Posted on 04/12/2007 12:48:48 AM PDT by FairOpinion
When Steve Forbes was seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani ridiculed his proposal to scrap the federal income tax code and replace it with a simple flat-tax. Giuliani called Forbes plan a "mistake" and said if implemented "would really be a disaster."
Despite these smears, Steve Forbes now believes Rudy embraces the flat-tax concept and endorsed him for president claiming he "will inspire the next generation of the Reagan Revolution."
Apparently Forbes forgot that when running for mayor, Rudy Giuliani showcased his liberal credentials and boasted he would "rekindle the Rockefeller, Javits Lefkowitz tradition" of the Republican Party and "produce the kind of change New York City saw with Fiorella LaGuardia and with John Lindsay."
Here's a sampling of the change the Rockefeller-Lindsay brand of Republican liberalism gave New York: During Governor Rockefeller's 14-year tenure, he brought New York State to the verge of bankruptcy. When Rocky entered office, his first budget was $2 billion, when he left office his last budget was $8.7 billion. Thanks to 18 tax increases he signed into law, New Yorkers were the most heavily taxed citizens in the nation and their state had the highest public debt in the nation. Viewing the mess he inherited from Rockefeller, Democratic Governor Hugh Carey said: "I've seen delicatessens in bankruptcy in better shape than the State of New York."
The Upper East Side Republican-liberal social engineer mayor, John Lindsay, financed New York City's big government agenda with creative fiscal gimmicks including phantom revenues, capitalization of expenses, short-term debt rollovers, false revenue estimates and excessive long-term borrowing. And Lindsay increased nuisance taxes, water rates, sewer taxes, commercial rent tax and instituted the city personal income, general corporation and unincorporated business taxes.
Mayor Lindsay's reckless fiscal policies were directly responsible for the City's 1975 default on debt.
Following in their footsteps, Mayor Giuliani declared that pledging no new tax increases is "political pandering." He also said "when I ran for mayor both times, I was asked very, very often to do the following: Pledge that you will never raise taxes. I refused to do that. Pledge that you will lower taxes. I refused to do that."
When Giuliani endorsed liberal icon Mario Cuomo for governor in 1994, he called the Republican-Conservative George Pataki's 25 percent state income tax cut (cloned from the Forbes-inspired New Jersey income tax cut) "irresponsible" and a "shell game that would hurt everyone in the state."
Forbes points to Rudy's fiscal management of New York City as proof of his conservatism. "Giuliani," he claims, "turned an inherited deficit [$2.3 billion] into a multimillion dollar surplus." It's true that during Giuliani's first term when times were tough, he contained costs and made some tax cuts. But what Forbes failed to point out is that in Rudy's second term, when the economy was booming, he abandoned fiscal restraint and became a big-spending liberal. City budget expenditures jumped 25 percent – twice the inflation rate – and Giuliani left his successor a projected operating deficit of $4.5 billion and New York's citizens with the highest tax burden in any major municipality in America.
Rudy Giuliani, a legatee of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay, fails on every fiscal and cultural issue that are dear to conservatives. And one can only hope that Steve Forbes and his friends will learn before it's too late that life-long liberal Rudy Giuliani is employing conservative rhetoric merely to patronize them.
And we mustn’t forget that when Giuliani endorsed Democrat Mario Cuomo for re-election to a fourth term as governor in 1994, he did so, he said, because Republican George Pataki had “a very right-wing voting record” and because Pataki proposed an “irresponsible” 25 percent state income tax cut.From: Rudy Giuliani, Life Long Liberal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVieg3vJG0I&mode=related&search
Read post #61.
1. True or False: If you don't like porn, you can simply not look at it.
2. True or False: If you don't like high taxes, you can simply refuse to pay them.
3. True or False: Other people not going to church makes it more difficult for you yourself to go to church.
4. True or False: Government overspending makes it more difficult for you to provide a secure future for your children.
Now this is something new from a politician's mouth -- I like it.
I’ll take these non-partisan reports about Rudy’s outstanding fiscal conservatism over George Marlin any day. LOL. But good try.
