The Fed
Guiliani - One good fascist, one great leader
Billy Q. Fakename
Giuliani is a racist pig. Giuliani is an-arrogant bastard. Giuliani is, overall, one hateful mofo.There. Now that I've summarized the arguments of the anti-Giuliani crowd, I'll pre-empt them: even if they are true, they just don't matter. It's time New York came to see that Giulani is not some good-for nothingFascist. Quite the opposite: he's a good-for-everything Fascist.
Lest we forget, the Manhattan of 1991 was just about lawless. Under Mayor David "Dinky" Dinkins, city crime reached its historical high with 2220 kills per year. A nice man by all accounts, Dinkins raised taxesand cooked the budget to give maximum funding to New York's public schools and social services. Police funding was kept on the low side.Unfortunately, public schools were in need of such enormous funding that Dinkins's money transfer was not enough. Taxes went up some more.
Then, over a course of months, the whole city went to hell. The low police budget sent crime soaring, so there was a latter-day exodus to the 'Burbs of Paramus and other points west. Total city revenue dropped in spite of the taxes because so many people moved out that social services became even worse off. And the money for police, in keeping with Dinkins's priorities, stayed low.
Needless to say, the New York voters booted Dinkins after one term in office. In his place came Giuliani, a new mayor who promised to hire entire legions of cops in a general effort to clean house.
True to his word, he reversed the damages of yore. Crime went down, the city became less Babylonian, upper-middle class/rich folks moved back, and Manhattan was once again livable.
Wherefore this hatred of Giuliani that spans every demographic of race, age and economics? Ah yes - the police brutality, for which I blame Chief "Hollywood Hank" Safir. Giuliani doesn't instruct beat cops to harass and kill blacks. Safir is the one who sanctions racial profiling. Blame him. The March 21st Voice says so too.
It's a very proper thing to support Hillary's Senate bid as she grandstands on 132nd St. while Giuliani remains silent about the latest police atrocity against Dorismond. Still, Giuliani shows a certain dedication that demands admiration here.Even in something so egregious as the police murder of an unarmed man, Giuliani remains so grateful to NYPD for cleaning up the city that he refuses to speak a word against that department. Surely, this is a man above something as inconsequential as senatorial back-biting. Perfect material forfederal office, I say.
Some people complain that Giuliani's quality-of-life reforms removed some of the city's delightful, essential character. They say that New York has lost its proud, previously vigliant soul for the sake of pleasing tourists. Pish-posh. What did that character, that soul, consist of exactly? The city's intolerable crime? The city's undue sleaze? The city's unparalleled ability to inspire fear? Fine. Let them all go. Even.without crime, sleaze, and fear, Prada considers Manhattan cool enough to deserve two Prada flagship stores less than three miles apart. Really, New York is no Des Moines. It is a city prolific enough to keep that old spirit and still be safe enough to drive a car in.
There's Giuliani's triumph at the end of all those reforms. Co see it from the Carman roof. While up there, think whether anyone would choose Columbia if the city of New York stiil had three times the violent crime that it does today. It's no coincidence that the applications started pouring in to Columbia once the city crime got back down to tolerable levels. And which Columbians are responsible for this boom? Which classes were the ones that took the most advantage of Giuliani's crime-fightin' success? It's hyperbole to say that safety was the main draw to Columbia. Then again, it's tough to deny a connection between the leap in applications around 1997 and the prodigious simultaneous drop in crime.Shout out those demonstration horrorstories. Recount the indignity of having police cordon off the Diallo "protest" from5th Ave. on westward. Blame mean mean Mr. Giuliani for it all. No one, though, remembered to compliment Mayor Dinkins on his niceness while escaping Manhattan for a safer home in the suburbs.
