Posted on 04/19/2007 11:52:47 AM PDT by areafiftyone
As Earth Day dawns Sunday, Americans should consider the relationship between environmentalists and the former mayor of the capital of Earth. From New York's City Hall, Rudolph W. Giuliani successfully confronted green zealots while advancing science and technology. Here again, Giuliani stands well right of where his detractors might expect.
_The West Nile virus debuted in the Western Hemisphere in the College Point community in the New York borough of Queens in August 1999. Among 62 New York state residents who contracted West Nile encephalitis (brain swelling) that year, seven died.
Rather than study the problem to death, that summer and in 2000, Giuliani launched widespread insecticide spraying against West Nile-carrying mosquitoes. Environmentalists went haywire.
The local No Spray Coalition sued to block fumigation. New York's Green Party callously declared: "These diseases only kill the old and people whose health is already poor."
Giuliani firmly told Newsday that spraying was "perfectly safe." He added:
"There are some people who are engaged in the business of wanting to frighten people out of their minds." In 2000, he told CNN: "The reality is that danger to human life is more important than birds, fish and insects."
Before releasing waterborne larvicide and aerial- and ground-level pesticide, hundreds of Health Department employees used fliers and home visits to urge Queens residents to remain indoors with windows and air ducts closed during nighttime spraying. A 75-person, 24-hour hotline answered 150,000 calls. Doctors and journalists also were briefed.
Giuliani's swift and thorough spraying programs yanked the wings off the mosquitoes that could have turned a manageable West Nile outbreak into a catastrophe.
"Unfortunately, West Nile has spread, largely because other mayors didn't spray when they were cowed by the greens," says John Berlau, author of "Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health." "But West Nile could have become an immediate nationwide epidemic if not for the quick action of Giuliani and his Health Department."
Given West Nile's documented human toll, Giuliani did the right thing. In 1999, a Russian flare-up sickened 500 people, killing 40. A 1996 outbreak of West Nile meningitis and encephalitis centered in Bucharest, Romania, infected 90,000 and hospitalized 835. Seventeen died.
_ Environmentalists whined when New York City and Consolidated Edison cooperated to build 10 new electrical generating plants and expand another facility.
"We object to the fact that our neighborhood is being slammed with pollution," East River Environmental Coalition President Susan Steinberg complained to gothamgazette.com. "Con Ed, let me breathe," demanded a placard at an April 2001 protest. One demonstrator's puppet puffed on an asthma nebulizer.
As Giuliani writes in his book, "Leadership": "I, too, would have preferred a public park or beautiful housing to a generator on the East River, but I also had to think about the 12,000 megawatts New Yorkers could consume in an hour on a hot day." Indeed, a 1999 blackout left 300,000 Washington Heights and Inwood residents in the dark for 30 hours.
"My administration's clear priority in this area is to see that the lights stay on and that electricity continues to flow in New York City," Giuliani said in a power-policy address that March. "There is no room for complacency as we prepare for the future."
_ Giuliani also privatized the management of Central Park. While the city still owns Gotham's gorgeous 843-acre rectangle of flora, bike paths, lakes, lawns and stages, the Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit, operates it.
For New York, this idea was as radical as an American president asking the National Geographic Society to manage Yellowstone National Park.
_ Today, Giuliani advocates broader domestic production to achieve energy independence as a national-security goal. As he told local supporters March 14: "We have to end our reliance on oil from sources that are enemies of the United States." Last June 13, he told a Manhattan Institute luncheon, "We have to diversify. That's our strength." He added, "You can be independent by being diversified." Giuliani embraces Alaskan oil drilling, plus natural gas, clean coal, ethanol and accelerated construction of atomic power plants.
None of this will help America's Mayor with the eco-freaks, but they hate him anyway. These facts, however, pour yet another spade full of earth on the myth that Rudolph W. Giuliani is some sort of liberal.
(New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.murdock(at)gmail.com.)
Answer:
1- Paid campaign worker.
2- DemonRAT mole.
Rudy may in fact be the Republican nominee for President, whether we like it or not. I think we should stay informed about him. I see alot of anti-Rudy things posted, I appreciate the occasional pro-Rudy post. I’ll have some tough thinking and soul-searching to do if he does win the nomination, and this information will help me considerably.
Why is this coming as such a shock to you? LOL! I’ve been posting Rudy threads since he first formed his exploratory committee. You are acting like this is the first time you’ve seen a Rudy thread. You’ve been on most of them.
I thought we were supposed to post crazy stuff here so we could talk about how crazy it is. Otherwise we’d hardly have anything ever posted here.
