Does anyone else think the hoopla surrounding Hillary's "emotional breakdown" is a TAD overblown. People acted like she had to be strapped to a gurney and wheeled out by paramedics.
hillary's simply a walking filibuster of mannish proportions... a micromanaging beast of old school politico paradigms
And boring too.
If you know anyone who lives in Michigan, tell them to vote for Romney on Tuesday....
Yes, you heard me right.
There's no Democratic Primary in Michigan on Tuesday, and anyone can vote in the Republican primary. So why not create a little mischief and make sure the most obviously creepy Republican wins, hurting McCain and dragging out the fight on the Republican side.
to understand why.... read this from Dailykos...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/10/2713/87225/55/434206
Yes, you heard me right.
There's no Democratic Primary in Michigan on Tuesday, and anyone can vote in the Republican primary. So why not create a little mischief and make sure the most obviously creepy Republican wins, hurting McCain and dragging out the fight on the Republican side.
to understand why.... read this from Dailykos...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/10/2713/87225/55/434206
Whatever the outcome, the race is certainly the most exciting one of my lifetime to date. I mean, we have a woman, a biracial man, a Mormon, a populist conservative and a serial-marrying Republican transvestite running for president!
A huge source of pleasure for me has been watching Giuliani waste away. I truly CANNOT STAND HER. And I love that virtually everyone on both sides of the aisle sees through her one-dimensional, historically questionable and tired 9/11 schtick for the hollow branding initiative it is. She's become a parody of herself, starting literally every sentence with "well, since 9/11, blah, blah". I can't get enough scandal about her abusing funds for Judith, Kerik, her ill-conceived campaign strategy, her own children who want nothing to do with her, the CUNT of a new wife, the Swift Boating fire officials -- you name it, I live for it. What more could those of us who lived through her wretched adminstration hope for than to watch that Machiavellian hag crash and burn?
I still recall her in the weeks following 9/11 threatening to arrest the little old Chinese ladies selling Twin Towers t-shirts on Canal Street and admonishing them for exploiting and profiting on tragedy. Yet she has done little else since leaving office. May she rot.
A huge source of pleasure for me has been watching Giuliani waste away. I truly CANNOT STAND HER. And I love that virtually everyone on both sides of the aisle sees through her one-dimensional, historically questionable and tired 9/11 schtick for the hollow branding initiative it is. She's become a parody of herself, starting literally every sentence with "well, since 9/11, blah, blah". I can't get enough scandal about her abusing funds for Judith, Kerik, her ill-conceived campaign strategy, her own children who want nothing to do with her, the CUNT of a new wife, the Swift Boating fire officials -- you name it, I live for it. What more could those of us who lived through her wretched adminstration hope for than to watch that Machiavellian hag crash and burn?
I still recall her in the weeks following 9/11 threatening to arrest the little old Chinese ladies selling Twin Towers t-shirts on Canal Street and admonishing them for exploiting and profiting on tragedy. Yet she has done little else since leaving office. May she rot.
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I do love her dress though.
Go Lex.
I've said the only reason she was runnin in the first place was just for an extra chapter in the autobiography. She had no cred in a national arena, no real substance to her platform, it was all image and huff, rather delusional really. But its all turned out so pathetic it will definitely make that autobio not a Simon and Schuster tome but a Dell Paperback. And it really betrays the truth, in 911 he did nothing, controlled nothing well at all, left the cops and FDNY to be polluted to death afterwards, and simply mistakenly revelled in a false apotheosis.
As for Michigan, the folks there have been contrarians in general for ever. It was one of the first anti-Federalist state populations starting in the early '80's when there arose some of the first local independent civilian militias that still exist to this day in many small towns there. Put that together with the population of Detroit and you've definitely got a state that prides itself on going its own way, national trends and standards can rot. Now it has the worst unemployment in the union. No one there is going to put much stock in any candidate you can be sure.
I've said the only reason she was runnin in the first place was just for an extra chapter in the autobiography. She had no cred in a national arena, no real substance to her platform, it was all image and huff, rather delusional really. But its all turned out so pathetic it will definitely make that autobio not a Simon and Schuster tome but a Dell Paperback. And it really betrays the truth, in 911 he did nothing, controlled nothing well at all, left the cops and FDNY to be polluted to death afterwards, and simply mistakenly revelled in a false apotheosis.
As for Michigan, the folks there have been contrarians in general for ever. It was one of the first anti-Federalist state populations starting in the early '80's when there arose some of the first local independent civilian militias that still exist to this day in many small towns there. Put that together with the population of Detroit and you've definitely got a state that prides itself on going its own way, national trends and standards can rot. Now it has the worst unemployment in the union. No one there is going to put much stock in any candidate you can be sure.
Lex I didn't know that about him lambasting the Chinese t-shirt ladies. I so value those shirts I bought on the street 48 hours after. One says "I Can't Believe I Got Out" which I love to wear in Fingernails NM, and "Evil Will Be Punished," an all-purpose garment for certain.
Everyone I talk to out here about the election brings up Julie's cross-dressing as a definite sign of some kind of 'mental illness,' as well as having an accused/unconvicted child-molesting ex-priest on staff at Giuliana Brothers or whatever it is. I am amazed he even tried to run. He is seriously delusional.
I was thrilled Osama won in Iowa and it really made me feel that all was not lost in this country in re to racism and idiots just voting-by-rote for the most evil white man. Obama speaks beautifully and is inspiring and there seems to be no taint of corruption about him. Except of course the love for power...
I'm praying Hillary doesn't win the nomination as she will probably crash and burn. She is a shoe-in for a republican win. And if it looks like she might win, the white-man consortium on the Republican side will probably have her off'd. I hate to be so pessimistic...
