Bad day for Rudy Giuliani

[tristano's ghost]

First we find out that he was asked to leave the Iraq Study Group because he didn't show up for a single meeting (this from a guy running on a security platform); now we learn that his South Carolina state chairman has been indicted for conspiracy to deal crack cocaine.



The Daily Show's gonna have some fun with that last one, I predict...

[tristano's ghost]

Correction: just a little good ol'-fashioned cocaine, as opposed to crack cocaine:

S.C. treasurer indicted on drug charges By JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jun 19, 6:40 PM ET

COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, a former real estate developer who became a rising political star after his election last year, was indicted Tuesday on federal cocaine charges.

The millionaire is accused of buying less than 500 grams of the drug to share with other people in late 2005, U.S. Attorney Reggie Lloyd said. Ravenel, 44, is charged with distribution of cocaine, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The investigation into Ravenel arose from a drug case last year in Charleston, Lloyd said. State Law Enforcement Division Chief Robert Stewart said his agents were aware of the allegations before Ravenel was elected in November, but they didn't have enough information to pursue criminal charges. The case was turned over to the FBI in April.

"The investigation is just beginning," the federal prosecutor said.

The man accused of selling Ravenel the drug, Michael L. Miller, is in custody on the same charge.

Ravenel will be allowed to turn himself in, authorities said. The treasurer's office referred all questions to Ravenel's lawyer Joel Collins, who did not return a message left at his office.

Gov. Mark Sanford suspended Ravenel immediately based on the serious nature of the charge. The governor said he would name an interim treasurer soon.

"These are obviously very serious allegations that we're constitutionally bound to act upon, and they'll ultimately be decided by the courts." Sanford said in a statement.

Ravenel started his political career in 2004, funding his own campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. He finished a close third in the Republican primary.

Ravenel was founder of the Ravenel Development Corp., a commercial real estate development company. His father, Arthur Ravenel Jr., was a powerful politician from Charleston who served eight years in the U.S. House and is a former state representative and state senator.

Thomas Ravenel is also the state chairman for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

[Ron Thorne]

Ya mean that ol' Rudy's not all he's cracked up to be?

[Gary Sisco]

Less than 500 grams?

[tristano's ghost]

Yesterday I discussed Rudy Giuliani's decision to bag on the Iraq Study Group to free up time to give paid speeches that netted him more than $11 million dollars over the last year and a half. But we found something funny when we started doing more research on Rudy and Iraq for today's episode of TPMtv. We figured we'd find a lot of examples of Rudy's huffing and puffing about Iraq and contrast those statements with the fact that he couldn't be bothered to show up for the meetings of the ISG. But it turns out flaking on the ISG is actually pretty consistent with Rudy's positioning on Iraq.

Remarkably enough, and I'm surprised more hasn't been made of this, Rudy has very consistently been ducking the issue for months. He's toed the party line opposing Democratic plans for a pull out. But he ignores the entire issue of Iraq whenever possible. And when he's forced to address he deals with it as quickly as possible as just one part of the war on terror, says he really doesn't know how it's going to turn out, and then moves on to something else.

A week ago, Greg Sargent flagged Rudy's eye-raising line that "We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people."

Pretty blase, if you ask me.

But again, that wasn't just one revealing remark. It fits together with a pattern that's -- I'll say it again -- remarkable when you figure that Iraq is the number issue in the country right now and that he's running as a national security candidate.

--Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo

>>"We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people."<<

Positively breathless leadership style on display there...

[Gary Sisco]

I'd say. Why not just shrug?

[Scott Dolan]

Could've saved some oxygen for somebody who planned to use it for something constructive.

[JamesH]

Originally Posted by tristano's ghost

First we find out that he was asked to leave the Iraq Study Group because he didn't show up for a single meeting (this from a guy running on a security platform); now we learn that hisSouth Carolina state chairman has been indicted for conspiracy to deal crack cocaine.



