Finally, the most repulsive, undeniably crazy Republican candidate has faced reality.


As the Monkey Muck blog so aptly puts it:

I believe, had Gore won in 2000, Giuliani would have been the shoo-in Republican presidential candidate in 2004. Say what one will about the man (he was my boss's boss's boss in 1994 - 2001) he is anything but crazy.

Crazy in that Batman-inspired master criminal megalomaniac way! Look at it this way: his campaign staff was populated by Neocons deemed to radical and out there to be part of the Bush administration/advisers. Now that's crazy!

Rudy's the real deal you're the one w/ issues Marc

Rudy's the real deal

Anyone's the real deal; depends on what you want.
As for the title of this thread, there is no riddance since Dec. 31, 2001 to speak of.

no nonsense. what's your name oenophore?

Well, he did say recently that he might have to pay for a proposed tax cut with another tax cut. That doesn't demonstrate much fiscal sanity to me.

He also referred to the terrorist threat as "existential." Really? I can't imagine any terrorist act, no matter how horrible, that would cause an end to this country. So it's not a threat to the existence of the nation. The real existential threat is from those who would abandon what this country stands for (or should stand for) in the name of providing some speculative, marginal increase in security.

And he would unreasonably lash out at those who crossed him. And there are all those First Amendment cases that he fought and lost, which he fought anyway even though any first year law student could have told him they were losers.

OK, maybe he's not crazy. How about unreasonable (as in frequently immune to the power of reason)?

For once I agree with Marc, he was too liberal. Too many wives.

Good tax ideas though. Daniel, as everyone knows, cutting taxes increases receipts. You should know that by now.

If you live or work in New York all terrorist acts are existential - you could be blown up. It doesn't get any more existential than that. Certainly the terrorists agree with your philosophy though.

As far as being unreasonable, I'm sure you can come up with 5 quotes why you need an unreasonable person to lead. Someone that gives up in the face of adversity can't get anything done. Maybe Marc just likes unreasonable people that agree with him?

Daniel, as everyone knows, cutting taxes increases receipts.

When taxes are cut, receipts usually go up. But they also usually go up when taxes are raised. Receipts tend to go up regardless of small changes in marginal tax rates because they're outweighed by inflation, economic growth, and population growth. It's a canard to say because revenues went up when taxes were cut, the tax cuts caused the revenue growth. Plus the logical implication of a cause-effect relationship would be that receipts would be highest if taxes were zero. The Laffer Curve is obviously correct at the extremes: both zero taxation and 100% taxation will bring in no revenues. Other than that, to say that lowering taxes cause increased revenues is speculation: first, we don't know what that curve looks like between the extremes, and second, we don't know where on that curve we would be.

If you live or work in New York all terrorist acts are existential - you could be blown up.

Sure. And I could get shot and killed; does that make every gun crime an existential threat? If so, what does Guiliani have on that issue, and any other issues that might cause my death (getting hit by a car, being misdiagnosed by a doctor, that staph infection I had last summer)?

To say that any event in which you might die is an existential threat I think demeans the meaning of the phrase, and it's clearly not what Giuliani was implying. Of course the the threat of death and destruction should be taken seriously, but let's not pretend anything they will do will cause the demise of the nation.

And add to that the fact that he had no real anti-terror policy. He said we'd "stay on the offensive," and that "weakness invites attack." Well, people who are willing to blow themselves up aren't deterred just because their opponents look strong. So even in what was supposed to be his strong suit, he was an empty suit.

If one wishes to write his pre-mortem obituary, one must state all the good things he's done as well as the bad. Recall the oration of Marc Antony, via Shakespeare, on the death of Julius Caesar, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is interred with their bones."

Well, people who are willing to blow themselves up aren't deterred just because their opponents look strong.

Sure, but they are resorting to suicide attacks *because* the opponent is strong. If the opponent is weak, more conventional attacks work, which would leave the attacker alive and give him a chance to attack again. So yes, there is a point, but it's one of those "well, duh" points.

If the opponent is weak, more conventional attacks work, which would leave the attacker alive and give him a chance to attack again.

That's assuming you don't get the people who perpetrate conventional attacks. The World Trade Center bombers were caught, tried, and convicted. And by the way, I doubt the conventional attackers would be deterred by strength any more than the suicide bombers would be. I'm not saying we shouldn't take security precautions to prevent attacks; I'm just saying that acting the tough guy isn't going to scare off those with fundamentalist ideological motives, whether they kill themselves in the process or not.

And let's not forget how America's Mayor thought he was so necessary to the future of the city that he wanted to suspend democracy itself and ignore the law to stay in office past his term. To me, that's the real existential threat.

(Oh, and that claim that he was so necessary to the city? Wrong. I think we're much happier under Bloomberg, and crime continued to drop. So much for Mr. Indispensable.)

