Mike Huckabee’s rise in the polls in Iowa has certainly gotten the attention of the traditional media, and the Romney camp is clearly managing expectations in order to blunt the effect of a potential Huckabee victory:

“It would be nice if Romney won,” said Doug Gross, an attorney overseeing Romney’s Iowa campaign. “If he finishes in the top two, he’s fine.”

Now that Huckabee has launched himself to the top of the heap (and if he follows through, it would be kind of an indictment of the notion that money rules in politics), it’s time to take a substantive look at his record and his proposals. I’m dubious that the media will actually do this. For example, perhaps the most prominent soundbite to come out of the YouTube debate was his statement that “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office” when asked about his support for the death penalty. This was actually a massive cop-out.

…what reporters didn’t note is that Huckabee was dodging a direct question on the very area — the intersection of religion and policy — on which he is building his campaign. The man whose ads call him a “Christian Leader” and who says his faith “defines me” wouldn’t answer a pretty simple question on how his faith affects his opinion on a policy issue.

But the press stood up an applauded. So witty! So clever! Ah, that Mike Huckabee, what a lovable guy!

In fact, it’s this tendency to focus on Huckabee’s personality instead of his policy that is masking one of the most insane ideas to appear in this cycle - his “fair tax” proposal.

“Abolishing the IRS”, of course, is the purported effect of enacting the “FairTax” proposal Huckabee supports. This would replace the income tax with a national sales tax. But you would still need a bureaucracy to enforce the sales tax! Business owners aren’t going to be willing to hand over 30% of the cost of goods sold [the tax rate you would need to have a revenue neutral sales tax] just because they’re a bunch of really swell people. In addition, a sales tax of that magnitude is terrible economics. The FairTax idea is beyond silly, and in the unlikely event that Huckabee is the GOP nominee, right-of-center economists will be committing professional malpractice if they don’t rise up en masse to debunk this malarky. Bruce Bartlett provides a good template: “In short, the FairTax is too good to be true, and voters should not take seriously any candidate who supports it.”

Huckabee takes a complex problem (the byzantine tax code) and applies a simple solution that would actually be unbelievably regressive and essentially shovel more money to the rich and powerful, as well as open up a huge expansion of the black market trafficking in untaxed goods. There’s no justification for it, which is why it has been roundly denounced any time a politician, like Steve Forbes, brings it up. Because Huckabee is an amiable politician with some rhetorical gifts, he’s getting away with a batshit crazy idea as his main campaign plank.

Iowa, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney | No Comments »

By spinning in ten different directions at once with regard to the Shag Fund, the Giuliani campaign is simply reinforcing the now well-established image of them as fabricators, which The New York Times finally blows the whistle on today.

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong.

When a campaign has earned a reputation as flat-out liars, explaining away a story of the magnitude of the Shag Fund gets even more difficult. And really, it’s about time that somebody noticed how Team Giuliani operates, although the Times pretty much confines it to statistics about his record in New York City, rather than the other examples, like making up stats about England’s record on prostate cancer.

The point is that today is the day when the lying catches up to Rudy Giuliani.

UPDATE: Rudy starts to wither from the pressure:

OKATIE, SC — Giuliani refused to take questions here today about allegations that travel expenses were picked up obscure city offices when he was mayor of New York City.

“We’ve already explained it,” he said, walking past reporters after a town hall meeting.

Giuliani, who is normally friendly to reporters, bristled past them, and campaign staffers were unusually physical in keeping the press away. Several campaign aides told campaign reporters to return to the press area, and some of his security detail manhandled reporters. On other occasions, reporters have been free to video Giuliani as he is shaking hands and signing autographs after events, and he often informally takes questions from reporters.

Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

Today brings us a load of media stories about Rudy Giuliani’s taxpayer-funded adultery. And Rudy’s campaign clearly can’t keep the story straight. They appear to have settled on the idea that the expenses were reimbursed by the NYPD and there’s nothing to see here. Of course, this is a non-answer. Unless there’s some wealthy benefactor named “NYPD,” mayor’s office and police department funds are all paid by taxpayers. It’s irrelevant to the main issue: why did Rudy stash these expenses in obscure portions of the budget in the first place?

One explanation blames anonymous bookkeepers. Then they tried to claim it was a longstanding practice, leading to one of the funniest attempts at spin I’ve ever seen:

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani’s City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration’s practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has “gone on for years” and “predates Giuliani.”

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, “I’m going to reverse myself on that. I’m just going to talk about the Giuliani era,” Lhota said. “I should only talk about what I know about.”

