Ask Lemmy

He fought the Italian mob because he was in the pocket of the Russian mob.

He shut down a lot of clubs and nightlife in NYC, basically ruined the underground scene there and left “clubs” to be bottle service for rich assholes.

He’s a fucking fascist piece of shit and he deserves to lose everything.

New York is incapable of hiring a mayor who doesn’t suck ass. That’s just what they do. It’s like asking why Louisiana or New Jersey elects corrupt politicians. It’s just a way of life.

Jokes aside, though, crime was way higher back in the 90’s and he was a prosecutor who was “tough on crime” even though he was friendly with the Russian mob. The police union (which is unusually political in NYC) was behind him. No one knew that one day, he would beclown himself every day for the rest of his natural life

He was elected as part of a white grievance reaction to having a black mayor.

If you look at NYC's mayoral timeline, you'll see David Dinkins ahead of him for just one term, 90-94.

In my opinion, he was the real solver of our crime issues, as besides the overall economy starting to escape the republican shitstorm of Reaganomics, we started the PAL program (Police Athletic League) and used some anti-crime money to keep schools open later.

This is a key point here, most crime was being committed by bored young men of school age, so instead of letting them out at 3 till their parent(s) got off work, PAL and other after-school programs let them hang out with friends, shoot basketball or take fun classes, etc. People had the ability to stay out of trouble a lot more easily, and for free.

First year of Dinkins, homicide peaks. Then it starts trending sharply down, statistics backed by the first ever computerized crime ledger, compstat. That first year made everyone think Dinkins was ineffective, so Giuliani got his shot. But all Giuliani did was coast on Dinkins work, besides posting cops in visible places like MTA turnstiles.

I really want to write a long screed about how shitty of a mayor who couldn't win a single lawsuit Giuliani was, but I think airing out how much better his precessor was would hurt his image even more.

But I'll say this: that whole nightclub scene NYC used to be famous for? Killed by Giuliani. There were nightclubs where you were in shoulder-high bubbles, dancing or more if you wanted. Famous places too, that one spot in the east village that was a bankrupt church, converted into a goth nightclub.. just memories because of a sensitive bitch fuckhead named Giuliani.

It was said the only really dangerous place in NYC whole Giuliani was mayor was in between him and a camera, but that's because he's a narcissistic piece of shit, not because he improved NY.

My understanding -- and I'm not a New Yorker -- was that he has been often credited with reducing crime in NYC. Part of that was, as I recall, by cracking down on minor crimes, things like aggressive panhandling, with the idea that that was kind of a gateway drug to more-severe crime.

I don't know whether that approach or him in particular was responsible for it, or whether it was other phenomena at the time -- my gut is that changes like that usually aren't just driven by one person -- but my understanding was that crime did considerably fall off around the time, and crime was something that a lot of New Yorkers had been really upset about.

When was Times Square rejuvenated? Was it during his watch?

I had read at some point after WW2 Times Sqaure slipped into seedy and run down with building owners on the brink of bankruptcy before efforts were made to reclaim the area from the places that were not desirable.

I wonder if he had any role in that?

I remember after 9-11-2001 he was hailed & praised & celebrated as a hero for the way he handled stuff and that was the first time I'd ever heard of him, so I figured he must obviously be a great guy but lately his name keeps popping up everywhere like he's a horrible person and I never have any idea what's going on . Politics is a bunch of blah-blah-blah.