Romney is such a freak. I can't believe a religious nut is again up for power... I said I'd move to Europe if Bush got re-elected. This time I mean it... one more term of these imperial losers I don't ever want to pay taxes again on this swift boat to perdition.
Everyone I talk to out here about the election brings up Julie's cross-dressing as a definite sign of some kind of 'mental illness,' as well as having an accused/unconvicted child-molesting ex-priest on staff at Giuliana Brothers or whatever it is. I am amazed he even tried to run. He is seriously delusional.
I was thrilled Osama won in Iowa and it really made me feel that all was not lost in this country in re to racism and idiots just voting-by-rote for the most evil white man. Obama speaks beautifully and is inspiring and there seems to be no taint of corruption about him. Except of course the love for power...
I'm praying Hillary doesn't win the nomination as she will probably crash and burn. She is a shoe-in for a republican win. And if it looks like she might win, the white-man consortium on the Republican side will probably have her off'd. I hate to be so pessimistic...
Romney is such a freak. I can't believe a religious nut is again up for power... I said I'd move to Europe if Bush got re-elected. This time I mean it... one more term of these imperial losers I don't ever want to pay taxes again on this swift boat to perdition.
It is really a sign of how uninspired really qualified, potentially great presidents are. No one running comes close to fitting that description.
Often, for me, all of Rudiani's caveats stack up on one little mentioned biological indicator: his father once did a year in jail for sticking up a milkman.
Often, for me, all of Rudiani's caveats stack up on one little mentioned biological indicator: his father once did a year in jail for sticking up a milkman.
HILLARY ON TYRA
One really must hand it to Hillary and her communications strategists. First her tearing up is played in heavy rotation and parlayed into a primary victory. Now - surprise, surprise! - she appears on the Tyra Banks Show to give a confessional on the Lewinsky scandal of 10 years ago. The timing is calculated. The Nevada and South Carolina primaries are nipping at her heels. She needs votes, especially African-American ones. She can't go on Oprah because television's First Lady is supporting Obama, so Tyra's the next best thing. And what does she talk about? The period of her life in which her popularity was at an all-time high: the Lewinsky scandal, when the country saw her as the wronged wife. I'm not saying that what she said on the show was a lie, but the timing of this release is without question a "check-mate" to Obama's rising popularity.
Hillary discusses the Lewinsky scandal
One really must hand it to Hillary and her communications strategists. First her tearing up is played in heavy rotation and parlayed into a primary victory. Now - surprise, surprise! - she appears on the Tyra Banks Show to give a confessional on the Lewinsky scandal of 10 years ago. The timing is calculated. The Nevada and South Carolina primaries are nipping at her heels. She needs votes, especially African-American ones. She can't go on Oprah because television's First Lady is supporting Obama, so Tyra's the next best thing. And what does she talk about? The period of her life in which her popularity was at an all-time high: the Lewinsky scandal, when the country saw her as the wronged wife. I'm not saying that what she said on the show was a lie, but the timing of this release is without question a "check-mate" to Obama's rising popularity.
Hillary discusses the Lewinsky scandal
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yep... male strategy... republicans love her
I'm really worried that if Hillary is nominated the Republicans will win. She gets very little support from Independents while Obama gets lots of crossover votes. He's more electable. He's more inspiring.
Here's a wonderful, if massively incomplete, list of vendettas Rudiani carried out throughout his vindictive reign as mayor. I could list more acts of spite, closing CHARAS/El BOHIO, etc., not to mention all the gross police misconduct he stood behind, Amadou, Abner, the list is lengthy.
This article is from the times, so I wonder what the has-been 'America's Governor' will aim at the rag now.
___________________________________________
In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price
By MICHAEL POWELL and RUSS BUETTNER
Published: January 22, 2008
Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him.
In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani's radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to The Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: "GOTCHA!"
That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci's doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.
They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci's decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for The Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.
Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.
"Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower," the mayor told reporters at the time. "Maybe he's dishonest enough to lie about police officers."
Mr. Schillaci suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized and later received a $290,000 legal settlement from the city. "It really damaged me," said Mr. Schillaci, now 60, massaging his face with thick hands. "I thought I was doing something good for once, my civic duty and all. Then he steps on me."
Mr. Giuliani was a pugilist in a city of political brawlers. But far more than his predecessors, historians and politicians say, his toughness edged toward ruthlessnessand became a defining aspect of his mayoralty. One result: New York City spent at least $7 million in settling civil rights lawsuits and paying retaliatory damages during the Giuliani years.
After AIDS activists with Housing Works loudly challenged the mayor, city officials sabotaged the group's application for a federal housing grant. A caseworker who spoke of missteps in the death of a child was fired. After unidentified city workers complained of pressure to hand contracts to Giuliani-favored organizations, investigators examined not the charges but the identity of the leakers.
"There were constant loyalty tests: ˜Will you shoot your brother?' " said Marilyn Gelber, who served as environmental commissioner under Mr. Giuliani. "People were marked for destruction for disloyal jokes."
Mr. Giuliani paid careful attention to the art of political payback. When former Mayors Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins spoke publicly of Mr. Giuliani's foibles, mayoral aides removed their official portraits from the ceremonial Blue Room at City Hall. Mr. Koch, who wrote a book titled "Giuliani: Nasty Man," shrugs.
"David Dinkins and I are lucky that Rudy didn't cast our portraits onto a bonfire along with the First Amendment, which he enjoyed violating daily," Mr. Koch said in a recent interview.
Mr. Giuliani retails his stories of childhood toughness, in standing up to bullies who mocked his love of opera and bridled at his Yankee loyalties. Years after leaving Manhattan College, he held a grudge against a man who beat him in a class election. He urged his commissioners to walk out of City Council hearings when questions turned hostile. But in his 2002 book "Leadership," he said his instructions owed nothing to his temper.