The best article I’ve seen on Rudy’s fiscal conservatism:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26604
The city also added approximately 430,000 new jobs during Giuliani’s mayoralty the most dramatic period of job growth in New York’s history. At the same time, Giuliani restored fiscal discipline to the city’s budget, transforming the $2.3 billion annual deficit he inherited in 1993 into the $1 billion surplus he hands over to incoming mayor Michael Bloomberg.
—
Rudy Giuliani: An American Hero
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2002
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1380
From January 27, 2000
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani today outlined his Financial Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2000-2004. The Plan reflects the Administration’s continued fiscal priorities of cutting taxes to stimulate continued record job growth and economic development; increasing spending in targeted areas, reducing City funded spending year-to-year by 1%, while maintaining overall City spending to less than the rate of inflation; and reducing the out-year gaps.
The Plan reflects the Administration’s success in reducing taxes by $2.3 billion since 1994 — more than any administration in the history of the City. Combined with the more than $2 billion in proposed tax cuts, this Plan will bring the total value of the Mayor’s tax reduction program to $4.5 billion annually by 2004. The Plan projects a surplus for FY2000 of $2.2 billion, the largest surplus in the City’s history. This is the fourth year in a row that the New York City four-year Financial Plan contains a surplus of more than $1 billion.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2000a/pr008-00.html
That's not fiscal conservatism.
That's not social conservatism.
That's not national security conservatism.
It is pure, unadulterated liberalism.
If any Democrat had a record like that, this ENTIRE forum would be all over that candidate, showing no mercy whatsoever as he was condemned for his liberalism. But we've got shills here, polluting this forum with a bunch of false propaganda about the most liberal Republican presidential candidate to ever seek the office.
Except that this is a conservative forum and we're supposed to be conservatives. We aren't "non-partisan" and we respect conservatives and their opinions. But thank you for revealing that you are more neutral or nonpartisan than you are conservative. May I suggest that you go find a nonpartisan or neutral forum to frequent instead of you continuing to annoy the conservatives here.
Oh, so Frontpage magazine isn’t conservative enough for you? Why am I not surprised.
During his 1993 campaign, Giuliani suggested cutting 35,000 positions from the city payroll. This was not a radical idea; for example, an advisory panel appointed by then-Mayor David Dinkins suggested that 25,000 positions could be eliminated.
Once in office, however, Giuliani changed the composition rather than the size of the workforce. He added about 4,000 cops and more than 14,000 “pedagogical” employees, subtracting a like amount from other categories.
He also found ways to shift a net 9,000 additional city employees into programs funded entirely by state or federal grants – which can always be withdrawn, leaving the city to pick up the tab.
The bottom line: As of November 2000, the city’s total full-time headcount stood at 253,348 – 1,012 more employees than were on the payroll when Dinkins left office. Indeed, the city’s workforce is as large as it’s ever been.
E.J. McMahon, Manhattan Institute
You're the one who claimed "non-partisan" reports were better than a report from a conservative. Now you're switching your tune. Could you please, just for one day or one hour, stop being so stupid?
I'm not sure what Rudy means by this, but until the Federal Reserve accepts that inflation is caused by the government, not the economy, we're never going to have proper monetary policy.
George Marlin ran as Mayor of NYC which makes him as partisan about Rudy as he can be.
Frontpage magazine, although conservative, is not above shooting down what are typically thought of as conservative positions when they think those positions are wrong.
I appreciate your legitimate, reasonable concerns. Hopefully he will address those soon. Though, is any president ever actually able to DO anything about these? Dare we hope?
Uninspiring pap.
pap
n.
Soft or semiliquid food, as for infants.
Material lacking real value or substance: TV shows that offer nothing but pap.
Slang. Money and favors obtained as political patronage: “self-seeking politicians primarily interested in patronage, privilege, and pap” (Fiorello H. La Guardia).
You're right, but that one I deliberately wanted kept up there for posterity. As I said before, I'm becoming disgusted here.
I come to FR as a safe haven from the leftists and the creeps I'm inundated with all day long as a NYer who works in the media industry. It's the one community out there where I can get news, discuss issues and have a laugh with like-minded people.
But the anti-Giuliani hatred has gone WAY too far, IMHO. I've devoted too much time and effort to FR (7 years) to 'get lost', as someone will inevitably tell me now.
You're officially on crack cocaine.
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