Posted on 11/30/2007 5:02:39 PM PST by neverdem
The uproar grew Thursday over expenses for Rudy Giuliani's protection during his trysts with Judith Nathan as his campaign's initial defense - that its accounting methods were the same as previous mayors' - unraveled.
Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."
When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only talk about what I know about."
The embarrassing backtrack comes as Giuliani rushed to network airwaves to defend himself against allegations his administration deliberately attempted to conceal the taxpayer cost of his NYPD protection while he engaged in secret Hamptons liaisons with Nathan, his then-mistress and current wife.
In interviews on CBS, ABC and CNN, Giuliani portrayed the allegations as a political "hit job" and "dirty trick" unleashed hours before a big Republican debate. The story was first reported Wednesday on the Politico.com Web site.
"This was really done to try to focus on my personal life," Giuliani said on ABC. "It was a perfectly appropriate set of expenses," he added on CNN.
"I was covered by the police for 24 hours a day, every day that I was mayor," Giuliani said. "I was covered because there were threats to kill me. Contracts back from when I was United States attorney, all kinds of things."
Denying any effort at concealment, he said, "All the billing is open - that's how you can find it."
As questions swirled about Giuliani's bookkeeping methods, others were focused on the potentially damaging political cost of the scandal.
Fran Reiter, former deputy mayor under Giuliani who is now supporting Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, said the biggest problem for him is the renewed spotlight on his adultery.
"Was there a corrupt activity? Were there expenditures that shouldn't have been expensed? Clearly no. The mayor has 24-hour, 365-day a year security. It should be paid for by taxpayer dollars," she said.
"The only political issue is any potential embarrassment because he was going out to Long Island to meet with Judith."
Records obtained by Politico.com through Freedom of Information laws showed for the first time this week how the Giuliani administration scattered travel costs totaling thousands of dollars among a slew of small city agencies, such as the Loft Board, which regulates the conversion of lofts in the city.
"I don't understand when it started. I don't understand why it started," Lhota said. "But I do know one thing: It was consistently done ... in no way shape or form did it imply a coverup."
Former Mayor Ed Koch and City Controller William Thompson, along with budget officials from the Koch and Dinkins eras as well as independent budget experts, described the bookkeeping practice as shoddy and wrong.
"It's simply an effort to fool the public," said Koch, a longtime Giuliani critic and supporter of Clinton. "I haven't got the slightest idea for his motivation other than it appears he wanted to disguise it so people wouldn't know what was happening. It's asinine."
Thompson, a Democrat, said the accounting practice "does not promote open government."
"It's not the way you want to see expenditures handled," Thompson said. "It creates just a more opaque, more difficult situation to track and to follow."
Dinkins declined Thursday to comment, but Carol O'Cleireacain, who served as his budget director, said Giuliani officials scattered expenses because they "didn't want anybody to know about it."
"This was the least transparent administration in a very long time," she said. "I have no trouble saying that."
Officials at the Independent Budget Office and the Citizens Budget Commission also slammed the practice, saying it severely undermines budget transparency.
Asked to respond to budget experts' criticism about the lack of transparency, Lhota replied, "They're out of their minds and you can quote me saying that."
"It's not a coverup," he said. "If you want lack of transparency, the costs would have been borne exclusively by the NYPD - it's total lack of transparency at the NYPD."
Thursday, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg appeared to back up Team Giuliani's assertion that all of the security money ultimately came from the NYPD.
"During the Giuliani administration, we believe that security expenses that were originally paid by the mayor's office were ultimately reimbursed by the Police Department," Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said.
dsaltonstall@nydailynews.com
If folks criticize Giuliani for abusing his power and wasting taxpayer dollars, you blame the folks initiating the criticism?
That is some seriously warped thinking, IMO.
I agree. And I said I was not going to support him in the primary. I will support him against Hillary, Obama, or the breck girl. I am not going to support a third party, especially if it is some loon like Pat Buchanan who is now pimping his book on Coast-to-coast am.