"It wasn't my sensitivities I was worried about, but the tone of civility I strived to establish throughout the city," he wrote. Mr. Giuliani declined requests to be interviewed for this article.
His admirers, not least former Deputy Mayor Randy M. Mastro, said it was unfair to characterize the mayor as vengeful, particularly given the "Herculean task" he faced when he entered office in 1994. Mr. Giuliani's admirers claimed that the depredations of crack, AIDS, homicide and recession had brought the city to its knees, and that he faced a sclerotic liberal establishment. He wielded intimidation as his mace and wrested cost-savings and savings from powerful unions and politicians.
"The notion that the city needed broad-based change frightened a lot of entrenched groups," said Fred Siegel, a historian and author of "The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life." "He didn't want to be politic with them."
He cowed many into silence. Silence ensured the flow of city money.
Andy Humm, a gay activist, worked for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which pushed condom giveaways in public schools. When Mr. Giuliani supported a parental opt-out, the institute's director counseled silence to avoid losing city funds. "He said, ˜We're going to say it's not good, but we're not going to mention him,' " Mr. Humm said.
"We were muzzled, and it was a disgrace."
Picking His Fights
Mr. Giuliani says he prefers to brawl with imposing opponents. His father, he wrote in "Leadership," would "always emphasize: never pick on someone smaller than you. Never be a bully."(HIS FATHER SPENT A YEAR IN JAIL FOR STICKING UP A MILK MAN! - Seven)
As mayor, he picked fights with a notable lack of discrimination, challenging the city and state comptrollers, a few corporations and the odd council member. But the mayor's fist also fell on the less powerful. In mid-May 1994, newspapers revealed that Mr. Giuliani's youth commissioner, the Rev. John E. Brandon, suffered tax problems; more troubling revelations seemed in the offing.
At 7 p.m. on May 17, Mr. Giuliani's press secretary dialed reporters and served up a hotter story: A former youth commissioner under Mr. Dinkins, Richard L. Murphy, had ladled millions of dollars to supporters of the former mayor. And someone had destroyed Department of Youth Services records and hard drives and stolen computers in an apparent effort to obscure what had happened to that money.
"My immediate goal is to get rid of the stealing, to get rid of the corruption," Mr. Giuliani told The Daily News.
None of it was true. In 1995, the Department of Investigation found no politically motivated contracts and no theft by senior officials. But Mr. Murphy's professional life was wrecked.
"I was soiled merchandise "” the taint just lingers," Mr. Murphy said in a recent interview.
Not long after, a major foundation recruited Mr. Murphy to work on the West Coast. The group wanted him to replicate his much-honored concept of opening schools at night as community centers. A senior Giuliani official called the foundation "” a move a former mayoral official confirmed on the condition of anonymity for fear of embarrassing the organization "” and the prospective job disappeared.
"He goes to people and makes them complicit in his revenge," Mr. Murphy said.
This theme repeats. Two private employers in New York City, neither of which wanted to be identified because they feared retaliation should Mr. Giuliani be elected president, said the mayor's office exerted pressure not to hire former Dinkins officials. When Mr. Giuliani battled schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, he demanded that Mr. Cortines prove his loyalty by firing the press spokesman, John Beckman.
Mr. Beckman's offense? He had worked in the Dinkins administration. "I found it," Mr. Beckman said in an interview, "a really unfortunate example of how to govern."
Joel Berger worked as a senior litigator in the city corporation counsel's office until 1996. Afterward, he represented victims of police brutality and taught a class at the New York University School of Law, and his students served apprenticeships with the corporation counsel.
In late August 1997, Mr. Berger wrote a column in The New York Times criticizing Mr. Giuliani's record on police brutality. A week later, a city official called the director of the N.Y.U. law school's clinical programs and demanded that Mr. Berger be removed from the course. Otherwise, the official said, we will suspend the corporation counsel apprenticeship, according to Mr. Berger and an N.Y.U. official.
"It was ridiculously petty," Mr. Berger said.
N.Y.U. declined to replace Mr. Berger and instead suspended the class after that semester.
˜Culture of Retaliation'
The Citizens Budget Commission has driven mayors of various ideological stripes to distraction since it was founded in 1932. The business-backed group bird-dogs the city's fiscal management with an unsparing eye. But its analysts are fonts of creative thinking, and Mr. Giuliani asked Raymond Horton, the group's president, to serve on his transition committee in 1993.
That comity was long gone by the autumn of 1997, when Mr. Giuliani faced re-election. Ruth Messinger, the mayor's Democratic opponent, cited the commission's work, and the mayor denounced the group, which had issued critical reports on welfare reform, police inefficiency and the city budget.
So far, so typical for mayors and their relationship with the commission. Mr. Koch once banned his officials from attending the group's annual retreat. Another time, he attended and gave a speech excoriating the commission.
But one of Mr. Giuliani's deputy mayors, Joseph Lhota, took an unprecedented step. He called major securities firms that underwrite city bonds and discouraged them from buying seats at the commission's annual fund-raising dinner. Because Mr. Lhota played a key role in selecting the investment firms that underwrote the bonds, his calls raised an ethical tempest.
Apologizing struck Mr. Giuliani as silly.
"We are sending exactly the right message," he said. "Their reports are pretty useless; they are a dilettante organization."
Still, that dinner was a rousing success. "All mayors have thin skins, but Rudy has the thinnest skin of all," Mr. Horton said.
Mr. Giuliani's war with the nonprofit group Housing Works was more operatic. Housing Works runs nationally respected programs for the homeless, the mentally ill and people who are infected with H.I.V. But it weds that service to a 1960s straight-from-the-rice-paddies guerrilla ethos.