So your saying there wasn't a huge difference in NYC that Rudy made from the time he stepped in compared to the Koch and Dinkens dark years. I guess it's all my imagination then. Bloomberg is just riding Rudy's coattails.

(Oh, and that claim that he was so necessary to the city? Wrong. I think we're much happier under Bloomberg, and crime continued to drop. So much for Mr. Indispensable.)

So your saying there wasn't a huge difference in NYC that Rudy made from the time he stepped in compared to the Koch and Dinkens dark years. I guess it's all my imagination then. Bloomberg is just riding Rudy's coattails.

There's a bit of truth to both contentions. Balls had to be busted for the City to improve and Mr. Giuliani gladly busted them.

So your saying there wasn't a huge difference in NYC that Rudy made from the time he stepped in compared to the Koch and Dinkens dark years.

Oh, there was a huge difference. It's just that much of it wasn't because of Rudy.

Crime went down nationwide, big time, in most big cities. It went down substantially in cities that ignored Giuliani's application of the "broken windows" theory of policing. And some of the policing practices that Giuliani takes credit for were initiated under, well, Dinkins of all people. Yes, Giuliani acted the tough guy. But let's not confuse correlation with cause. The causes of New York's changes are many and varied, and I doubt Rudy is responsible for all of them--though he certainly takes credit for all of them.

Here's an excerpt from a Slate Magazine article on Giuliani and the New York City crime issue. Whether one agrees with it or not, Giuliani's credit for crime reduction is at least debatable. (And here's another Slate article that gives Rudy credit for making the city governable again in his first term but takes him to task for cronyism, fiscal irresponsibility, and general weakness as a manager in his second term. When Bloomberg arrived in 2002, City Hall apparently had no email or computerized payroll system, but did have lots of no-bid contracts.)
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Under Giuliani, Broken Windows started out as a good faith effort to reduce serious crime by going after petty crime. But over time it evolved into a branding mechanism, a means for relentlessly associating New York City's renaissance with Mayor Giuliani's face. Today, Broken Windows is among the most universally discredited theories in the social sciences. Study after study has concluded there is no causal link between the reduction in nuisance crimes, like turnstile jumping or aggressive panhandling, and the reduction in serious crimes, like robbery and murder. And this was easily inferable at the time. The reduction in New York City's crime rate was echoed nationally, in many cities that did not employ Quality of Life policing. In retrospect, the principal causes behind New York City's crime drop had nothing to do with Giuliani. They included: a receding of the '80s crack epidemic, a growth in the prison population thanks to the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, an increase in the numbers of police initiated by Giuliani's predecessor, and possibly, as the Freakonomics authors famously argued, the legalization of abortion a generation earlier. But, as the journalist Wayne Barrett says in Giuliani Time, "this mythology that Rudy Giuliani single-handedly supercopped, and conquered, crime in New York City" is now in the "bloodstream" of Americans.

City Hall apparently had no email

Absolute bullshit! There was lots of e-mail traffic within City government at the time.
When it comes to management, I'll agree with my commissioner at the time that there are too many layers of responsibility and communication between the mayor and the agencies. The Mayor's Office of Operations had several directors during the Giuliani administration, but no matter who was in charge, it seemed to have been run by Dilbert's boss. How do I know? I was third in command (assistant commissioner) of a City department and had to deal with it.

It's just that much of it wasn't because of Rudy

i guess you never walked or drove in NYC before and then during Rudy's time.

all Dinkins did was reroute planes during the US Open. double fault Daniel

all Dinkins did was reroute planes during the US Open.

Also quite wrong. Dinkins was a gentlemanly mayor who sought tranquility and harmony when ballbusting was badly needed. He has accomplishments to his credit.

I admit I don't know what the phrase "City Hall had no email" means. Could there have been departmental email but no central email within City Hall itself?

All I can do is refer to a recent New York Magazine piece, in which Esther Fuchs, a Columbia University professor of public affairs hired by Bloomberg to do an analysis of city government when he got into office, is quoted as saying "City Hall didn’t even have functional e-mail when we arrived—in 2002!" Perhaps we should ask her, or the author of the Slate article, for more details.

i guess you never walked or drove in NYC before and then during Rudy's time.

Sure I did. But just because things got better doesn't mean that Rudy was responsible. There were lots of other things going on both before and during his time in office that contributed to the drop in crime. Crime went down in lots of major cities, even though Giuliani wasn't there to make it happen. For that point as well as for assertions regarding Dinkins, I again reference the same New Yorker article as above. The police buildup started under Dinkens. The crime rate started falling before Giuliani took office. Refusal to believe it won't make it any less true.
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Bill Bratton came to New York from Boston in 1990, hired by the MTA to overhaul the city’s transit police. Four years later, the new mayor appointed Bratton police chief. The efficiency and aggressiveness of the NYPD increased markedly under the new leadership. And the department’s combination of street-savvy personalities and nuevo-thinking made for an irresistible, media-ready narrative. The murder rate dropped 74 percent. But murders also dropped 73 percent in San Diego; killings were down 70 percent in Austin, 59 percent in Honolulu, and 56 percent in Boston. None of those miracles, however, was accompanied by a cult of personality forming around the relevant mayor.