That’s priceless.

As more and more gets unearthed, it looks like these Shag Fund expenses were only a part of Giuliani’s living off the public dime.

It seems more likely in his final years and months as mayor Rudy was living larger and larger on the NYC dime. And a look at the book-keeping details that are emerging suggests a very conscious effort to use these squirrelly accounting techniques to hide Rudy’s high-living ways from public scrutiny. Some of it was Shag Fund spending, but not all, probably not even most.

The problem is that even though the accounting techniques were part of a general effort to hide Rudy’s living the high-life on the city’s dime, it’s now shined a bright light on the Shag Fund. And the Shag Fund was evidently spread more widely than the stuff accounted for with the squirrelly book-keeping.

Who paid for the city car and driver given to Judi while she was still Rudy’s mistress?

Who paid for her security detail?

Why did she have one?

Does the city have to pay for travel and expenses for Rudy’s wife and his mistress? Can’t the budgeting be monogamous even if Rudy’s not?

The NY Times has more on this element of the story. The attempts to conceal this from public view until well after his potential Senate run, and his stonewalling of investigations into these practices by auditors in 2001 and 2002, back up the accounts.

(City Comptroller William C. Thompson) said auditors working under his predecessor first raised questions about the travel costs during the Giuliani administration. Their requests to the Giuliani administration for details and justification went unanswered, Mr. Thompson said.

Indeed, while Mr. Giuliani and his aides provided extensive responses yesterday to the reports about the billing practices, they did not, according to the Politico report, offer any explanation before its publication.

You know you’re in trouble when Bernie Kerik has to vouch for you.

This story and one other are dominating headlines today. More on that one in a separate post.

Rudy Giuliani | 3 Comments »

Rudy Giuliani is trying to call the story about his taxpayer-funded adultery a hit job. In that case, the hits just keep on coming.

In 2001, the last year of Rudy’s mayoralty, the city gave Judi her own taxpayer-funded security detail, too — even as it reduced the size of the security detail assigned to Rudy’s soon-to-be-ex.

From the New York Post on June 4, 2001:

“The Post has learned that city detectives have once again been assigned to protect Mayor Giuliani’s girlfriend, even as he has scaled back the size of his estranged wife’s police detail.

Nathan and her pooch were seen yesterday being escorted to her Upper East Side apartment by one of the detectives now assigned to watch over her during the day when she’s not at the mayor’s side.”

Turns out that the NYPD were a taxi service for the Mayor’s mistress. All of these costs protecting a private citizen, the overtime and travel expenses, were billed to New York City taxpayers. This is exactly the kind of behavior that took down New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who was using state employees “as chauffeurs and aides to his wife.” So we not only have extremely unethical behavior, it could be criminal, though Josh Marshall thinks Rudy will skate because Hevesi was nailed on a state law, not a city statute.

It’s still unclear how much money we’re talking about here, because the expenses are so buried and misallocated:

The comptroller found that Giuliani’s office hid $143,867 worth of “non-local travel” expenses in random city agencies in 2000; they upped the slippery accounting in 2001, charging $435,215 in 2001. Given the charges for the Hamptons travel noted in the Politico piece, only a fraction of this was for the eleven trips.

In other words, Giuliani’s office had something like a widespread policy of misallocation of which the trysts were just a part — something that they’d also done for certain salaries, according to today’s New York Times:

“The administration of Mr. Giuliani’s successor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said in 2002, several months after taking office, that the Giuliani administration had kept the budget for the mayor’s office artificially low by paying more than $5 million in salaries through other city agencies. The agencies to which Mr. Giuliani billed the travel expenses were outside the mayor’s office.”

The Times adds that the NYPD typically picked up the bill for the mayor’s security detail. But a Bloomberg aide tells the New York Daily News that it is common for the security detail to bill the mayor’s office and then for the NYPD to reimburse it. However, “the aide could not confirm it was past practice to shuffle costs among an alphabet soup of agencies.” There lies the rub.

What we have is the slow uncovering of a history of recklessness and lawlessness while in the Mayor’s office, where loyalty was valued and rules were disregarded. I think that’ll be of note to the voters.

Rudy Giuliani | 3 Comments »

Mitt Romney’s latest ad:

Note especially the slo-mo sleeve-rolling, which is as much proof as anyone could possibly need that this is a go-getting go-getter who gets on the go and, um, go-gets.

That really is priceless. Who needs a record when you can make a perfect crease on a pressed white shirt and roll it up to the elbow? I fully expect the next ad to be ALL sleeve-rolling. It’s simply too powerful to rebut.

