Rudy Giuliani encouraging consumers to spend after 9/11

Come here and spend money, just spend a little money. Go to a store, do your Christmas or holiday shopping now, this weekend. … buy your birthday gifts for the next three or four months. We’re the best shoppers in the world.

~ New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, September 21, 2001

Rudy Giuliani on financial regulation

Bartiromo: How should Sarbanes-Oxley be changed?

Giuliani: We have a tendency to underregulate. Then we have scandals, and we swing wildly in the other direction. I think it's time we take a look at some of the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. That doesn't mean we get rid of it, but we start to make it more balanced. Most American businesspeople are honest. We have some dishonest ones, but we can't overreact to that.

~ Rudy Giuliani, "Rudy Giuliani On Iraq, Taxes, Mistakes," BusinessWeek, April 30, 2007, interview by Maria Bartiromo

Jack Kenny on Giuliani's tax cut record

Giuliani is on more solid ground when talking about the 23 tax cuts during his eight years as mayor, but even there the road is a little slippery. To get to 23, he counts some tax cuts passed over his strenuous opposition. "The largest and most economically potent tax cut of the Giuliani era," noted Ed McMahon of the Manhattan Institute, "was the elimination of a 12.5 % income tax surcharge – pushed by then-Council Speaker Peter Vallone over strong mayoral opposition." When the City Council reversed a partial repeal of another surtax after only a year, the mayor’s protest was "uncharacteristically muted," McMahon observed in an August 6 op ed piece in the New York Daily News. The "mute" button was off, however, when Giuliani loudly and vigorously opposed the Legislature’s repeal of the city commuter tax.

~ Jack Kenny, "Saint Rudolph and the Dragon Lady," LewRockwell.com, November 27, 2007

Jack Kenny on Giuliani slaying the dreaded Hillary Clinton

A recent pamphlet from the Giuliani campaign mentions the dreaded Hillary by name seven times and includes two photos of her. Two of the six panels are devoted to her exclusively. Perhaps we should cancel the New Hampshire primary now. Mayor Giuliani has already chosen the nominees of both parties.

"Rudy Giuliani is the only Republican who can beat Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in 2008," the slick mailer proclaims. Where, in Hoboken? Uncle Rudolph was going to defeat Hillary when she invaded New York and ran for the Senate in 2000. Some skeptics still believe it was his deteriorating poll numbers more than his health problems that convinced His Honor to withdraw from that race. Surely, he was healthy enough by 2006 to oppose Clinton in her run for reelection. By that time Giuliani, his political stock resurrected by the events of 9-11, was busy running for president. Too bad. Had he slain the dragon lady in ’06, a grateful GOP might have already handed him the presidential nomination for 2008. As it is, the "Only Rudy can beat Hillary" theme remains an untested theory.

~ Jack Kenny, "Saint Rudolph and the Dragon Lady," LewRockwell.com, November 27, 2007

Ron Paul on Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy

If someone is unhappy with the Bush [foreign] policy, they would find Giuliani's... even more extreme. But since Giuliani is so anxious to go to war, somebody ought to ask him why he didn't go when he was called up instead of ducking it like some of those other chicken hawks — he took, what, four deferrals?

The kids today are expected to go because Giuliani likes this stuff. But whether it's Cheney or Giuliani, these guys think it's quite proper to go to war when they feel like it. But they never had to expose themselves.


~ Congressman Ron Paul, "Ron Paul: A Republican Takes the Lead Against the War," Rolling Stone, November 14, 2007, by Tim Dickinson

Giuliani packs foreign policy team with neocons

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.

~ The New York Times, "Mideast hawks help to develop Giuliani policy," October 25, 2007, by Michael Cooper and Marc Santora