There’s now a large body of research indicating that crime would have shriveled even if New York hadn’t been lead by two self-proclaimed geniuses. The crack plague burned out just as Giuliani and Bratton deployed an additional 8,000 men and women in blue—thanks to President Bill Clinton and David Dinkins, Giuliani’s much-derided predecessor at City Hall. The murder rate had actually begun declining in 1991, under Police Commissioner Lee Brown, and continued to fall under his successor, Ray Kelly; Dinkins, however, wasn’t quick enough or deft enough to claim credit. Giuliani and Bratton took full advantage of the increase in manpower and were even better at exploiting the media attention.

As someone who has lived most of is adult life in NYC, it has gotten better. I never worried much about walking around in this town at night and through hells kitchen. But, who would mess with a six foot tall long hair dude dressed in all black or in bright outdoor winter clothing swinging ice axes in his hand while whislting rage against the machine?

Studies have shown that the drop in crime in NYC has more to do with the population that commits crimes(15-35 year old men). Which was in decline before Mr 9/11 was in office. Also, that lead paint laws went into affect in the late 60s/70s. Lead paint leeds to bad things.

The one area I will give to Rudy is the Javits Center. I've had to work there many times over the years. Before he was in office my clients would lose so much equipment their insurance rates would go up. The labor bill would be sky high and getting your equipment in and out would be a nightmare. Also, the threat of physical violence was real.

After he fired almost everyone in the building it became a much easier work enviroment.

Anywho, I'm glad to see the him drop out of the race.

I'd like to hear from people who grew up in NYC in the so called "dark years" 70's and 80's. You can read all the Slate magazines you want, but nothing replaces honest, first hand experience.

Uh, didnt you, Rob?

You can read all the Slate magazines you want, but nothing replaces honest, first hand experience.

I don't think just comparing the situation a few decades ago to today tells us very much about why things changed. Crime went down in NYC, but crime went down, substantially, just about everywhere. The economy did better in the 90s, but it did better just about everywhere. If there are marginal differences between areas, they might have to do with factors other than who happened to be running the executive branch of local government.

We are cause-finding creatures; figuring out how things happen has helped us survive and control our environment. But we also are quick to find simple causes from mere correlation, an inference that is easy to make but often wrong. And that's why we need analysis in addition to first-hand experience to figure out why things happen.

So it remains to me to list a couple of good things the man did.

• As US attorney and mayor, he did more to harm organized crime in NYC than anyone else.
• He began the process, culminated in the Bloomberg administration, of making public K-12 education an accountable mayoral department instead of a semi-autonomous board.
• Housing and Transit Police were dissolved as separate agencies, allowing greater flexibility in assignment.

There were other improvements that may be attributed to the mayor’s subordinates.

It sucked. True, you could have amazing fun doing incredibly stupid things, the creativity of danger abounded and nobody would mistake the city for Disney World or a country club. But it sucked.

Giuliani definitely did good things, but a) he wanted to cancel elections after 9/11 and stay in power indefinitely and b) he just was not responsible for many of the changes that happened in NYC in the late 90's.

Some thread deviation here. During Giuliani’s administration, a marvelous thing happened that had little to do with the mayor himself. All but the youngest of us recall the Year 2000 “Crisis.” The administration took it seriously and spent about $300M on it. It was a glorious time for me. I cheerfully volunteered to be my agency’s y2k (remember that silly term?) coordinator. Our records management system wasn’t made for the 21st century, so I spent about eight weeks modifying it. (Hiring an outside consultant to do it would have cost more than my year's pay and would have deprived me of the fun.) We got a shitload of new PCs, all off budget. We had plenty of antiquated malfunctioning equipment that we couldn’t afford to replace before. But if the manufacturer indicated in a letter that it wasn’t compliant, we could replace anything, no questions asked, all from a special budget apart from our agency’s. It was like Santa Claus on steroids.
I think there ought to be a crisis like this every now and then to set things right – the year 10000, alas, is a long time off.

How many of you Y2K computer jocks changed the software to recognize a FIVE digit year? i.e for Y10K. I suspect most of you didn't learn the lesson the first time, so yea, there will be another crisis.

We'll all be laughing in our graves.
One of my points above is that such a crisis can be a good thing.

i was at 57th n 7th that night. when the ball dropped everyone screamed happy new year, then it got really quiet for a couple of seconds. then most of the crowd went, "awww..." seemed everyone wanted the lights to go out