Or is that too obvious to be worth saying?
Rudy Giuliani, Tax Dodger?
Published January 29, 2008 Character , History , business , corruption 2 CommentsTags: furniture, giuliani, giuliani center, giuliani partners, mayoral records, nonprofit, rudy, tax evasion, tax shelter, taxes, urban leadership
There’s a question we’d like to ask Rudy, and it’s got nothing to do with Florida: why did his little nonprofit, a tax-free organization which had no office space of its own, buy so much office furniture? Where exactly did they put it?
This was an organization that had no employees of its own and was effectively a side project of Giuliani Partners — but it had about $15,000 in furniture, purchased without paying taxes (also, $1700 in computer equipment). Now, the contact address for the Giuliani Center is the Giuliani Partners office. Perhaps the for-profit Giuliani Partners company was furnished tax-free by the Giuliani Center? Maybe it wasn’t — but then where did all that furniture go?
As a refresher, we’re not talking about Giuliani Partners, but Rudy’s other, nonprofit venture, The Rudolph W. Giuliani Center for Urban Leadership, Inc. Now, the only thing we remember these folks doing is taking over Giuliani’s mayoral letters and not letting anyone else at them until they had been privately, secretly processed. Their tax records bear this out — the only major expenses they have are for archiving and storage, back in 2004, a one-time expense that ceases once the city reclaims the records. Sure, they take some money in, but they don’t spend it, and they don’t pay anyone, other than their accountant.
They do lose a little money — namely, the depreciation in value of their sole physical asset, their furniture.
And if the 990 forms of Rudy’s 501c3 raise questions, can you imagine the questions that might come up if we could see actual financial records for his private operation?
For the curious: Giuliani Center – 2004 Form 990
Regan Settled, We Didn’t.
Published January 29, 2008 corruption Leave a CommentTags: america's mayor, bias, fair and balanced, fox news, giuliani, judith regan, lawsuit, media matters, news corp, rudy, settlement
Judith Regan, former lover of the not-so-sexy Bernie Kerik, may have settled her lawsuit against News Corp without resolving (at least not publicly) the issue of whether they were trying to force her to be pro-Giuliani, but not everyone is ready to let Fox News off the hook:
Who You Calling Nasty?
Published January 28, 2008 Character , Running a Campaign , Vs. Republicans Leave a CommentTags: campaigning, civic, florida, giuliani, mccain, nasty, nice, romney
With polls against him, Rudy is trying to sell Florida voters on his nice-ness — something he’s never really run on before. He says the other candidates are being nasty, and can’t we all (now that no one is attacking us personally) get along? Fox News explains:
Responding to the escalating war of words between John McCain and Mitt Romney, Giuliani said Saturday that the American people are “tired of the name calling and finger pointing.”
“If you listen to my opponents, it is getting kind of nasty,” Giuliani told a “Women for Rudy” event in Orlando. “We don’t want to become like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton right? They are trying to work their way out of it, we dont want to work our way into it. Right?”
At a media availability after the event, Giuliani savored the opportunity to cast himself as the optimistic candidate with a vision for Florida—calling on his opponents to strike a cease fire.
“I think this election should be about the positive things, about what we can do, what we can accomplish. I’m concerned that some of my opponents are engaging in negative campaigning using words like ‘dishonesty,’” he said. “The reason I am being positive is I believe that is the way to win. It seems to me you sorta got that message when you saw what happened in Iowa with Mike Huckabee. The American people are sending us a message that they want us to be positive–that they are tired of the name calling and finger pointing.”
http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/01/26/mccain-and-romney-are-getting-kind-of-nasty-giuliani-says/
Gail Collins Speaks for Us
Published January 26, 2008 Character , History , new yorkers , polls Leave a CommentTags: 9/11, Bush, democracy, election, florida, giuliani, polls, rudy, rule of law, shameful, wtc
…When, spurred on by some lousy poll numbers for Rudy in Florida, she writes this in today’s New York Times:
Those of us who live in New York found it rather peculiar that Giuliani was a front-runner at all, given his deeply mixed record running the city. Now, the idea that Florida might take him out of the race is somewhat disappointing. There’s still so much about him we haven’t yet had a chance to share with the national electorate. Did we ever mention the time he tried to stop the city elections because he didn’t think that New York could get along without him?
