Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 10

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

During his term as New York City’s Public Advocate, de Blasio also apparently used his position to obtain the political and financial backing of Billionaire Speculator and Plutocrat George Soros (who also operates the tax-exempt Open Society Institute foundation that subsidizes various left-liberal middle-class NGOs around the globe and left-liberal, Democratic Party-oriented middle-class activists and NGOs in the United States).

As the New York Times also revealed in its Aug. 31, 2013 article:

“…Mr. de Blasio nurtured a relationship with George Soros, the billionaire financier, whose foundation became the single biggest benefactor of an obscure nonprofit organization that paid for Mr. de Blasio to promote his advocacy work around the country….His advocacy brought him into contact with a powerful ally: Mr. Soros, who had long deplored the influence of corporations in the political system, even as he poured millions of his own fortune into campaigns.

“The billionaire banker and the Brooklyn activist met on an autumn evening in 2010, when Mr. de Blasio spoke on a panel…held in Mr. Soros’s grand Fifth Avenue home. The two chatted afterward, and Mr. de Blasio promised to stay in touch.

“Four months later, Mr. Soros’s foundation pledged $400,000 to the Fund for Public Advocacy…to support the work of the public advocate’s office.

“The donation was the largest single contribution to the fund, a tax exempt 501(c)(3), during Mr. de Blasio’s tenure….”

Yet Soros’ foundation obtained the $400,000 it used to subsidize de Blasio’s Fund for Public Advocacy from the surplus capital that Soros gets from speculating and investing in transnational corporations that exploit workers and middle-class consumers around the globe; and the special private economic and class interests of Billionaire Soros and his Soros Fund Management firm conflict with the economic class interests of the public and most of the people in New York City who work and live in New York City.

For unlike most people who live, work or grew up in New York City, George Soros and his Soros Fund Management LLC investment firm controlled or owned or collected dividends from over $5.7 billion worth of Wall Street corporate stock in 2013. According to its SEC filing, on June 30, 2013 the Soros Fund Management investment firm’s portfolio included, for example, over $344 million worth of Google stock, over $112 million worth of AIG stock, over $76 million worth of Macys Inc. stock, over $32 million worth of Apple Inc. stock, over $30 million worth of Wal-Mart stock, over $14 million worth of Time Warner Cable stock, over $3.4 million worth of Comcast stock, over 8 million worth of Citigroup stock and over $46 million worth of Loral Space & Communications stock.

Coincidentally, a retired Loral Space & Communications executive named Bernard Schwartz also gave “the maximum $4,950” to de Blasio’s “mayoral bid, then poured $25,000 into the Fund for Public Advocacy,” according to the Aug. 31, 2013 article in the New York Times.

(end of part 10)