The group's members marched on City Hall, staged sit-ins, and delighted in singling out city officials for opprobrium. Mr. Giuliani, who considered doing away with the Division of AIDS Services, became their favorite mayor in effigy.
Mr. Giuliani responded in kind. His police commanders stationed snipers atop City Hall and sent helicopters whirling overhead when 100 or so unarmed Housing Works protesters marched nearby in 1998. A year earlier, his officials systematically killed $6 million worth of contracts with the group, saying it had mismanaged funds.
Housing Works sued the city and discovered that officials had rescored a federal evaluation form to ensure that the group lost a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Martin Oesterreich, the city's homeless commissioner, denied wrongdoing but acknowledged that his job might have been forfeited if Housing Works had obtained that contract.
"That possibility could have happened," Mr. Oesterreich told a federal judge.
The mayor's fingerprints could not be found on every decision. But his enemies were widely known.
"The culture of retaliation was really quite remarkable," said Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, the lawyer who represented Housing Works. "Up and down the food chain, everyone knew what this guy demanded."
The Charter Fight
The mayor's wartime style of governance reached an exhaustion point in the late 1990s. His poll numbers dipped, and the courts routinely ruled against the city, upholding the New York Civil Liberties Union in 23 of its 27 free-speech challenges during Mr. Giuliani's mayoralty. After he left office, the city agreed to pay $327,000 to a black police officer who was fired because he had testified before the City Council about police brutality toward blacks. The city also agreed to rescind the firing of the caseworker who talked about a child's death.
In 1999, Mr. Giuliani explored a run for the United States Senate. If he won that seat, he would leave the mayor's office a year early. The City Charter dictated that Mark Green, the public advocate, would succeed him.
That prospect was intolerable to Mr. Giuliani. Few politicians crawled under the mayor's skin as skillfully as Mr. Green. "Idiotic" and "inane" were some of the kinder words that Mr. Giuliani sent winging toward the public advocate, who delighted in verbally tweaking the mayor.
So Mr. Giuliani announced in June 1999 that a Charter Revision Commission, stocked with his loyalists, would explore changing the line of mayoral succession. Mr. Giuliani told The New York Times Magazine that he might not have initiated the charter review campaign if Mr. Green were not the public advocate. Three former mayors declared themselves appalled; Mr. Koch fired the loudest cannonade. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Mayor," he said during a news conference.
Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., chairman of a Charter Revision Commission a decade earlier, wrote a letter to Mr. Giuliani warning that "targeting a particular person" would "smack of personal politics and predilections.
"All this is not worthy of you, or our city," Mr. Schwarz wrote.
Mr. Mastro, who had left the administration, agreed to serve as the commission chairman. He eventually announced that a proposal requiring a special election within 60 days of a mayor's early departure would not take effect until 2002, after both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Green had left office. A civic group estimated that the commission spent more than a million dollars of taxpayer money on commercials before a citywide referendum on the proposal that was held in November 1999.
Voters defeated the measure, 76 percent to 24 percent. (In 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg advocated a similar charter revision that passed with little controversy.)
Mr. Green had warned the mayor that rejection loomed.
"It was simple," Mr. Green said. "It was the mayor vindictively going after an institutional critic for doing his job."
None of this left the mayor chastened. In March 2000, an undercover officer killed Patrick Dorismond, a security guard, during a fight when the police mistook him for a drug dealer. The outcry infuriated the mayor, who released Mr. Dorismond's juvenile record, a document that legally was supposed to remain sealed.
The victim, Mr. Giuliani opined, was no "altar boy." Actually, he was. (Mr. Giuliani later expressed regret without precisely apologizing.)
James Schillaci, the Bronx whistle-blower, recalled reading those comments and shuddering at the memory. "The mayor tarred me up; you know what that feels like?" he said. "I still have nightmares."
This article is from the times, so I wonder what the has-been 'America's Governor' will aim at the rag now.
___________________________________________
In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price
By MICHAEL POWELL and RUSS BUETTNER
Published: January 22, 2008
Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him.
In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani's radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to The Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: "GOTCHA!"
That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci's doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.
They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci's decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for The Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.
Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.
"Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower," the mayor told reporters at the time. "Maybe he's dishonest enough to lie about police officers."
Mr. Schillaci suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized and later received a $290,000 legal settlement from the city. "It really damaged me," said Mr. Schillaci, now 60, massaging his face with thick hands. "I thought I was doing something good for once, my civic duty and all. Then he steps on me."
Mr. Giuliani was a pugilist in a city of political brawlers. But far more than his predecessors, historians and politicians say, his toughness edged toward ruthlessnessand became a defining aspect of his mayoralty. One result: New York City spent at least $7 million in settling civil rights lawsuits and paying retaliatory damages during the Giuliani years.
After AIDS activists with Housing Works loudly challenged the mayor, city officials sabotaged the group's application for a federal housing grant. A caseworker who spoke of missteps in the death of a child was fired. After unidentified city workers complained of pressure to hand contracts to Giuliani-favored organizations, investigators examined not the charges but the identity of the leakers.
"There were constant loyalty tests: ˜Will you shoot your brother?' " said Marilyn Gelber, who served as environmental commissioner under Mr. Giuliani. "People were marked for destruction for disloyal jokes."
Mr. Giuliani paid careful attention to the art of political payback. When former Mayors Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins spoke publicly of Mr. Giuliani's foibles, mayoral aides removed their official portraits from the ceremonial Blue Room at City Hall. Mr. Koch, who wrote a book titled "Giuliani: Nasty Man," shrugs.
"David Dinkins and I are lucky that Rudy didn't cast our portraits onto a bonfire along with the First Amendment, which he enjoyed violating daily," Mr. Koch said in a recent interview.