Election 2008 | 1 Comment »

Booman offers the best roundup of the Republican YouTube debate that I’ve seen. I have only seen parts of it. But as far as I can gather, it was a lightning round of immigrant-bashing, historical revisionism (public opinion lost the Vietnam War), Jesus praise (apparently, there is a religious test for office on the Republican side), and anti-tax rhetoric. It was a Wednesday, the day of Grover Norquist’s weekly conservative meeting, and so I guess that’s why he got to ask a question even though he has unfettered access to Republicans. I already mentioned Rudy Giuliani’s stumble through questions about his taxpayer-financed booty calls. You had Mitt Romney refuse to call waterboarding torture until he consulted with an executive for Blackwater. Mike Huckabee came armed with an excellent amount of one-liners that allowed him to sidestep substantive questions. Fred Thompson made it through the whole debate without sleeping, though there was one touch and go moment where someone had to hold a piece of glass up to his nose to ensure he was still breathing. And CNN didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory by failing to disclose that one of their questioners is on a steering committee for Hillary Clinton.

All in all, I’m pleased with my decision to be somewhere else last night. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Fred Thompson, Presidential Debates, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney | No Comments »

You can either defuse or intensify a scandal within the first 48 hours. For Rudy Giuliani, he’s committing one of the cardinal sins - he’s throwing the book at it, making multiple excuses, none of which pass the smell test.

Somehow CNN managed to shoehorn the question about his government-financed adultery into the YouTube debate, even though the questions were supposed to be all pre-taped. And he stumbled through it:

“First of all, it’s not true,” he said during a GOP debate hours after the story broke. “I had 24-hour security for the eight years that I was mayor. They followed me everyplace I went. It was because there were, you know, threats, threats that I don’t generally talk about. Some have become public recently; most of them haven’t.

“And they took care of me, and they put in their records, and they handled them in the way they handled them,” Giuliani said. “I had nothing to do with the handling of their records, and they were handled, as far as I know, perfectly appropriately.”

That’s a nutty answer. If it’s not true, that should be the end of it. But he goes on to say that he had nothing to do with it, that the police put in their own records. If the whole thing is not true, how would he know what the police did? You can’t claim it’s false AND blame someone else. Furthermore, it makes no sense that the NYPD would hide his love trysts in the mayoral budget and not the police budget. That very act means that the mayor’s office had to be involved at some level.

And this is only the most recent answer.

EARLIER THEY TRIED THESE ANSWERS

TRY THIS: “SECURITY.” In 2001 and 2002, when city auditors questioned the expenses, the mayor’s office refused to provide the documents, citing “security.” [Politico.com, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: “ACCOUNTING.” Speaking with the Politico, which broke the story, “A Giuliani aide…denied that the unorthodox billing practices were aimed at hiding the expenses, citing ‘accounting.’” [Politico.com, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: “COMMON PRACTICE.” Denying charges to the CBS Evening News, the Giuliani campaign said “this is common practice.” [CBS Evening News, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS “HE DID EVERYTHING APPROPRIATE.” Campaign surrogate Congressman Peter King told ABC: “The mayor did absolutely nothing improper, he did everything appropriate, the NYPD did everything appropriate. And even if you read the story carefully it does not say the mayor billed anyone for anything. But again, Mayor Giuliani and his staff, city hall will give a definitive answer. But I can assure you now that everything was done properly and there is absolutely nothing to it.” [”Political Radar,” ABCNews.com, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: “LEGITIMATE EXPENSES,” “FACT OF LIFE” The evening the story broke, top Giuliani aide Tony Carbonetti told the Associated Press that “these were all legitimate expenses incurred in protecting the mayor, and his police detail covered him wherever he went, 24/7.” He continued to say “You just do what you do and the police go with you. That’s just a fact of life when you’re the mayor of New York.” [Associated Press, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: WE’LL INVESTIGATE. Carbonetti then told reporters in the same time period “that he has ordered an investigation, and “he does not know why the charges were accounted for” in this way. He continued to say “I first learned the fact of this today,” and while he had “heard about something like this a few days ago” he “was told it was being handled.” [”The Trail,” WashingtonPost.com, 11/28/07]

That’s SIX explanations in one day. Actually, seven, because later in the AP story an aide came up with this beaut:

Later, an aide said that for accounting purposes, the expenses appear to have been temporarily allocated to city offices and paid for out of the mayor’s budget but that the police department ultimately picked up the tab and reimbursed the mayor’s office at the end of each year.

Huh? It’s common practice in New York City for extra-budgetary payments hidden from taxpayers?

