Posted on 02/16/2007 4:34:15 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
Which is ok. My ears are ringing now.
Your deep thinking keeps Democrats in power.
If someone had asked me a year ago what I thought of Rudy Giuliani, I would have said, he's a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Well, I did some research of my own and found out the real facts about Rudy Giuliani. The Brooklyn born liberal.
Enjoy.
The Real Rudy Record
From the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:
"Even with the tax cuts of the last several years, New York remains by far the most heavily taxed big city in the country."
TAXES: Giuliani did cut the marginal city income tax rates, reducing taxes by some $2.0-billion from 1996-2001, but those cuts only offset the $1.8-billion increase in city income tax rates put in place by Mayor Dinkins a few years earlier. In the end, income taxes were actually cut by a modest $200-million. Freezing the 12.5% surcharge on high wage earners was good, but Giuliani didn't attempt to abolish that surcharge. Nor did Giuliani attempt to make serious permanent changes to the city income tax code. The primary reason Rudy and the City Council agreed to cut taxes, was to make NYCity more appealing to new businesses thinking about locating/relocating to the Big Apple. A smart move, however, when Rudy left office he left NYCity straddled with some of the highest income taxes, property taxes and utility rates in the entire nation.
GOVT SPENDING: From 1997 to 2001, spending under Giuliani went up 32%. More then double the rate of inflation. Rudy left NYCity with a projected, pre-9/11 deficit of $2.0 billion and an increased debt total of $42-billion. Second largest debt after the federal government. Giuliani also added 15,000 new teachers to the city employment rolls. Increasing the membership of two major liberal organizations, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
"The scope of government was not reduced at all. The mayor abandoned his most visible initiative in this sphere—the proposed sale of the city hospital system—after a struggle with the unions and defeats in the courts. He did cut costs in social services; even before the new federal welfare reforms took effect in 1997, the city had begun to significantly reduce caseloads. But money saved on social services has only helped to subsidize big increases in other categories. Today the array of social services sponsored and partially funded by the city—from day care to virtually guaranteed housing—is as wide as ever.
"In the final analysis, Mayor Giuliani sought to make the city deliver services more efficiently—not to make the city deliver fewer services. Gains in efficiency were offset, however, by a spike in the costs of outsourced contracts (see point 2 below). Thus, in two areas where inroads might have been made, the city instead failed to reduce spending."
"1. Personnel Increases. In 1995–96, the city entered into a series of collective bargaining agreements with its public-employee unions. In addition to granting pay increases that ended up roughly equaling inflation, the city promised not to lay off any workers for the life of the contracts. These agreements were expected to add $2.2 billion to the budget by fiscal 2001. But that estimate didn’t reckon with renewed growth in the number of city employees. After dipping in Giuliani’s first two years, the full-time headcount rose from 235,069, in June 1996 to over 253,000 by November 2000. Thanks largely to this growth in the workforce, the total increase in personnel service costs since 1995 has been $4 billion.
2. "Outsourced Services. The failure to shrink the scope of city government made it all the more imperative that Mayor Giuliani vastly increase its efficiency. In the attempt to increase productivity, the mayor farmed out some city services to private contractors. But as the number of outsourced contracts doubled under Giuliani, contractual expenses also nearly doubled—from $3 billion to $5.8 billion. While it may be argued that the city saved money by outsourcing these services, the net savings turned out to be marginal at best. In practice, outsourcing proved to be more of a bargaining chip in negotiations with unions than a serious means of pruning expenses."
Rudy Giuliani was NO fiscal conservative. Another run-of-the-mill NYCity liberal.
OMG, hahahaha. Wait until all the strong conservatives start joining Rudy, LOL!
I'm waiting. And Newt was #1 on the FR poll, lol.
No, but GW Bush has done much to throw the GOP out of power. And if he signs amnesty, and the GOP nominates a pro-amnesty candidate, there will be electoral hell to pay.
"Most of Clinton's policies are similar to most of mine." - Rudy Giuliani
the state has a natural democratic demographic, and a non-functional republican party.
Yeah, I don't think I'd be able to tolerate it around here, if Jesus were running for POTUS.
He runs the risk of losing his top ranking!
Oh, Rudy has a fair shot of winning the nomination. He can make focus-group tested utterances to try and put people at ease about his liberal past.
And he can wrap the mantle of 9-11 around his shoulders to deflect criticism of actions such as taking guns away from long-term permit holders.
And he can exploit the front-loaded primary schedule to use money and bull**** to knock out rivals - especially since the GOP, more and more, is driven by a core of big-money donors in the primary stages.
But none of that can overcome his weakness in the general election if he were to win the nomination. He will not be able to hold the party together if he wins - he just has too many liberal and statist views to run away from. And he cannot make up for erosion of support from the base by getting votes elsewhere. He cannot entice pro-life Catholic Dems to cross over. He cannot entice pro-gun Dems to cross over. And a pro-war pubbie cannot make much headway leftward when opposition to the Iraq War increases dramatically the further left one goes.
If the DemonRats control the White house, House and Senate they will allow Iran and North Korea to build nuclear weapons. If Jihadists get their hands on them and use them here, America as we know it may indeed come to an end.
And let then rest hang out to dry!
very true.
but NJ itself aside, as you say, the problem is that the Dem base demographics are spreading now. Pennsylvannia used to be a reliable R state, then a toss-up, now its solid Dem. and its because we can't get any votes in the metro areas - not the urban inner city mind you, but suburbs connected to the metroplexes. Its impossible to win PA when you are getting blown away in the populated suburbs around Philly and Pittsburgh. Virginia is sliding too, northern VA is taking on the same voting demographics as the northeast suburbs. North Carolina is next.
What do you do if Newt and Duncan Hunter fall back and endorse Rudy? Do you go third party, or stay home.
Linus and Lucy? LOL
Hahahah ... thanks for that ping. I was gone for a few hours and look what happens! :-D
sure it could, some things certainly could come to an end. let's list a few:
- elect Hillary in 2008, the two big social issues - abortion and gay marriage - they're done. You'll have a guaranteed pro-Roe majority on the Court until 2040, and probably lose the defense of marriage act, which will nullify states rights on the gay marriage issue.
- Health care - move to national health care, and corporations will start dropping their employer provided plans. once that happens, there is no going back, the people will support the Dems for fear of losing their socialized medical coverage, with no where else to go now that their employer has walked away.
- US national security. Need we debate this issue with Hillary as POTUS? I think not.
so don't tell us that there aren't some massive fundamental changes that can come by putting Hillary in the white house in 2008.
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