RUDY VERITAS

ABOVE THE FRAY

 

Like some of you, I listened to the Public Advocate debate this weekend.  Hearing the debate and seeing Mark Green run again for his old office reminded me of a famous Saturday Night Live sketch.  It was 1988, shortly before the New Hampshire primary.  The SNL sketch was a debate between the Republican contenders.  It was most memorable as the first time Dan Ackroyd did his Bob Dole impression nationally and Al Franken tried out his Pat Robertson.  Nora Dunn, playing Rep. Pat Schroeder, was the moderator.  The last question to the candidates was, "you're all bright, articulate spokesmen for your party.  But only one of you can be the nominee.  Would you accept the number two spot on the ticket?"  Each candidate in order mocked the position and derisively scorned the notion of serving as Vice President.  Bob Dole added, "the only person I can think spineless enough to want the job would be my good friend George Bush."

Then she came to Bush, who said he wouldn't rule it out.  "I'd make a damn good vice president.  I've been there, I've done it - for eight years  - and I could do it or eight more."  Now that to me was one of the funniest bits in a sketch that was already hilarious.  It's commonly accepted in American politics - or used to be - that nobody really wants to be Vice President.  Mondale, Gore and Cheney have changed that view somewhat but conventional wisdom still held in 1988.  And here was Bush, having done the number two job for eight long years, saying he'd do it again for eight more. And what's more he admits it in a presidential debate.

Now here you have Mark Green saying essentially the same thing.  Isn't his whole candidacy premised on the Bush/Carvey line, "I've been there, I've don't it - for eight years - and I could do it for eight more."  Except he's not running to return to the majesty and power of the Vice Presidency of the United States.  He wants to reclaim a job that only exists because the powers that be (county bosses) who amended the City Charter after it was ruled unconstitutional agreed to save a job for Andrew Stein.  That is the sole reason that position exists.

I think Mark Green's candidacy is pitiable.  He has become the living embodiment of the caricature that Dana Cavey tried to turn George Bush into 21 years ago.  The difference of course being that George Bush never wanted to be V.P. a second time.  That would have been mockable.  Mark Green does want to be Public Advocate again.  And that's just sad.

 

Russell Harding

I Want to Be a Part of B.A.

 

Argentina has never been known as a bastion of democracy and freedom.  Images that come to the fore are more likely military coups and the financial crisis of the 90's than freedom of the press.  But this past week something extraordinary happened there.  We, the United States, like to think of ourselves as the example for the world in democratic rule.  GW bush wanted to export it like Coca-Cola or blue jeans.  Sadly, if we were a model he surely tarnished our brand for generations.  The cause of freedom and the libertarian ideal got a big shot in the arm this week not from Washington, D.C. but from Buenos Aires of all places.

The Supreme Court of Argentina handed down a decision that many of us can't imagine happening here in our lifetime.  The justices did not decriminalize marijuana for personal use, they legalized it.  The distinction is extremely important.  Decriminalization amounts to holding your nose and permitting behavior you believe criminal or immoral but societally tolerable.  What the court said was that this was a matter of personal freedom.  The use of marijuana was a decision for adults to make without interference from the state.  Those of us who believe that drug laws in this country are not only ineffective and harmful but contrary to the American principle of personal responsibility can only look upon the court's ruling with wonder and envy.  I don't use drugs, haven't in nearly twenty years, but should I choose to that decision should be mine alone, not the governments.

Argentina has now legalized drug use in small quantities.  Mexico quietly decriminalized personal possession of most drugs.  Brazil will shortly legalize personal drug use.  The drug war is lost and never should have been fought.  In the coming decade, country after country from Sweden to Portugal will lead the way.  How long will the U.S. hold out?

As for Argentine democracy, however much it might make many chortle, Democrats can only look down Argnetine way with lust at a nation that freely elected first the husband and then the wife (Nestor & Cristina Kirchner) as its President.  That is something the Democratic Party and the U.S. itself could not achieve in 2008.

 

Russell Harding

8/26 - ON MY MIND

 

   1. Rudy Giuliani's favorite movie, as everyone knows, is 'The Godfather.'  Apparently he sought to act out a scene from that film this past week.  Usually Rudy is Don Corleone.  But this time he was playing the Tom Hagen part.  I am guessing that Tony Carbonetti and Peter Powers were unavailable or have decided to step back from chores like these. 

Rudy ventured out to Wolz Studios - in this case Nassau County - in order to see Joe Mondello and obtain his signature on a piece of paper.  Fans of the movie will recall Tom Hagen went to see Mr. Wolz in order to get the producer to sign Johnny Fontane to his new picture.  Fans will also recall the unnamed bandleader who wouldn't let Johnny out of his contract and was assured that "either his brains or signature would be on that piece of paper" - the famous, "offer he couldn't refuse."

Well Rudy left Joe Mondello's office and shortly thereafter his signature was affixed to a press release announcing his intention to step down as Chairman of the State GOP.  One has to wonder what offer did Rudy make Joe that he could not refuse.  There have been no reports of decapitated equine down state so that can't be it.  So what was it and what does it mean?  Rudy clearly wants the state party lined-up for something.  Governor in 2010?  I am not a betting man, but if I were I am not prepared yet to see him doing this. 

Second acts in politics are hard, third acts nearly impossible.  Richard Nixon most famously lost - narrowly - a presidential election and then went on to an ill conceived race for Governor of California. He doggedly worked the next six years to reestablish himself within the party and in the voters' minds as the "New Nixon" of 68.  Rudy Giuliani is not Richard Nixon; he lacks his discipline and focus, not to mention his analytical ability on domestic and global affairs.  A losing race in 2010 would finish him off for good. 

