Hillary Clinton's 1990's White House Years Revisited: Part 3

If 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is elected on November 8, 2016 to become first wife of a former U.S. president to win a U.S. presidential election, and she moves into the White House for four years on January 20, 2017, it won't be the first time that Clinton will be occupying the White House. As she recalled in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon and Schuster book publishing subsidiary): 

"Webb [Hubbell] had resigned from from his job at the Justice Department...In his own memoir, Friends in High Places, Webb [Hubbell]...admits that the charges against him were true and that he had stolen from the [Rose] law firm in a futile attempt to get out from under a crippling debt that he had hidden from his family and friends...Hubbell would plead guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion. He confessed that between 1989 and 1992, he submitted more than 400 doctored bills to cover personal expenses, cheating his clients...at the Rose Law Firm of at least $394,000.

"...Webb [Hubbell] had been a trusted colleague...He was a dear friend. I had spent more hours in his company than I could count...In March 1995, I took my first extended trip overseas without the President...My companions included...Jan Piercy, my friend from Wellesley and U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank...In late July [1995], I began a weekly newspaper column...

"Welfare reform had been debated by Bill [Clinton]'s staff since the presidential campaign, when Bill [Clinton] promised to `end welfare as we know it.' I agreed that the system was broken and needed to be fixed...During my book tour I spoke at my alma mater, Wellesley College, on January 19, 1996, and spent the night at the gracious home of its...President...

"...Bill [Clinton] and I were anxious about our...State Dinner for French President Jacques Chirac and his wife...in February 1996...Bill [Clinton] worked hard to win French cooperation...most notably in 1999 when he persuaded France to go along with NATO air strikes...in Kosovo despite the lack of a specific U.N. resolution...The State Department had asked me to go as an emissary to Bosnia-Herzegovia...Gains on the ground by the Croat-Muslim coalition that the U.S. had helped support, coupled with the NATO airstrikes that Bill [Clinton] had advocated...forced the Serbs to negotiate...The United States had sent over 18,000...troops...

"As part of his foreign policy agenda, Bill [Clinton] supported the expansion of NATO eastward from the Atlantic...There was significant opposition to NATO expansion within the United States and Russia, which did not want to see NATO at its own borders...I spoke at Radio Free Europe headquarters...I applauded the role Radio Free Europe had played...I said that......sustaining a free society is like a three-legged stool: one leg is a...government, the second is a free market economy...I favored NATO expansion...

"...Welfare reform became a success for Bill [Clinton]. I strongly argued that we had to change the system...In 1987 and again in 1988, Bill [Clinton] was the lead Democratic governor working with...the Reagan White House on welfare reform...The third bill passed by Congress...cut off most benefits to legal immigrants, imposed a 5-year lifetime limit on federal welfare benefits, and maintained the status quo on monthly benefit limits, leaving the states free to set benefit limits...

"The President [Bill Clinton] signed this third bill into law...I agreed that he should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage--though he and the legislators were roundly criticized by...liberals, advocacy groups for immigrants and most people who worked with the welfare system...Bill's decision and my endorsement of it, outraged some of our...supporters...They...believed the legislation was shameful, impractical and harmful to children...By the time Bill [Clinton] and I left the White House, welfare rols had dropped 60 percent from 14.1 million to 5.8 million..."

(end of part 3)

Hillary Clinton's 1990's White House Years Revisited: Part 2

If 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is elected on November 8, 2016 to become first wife of a former U.S. president to win a U.S. presidential election, and she moves into the White House for four years on January 20, 2017, it won't be the first time that Clinton will be occupying the White House. As she recalled in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon and Schuster book publishing subsidiary): 

"...On October 26 [1963]...the Hillaryland gang invited over a hundred of my family members and friends to come from around the country for a surprise 46th birthday party at the White House...I was ushered upstairs and told to put on a black wig and hoopskirt--the Colonial look...and an attempt to replicate the fashions worn by Dolly Madison. Then I was led down to the State Floor, where I was greeted by a dozen staffers in blond wigs...Bill [Clinton] was disguised as President James Madison (with white wig and tights)...

"On Halloween 1993,...I learned that...the Resolution Trust Corporation [RTC]...had recommended the criminal investigation of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, owned by Jim McDougal. McDougal and his wife, Susan, had been our partners in the Whitewater Development Company, Inc....RTC investigators were looking into allegations that McDougal had used his S&L to funnel money illegally to political campaigns in Arkansas, including Bill [Clinton]'s gubernatorial reelection campaign in 1986...

"...Our personal lawyer, Bob Barnett, recused himself from Whitewater because his wife, Rita Braver, was a CBS correspondent assigned to cover the White House...Bob became my counsel and adviser in 1992, and I could not have asked for a better friend in the years that followed.

"Bob recommended David Kendall, his colleague at Williams and Connolly, to represent us in the Whitewater matter...David...had experience in corporate law...He represented clients in several S. and L. investigations in the 1980's...David took over the files from Vince Foster's office...

"By the mid-1980s McDougal...had bought a small thrift called Madison Guaranty...He...used the Whiteewater Development Company to buy property near a trailer park south of Little Rock that he...named Castle Grande Estates...In 1985, Rick Massey, a young lawyer at the Rose Law Firm...worked for McDougal...Because McDougal had been negligent in paying a previous bill from Rose for legal services, the firm insisted that he pay a $2,000 monthly retainer...My partners asked me to request the retainer from McDougal and to become the `billing partner'...I arranged the retainer...Federal S. and L. regulators took over Madison Guaranty...and initiated an examination of the S. and L.'s transactions because of allegations that McDougal had engaged in a pattern of self-dealing...

"...In 1986...I asked McDougal to take our names off the [Whitewater Development Company] mortgage...Whitewater...had failed to pay property taxes...

"My brother [Tony Rodham] had...become engaged to Nicole Boxer, the daughter of Senator Barbara Boxer of California...We were planning a spring wedding [in 1994] for Tony and Nicole at the White House, so I invited Nicole, her parents and her brother, Doug [Boxer] to join us for Thanksgiving dinner at Camp David [in 1993]...

"NAFTA was ratified on December 8, 1993....As more of our financial records were released...they generated additional stories...In mid-March [1994], The New York Times ran a front-page article...The story accurately reported the profits I had made in the commodities market in 1979...Our close friend Jim Blair...was generous enough to share his expertise in trading commodities...With his help, I...turned $1,000 into $100,000 in a short time...

"...In the early spring of 1993, [Richard] Nixon...sent Bill [Clinton] a letter...Bill [Clinton] invited the former President to the White House...and Chelsea [Clinton] and I greeted him as he stepped off the elevator on the second floor...

"...Paula Corbin Jones...accused Bill Clinton of sexually harassing her by making unwanted advances...On May 6, 1994...Paula Jones filed a civil suit against the President of the United States, asking for $700,000 in damages...In early June 1994, Bill [Clinton] and I traveled to England...Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had invited us to spend the night on her royal yacht HMS Britannia...

