barron showing how false
narratives drove progressive power grabs.
De Blasio created a different city – by weakening the cultural
infrastructure underpinnings, the glue that held NYC together.
The biggest lie was the de Blasio’s promise to build affordable housing, while he showered gentrification developers with billions in tax breaks (even trust fund brats) to build new housing, to attract out-of-town, high-rent-paying progressives, into low rent neighborhoods. De Blasio’s quest for power at first resulted in pushing out hundreds of thousands of the city’s poor and minority residents out of their apartments. Now it is pushing the middle class, wealthy and businesses out of a broken city.
When Dr.
Brown in Back to the Future, described Biff’s Place as a disruption in
the timeline. Everyone watching the movie understood the harm the wrong person
in charge of a city could do. You have to blame the media for not explaining
the harm that eight years of de Blasio did to the city. As he runs for governor to make more money
for his PAC slush fund or as his term ends it is time to educate the public to
win back our city, our democracy.
Without defeating de
Blasio’s left-wing uprising whose goal is to create a different city, as Barron
puts it in his conclusion, “A NYC detached from reality will descend into
disorder, dispossession, and bankruptcy.”
1. de Blasio top aide Deputy Mayor Emma Wolfe worked for ACORN . . . de Blasio closest lobbyists political consultant Berlin Rosen started out working for ACORN . . . The Advance Group Scott Levenson who destroyed Speaker Quinn mayoral campaign by using the anti-horse carriage PAC NYCLASS against her was ACORN spokesperson while the feds were investigating it.
2. de Blasio used Data and Fields for his campaign for Public Advocate in 2009.
3. Berlin Rosen was de Blasio campaign consultant and was paid by his PACs like campaign for one NY - Both part of federal investigations.
4. Hilltop was de Blasio campaign manager in 2013 when he was arrest protesting the closing of LICH Hospital. Once elected mayor de Blasio closed the hospital and Hilltop’s president when to work for the luxury developer building on the site.
5. Laurence Laufer was de Blasio election lawyer.
6. de Blasio was federally investigated for pay to play and money laundering for the Campaign for One NY PAC he created. The PAC was closed during the investigation.
7. The NYCLASS PAC destroyed mayoral front runner Kristen Quinn and allowed de Blasio to easily win.
8. All de Blasio citywide campaigns have been endorsed by the WFP. He ran his campaign for Public Advocate inside the party’s Brooklyn HQ.
9. Berlin Rosen ran all the WFP campaign which received help from Data and Fields and then investigated by the feds.
10. Brad Landers Council and comptroller campaign were run by Berlin Rosen. During the council campaign Lander received help from Data and Field which was closed by the CFB for breaking the public funding election rules.
11. PA Jumaane Williams was endorsed by the WPA. In 2013 he was also endorsed by the WPA where he campaigns received help from the illegal Data and Fields that was investigated by the feds.
12. Scott Levinson head of the Advance Group ran the NYCLASS that help spend 1million dollars destroying Council Speaker Quinn campaign for mayor, allowing the de Blasio to win. Levinson was also spokesperson for ACORN. Both NYCLASS and ACORN was investigated by the fed. NYCLASS received $250,000 from de Blasio cousin,
13. Lawrence Mandelker from the same as de Blasio lawyer - Lawrence Laufer represented Levenson a case he co-mingled NYCLASS PAC money with two council campaigns he was running.
14. de Blasio used Data and Field which funneled money to his campaign for Public Advocate
15. Jumaane Williams used Data and Field which funneled money to his campaign for City Council
16.The principals of Berlin Rosen worked for ACORN
17. Brad Lander used Data and Field which funneled money to his campaign for City Council.
18. The principals of Berlin Rosen work in and help run AG Schneiderman office and campaign.
19. Levinson the president of the Advance Group was spokesperson for ACORN while it was under federal investigation.
20. The Advance Group and former Council Speaker Mark-Viverito were fined for Levinson illegal help with her speaker’s campaign
21. Council Speaker Mark-Viverito received illegal campaign help from WFP’s Data and Fields when she ran for council in 2013.
22. Berlin Rosen ran council Speaker Mark-Viverito first campaign for City Council. In that campaign she received illegal help from WFP Data and Fields.
23. de Blasio campaign manager Bill Hyers president of Hilltop worked for the mayor’s Campaign for One NY PAC that was investigated by the feds before it was shut down
23A. Working Families Party and Berlin Rosen Dan Levitan Spok4esperson for Campaign for One NY
24. Laurence Laufer was the lawyer for de Blasio PAC Campaign for One NY
25. Lawrence Madelker was the lawyer for WFP Data and Fields which was investigated by the feds, state, and city CFB.
26. Berlin Rosen work for the UFT PAC United for the Future
27. The Advance Group work for the UFT PAC under a different name, Strategic Consultants Inc.
28. Red Horse work for the UFT PAC United for the Future
29. The UFT contributed to de Blasio PAC Campaign for One NY that was investigated by the feds $350,000
30. Red Horse work for the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, and SI DAs
31 Berlin Rosen work for de Blasio and Two Trees Real Estate
Developers at the same time
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