I think Rudy, like many, isn't convinced Andrew Cuomo has the guts to do this.  No one has ever lost money betting on the cowardice of the Cuomos and people just don't see Andrew stepping up to the plate and killing the king.  That is Rudy's reluctance and that is what he is waiting to see.  But in the meantime Rudy is acting as Don and Consilgiere all-in-one.  His circle is shrinking instead of expanding.  That is what fated his downfall in 2008.  Unlike RN he doesn't seem capable of learning from his mistakes.

2.    Ted Kennedy.  Naturally, there was almost nothing I saw eye to eye on with the late Senator.  But I respected him as a legislator.  I worked in the Senate and saw him up close.  Both the good and the bad.  He was what everyone is saying today - a hard worker who could form coalitions on issues he was passionate about.  He was a fighter for what he believed in and a dogged, tenacious opponent of that which he opposed.  The bad was his personal behavior as was constantly talked about on the Hill.  He and Chris Dodd banging and sharing waitresses at La Colline over and over again.  Not pretty.

My favorite Ted Kennedy moment happened years before I went to work in the Senate.  I was 16 years old working as a page at the 1980 Democratic Convention in New York.  As now, I was a Republican - if then only in spirit.  But there looked never to be a Republican Convention being held in NYC and working any national convention seemed thrilling.  I hated Jimmy Carter.  I was glad Ted Kennedy challenged him even if he couldn't enunciate his reasons for wanting the job to Roger Mudd.  I was working the convention floor the night of his speech.  Just as I would be the night Jimmy Carter mangled Hubert Humphrey's name and Ted Kennedy deprived him of the 'arms held high' victory/unity symbol.

I was raised in a household that carried the Kennedy torch; JFK and RFK were true heroes to both my parents and instilled in them their love of politics.   I didn't share the crowd's passion that night but only an idiot could fail not to be moved by the moment.  It was electric.  I was standing right beneath the podium when Ted Kennedy said, "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."  It wasn't my hope or dream but the place erupted and wept.  It was certainly one of the most memorable moments of my young life. 

3.    I of course have no personal knowledge of Bernie Madoff's health or lack thereof.  But I am an expert in the ways of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.  I suspected all along, the minute I heard he was being sent to Butner, that he was ill.  A few facts:  The BOP has a 500 mile rule.  You will be incarcerated within 500 miles of the Court in which you were sentenced.  There are three exceptions that the BOP makes to that rule: 1. You have family in another part of the country.  In that case the BOP will consider another region; 2. They are punishing you.  The BOP routinely punishes inmates; either inmates who don't follow the rules or just inmates the BOP considers troublesome (suing the BOP too much, appealing your conviction, filing grievances against the staff)by sending them far away from their families; or 3. There is no space in a prison of your security level within 500 miles of your court.  

Now Butner is 481 miles from Bernie Madoff's home.  Just under the limit.  But there were closer facilities to which he could have been sent.  Why there?  Because the prison he is in is feet away from  the BOP's "premier" medical facility.  In fact, it's their cancer center, FMC Butner.  I was there for 20 months.  I suspected that was the reason he was assigned there.  Furthermore, knowing the BOP as I do, I can tell you with absolute certainty that their statement yesterday denying it is almost unprecedented.  The BOP makes a point of not countering press speculation.  I knew many high profile inmates who asked the BOP to issue a statement denying something and the response was always the same, "that's what your lawyer is for."  Equally suspicious, was the BOP's attack on the Post.  Even if the Post story were inaccurate, it wasn't a malicious story regarding the BOP - the Post wasn't claiming Madoff was being denied treatment.  But the BOP launched into an outright attack against the Post.  Why?  I suspect they don't want to appear in any way to be providing him favorable treatment.  Sending him to the prison next door to their cancer center would make it far, far easier for him to be moved there permanently than if he were in another prison nowhere near North Carolina.  As for Madoff's attorney, Ira Sorkin, he had no comment.  The Post story sounds about right to me.

4.    Race.  We have reached the nadir of our political lives when Dave Dinkins and Al Sharpton are giving Gov. Paterson soothing advice on race and polling.  In essence telling him to chill out.  The NY Times yesterday wrote a very kindly piece - as they always have - about David Dinkins and race.  They rewrote history by claiming he rarely mentioned it as Mayor.  It seems the Times is still trying to overturn the 93 result.  David Dinkins was never stupid enough to do what Dave Paterson did and claim outright that his poll numbers were as a result of racism.  But anyone who attended or watched his press conferences saw him over and over again ask these rhetorical questions of the press leading to only one answer - in his mind - racism.  After leaving office he spent the next eight years on NY 1 as a guest asking these same questions over and over, never able to come to terms that he was a failed leader and that in 89 he was an unproven party hack which accounted for the narrow race after the primary (not to mention the fraudulent letter and stock deal).  He did it again in the Times story which ironically was claiming that he almost never did it.  In today's paper there is a story about Al Sharpton advising Paterson on how to modulate comments on race.   It's truly Alice in Wonderland.  You need Dave Paterson out of office just so that Sharpton and Dinkins are not the voice of reason on the subject of race. That's apparently what we've come to.

5.    Is it just me or has the press failed to take notice of a pattern of lying from Mayor-for-Life Mike.  The incident the other day about transit pay raises; did anyone believe Mike when he totally disputed Roger Toussaint's account of their phone conversation?  I don't think so.  Mayor-for-Like Mike has a truly despicable habit of lying when he's been caught in something, even something innocent.  That is a very troubling predilection in a Mayor.  Recently, in a Vanity Fair  story about the Madoff sons, Bloomberg totally denied writing one of them a letter of recommendation to a country club.  The reporter had the letter, it was undeniable, and yet Mayor-for-Life Mike denied it.  So he wrote one of the kids a letter, who cares?  Why would someone deny something like that?  In my own case, he denied having met me, although we had met, dined and chatted on numerous occasions.  It was a ridiculous thing to deny, but he did. 