"As we moved toward the midterm elections in November [1994], Bill [Clinton]'s political advisers assured us that the Democrats were in relatively good shape. But I was worried...I also knew that some core Democratic supporters felt disillusioned by our failure to reform health care or betrayed by the Administration's successful push for NAFTA...

"Two weeks before Election Day [in 1994], Bill [Clinton] and I took a brief break...and traveled to the Middle East...And I celebrated my 47th birthday...On October 26 [1994], I saw the Pyramids at Giza in the morning light, and...President Mubarak's wife, Suzanne, hosted a birthday breakfast, complete with cake, in a dining room overlooking the Sphinx.

"Hosni and Suzanne Mubarak are an impressive couple...Like other Arab leaders whom I have met, Mubarak recognizes the dilemma he faces in governing...

"I began my schedule Election Day [in November 1994] much as I would any other...Bill [Clinton] and I...wanted to be alone as we absorbed the election returns...The Democrats lost 8 Senate seats and an astounding 54 seats in the House--ushering in the first Republican majority since the Eisenhower administration. Democratic incumbents were routed everywhere...Defeated and disappointed, I wondered how much I was to blame for the debacle..." 

(end of part 2)

Hillary Clinton's 1990's White House Years Revisited: Part 1

If 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is elected on November 8, 2016 to become first wife of a former U.S. president to win a U.S. presidential election, and she moves into the White House for four years on January 20, 2017, it won't be the first time that Clinton will be occupying the White House. As she recalled in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon and Schuster book publishing subsidiary): 

"...Throughout the [1993] inaugural festivities, Bill [Clinton] received security briefings...He was already shifting his attention...to news of U.S. planes that were bombing Iraq...The [Secret] Service uses code names for its protectees...Bill [Clinton] became `Eagle,' I was `Evergreen.'...

"...I wanted to put our personal stamp on the White House...I hired Walter Scheib, an experienced chef...In early February [1993], Bill [Clinton] and I invited Vince Foster, now Deputy White House Counsel; Bruce Lindsey, also in the Counsel's office and still one of Bill [Clinton]'s closest advisers and traveling companion; and Webb Hubbell, Associate Attorney General, to a...dinner in the second-floor dining room...Bruce, Vince and Webb were among my closest friends...I can still close my eyes and see Vince at that table...

"On January 25 [1993], Bill [Clinton] invited me...to lunch in the President's small study near the Oval Office...and our old friend Ira Magaziner,a...business consultant...Ira...had private sector experience as the owner of a consulting business in Rhode Island that advised multinational companies on how to become...profitable...

"...As the wife of a...President, I didn't have to worry about my family's access to health care...Bill [Clinton] announced that I would chair a newly formed President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform...Several of Bill [Clinton]'s key lieutenants heartily endorsed the idea, including [then-Goldman Sachs executive] Robert Rubin, Chairman of the National Economic Council and later Secretary of the Treasury. One of my favorite people in the administration, [former-Goldman Sachs executive] Bob [Rubin] is fabulously...successful...

"...Bill [Clinton]...had won the [1992] election...with less than a majority of the popular vote--43 percent...Bill [Clinton]...rejected the single-payer and Medicare models, preferring a quasi-private system...that relied on private market forces...

"In...Yugoslavia...I was disgusted by the failure of the United Nations to intervene...I was convinced that the only way to stop...genocide in Bosnia was through...air strikes against Serbian targets...Bill [Clinton] met with his advisers to consider American involvement...

"...On July 20 [1993]...Vince Foster was dead; it looked like a suicide...Bernie Nussbaum...had been with Vince the morning of his death...Two days after Vince's death, Bernie Nussbaum went to Vince's office and, with representatives from the Justice Department and the FBI, reviewed every document there...In the course of this first search, Bernie discovered that Vince had stored in his office some files containing work he had done for Bill [Clinton] and me when he was our attorney in Little Rock, including files that had to do with the land deal called Whitewater. Bernie gave these files to Maggie Williams; and, soon after, they were transferred to the office of Bob Barnett, our private attorney in Washington...

"...By late August [1993], [then-Treasury Secretary Lloyd] Bentsen, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and economic adviser [former Goldman Sachs Director] Bob Rubin were adamant about postpoining health care reform and moving forward with the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA. They believed that...NAFTA warranted immediate action and creating a free trade zone in North America...would...create jobs..."

(end of part 1)

Did Hillary Rodham Clinton Seek To Enrich Herself When Husband Held Arkansas Public Office?

Most Democratic Party voters don't think that the wife of a public official should seek to personally enrich herself and her family when her husband is supposed to be serving the public interest as a state attorney general or state governor. Yet in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon and Schuster book publishing subsidiary), former Arkansas Attorney General and Governor Bill Clinton's wife--2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton--wrote the following:

"...We lived in the Governor's Mansion [in the late 1970's] and had an official expense account that covered meals...But I worried that...we needed to build up a nest egg.

"...My friend Diane Blair was married to someone who knew the intricacies of the commodities market...Jim Blair was...lawyer whose clients included the poultry giant Tyson Foods...Jim had developed a system of trading that was making him a fortune...By 1978...I was willing to risk $1,000 and let Jim guide my trades through...broker...I walked away from the table $100,000 ahead...

"...In the spring of 1978...a businessman...named Jim McDougal approached us with a...deal: Bill [Clinton] and I entered a partnership with Jim and his...wife Susan, to buy 230...acres on the south bank of the White River in...Arkansas. The plan was to subdivide the site for vacation homes, then sell the lots at a profit.

"...Bill [Clinton] had...made a...real estate investment with McDougal the year before that had turned a...profit...We took out bank loans to buy the property, eventually transferring ownership to the Whitewater Development Company, Inc....in which we and the McDougals had equal shares...

"...I kept my name after Bill [Clinton] was elected to state office partly because I thought it would help avoid the appearance of conflict of interest...

"I was helping...defend a company that sold and shipped...logs by railroad. As a shipment was unloaded at its destination, the logs came loose...and injured some employees of the company that had purchased the logs...

"...In early March [1992]...[1992 Democratic Party presidential primary candidate and California Governor] Jerry Brown went on the offensive against Bill [Clinton], focusing on my law practice and on the Rose Law firm, where I had been a partner since 1979...The Rose Firm...provides...services to the Arkansas state government.....

"...Brown accused Bill [Clinton] of steering state business to the Rose Firm...

"...I was [1992 Democratic Party presidential candidate] Bill [Clinton]'s principal surrogate on the campaign trail. I wanted to support his campaign and to advance his ideas. I had taken leave from my law firm and resigned from all of the corporate boards on which I served. That meant leaving the board of Wall-Mart, on which I had sat for 6 years at the invitation of Sam Walton, who taught me a great deal about corporate...success...

"I proudly cast my vote for Bill [Clinton] to be my President...Robert Rubin, the Co-Chairman of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, accepted Bill [Clinton]'s offer to become the first head of a soon-to-be-created National Economic Council...

