(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)
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