More troublesome - and I have been mentioning it on this site since the day I launched it - is how completely out of touch our billionaire Mayor is with common folk.  The exchange the other day on his radio show regarding the pay for execs at big pharma is a prime example.  First, why would someone assume that execs at those companies don't make heavy bucks?  Second, why did he instinctively defend them?  Third, when he discovered he was wrong, his admission - which sought to show some outrage at their compensation - sounded more like he was impressed.  "Oh, the guy makes $27 million, that's better," it seemed like he was saying from his tone.  He can't relate to 99.9% of New Yorkers and worse, never makes the slightest effort to show that he can.  He thinks schmoes making $50k are just that, schmoes.  He truly believes that there has to be something wrong with someone who isn't making at least $30 mill.  They must be lazy or stupid, he assumes.  His utter disdain for most of the city is evident in his poll numbers.  There can be no other explanation why someone with a 60% approval rating is at 47% in the polls.  People don't like him because they know he is openly contemptuous of them.

6.    The NY Times ran an editorial yesterday bemoaning the plight of juvenile offenders at NY State prison facilities.  The Justice Dept has issued a scathing report on conditions in those prisons.  Two years ago, everyone's favorite prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, also released a report on the abuse in Chicago prisons; the physical abuse and lack of medical treatment.  I shook my head then and shake it now.

When Patrick Fitzgerald released that report nearly every single charge he made was true, and worse, in federal prisons.  The BOP is monitored by no one.  The BOP and US Attorney's Office are housed within the US Dept of Justice.  No sister agency is going to investigate the other.  Where was the US Attorney investigation into abuses at federal prisons?  You, the reader, assume they don't happen because you never read about them.  You never read about them because no one has jurisdiction to investigate.  No state official can investigate a federal prison in that state; no D.A., state attorney general, sheriff, or state crime bureau.  There is no federal oversight of the BOP other than by that agency's inspector general and everyone knows that office in the BOP is a joke. 

So while the NY Times rants and raves about state prison conditions someone should be asking these US Attorneys why they never look within their own jurisdiction?  Inmate abuse, withholding of medical treatment through neglect, malice or incompetence is rife throughout the BOP.  Violation of prisoner rights is the norm in the BOP not the exception.  I will be detailing stories later in J'ACCUSE, especially of the medical horrors.  Just ask yourself the last time you heard or read about a federal prison under investigation and ask yourself why you haven't.  I assure you it is not because they are abuse free.

 

Russell Harding

J'ACCUSE - Part VII

During the summer and fall of 2002 the investigation went-on and the grand jury continued to do their work.  It was during the summer - and months after the search on my home - that Debbie revealed they had found one illegal image of child pornography.  She explained they were continuing to look.  {For the full story on that discovery see J'Accuse Part V}.  I was devastated.  I was sure there was nothing to find.  My depression was getting worse.  I was also gaining weight which always added to my depression.  I decided to start exercising and went for 5-7 mile walks around the Central Park Reservoir every morning with Seabright and a friend of mine.  It was a very hot summer and I started to sweat off a few pounds.  I had a wedding to go to in Los Angeles that October and I wanted to lose as much weight as possible before then.

After the search warrant was executed, before anything was found, Debbie insisted to Jerry that I agree not to have a computer in my home.  Jerry agreed.  I thought this was ridiculous.  I won't argue the merits of whether I should or shouldn't have had one.  I will say that it was another of a long list of 'gives' by Jerry to Debbie.  I was merely under investigation.  At that point they had absolutely no justification for making the request or getting anyone to enforce it.  What was her leverage?  That she was going to indict me sooner?  That's a meaningless threat and a good lawyer would have told her to fuck-off unless there we a reason to say yes beyond "goodwill."  But Jerry was completely bamboozled by Debbie.  He would go on and on about what a tough guy he was with prosecutors and judges and then in the end he was always the creampuff.  In the three years he was my attorney he fought Debbie on two or three things, succeeded in one,  and that was it.  And the one thing he succeeded on, while important to me at the time, was very minor in the case.  It was also the only time I saw Jerry truly stand up to Debbie and she backed down.  If only that had been his regular practice. 

As I have said, he would always rationalize her behavior.  This was long after his associate, Henry Mazurek, came to agree with me that Debbie's behavior was vindictive and totally out of the norm of his experience.  Henry confided to me that he saw that Jerry was simply blinded by his friendship with Debbie to see her true nature.  She was a vicious, deceitful person.  It spoke so little of Jerry that he would even be friends with the likes of her.  I could never reconcile that. 

In the fall, as my depression worsened, Mark Mills, the forensic psychiatrist in the case, prevailed upon me to seek out a therapist.  Mark had been kind enough to talk me through some bad days, but he wasn't a therapist - that's not what he did.  So I asked my walking partner if she was happy with her shrink and she told me he was very good.  She told me he was the Chief of Psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital.  That sounded impressive so I went to see him.  My first appointment with Dr. Allan Collins was on the one year anniversary of 9/11.  For reason I won't bore you with now, that day is always very difficult for me.   At first, I thought he could help me.  He was very understanding and told me flatly that whatever chats I had online about sexual subjects, even illegal ones, were not deviant and can in fact be healthy.  He did not believe the prosecutorial view that discussing something means you will act on it.  Quite to the contrary.  He believed those chats could be a useful outlet for some as sexually repressed as I was.  He charged $250 an hour and recommended I come 2-3 times a week. 

He quickly suggested that I go on medication for the depression.  I wasn't opposed, as I had been on various anti-depressants in the past.  I had one condition.  I would not take anything that had as a major known side effect of weight gain.  I had been fat, was fat, and knew that gaining weight would defeat the purpose of any pills to cheer me up. He said he would prescribe nothing that had that side effect, he told me there were options in selecting which meds to choose.

