(originally posted 11/7/07)
The first in what may be a series of my jabs at presidential candidates in the lead-up to the 2008 election.
An Authoritarian
I'm not going to vote for, nor could I be convinced to vote for Rudy Giuliani. The number one reason being that he is an authoritarian. His clampdowns on everything from jaywalking (for which a person could be strip-searched) to ferrets (which he banned in the city) bespeak of a man convinced that power rests in the hands of not the people, but the tyrant. He has said it himself before. In a speech at a forum on crime convened by the New York Post in 1996, Guiliani spake thusly:
"We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."
Freedom is about ceding your free will? Very Orwellian, Rudy, and indicative of why your popularity just before the attacks of 9/11 was in the 30th percentile. In his early days as mayor, he partnered with his police commissioner, Bill Bratton, to enact a policy on crime known as "broken windows." This policy is about crime prevention through pruning, harsh prosecutions of small crimes to prevent, in theory, larger crimes blossoming. Giuliani and Bratton cracked down on such crimes as graffiti and jaywalking, going so far as to construct concrete barriers to prevent jaywalking and a giant surveilance network to monitor for grafitti. A bit of a misplaced priority, yes? When the crime rate went down (in a continuation of a trend that started under the previous mayor, David Dinkins), Bratton made the cover of Time magazine. Later that year Giuliani forced Bratton to resign, reportedly largely because Bratton had become more noteworthy than he. One part vengefulness, one part narcissism.
Guiliani refuses to talk to people who don't agree with him. In an interview with American Legends, Ed Koch (Former Mayor of New York and Giuliani supporter) recalled this little episode:
"When Rudy was mayor he refused to meet with two important black leaders, Carl McCall, the then state comptroller, and Virginia Fields, the Manhattan borough president. This went on for over a year. I had occasion to ask him, "Rudy, why won't you meet with them?" And, he said: "I don't agree with them." I told him: "Rudy, you only meet with people you agree with? That's crazy." This episode was part of his insensitivity, his inability to respect others."
Rudy Giuliani is the only person to thus far have recieved three consecutive Muzzle Awards from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. The awards are intended to draw attention to abridgements of the freedom of speech, and, noting that Giuliani has "stifled speech and press to so unprecedented a degree, and in so many and varied forms, that simply keeping up with the city's censorious activity has proved a challenge for defenders of free expression," the TJ Center awarded him an unprecedented Lifetime Muzzle Award.
Fortunately, most of Rudy's attacks on free expression have been rejected by the courts. More than 35 successful lawsuits were brought against Giuliani and his administration for infringing on First Amendment rights. In a December, 2001 letter to the editor of the New York Times, NYCLU director Donna Lieberman wrote:
"An assessment of the Giuliani mayoralty should encompass the whole record. During his tenure, the NYCLU went to court in 34 separate cases to challenge the city's violations of First Amendment rights.
"In nearly every case, the courts rejected the city's policies including: the firing of Police Officer Yvette Walton in retaliation for testifying before the City Council about racial profiling; the attempt to censor the Sensations exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum; the ban on press conferences and demonstrations by Giuliani critics on the steps of city hall; the ban on condoms as part of AIDS education in City Parks. Occasionally, after being sued, the City agreed to reverse the offending policy as with the one that singled out political demonstrators charged with minor offenses so that they could not get appearance tickets to return to court and often had to stay in jail overnight.
"And lest we think these transgressions were a pre-September 11 phenomenon, only last week, a federal court rejected the Giuliani administrations violation of religious freedom and ordered an end to police harassment of homeless people sleeping on the steps of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church."
Clearly, Giuliani doesn't stand for freedom any more than kleptocrat Vladimir Pultin does.
Vengefulness
The episode indicated above with Bill Bratton illustrates a bit of Rudy's venegful nature, but it is really just the fluke of the whale. When the City Council overrode his veto of a bill to change the operations of homeless shelters in December 1998, Giuliani sought to evict five community service programs, including one that served 500 mentally ill people, in the district of the bill's chief sponsor, and to replace them with a homeless shelter. In responce to an assertion by Rev. Calvin O. Butts that Giuliani doesn't like black people, Giuliani withdrew city funding for programs with which the cleric was connected. In Newsweek, columnist Jonathan Alter says: "His ridiculously thin skin and mile-wide mean streak were not allegations made by whiners and political opponents. They were traits widely known to his supporters."