The major reason people here have anything against Rudy is over abortion. I have trouble with his stand on life. But the sad reality of it is, there isn’t going to be any Life Amendment passed by either House. The only way is to elect some one who is going to appoint pro-life judges. If Hillary, Obama, or the breck girl becomes President, do you think they appoint a Scalia, Roberts, Alito, or Thomas? No.
The best we can hope for is Roe V Wade being overturned and revert to the state level. However, most states would allow some abortion rights. Until people hearts and minds will change on abortion, there is going to be some abortion in this country. I am not going to throw my vote away and get some one elected who turn this country over to the enemies of America. Rudy wouldn’t be perfect, but at least he will fight TGWOT.
All I said was, if he broke the law, prosecute him. But obviously, you didn’t read that.
“I thought she was a nurse from a coal town in Pennsylvania. Did Rudy set her up in a little love nest that he paid for? Just wondering.”
Judith ended up with a high paying job for some medical company, I believe. She’s a pretty smart cookie. Small excerpt from Wiki:
“Born Judi Ann Stish[4][5] she is a native of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a town known for its coal mining economy. Her family is Roman Catholic;[6] the surname was originally Sticia and of Northern Italian origin.[7] Her father, Donald Stish, Sr., is a retired circulation manager for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her mother, Joan, who is of Polish-American heritage,[6] is a homemaker. [8] She had an older brother, Donald, Jr., who died in 2004, and has a younger sister, Cyndy.[1] [6]
Nathan received a New York nursing license[7] and began working in 1993[9] as a pharmaceutical sales representative with the hospital sales division of Bristol-Myers Squibb,[11][19] selling surgical supplies, anti-depressants, and antibiotics in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn;[8][9] one of her specialties was infectious diseases.[20] Around this time she became romantically involved with Woodhull Hospital clinical psychologist Manos Zacharioudakis;[21] she and her daughter lived with him for four years, until early 1999.[21] Meanwhile, she became one of Bristol-Myers’ top sales managers, [22][8] by 1997 managing a 12-person sales team.[9]
Judith Nathan met Mayor Giuliani in May 1999 at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar;[19] they have said they were introduced by a doctor who is a mutual friend.[19] Giuliani took the initiative in forming an ongoing relationship.[19] The mayor was still married to and living with his second wife, Donna Hanover, although they had been publicly distant since 1996,[23] and Nathan was still living with Zacharioudakis.[1] At first kept secret,[9] by early 2000 Giuliani and Nathan’s relationship had become visible and was the subject of considerable media attention and scrutiny upon Nathan, especially in the New York press. Giuliani and Hanover separated in May 2000 (they divorced in July 2002).[24] Later in 2000, Giuliani credited Nathan’s nursing background in helping him through his treatment for prostate cancer.[22] In March 2001, desiring less travel and reduced public visibility, Nathan left Bristol-Myers and became a fund raiser and later the managing director of Changing Our World,[8] a national fundraising and philanthropic services company headquartered in New York that helps not-for-profit groups raise money for causes such as juvenile blindness and HIV/AIDS in Africa.[9]”
Rudy is upset that his personal life is the focus??? Does he honestly believe that the democrats and media will not go after the chaos that is his personal life. He was disloyal, vicious, and uncaring.
This is one reason that Rudy will NEVER win the election. His personal life was a disaster.
Thompson/Hunter 2008
I think you underestimate the diversity of the opposition to Giuliani. Abortion isn't even in my top-5 reasons for Giuliani. His sleazy deals, secrecy, and crooked friends, many who he appointed to office, are much higher on my list.
If Hillary, Obama, or the breck girl becomes President, do you think they appoint a Scalia, Roberts, Alito, or Thomas?
No... and neither will Rudy. His record supports my case.
Rudy wouldn’t be perfect, but at least he will fight TGWOT.