Mr. Giuliani retails his stories of childhood toughness, in standing up to bullies who mocked his love of opera and bridled at his Yankee loyalties. Years after leaving Manhattan College, he held a grudge against a man who beat him in a class election. He urged his commissioners to walk out of City Council hearings when questions turned hostile. But in his 2002 book "Leadership," he said his instructions owed nothing to his temper.
"It wasn't my sensitivities I was worried about, but the tone of civility I strived to establish throughout the city," he wrote. Mr. Giuliani declined requests to be interviewed for this article.
His admirers, not least former Deputy Mayor Randy M. Mastro, said it was unfair to characterize the mayor as vengeful, particularly given the "Herculean task" he faced when he entered office in 1994. Mr. Giuliani's admirers claimed that the depredations of crack, AIDS, homicide and recession had brought the city to its knees, and that he faced a sclerotic liberal establishment. He wielded intimidation as his mace and wrested cost-savings and savings from powerful unions and politicians.
"The notion that the city needed broad-based change frightened a lot of entrenched groups," said Fred Siegel, a historian and author of "The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life." "He didn't want to be politic with them."
He cowed many into silence. Silence ensured the flow of city money.
Andy Humm, a gay activist, worked for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which pushed condom giveaways in public schools. When Mr. Giuliani supported a parental opt-out, the institute's director counseled silence to avoid losing city funds. "He said, ˜We're going to say it's not good, but we're not going to mention him,' " Mr. Humm said.
"We were muzzled, and it was a disgrace."
Picking His Fights
Mr. Giuliani says he prefers to brawl with imposing opponents. His father, he wrote in "Leadership," would "always emphasize: never pick on someone smaller than you. Never be a bully."(HIS FATHER SPENT A YEAR IN JAIL FOR STICKING UP A MILK MAN! - Seven)
As mayor, he picked fights with a notable lack of discrimination, challenging the city and state comptrollers, a few corporations and the odd council member. But the mayor's fist also fell on the less powerful. In mid-May 1994, newspapers revealed that Mr. Giuliani's youth commissioner, the Rev. John E. Brandon, suffered tax problems; more troubling revelations seemed in the offing.
At 7 p.m. on May 17, Mr. Giuliani's press secretary dialed reporters and served up a hotter story: A former youth commissioner under Mr. Dinkins, Richard L. Murphy, had ladled millions of dollars to supporters of the former mayor. And someone had destroyed Department of Youth Services records and hard drives and stolen computers in an apparent effort to obscure what had happened to that money.
"My immediate goal is to get rid of the stealing, to get rid of the corruption," Mr. Giuliani told The Daily News.
None of it was true. In 1995, the Department of Investigation found no politically motivated contracts and no theft by senior officials. But Mr. Murphy's professional life was wrecked.
"I was soiled merchandise "” the taint just lingers," Mr. Murphy said in a recent interview.
Not long after, a major foundation recruited Mr. Murphy to work on the West Coast. The group wanted him to replicate his much-honored concept of opening schools at night as community centers. A senior Giuliani official called the foundation "” a move a former mayoral official confirmed on the condition of anonymity for fear of embarrassing the organization "” and the prospective job disappeared.
"He goes to people and makes them complicit in his revenge," Mr. Murphy said.
This theme repeats. Two private employers in New York City, neither of which wanted to be identified because they feared retaliation should Mr. Giuliani be elected president, said the mayor's office exerted pressure not to hire former Dinkins officials. When Mr. Giuliani battled schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, he demanded that Mr. Cortines prove his loyalty by firing the press spokesman, John Beckman.
Mr. Beckman's offense? He had worked in the Dinkins administration. "I found it," Mr. Beckman said in an interview, "a really unfortunate example of how to govern."
Joel Berger worked as a senior litigator in the city corporation counsel's office until 1996. Afterward, he represented victims of police brutality and taught a class at the New York University School of Law, and his students served apprenticeships with the corporation counsel.
In late August 1997, Mr. Berger wrote a column in The New York Times criticizing Mr. Giuliani's record on police brutality. A week later, a city official called the director of the N.Y.U. law school's clinical programs and demanded that Mr. Berger be removed from the course. Otherwise, the official said, we will suspend the corporation counsel apprenticeship, according to Mr. Berger and an N.Y.U. official.
"It was ridiculously petty," Mr. Berger said.
N.Y.U. declined to replace Mr. Berger and instead suspended the class after that semester.
˜Culture of Retaliation'
The Citizens Budget Commission has driven mayors of various ideological stripes to distraction since it was founded in 1932. The business-backed group bird-dogs the city's fiscal management with an unsparing eye. But its analysts are fonts of creative thinking, and Mr. Giuliani asked Raymond Horton, the group's president, to serve on his transition committee in 1993.
That comity was long gone by the autumn of 1997, when Mr. Giuliani faced re-election. Ruth Messinger, the mayor's Democratic opponent, cited the commission's work, and the mayor denounced the group, which had issued critical reports on welfare reform, police inefficiency and the city budget.
So far, so typical for mayors and their relationship with the commission. Mr. Koch once banned his officials from attending the group's annual retreat. Another time, he attended and gave a speech excoriating the commission.
But one of Mr. Giuliani's deputy mayors, Joseph Lhota, took an unprecedented step. He called major securities firms that underwrite city bonds and discouraged them from buying seats at the commission's annual fund-raising dinner. Because Mr. Lhota played a key role in selecting the investment firms that underwrote the bonds, his calls raised an ethical tempest.
Apologizing struck Mr. Giuliani as silly.
"We are sending exactly the right message," he said. "Their reports are pretty useless; they are a dilettante organization."
Still, that dinner was a rousing success. "All mayors have thin skins, but Rudy has the thinnest skin of all," Mr. Horton said.
Mr. Giuliani's war with the nonprofit group Housing Works was more operatic. Housing Works runs nationally respected programs for the homeless, the mentally ill and people who are infected with H.I.V. But it weds that service to a 1960s straight-from-the-rice-paddies guerrilla ethos.
