Please read the BLOG and hyperlinks below, it is becoming real disgusting of what has become of our political party system.

It seems that the Bronx Republicans are pretty much lost when it comes to having a credible county organization. Under the current leadership of Joseph J. Savino, we have found many current members of Bronx County GOP tainted with criminality. What is Mr. Savino running in the Bronx, a political club or a halfway house of criminality and corruption. Please read all hyperlinked websites below:

2007 - 2009 Current elected officials for Bronx County GOP:

http://www.gograssroots.org/downloads/newvoices/BronxRepDL.pdf

Fred Brown - 77th A.D. Current 2007-2009 Male State Committee member:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEED81131F930A15754C0A...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE6DD1530F93AA15755C0A...

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0717FD3A5F0C708DDDA108...

http://www.nycsci.org/reports/12-93%20CSB%20ELECTS%20RPT.pdf

Curtis Johnson - 79th A.D. Current 2007-2009 Male State Committee member:

PRESIDENTIAL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE RUDY GIULIANI'S BRONX, NEW YORK DELEGATES

Presidential candidate hopeful Rudy Giuliani has a cast of characters as his delegates in New York. Just take a look at the Bronx County Republican Delegates for Rudy Giuliani.

Congressional District 7
Joseph J. Savino Jr., delegate and Bronx County GOP Leader: Joseph Savino can be challenged on his residency as a delegate, he moved back to Rockland County.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/nyregion/02bronx.html?ex=1330491600&en...

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/runninscared/archives/002001.php

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0426,robbins2,54687,5.html

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10222006/news/columnists/gas_guzzler_hosp_ra...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03022007/news/regionalnews/election_money_mi...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03012007/news/regionalnews/board_of_elex_rai...

Ben Smith at Politico.com has a blockbuster now. Go right now and read his current post. Smith's follow up has Giuliani denials and statements that payments were not improper. But check updates after the jump.

There, Smith shows how then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani billed obscure NYC agencies for trips to -- what to me appears to be -- Long Island overnights with then-lover wife-number-three-to-be Judith Nathan. The tricky way in which the billing was carried out and the fact that Mayor G. had no NYC business to carry out in Southampton, suggest to me that Mr Giuliani used public resources for private purposes. Did that happen in this case?

Smith's done some remarkable reporting. NY Times' William Rashbaum's story, here, points out that security expenses are routinely billed through NYPD and that Mr. Giuliani would not personally have handled the billing. (There are reasons for thinking this may not be the case. Many report Mr. Giuliani tried to completely control of both NYPD and his personal affairs. The billing here concerned both.) If normal procedures were followed, did NYPD also get bills for these trips? Talk Left's Post is here. Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, quoted by Sam Stein on HuffPost says the Giuliani billing was "improper."

No! I don't mean NYCHA is not broke but ...New York City’s Housing Authority (NYCHA) has been and is being mugged and robbed by Federal, State and City Republicans. NYCHA operates more than 2600 buildings with more than 180,000 apartments and many more than 400,000 residents. (It does a lot more, but for purposes of this post and the next, I focus only on its role as housing operator) As a result of planned policies federal, state and local subsidies for NYCHA have declined dramatically over the Bush, Pataki, Giuliani and Bloomberg years. As a result, cash for routine maintenance is drained away, fees and rents have increased and surprisingly, NYC continues, vampire-like, to suck hundreds of millions of dollars a year from NYCHA. (See the figures after the jump)

NYCHA’s GOP government-induced financial crisis was the subject of a fascinating forum a few days ago at the New School's Center for NYC Affairs. There Daily News columnist and editorial board member and former NYCHA resident Errol Lewis convened a panel of experts and officials and an audience of alarmed tenants and activists. The tales they told, the problems they debated and recent developments point to a NYCHA crisis which could, if not addressed, severely damage the largest single bloc of affordable housing in NYC – some of it imposed by Mayor Bloomberg right this minute.(Check out the forum here)

Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe reports on the danger that Rudy Giuliani's candidacy will end up being defined by a single issue (9/11, of course) and why such an approach could falter down the road, as voters ask for something more -- for instance, an Iraq war policy.

Particular credit to Milligan for mentioning the fact that here in New York there are a lot of people who consider his claim to 9/11 heroism totally fraudulent. The article actually features a nice juxtaposition, citing out-of-state sentiments like this:

"He took control," said Carolyn Mercadante , 70, a Delaware voter who came to see Giuliani speak. "Just the fact that he was such a presence there" in New York the day of the attacks, said 67-year-old Bill Uranko of Middleton, Del., when asked to explain what impressed him about Giuliani's Sept.11 performance. "You could see he was visibly moved by what happened.