You sound like the old Schwarzenegger shills. And now California he is governing to the left of many democrats, all under the (R) label. And he's destroying the CA GOP at the same time. That is the same thing that Rudy will do on a national level.
I did read that. I'm just amazed that some folks are willing to accept all behavior as long as it isn't criminal. Giuliani is ethically challenged and has no place in public office. His behavior relative to this latest scandal is just more proof.
The Christian conservatives will come out of the woodwork to vote for that ticket.
I swear he was about to say "I had 24-hour security because my own damn city wasn't safe!"
Our nation would not be safe with him at the helm. He's a poseur.
Now I know the definition of one being in the tank. :)
If the press re-airs the statements he and his attorney made in his very public divorce, people will see just how viscious and uncaring. I don't care that his wife was a leftie--some of the stuff spewed against her was really disgusting.
Another good one, how many more you got like that. :) LOL
During the election campaign the press will replay anything that hurts Giuliani. It will replay these divorce tapes.
Everyone’s got to know that. How can they not know in their guts that that will happen.
Hillary’s going to look like a saint next to this man.
When taxpayer dollars and non-transparent government accounting practices are involved, I emphatically do not consider it merely Giuliani's personal life.
I respectfully submit that your post is a good example of why I believe a Giuliani presidency would be worse in some ways than even a 'toon presidency. Almost all pubbies would condemn this type of behavior from a president 'toon. About a a third of pubbies apparently will excuse this type of behavior from a president Giuliani.
It's just support for my contention that many pubbies will make excuses for Giuliani if/when he nominates a liberal judge, or supports gun-grabbing legislation. If it's president 'toon doing such things, I expect republicans will band together against it.
Hard to find out anything when Giuliani stole his mayoral records and put them under lock and key, against all tradition.
I wonder what he’s hiding in there?
Sooner or later, this guy is going to plummet.
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Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926032/posts
Posted on 11/15/2007 3:43:17 AM PST by Kevmo
There are a number of important reasons that libertarians and conservatives don't trust Giuliani.
"Rudy wouldn’t be perfect, but at least he will fight TGWOT."
I don't have much confidence.
The Unlikely Frontrunner - Is the GOP in for a Rudy awakening?
Giuliani spends a good deal of every stump speech stressing the need for America "to stay on offense" in the war on terror. His precise conception of that war, and his approach to foreign affairs in general, is harder to pin down. To the extent that he's amplified his view of the terror war, it seems much closer to the economic determinism of the moderate realist school than to the notorious butt-kicking strategy of the neoconservative warrior class. Indeed, he says the "war on terror" is itself a misnomer; he prefers the term "the terrorists' war on us," which does sound rather more defensive.
"Americans hate war," he recently told the Churchill Club, a gathering of Silicon Valley executives. "We're at war because they want to come here and kill us, not because we want to go there and kill them. We want to do business with them. We would love to have them all wired and part of the Internet buying American products, and then we'll buy their products. And then we'll have the kind of issues we have with China and India, like we used to have with Japan. But those are good issues to have. That's America, that's what America is about."
In the end, he says, victory in the terror war may come down to commerce. "Technology has transformed the world," he told the executives. "Part of the way we're ultimately going to win the war on terror is through that technology. We're going to win the war on terror because, yes, we have to be militarily strong, we have to consider defending ourselves, but ultimately we overcome terrorism when those parts of the world that haven't connected yet connect to the global economy."
Consider China, he said. "China has plugged in. It's still a dictatorship, and they have to overcome that. But they've plugged into the global economy. If you think of where the terrorists are coming from, those are places that haven't plugged in. Ultimately economic freedom pushes you to political freedom. . . . We need to be strong, we need to be determined, but we also need to connect as many of these [Middle Eastern] countries as possible to doing business with us, to being connected to the Internet with us."
Not very inspiring on the WOT either.
Pretty much a loser all around.
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