Michael Goodwin

Michael Goodwin

US News

De Blasio is a two-faced pol

Recent revelations about Bill de Blasio’s fishy financial records and his failure to disclose rental income on one of his two, million-dollar houses have not damaged de Blasio’s commanding lead.

Most of his supporters are immune to buyers’ remorse.

But there might be action on the other end of the deal. I’m hearing de Blasio himself has a touch of seller’s remorse.

In small groups and individual meetings, the candidate is said to be privately reassuring well-heeled New Yorkers that, despite the sweeping overhauls he talks about publicly, they can trust he will not get carried away and wreck the city.

In fact, some people came away with the impression that the Democrat was suggesting his campaign promises are just that — and will expire once he becomes mayor.

“I understand that we can’t let crime come back,” one man quoted de Blasio as telling business leaders. “If we do that, New York is finished.”

The City Hall front-runner reportedly also told developers that “you can build as big and as high as you want.” The only condition was that they had to help build affordable housing.

The secret assurances stand in stark contrast to the campaign narrative de Blasio built around radical ideas: The police keep crime low through racial profiling, he will turn the page on the Giuliani-Bloomberg era and Occupy Wall Street is right about the 1 percent stealing from the 99 percent.

His new love for public safety and other skim backs make it tempting to demand that the real Bill de Blasio stand up! That also would be wrong.

This is the real de Blasio. Both of him.

The charge that he is a more-than-ordinary hypocrite has dogged him all along and united his primary rivals. They knew many of his campaign stands were the opposite of positions he took over the years, and saw his switches as pure calculation. Their lingering bitterness is evident from the few appearances they made with him since his victory.

The case against him is a slam-dunk: From term limits to policing to slush funds to campaign finances, he crafted a new image for himself as an outside reformer after a career spent on the inside. Just as he earlier shed his names in a search for a new identity, he shed his positions in a search for a new job.

GOP nominee Joe Lhota gets the pattern, and did jujitsu with his rival’s “tale of two cities” slogan, calling the habitual flip-flops a “tale of two de Blasios.”

His latest example is that de Blasio supported the plan for affordable housing in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project, but didn’t complain when none was built. Developer Forest City Ratner raised $73,000 for de Blasio, leading Lhota to charge that the Dem was “silent because he’s been bought.”

The issue is not simply that de Blasio says one thing and does another, or even that he says two things and does neither. It’s the idea that he has no guiding principle other than ambition.

His class-warfare screeds are especially rich given his personal finances. The Post revealed that de Blasio did not report any rental income on his financial-disclosure forms going back to at least 2007. Yet his 2011 tax return shows income of $47,500 from rent on a second Park Slope house he owns.

His campaign claims he didn’t have to report the income publicly because it was offset by expenses. That doesn’t make sense — the form says outside income over $1,000 must be reported. Notably, he didn’t take that position with the IRS.

The rental income from 2011 suggests he charged about $2,000 a month for each of two small apartments in the second house. Is that what he means by “affordable,” or does that demand apply only to other landlords?
The Post also found his mortgages total nearly $1.3 million, an enormous debt for a family of four with income reportedly limited to his Public Advocate salary of $165,000. It looks as if he’s using the houses, which have a combined market value of $2.3 million, as an ATM. Do his Occupy friends know he’s so cozy with big banks?

Probably not, because there is much about de Blasio nobody knows. Absent a political miracle, we’re about to learn the hard way.

O, what a load of gulli-bull!

To hear the White House spin, President Obama’s administration is like an unfaithful spouse. And he’s always the last to know!

Somebody, we are supposed to believe, is keeping our cuckolded president in the dark. He didn’t know the ObamaCare Web site would be such a flop and that millions would lose their insurance. Nor did he know our spooks were spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It’s all news to him. Maybe, but who are you gonna believe — him or your lying eyes?

Not him.

In truth, Obama’s declarations of aggrieved innocence reveal the White House code for reacting to events.

When something happens he believes is good for him, aides fall all over themselves to claim he made it happen. Recall that he spiked the football so many times on the Osama bin Laden raid that he acted as if he pulled the trigger himself.

When something happens that is bad for him, he denies any involvement and responsibility. The Benghazi terror attack, the IRS targeting of conservatives and now the ObamaCare debacle and the surveillance complaints were hot potatoes thrown to others.

The pattern would be comical if it weren’t so disturbing. The president of the United States weighs only the personal stakes of events, without regard to the impact on the country. In his narcissistic worldview, it’s all about him.

But you already knew that.

Watchdogs hail burglars

There they go again. So-called good-government groups are using Albany corruption to push their hobby horse of public financing for campaigns. Naturally, they do so without conceding the cost or that public money invites corruption.

Their willful ignorance earns them a new name. Instead of good-government groups, let’s call them what they are: big-government groups. It’s more accurate.

Stupid ‘bank’ shot

Even allowing for The New York Times’ relentless attack on capitalism, its Friday editorial was shocking. It argued that the $13 billion settlement the government extorted from JPMorgan Chase isn’t big enough.
The headline captured the extreme attitude: “Reparations From Banks.”

In better days, the word “Reparations” was reserved for the heinous crimes of slavery and the Holocaust. To use it about disputed allegations of bank misbehavior is outrageous, yet par for the editorial page’s extremism.

Subscribers should demand reparations for being assaulted by idiocy.

Hill ♥s everyone

A Wall Street Journal story about Hillary Clinton’s early moves toward the 2016 Democratic primary says she is currying favor with “crucial blocs within the party: African-Americans, liberals, Hispanics and gay and lesbians.”

Well, then, she’s covered all the bases.