The Daily Show's gonna have some fun with that last one, I predict...

I beg to differ. Given our current President's credential's, Guiliani will be President in no time. All he needs to do is continue to charm the religious right and the simpleton masses. Then when he's elected, immediately start scaring the bejesus out of people.

That'll get him at least 8 years. Does he have a son to take over when he's done?

[PHILLYQ]

Originally Posted by JamesH

I beg to differ. Given our current President's credential's, Guiliani will be President in no time. All he needs to do is continue to charm the religious right and the simpleton masses. Then when he's elected, immediately start scaring the bejesus out of people.

That'll get him at least 8 years. Does he have a son to take over when he's done?

At least his son won't be 35 by then!

[Gary Sisco]

I wonder would he show for his inaugural bash in drag?

[Root Doctor]

Rudy's Senior Foreign Policy Team member: Norman Podhoretz.

[Scott Dolan]

These assholes are in such disarray they just seem to drawing shit out of a hat.

This, no doubt, is supposed to counter his socially liberal side with the conservative base.

Time to set Washington on fire and build something else a little further out west.

[RBS]

Originally Posted by Ron Thorne

Ya mean that ol' Rudy's not all he's cracked up to be?

He's out of his mind, Ron.

I swear to God, he's seriously looney tunes.

[Scott Dolan]

Why is he looney tunes?

[RBS]

If you disagree with him, he goes ballistic.

When he was mayor of New York, an ad agency put an ad in a bus that said something like, "This is the only thing Rudy hasn't taken credit for."

He tried to get it pulled.

I was being facetious when I said "looney tunes." His performance after 9/11 was certainly commendable and heartfelt, but up to then, he was really disliked by a lot of us New Yorkers.

Hope to see you next year, my friend.

[Monte Smith]

I lived in Manhattan from 1996-2000 and definitely was pro-Giuliani the whole time. His "9/11 legacy" means little to me. It's his performance as mayor that I find highly effective. Yeah, I have a lot of liberal friends who hated Giuliani ("friggin' Giuliani") and the worst crime they laid at his feet was making Times Square a comfortable place for tourists and families. When plainly, it should be a den of rats and villains? Giuliani ran a clean city and a proud city and a booming city. I'll vote for him again, gladly.

[Gordon B]

Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity
Data May Undermine Giuliani's Claims

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 8, 2007; A02

Rudy Giuliani never misses an opportunity to remind people about his track record in fighting crime as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001.

"I began with the city that was the crime capital of America," Giuliani, now a candidate for president, recently told Fox's Chris Wallace. "When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent."

Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

"It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin said in an interview. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."

Through much of the 20th century, lead in U.S. paint and gasoline fumes poisoned toddlers as they put contaminated hands in their mouths. The consequences on crime, Nevin found, occurred when poisoning victims became adolescents. Nevin does not say that lead is the only factor behind crime, but he says it is the biggest factor.

Giuliani's presidential campaign declined to address Nevin's contention that the mayor merely was at the right place at the right time. But William Bratton, who served as Giuliani's police commissioner and who initiated many of the policing techniques credited with reducing the crime rate, dismissed Nevin's theory as absurd. Bratton and Giuliani instituted harsh measures against quality-of-life offenses, based on the "broken windows" theory of addressing minor offenses to head off more serious crimes.

Many other theories have emerged to try to explain the crime decline. In the 2005 book "Freakonomics," Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner said the legalization of abortion in 1973 had eliminated "unwanted babies" who would have become violent criminals. Other experts credited lengthy prison terms for violent offenders, or demographic changes, socioeconomic factors, and the fall of drug epidemics. New theories have emerged as crime rates have inched up in recent years.

Most of the theories have been long on intuition and short on evidence. Nevin says his data not only explain the decline in crime in the 1990s, but the rise in crime in the 1980s and other fluctuations going back a century. His data from multiple countries, which have different abortion rates, police strategies, demographics and economic conditions, indicate that lead is the only explanation that can account for international trends.