...and contrasting them with the far different things you'll hear from New Yorkers, for instance:

Soren Dayton takes a look at early polling data from Pollster.com, comparing a Clinton-Giuliani race to a Clinton-Bloomberg-Giuliani race. Either way, the news right now is bad for the GOP:

1. Even without Bloomberg, Giuliani loses nearly every swing state. Giuliani would win only Missouri and Washington. Note that WV, CO, NV, AZ, PA, MI, and FL are not included in this sample.

2. Bloomberg seems to take his votes from both sides, but somewhat more from the GOP. However, in the swing states, the damage seems to be almost 2-1 against the GOP. However, these results are almost all within the margin of error.

I'm personally not big on horse race reporting, and these are way early polls anyway. But at least it gives you some idea where Bloomberg's support might come from.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his first public appearance since announcing switching from the Republican Party to being an independent, a press conference celebrating the alleged success of his 311 program, to showcase his policy creativity to the media.

Bloomberg’s aware that his leaving the Republican Party would confirm to the media, his current constituents and potential presidential voters, that he’s pursuing an independent Presidential candidacy, despite saying wink, wink, I’m not running, and knew the world be watching his first appearance after making public his official political independence. This is why Bloomberg is using a press conference honoring 311, a program that he is particularly but unjustifiably proud of, as the location of his personal Presidential Debutante Ball.

Bloomberg hoped touting 311 success would perpetuate the myth that he’s a non-partisan problem solver. But the emperor has no clothes. 311 is useless.

Danny Hakim at the Empire Zone reports that New York State Republicans, unsurprisingly, are "pining" for a Giuliani nomination -- since it looks to be about the only thing that could rescue their Albany fortunes at this point. In recent presidential election years, the extra turnout has helped Democrats in swing districts; the state's GOP dinosaurs are hoping that a Rudy candidacy would turn that trend on its head.

Serph Maltese, himself an endangered old elephant, sounds positively giddy:

Having Mr. Giuliani at the top of the ticket, he said, “ensures that we hold the State Senate,” which would be no small victory. The Senate is the Republican Party’s last statewide power base — and one that Gov. Eliot Spitzer covets.
“You know we will certainly take aim at the Klein seat, the Nancy Larraine Hoffmann seat,” Mr. Maltese said, referring to the Bronx-Westchester seat of Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, a Democrat, and the Syracuse-area seat once held by Ms. Hoffmann, a Republican. Mr. Maltese added that he also thought the party could win back the Westchester seat that Nicholas A. Spano lost last year.

The question is whether a candidate who supports gun control and the right to abortion, and who may very well be excommunicated from the Catholic church -- whether for the abortion stance, his adultery, or both -- could really turn out New York's conservative base. Certainly, his fraught history with the state's Conservative Party doesn't bode well for those hopes.

David Saltonstall of the Daily News has a very interesting piece on the unusually, shall we say, sanitary condition of Rudy Giuliani's mayoral archives. Seems Rudy's people snapped up over 2,000 boxes of records from City Hall when he left office, with the promise that the newly-ex-mayor would personally pay to have them privately archived.

And he did. Only, the files were returned without a detailed index -- which makes it extremely difficult to search them. What's more, based on what reporters have found so far, history seems to have decided to be somewhat kinder to Rudy since his people borrowed the records:

A file labeled "Private Life/Divorce" offers nothing more than a few old press clippings about his breakup with Donna Hanover, as well as a transcript from the May 2000 press conference where he described his then-girlfriend and now-wife, Judith Nathan, as "a very good friend."

Meanwhile, Hanover's papers as First Lady have been all but erased. "This subgroup was not filmed," is all the archive says.

Documents from the historic weeks after 9/11 seem similarly scant. Instead of memos detailing concerns about air quality or coordination among agencies, the record consists of a few dry reports that sketch efforts to restore the city bureaucracy. [...]

One of the most disgusting tactics the Republicans have used is exploiting the 9/11 attacks for their own gains. As my wife (when she was 8 months pregnant) yelled at Republican delegates to the Republican Convention in 2004, "Shame on you for turning our tragedy into a photo op." The delegates were none too pleased being chased down the street by a very pregnant woman accusing them of exploiting our tragedy.

Well, as I reported yesterday, Rudy Giuliani (the man despised by the firefighters who were the TRUE heroes of 9/11) is the latest Republican to use this disgusting tactic. Not only was Giuliani's claim that only a Republican can prevent a terrorist attack a disgusting exploitation of a national tragedy, but it is demonstrably wrong. Clinton's administration prevented the millenium attacks. He also warned the nation that al-Qaeda was going to attack. Bush's administration ignored the warnings and the 9/11 attacks happened on HIS watch. Giuliani is wrong.

Howard Dean is taking him on and I think it is particularly important for NYC to reject "anti-firefighter" Giuliani's exploitation of the attacks on our city. This is Howard Dean's message and call to action: