Rudy Giuliani

[shortcircuit]

He scares me almost as much as Hellary Clinton.

Giuliani firm made millions pushing data-mining program

Published on Friday, December 14, 2007.





Source: RawStory

Revelations about the far-ranging business entanglements of GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani continue to put the former New York mayor on the hot seat.
The latest : As reported by Time Magazine, Giuliani’s private consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, received a $6.5 million windfall for helping a tech company called Seisint Inc. land government contracts for a massive data-mining program — a system the firm said could help fight terror by using supercomputers to store “billions of pieces of information from public records.”

The problem, write Time’s Michael Weiskopf and Massimo Calabresi, is that “the payment of percentages or commissions to ’solicit or secure’ government contracts is prohibited by federal law and laws of some states.”

An unnamed source at Giuliani Partners told the magazine that the firm had never received commissions, however, labeling the money instead as “special bonuses” that wouldn’t run afoul of federal law.

“Meanwhile, Seisint’s premier product–MATRIX–had proved controversial,” continues Time. “The databases it searched contained personal histories of millions of Americans, their relatives, past addresses, property records and credit ratings. Civil-liberties groups said MATRIX would create detailed data profiles of innocent Americans.”

[shortcircuit]

Giuliani Snuck 2,000 Boxes of Records Out of New York's City Hall

Published on Sunday, December 23, 2007.


Source: Alternet - Pam Spaulding

Let's see how his campaign responds to this. The AP reports that, while NY government only allows a former mayor to keep a few token gifts when they clean out their desks, Rudy Giuliani would have needed several U-Hauls to remove all the paperwork he whisked out of City Hall, Gracie Mansion and other offices. That doesn't square with his claim that he believes in "open government." Or maybe it depends on the meaning of the word "open."

Under an unprecedented agreement that didn't become public until after he left office, Giuliani secreted out of City Hall the written, photographic and electronic record of his eight years in office - more than 2,000 boxes.


Along with his own files, the trove included the official records of Giuliani's deputy mayors, his chief of staff, his travel office and Gracie Mansion - the mayor's residence that became a legal battlefront during his caustic divorce.


The mayor made famous - and very wealthy - in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has long described his City Hall as an open book.


In a Republican presidential candidates' debate last week, Giuliani asserted: "My government in New York City was so transparent that they knew every single thing I did almost every time I did it. ... I can't think of a public figure that's had a more transparent life than I've had."


But the public record, as reviewed by The Associated Press, shows a City Hall that had a reputation of resistance - even hostility - toward open government, the First Amendment and the public's access to simple facts and figures.


"He ran a government as closed as he could make it," said attorney Floyd Abrams, a widely recognized First Amendment authority who faced off against city lawyers when Giuliani sought to shut the Brooklyn Museum of Art because the mayor considered a painting sacrilegious.

This is a scathing article and a must-read. It documents a man so controlling and paranoid that requests for benign public data having nothing to do with security (such as number of working water fountains in the city's parks), required a formal request to the mayor's office.

And he repeatedly battled other city agencies over access to information that ended up in court, with the city losing almost every case.


Advocacy and oversight groups long accustomed to easily obtaining information about city services and finances - the Citizens Budget Commission and the Women's City Club among them - were required to file freedom of information requests for documents, often resulting in months of delays and added legal costs.


In a slap at Giuliani's City Hall, a judge in one such case wrote bluntly, "The law provides for maximum access, not maximum withholding."


Attorney Eve Burton, who represented the New York Daily News during much of the Giuliani era, said the newspaper submitted more than 100 filings in six years related to information or access requests, appeals or lawsuits involving the administration. In one case, she said, the city refused to turn over the names of people who held gun permits - unquestionably public information - until threatened with a lawsuit.

[summerose]

Yep, I agree short. He is scary!

[shortcircuit]

www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=5100

[sometimeman]

[shortcircuit]

Ailing 9/11 Workers Confront Giuliani In New Hampshire

Published on Sunday, January 06, 2008.





Source: The Huffington Post - Sam Stein

Finishing a disappointing sixth in the Iowa caucus and staring down a similarly poor result in New Hampshire, Rudy Giuliani has yet another problem on his hand.
Before Saturday's GOP debate, several members of the 9/11 recovery effort will be stationed outside the forum petitioning the former New York City Mayor to discuss the mishandled health safety issues following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The protest coincides with and promotes a new short video by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films, which uses the testimony of these 9/11 workers to detail the dangerous conditions and serious illnesses encountered at the recovery site.

Still today, many suffer from violent coughs, severe asthma, and pulmonary and mental health issues. Giuliani, the workers note, is not responsible for their sicknesses, but he did not sufficiently warn about the hazards at the site and, more importantly, has done next to nothing to help the thousands who are suffering from recovery-related ailments.

"The hypocrisy of running a campaign on a 9/11 agenda and you have these people still dying and becoming much sicker then they were a year or two years prior is really insulting," Alex Sanchex, a janitorial worker, says in the film.

Greenwald told the Huffington Post: "These first responders are not blaming Rudy for being sick, they are asking why he has done nothing to help them since they got sick. They want to meet with him and ask what he is going to do to help them. They have tried to call and meet with him. Nothing. He who is Mr. 9.11 has abandoned the real heroes of 9/11."

More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems following their work at the World Trade Center recovery site. Toxic dust from that area has been directly linked to sarcoidosis, a debilitating disease that FDNY members now develop at five times the rate they had previous to working around the toxins.



Following the Democrats takeover of Congress in 2006, hearings were held to determine what went wrong in exposing these firefighters to such porous conditions. Much blame was laid at the feat of the then-EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman. Subsequently, several investigations have called into question the extent of Giuliani's knowledge and handling of the hazardous 9/11 site.

According to the New York Times, in the aftermath of 9/11 Giuliani "seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies" during the clean up effort, but "never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators." Moreover, the paper added, Guiliani "warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed."

But what has drawn the ire of the recovery workers is not what Giuliani did in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11, but rather how he has seemingly forsaken their plight in favor of focusing on his business and political careers. Giuliani, Greenwald notes, has offered no assistance to other New York elected officials in efforts to lobby the federal government for funds for victim treatment. He won't even meet with the victims themselves.

"The fact of ignoring those who sacrificed the most while he profits and profiteers from 9/11 is a scandal and is disgusting," the filmmaker said.

The remarks echoed those made in the film by Mike McCormack, a USAF Auxiliary Civil Air Patrolman: "After he left office, you may have to turn in your key to the city. But I don't believe turning in your moral compass and responsibility to people who trust you. That shouldn't fall at the wayside."

This is the third Giuliani movie made by Greenwald and Brave New Films. The first looked at Giuliani's decision to put New York's terrorist response center in the World Trace Center complex - a known and obvious terrorist target. The second focused on Giulaini's failures to upgrade the faulty radios used by FDNY members on 9/11.