MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-01-27 |
| FROM | From: "Michael L. Richardson"
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Republican Endorsements and the facts
|
Ruben, I totally disagree. The best thing to happen to New York City
was Giulliani leaving office. His first 4 years in office he did not
meet with any Black Leaders (elected or otherwise) creating his own
racial polarizing. When he finally meet with black Leaders he ignored
them. I am a 55 year old Black Man and I have lived my entire life in
one or another of the Five Boughs. I never feared for my life until
Giullani's permissiveness with the Police (it's the Police I feared
shooting me not any would be mugger). The police violence against has
not ended. The events after 9-11 saved him from the righteous anger of
the people of this city. Don't forget he Sold us (New York City) down
the river [why else would he fly the Arkansas flag over city hall?
Arkansas did not take the City by force]. I leave you with this
question, If he was such a good Mayor why did he barricade himself in
City Hall? You do remember the barricades?
Ruben Safir wrote:
> Brooklyn, NY
> January 27th, 2008
>
> To The Editors of the New York Times
>
> The endorsements that the NY Times made this week of John McCain in the
> Republican primary had acute inaccuracies with regard to Mayor Giulliani.
> The Times wrote:
>
> “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.â€
>
> The complaint by the Times that Giuliani is a secretive vindictive
> person is not news. Up until riots broke out in Brooklyn, the Times
> banged this drum relentlessly. But the claims that he saw no need to
> limit police power and was racially polarizing, or left a legacy of
> racial polarization make me wonder if the current editors of the Times
> actually lived in New York City in the years prior to the Rudy miracle.
>
> Giuliani didn't create the racially charged atmosphere in New York
> prior to his election. He inherited. Did the times forget the race
> riots that pit West Indian Blacks against Orthodox Jews under the
> Dinken's administration? Did they forget the 2000 murders a month,
> mostly of Black and minority young people prior to Giuliani removing
> 50,000 illegal handguns off the street? Did the Major forget how race
> baiting politics by previous administrations allowed Sunny Carson and
> Al Sharpton to protest in front of an innocent Korean Grocery store on
> Church Avenue for nearly two years which resulted in a racially charged
> powder keg which nearly exploded in the face of the entire outer boroughs?
>
> New York's current state of racial harmony, good but hardly perfect,
> is a direct result of a Giuliani ending violence. In fact, the Rudy
> Miracle which ended violence all across New York made the job of his
> predecessor easy. Slum and crime infested communities all across this
> city where made safe for the first time in generations. Williamsburg,
> Harlem, Long Island City, Washington Heights, Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Fort
> Greene, Greenpoint, Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, bastions of murder,
> drug deaths, AID's and hopelessness have opened up to young people,
> businesses and the arts. Young women who now job without any fears
> down Hoyt street, 125th Street, and Lafayette Avenue would have been
> attacked, raped and driven from their homes just a few short years ago.
> Does the Times have a nostalgic remembrance or just bias with the facts?
>
> The financial problems that Rudy left the city with, even after 9-11,
> was in no way close to the institutional budget disasters which dated
> back to Laguardia. One out of four people in New York City were on
> public support prior to his miracle on city government. I was victimized
> by the previous ideas of city finance when school days were cut back
> from 10AM – 2PM and class sizes swelled to 50 kids in a class room?
> Did Rudy leave Blomberg with such an intolerable mess?
>
> Furthermore, you fail to mention that Rudy is an administrative genius.
> Nobody of any of the current candidates is even remotely capable of
> administrating government as the Mayor. His government was one of the
> most open ones ever and his morning round table meetings which called
> all levels of administration to account for itself in light of statical
> facts, and which pressed for results is unheard of in current or previous
> administrations. Up and down the entire hierarchy of Government, everyone
> who worked for New York City knew they were being watched, judged and
> being held accountable. None of the Democratic candidates could ever
> say that. In fact, the Clinton administration was a free for all.
>
> In my opinion, the nation must have that kind of government going into the
> next decade. And if a few political eggs need to be broken on the road
> to regaining control of our foreign policy, our intelligence community
> and the federal bureaucracy, so be it. I'd be happy to send them all
> to the same place the Mafia went after it was drummed from the private
> sanitation business in this town. And if there isn't enough room for
> both the ego's of Rudy and Branton, so be it. Who cares.
>
> The Mayor made safe the nice new location of the NY Times billion dollar
> building. So considering the fortune of money the Mayor's policies
> and administration made possible for the paper and the Times family.
> You would think they'd be a little more truthful. Or perhaps they would
> prefer to go back to having crack adicts in their loading docks.
>
> One last point. While the Mayor was busy after 9-11 holding the city
> and nation together, the Times executives were busy giving directives
> to move their entire computer infrastructure outside of the “dead
> zone†of New York City? What was the dead zone? The area around
> New York where, if it was attacked by a nuclear weapon by a terrorist,
> that the systems would be unaffected so that they could still publish.
> The Times put its money on a bet the the city would be nuked. The Mayor
> has done the opposite.
>
>
> Ruben Safir
>
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