Because the countries phased out lead at different points, they provide a rigorous test: In each instance, the violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier.

"It is startling how much mileage has been given to the theory that abortion in the early 1970s was responsible for the decline in crime" in the 1990s, Nevin said. "But they legalized abortion in Britain, and the violent crime in Britain soared in the 1990s. The difference is our gasoline lead levels peaked in the early '70s and started falling in the late '70s, and fell very sharply through the early 1980s and was virtually eliminated by 1986 or '87.

"In Britain and most of Europe, they did not have meaningful constraints [on leaded gasoline] until the mid-1980s and even early 1990s," he said. "This is the reason you are seeing the crime rate soar in Mexico and Latin America, but [it] has fallen in the United States."

Lead levels plummeted in New York in the early 1970s, driven by federal policies to eliminate lead from gasoline and local policies to reduce lead emissions from municipal incinerators. Between 1970 and 1974, the number of New York children heavily poisoned by lead fell by more than 80 percent, according to data from the New York City Department of Health.

Lead levels in New York have continued to fall. One analysis in the late 1990s found that children in New York had lower lead exposure than children in many other big U.S. cities, possibly because of a 1960 policy to replace old windows. That policy, meant to reduce deaths from falls, had an unforeseen benefit -- old windows are a source of lead poisoning, said Dave Jacobs of the National Center for Healthy Housing, an advocacy group that is publicizing Nevin's work. Nevin's research was not funded by the group.

The later drop in violent crime was dramatic. In 1990, 31 New Yorkers out of every 100,000 were murdered. In 2004, the rate was 7 per 100,000 -- lower than in most big cities. The lead theory also may explain why crime fell broadly across the United States in the 1990s, not just in New York.

The centerpiece of Nevin's research is an analysis of crime rates and lead poisoning levels across a century. The United States has had two spikes of lead poisoning: one at the turn of the 20th century, linked to lead in household paint, and one after World War II, when the use of leaded gasoline increased sharply. Both times, the violent crime rate went up and down in concert, with the violent crime peaks coming two decades after the lead poisoning peaks.

Other evidence has accumulated in recent years that lead is a neurotoxin that causes impulsivity and aggression, but these studies have also drawn little attention. In 2001, sociologist Paul B. Stretesky and criminologist Michael Lynch showed that U.S. counties with high lead levels had four times the murder rate of counties with low lead levels, after controlling for multiple environmental and socioeconomic factors.

In 2002, Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh, compared lead levels of 194 adolescents arrested in Pittsburgh with lead levels of 146 high school adolescents: The arrested youths had lead levels that were four times higher.

"Impulsivity means you ignore the consequences of what you do," said Needleman, one of the country's foremost experts on lead poisoning, explaining why Nevin's theory is plausible. Lead decreases the ability to tell yourself, "If I do this, I will go to jail."

Nevin's work has been published mainly in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research. Within the field of neurotoxicology, Nevin's findings are unsurprising, said Ellen Silbergeld, professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and the editor of Environmental Research.

"There is a strong literature on lead and sociopathic behavior among adolescents and young adults with a previous history of lead exposure," she said.

Two new studies by criminologists Richard Rosenfeld and Steven F. Messner have looked at Giuliani's policing policies. They found that the mayor's zero-tolerance approach to crime was responsible for 10 percent, maybe 20 percent, at most, of the decline in violent crime in New York City.

Nevin acknowledges that crime rates are rising in some parts of the United States after years of decline, but he points out that crime is falling in other places and is still low overall by historical measures. Also, the biggest reductions in lead poisoning took place by the mid-1980s, which may explain why reductions in crime might have tapered off by 2005. Lastly, he argues that older, recidivist offenders -- who were exposed to lead as toddlers three or four decades ago -- are increasingly accounting for much of the violent crime.

