Rudy Giuliani May Got What You Need

The story right now being bandied about by the mainstream media and the talk radio world is that the GOP has no front-runner for the 2008 Presidential election or that the front-runners are not exactly inspiring anyone. The three most prominent names right now are obviously John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

The reason these three contenders fail to ignite the imagination of their base is not because they aren’t competent leaders or even forces to be reckoned with in terms of security but rather that they fail to meet the social conservative litmus test of Republican base. They are not anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion or anti-gun control enough for many social conservative voters to trust and therefore many just aren’t excited enough to stand behind these while either Clinton or Obama make their way to the White House.

As I’ve said before, social voting in the age of world wide Islamic terrorism befuddles me. I suppose President Brownback could try and outlaw abortion but a world free of legally murdered babies doesn’t stop Mohammed from blowing himself up outside of your local Starbucks. President Huckabee could save the institution of marriage for the next thousand years by sending all homosexuals to France forever but that has nothing to do with Iran or North Korea and the likely possibility that they will facilitate one of many terrorist groups getting their hands on a nuclear device. Stopping stem-cell research doesn’t drop the bomb from being dropped on Israel or us for that matter so I fail to see how social vote should supercede security and foreign policy votes.

Let me explain it this way; You have what’s called Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, which is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed in 1943 that states as humans meet 'basic needs', they seek to satisfy successively 'higher needs' that occupy a set hierarchy. Maslow wrote that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy." In other words, if your most basic needs weren’t met, then your emotional, spiritual and psychological growth would be stunted or crippled.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is typically represented as a pyramid with the more primitive needs at the bottom and consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as deficiency needs associated with physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. While deficiency needs must be met, growth needs are continually shaping behavior. The basic concept is that the higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus once all the needs that are lower down in the pyramid are mainly or entirely satisfied. Growth forces create upward movement in the hierarchy, whereas regressive forces push prepotent needs further down the hierarchy.

As you can see from the pyramid shown above, the first two levels of need are physical survival needs such as water, food, sleep, warmth and exercise and safety and security needs. The other more ethereal needs don’t come into play until those two levels have been met.

Now let’s look at the candidate most likely to be beat Hillary Clinton should the Democrats opt to give her a run at the White House, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Aside from the fact that he’s the most like GOP candidate to actually win NY since probably the Reagan administration, Giuliani’s record stacks up pretty well against the first two levels Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

As Mayor of the largest city and arguably the most important city in America, Giuliani had to manage the city public works efficiently and make the city livable for its residents. According to his campaign website, “Rudy Giuliani cut more taxes than any Mayor in New York City history, reducing or eliminating 23 city taxes, saving individuals and businesses a cumulative $8 billion, while reducing New Yorkers’ tax burden by nearly 20%. By the end of Giuliani’s term in office, New Yorkers enjoyed their lowest tax burden in three decades, along with the creation of approximately 425,000 new private sector jobs… When Rudy Giuliani took office, 59% of New Yorkers said they would leave the city the next day if they could, according to a CNN/Time poll. Drawing upon the “Broken Windows” theory of policing, the City cracked down on quality of life crimes such as aggressive panhandling, graffiti, and drug dealing, transforming places like Times Square into safe destinations for theatergoers and sightseers. The City launched an aggressive initiative against drunk drivers, and implemented a ban on sex shops within 500 feet of residential neighborhoods, churches, and schools. In addition, Mayor Giuliani acquired 2,038 acres of new parkland – the most in more than 50 years.”

The former mayor also has a solid record on protecting children and increasing security in a city that once rivaled other big cities in rapes and murders. “Under Rudy Giuliani’s leadership as Mayor of the nation’s largest city, murders were cut from 1,946 in 1993 to 649 in 2001, while overall crime – including rapes, assaults, burglary and auto-thefts – fell by an average of 57%. According to the FBI, New York was transformed from the crime capital of the country into the Safest Large City in America, while becoming the global model for excellence in law enforcement. Rudy Giuliani believes that “Public safety is a fundamental civil right…when you reduce crime, you restore people’s freedom.”

Acting on his belief that “One of the most important responsibilities of government is to protect children from harm,” Mayor Giuliani worked to create the city’s first independent child welfare agency, reducing the foster care population by promoting a record number of adoptions, and doubling child support collections by cracking down on deadbeat dads, and implementing a program called HealthStat, which identified unenrolled children eligible for health insurance.”