After trying a few different things, he ended up putting me on Lexapro, Desipramine and a third pill I cannot now recall, to be taken in combination.  They never really worked very well and the depression did not let-up substantially.  But I continued to take them.

During part of this period, Tom Robbins and the Village Voice continued to run the fabricated chats that Robbins and Fred Sawyers had created.  It was amazing to me that he could get away with this.  Real newspapers continued to pick-up his stories and run them.  I developed a new disrespect for the integrity of the New York media. 

In one piece he quoted a fired HDC employee regarding my use of my company car.  Robbins went to great pains to point out that this employee was fired by me for no apparent reason.  I came off looking like a capricious, heartless boss.  The truth was that this employee - a mail room worker who backed up my driver at night - had disappeared for three days from work.  He simply didn't show up with no phone call as to his whereabouts.  When he returned he gave the VP of Human Resources some excuse and he was warned.  Again he disappeared for days with no word.  His mother called to say that he was in jail again (we had no idea he had been previously) for having beaten up his sister.  When he returned he was dismissed.  All of that was left out of Robbins' article. The fired worker came off a saint in Robbins' hands. You think all I have just relayed might have cast some doubt on the employee's credibility?

For those of you who have read Tom Robbins, whether in the Voice or the Daily News, you know that this is his modus operandi.  Why he behaves this way is a mystery.  I have to assume it is because he is just a bitter person who thinks he should have done better with his life journalistcally than bounce back and forth between the Village Voice and the Daily News.  But with Robbins, the axe is always out and the ethics sit on a shelf.  Ironic since his bread and butter stories are based on the ethics of others.  Can there be a lower form of journalist than one who simply concocts his facts and quotes?

As I have said previously, Debbie Landis, the prosecutor, was convinced of two things in this case: that I had absconded with millions of dollars as yet undiscovered and that I had done much, much more than chat on line about kids.  Towards that end she turned the world upside down trying to find some "victim" who would come forward and point an accusatory finger at me.  Of course, nothing came of it.  But Jerry and I were tiring of this.  Jerry suggested and found a polygrapher whom he hoped would allay Debbie's baseless concerns.  Jerry hired a man out of Virginia who had the longest CV either of us had ever seen.  He was the former chief polygrapher for the US Army and the FBI.  Jerry asked me before he hired him and then again on the day of the test if I was sure I wanted to do this.  I did not particularly want to, only because I resented the need.  I was not obligated to prove I had not committed a crime.  She was required to demonstrate that I had.  Jerry had never seemed 100% convinced that my assertions were true.  He told me that if I had something to hide we might not want to do this even though were the test to come out badly he naturally wouldn't turn it over to Debbie (she had no idea we were doing this).  Jerry clearly had had clients lie to him before and he wasn't taking anyone's word as fact.  I told him for the 50th time, I had done nothing, and there's nothing to worry about.  It was after meeting the polygrapher that I saw in the modern era polygraphs are done on laptops, not those huge machines with bouncing needles and paper.

It's a myth that questions in a polygraph are usually sprung on a subject.  i have done some research into this since I took mine.  A bad reaction is heightened by the subject knowing a particularly troubling question is coming.  On TV shows the questions are sprung on the subject without any warning.  In real life an examiner will tell the subject what's coming, as it heightens the fear of that question you want to evade.  The examiner in my case told me broadly what he was going to ask.  He mentioned that he would ask me questions regarding sex with minors; the word he used was 'minors.'   I told him not to ask me that.  I told him it wasn't exculpatory enough.  In some states it is legal, with consent to have sex with 14 or 15 yos.  I said ask me if i have ever had any sexual contact or relations with anyone under the age of 18, as I had not - ever.  Because of my sexual repression I had done nothing until college and then only with men my age or older. 

When the test was done Jerry went to talk to the polygrapher and I waited.  He came back beaming.  I don't think i had ever seen him that happy.  He told me I passed with flying colors (In reality, the polygrapher explained to me, this expression has no meaning, what you hope to score ideally, which I did, was the lowest possible on a deceptiveness scale).  Jerry seemed relieved that what I had been telling him all along had been proved.  He would send the results to Debbie who could not challenge this polygraphers work, much as she would have liked to.  She did however back off on this part of the investigation.  None of that episode made me especially happy.  I resented that I had to take the test and then later on that it was and remains totally inadmissible.  Debbie would frequently make cryptic allusions in court to not knowing what I may have done in my past with children.  Since the polygraph wasn't admissible - however she knew and did not dispute the results - it was a cheap shot and another in a long series of disadvantages that defendants suffer under in Federal Court.

In Part VIII I am indicted and arrested.

 

Russell Harding

YOU HUG IT, YOU OWN IT

 

Colin Powell famously said of the Iraq invasion and the American occupation to follow, "You broke it, you own it."  Much the same could be said of President Obama's inept handling, not of the economy - which is most definitely mishandled - but of the public's perception surrounding those responsible for its sorry state.  In Gen. Powell's example there was no way of invading and occupying a country and not being seen as laying claim to the action.  But Obama didn't create this mess, he inherited it.  So why is he creating no daylight between himself and the bad numbers?

Those old enough to remember or have studied FDR, know that he spent nearly his entire 12 years in office blaming Herbert Hoover for everything.  FDR had a visceral hatred of the man and his policies.  At the first sign that the economy was retreating - and it did for much of the 30's - he would start talking about the 20's and Hoover.  Mostly it was politics but some of it had a basis in fact.

