Michael Bloomberg is apparently running his anti-gun 501(c)4 non-profit using City of New York assets:

Domain names for [Mayors Against Illegal Guns] were registered in 2006 by the New York City Department of Information and Technology, and have remained on official city web servers ever since.

Yet the group’s “action fund,” through which [Mayor Bloomberg] has piped at least $14 million of his own money in ads over gun control this year alone, is registered as a 501c4, a nonprofit “social welfare” group with the same tax status as, say, the Karl Rove-linked Crossroads GPS or Organizing for Action, President Obama’s grassroots arm. And it raises questions about why a website associated with the group is being managed by City Hall.

…on the dime of New York city taxpayers, no less. 

In fact, the various pieces of the mayor’s efforts appear as a confusing muddle online, with sites that are ostensibly not part of the 501c4 nonetheless being visually dominated by entreaties to click through to the ones that are. There’s little indication that these are different entities with different oversight.

At minimum, the use of a city web server and city employees underscore what critics have long derided as a blurring of the lines between government resources and Bloomberg’s own multi-billion-dollar fortune, his company, and his pet interests in his three terms as mayor.

The answer?  “Shut up, they explained”.  Their ends justify their means, silly peasant.  It only remains for you to be Happy To Pay For it. 

It’s the New York (and Chicago, Philadelphia, Trenton, Boston, Detroit, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Baltimore and, by the way, Minneapolis and Saint Paul) way.