Probably should be mentioned that the guy in charge of security in this period was Bernie Kerik.

The truth is that the Giuliani camp has no idea how to deal with this one. There’s no unity of message because there’s no proper explanation for hiding exuberant expenses in the most audacious manner:

Admittedly he only charged $10,000 to the people with disabilities fund. Chump change for the shag fund. But the office charged with getting counsel for indigent defendants got stuck with $400,000.

Rudy and Judy aren’t like us little people. But even that high in the stratosphere, half a million dollars covers a lot of shagging.

I’d heard a lot that Rudy’d done a lot to screw poor folks caught up in the criminal justice system but this puts the matter in a whole new light.

So far this story isn’t getting major attention, but I can’t see that continuing, although admittedly I don’t know what it takes for the traditional media to notice things at this point.

Rudy Giuliani | 7 Comments »

“Annual snowfall reduced” during his tenure as Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani’s YouTube debate ad claims.

At least we know he’s not denying that it exists.

Update: If Rudy is going to take credit for less intense winters around here, he should also get the blame for New York City’s bedbug explosion.

Freezing temperatures are the only thing that consistently kills the disgusting little critters.  When it’s 70 degrees on January 5, the bedbugs are on the move, going to the beach, or your bed.  And, laying eggs everywhere.

So if snowfall shrunk because of his fiery mayorship, then he also caused too many of us to be afflicted with those gag-inducing, itchy welts.

Election 2008, Rudy Giuliani | 7 Comments »

All day long, CNN has been highlighting the funny videos submitted for its YouTube debate with the Republican candidates by showing this submitted question. It shows a rifle-toting Dick Cheney cartoon asking about the extent of the next VP’s powers.

The cartoon is actually from the Houston Chronicle’s editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson. And it’s funny because it’s true.

While it cannot be denied that Cheney’s expansive powers have been fully enabled by President Bush, it’s also true that Cheney has more or less on his own asserted executive privilege and also claimed that his office was free of oversight and checks and balances because it was not part of the executive branch.

It’s important that the Cheney Vice Presidency be rendered an historical anomaly, and not the executive branch equivalent of extraordinary rendition in which the dirty work of a supreme presidency is outsourced to an unaccountable extra-governmental agent.

That point and other should be brought up during this and future debates, and not just during the funny outtake reel.

Vice President | 1 Comment »

This could end up being a big deal, because nothing gets the media going more than hypocrisy and sex.

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

Yes, it would be hard to justify expenses incurred out in the Hamptons, which is kind of, you know, not in New York City.

Isn’t Giuliani the guy who goes on and on about how government-financed health care is like socialism? What does that make government-financed adultery?

Also, Rudy isn’t exactly poor. He couldn’t spring for a city hotel room to have his trysts with Judi Nathan, instead of putting it on the public dime and forcing the security detail to tag along? or he couldn’t use the Ground Zero-area love nest like Bernie Kerik? I think this is more about somebody abusing the system because they could, and hiding it from public view because that’s the way things are done.

The expenses first surfaced as Giuliani’s two terms as mayor of New York drew to a close in 2001, when a city auditor stumbled across something unusual: $34,000 worth of travel expenses buried in the accounts of the New York City Loft Board.

When the city’s fiscal monitor asked for an explanation, Giuliani’s aides refused, citing “security,” said Jeff Simmons, a spokesman for the city comptroller.

But American Express bills and travel documents obtained by Politico suggest another reason City Hall may have considered the documents sensitive: They detail three summers of visits to Southampton, the Long Island town where Nathan had an apartment.

The official secrecy, the abuse of the public trust - sound like somebody currently in the Oval Office that you know?

Interesting to note this too:

Receipts show him in Southampton every weekend in August and the first weekend in September of 2001, before the terror attacks of Sept. 11 disrupted the routines of his city.

9/11 really did change everything. Even Rudy’s booty call schedule.

My favorite part of the very detailed article, though, is this:

None of the 2001 trips to Southampton appear in Giuliani’s official schedule. However, the schedule does contain a potential clue to his destination. Before three of them, Giuliani paid a visit to his barber, Carlo Fargnoli, on York Avenue near the mayor’s official residence, Gracie Mansion.

Judi must have been a stickler for proper appearance. Seriously, a barber before every date? And considering we’re talking about Giuliani, for WHAT?

This is less a story about the awkward, bungling efforts to charge the public for his own affairs, so much as what it reveals about Rudy himself, his arrogance, his lack of accountability, his unfamiliarity with ethics.

Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »