MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-11-14 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] I'm sure it's a coincidence, part n+1
|
Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn-at-panix.com):
> your getting Rudy Guiliani in the administration. Your likely going to
> see tghe best administration of your lifetime
'Giuliani'.
Ah yea! The man who said Mr. Trump was a 'genius' for finding a way to
lose the better part of a billion dollars in a single year running a
casino, and who explained that 'everybody' commits adultery -- the
politician whom journalist Jimmy Breslin once called "a small man in
search of a balcony". The guy who said "freedom is about the
willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a
great deal of discretion about what you do'. The man who never met an
act of prosecutorial excess or abuse of police authority that he didn't
like.
In 2000, two undercover New York Police Department detectives shot and
killed 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond. The detectives asked Dorismond if
he knew where they could find some pot. Dorismond, no pot dealer, was
offended at the question, and a scuffle broke out. One of the officers
pulled a gun. The detectives claim Dorismond tried to grab it. After the
incident, Giuliani (illegally) released Dorismond’s juvenile record,
which by law was supposed to remain sealed. Citing Dorismond’s record
as a minor, Giuliani then proclaimed the dead man "no altar boy."
(Actually, Dorismond _had_ been an altar boy.)
The city eventually paid $2.25 million to Dorismond’s family. The
detective was cleared. Giuliani defended the release of Dorismond’s
juvenile records by claiming the man had no right to privacy after
death. (Charming.)
Giuliani also defended the officers who shot Amadou Diallo 19 times
after he pulled a wallet out of his jacket to show them his ID.
He doesn't much like the First Amendment, either: He waged war on a
Brooklyn art museum because it displayed a painting he found offensive.
He later tried to assemble a "decency task force" to seek out art at
public museums for possible censorship.
In giving Giuliani a lifetime “muzzle award” for his hostility to free
speech, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free
Expression wrote, "He has 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." First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams called Giuliani "the
single most consistent opponent of First Amendment rights in living
memory." In a 2007 profile for Washington Monthly, Rachel Morris pointed
out that as mayor Giuliani lost 35 First Amendment lawsuits.
A New York Times reported in 2008 about the man's consistent pattern of
petty vindictiveness citing one man confronted Giuliani during a radio
show about a red light sting in his neighborhood. When Giuliani didn’t
respond, the man went to the New York Daily News. The same morning the
article ran, NYPD cops showed up at the man’s door to arrest him on a
13-year-old traffic warrant. The NYPD then released the man’s
decades-old record, despite the fact that it was supposed to be sealed.
An NYPD spokesman also falsely claimed the man had been convicted of
“sodomy.”
The Times article lays out how Giuliani used licensing bureaus, housing
codes and other city government infrastructure to punish whistleblowers,
critics, detractors and disloyalists. He not only tried to get his
political opponents fired; when he heard they were being considered for
other positions, he’d call the potential new employers to pressure them
to look elsewhere.
When civil rights attorney and New York University law professor Joel
Berger wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing Giuliani in 1997, the
mayor’s aides called NYU and threatened to cancel an apprenticeship
program the city ran with NYU unless the school fired Berger from the
course he was teaching.
God, what a lovable guy. How can you not respect that?
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