"...Bill [Clinton] couldn't appoint me to an official position, even if he had wanted to. Anti-nepotism laws had been on the books...But there were no laws to prevent me from continuing my role as Bill Clinton's...advisor and, in some cases, representative..."

Did Hillary Clinton Represent Arkansas Corporate Clients When Husband Was Arkansas's Attorney General and Governor?

Most people in the United States during the 1970's did not think it was ethical for a state attorney general or state governor's wife to enrich herself by providing legal representation and legal services for corporate clients in the same state, and at the same time in which her husband was supposed to be representing the public interest as a public official.

Yet in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon and Schuster book publishing subsidiary), former Arkansas Attorney General and Governor Bill Clinton's wife--2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton--wrote the following:

"We were married...on October 11, 1975...He is still the most interesting...person I have ever met...Bill Clinton's first election victory as Attorney General of Arkansas in 1976 was anticlimactic. He had won the primary in May and had no Republican opponent...

"With Bill's election assured, we both felt free to get involved in [Jimmy] Carter's [1976 presidential] campaign when he became the Democratic nominee...Carter's staff asked Bill to head the campaign in Arkansas and me to be the field coordinator in Indiana...Carter did not carry Indiana...

"Bill and I had to move to Little Rock...Fayetteville was too far to commute, so I couldn't continue teaching at the University...I began to...consider joining a private firm...Representing private clients...would help us financially...The Rose Law Firm was the most venerable firm in Arkansas...I had gotten to know one of its partners, Vince Foster...After 1976, Vince and another Rose Firm partner Herber C. Rule III, came to see me with a job offer...In the first jury trial I handled on my own, I defended a canning company...

"...Bill...was elected Governor in 1978...In 1979 I was made a partner at the Rose Law Firm..."

How Hillary Clinton Obtained Her U. of Arkansa Law School Teaching Job Revisited

During the 1970's, most people in the United States did not think that a teaching job at a publicly-funded state university law school should be given to an applicant with no previous law school teaching experience on the basis of nepotism--or just because the applicant's partner had local, state and national Democratic Party political connections and was a pal of the law school's dean.

Yet in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon and Schuster book publishing subsidiary), former President Bill Clinton's wife--2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton--wrote the following:

"...One night, Bill and I ended up in the kitchen talking about what each of us wanted to do after graduation [from Yale's Law School in Connecticut]...Bill was absolutely certain: He would go home to Arkansas and run for public office...After the [1972 Democratic National] convention, Gary Hart asked Bill to go to Texas, along with Taylor Branch...to run the McGovern campaign in that state. Bill asked me if I wanted to go, too. I did. Anne Wexler...offered me a job heading up the voter registration drive in Texas...It was obvious to all of us that Nixon was going to trounce McGovern in the November [1972] election...

"After completing law school in the spring of 1973, Bill took me on my first trip to Europe...Bill was coming home to Arkansas and taking a teaching job in Fayetteville, at the University of Arkansas School of Law...We agreed that I would come down to Arkansas after Christmas 1973...By the time I arrived for New Year's, Bill had decided to run for Congress...

"That spring [of 1974]...I went with Bill to a dinner party where I met some of his law school colleagues, including Wylie Davis, then the Dean. As I was leaving, Dean Davis told me to let him know if I ever wanted to teach...I decided to take him up on the idea...I asked what I'd be teaching, and he said he would tell me when I got there...On a hot August [1974] evening, the day I arrived, I saw Bill give a campaign speech in Bentonville. The next day I attended the reception for the new law school faculty...I'd be doing what I could to help Bill in his campaign...Bill Bassett, President of the bar association, took me around to meet the local lawyers and judges...

"Classes started the next morning. I had never taught law school...and was barely older than most of my students..."

Revisiting The Clintons of Arkansas's Pre-2016 Presidential Campaign's Pre-1996 Political Record: Part 2

In 2016 the Clintons of Arkansas are campaigning for a third term in the White House after January 21, 2017. Yet the Clintons' political record when Bill Clinton was Arkansas's governor (at the same time that his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, represented Arkansas corporate establishment clients as a corporate lawyer for Arkansas's Rose Law firm and sat on the board of directors of the Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Corporation)--was apparently not considered to be an ethical political record by the Center for Public Integrity. As Charles Lewis and the Center for Pubic Integrity's 1996 book, The Buying Of The President, recalled:

"...The point of Whitewater and Bill Clinton's public service career in Arkansas is that long before the presidential election of 1992, his political identity as an accommodator of the largest, most powerful monied interests was well established. While he was governor, millions of dollars in private favors at public expense accrued to various companies and individuals, and Clinton's professional career as a politician wasa supported by the Arkansas financial and political elites.

"Bill Clinton...has always understood the political importance of raising substantial campaign funds. What is most striking about his first campaign is how a 28-year-old assistant professor of law in Fayetteville, Arkansas, running for a seat in the Congress for the first time, could raise more money than the incumbent four-term Republican congressman. During that 1974 election Clinton raised $178,000, about $20,000 more than John Hammerschmidt, from traditional Democratic party sources.

"In 1974 as well as 1992, candidate Clinton has actually embraced powerful corporate interests and much of their agenda despite his rhetoric against them. When Clinton ran for Congress in 1974 the largest employer in the Third District of Arkansas was Tyson Foods, based in Springdale, which was well on its way to becoming the nation's largest poultry producer...

"The chairman, Don Tyson, is a colorful figure who in the late 1970s designed his corporate office as a replica of the Oval Office in the White House, with doorknobs shaped like chicken eggs. Tyson was estimated to be worth $800 million. He supported Clinton in the 1974 race and according to author David Maraniss, the Tyson family donated a campaign telephone bank which was operated from an apartment near the University of Arkansas, although it should be noted that no such `in-kind' contribution was reported by the campaign to the Federal Election Commission. Clinton never talked much about the company itself publicly, but, instead spoke empathetically about the plight of chicken farmers.

"The Tyson-Clinton relationship continued in Washington, of course, and it grew out of a special culture. Probably no one has better captured the real essence of the political-financial nexus in Arkansas than journalist Michael Kelly, who wrote that Arkansas:

"`...has been ruled for almost all of its existence, and is largely ruled still, by a thin upper crust of Democratic party officials and Democratic legislative leaders and important landholders and businessmen. This elite, bound together not by party or even ideology but by mutually advantageous relationships, holds sway over a small and politically disorganized middle class and a large but well-beaten population of the poor. The contradiction is that Arkansas voters, in a class-based reaction against this condition, perpetually favor politicians who are `common' in touch, populist in theology, and reformist in policies.'

"To be plausible and acceptable to the political and financial elite of Arkansas, a politician certainly cna and must relate well to the people. But he or she must not substantially interfere with the daily commerce of the state, the business status quo. Every candidate in Arkansas instinctively knows this or learns it the hard way. Such is the theater into which Bill Clinton's political career was born." 

