Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Bill de Blasio, the Next Mayor of New York City
Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, running on the Democratic ticket, won a landslide victory for New York City Mayor last evening, beating his Republican challenger, Joe Lhota, 73.3 percent to 24.3 percent with 99.7 percent of the vote counted thus far.
The landslide victory is a harsh rebuke to the current billionaire Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who used his enormous wealth to overturn the previous two-term limit, giving himself an extra four years in office. It is also a long in the making victory for those who believe Bloomberg’s 12 years in office ushered in a merciless gilded age, bestowing benefits on the rich and Wall Street elite while savaging the poor and middle class, and silencing dissent with brutal police force.
The Republican choice of Joseph (Joe) Lhota demonstrated the tone-deaf quality of the party bosses in New York. Lhota had a 14-year Wall Street investment banking background, previously working for First Boston and PaineWebber before joining the Mayor Rudolph Giuliani administration in 1994, and serving in various capacities including Deputy Mayor for Operations.
Both Bloomberg and his Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, had previous Wall Street careers. Kelly was formerly Senior Managing Director of Global Corporate Security at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., the Wall Street firm that collapsed in March of 2008. Bloomberg was a former trader at the investment bank, Salomon Brothers, before founding his trading data and publishing empire, Bloomberg L.P. His company provides Wall Street and trading floors around the world with the Bloomberg Terminal, which has been the cash cow of his franchise. It has been previously estimated that the data terminals alone generate upwards of $5 billion a year in revenue. Since taking office, Bloomberg’s personal wealth has grown from $3 billion to a current Forbes estimate of $31 billion as of this past September.
It has not gone unnoticed that Wall Street stock averages are reaching all-time highs as is Bloomberg’s wealth while income inequality in America also reaches unprecedented levels with 46 million Americans living below the poverty level.
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