Posts Tagged rudy giuliani

10 results.
Nov26

Giuliani wrong on health care

by tdaxp on November 26, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election, Health Care

Martin, J. (2007). Rudy: It’s time to unmask Romney. Politico. November 26, 2007. Available online: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/7029.html.

After months of provocation, Mayor Giuliani has finally responded to Governor Romney’s attacks. Sadly, one of his counter-attacks misses the mark, badly.

“The one thing he’s known for is health care,” Giuliani said, referring to Romney’s signature initiative aimed at insuring all Massachusetts citizens. “And the health care is the thing he’s now abandoned for the rest of the country. It contained a very big mistake, which he realizes is a very big mistake, the mandate.”

The Massachusetts health care plan compels citizens to sign up for their choice of coverage and levies what Giuliani deemed “a tax” on those who don’t. The health care proposal Romney has laid out in the presidential contest includes no such mandate.

“That’s not the way to expand health care,” Giuliani continued. “The way to expand health care is through the program that I’ve talked about, which Mitt Romney has now adopted.”

While I previously applauded Giuliani on health care, here Rudy misses the point of insurance: the pooling of risk. Better and better bioscience, however, will reveal more and more risk, either allowing health care companeis to discriminate against the riskier, or allowing the less risky to opt-out of the system all together, or both. While this has always happened, this will be happening with a far higher degree of precision in the future as the cost of genome sequencing falls to around a thousand dollars.

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Nov06

Giuliani and Thompson Right on Climate Change

by tdaxp on November 6, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election

Eilperin, J. (Nov. 6, 2007). Climate is a risky issue for democrats: candidates back costly proposals. Washington Post, A1, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110502106.html?hpid=topnews.

Of the major candidates, only Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson have it together on global climate change:

While Democrats are working to outdo each other on climate change — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, for example, supports a 90 percent greenhouse gas reduction by midcentury — GOP presidential candidates remain more skeptical, to say the least. Former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) stands by his commentary on National Review Online that warming on other planets has led some people “to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.”

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said in the wake of Gore’s Nobel Prize win that when it comes to global warming, “if we try to deal with it at too hysterical a pace, we could create problems.”

Among Republicans, only Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) — who began crusading against climate change after a heckler dressed as a penguin followed him around New Hampshire during his 2000 presidential bid — backs a specific, 60 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2050. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee endorsed a mandatory carbon cap last month but has not laid out specifics.

(In fairness, Mitt Romney is not mentioned in the article, but the LCV profile is informative.)

Human-caused (“anthropogenic”) climate change may be happening. But if it is, nearly all “solutions” being talked about are worse than the problem. A better approach would be to fight HIV/AIDS, feed the hungry, and grow the economy — if you are concerned about human welfare, and not merely the puritanism of global warming religion.

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Sep21

Good and better ways to secure East Asia

by tdaxp on September 21, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election, Greater East Asia, Thomas Barnett

Joacy, M. (2007). Giuliani Visit to London Aims to Bolster Credentials. Wall Street Journal. September 20, 2007.

My preference is to keep NATO as a keep-Russia-out-of-Europe club, and build up a Pacific NATO. Still, multilateralizing America’s security guarantee to the geostrategically chaotic states of the western Pacific (Japan, South Korea, North Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc.) would not be a bad thing, and Giuliani’s calls to expand NATO into the Pacific are not foolish.

While Tom disagrees, this seems to be a case of the great (waiting for a Pacific Treaty Organization that includes all the western Pacific states) becoming the enemy of the good (providing east Asia’s first institutional security guarantee).

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Sep17

Another reason to like Rudy Giuliani

by tdaxp on September 17, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election

Hay, P. (2007). Hillary slayer. The American Spectator. September 17, 2007. Available online: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12030 (from Real Clear Politics).

HIllary Clinton is my prefered nominee out of the major Democratic candidates — she is a good politician — but she should not be President.

Rudy may be the Republican to stop her:

Last week, all Republican politicians worth their weight came out blasting MoveOn.org for taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times smearing Gen. David Petraeus on the day he was scheduled to deliver his Iraq progress report to Congress. The outrage among conservatives only grew as leading Democrats failed to condemn the ad, Hillary Clinton questioned the general’s honesty, and it was disclosed that the far left group was given a drastically reduced advertising rate in the New York Times.

But while other Republicans complained, Rudy Giuliani did something about it. Speaking to reporters in Atlanta on Thursday, Giuliani demanded that the New York Times give his campaign the same discounted rate so it could take out an ad defending Gen. Petraeus and assailing Clinton and MoveOn.org for “character assassination of an American general in a time of war.” He also called on the paper to run the ad at the time of his choosing (Friday, the day after President Bush’s primetime address to the nation).

…

As demoralized conservatives begin to fear that another Clinton presidency is inevitable, this episode demonstrates that Giuliani may represent the Republicans’ best shot at defeating Hillary in next year’s election.

Throughout his career, Giuliani has excelled at relentlessly pursuing opponents, whether in the courtroom or political arena. As a young prosecutor in the 1970s, before he became a celebrity for taking on the mob, he gained notice for his successful prosecution of Democratic Congressman Bertram L. Podell in a bribery trial. The New York Times magazine recounted the dramatic conclusion in a 1985 profile: “Under Giuliani’s intense cross-examination, Podell faltered, became so nervous he poked out his eyeglass lens, asked for a recess and gave up, pleading guilty.”

