If Bill de Blasio weren’t so crooked and his victims weren’t so innocent, you could admire his chutzpah. After all, this is a con man so sure of his con that he drops a ton of BS on reporters without revealing the slightest sign of embarrassment.

With the election behind him, the mayor matter-of-factly acknowledges that he knew since March of 2016 that the city had failed for years to do required lead-paint inspections in public-housing apartments, even though he promised it would. Why didn’t he come clean before he was outed?

“I think that’s a fair point and, in retrospect, I wish we had,” he said.

We? We didn’t lie — you did. Singular.

He also knew that the Housing Authority’s chief falsely claimed to the feds in writing that the inspections were done as required. “She acted in good faith,” he insisted.

Perhaps realizing he’d more or less conceded a cover-up, the mayor serenely declared: “There was no attempt to deceive.”

Of course there was — that was the whole point of claiming the inspections were done. And deception was the whole point of the mayor’s denying there was any deception. Arrgh!

A lie stacked on top of lies — welcome to Bill de Blasio’s New York. He hasn’t even taken the oath for a second term, and he’s already making it clear that truth will have no place in it.

Imagine a private company falsifying a federal document the way his administration did, and imagine the top executive confessing he knew it was false. Faster than you can say income equality, prosecutors would be all over the case.

So, where is the prosecutor here? Or is this just another instance where the public quietly accepts it as fact that government gets to set the rules but doesn’t have to play by them?

There is another curious angle to the lead-paint scandal. City Hall insists that, despite the fact that children 6 and under live in thousands of city apartments with lead paint, only four children tested positive for elevated blood levels — and that two were not related to lead paint.

Noting those stats, de Blasio added, “Thank God there has not been harm done to any child because of the mistakes that were made.”

How does he know there’s no harm? Are elevated lead levels in children harmless, or did these kids just get lucky?

If so, perhaps the whole lead paint issue is overblown in the first place and requiring detailed inspections of tens of thousands of apartments where no children live is a waste of time and money.

But progressives can’t go there. They would rather pose on the high moral ground of supporting an unreasonable requirement that they can’t possibly meet, but be able to admit they failed those children — and lied — without punishment.

That’s the progressive way: preach virtue without actually having to practice it.

It’s curious, too, that de Blasio plans to appoint a monitor to watch over the Housing Authority. He insists his chairwoman, Shola Olatoye, is doing a great job, but he still needs someone to make sure she’s doing her job.

By my count, that makes five major city agencies with monitors — police, fire, children’s services, corrections and now the Housing Authority.

This is a form of outsourcing, whether or not it’s court-ordered, that takes accountability away from elected officials.

Once upon a time, and for a very long time, the mayor managed city agencies. Now “experts” charging millions of dollars are hired to do the job.

Meanwhile, de Blasio is busy planning his next trip to Iowa, where he will lecture the locals on progressive values and urge them to get the country to follow New York.

Before they buy his spiel, the Iowans better look carefully at the city de Blasio is fleeing and his style of mismanagement. It’s not something anybody should copy.

Finally, push comes to chauv

The Bonfire of the Elites that started with Harvey Weinstein continues to spread, with the list of those consumed by the flames growing each day.

Yesterday, another Hollywood star joined the fallen, with John Lasseter, head of animation at Disney, taking a leave from Pixar over “missteps.”

They included the usual “grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes,” the Hollywood Reporter says.

Yet among the heavyweights brought down by their own actions, Charlie Rose stands out. Not just because of his prominence, but also because he claimed to believe that the women he was harassing and groping and demeaning by walking around in the nude were more than fine with his conduct.

In fact, Rose convinced himself they actually enjoyed his attention.

So while he copped to acting “insensitively at times” in a written statement, Rose insisted that “I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.”

Translation: I’m rich and powerful, so I assumed the 20-something assistants and interns were flattered by my attention. Who wouldn’t be?

For his grand delusions, Rose pays with his career now that CBS and PBS have dumped him. At 75, he’s not likely to get an encore, especially when even Bill Clinton could be headed for banishment over his dirty past.

But Rose is not likely to be on the front pages for long — someone new will take his place. So far, the guilty have come from politics, Hollywood and the media but the next wave could come from a new arena — maybe Wall Street, or the medical community or tech or any other sector where older, powerful men believe they are irresistible to women young enough to be their daughters.

As Robert Dilenschneider says, “It may only be a matter of time before cases in the business world start making headlines, too.”

Dilenschneider, whose firm handles corporate consulting and public relations, sent out a note warning executives that it’s time to review their policies on sexual harassment and be sure they are being enforced.

“This is a watershed moment in American history,” he writes. “The bar is being raised for workplace conduct, and there will be no turning back.”

Amen to all that.

A fuzzy ‘impeach’

Tom Steyer, the hedge-funder behind the “time to impeach” ads and billboards isn’t helping the Democrats’ case against President Trump.

So says Obama campaign guru David Axelrod, who sees the ads as “more of a vanity project than a call to action.”

Axelrod makes perfect sense — until the next sentence, when he qualifies his criticism, adding the ad campaign is wrong “at least at this point.”

In other words, save your money for when the time for impeachment is right.

Recipe goof takes the cake

That’s a whole lotta Bundt cake. A correction in The Wall Street Journal reads:

“The recipe for chocolate-swirled pumpkin Bundt cake with molasses glaze requires a 10-to-12-cup Bundt pan. An Off Duty article on Nov. 4 about vegan desserts incorrectly listed a 10-to-12-quart Bundt pan.”