Giuliani obviously will be strong on domestic law and order issues as well as quality of life issue but the big question will be whether or not he has the gumption to fight Islamic terrorism worldwide. If his speeches are to believed and his actions concerning an anti-Semitic Saudi and a very large check are any indication then I believe Giuliani will be the kind of terror warrior many of us thought Bush would become.

The world has become too small to be so caught up in social policy voting. No matter who you vote in, either very liberal or very conservative, the fact of the matter is that abortion will never be prohibited in our lifetime but the likelihood of Iran or China starting a nuclear war is and the smart people of this country should be thinking about what kind of leader they want to be in charge when that does happen. When your most basic needs are being threatened and your livelihood is under attack from foreign invaders, who do you think is going to protect you and fight the enemy, Giuliani or Hillary Clinton? At the end of the day, social votes aside, Giuliani has got what every American needs – the ability to lead and manage this nation while fighting the enemy abroad.

Kucinich To Hold Fairness Doctrine Hearings

I've come to realize what cowards politicians can be. Many from both parties are so petrified of the media that they go to extremes to control the media whenever the opportunity presents itself. We all remember how the Bush people would conduct "Town Meetings" and fill said meetings with handpicked supporters so as to not present the image that the man was unsupported. They even went as far as to give attendees pre-approved questions to ask. It's episodes such as this that earned the administration such derisive labels as "fascist."

But the Democrats aren't much better, just a different shade dictator, namely communists. Hillary Clinton is infamous for trying to control the media around her and while her history of attempting to silence people around her has been well documented, the latest from the Hillary camp is that she won't do any talk radio interviews, including those hosts associated with Air America. Heck, even Pat Buchanan sat down with Randy Rhodes on her own show.

Speaking of talk radio, Congressman and Presidential also-ran Dennis Kucinich is talking about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine (see below). On paper all it says is that media establishments must present both sides of an issue at all times. While that may sound reasonable, there are at a minimum, two problems with this so-called Fairness Doctrine.

First there is the problem of what exactly constitutes "fair". Certainly the party in charge of the country thus charged with presiding over the Fairness Doctrine will have a rather subjective view of what in fact "fair" means.

If someone is saying that there should be abortion on demand at all times to any female that deigns to have one, then is the fair thing to do is to have someone opposite that person say there should never be abortion at all ever under any circumstances? What about a moderate point of view? What if my listeners/viewers don't care about the opposing point of view and want to hear only far ____wing commentary? The problem with the Fairness Doctrine is that is limits consumer choice by involving government in private enterprise.

This brings me to my second point, which is that it is simply not the governments place to dictate programming on privately owned media channels. All it can do is lay out laws governing what kind of programming can go where (public TV, cable TV, PPV, etc) or on the radio (as opposed to satellite radio) and that is all. Congress by law cannot tell MTV to get rid of Jackass because Maxine Waters thinks white men getting kicked in the nuts just isn't funny. At the very least, the proposed Fairness Doctrine is an over-reach and at most it is shades of the former Soviet Union and to be frank, the current Russia's attempts to tightly control the media in order to protect itself.

People should use the internet to voice their concerns about this to their congressman and fight against any legislation that retracts freedom speech and choice in the marketplace rather than quietly allow Congress to become the media.

Per his telegraph to a media reform conference last week, Ohio Democratic Representative and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has been named head of a new House Domestic Policy Subcommittee and he plans to hold hearings on media ownership with an eye toward a reintroduction of the fairness doctrine.

The doctrine, which was scrapped by the FCC in 1987 as unconstitutional, put an affirmative obligation on broadcasters to air both sides of controversial issues. It's absence is also credited with the rise of conservative talk radio.

Appearing on Lou Dobbs CNN program Kucinich said he planned to hold hearings on the doctrine. He said that since the doctrine was scrapped by the FCC, 50 media companies have shrunk to six. Kucinich, who voted against the war in Iraq and does not want to fund the administration's proposed troop increase, tied the absence of the doctrine and concentration of media to the launch of the war. "How in the world did we end up in this war in Iraq when one study said that only three news sources that opposed the war were able to get on the air out of 393. What does that say. Was there an uninhibited exchange of ideas." He did not identify the study.

"I think that this is an opportunity for America to revisit the issue of consolidation of the media," he told Dobbs. "And how it relates to whether the media is serving in the public interest."

This issue and more will be discussed this Sunday at 12:30PM on Progressive Conservatism Live!