The group's members marched on City Hall, staged sit-ins, and delighted in singling out city officials for opprobrium. Mr. Giuliani, who considered doing away with the Division of AIDS Services, became their favorite mayor in effigy.
Mr. Giuliani responded in kind. His police commanders stationed snipers atop City Hall and sent helicopters whirling overhead when 100 or so unarmed Housing Works protesters marched nearby in 1998. A year earlier, his officials systematically killed $6 million worth of contracts with the group, saying it had mismanaged funds.
Housing Works sued the city and discovered that officials had rescored a federal evaluation form to ensure that the group lost a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Martin Oesterreich, the city's homeless commissioner, denied wrongdoing but acknowledged that his job might have been forfeited if Housing Works had obtained that contract.
"That possibility could have happened," Mr. Oesterreich told a federal judge.
The mayor's fingerprints could not be found on every decision. But his enemies were widely known.
"The culture of retaliation was really quite remarkable," said Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, the lawyer who represented Housing Works. "Up and down the food chain, everyone knew what this guy demanded."
The Charter Fight
The mayor's wartime style of governance reached an exhaustion point in the late 1990s. His poll numbers dipped, and the courts routinely ruled against the city, upholding the New York Civil Liberties Union in 23 of its 27 free-speech challenges during Mr. Giuliani's mayoralty. After he left office, the city agreed to pay $327,000 to a black police officer who was fired because he had testified before the City Council about police brutality toward blacks. The city also agreed to rescind the firing of the caseworker who talked about a child's death.
In 1999, Mr. Giuliani explored a run for the United States Senate. If he won that seat, he would leave the mayor's office a year early. The City Charter dictated that Mark Green, the public advocate, would succeed him.
That prospect was intolerable to Mr. Giuliani. Few politicians crawled under the mayor's skin as skillfully as Mr. Green. "Idiotic" and "inane" were some of the kinder words that Mr. Giuliani sent winging toward the public advocate, who delighted in verbally tweaking the mayor.
So Mr. Giuliani announced in June 1999 that a Charter Revision Commission, stocked with his loyalists, would explore changing the line of mayoral succession. Mr. Giuliani told The New York Times Magazine that he might not have initiated the charter review campaign if Mr. Green were not the public advocate. Three former mayors declared themselves appalled; Mr. Koch fired the loudest cannonade. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Mayor," he said during a news conference.
Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., chairman of a Charter Revision Commission a decade earlier, wrote a letter to Mr. Giuliani warning that "targeting a particular person" would "smack of personal politics and predilections.
"All this is not worthy of you, or our city," Mr. Schwarz wrote.
Mr. Mastro, who had left the administration, agreed to serve as the commission chairman. He eventually announced that a proposal requiring a special election within 60 days of a mayor's early departure would not take effect until 2002, after both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Green had left office. A civic group estimated that the commission spent more than a million dollars of taxpayer money on commercials before a citywide referendum on the proposal that was held in November 1999.
Voters defeated the measure, 76 percent to 24 percent. (In 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg advocated a similar charter revision that passed with little controversy.)
Mr. Green had warned the mayor that rejection loomed.
"It was simple," Mr. Green said. "It was the mayor vindictively going after an institutional critic for doing his job."
None of this left the mayor chastened. In March 2000, an undercover officer killed Patrick Dorismond, a security guard, during a fight when the police mistook him for a drug dealer. The outcry infuriated the mayor, who released Mr. Dorismond's juvenile record, a document that legally was supposed to remain sealed.
The victim, Mr. Giuliani opined, was no "altar boy." Actually, he was. (Mr. Giuliani later expressed regret without precisely apologizing.)
James Schillaci, the Bronx whistle-blower, recalled reading those comments and shuddering at the memory. "The mayor tarred me up; you know what that feels like?" he said. "I still have nightmares."
wow! the New York Times really threw down over Giuliani in their endorsements of Hillary & McCain for their party's nominations...
quote:Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?
That man is not running for president.
The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.
Mr. Giuliani's arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn't share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.
The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city's and the country's nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.
LOVE IT. And so apt.
THE REPUBLICANS WANT TO RUN AGAINST CLINTON....
that's the situation.
The more I see Bill CLinton freaking out and lying about Obama's record and statements the more worried I get about Hillary as the nominee. We need a break from the Clinton soap opera.
I strongly urge Democrats to vote for Obama (or at least Edwards since he will probably throw his delegates to Obama)
The Republicans have no idea how to run against Obama. They can't trot out their usual Hillary Hating crap.
that's the situation.
The more I see Bill CLinton freaking out and lying about Obama's record and statements the more worried I get about Hillary as the nominee. We need a break from the Clinton soap opera.
I strongly urge Democrats to vote for Obama (or at least Edwards since he will probably throw his delegates to Obama)
The Republicans have no idea how to run against Obama. They can't trot out their usual Hillary Hating crap.
I agree ... and disagree.
For the record I'm voting for Obama. While there are things I admire about Hillary "Sugar Walls of Steel" Clinton and her husband, most notably their unparalleled mastery of the political game, I have no desire to live through a repeat of the 90s with all its triangulationist shit. The country deserves better. Obama represents the future, and they'll use any lie or trick or innuendo to stop his momentum, as we've seen in recent days. And yes, Hillary IS the candidate the Republicans want to run against. They think they can drum up enough Clinton hatred to run her down at the OK Corral.
However ....
I've come to suspect that Hillary can beat any of the GOP candidates. McCain might give her some trouble, but something tells me she can whip his ass too. The Clintons have had everything + the kitchen sink thrown at them and they just keep right on coming. Love them or hate them, one must hand it to them, or at the very least not underestimate them.