The Great Communicator had eight years in the White House and from Jan 20, 1981 until the day he left, he blamed Jimmy Carter: his philosophy, management, ideology, for all of the nation's ills.  And in the main he was correct.  Ronald Reagan didn't accept ownership of the recession he inherited ever!  He accepted credit for the recovery that he initiated and engineered.  It was always Jimmy Carter's disaster. Reagan and his aides never let you forget it.  I lived in DC for the last few years of the Reagan Administration.  The failed policies of Jimmy Carter was still the mantra even 8 years later.  It worked.  Carter was a pariah even within his own party for a decade.  He couldn't attend the Democratic National Conventions for years.  Ronald Reagan did that.  Barack Obama seems to have learned the wrong lessons in those fancy schools he attended.  His attack dog advisors have given him nothing but losing advice.  

On or about his 60th day in office he started trumpeting how the economy was turning around.  Once he did that he owned it.  You hold a baby's dirty diapers at arms length and hold your nose, you don't embrace the mess.  The "not bad" bad jobs numbers that came out last week are a perfect example.  Yes, its possible to twist and squint so that they looked less than awful.  But why would you?  We're in a horrific recession.  George Bush, his policies, his management, his detached, ineffectual leadership caused it.  Why would anyone else take responsibility for it?  Those of you who admire Obama for "stepping up to the plate" or "putting the past behind him" may be satisfied with your hero being in office for a very short time. There's nothing admirable about letting George W. Bush off the hook.  Certainly not to the millions who believed Obama was their savior.    `

It is insulting intellectually for Obama and Biden to tell the American people that this stimulus package has done anything - good or bad - yet.  With only 20% of the funds having made their way into the economy and only a few months having passed no sensible person could be made to believe that Obama's policies have made any difference.  And yet we all know the economy, at least the employment numbers and the perception - if not actual growth, will get worse through this year and the beginning of 2010.  So why identify yourself with these awful numbers, why spin them when they're not yours yet to spin? 

The Obama Administration should have only started accepting this economy as its own sometime in the early Spring of 2010, the serious start of the midterm elections. At that point time would have ended the recession, as it does with most of them, or his policies, as he claims, would have produced results.  If neither were true it really wouldn't matter by then because there would be nothing to do about it except blame George Bush for destroying the economy.   But those options have been removed.  The president for better or worse owns this mess he's hugged it to his and Larry Summers' bosom.  Like so much of what he's done already: Guantanamo, torture, wiretaps, constitutional accountability and gay rights, it's another in a disturbing string of perplexing Obama letdowns.

 

Russell Harding

The Giuliani - Madoff Connection

First, let me say I don't think what I am about to mention is news.  I just think it hasn't been widely disseminated.  Second, I have mixed feelings on where I stand. OK, what am I talking about?  In the weekend newspapers it was revealed that the actual nuts and bolts mastermind behind the Madoff scandal, Chief Financial Officer Frank DiPascali, Jr.,  is going to cut a deal with the Feds.  Supposedly he is giving them names in exchange for leniency.  Now be clear on this; Bernie Madoff is the public face of the world's largest Ponzi scheme, but the man who made it run, day in and day out, was Frank DiPascali.  For all of the rage the investors have launched at Madoff, the one who moved the financial levers and switches everyday to swindle them was Frank DiPascali, not Bernie Madoff.  The phony dot matrix printer statements that they received each month came from DiPascali's 17th floor offices.  

Now what should I care about any of this, I wasn't stupid enough to invest with Madoff.  I care because it makes me wonder how I feel about Rudy Giuliani's law firm representing Mr. DiPascali.  Marc Mukasey is officially listed as Mr. DiPascali's attorney.  Marc is a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani, the Mayor's law firm in New York.  The New York office of the firm is run by Giuliani Partners (GP) principal and Rudy protege at the Law Department, Dan Connolly.  Not a single chance that Rudy and Denny Young weren't consulted before Mr. DiPascali was taken on as a client.

I have and always believed that everyone accused is entitled to a good defense.  I fault no attorney for doing their damnedest for their client, whether he be Jeffrey Dahmer or the Unabomber.  And if that attorney is a tenacious public defender, I have all the more respect for their ethic.  But what we're talking about here is money and perception. Rudy Giuliani is not some hard working public defender, far from it.  He wants to be President or Governor or something.  And as such, perception morphs into reality.

When a Saudi prince attempted to give the 9/11 Fund $10 million, Mayor Giuliani took an incredibly principled stand by returning the check after the Prince's people handed out statements at Ground Zero attempting to explain the 9/11 terrorists rationale and blame U.S. policy for the attack.  I was not two feet from the Prince when his aides started to hand out that disgusting document.  I was never prouder of Rudy than I was that day when he told the Prince to take his check back.   Naturally, it has been hinted in the media that Giuliani Partners later had business dealings with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, choosing to ignore his fierce anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric.  The Prince always likes to counter that he loves America, he owns so much of it (Saks, Citicorp, Apple, Newscorp...).  

But with so many victims of Bernie Madoff and Frank DiPascali out there, from museums, pension funds, charities, schools, and Holocaust survivors does Rudy Giuliani really want to help pay his Madison Avenue penthouse's monthly maintenance or his Hamptons Country Club fees with the profits of that fraud?  Because any monies that Frank DiPascali is using to pay his legal bills with Mr. Giuliani's law firm come directly from the fraud and its victims.  I agree that Frank DiPascali deserves a defense.  But does it have to be Rudy Giuliani who profits from it?  Is that what he wants?  I know perfectly well that Rudy does not hold the same views I do about defending the accused.  On many occasions, publicly and privately he has stated that heinous defendants wouldn't get his representation were he a practicing criminal defense lawyer.  You can be damn sure that had Henry Louis Gates's case not been dropped, Rudy would not have taken up the charge.  There's a defendant who the former Mayor believes should have just "shut up" in the face of a clearly out of control cop.  But Mr. DiPascali?  Years and years of methodical, ruthless deception on an unprecedented scale.  Will former Southern District US Attorney Giuliani be of any help in the DiPascali prosecution in the US Southern District?  Mr. Mukasey was an Asst. US Attorney there as well.  Maybe he can influence his old colleagues to go lenient on the greatest fraudster of all time. Or maybe it should be noted that Marc is appearing before Judge Richard Sullivan who filled his dad's seat on the court.