(She’s referencing, of course, Giuliani’s effort to postpone mayoral elections after the World Trade Center attacks, so that he could continue to be mayor. Luckily, the candidates wouldn’t stand for it. But if you thought Bush had shamefully little respect for the rule of law and basic democratic principles, you’d be pretty horrified by Rudy.)
More Tough Talk from the NYT
Published January 24, 2008 Character , Endorsements , History , new yorkers Leave a CommentTags: giuliaini, new york times, rudy
The New York Times calls it like they see it:
That man is not running for president.
The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.
Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.
The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.
WNYC Rips Rudy on Downtown Air Quality Post-WTC-Attacks
Published January 24, 2008 Character , History , The Issues , WTC Attacks , new yorkers Leave a CommentTags: 9/11, 9/11 cough, air quality, daily news, giuliani, liar, npr, rudy, wnyc
It’s the politics of pile-on among New York outlets, but dammit, he deserves it:
GIULIANI: Let’s do the Daily News first. The Daily News today had a story about how the zone is a “toxic danger.” And the reality is that although obviously very, very close to where the work is being done there are dangers and risks, the reality is far different than the way the article described it.
REPORTER: And to back that up, Giuliani brought forward his health commissioner, Dr. Neal Cohen:
COHEN: We don’t believe that there any risks here with respect to long term health effects and that occasional uptick in elevated readings that are taken with some of these with pollutants, generally those return to acceptable levels.
REPORTER: Cohen says today he and other city officials were quote “relying on data provided by the experts from the federal government as the basis for their conclusions at the time.”
Dr. Phillip Landrigan of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has studied those afflicted with World Trade Center-related illnesses, some 20,000, or more, by his count. He says it should have been clear the air in Lower Manhattan was not safe.
LANDRIGAN: And I’m not just talking about the cloud I’m not just talking about the first 24, 48 hrs. For a period of many weeks the air in Lower Manhattan was not safe. And people who lived and worked there should have been told clearly that the air was not safe. They should have been told clearly to take precautions. And it’s my view that had they been given clear information that there would be fewer sick people today.
New York Times on Rudy’s Vengeful Side
Published January 24, 2008 Character , History , new yorkers Leave a CommentTags: children, dinkins, giuliani, grudge, housing works, koch, petty, portraits, rosalie harman, rudy, schillaci, vengeful
The NYT is one of several NY publications to dig back into Rudy’s past in the week before the Republican Florida primary. They dig at his petty, vengeful character, bringing up, among others, the Schillaci episode:
In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani’s radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to The Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: “GOTCHA!”
That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci’s doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.
They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci’s decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for The Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.
Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.
“Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower,” the mayor told reporters at the time. “Maybe he’s dishonest enough to lie about police officers.”
The Times also reminds us of the Housing Works episode (which the city eventually settled, paying the nonprofit group $5 million), the story of a caseworker they don’t name but who is Rosalie Harman, the removal of Dinkins’ and Koch’s portraits once they openly criticized Rudy, and much more.
Rudy Attacks Rivals – Just Like Old Days
Published January 21, 2008 Character , History , Running a Campaign , Vs. Republicans 1 CommentTags: art, attack, brooklyn museum, central power, giuliani, hypocrisy, jay walking, republicans, rudy, sensation
Giuliani today came out and attacked the other Republican candidates (to whom he barely poses a threat), saying not only that they didn’t do enough to support Bush’s tax cuts, but that they also tend to overestimate the importance of central authority:
Sometimes people that are in Washington too long, in state capitols for too long, they think … it’s about the central government,” Giuliani said. “They can have a plan to straighten things out for you. Beware of central governments that have plans to straighten things out for you.
Coming from someone who surrounded himself with loyal yes men, centralized power in the hands of the mayor, attempted to tell museums what art they could and couldn’t show, and even went so far as to order New Yorkers not to jay walk in midtown, that sounds only mildly hypocritical.
More Rudy On Change
Published January 17, 2008 Plans for Office , Speeches , The Issues , Vs. Democrats , War Leave a CommentTags: change, florida, giuliani, medicare, republican, rudy, stump speech, taxes, War
Rudy says he’s going to give us “change” in the form of more false promises of prosperity through the bankrupt Republican ideology of regressive tax cuts, no guaranteed health care, and a much too expensive war. Needless to say, we’re not persuaded:
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