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

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

Democratic Party professional politicians like the Clintons have apparently been eager to cash in big when they finally vacate their government offices. Yet most publicly-funded New York City government officials still are paid more annually than what the average individual worker in the Big Apple is allowed to take home each year. As long ago as 2007, for example—despite the alleged budgetary problems of New York City’s government—the following annual salaries were being paid to local city government elected and appointed officials:

1. CUNY Chancellor: $350,000;
2. NYC Dept. of Education Chancellor: $250,000;
3. NYC Mayor: $225,000;
4. NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations: $204,866;
5. Queens College President: $196,000;
6. CUNY Medical School President: $192,000;
7. NYC District Attorneys/Prosecutors: $190,000;
8. CUNY School of Law Dean: $189,740;
9. NYC Comptroller: $185,000;
10. College of Staten Island President: $183,113;
11. NYC Deputy Mayor for Policy: $177,236;
12. NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Development: $177,236;
13. NYC Deputy Mayor for Administration: $177,236;
14. NYC Deputy Mayor for Legal Affairs: $177,236;
15. NYC Housing Authority Chair: $177,038;
16. Queensborough Community College President: $176,580;
17. Hunter College President: $175,000;
18. NYC Mayor’s Chief of Staff: $171,038;
19. NYC Mayor’s Press Secretary: $171,038;
20. NYC Dept. of Citywide Administration Services Commissioner: $172,038;
21. NYC Office of Emergency Management Commissioner: $171,038;
22. NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection Commissioner: $171,038;
23. NYC Financial Information Services Agency Executive Director: $171,038;
24. NYC Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner: $171,038;
25. NYC Dept. of Social Services Commissioner: $171,038;
26. NYC Office of Labor Relations Commissioner: $171,038;
27. NYC Corporation Counsel: $171,038;
28. NYC Office of Management and Budget Director: $171,038;
29. NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation Commissioner: $171,038;
30. NYC Office of Payroll Administration Executive Director: $171,038;
31. NYC Police Commissioner: $171,038;
32. NYC Probation Commissioner: $171,038;
33. NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner: $171,038;
34. NYC Off-Track Betting Corporation President: $171,017;
35. NYC Public Advocate: $165,000;
36. NYC Mayor’s Director of Research: $147,000;
37. NYC Mayor’s Special Advisor for Government: $126,072;
38. NYC Mayor’s Senior Advisor: $125,246; and
39. NYC City Council Members: $112,500.

Yet despite their inflated salaries, New York City government officials have still apparently not been able to reduce the official unemployment rate in the Big Apple to below 4 percent in 2013 or provide many union wage jobs for New Yorkers who still have jobs. In August 2013, for example, the official jobless rate in New York City was 8.6 percent, while wages for most workers in the Big Apple have dropped by about 7 percent after adjusting for inflation, since 2002.

In addition, the median rent in New York City has increased by almost 9 percent since 2007 and the number of rental units affordable to low-income families in the Big Apple has dropped from 40 percent to 25 percent since 2002. So, not surprisingly, the number of homeless families economically compelled to live in city housing shelters has increased by 73 percent since 2002, although “more than one out of four families in shelters, 28 percent, include at least one employed adult…and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs.,” according to the Sept. 17, 2013 issue of the New York Times.

So substituting an apparent phony from Cambridge, Massachusets (who is a Democratic Party politician backed by special business and real estate economic interests) for a Republican Party plutocrat from Medford, Massachusetts (who was also backed by special Wall Street upper-class economic interests) in City Hall ain’t likely to bring much economic equality, political freedom, apartment rent rollbacks or adequately-paid 30-hour workweek jobs to most New Yorkers and New York City tenants in 2014.

And substituting one phony female Clinton for one phony male Clinton in the White House in 2017 ain’t likely to finally create a radically democratic multi-racial society in either the Big Apple or the United States in 2017.

Neither another Republican administration headed by former Mayor Giuliani’s Deputy Mayor—former Paine Webber and Cablevision Executive Joe Lhota—nor a Democratic de-Blasio-Clintongate administration headed by a Clinton “wanna-be/Clinton clone Democrat" will likely liberate the multi-racial working-class “Slaves of New York” in 2014, given the undemocratic political, economic and mass media manipulation/media censorship System that still exists in the United States in the 21^st-century.

All Mass Media and Wall Street Economic Power To The People!

(end of article)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 13

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

Bill de Blasio’s Clintongate Scandal Connection

In an Aug. 13, 2013 Politico website article, titled “Hillary Clinton’s Next Act: The family foundation,” Maggie Haberman also indicated how Hillary Clinton will apparently also become more directly involved in the New York City-based philanthropies empire of the Clintons (at the same time her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign manager de Blasio will likely be occupying the mayor’s office in New York City):

“Hillary Clinton’s next phase of life — the co-leader of a family foundation — has officially begun.

“She’s coming in to her husband’s signature foundation, which has been renamed for all three Clintons — their daughter has an increased presence…. Hillary Clinton’s new office at the foundation’s Manhattan headquarters is slowly taking shape as the chiefs of staff to all three Clintons hold a standing meeting every Monday to arrange schedules and events — three offices staffed with people who have worked together for years….Clinton is joining the foundation launched by her husband and a coterie of former White House aides and advisers...And the foundation is also the structure that has provided sustenance for the extended Clintonland for over a decade…Hillary Clinton’s staff at the foundation is just under 10 people — seven in her current Washington-based transition office and two recent hires…Teneo and some of its clients are also still involved in supporting the foundation’s work, one official said.”

Not much of the money that Bill Clinton has been collecting since 2001 for his tax-exempt “philanthropic” activities (from the ultra-rich folks and special corporate interests who profited most during the 1990s from his administration’s economic policies) has apparently been redistributed to either the families of the children who died in Iraq as a result of his administration’s economic sanctions policy or of the civilians in Serbia who were killed after he ordered that country bombed.

