Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 420 Editor's Choice: 45
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Bloomberg, Guiliani, and Paul
[Read the article: Mike Bloomberg could buy the White House]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I guess a lot of people don't know, and the "I've lived in New York my whole life" crowd either doesn't want to remember or never went north of Yonkers to find out. Rockefeller, Lindsay, the beloved Koch, the train wreck that was Dinkins - NYC mayors were incompetent idiots. The other 50% of the population of New York State despised NYC for over 30 years, and despised New Yorkers for electing these morons. Sure, it was a fun place to visit and you could get the best pizza and Chinese food in the country there, but aside from that it was nothing but an enormous drain on the rest of the state, an embarassment. Believe it or not, people in Plattsburgh and Buffalo and Syracuse didn't want 20% of their tax dollars being used to keep that city afloat. Hillary supporters can congratulate themselves on what a great candidate they have because she won that Senate seat, but the fact is she only won because she wasn't from NYC and the other guy was, same as a lot of Dems won seats in congress this year simply because they weren't Republicans.
Guiliani and Bloomberg are the 2 best administrators that city has had in half a century. Rudy is seen as a racsist by some because he treated everyone the same - no more black community centers, no more hispanic health clinics, just community centers and health clinics. He refused to acknowledge race as an excuse for behavior. He took a hard line with that, because that was what was causing a lot of the damage to the city. Holding everyone to the same standards of behavior, letting everyone know they were not going to receive special treatment because of the color of their skin, led directly to the reductions in crime and social services that resulted in the increases in business investment, tourism, and tax base which have pulled NYC out of receivership for the first time since the early 70's.
And that gave Bloomberg a foundation to work from, which he did a fantastic job at. I thought it was great that he didn't whine and cry when Bush didn't come through with the post 9/11 money. Finally, NYC got some of its attitude back, after decades of being the poster child for entitlement at every level. Mike wasn't saying "whatever you say Mr. President", he was saying "fuck you, we'll do it ourselves, we don't need anybody's help". And they didn't.
What both of these guys are very good at is finding the underlying cause of a problem and addressing it directly, no matter how hard that might be. You can tell they are good at it because the problems actually get solved, which seperates them from every single other candidate out there.
I'd go with Bloomberg first, because the most obvious problem we have today is campaign financing. That's what makes pussies out of congressmen, that's what has given us the one party system we have today, and that's what has given corporations influence that is supposed to be reserved for citizens. And those are the reasons Bush gets away with murder, literally. A strong leader coming from outside (but not too far outside) the existing system has the best chance of changing it.
Paul would be my second choice, because he will force confrontation on campaign finance and every other issue where the feds have exceeded their authority and failed in their responsibilities. Can you see a 7 term senator trying to justify why he needs to be able to take $300,000 from a PAC in order to serve his constituents? A Paul presidency would be a non-violent revolution, which is just what we need.
And Guiliani would be third. He has enough ego that he might bite the hand that feeds him in order to ensure a gigantic legacy. And he has gotten to where he is by fixing what's wrong.
Ideology is nice, it's great, but we really haven't had any ideological differences in government in a very long time and we can't afford to let perceived differences influence our decisions now. Fix the underlying problem (a broken system for choosing our leaders) and then we can move on to other things.
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Dream sequence
[Read the article: "The Sopranos" goes dark]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As far as the room goes - we don't know if the room was freshly painted at first or not,, really. And we have no real idea how long he was in there - Phil's impatience and a few comments about missed events indicate it was more than a couple of days. The only thing that might seem a little odd at first is the coat rack, but Tony has had a coat rack every where that was his the entire show, and one of his quirks was that it obviously irked him to have to put his coat or jacket on a chair.
Someday someone associated with the show is going to make millions off a book about this episode.
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Does anyone have a tape of Bush's inauguration?
[Read the article: The al-Marri decision]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just curious if after the Chief Justice said "uphold and protect the Constitution" George cleverly said "subvert and render unto shreds the Consitution"...