Do we want or need another vengeful president? There are suspicions in many minds (including mine) that one of the bigger reasons that W so badly wanted war with Iraq was revenge for an alleged plot by Saddam Hussein's govenment to assasinate G.H.W. Bush. What would Giuliani do if Hugo Chavez tweaked his nose (as he is wont to do) in a diplomatic setting? Invade Venezuela? I shudder to think what he might do to domestic critics using the power of the presidency.
Corruption
Rudy is corrupt. Cronyism and underhanded dealing have been large parts of his years of public service. He promoted Bernard Kerik to the position of Police Commissioner, despite the positioning requiring a college degree and Kerik's lack thereof. He also lobbied for Kerik to be made Secretary of Homeland Security, but Kerick withdrew his acceptance of this nomination once several scandals broke. He later pled guilty to charges of corruption resulting from his connections with the Gambino crime family. He is currently under investigation for tax evasion.
Rudy also appointed Russell Harding, another unqualified and undegreed friend, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation. Harding, like his presidential predecessor, went down in flames when it was revealed that he defrauded the corporation for millions.
Giuliani Partners is a corportaion, ostensibly a consulting firm, that Rudy organized to make his influence in government available for hire. The firm's partners include the aforementioned Bernard Kerik and indicted sexual abuse practicioner and former priest Alan Placa as well as a former FBI agent who admitted taking items from ground zero. The clientele who seek out Giuliani for his influence include Hank Asher, an admitted drug trafficker and datamining baron.
Giuliani's firm has also been sued for alledgedly scheming to defraud the plaintiff of $10 million.
Recently, Giuliani's campaign has been linked to money laundering and electoral manipulation. Oh, joy, another bought and rigged election.
Power Grab
When the attacks of September 11 happened, the New York mayoral primary election was in full swing. It was delayed by the attacks, and Giuliani used this basis to lobby to circumvent the New York consititution and run for a third term. When this was denied, he sought three months more in office. He claimed at the time that the city needed him desperately. Not so, it turns out.
Lies!
Giuliani doesn't let the facts get in his way. His presidential campaign has claimed, in states far away from New York, that he took the $2.3 billion dollar deficit left him by Mayor Dinkin and turned it into a billion-dollar surplus. In reality, he left office with more than double the deficit, $4.8 billion.
Just a week after the attacks of September 11th, Giuliani moved to re-open the financial district around Wall Street, claiming that the air was "safe and acceptable." This was not true. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the air around lower Manhattan at that point and for weeks to come still had high levels of asbsetos and caustic substances. This was obviously a case of putting the financial markets ahead of public safety.
He has recently claimed to have spent as much time at Ground Zero as any of the cleanup workers. Investigating this claim, the New York Times reported that Giuliani's appointment log tells that he spent only 29 hours at the site in three months. Many of the cleanup workers spent 10-hour daily shifts at the site.
Giuliani and his campaign have asserted that Giuliani has been a student of Islamic terrorism for 30 years. However, during Giuliani's term as a federal prosecutor he garnered no significant terrorism convictions and was focused mostly on organized crime and corporate corruption. He also published no academic paper, delivered no policy address, wrote no journal article, nor wrote any book on Islamic terrorism prior to September 11, 2001. Funny behavior for someone who is intensely interested in the subject.
Another dishonest moment is when he announced his intention to seperate from his second wife, Donna Hanover, at a news conference. This was the first she had heard of it.
Giuliani has a well-documented history of cheating on his spouses. He seems to have the worst attributes of Bill Clinton as well as the worst attributes of W.
Egad...
I could go on. Really. For a long time. The skeletons in this man's closet could decorate Dia de los Muertos celebrations in every city of the Spanish-speaking world. I'll post some references later, but this information is out there, in the archives of any institution that has ever dealt with him. I can't believe that anyone would ever consider him to be a good choice to lead this country, but I guess people voted for Hitler, so there's no telling with a manipulated electorate.
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