THE POWER OF GOOD IDEAS (Rudy Giuliani in NYC)

New York Post ^ | August 26, 2004 | RYAN SAGER

[OESY]

In 2001, New York Times... liberal columnist Anthony Lewis was asked: "Have you changed your views on socialism?" Lewis' answer: "I'm still for it. But it doesn't work."

...Never underestimate "the power of bad ideas."

No matter how successful some of the policies... since the early '90s have been, they'll always have critics on the left who treat accountability, self-reliance and high standards as the enemies of the downtrodden....

Welfare reform: One of the biggest successes of the Giuliani administration was its program of welfare reform, launched long before the federal Welfare Reform Act of 1996. When Giuliani came into office, more than 1.1 million out of some 7 million New Yorkers were dependent on welfare. From 1994 to 2001, that caseload fell by 60 percent....

Restored standards at CUNY: [T]he City University of New York... was "the poor man's Harvard" ...[until] open enrollment — the abandonment of all admissions standards. The CUNY diploma soon wasn't worth the paper it was printed on....

Broken-windows policing: Who, in the late '80s and early '90s, could have predicted that New York City would soon claim the title of safest big city in America? Yet national crime statistics compiled by the FBI say Gotham has done just that... [by] cracking down on small quality-of-life crimes [to] bring an out-of-control city under control. Giuliani's embrace of this strategy led to his being portrayed as a "thug" and a "fascist" — but it worked. In 1990, New York City saw 2,245 murders; in 2001, just 642. By 2002, the city's murder rate had dropped to its lowest level since 1963.

Rudy's name still comes in for cursing..., [but] if... a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality, ... "Every liberal in New York has been mugged."

[Blood of Tyrants]

The 'Rats have never let total and utter failure be a reason to end a program, nor have the ever let proven success of a conservative program be a reason to embrace it.