Mr. Giuliani has maintained for nearly 8 years that his clients at Giuliani Partners are no one's business and he has steadfastly refused to release a list of his clients, even during his failed presidential run.  But law firms are a different animal.  You can't go into court and withhold your law firm's name when representing a client.  Now maybe if the attorney actually representing Mr DiPascali wasn't a Rudy guy through and through (see Addendum) or the Managing Partner wasn't a Rudy protege and GP principal partner, Mr. Giuliani might, might be able to say, "I don't approve every client my law firm accepts."  But there is no credible way that can be true in this case.  Not with a client this high profile.  And you know that they would not have accepted him and risked adverse publicity if the fees generated were not astronomical.  

So there you are.  Earth shattering revelation?  No.  But I think it is perfectly reasonable for the victims of the Madoff disaster to ask, while they wait to see some small compensation from the bankruptcy court and their various lawsuits, what Rudy Giuliani and his partners will do with their money that they have received from Frank DiPascali.  Give it to charity?  Return it to the investors?  Some of it?  The press has been so extraordinarily gracious to Mr. Giuliani about his businesses and their clients in the past.  So I do not expect much from them in terms of inquiry.  But maybe some defrauded Madoff investor will ask the question, "What does Rudy Giuliani plan to do with our money now that he will have a goodly chunk of it?"

ADDENDUM

Frank DiPascali's attorney of record is Marc Mukasey.  I first met Marc during the 1989 Giuliani campaign for Mayor.  His mother, Susan Mukasey, had asked that he be given a position.  At first he was a volunteer, later becoming Deputy Volunteer Coordinator under Mindy Franklin, Randy Levine's girlfriend.  At that time, his last name was Saroff.  His mother was at that time remarried to Federal Judge Michael Mukasey, a longtime Rudy friend.  I had always assumed his mother was divorced from his father and had simply remarried.

Later, after the campaign, Mindy and I ran into Marc one day outside of our gym.  I said, in my not very funny way, "Marc Saroff, how the hell are you?"  He turned stoned cold and corrected me, "It's Mukasey."  "Oh," I said, " I didn't know."  It turned out, he explained, that he had legally changed his name to Mukasey.  I assumed - for no particular reason - that I had been mistaken.  His father therefore must have died or been an abandoning low-life deadbeat, hence the desire to rid oneself of the name.  Mindy set out in her determined fashion to find out the truth.  What she discovered sickened us both.  It turned out that Mr. Saroff pere was alive and well.  Furthermore, he was not a lowlife.  He had remained close and in contact with Marc after the divorce from Susan.  It turned out that Marc wanted his step father's last name because he wanted to go into the law.  His step father at the time was a famous Federal Judge, handling major terrorism cases.  Marc had gone to his real father and asked him to give his permission for Marc to be adopted by Judge Mukasey.  I can only imagine what a wrenching thing that must have been for the father to deal with. He gave his consent.  Mindy and I would always look upon that kid as an unremitting scumbag for having done that to his father and for the reasons behind it.  We both could not help think what a scheming, manipulative and clawing person Marc would become if he had notions like this at his young age.

Well Marc did not bet wrong.  His step father, now father, went on to become Presiding Judge for the Second District in New York and was so while Marc was an Asst. US Attorney there.  He later became Attorney General of the U.S. vehemently defending Bush policies such as torture and illegal wiretapping.  And in his final days as AG suppressed the Inspector General's report on Justice Department policies during the Bush years.  Marc landed well as a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani practicing white collar defense law.  And now he is front and center in representing the greatest swindler in the history of our country.  I am sure his father would be proud.  At least one of them.

 

Russell Harding

Nicht Ein Wort

 

 It used to be said that people liked billionaire candidates for public office because they weren't corruptible.  They wouldn't steal your money, the theory went,  because they have so much of their own.  That still remains true.  But what now seems apparent is that they needn't line their own pockets for them to be politically corrupt.  Mayor-for-Life Mike has been engaging in some pretty impressive political corruption of his own to the tune of nearly $1,500,000.  Now as is his habit, he's lying about it.  I will not attempt to explain the minutiae of the scandal, the New York Times can explain it much better than I can (NYT story).   

Essentially Bloomberg wanted to augment his own personal charitable giving to two Jewish groups with City money without any scrutiny or fingerprints.  So he and his staff violated long-standing city rules as well as the rules of his own Mayor's Office of Contracts (MOC).  Monies, such as they disbursed, require that either a Borough President or a City Councilmember be listed as the requester of funds.  No such office made the request for those funds.  The Mayor or his staff assigned to those disbursements the name of a City Councilmember.  That Councilmember, Simcha Felder, vehemently denies ever requesting the money.  Moreover, the Mayor's Jewish liaison left city government to become a lobbyist for one of the two groups shortly after the funds were disbursed.  Does this thing smell or what?

I was head of Inter-Governmental Affairs in the Mayor's Office for 2 1/2 years.  This cover-up of an appropriation and violation of MOC rules is unprecedented.  The Mayor and his staff are playing this off as a simple disagreement in remembering events -  "Felder says he didn't and we say he did, end of story."  This he said/he said explanation is fine were it not for the fact that laws have been broken and about $1.5 million dollars was improperly and secretly dispersed.  Why was it done?  Why was Felder's name used and not another elected official?  What ties existed before between Bloomberg staff and these organizations?  In our day, MOC checked with officials to verify they requested the money.  Why was that not done here?  I could go on.  I ask these questions to make the point that clearly this needs to be investigated.  But by whom?  The joke in all this is that there is, in theory, the perfect agency to do the work.  But, not surprisingly, they have been deadly silent.  As my mother would say, "Nicht Ein Wort."  Not one word. 

