I Don’t Care How The President Roasts Me As Long As He Spells My Name Right

Or how to find the bright side of things:

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he stands behind his controversial joke about “colored people time” — even after President Obama zinged him for it at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend.

“It is an honor to be cooked by the leader of the free world,” de Blasio said on Hot 97 Monday morning when the hosts mentioned the Obama joke.

During his monologue, Obama referenced the controversy when he said: “I do apologize, you know I was a little late tonight. I was running on C.P.T., which stands for ‘jokes that white people should not make.'”

De Blasio said he enjoyed the president’s joke.

“It’s funny. But when the president of the United States makes a joke about something, that’s kind of cool,” de Blasio said. “Look at the bright side.”

Letter Of Law Followed . . .

. . . the spirit of the law is another matter apparently:

The office of Mayor Bill de Blasio has received subpoenas from federal and state prosecutors in connection with a series of overlapping investigations into his fund-raising activities, the counsel to the mayor said on Wednesday.

[. . .]

Karen Hinton, the mayor’s top spokeswoman, declined to comment “on details of the investigation” but said “all involved followed the letter of the law.”

A Tale Of Two Cities

Or perhaps it’s just a secret scheme to fully rehabilitate Bloomberg’s legacy:

On its face, it makes no sense.

A handful of sophisticated New York developers write big campaign checks to rural backwoods political committees miles upstate.

Upon closer inspection, however, it all becomes clear.

The developers were told the money wasn’t meant to help elect some yahoo constable in Moosebreath Corners, N.Y. Instead, it would help Mayor de Blasio in his quixotic quest to flip the GOP-controlled state Senate to the Democrats.

And the developers who chose to give just happened to be seeking — or had in the past received — lucrative benefits from the de Blasio administration such as zoning changes and tax breaks.

All of this is now under investigation by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

When It’s Slushy It’s Easy To Slip

“Mayor de Blasio’s Campaign Fund-Raising Scrutinized in U.S. Corruption Inquiry”:

A wide-ranging federal corruption investigation centered on two businessmen with ties to Mayor Bill de Blasio is also examining some aspects of his campaign fund-raising, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.

The investigation, which in recent days has garnered attention because the focus on the two businessmen led federal agents to interview roughly 20 senior New York Police Department officials, has for some time been examining the ways the businessmen wielded influence in New York City government, several people briefed on the matter said.

That examination has included an aggressive review of Mr. de Blasio’s campaign fund-raising, the person with knowledge of the matter said. The investigation’s focus on Mr. de Blasio’s fund-raising was reported on Friday night by WCBS-TV News.

It was unclear what specific aspect of the mayor’s fund-raising was under scrutiny and how it related to the conduct of the two businessmen.

The two businessmen under scrutiny are Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg. Both served on a large committee that planned Mr. de Blasio’s inaugural celebration in 2014, and Mr. Rechnitz and his wife each contributed $4,950, the maximum amount allowed, to his 2013 campaign. Mr. Rechnitz also raised about $45,000 for him.

Or, “De Blasio’s lust for power will be his final downfall”:

[. . . A]ll the probers’ tips lead back to City Hall, and now the target is coming into clear view. It looks as if the mayor’s three slush funds, the ones that good-government groups blasted as a “shadow government,” have a bull’s-eye on them.

The multimillion-dollar operation is tied to every sleazy deal you’ve read about since de Blasio took office. It is the dirty doorway to all the other schemes and players.

The funds raised at least $4.36 million from developers, unions, taxi medallion owners, carriage-horse opponents and wealthy liberal activists like George Soros. In short, all those who wanted something big and valuable from de Blasio found their way to the back-room boiler operation and wrote a fat check.

The first of the groups was such a hit that the mayor created two more. All three nonprofits have an innocent-sounding name and, because they are incorporated separately from his official campaign, are not bound by the limits and disclosures required under the city’s campaign finance law. It’s a safe bet that avoiding those rules is why the groups were created.

If that pattern weren’t suspicious enough, an added element is that de Blasio has been moving huge amounts of money among the three entities, creating a virtual shell game that, temporarily at least, conceals the donors, how much they gave and how the money is being spent.

Ultimately, the issue is what, if any, favors the donors got in exchange for their cash. Were there illegal quid pro quos?

Lessons In Leadership

Because you can always blame things on lousy messaging on the part of some junior staffer:

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday that he was going to add $305 million to New York City’s capital budget to speed up work on Water Tunnel No. 3 so that it would be able to serve Brooklyn and Queens.

The money will pay for construction of two deep shafts in Maspeth, Queens, that will connect with the tunnel, which is virtually finished. When the work is done, the five million people who live in the two boroughs will have a robust supply of water other than Tunnel No. 2, which was built in 1936.

The mayor’s announcement came just hours after The New York Times reported that his administration last year had removed all money to pay for the tunnel and had also replaced the announced 2021 deadline for completion with a commissioner’s “guess” that it would be ready for service sometime in the mid-2020s.

Those actions and statements, the mayor said, had been misunderstood as postponing the work. “There are times when my team does not do a good job of explaining something,” he said.

The simplest part of the mayor’s day may have been finding money to pay for the tunnel, not an especially difficult task in a budget swollen with revenues from a booming city economy.

Far more awkward was the struggle by him and his aides to argue that they had never flagged in their support for the tunnel project, and to avoid an unflattering comparison to Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who drove progress on the construction after work on the tunnel had moved sluggishly for decades.