Guest Freedom Fighter Posted January 22, 2008 Share Posted January 22, 2008 In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price By MICHAEL POWELL and RUSS BUETTNER NY Times January 22, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/politics/22giuliani.html?ex=1201669200&en=7776bd8c9e76fa77&ei=5070&emc=eta1 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 ruthlessness and 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. 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." 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." ------------ Though sworn to uphold our Constitution, by the end of 2002 the courts had found Giuliani in violation of the First Amendment TWENTY SEVEN TIMES. Mayor David Dinkins, his predecessor in office, bravely stated that Giuliani is " - a bully, mean-spirited, and he rules through fear and intimidation." New York's previous mayor, Ed Koch, has said that Giuliani " - uses the levers of power to punish." Former schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, a one-time pal of Giuliani, stated: "There's something very deeply pathological about Rudy's humanity - - He was barren, completely emotionally barren, on the issue of race." Giuliani's vile racism has even been acknowledged by his successor, Mayor Bloomberg: "You forget that every single decision [in the Giuliani administration], everybody, every story, everything was always couched in terms of race" - quoted in the November 4, 2003 Daily News from Vanity Fair magazine. Among the many hypocrisies and arrogant abuses of power by "mayor morality" was the assignment, at taxpayer expense, of several NYPD detectives as round-the-clock bodyguards for his MISTRESS. But the tyrant's own words say it best: " - 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 AND HOW YOU DO IT." - Mayor Giuliani, quoted in the New York Times, March 17, 1994. "State authority must provide for peace and order, and peace and order in turn must conversely make possible the existence of state authority. Within these two poles all life must now revolve...Ideas of 'freedom,' mostly of a misunderstood nature, inject themselves into the state conceptions of these circles." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. Berlin, Monday, Aug. 20, 1934 -- Eighty-nine and nine-tenths percent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The result was expected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Matt D. Posted January 23, 2008 Share Posted January 23, 2008 "Freedom Fighter" <liberty@once.net> wrote in message news:e5slj.474657$kj1.262764@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net... > In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price > By MICHAEL POWELL and RUSS BUETTNER > NY Times January 22, 2008 > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/politics/22giuliani.html?ex=1201669200&en=7776bd8c9e76fa77&ei=5070&emc=eta1 > > 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 ruthlessness and 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. > > 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." > > 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." > > ------------ > Though sworn to uphold our Constitution, by the end of 2002 the courts had > found Giuliani in violation of the First Amendment TWENTY SEVEN TIMES. > Mayor David Dinkins, his predecessor in office, bravely stated that > Giuliani is " - a bully, mean-spirited, and he rules through fear and > intimidation." New York's previous mayor, Ed Koch, has said that Giuliani > " - uses the levers of power to punish." Former schools Chancellor Rudy > Crew, a one-time pal of Giuliani, stated: "There's something very deeply > pathological about Rudy's humanity - - He was barren, completely > emotionally barren, on the issue of race." Giuliani's vile racism has even > been acknowledged by his successor, Mayor Bloomberg: "You forget that > every single decision [in the Giuliani administration], everybody, every > story, everything was always couched in terms of race" - quoted in the > November 4, 2003 Daily News from Vanity Fair magazine. > > Among the many hypocrisies and arrogant abuses of power by "mayor > morality" was the assignment, at taxpayer expense, of several NYPD > detectives as round-the-clock bodyguards for his MISTRESS. > > But the tyrant's own words say it best: > > " - 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 AND HOW YOU DO IT." > - Mayor Giuliani, quoted in the New York Times, March 17, 1994. > > "State authority must provide for peace and order, and peace and order in > turn must conversely make possible the existence of state authority. > Within these two poles all life must now revolve...Ideas of 'freedom,' > mostly of a misunderstood nature, inject themselves into the state > conceptions of these circles." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. > > Berlin, Monday, Aug. 20, 1934 -- Eighty-nine and nine-tenths percent of > the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's > assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other > ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The > result was expected. > > Good job by the NY Times! This guy has to be exposed as the worst possible candidate for president. He would act like the thug he is with the US armed forces if given the chance. Our kids would have to do his dirty work. He reminds me of Cheney. He is NOT the hero of 911. He is an opportunistic dirty politician. Best thing for the country (hate to say this) would be he gets re aquainted with his cancer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Freedom Fighter Posted January 23, 2008 Share Posted January 23, 2008 "Matt D." <matthew.donohue2@verizon.net> wrote in message news:QmAlj.3902$uB6.656@trndny05... > > "Freedom Fighter" <liberty@once.net> wrote in message > news:e5slj.474657$kj1.262764@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net... >> In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price < snip > > Good job by the NY Times! This guy has to be exposed as the worst > possible candidate for president. He would act like the thug he is with > the US armed forces if given the chance. Our kids would have to do his > dirty work. > He reminds me of Cheney. He is NOT the hero of 911. > He is an opportunistic dirty politician. > Best thing for the country (hate to say this) would be he gets re > aquainted with his cancer. In the cases of many malicious people I would not go quite so far as to say this. But when you consider all the injustice, suffering, and death that has resulted from Giuliani's malevolence, and that he is a potential Hitler, I must agree with you 100%. He indeed does deserve the same fate as the many victims of the Ground Zero toxins he denied were a threat to health. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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