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Commentary By Bob McManus

De Blasio: More Corrupt Than Any Mayor Since… Jimmy Walker

Cities New York City

And so another shoe drops on Mayor Bill de Blasio, underscoring yet again the big fellow’s astonishing contempt for law, custom and ethical conduct in the pursuit of the people’s business.

You would have to go back to Jimmy Walker, and maybe earlier than that, to find a mayor so egregiously inclined to use the municipal fisc as a political piggy-bank.

Blas has been in ethics trouble virtually since Day One, when he dropped a multibillion-dollar contract on the teachers union and then swept $350,000 in teacher money into the accounts of a now-defunct PAC, the Campaign for One New York. Or maybe it was the other way around; it’s hard to keep his conflicts straight.

But you know what?

Nobody can do anything about this guy. That is, New York’s public-integrity enforcement infrastructure is so compromised, and so incompetent, that de Blasio is free to carry on his shenanigans for the remainder of his term.

News of Blas’ latest scandal ­arrives via The City, a local-news-oriented internet startup that Wednesday revealed a heavily ­redacted city Department of ­Investigation report alleging woeful wrongdoing. To wit, that the mayor has heavily pressured folks doing business with the city to contribute to his various political schemes. And he did so despite repeated official warnings that he was acting improperly.

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post

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Bob McManus is a contributing editor of City Journal. He retired as editorial page editor of the New York Post in 2013 and has since worked as a freelance editor, columnist, and writer.

This piece originally appeared in New York Post