Giuliani fired Ray Kelly, someone who under Mayor Bloomberg has proven himself to be one of the best Police Commissioner’s in the country.

Giuliani also fired William Bratton, someone who proved as NYC’s Police Commissioner and now as Los Angeles’ Police Commissioner that he too is one of the best Police Commissioner’s in the country.

After the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, Giuliani never took action to repair the problem with radio communications in the towers. This failure resulted in catastrophic events on Sept 11, 2001.

During the Giuliani administration, emergency response and preparedness was a major initiative, yet after being advised of the need to designate a command agency at the scene of emergencies, Giuliani never did so. Michael Bloomberg finally rectified this situation after becoming mayor.

Giuliani also has to address the criminality in his administration, several high ranking officials other than Kerik have had legal problems:

Russell Harding (Harding was the son of the Chairman of NY’s Liberal party who was reward with a high ranking job in the Giuliani administration – he became involved in a scandal where major spending improprieties took place)

Fred Patrick (Patrick was a high ranking official in law enforcement under Giuliani and was caught in a scandal involving the Correction Foundation which was headed by Kerik – over 1 million dollars was mis-appropriated from a NYC Correction Department account and placed into the private Correction Foundation account. Patrick was imprisoned for improperly spending about 135 thousand dollars of this money. Although NYC’s Department of Investigation concluded that over 1 million dollars had been mis-appropriated, no one was charged with this crime.)

Anthony Serra (Serra was a high ranking official in law enforcement under Giuliani who was also a Republican party operative who ran political operations from his city office. Serra had been repeatedly and unjustifiably promoted, more than doubling his salary during the Giuliani years. He was imprisoned for his criminal activities.)

John Picciano (Picciano was a Correction Captain who worked for Bernard Kerik. He was named in two incidents – one a tax scandal where over 1 hundred employees were terminated for participating in it and the other a domestic violence incident as reported to the NYPD on a police complaint report, yet he was never disciplined or held responsible for these actions. In fact, records show that although he didn’t pass the promotional exam, he was promoted outside the uniformed ranks to a newly created position of Chief of Staff to the Commissioner, first in Correction and then in the NYPD. This promotion approximately doubled his Captain’s salary. Picciano was also involved in spending improprieties. He later left city service and went to work with Giuliani along with Kerik.

The Kerik case is complicated but news reports have made it clear that Giuliani knew of or should have known of Kerik’s massive list of mis-deeds. The failure of the Giuliani administration to properly vet Kerik for the position of Police Commissioner and then to ensure he received clearance at the federal level to be briefed regarding national security issues – both before and after 9/11 is damning. The fact that Giuliani later testifed in the Bronx that he had been briefed regarding Kerik’s file and that records show much of the negative information concerning Kerik was in the file is also damning. How could Giuliani have allowed this. Worse yet, knowing this, how could he have recommended Kerik for the position of Homeland Security Director.

But this thread isn’t about Hillary Clinton, is it?

Comment by JPark

No such bandwagon exists… I know I sure wouldnt jump on one that did believe in screwing the poor. If America ended its empire stance in the world and stuck to funding a DEFENSIVE military that concentrates on developing high tech and defense only we could afford to abolish the IRS and income taxes. The Fed gets only 1/3 of its money from our pay checks. Stream line the federal governments systems to reduce costs and you have saved even more money. Start a flat tax and the poor is taken care of… there is no IRS… no more attacking other countries for our own profit…. and maybe… just maybe we can get our Constitution and Bill of Rights back.

Like so many tightly wound repressed and mentally ill Republicans, Klaudt was preaching the moral superiority of the far right while he was abusing molesting children– his own foster daughters and 2 state legislative pages! He “faces a long list of charges: eight counts of rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of witness tampering, sexual contact with a person under 16, and stalking.”

Rudy, get in there and defend this predator.

I too would support torturing the GOP debaters live on TV. We’d see what they’re made of, or watch them give up all their dirty little secrets.

Ewww…. Judith Regan is Bernie Kerik’s former girlfriend. That woman gives the term sleaze new meaning.

Now if you all want something to worry about look to Romney, this guy’s got more buck’s than our own treasury and endless posabalaties to raise more through the rich mormon’s..He’s pretty, spout’s the family values stuff and the radical reich may give him a pass just to try and keep the reich wingers in…I personelly don’t care for him but would bet thousands of followers do…..I think the entire bunch of runners for the reich are tainted good’s and they need to start over with their pick’s but that just my opinion…Blessings

Also, Giuliani’s sudden ‘rags to riches’ tale, partly due to his relationship to Kerik, will take the shine off of his ‘hero’ status. As Taegan Goddard notes:

“Rudy Giuliani, ‘who just six years ago told a divorce court he had only $7,000 in assets under his control, has amassed a net worth of more than $30 million, much of it from paid speeches,’ the New York Times reports. ‘Giuliani’s $30 million fortune is the most unexpected information to emerge from the disclosure forms so far.’”
– Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, “Giuliani’s Wealth Biggest Surprise from Disclosures,” May 17, 2007.

Giuliani is a one-trick pony and that one-trick is that he was a ‘hero’ on 9/11 for doing the same thing any big city mayor would have done in a similar crisis. (Suffice to say that if he had been mayor of St. Louis or Kansas City, the NY-based Big Media wouldn’t have anointed him ‘America’s Mayor.’)

In the early GOP debates, his desperate and transparent attempts to bring everything back to 9/11 were annoying, even to some Republicans. This one-trick pony just doesn’t wear well.

Throw in the fact that he knows less about foreign policy than President Winky Dink (if that’s possible) and you have a candidate who’ll be fading fast in the early primaries as the GOP Base get as sick of him as everyone else.

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Only 25 percent of those surveyed say things in the U.S. are going in the right direction, according to an AP-Ipsos poll this month. That is about the lowest level of satisfaction detected since the survey started in December 2003.

Rarely have longer-running polls found such a rate since the even gloomier days of 1992 ahead of the first President Bush’s re-election loss to Democrat Bill Clinton.

The current glumness is widely blamed on public discontent with the war in Iraq and with President Bush. It is striking for how widespread the mood is among different groups of people.

Since petroleum supply trucks come up from Kuwait and Basra to Baghdad and points north for the US troops, it is desirable that some Multinational Forces remain in Basra as long as large numbers of US soldiers and Marines are in the country. Tanks don’t do you much good if they are out of gas. Basra would be an unfamiliar and dangerous environment for US troops, and where to get and extra 10,000 soldiers? Without them, the US mission in Iraq could collapse unexpectedly from the south. (See yesterday’s posting for what a mess Basra is with regard to security.)

Brown will be abandoning the policies of Tony Blair, and the leak comes only a day after Blair promised the contrary in Baghdad (with mortar shells landing just before he arrived in the Green Zone). Blair’s muscular foreign policy and perceived subservience to Bush are widely viewed as disasters among his own party’s rank and file.