GIULIANI-Benevolent Dictator (NYT)

[kpete]

Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy

By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: May 14, 2007

.............

An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.

..............

From the beginning, there was no doubt that Mr. Giuliani and his team ruled the hellish disaster site. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, all with extensive disaster response experience, arrived almost immediately, only to be placed on the sideline. One Army Corps official said Mr. Giuliani acted like a “benevolent dictator.”

............

“The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response to environmental concerns,” said David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor group.

Records show that the city was aware of the danger in the ground zero dust from the start. In a federal court deposition, Kelly R. McKinney, associate commissioner at the city’s health department in 2001, said the agency issued an advisory on the night of Sept. 11 stating that asbestos in the air made the site hazardous and that everyone should wear masks.


more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/nyregion/14giuliani.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Gabi Hayes]

1. THANK YOU! wake up, America! do you want this thug as your next diktator?

From the beginning, there was no doubt that Mr. Giuliani and his team ruled the hellish disaster site. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, all with extensive disaster response experience, arrived almost immediately, only to be placed on the sideline. One Army Corps official said Mr. Giuliani acted like a “benevolent dictator.”

Despite the presence of those federal experts, Mr. Giuliani assigned the ground zero cleanup to a largely unknown city agency, the Department of Design and Construction. Kenneth Holden, the department’s commissioner until January 2004, said in a deposition in the federal lawsuit against the city that he initially expected FEMA or the Army Corps to try to take over the cleanup operation. Mr. Giuliani never let them.

[Selatius]

2. Now Imagine Giuliani doing the same thing to the whole country if he became president.

Campaign slogan:

"You've had idiotic. Now try despotic."

[whistle]

3. The repuke seem to be big on dictators, benevolent, malevolent, belligerent

...or ignorant....they seem to produce them all

[OwnedByFerrets]

5. Read John Deans book and you will see why.....nt

[whistle]

8. I will, thanks...

[Gabi Hayes]

4. THIS IS ST. RUDY's lasting legacy, and I mean LASTING, unless a real

calamity occurs, and he's installed, like Bush.

just think how many years it's going to take for the rest of these workers to fall ill and die because they weren't protected

you know, of course, Michael Moore's trip to Cuba (illegal?) was to get Ground Zero workers the health care they were refused here

can't wait for that story to get oat and aboat

[KurtNYC]

6. it wasn't just the WTC site - wall street was covered with ash and dust

composed of everything that was in the towers: asbestos, concrete, glass, and people. That dust was still all over Wall street when Rudy re-opened it on 9/15/01. There were abandoned donut carts with the donuts still in them and about 5 inches of ash on everything. Those big rubbermaid tubs that street vendors use were laid out and their belts, dozens of belts were laid out for sale -- untouched for 4 days. It was surreal. It looked like Nagasaki might have. You could tell that people had just run for their lives. Left their stuff and ran.

It was being allowed into a crime scene that was not even cleaned up. NYers bodies pulverized to ashes were being scooped up by tourists in the envelopes that hotels have in the rooms. Perhaps to be sold on Ebay or as a macabre souvenir. We weren't just 'allowed' into lower Manhattan, Rudy encouraged people to go.

[speedoo]

7. K&R nt