Santa Anita at Hollywood

[NoCarolinaTony]

Hey Jerry,

Just for grins and giggles, how does that compare to any other mayor of new york historically? Just curious, and nothing else.......

NC Tony

[TGJB]

Tony-- I\'ve only been paying attention since Ed Koch (who used to live in my building before he moved to Gracie Mansion), and I\'m not saying he was the worst mayor we\'ve had (Dinkins by a pole). But in terms of being an autocrat and a meglomaniac, Guliani was in a class by himself. He was always in big time conflict with someone, always trying to shut someone down, especially those who disagreed with him (hence the First Amendment fights), always bad mouthing someone. It\'s been much quieter around here since he\'s gone.

And don\'t get me started about his claim that what he did for 2 months AFTER 9/11 makes him some kind of expert on terrorism. If he ever got to the general election (which he won\'t), he would get ripped apart on that one.

[BB]

My favorite Rudy/1st Amendment story is the one about the bus ads. Rudy is a big-time credit hog, and New York Magazine played on this nicely in bus ads that said \"New York Magazine: Perhaps the only good thing in New York that Rudy hasn\'t taken credit for.\" This thin-skinned autocrat had the city sue NYM, on the pretense that he had not signed on for any \"endorsement\" of the magazine. It just shows you how small, petty and humorless this guy is. No one who understands written English would have interpreted that ad as an \"endorsement\". On the contrary, Rudy suing the magazine essentially proved their point.

[richiebee]

RG\'s approval rating in New York City on 9/10/01 was somewhere between 40%-
50%, somewhere near 10% among African Americans.

Gaffegate-- RG\'s campaign workers wearing Yankee caps in NH, in the middle of
Red Sox Nation. Doh!!

Favorite RG campaign moment-- taking the cell phone call from Judy Nathan at
the NRA meeting.

Do not vote for RG until you have \"Googled\" -- Alan Placa, Russell Harding.
And I hadn\'t realized that the infamous downtown Manhattan prison facility, the
Tombs, had been renamed in Bernie Kerik\'s honor. When Kerik was indicted in
2006, Mayor Mike Bloomberg ordered that Kerik\'s name be removed from the
facility, sparing Bernie the embarrassment of possibly being incarcerated in a
jail bearing his name.

[fkach]

I\'m not huge a Rudy fan and I didn\'t follow the local politics much at the time. But as a lifetime NYer, I\'d have to think it\'s extremely difficult to accomplish anything worthwhile in this town without making a lot of enemies. That goes double if it involves making fiscally responsible cuts of any sort.

I really can\'t judge someone by how popular he is at the end of his term. It depends on why he is unpopular.

I think if we ever elected a super strong president (not suggesting Rudy is that man) that dealt with the economic realities and demographics of our country and fixed social security and medicare for the long term, he would be the most unpopular president in our history at that time and make more enemies than you could imagine. Of course, he would be national hero a few decades from now for showing that kind of courage.

[TGJB]

Bloomberg has an approval rating around 70%. And he\'s a guy who won his office in a very close election.

[fkach]

I was talking in general terms.

You would know better than I whether Bloomberg has taken on a lot of vested interests for the long term good of the city during his time as mayor.

It works both ways.

If you happen to have a good economy through most of your term and don\'t need to do anything tough (but right), you could easily be wildly popular because of favorable conditions that have little to do with your leadership.

I always judge politicans by their actions and not their popularity. Of course, I have my own opinion about the right things to do and tend to be a much longer term thinker than the average person. I\'m also a very strong fiscal conservative, hard money, anti-Federal Reserve guy. If I was charge I\'d be assassinated. ;-)

[NoCarolinaTony]

Jerry,

In all sincerity, I have no dog in this fight. Guiliani took down my Uncle whose last name began with an A and had the same last name as two pretty famous baseball players (brothers) in the 70\'s. I can PM you more details some day.

In any event, I was just curious, as to how he compared to others. I am not a big fan of throwing out one sided factoids like that, and not know if 21 cases is high low or par.  

I doubt Guiliani runs either. It\'s my opinion we will have an African American or Woman president or both before we ever have an Italian American president.