We'll see.
For the record I'm voting for Obama. While there are things I admire about Hillary "Sugar Walls of Steel" Clinton and her husband, most notably their unparalleled mastery of the political game, I have no desire to live through a repeat of the 90s with all its triangulationist shit. The country deserves better. Obama represents the future, and they'll use any lie or trick or innuendo to stop his momentum, as we've seen in recent days. And yes, Hillary IS the candidate the Republicans want to run against. They think they can drum up enough Clinton hatred to run her down at the OK Corral.
However ....
I've come to suspect that Hillary can beat any of the GOP candidates. McCain might give her some trouble, but something tells me she can whip his ass too. The Clintons have had everything + the kitchen sink thrown at them and they just keep right on coming. Love them or hate them, one must hand it to them, or at the very least not underestimate them.
We'll see.
I heard one of the political commentator-analysts (and there are so many!) saying that word from Hillary's camp is that they intend to do nothing to restrain Bill. They are just letting him raise hell, leaving Hillary to say "boys will be boys".
As with every move the Clintons make, this too is strategic and calculated. Polls have shone time and again that people don't like it when Hillary goes negative. They like it when she's the wronged wife or the victim. By having Bill sound off, he does the dirty work and allows her hands to stay clean (more or less).
It's also interesting from a gender standpoint. Where gender affects how people see Hillary, it in turn affects public perception of Bill, the first male spouse of any presidential candidate. On some level the public expects any man worth his salt to defend his wife. It's a nod to traditionlists who may not be comfortable with a woman running the show.
As with every move the Clintons make, this too is strategic and calculated. Polls have shone time and again that people don't like it when Hillary goes negative. They like it when she's the wronged wife or the victim. By having Bill sound off, he does the dirty work and allows her hands to stay clean (more or less).
It's also interesting from a gender standpoint. Where gender affects how people see Hillary, it in turn affects public perception of Bill, the first male spouse of any presidential candidate. On some level the public expects any man worth his salt to defend his wife. It's a nod to traditionlists who may not be comfortable with a woman running the show.
Lex, I've been enjoying reading your perspective here. I was very moved by Obama's speech last night in SC - he is a brilliant speaker and his audience obviously impassioned.
It is an interesting race this year and for the first time since I can remember, I really like all three of the Dem. candidates, and will be happy to go vote for any of them in November.
I am thrilled that the main two contenders are a
woman and a black man, and that Obama seems to be waking up a sleeping generation of young voters - its about time! It is more meaningful to me that a woman become president than a man of color, because we are 50% of the population yet have never achieved this.
But the reason I will vote for Hillary is not gender, but gravitas. She seems to have the maturity for the job, and to a certain extent I identify with her - its not easy to be the practical one! No, I don't agree with all her positions, but she has been a formidable senator for NY, even winning grudging respect upstate in some of the most conservative - and longtime Republican - districts.
Thanks to our current president "The Bush Tragedy", the world is a much scarier and even more dangerous place, and the economy in deep distress. I think its going to take both Clintons working in overdrive, with every year of their combined experience, to begin to sort it out.
Perhaps Obama could sort it all out brilliantly, but then again, what if he can't?
It is an interesting race this year and for the first time since I can remember, I really like all three of the Dem. candidates, and will be happy to go vote for any of them in November.
I am thrilled that the main two contenders are a
woman and a black man, and that Obama seems to be waking up a sleeping generation of young voters - its about time! It is more meaningful to me that a woman become president than a man of color, because we are 50% of the population yet have never achieved this.
But the reason I will vote for Hillary is not gender, but gravitas. She seems to have the maturity for the job, and to a certain extent I identify with her - its not easy to be the practical one! No, I don't agree with all her positions, but she has been a formidable senator for NY, even winning grudging respect upstate in some of the most conservative - and longtime Republican - districts.
Thanks to our current president "The Bush Tragedy", the world is a much scarier and even more dangerous place, and the economy in deep distress. I think its going to take both Clintons working in overdrive, with every year of their combined experience, to begin to sort it out.
Perhaps Obama could sort it all out brilliantly, but then again, what if he can't?
yes we do live in a "depressingly male dominated society" but i will not be voting for THIS woman... she's stagnation incarnate... sisyphean... she flaunts male bravado while she herself holds contempt for men... i don't mind that mind you it's just i will not support such snobbery
obama is vigorous and visionary and forward thinking... and i adore that in human beings
obama is vigorous and visionary and forward thinking... and i adore that in human beings
Frank Rich on why a Hillary Nomination could lead to a Republican win.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27rich.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27rich.html?hp
I loved Clinton during those Whitehouse years and the work that the Democrats did at that time. This is a much different time in history and there is so much wrong with our world that it will take an altogether different perspective to save us. Hilary lacks the freshness and the true inclusiveness needed to return us to the great country that we once were. Obama is the way of the future if we want to survive. His sense of fairness and wholeness for us as a people is far more reaching that the Clintons.
There should be no reason why a woman could not be the president but it should be the right woman.
Also if Hilary is the democratic candidate I believe that the republicans will smear her in a way that they cannot publicly smear Obama. It is still an old boys club in Washington despite the great inroads that women politicians have gained in the last two decades. The world we live in today must not wait any longer to see true and lasting peace among the different races and cultures. The future must be about brotherhood and unity and eqaulity between ALL people or we are doomed to repeat the same long suffering mistakes of our long history. That is something that Barack Obama has the potential to do.
There should be no reason why a woman could not be the president but it should be the right woman.
Also if Hilary is the democratic candidate I believe that the republicans will smear her in a way that they cannot publicly smear Obama. It is still an old boys club in Washington despite the great inroads that women politicians have gained in the last two decades. The world we live in today must not wait any longer to see true and lasting peace among the different races and cultures. The future must be about brotherhood and unity and eqaulity between ALL people or we are doomed to repeat the same long suffering mistakes of our long history. That is something that Barack Obama has the potential to do.