Yet according to a May 23, 2013 Celebrity Worth website article by Brian Warner, since 2001 the presidential candidate whose 1996 re-election campaign in New York was directed by Bill de Blasio has earned over $106 million in speaking fees—despite the Great Recession of the post-2008 years which the Clinton administration’s late 1990s repeal of FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act (that mandated the separation of commercial banking and investment banking) helped create. As Brian Warner observes in his Celebrity Worth article:

“…As a private citizen, Bill was finally able free to cash in… One of the first big windfalls came when the Knopf Publishing Group paid him $15 million for the rights to his memoir My Life. That $15 million is still the largest book advance of all time…. In the 12 years since Bill Clinton has left office, he has given 544 paid speeches all over the world. His fee has ranged from $28,000 to $750,000. The average fee for a single speaking engagement has been $195,000. In 2012, Bill earned $17 million and in 2011 he earned $13.4 million. In total he has made $106 million off speaking engagements since 2001… Out of all of his earnings, $57 million came from outside the US…. “

The same article also indicated how the U.S. senatorial candidate whose campaign Bill de Blasio managed in 2000 has also apparently cashed-in since the Clintons first vacated the White House in early 2001:


“Before Bill Clinton entered the White House…His wife Hillary was the real breadwinner of family at the time, bringing home a salary of $188,547 as an attorney at the…Rose Law Firm in Little Rock…Hillary Clinton earned $8 million for her 2003 biography Living History…Earlier this year Hillary Clinton re-entered private life after stepping down as Secretary of State. Hillary quickly earned a cool $14 million advance for future book with publishing company Simon & Schuster. She is also starting to hit the privates speech circuit and earning six figures for her time…If Hillary and Bill continue to cash in…it's likely that their combined net worth will pass the $200 million mark in the next 3-5 years….”
(end of part 13)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 12

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

Bill de Blasio’s Clintongate Scandal Connection

In an Aug. 28, 2013 article, titled “The Press Scrutinizes the New Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation”, that was posted on the Philanthropy website, Rick Cohen noted that “the intersection of the Clintons’ foundation and Hillary Clinton’s presidential run has generated a spate of articles suggesting that the renamed and expanded foundation is really now a `pre-campaign organization’ for the campaign and is becoming `the command post for all things Hillary. The same article also observes: 

“If you were someone who wanted to get in good with someone with a decent shot of becoming the next president, you might show up at one of the upcoming fundraisers associated with Hillary or Chelsea, such as the scheduled November 9th `Millennium Network’ event, with top-tier $15,000 donors getting themselves photographed with Hillary herself…The association with a possible future president’s name probably makes the foundation nearly irresistible to donors….The ex-president has attracted some raised eyebrows due to the character of occasional donors (notably Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who received some personal benefits from his association with the former president) and questions about some of his foundation’s initiatives…

“The new foundation with Hillary on the nameplate has garnered new scrutiny, including an in-depth article in the New York Times co-authored by Nick Confessore and Amy Chozick. The NYT reporters wrote about the ever-increasing size of the foundation (now with 350 employees), a constantly changing board of various Clinton intimates, $50 million in travel expenditures since 2003…and hints of conflicts of interest concerning [Doug] Band, who has left the foundation to start a private consulting business—not to mention Hillary Clinton’s expanding `nerve center’ of staff, which occupies two floors of the foundation’s Midtown Manhattan offices…

“There are plenty who are plying the foundation for access to the Clintons and their associates..The business and political overlaps show up with Band’s company, Teneo, which seems to have employed Huma Abedin while she was a `special government employee’ at the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary…

"The investigative journalism story...is the news that it is now officially being co-managed by the former president and the former Secretary of State. `I think having a place such as this for a platform gives her a great launching pad into 2016,’ former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told Politico. `It gives her, quite frankly, a great place with which to create or begin to create the message she would use should she decide to run….”

Yet as the New York City Public Advocate since 2010-whose public office website claims to be holding both corporations and tax-exempt “non-profit” organizations like the Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative accountable to the public--Bill de Blasio has apparently failed to adequately monitor or investigate the apparently self-serving and unethical way the Clintons have been operating their New York City-based Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative.

But around the same time that the Clintons’ former 1996 New York campaign director, Clinton-appointed HUD official and 2000 U.S. Senate campaign manager began his term as the New York City Public Advocate, the Washington Post observed in a Jan. 2, 2010 article:

“Foreign governments, longtime Democratic fund-raisers...gave money to President Clinton’s…foundation in 2009, according to a list of donors the foundation released yesterday under an agreement with President Obama to prevent the appearance of conflicts with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s role as secretary of state.

“Some foreign governments…had been multimillion-dollar donors in the past, including Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar…, Other governments continued their giving, including Norway, which has given $10 million to $25 million over the past several years, and Oman, whose donations have totaled $1 million to $5 million.

“Also among the 19,047 donors from last year are Slim-Fast founder and billionaire Democratic donor S. Daniel Abraham, who has given the Clinton Foundation $5 million to $10 million; Canadian mining tycoon Frank Giustra, who has given more than $25 million; and Scottish financier Sir Tom Hunter, whose foundation has donated $10 million to $25 million. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also gave money in 2009 and ranks among the top donors, having given more than $25 million...Some…Clinton Foundation supporters did not give money last year, including Hollywood magnate Stephen Bing and upstate New York businessman Tom Golisano, each of whose past donations total $10 million to $25 million. Citigroup, the banking firm that has received federal bailout money, is a past supporter…Richard Scaife, a conservative media baron… has given the Clinton Foundation $100,001 to $250,000…

“The foundation…financed the construction of Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock…. Clinton resisted revealing his foundation’s donors during his wife’s presidential campaign, but he agreed to do so in late 2008 when Hillary Clinton was negotiating with Obama’s transition team to join the Cabinet….”

In a Sept. 22, 2013 article in The New Republic, titled “Scandal at Clinton Inc.,”  Alec MacGillis also wrote the following in reference to the tax-exempt Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative “philanthropies” and their apparent connection to the for-profit Teneo consulting firm of Clinton Global Initiative Advisory Board member Doug Band:

“Bill Clinton now leads a sprawling philanthropic empire like no other…It has formed partnerships with multinationals and wealthy individuals… In July 2001, the former president had established the William J. Clinton Foundation....In 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) was born.

“CGI is not a traditional charity…It is a series of collaborations with corporations or individuals…CGI was the perfect vehicle for Clinton…. It placed him at the center of a matrix of the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-powerful, the kinds of people Clinton has always taken a special pleasure in surrounding himself with…


“Teneo has its headquarters on the forty-fifth floor of the former Citigroup Center tower in Midtown and employs more than 200 people in 13 cities…It describes its raison d’être as `integrated counsel for a borderless world,’ offering investment banking, restructuring advice, and `business intelligence’” on dealing with `global disruptors.’… From the beginning, Teneo resembled an outpost of Clintonland more than an independent entity. Clinton and Blair came on as paid advisers…. Nancy Hernreich Bowen, director of Oval Office operations under Clinton, works in the Hong Kong office…. A number of key Teneo clients were also closely involved with Clinton’s charitable work. One month before the Rockefeller Foundation presented Clinton with an award for philanthropy, it gave Teneo a $3.4 million contract…Other Teneo clients include the big hospital chain Tenet (which is a lead partner in the new Clinton Health Matters Initiative) and UBS Americas (which launched a Small Business Advisory Program with the foundation). (According to The New York Times, Teneo’s monthly fees can be as high as $250,000.)… In February 2012, Bill Clinton’s office announced that he would no longer take payment from the firm. The page listing an `advisory board’ headed by Clinton and Blair vanished from its website….”
(end of part 12)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 11

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

Bill de Blasio’s 2013 Campaign Contributors

Besides apparently being able to collect up to $1,050 in public matching funds for each individual wealthy New York City resident who contributes over $175 to de Blasio’s 2013 campaign to succeed Billionaire Plutocrat Bloomberg as the Big Apple’s mayor in 2014, the campaign committee of de Blasio has collected over $5.7 million in campaign contributions, including a lot of individual campaign contributions of $4,950 from a number of extremely wealthy folks. As Christopher Robbins observed in an Oct. 6, 2013 article on the Gothamist website:

“…We poked around the New York City Campaign Finance Board's handy searchable database to see who is emptying their pockets for a Mayor de Blasio.