Nevin's finding may even account for phenomena he did not set out to address. His theory addresses why rates of violent crime among black adolescents from inner-city neighborhoods have declined faster than the overall crime rate -- lead amelioration programs had the biggest impact on the urban poor. Children in inner-city neighborhoods were the ones most likely to be poisoned by lead, because they were more likely to live in substandard housing that had lead paint and because public housing projects were often situated near highways.

Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, for example, were built over the Dan Ryan Expressway, with 150,000 cars going by each day. Eighteen years after the project opened in 1962, one study found that its residents were 22 times more likely to be murderers than people living elsewhere in Chicago.

Nevin's finding implies a double tragedy for America's inner cities: Thousands of children in these neighborhoods were poisoned by lead in the first three quarters of the last century. Large numbers of them then became the targets, in the last quarter, of Giuliani-style law enforcement policies.

[Gordon B]

Baltimore's row houses in poor neighborhoods sadly have high levels of lead, which may in part account for the city's ascension to #2 in murder rate, behind Detroit.

Al or Larry, do you know if Detroit has a similar lead problem to Baltimore?

[Al in NYC]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

I lived in Manhattan from 1996-2000 and definitely was pro-Giuliani the whole time. His "9/11 legacy" means little to me. It's his performance as mayor that I find highly effective. Yeah, I have a lot of liberal friends who hated Giuliani ("friggin' Giuliani") and the worst crime they laid at his feet was making Times Square a comfortable place for tourists and families.

Well, that and having the police constantly harass anyone darker than a paper bag -- far too often with guns drawn to shoot first and ask questions later. And then to treat that like it should be the normal and expected course of business. And, of course, the race-baiting campaigns he ran - twice - to get himself elected mayor. Believe me, the implications of this were not missed by black NYers, and he certainly wasn't beloved in any way in the city's less paleskin communities.

NYC didn't miss a serious riot by much during the tension over Louima, Diallo, Dorismond, etc. And had it happened Giuliani's legacy would be quite different.

[Ron Thorne]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

I lived in Manhattan from 1996-2000 and definitely was pro-Giuliani the whole time.

No shit?

[Al in NYC]

Originally Posted by Gordon B

Baltimore's row houses in poor neighborhoods sadly have high levels of lead, which may in part account for the city's ascension to #2 in murder rate, behind Detroit.

Al or Larry, do you know if Detroit has a similar lead problem to Baltimore?

Detroit has (or, rather, had) a lot of old wood frame houses, many of them with decades of cheap paint slapped on them, so I'm certain there was some lead contamination. But I never remember any big fuss over it the way there was in NYC, perhaps because Detroit is much more a city of homeowners than renters. Today though, a whole lot of those houses are gone, perhaps most of them, and a majority of the city's population now lives in housing that was built after the start of WWII (a lot of housing in Detroit was built during the war).

It's an interesting correlation to be sure, but at least in Detroit there are certainly a host of other factors that are much more obviously causal in its high crime rate. Not the least of which is the almost total lack of a working economy, and the lack of any connection to or means of access to the wider economy for many city residents due to their racial, social, and geographic isolation.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Al in NYC

Well, that and having the police constantly harass anyone darker than a paper bag -- far too often with guns drawn to shoot first and ask questions later. And then to treat that like it should be the normal and expected course of business. And, of course, the race-baiting campaigns he ran - twice - to get himself elected mayor. Believe me, the implications of this were not missed by black NYers, and he certainly wasn't beloved in any way in the city's less paleskin communities.

NYC didn't miss a serious riot by much during the tension over Louima, Diallo, Dorismond, etc. And had it happened Giuliani's legacy would be quite different.

Not having lived there, all I truly knew of Guiliani was his performance during, and after, the September 11th attacks. That, and the fact that Howard Stern usually spoke quite highly of him. So I always figured he must have been a pretty damned good mayor.

Then I started reading up on a lot of his exploits pre-September 11th. He certainly wasn't very popular, as Al has noted here.