…

While it is popular for conservatives to lament the existence of the liberal media, Giuliani understands that it is a reality. Rather than belly-ache about it, or, as the Bush administration often has done, ignore attacks by assuming people aren’t paying attention and they will go away, Giuliani understands that conservatives need to simply be better at using the media to their advantage, as he did when he fought entrenched liberal interest groups as mayor.

“If I run against Hillary Clinton, I’m perfectly prepared to carry this battle, not expecting that the New York Times or the major networks…are going to give us anywhere the same kind of favorable coverage they will give her,” Giuliani told Hugh Hewitt last week. “I’m a realist, I’m not saying that in any way where I have a chip on my shoulder. I’ve lived with this all during the time I was mayor of New York City. The reality is we just have to be better at communicating.”

Agreed. We — Republicans, Americans — need a speaker and a fighter. Rudy fits the bill.

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3 Comments
Sep09

Preferences from the top tier

by tdaxp on September 9, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election

Republican Party
Preferred Winner: Rudy Giuliani. Great things on foreign policy, and his federalist conservatism is a welcome break from Bush’s evangelicalism. Only drawback: uncertainty on judges.
Back-up Winner: Fred Thompson. An unambitious people-person with a conservative orientation, Thompson is the Bush ’00 of ’08. Drawbacks: Vague beliefs, comes across as old.
Please no: Mitt Romney. Mitt agrees with you on the issues. Because he’s supported both sides of all of them.

Democratic Party
Preferred Winner: Hillary Clinton. If she governs like it was Bill’s third term, thins would generally be alright.
Backup Winner: Barack Obama: A post baby-boomer President is attractive as such, as is someone with Barack’s biography.
Please no: John Edwards. Can he possibly be serious about anything he says???

Generic Ballot
Preferred Winner: Republican Party.
At its wingnut extreme, the Republican Party is stupid. The Democratic Party and its extreme, though, is anti-American. I’ll take idiotic over treacherous.

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9 Comments
Aug24

The End of Private Insurance

by tdaxp on August 24, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election, Health Care

Remember my praise of Rudy Giuliani’s federally-based health care plan, especially in contrast to John Edwards and Barack Obama’s backwords company-centered plan?

Giuliani is not just on the side of the angels, he’s on the side of history. At it becomes cheaper and cheaper to sequence a person’s genome, we will either face a situation where insurance companies only provide insurance to people they know will be healthy or, atlernatively, only people who believe they will be sick will buy insurance. (In other words, just like now, or worse.)

The solution, however it comes, will have to be risk-pooling at a national level. Giualini’s plan starts us down that road. Edwards and Obama, by contrast, offer only a tired repeat of the old industrial state.

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2 Comments
Aug19

Giuliani’s Foreign Policy Vision, as grokked by a517d0gg

by tdaxp on August 19, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election

The recently engaged Adrian (congrats!) has finished his three part criqitue of Rudy Giuliani’s recent article in Foreign Affairs. (Giuliani’s words were previously both here and at Tom Barnett’s blog.)

One of the heuristics i use in judging candidates is the quality of the arguments against them. It is here that i owe special thianks to Adrian’s fine effort. While clearly the result of much thought and reflection, Adrian (who also goes by the nom de guerre a517d0gg)’s critiques either miss the mark or reinforce my support for Rudy. If these are the best that can be thrown against Mayor Giuliani, then he deserves to be President today, and not have to wait until January 2009.

Adrian’s series, “Giuliani’s Foreign Policy Vision,” is in three parts

Read them all today!

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Aug16

Giuliani right on economics, free trade, history, military-political cooperation

by tdaxp on August 16, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election

Major props to Tom Barnett for highlighting Rudolph Giuliani’s fantastic article in Foreign Affairs.

Giuliani: right on health care, right on federalism… right on the world?

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Aug01

Giuliani Right on Health Care

by tdaxp on August 1, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election, Health Care

Sentora, M. (2007). Giuliani seeks to transform U.S. health care coverage. New York Times. August 1, 2007. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/us/politics/01giuliani.html.

Neither his plan nor the article covering it are perfect, but hard not to like this:

Rudolph W. Giuliani on Tuesday called for transforming the way health care coverage is provided in the United States, advocating a voluntary move from the current employer-based system to one that would grant substantial tax benefits to people who buy their own insurance.

..

And to help the poor or others struggling to afford health insurance, Mr. Giuliani said he would support vouchers and tax refunds, but he gave no details about how he would pay for them.

Mr. Giuliani’s vision stands in stark contrast to the plans offered by the leading Democratic candidates. Both Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina have proposed bolstering the employer-based system by requiring corporations to buy insurance for their workers, and raising taxes or rolling back tax cuts to increase subsidies for health care for the poor.

Corporatism, the idea that companies should be simultaneously protected by the government but expected to fund welfare societies for their workers and dependents, is one of those bad ideas that are just hard to killed. From China’s State-Owned Companies to Detroit’s dinosaurs, too many enterprises and too many workers have been dragged down because governments made the stupid prediction that large companies cannot possibly go bankrupt.

There needs to be some form of universal healthcare, and it should be at least funded by the government through the income tax. Calls for “employer-based healthcare,” like from the junior Senator from Illinois and former junior Senator from North Carolina, are steps in the wrong direction.

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Jul25

A States-Rights Conservative?

by tdaxp on July 25, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: 2008 Presidential Election, Republicans

Ronald Brownstein has good things to say about Rudolph William Louis Giuliani. Giuliani seems to have a more developed intellectual framework than any serious candidate since John McCain, er, any other serious candidate.

If McCain-Lieberman isn’t happening, it’s hard to argue against Giuliani-Thompson.

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9 Comments