Neither. But I am in charge of the Rudy ping list and keep the Freepers who like Rudy informed.
Too bad for Rootee. Al Gore invented mosquitos and now Rootie has gone and sprayed them. That’s not very green of him, is it?
They can screech “liberal” all the way to the inauguration!
Why are you being such a girly man and choosing the word "Appropriate".
Wouldn't a fist in the air and a defiant shout of "not allowed under any circumstances" be more of a reflection of your attitude?
And we Thank You Very Much!!! :)
But, showing again his nasty streak, and his apparent need to personally attack anybody who suggests he is doing something wrong, EVEN if they were just poisoned by his anti-nile-virus policy, he attacked the woman's story because she apparently got the TIME wrong of when she was sprayed.
From the New York Times, September of 2000: Giuliani Questions Account of Spraying
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani acknowledged yesterday that a woman had been treated at an emergency room on Monday after she complained of being sprayed with a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes that spread the West Nile virus. But the mayor said there was ''obviously a discrepancy'' between the city's spraying schedule and the woman's account of when she was sprayed.
...
spraying in the area where the incident is said to have occurred did not begin until shortly before midnight last Sunday, at least an hour after the woman said she was sprayed.
Rudy is one tough hombre, attacking a street artist who was incapacitated by bug spray because she was off by an hour.
All of this is irrelevant. Last time I checked, he was now a Kyoto supporter.
I remember when the city did the spraying THIS WOMAN WAS an Eviroweenie. Spraying occurred after midnight or really early before dawn.
We do indeed.
Of course, he now praises the progressiveism of Arnold in pursuing governmental environmenal agendas and also agrees global warming is human caused.
Deroy, how DO you drink all that Kool-Aid and still not have to run to the bathroom? You must have a bladder the size of a cantelope.
Earth Day?
Sounds like a good reason to go to the range!
I forget which one, but I’m quite sure Rooty put either one of his many X wives or girlfriends in charge of that.
With a big salary I might add.
But in fact, the West Nile Virus outbreak in the United States started in New York City in 1999, and spread FROM THERE to the rest of the country.
"West Nile virus is a mosquito-borne flavivirus and human neuropathogen. Since the virus was recognized in New York City in 1999, it has spread rapidly across the United States, with human disease documented in 39 states and the District of Columbia. West Nile virus can cause a broad range of clinical syndromes, including fever, meningitis, encephalitis, and a flaccid paralysis characteristic of a poliomyelitis-like syndrome."
If Rudy had acted more quickly, maybe we would have stopped this thing before it got out of New York? I doubt it, but it makes as much sense as claiming that his reaction in 1999 was better than everybody else's, when he was the only mayor in 1999 who really had to do anything.
Further, I can find little evidence that any major metropolitan area refused to spray when they had an infection.
I know that we have had spraying in our country for some time, and while some environmentalists always complain, nobody takes them seriously when there is a serious medical problem.
Only a complete liberal would fail to treat for mosquitos in the face of this threat. Maybe that is why Deroy Murdock thinks it's such a big deal that Rudy did something, because it wasn't expected of him as a complete liberal?
Some links to "liberal" cities who had no problems with spraying when the New York City mosquito problem spread to their locations:
Chicago spraying Mosquitos to combat West Nile
San Diego County set to spray for West Nile
Prevention Key to attacking West Nile in Ohio
Sprays used in Mass. to combat West Nile(this is particularly pertinent, as this spraying was in Boston in July of 2000, which is the same time Rudy was supposedly the only mayor smart enough and strong enough to allow spraying in his city)
Philadelphia uses spray against West Nile Virus
I finally gave up searching for a "liberal city" that refused to spray for mosquitos when they had an actual outbreak of West Nile. I'll be interested to see if any Rudy supporters can find one.
There are a LOT of stories about groups fighting spraying, including a lawsuit that made it through the courts, but no cases where a major city gave in to the groups, or the groups won a court battle.
So I don't know where Deroy got the idea that a huge government program to spray for mosquitos was anathema to liberals, and proved Rudy was a conservative.
Yes. But since he admitted she was sprayed, what difference did it make what time it was? If he wanted to argue that she stood there and got sprayed on purpose, and he had evidence, at least that would be germaine to the discussion. But picking on what time of evening she was hit, when she was treated early monday morning, is petty.
Amazing. Rudy involuntarily and against their will sprays people with chemicals, and the RudyBots declare him a hero. Anywhere else in the country, he would be charged with assault. It just shows how he totally ignores the rights of others when he thinks he is right.
Its nothing but a bunch of NYC chicken little hysteria. If it were a real threat, I guess the rest of us would be dead by now!
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