That said, did he not make a lot of lasting positive changes to the city itself?

[guy]

Originally Posted by Al in NYC

It's an interesting correlation to be sure, but at least in Detroit there are certainly a host of other factors that are much more obviously causal in its high crime rate. Not the least of which is the almost total lack of a working economy, and the lack of any connection to or means of access to the wider economy for many city residents due to their racial, social, and geographic isolation.

Presumably, if this economist is doing good work, he's taking economic factors into account.

If he hasn't... well, it's an interesting correlation that should be explored by more rigrorous work.

Guy

[Gordon B]

I've done a little searching this morning and found that other researchers have also found relationships between lead exposure and future criminal activity.


In the criminal law chapter of our Principles of Law and Economics textbook, Peter Grossman and I [Dan Cole] discuss a 1995 study from Scotland which found lead poisoning to be the strongest predictor of disciplinary problems in school; school disciplinary problems were, in turn, the strongest predictor of arrests among 7-22-year-olds. See "Toxic Criminals: Text May Offer Clues about Lead's Effects," 1 Crime Times 4 (1995).

Environment Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes.

[Gary Sisco]

I wonder does it account for how little Podhoretz' ultrastalinist political history gets discussed in his incarnation as neocon. At least he's consistently authoritarian, statist, antidemocratic and sectarian.

[Brian Olewnick]

Gordon, fascinating stuff about the lead poisoning. Curious if the correlation between it and a given crime stat, say murder, ran across racial and class lines (even adjusting for the likelihood of poor housing being nearer to major highways, etc.)

[rollhead]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCYE...2Fdailypolitic

[RBS]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Not having lived there, all I truly knew of Guiliani was his performance during, and after, the September 11th attacks. That, and the fact that Howard Stern usually spoke quite highly of him. So I always figured he must have been a pretty damned good mayor.

Then I started reading up on a lot of his exploits pre-September 11th. He certainly wasn't very popular, as Al has noted here.

That said, did he not make a lot of lasting positive changes to the city itself?

Yeah, he did. There's much less crime, but the crime started dropping with the Dinkins (not one of my favorites, believe me) plan to add more cops.

Guiliani was very good for bringing big business into the city. But did it help all that much? Yes, probably. But if you're not white and rich, the city is no longer as good a place. We're starting to see the effects of it now. Local mom and pop businesses disappearing, rent rates soaring, etc.

Also, I'm still wondering where all those homeless people went to.

[PHILLYQ]

Originally Posted by Al in NYC

Well, that and having the police constantly harass anyone darker than a paper bag -- far too often with guns drawn to shoot first and ask questions later. And then to treat that like it should be the normal and expected course of business. And, of course, the race-baiting campaigns he ran - twice - to get himself elected mayor. Believe me, the implications of this were not missed by black NYers, and he certainly wasn't beloved in any way in the city's less paleskin communities.

NYC didn't miss a serious riot by much during the tension over Louima, Diallo, Dorismond, etc. And had it happened Giuliani's legacy would be quite different.

Stop and frisk without any apparent reason except skin color was very common in Giuliani's mayoralty.
It's also worth noting that nearly every city in the US registered declines in crime, and that crime began declining under Dinkins, the previous mayor. Dinkins also expanded the police force, so the great drop in crime may also have happened under a second term of Dinkins as well as under Giuliani.

[Gordon B]

Giuliani's economic advisors are mostly political people like Steve Forbes, Bill Simon, Martin Anderson, and Michael Boskin. That's disappointing.

Barack Obama's chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is a highly respected Chicago Economist. Here's an example of his writing.

Mitt Romney has both Greg Mankiw and Glenn Hubbard, both top economists advising him.

The question of course is whether either Romney's or Obama's economics teams will have much impact on the thinking of the prospective Presidents.

Mankiw did not have a lot of influence with Bush during his two years as head of the Counsel of Economic Advisors.