“First: the Big Names. De Blasio said he'd build (metaphysical) "spaces" for Occupy Wall Street to thrive in, but Zuccotti Park's namesake, John Zuccotti of Brookfield Properties, donated $4,950 to the candidate during the last filing period, the maximum amount allowed by law….Real estate developer Ben Shaoul, who sits on the vanguard of gentrification in the East Village, also donated the $4,950 maximum to de Blasio…So did real estate mogul Ed Scheetz.

“Michael Ratner, Karen Ranucci, and Ellen Ratner, who are developer Bruce Ratner's brother, sister-in-law, and sister, respectively, all donated the maximum amount to de Blasio's campaign…David Belt, a founding partner of DBI Construction Consultants… also donated the maximum amount to de Blasio, as did Jack Cayre, the CEO of Midtown Equities, the firm that is building the giant Yuppie Condo Mall at the Empire Stores site in DUMBO…And so did the co-founder of Bed Bath & Beyond, Leonard Feinstein.

“Billionaire…Alexander Rovt donated to de Blasio last year, but his son Maxwell, who is the Chief of Real Estate for the family business, IBE Trade Corp, donated $4,950 to de Blasio this past cycle. (His mother and father each donated $2,475 the previous cycle, in addition to other contributions made last year.) Meanwhile, the Soros family—George, Alexander, Andrea, and Jonathan, donated a total of $13,025 last cycle….Igor Medvedovskly, the general manager of Yellow Cab Medallion Company also donated $4,950 last month.

“As for Wall Street: Neil Mitchell, Morgan Stanley's private wealth executive director (and former senior VP at Lehman Brothers) donated $4,700 last cycle…”

Despite receiving a lot of money in campaign contributions from various labor union bureaucrats, de Blasio has also accepted big campaign contributions from the following individuals over the last few years: 1. $4,950 from William Zeckendorf of Brown Harris Stevens; 2. $4,950 from Arthur Zeckendorf of Terra Holdings; 3.  $4,950 from Loudas Zoumas of The Avaris Group;  4. $4,950 from Alen York of Alen Sands York Association; 5. Over $4,950 from Joanne Wycott of Southhampton, New York; 6. $500 from Alice Wolf of Cambridge, Massachusetts; 6. $4,950 from Gilbert Winn of Boston, Massachusetts; 7. Over $4,950 from John Wilhelm of Santa Barbara, California; 8. $4,950 from Victor Weingarten of Gotham Yellow Taxi;  10. $3,475 from Rob Wavra of The Sentinel Homeland Security Group in Fairfax, Virginia; 11. $4,500 from James Vasey of Cab Management Corporation;  12. $2,500 from Michael Varner of JP Morgan Chase; 13. Over $4,500 from Jeff Thamkittikasem of The Sentinel Homeland Security Group;  14. $4,950 from Robert Tannenhauser of the Ruxton Capital Group; 15. $4,500 from Carol Tannenhauser of the Ruxton Capital Group; 16. $4,950 from Jay Snyder of HBJ Investment; 17.$4,950 from Robert S. Rubin of JP Morgan Chase; 18. $4,950 from Steven G. Rubenstein of Rubenstein Communications; 19. $4,950 from John Rove of Columbia University; 20. $4,950 from Nan Cooper Rothschild of Columbia University; 21. $4,950 from the New York State Economic Growth PAC; 22. $4.950 from Amy O’Donnell of Procter & Gamble;  23. $4,950 from W. Patrick McMullan of Bear Stearns; 24. $4,950 from Sanel Ljesnjanin of Millenium Taxi; 25. $4,950 from David Kuperberg of Cooper Square Realty; 26. $4,950 from Timothy Ingrarasa of Goldman Sachs; 27. $4,950 from Neil Greenbaum of All Taxi; 28. $4,950 from Howard Gottlieb of Glenwood Investment Capital; 29. $4,950 from Eugeny Friedman of the Taxi Club; 30. $4,950 from Alexander Durst of The Durst Organization; and 31. $400 from Cooper Union Trustee Jeffrey Gural.

(end of part 11)

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)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 9

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

As the New York Daily News observed in a Sept. 22, 2013 article, “the records examined by The News…show that from 1995 to 2001, the now-candidate for mayor was registered with the city Board of Elections as Bill de Blasio and voted 10 times under that name, even though he had not yet petitioned the court to change his name from Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm;” and “on a June 25, 2003, mortgage with JPMorgan…he was listed as `Bill AKA Warren de Blasio AKA Wilhelm’ and he signed it, `Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm AKA Bill de Blasio. Yet registering to vote under a different name than your legal name—and then voting under a different name than your legal name in various elections-- was apparently considered legally “kosher” by New York City’s Board of Elections with respect to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm (who perhaps dropped the “Wilhelm” part of his name when he realized that people in New York City who voted on the basis of ethnic background rather than political philosophy might be more inclined to vote for a Democrat whose last name was just “de Blasio” rather than “de-Blasio-Wilhelm.”)

After getting elected as the Big Apple’s Public Advocate in 2009, de Blasio apparently used his office as a stepping-stone to more easily win election as New York City’s mayor in 2013. In addition, as New York City’s Public Advocate de Blasio apparently served special economic and corporate interests instead of serving the public interest. As the New York Times recalled in an Aug. 31, 2013 article:

“New York City was planning to allow thousands of new taxis to operate outside Manhattan…It was hard to imagine Mr. de Blasio…opposing a proposal to improve transportation for his chronically taxi-starved neighbors….Mr. de Blasio would emerge as the taxi plan’s most prominent opponent…and using his office to fight it in court — and confounding allies who found his stance incongruous with his typical stands.

“`I was flabbergasted,’ said David S. Yassky, the taxi and limousine commissioner whose former City Council district borders Mr. de Blasio’s. `After hearing all his rhetoric about standing up for the outer boroughs, here’s a program that actually would help 80 percent of New York City, and he did everything he could to stop it.’”

“The powerful taxi and limousine industry, which bitterly opposed the city’s plan, made its gratitude clear, sending about $200,000 in contributions to Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign in the last two years, far more than his rivals received. And Mr. Kabessa, the chief executive of Carmel Car and Limousine Service, now sits on the campaign’s finance committee and was a host of a fund-raiser for Mr. de Blasio this spring.