The NYC Dept of Investigation has a checkered and mostly ignoble history.  It is common knowledge that no serious investigation of a senior member of a Mayoral administration has ever taken place by DOI.  Whether it was Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani or Bloomberg, any investigation that you want kept away from serious law enforcement is sent to DOI.  It is the place where tough scrutiny goes to die.  Sure, they'll investigate building inspectors and contractors for corruption but an administration official of high rank?  Never.  The irony in all this is that the current scandal is tailor made for a supposed administration watchdog like DOI.  Someone is clearly lying.  This is not a difference of memory.  Who better than they to find out who.  They absolutely do not need the mayor's invitation to begin an inquiry.  The Commissioner of DOI, Rose Hearn, made a big point upon taking office of throwing barbs at the Giuliani Administration's management of DOI and promised unbiased and ruthless investigations.  

Of course that was a joke.  She may not have fully understood that back in 2002.  It's possible she didn't know the Keystone Cops that comprise most of DOI.  Or that from Day One Mayor-for-Life Mike was never going to let her run wild through his backyard.  But here we are.  Cover-ups, paybacks, lies within City governement, who knows what else.  And DOI sits whistling, starring at the ceiling, trying to avert its gaze from the curious onlookers waiting to see what they'll do.  It's a rather mute point since if the pressure becomes strong enough and Mayor-for-Life Mike does send this DOI's way it will be with the full understanding of where this can go and how far.  But it would be nice, for once, to see Rose Hearn at least pretend to live up to those tough words of January 2002.

 

Memory Woes

8/6    Great wealth breeds great arrogance.  In the continuing saga of who asked for $1.5 million for two Jewish service organizations, Mayor-for Life Mike says yet again, it's a faulty memory (NYT Blog).  He now says we should keep paper records because people can't be expected to remember these things.  Oh, really?  A $60 billion enterprise keeping records, wow that is some great management innovation from him.  Only one problem, records were always kept by the Mayor's Office of Contracts (MOC).  It was only under this administration that they seemed to have stopped doing so. The question is why.  Why didn't MOC have a record of these particular requests? And what were they doing approving the funds without one, if as they say none exists/existed?  There is so obviously more here than meets they eye.  The Councilmember involved has no known reason to lie and moreover, only the paperwork for these two organizations are non-existent out of the dozens of requests documented by MOC for Councilmember Felder.  This episode is the very definition of a conspiracy.  That's clear.  What is unclear is why and by whom.  Amazing to me still that in this age of runaway prosecutions for nearly everything, this can't attract the eye of any prosecutor or investigative agency.  I wonder why.

 

Russell Harding

The Utter Nerve

 

Imagine for a moment a Mayor of New York City running for reelection telling the voters that in his next term he would lobby his Dept of Transportation commissioner to pave more streets.  Or he would beseech his Sanitation commissioner to plow roads faster during blizzards.  You would have a citizenry scratching its head at the total disconnect of the man.  And yet Mayor-for-Life Mike has said essentially that.  He proposes in his next term to 'lobby' the MTA to do various things incorporated in a new campaign document his staff dreamed up.  Faithful readers of this site know I have railed over and over again that Mayor-for-Life Mike has cynically avoided accepting any responsibility for the abysmal management of the MTA.  He has pretended for 8 years that the MTA is some amorphous being over which he has no power.  Rather than the truth which is that he has three crucial appointments to the board that can and have shaped policy in previous administrations.  Now, not content with that fiction, he seeks to perpetuate it.  I had expected him to say, "In my next term I will make the MTA eliminate fares on cross-town buses.  If they don't, I will hold up business till they do."  He can if he so chose (I will write at greater length closer to the election how this is done if the will is there). Basically do an about face in an election year.  

But instead he has said the same thing over and over.  He'll lobby the MTA, like he would lobby Albany for a piece of legislation.  But of course, that is another fiction.  He is so utterly despised in the State Senate and by much of the Assembly that he dare not step foot past Kingston.  He can't get anything done in Albany.  He can't get anything done at the MTA.  He can't get anything done at the Port Authority.  D.C. felt free to snub him and the P.D. by denying the greatest terrorist target in America extra police funding.  Can you imagine them doing that to Giuliani?  And the MTA knowing his record and lack of fangs responded to his pledges by saying, "they would study them."  In case you haven't spent time amidst giant bureaucracies, that means, "Fuck Off!"

There was a report yesterday listing the worst airports in America.  Guess who has the top three?  Yup, the Port Authority of NY & NJ (PA): JFK, LaGuardia and Newark.  You may recall some time ago I blasted Mayor-for-Life Mike for blowing the literally once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Rudy handed him to take back JFK & LaGuardia once their leases expired.  Rudy had laid out the groundwork, the leases were expiring in a short time.  All Rudy's successor had to do was set-up a new authority to accept them and begin the transition.  The financial markets were no longer going to lend to an entity whose very existence was in question.  Rudy had them.  But no.  Mayor-for-Life Mike, seeking as always less responsibility not more and as one of his very first acts as Mayor, extended the leases for marginally better terms.  Thereby dooming the local, domestic, and international traveling public to a miserable flying experience for generations. It was the greatest gift the PA had received since its inception.

Some enterprising reporter - or Bill Thompson's opp research team - should go back and check what Bloomberg had said about the PA when he handed them the airports for another 50 years.  I am sure it would contrast sharply with his current view that "Perhaps, the PA doesn't represent the interests of NYC."  Ya think?  A TV commercial on this would be a no-brainer.  NYers hate the airports more than anyone.  Rightfully so.  Is this a man whose judgment and honesty you can trust on crucial matters?