Ted Kennedy Endorses Barak Obama
Kennedy is a long time supporter and friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He had planned on remaining neutral but was so disgusted with the racial polarization of the Clinton campaign that he called Bill Clinton to tell him to stop. Apparently he was more angry at the end of the conversation than at the beginning.
Kennedy also believes that Hillary has so polarized the party that she cannot win in November.
Ted Kennedy is the leader of the liberal wing of the party. He stood up and called the war in Iraq a fraud while Hillary Clinton was voting for it and encouraging the greatest foreign policy disaster in our lifetimes
Kennedy is a long time supporter and friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He had planned on remaining neutral but was so disgusted with the racial polarization of the Clinton campaign that he called Bill Clinton to tell him to stop. Apparently he was more angry at the end of the conversation than at the beginning.
Kennedy also believes that Hillary has so polarized the party that she cannot win in November.
Ted Kennedy is the leader of the liberal wing of the party. He stood up and called the war in Iraq a fraud while Hillary Clinton was voting for it and encouraging the greatest foreign policy disaster in our lifetimes
Tom Hayden (60's radical anti-war leader) endorses Obama
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/hayden
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/hayden
While I'm kind of mystified by the whole Kennedy clan thing, the American Royalty bent, etc. -even though their pappy started out as nothing but a rum runner, I'm not feeling great about Ted's granstanding, and with Caroline by his side no less. I know they are both just acting as Democrats mostly.
But for people who are supposed to be Democrats they sure are behaving like Republicans.
But for people who are supposed to be Democrats they sure are behaving like Republicans.
Flash:
Giuliani to pull out of race tomorrow after weak showing in Florida.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead! Hallelujah -
NIGHTMARE AVERTED
High Fives All the way Around
Giuliani to pull out of race tomorrow after weak showing in Florida.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead! Hallelujah -
NIGHTMARE AVERTED
High Fives All the way Around
How are the Kennedy's acting like Republicans? Was Ted acting like a Republican when he spoke out and voted against the Iraq war while a majority of his colleagues (including Hillary) voted for it? He spoke about economic justice and principle and is supporting a man who also had the foresight to oppose this war. What about that is Republican?
Chi Chi -
Whatever else happens this year it's delicious to see the end of Giuliani's career. He's completely discredited. He deserved nothing less than the total humiliation he is experiencing right now.
Whatever else happens this year it's delicious to see the end of Giuliani's career. He's completely discredited. He deserved nothing less than the total humiliation he is experiencing right now.
BRAVO!
Lily, yes the Kennedy's champion many progressive causes - I am not picking fault with their political views on issu4es at all.
All I mean by Kennedy acting like a Republican by his endorsement is that to give the endorsement he presented himself in public as a patriarchal party leader accompanied by the status symbol of his niece -they stood as the ultrapriviledged patricians which is a pose perfected by the Reagans- not exactly the image of representatives of a populist-leaning party.
So, to my mind, presenting oneself as the supremely priviledged patriarch, a kind of titular party head, bestowing the grace of his favor upon someone, a personal favor that by the imputed exalted status of his ranking in the social and political order should carry massive gravitas and sway all lookers-on, is not exactly a very democratic pose to strike.
That's all.
All I mean by Kennedy acting like a Republican by his endorsement is that to give the endorsement he presented himself in public as a patriarchal party leader accompanied by the status symbol of his niece -they stood as the ultrapriviledged patricians which is a pose perfected by the Reagans- not exactly the image of representatives of a populist-leaning party.
So, to my mind, presenting oneself as the supremely priviledged patriarch, a kind of titular party head, bestowing the grace of his favor upon someone, a personal favor that by the imputed exalted status of his ranking in the social and political order should carry massive gravitas and sway all lookers-on, is not exactly a very democratic pose to strike.
That's all.
Now Rudiani ranks up there with Little Bush and his whole Idiocracy.
seven,
Yah. Now I get what you meant
Yah. Now I get what you meant
I've been jumping and wringing my hands in GLEE all day reading about Rudy's rude awakening. I feel as tickled as a Munchkin just after the house landed. If nothing else positive comes of this election, at least we know she's been exposed as the oily stage villian she is. They say she did it all for Judith, who really wanted to be First Lady. HA!
The only political office she's suited to is Staten Island Borough President.
The only political office she's suited to is Staten Island Borough President.
Chi Chi, your points about Hillary are well-taken. In fact I remember having almost this same conversation with you years ago at Magique. I've said from the beginning, and still maintain, that whoever the Democratic nominee is will get my vote, including her. And if she gets elected I'll be comfortable with it because she'll probably do a decent job. I just want a chance to vote for a good alternative, and for the first time in years we have one in Obama (until earlier today we had two, but alas Edwards is gone).
To me primaries and general elections are two very different political terrains. Primaries are about principles, romance and emotion. General elections are about pragmatism, survival and reason. In all likelihood Hillary will still cinch the nomination, as research indicates she has been far more extensive in securing Latino voters and locking down key voting blocks here in the tri-state area. But for now I'm enjoying the wave of the moment and want to act on possibility and inspiration.
To me primaries and general elections are two very different political terrains. Primaries are about principles, romance and emotion. General elections are about pragmatism, survival and reason. In all likelihood Hillary will still cinch the nomination, as research indicates she has been far more extensive in securing Latino voters and locking down key voting blocks here in the tri-state area. But for now I'm enjoying the wave of the moment and want to act on possibility and inspiration.
Watching Giuliani crash and burn, slowly and steadily, has been an absolute JOY! It's like a gift from heaven and proves that eventually some people do get what they deserve!