“But a review of his years as public advocate shows that the office often served another aim: Elevating Mr. de Blasio’s political ambitions and his profile in anticipation of a run for mayor..."
(end of part 9)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 7

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

Bill de Blasio’s Cambridge, Massachusetts Roots and Polaroid Connection

During the years that de Blasio’s mother was apparently working for Land as a Polaroid Corporation public relations manager, the recipient of the National Education Association [NEA]’s 2012 Rosa Parks Memorial Award, Caroline Hunter, discovered that Land’s Polaroid Corporation was also collaborating with the apartheid regime in South Africa. As the NEA website recalled:

“At the age of 21, fresh out of Xavier University, New Orleans, Hunter landed a good job as a chemist at the Polaroid Corporation. Then one day, quite by chance, she spotted in her workplace an enlarged South African photo identification card. The year was 1970, decades before the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S. had gathered steam. But Caroline Hunter knew the significance of that photo identification card. It was part of what Nelson Mandela called `the hated document’— that is, the South African passbook all Blacks in South Africa were required to carry at all times. It was an important link in the chain that the Apartheid regime used to control and monitor the movement of Blacks.

“Polaroid had in fact been doing business with the apartheid government of South Africa for years. Most important was its ID-2 system, which consisted of a camera, instant processor and laminator. It could generate a photo identification card in just two minutes and more than 200 in an hour—exactly the technology the apartheid government needed to enforce its Pass Laws Act.

“After finding the mock passbook, Caroline Hunter and her colleague (and later husband) Ken Williams, a photographer at Polaroid, launched their campaign. They distributed fliers around the workplace, alerting their colleagues to Polaroid’s complicity with apartheid. They organized demonstrations outside the company’s headquarters, and they spoke out to the larger community. Up until this point, Polaroid had a reputation as a liberal company—`an equal opportunity’ employer. But the Polaroid management did not take well to the protests, and they fired Hunter and Williams…”

In his book Sharpville: An Apartheid Massacre and Its Consequences, Tom Lodge also wrote that “the formation of the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM) by black employees at Polaroid’s Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters signaled wider concerns with US-South African connections: the PRWM was formed to stop Polaroid’s processing of film for South Africa’s passbooks…” And according to Insisting On The Impossible:

 “…Early in 1971, demonstrators protesting Polaroid’s involvement in South Africa and Land’s key role in defense nearly prevented Land from speaking about his color-view research at the American Physical Society in New York…In 1970 and 1971, employees and outsiders demanded that Polaroid cease selling its products in South Africa, including its photo-identification equipment…Some critics even took out large advertisements urging a boycott of Polaroid products. To meet the criticism, Polaroid sent a committee…to South Africa. The committee…recommended continuing sales through Polaroid’s South African dealer, which amounted to $1.5 million a year…”

And Polaroid apparently did not stop selling its products in South Africa until 1977.

Yet during de Blasio’s years as a teenage junior high school and high school student government politico in Cambridge during the 1970s (who was also profiled in the Boston Globe during the late 1970s) he apparently never questioned the morality of the political role his mother was apparently playing as a public relations manager for a corporation that was collaborating with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Coincidentally, de Blasio joined some other local politicians in signing a Jan. 31, 2013 letter to Brooklyn College’s president which attempted to pressure the college’s Political Science Department to withdraw its sponsorship of a campus panel discussion about the non-violent BDS campaign to use economic divestment tactics (similar to those used by the anti-apartheid Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement in the 1970s against the Polaroid firm in whose public relations department his mother worked) to get the Israeli government to end its denial of Palestinian human rights; which led columnist Katha Pollit to criticize de Blasio and the other local politicians who signed this letter for setting “themselves up as micro-managers of campus programming, backed up by threats of financial punishment,” in her Feb. 5, 2013 column of The Nation magazine. 

(end of part 7)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 6

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

Bill de Blasio’s Cambridge, Massachusetts Roots and Polaroid Connection

When Hillary Clinton named de Blasio in December 1999 to be her full-time campaign manager during her successful campaign in 2000 to occupy one of New York’s seats in the U.S. Senate between 2001 and 2009, she claimed she had chosen “someone who…grew up in New York—a point that was prominently mentioned in the single-page news release announcing the appointment,” according to the Dec. 4, 1999 New York Times article; apparently, according to the Aug. 25, 2013 New York Times article, because of  “the carpetbagging charges that dogged Mrs. Clinton.”

Yet, in reality, in late 1999 Hillary “The Carpetbagger from Arkansas and Washington, D.C.” had chosen a “Carpetbagger from Cambridge, Massachusetts” to be her U.S. Senate campaign manager in 2000: because Bill de Blasio did not grew up in New York, but did grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As Dan Janison noted in an Aug. 17, 2013 Newsday article:

“De Blasio was raised in Cambridge, Mass., Bay State roots being one of the…things he shares with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And de Blasio remains a Red Sox fan…. De Blasio attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School..”.

And as the Boston Globe recalled in a Sept. 30, 2013 article, “De Blasio moved to Cambridge in 1966, when he was 5” and “his mother, Maria, was a public relations manager at Polaroid.”

The old Polaroid Corporation (that went bankrupt in 2001, had its assets purchased by OEP Imaging Corporation in 2002 and ceased to exist in 2002), in whose public relations department the now-deceased Maria de Blasio Wilhelm worked for nearly 20 years, was formed in 1937 by Edwin Land—a grandson of Avram Solomonivich and the son of Harry Land, the owner of the H.M. Land Waste Company in Connecticut. According to Victor McElheny’s Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land, during the 1920s the “main business” of Edwin Land’s father “was to handle all the scrap metal from Electric Boat, the principal builder of submarines in the United States;” and “by 1927, Harry Land had begun to invest his profits in real estate.”

Established in 1937 with the financial backing of Wall Street investment bankers like James P. Warburg, during World War II Polaroid profited from the war by supplying “$2 million dollars’ worth of still [3-D] Vectographs to the U.S. military,” producing “filters for goggles” for U.S. Navy gunners, and making “periscopes, lightweight stereoscopic rangefinders, aerial cameras, the Norden bombsight, and a mechanism that antiaircraft gunners could use in training their tracer fire,” according to Insisting On The Impossible. The same book also recalled that during World War II, “the Navy asked Polaroid to work on a plane-launched, guided anti-ship bomb,” “for the thousand-pound guided bomb, the Navy awarded a contract that paid a total of $7 million dollars to Polaroid over several years” and “the contract represented a substantial fraction of the company’s wartime business.”

During the Korean War, Cold War and Vietnam War eras of the 1950s and 1960s, Polaroid President and Chairman Land also headed the Republican Eisenhower administration’s Technological Capabilities Panel’s intelligence project that helped the CIA develop its secret U-2 spy plane and spy satellite programs. In addition, as a member of both the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities and the President’s Science Advisory Committee (along with former Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank board chairman and MIT President James Killian), Polaroid’s president and chairman was “virtually in control of the development of U.S. technical means for gathering intelligence, especially in the CIA and the National Security Agency, which monitored communications throughout the world” during the late 1950s and early 1960s, according to Insisting On The Impossible.