I am desperate to ask - how stupid exactly does he think we are?  But the answer is we're pretty stupid.  He was reelected with absolutely no rationale.  He pulled a coup d'etat by hijacking the City Charter in order to perpetuate himself in office.  And yet he has a 60% + approval rating.  It is telling however, that if these polls are to be believed - and I am not sure they are - that with $20 million already spent versus a nearly non-existent opponent, he is losing ground.  The only explanation I can see after studying polls for over 30 years is that people genuinely dislike him.  Why else would someone with a 60+% approval rating have below 50% against a nobody opponent.  Clearly nearly a decade of open contempt for his constituents, their problems and their lives, is coming home to roost.   I have always found him to be intensely dislikable; that was one reason I chose to leave rather than serve under him and run HDC.  I urge Bill Thompson's staff to read my Mark Green post.  Howard Wolfson is one mean motherfucker.  If these polls are accurate and Thompson gains traction, Bloomberg's City Hall will be looking very closely at the Comptroller's Intel detail to see what they might know about their charge and what the Bloomberg campaign can leak.

During the transition in 2001 Vinny LaPadula told me that Bloomberg had told him that he had every intention of continuing to run the day to day operations of Bloomberg, Inc.  Testimony from the various sexual harassment suits at Bloomberg pretty much confirms that.  Profits for the company and himself have increased exponentially over the last eight years.  He's the richest man in the city.  The city however hasn't fared so well.  Our budget has doubled, our debt is skyrocketing and will consume us in the out years, pension costs due to giveaway labor contracts will become crippling, crime is rising, the subways are slower and dirtier, everything is more expensive.  But luckily we can't smoke, eat trans-fats or drive through much of Manhattan.   His value as mayor has been exactly what he commands, $1 a year.

Why exactly 47% of the city still would vote for him is a mystery to me but maybe we're waking up.  Trans fats, smoking, urban beaches at the crossroads of the world and calorie counting may be cited as an impressive set of accomplishments for a Surgeon General.  It is laughable as an 8 year record for a Mayor of New York City seeking voter reaffirmation.

 

Russell Harding

To Be or Not To Be

 

We've reached some point in NYS politics when even the New York Post is getting fed up with Rudy.  The Post, long a Giuliani promoter, had an editorial over the weekend regarding the 2010 Governor's race and essentially telling him to (insert scatological aphorism here).  They reminded him that his delay in 2000 to enter the US Senate race against Hillary Clinton left an already weak Rick Lazio even more hapless by stymieing his fundraising and support.  Thereby costing him any real chance of victory.

What precipitated this admonishment was a Crain's breakfast last week in which Rudy said that things would have to be pretty bad in the State for him to consider running.  He joked - his trademark these days - that he only runs when things are at their worst.  The moderator, Greg David, even commented that Rudy didn't seem prepared to run.  It wasn't clear to the former Mayor if David meant organizationally or by his vague answers to the questions.

So what is Mr. Giuliani trying to tell us?  I can guarantee that he doesn't know so there is no way we can.  But we do know a few things.  First, what he really wants is to run for president again.  He truly believes that four more years of Bush-Cheney policies would have righted the ship with him at the helm.  Unfortunately, no one - save one delegate - believed that in 2008 and fewer will buy it in 2012.  I would bet a lot of money on a second Obama term; less for political reasons than for historical ones.  But even if 2012 turns out to be a good year for Republicans they will not be turning to the past.  I can assure you that the nominee of my party will be someone whose name did not appear on a presidential ballot in 2008.  That's right, Mitt Romney will not be the nominee.

But a stateless Rudy Giuliani needs a home.  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue appears blocked for now.  Gracie Mansion has a lifetime occupant who refuses to leave.  That leaves 138 Eagle Street, better known as the Executive Mansion.  So Rudy looks over the dusty drapes and carpets and muses aloud, "I might consider it, if the offer were right."  The offer apparently is that we have to beg and plead for him to save us.  Rudy is Moses, you see, and we the Israelites turn to him in our time of fiscal and legislative bondage.  Rudy sees himself leading us out of the dark Albany corridors and into a prosperous land flowing with budget surpluses and tough appelate judges.

But the question I have been asking for almost a year still remains unanswered; which Rudy would be running in 2010?  Is it the far-right, Cheney admiring, giggling, torture apologist of 2008?  Perhaps it's the unsteady, philosophically unsure and organizationally challenged candidate of 1989.  Or maybe it's the open, inclusive, independent, confident, sometimes polarizing but always serious leader of 1993.  Of these three Rudy personas which would you choose?  Not only the man you would vote for but the one you'd want to project to the voters in a time of crisis.  The answer of course is C.  But inexplicably Rudy and his advisors over at Giuliani Partners believe A is the winner.  There is no explaining it so there can be no explanation.  The full Randy Levine conversion of Giuliani from an independent maverick into a Tom Coburn clone is complete. 

More disturbing than how he would run is how he would govern.  Again, we do not know because we don't know which Rudy currently inhabits the body.  1993 Rudy would restore New York State to fiscal and political sanity.  1989 Rudy would do a competent job, with slip-ups along the way.  And 2008 Giuliani would have us in a full scale political civil war within 6 months.  That is how stark the differences would be.

Personally, I do not want to beg anyone to take the reigns of leadership.  Part of being a great leader is having a burning need to do the job.  Giuliani made it clear at the Crain's breakfast that no such fire exists yet.   I do not know what to make of all this.  But I do know that he is quickly becoming a tragically flawed figure of Shakespearean dimension.  My advice to him at this point would be to leave the Hamlet act to the Cuomos.  They have it perfected.

 

Russell Harding