NC Tony

[BB]

Tony;

From Wikipedia. The entries for Koch, Dinkins & Bloomberg do not cite any first amendment cases of note. For a former federal prosecutor, he seemed to have little understanding of our constitution and its comforts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayoralty_of_Rudy_Giuliani

Litigants filed several civil liberties violations lawsuits against the mayor or the city. Giuliani\'s administration lost 22 of 26 cases. [83]
Some of the court cases which found the Giuliani administration to have violated First Amendment rights included actions barring public events from their previous location at the City Hall steps, not allowing taxi drivers to assemble for a protest, not allowing city workers to speak to the press without permission, barring church members from delivering an AIDS education program in a park, denying a permit for a march to object to police brutality, issuing summons and seizing literature of three workers collecting signatures to get a candidate on the presidential ballot, imposing strict licensing restrictions on sidewalk artists that were struck down by a court of appeals as a violation of artists\' rights, using a 1926 cabaret law to ban dancing in bars and clubs, imposing an excessive daily fee on street musicians, imposing varying city fees for newsstand owners based on the content they sold, a case against Time Warner Cable, and an incident in which Giuliani ordered an ad for New York magazine that featured his image taken down from city buses.[84][85] The ad featured a copy of the magazine with the caption, \"Possibly the only good thing Rudy hasn\'t taken credit for\".[86] The next year, the group awarded the Muzzle to Giuliani again for his actions against the Brooklyn Museum exhibit.[87]
Giuliani and his administration encountered accusations of blocking free speech arising from a lawsuit brought by Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church for removing the homeless from the church\'s steps against the church\'s will, and during his 1993 campaign, when he criticized incumbent Mayor Dinkins for allowing Louis Farrakhan to speak in the city. After being criticized for impinging on freedom of speech, he backed down from his criticism of Dinkins.[17]
In 2000, Mayor Giuliani received a \"Muzzle Award\" from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Muzzles are \"awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech.\"[88] This was Giuliani\'s third such award, including an unprecedented first awarding of a \"Lifetime Muzzle Award,\" which noted he had \"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.\"[84]
More than 35 successful lawsuits were brought against Giuliani and his administration for blocking free speech. In his book Speaking Freely, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said Giuliani had an \"insistence on doing the one thing that the First Amendment most clearly forbids: using the power of government to restrict or punish speech critical of government itself.\"

[BB]

To paraphrase Dylan, fkach, if you and your African clawed frog see Rudy coming you\'d both better run. Again, via wikipedia:

Ferret Ban
Giuliani vetoed a bill legalizing the ownership of ferrets as pets in the city, saying that legalizing ferrets was akin to legalizing tigers. He sent a memorandum, \"Talking Points Against the Legalization of Ferrets,\" to City Council members saying that ferrets should be banned just as pythons and lions are in the city. Councilman A. Gifford Miller said afterwards that Giuliani\'s \"administration has gone out of its way to invent a ridiculous policy.\"[103] The editor of Modern Ferret magazine testified that ferrets are domesticated animals who do not live in wild and whose natural habitat is within people\'s homes. She argued that no case of ferrets transferring rabies to humans ever occurred, and the legalization bill would require ferrets to be vaccinated against rabies as dogs are. She later wrote that at the public hearings proposing to ban ferrets, no citizen or veterinarian ever spoke against ferrets, only representatives from the Department of Health, City Council, and Mayor Giuliani himself.[104]
David Guthartz, founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ferrets, called a radio show Giuliani was hosting to complain about the citywide ban. Giuliani responded:
\"There is something deranged about you. ... The excessive concern you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist. ... There is something really, really very sad about you. ... This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness. ... You should go consult a psychologist. ... Your compulsion about—your excessive concern with it is a sign that there is something wrong in your personality. ... You have a sickness, and I know it\'s hard for you to accept that. ... You need help.\"[105]

[TGJB]

Well done. The quote from the Jefferson people is pretty funny.

It is itnteresting that nobody outside NY really knows who this guy is. You have to think this stuff would come up in the unlikely event he ever got to the general.

[TGJB]

Tony-- I came up with the Van Arsdales, the Kings, and the Petries, the latter being the only one I could see any way to stick an \"A\" in front of.

[NoCarolinaTony]

The better one played for the Astro\'s....and his nickname sounds like Astro\'s....

NC Tony

[TGJB]

I misread it, thought you said basketball.

Probably not the Aarons.

Aspromonte? (We looked it up).

[NoCarolinaTony]

Thats it....

NC Tony