As the same book also recalled:

“Many years of largely secret government services had prepared Land for the work leading to U-2 and beyond…For the work on Project Charles, Land assigned one of his leading optical scientists, David Grey, to participate with him…The Project Charles report recommended use of one-step Land-type photography to record images off radar scopes…Land…set up a center for bringing together all the elements of the reconnaissance [U-2] plane. The small room was at 2 Osborn Street [in Cambridge] the modest red brick building that contained his office and laboratory…”

Coincidentally, some former CIA officials have apparently claimed that Bill Clinton spied on anti-war movement activists for the CIA in the UK while attending Oxford, not many years after Polaroid apparently collaborated with the CIA to develop its U-2 spy plane. According to a 1996 book written by a former senior aide to 1984 Democratic Party presidential nominee Walter Mondale named Roger Morris, titled Partners In Power:

“`Bill Clinton’s ties to the intelligence community go back all the way to Oxford and come forward from there,' says a former government official who claims to have seen files long since destroyed… One former agency official would claim later that the future president was a full-fledged `asset,’ that he was regularly `debriefed,’ and thus that he informed on his American friends in the peace movement in Britain. Similarly, he was said to have informed on draft resisters in Sweden during his brief trip there with Father McSorley…

“One more CIA retiree would recall going through archives of Operation Chaos at the Langley headquarters—part of an agency purge amid the looming congressional investigations of the mid-1970s—and seeing Bill Clinton listed, along with others, as a former informant who had gone on to run for or be elected to a political office of some import, in Clinton’s case attorney general of Arkansas. `He was there in the records,’ the former agent said, `with special designation.’ Still another CIA source contended that part of Clinton’s arrangement as an informer had been further insurance against the draft...”


In a footnote to his 1996 book, the author of Partners In Power, Roger Morris, also noted that “interviews on the issue of Clinton and the CIA were arranged in part through organizations of retired intelligence officers and other national security officials and included former ranking members of the CIA stations in London, Stockholm, Paris and Moscow, as well as some who served at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, during the late 1960s and who were familiar with the Operation Chaos files.”
(end of part 6)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 5

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

Bill de Blasio’s Hillary Clinton Connection

In his 2000 book Rogue State, anti-war writer William Blum indicated some of the reasons the husband of Hillary Clinton was considered responsible for war crimes by many anti-war activists on the Lower East Side in 1999: “for his merciless bombing of the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights, taking the lives of many hundreds of civilians and producing one of the greatest ecological catastrophes in history; for his relentless continuation of the sanctions and rocket attacks upon the people of Iraq; and for his illegal and lethal bombing of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan and Afghanistan.”

And most anti-corporate activists on the Lower East Side in 1999 also opposed the pro-NAFTA, pro-WTO and pro-IMF economic policies that both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton promoted, which helped create a larger growth in economic inequality in the USA during the Democratic Clinton administration of the 1990's than in any previous U.S. administration.

Yet Bill de Blasio still agreed in late 1999 to serve the Clintons as Hillary Clinton’s 2000 campaign manager when the wife of Arkansas’s former governor (and then-Democratic Party Boss Bill Clinton) wanted to “carpetbag” into New York State from the White House and grab a third seat in the U.S. Senate for Arkansas’s political establishment; and wanted to also use one of New York State’s seats in the U.S. Senate as a stepping stone for a future U.S. presidential campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and as a way to authorize a 2003 Pentagon attack on Iraq that most people in New York City opposed. As the New York Times observed in a Dec. 4, 1999 article, titled “Clinton Senate Campaign Gets A Full-Time Director:”

“Hillary Rodham Clinton began to lay the groundwork for…her United States Senate campaign yesterday, selecting Bill de Blasio…to serve as her full-time campaign manager.

“Mr. de Blasio, 38, has held a series of political and governmental jobs in New York… He took a desk and phone at Mrs. Clinton's Midtown campaign headquarters yesterday and will formally begin work on Monday.

“With his appointment, Mr. de Blasio joins a small full-time campaign staff,…

''`I am very excited to do this,’' Mr. de Blasio said. `'I think she's a great candidate.’…'

“Mr. de Blasio…has ties to City Hall, through Mr. Vallone…and, perhaps most important, to Harold M. Ickes, Mrs. Clinton's senior political strategist. Mr. Ickes also works as Mr. Vallone's paid lobbyist in Washington….”

In an Aug. 25, 2013 article, the New York Times also indicated how de Blasio contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2000 campaign to grab one of New York’s seats in the U.S. Senate for U.S. presidential campaign stepping-stone reasons:

“Mr. de Blasio, a former official in the Clinton administration...joined the campaign in late 1999, after being recommended by several people close to the Clintons, including Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton….His primary objectives…included serving as a liaison to New York’s power brokers, in the city and upstate…Never was he more instrumental, his colleagues say, than when he soothed the feelings of Jewish leaders…Indeed, Mr. de Blasio stayed in close contact with Assemblyman Dov Hikind ... And Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime adviser to Mrs. Clinton, said that the former first lady `would not have been senator without him’ because `he paved the way for her with many of the prickly political factions in New York State.’”

And in her 2003 autobiography, Hillary Clinton also recalled that in 2000 “Patti Solis Doyle…coordinated my White House and campaign schedules,…overseeing logistics and helping to run campaign strategy” and “Patti joined an experienced team led by my campaign manager, Bill de Blasio, who proved to be an outstanding strategist and trusted emissary among the…communities of New York…”

Coincidentally, the Clinton White House Chief of Staff who recommended de Blasio as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Tiber Creek Group-Ickes and Enright Group lobbyist Harold Ickes, has, in recent years, also been the president of the tax-exempt Fund for the Public Advocate, which “was formed by the Office of the New York City Public Advocate and incorporated in 2002 as a…tax exempt corporation” and “seeks to partner with foundations, corporations, individuals and community organizations,” according to its website.

And among the clients whose special interests have been represented by the Tiber Creek Group-Peck Madigan Jones firm that Fund for the Public Advocate President Ickes’s lobbying firm has been a part of during Bill de Blasio’s term as New York City’s Public Advocate have been the following:  Health Partners, Inc., Hertz Corporation, International Swaps & Derivatives Association, MasterCard International Incorporated; Mid-Sized Bank Coalition of America; NYSE Euronext, Inc.; Pentagon Federal Credit Union; Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America; US-Russia Business ; Whirlpool Corporation; Wells Fargo Securities, Inc.; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Yet as the New York Times observed in an Aug. 31, 2013 article:

“”One of his first actions was to bring in an old friend and mentor as the fund’s president: Harold M. Ickes, a prominent figure in the Clinton White House. Mr. Ickes, who resides in Washington, was initially skeptical of Mr. de Blasio’s entreaties.

“`I said, “Do you really want a non-New Yorker?’” Mr. Ickes recalled in an interview.

“But Mr. de Blasio was insistent. `He thought it would be an asset,’ said Mr. Ickes, who also advises Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign.”

(end of part 5)