Not only is the article biased (Written by the attorney representing the cabdrivers who litigated against the policies enacted by Guiiliani) but frankly, its counter-persuasive. I think people would be morely likely to vote for Giuliani than against him based on this article.

The author's underlying premise is that there really never was a problem with blacks not being able to get cabs in New York City. Since I've never been a black man trying to hail a cab in New York City, I obviously cannot speak to this issue from firsthand experience. I do know, however, that ever since I became aware, as an adolescent, of racial tensions in America, I have heard complaints and read numerous articles about blacks not being able to get cabs in New York City. Have they all been lies and overreactions? Danny Glover doesn't exactly strike me as Mr. Angry Militant Whitey-Hating Black Man.

Some of you may remember a stunt pulled by liberal documentarian Michael Moore on his reality-based telvision show, "TV Nation". He went to New York and filmed prominent black actor Yaphet Kotto attempting to hail a cab. Countless cabs passed him by without pulling over. He then had a white convicted felon try to hail a cab. Many more cabs pulled over for the white felon than for Mr. Kotto.

I think we can all agree that Michael Moore is not going to be casting a vote for Rudy Guiliani anytime soon. But what his exercise demonstrated was that the problem with blacks not being able to get cabs in New York City was not a figment of Rudy Guiliani's imagination, contrary to what the cabbies' lawyer would have you believe. How is it that the author can say that the reason why most blacks can't get a cab is because the cab driver isn't going to their particular destination, if the cab driver will not even pull over to ask the black man where he wants to go? And, if a cab driver specifically chooses not to go to areas of town where there is large black population, then the explanation of "not going to that destination" is not really a race-neutral one, is it?

I have less trouble believing the second part of the author's argument: that Guiliani was being too hard on the cabbies who were accused of violated the policy, and the harshness was for political gain. I have no doubt that Guiliani had to have known that cracking down on racist cabbies would have improved his position with black voters, and this may have even been driving the policy. But so what? This is how things are supposed to work in a democracy. If a problem exists among a signifcant portion of the citizenry, and a politican fixes the problem, the politician should be able to count on some goodwill among the voters whom he helped. From what has been described, it sounds like Guiliani helped solve a very significant problem affecting the black residents of New York City. It shouldn't be pooh-poohed simply because it may have been politically motivated.

As far the idea that his crackdown was unfair and violated the rights of the cabbies, this is what the courts are for. And apparently, Guiliani went too far. I don't see this as a legitimate reason to vote against him. As a government lawyer, I know firsthand that it's very easy to "go to far" in remedying problems. There are very few "bright lines" in the area of due process. At the end of the day, all you can do is implement a policy that you think is fair, just, and legal, and hope the courts agree. It doesn't always happen that way. But it doesn't mean that you were acting maliciously.

So Guiliani imposed penalties that were too harsh on racist cab drivers. Memo to Guiliani's Opponents: Do NOT try to attack Guiliani for this. It will backfire. Most people on either side of the poltical spectrum favor harsh sanctions for people who deny services to other people based on race.

Make no mistake, I am not a Guiliani supporter. (Although I do think that of the GOP candidates, he is the one I would least mind seeing sworn in as President). But honestly, if you're trying to offer reasons not to vote for Guiliani, you've got to do better than this.

Ha! I loved this post. Your issues were so off base I'm not sure you even read the article.

"As far the idea that his crackdown was unfair and violated the rights of the cabbies, this is what the courts are for."

????? You missed the point. Guiliani took the cars with no hearing, he avoided due process (as guaranteed by the Constitution) so the cases NEVER WENT TO COURT. If you don't mind the idea of having a President who ignores the constitution then...

"And apparently, Guiliani went too far. I don't see this as a legitimate reason to vote against him. "

You don't? Personally I want a President who actually respects the law and doesn't knowingly violate it. I guess that is just me.

"So Guiliani imposed penalties that were too harsh on racist cab drivers."

Umm...no. You missed the part of the article that made it clear the cab drivers were not racist. They were declining fairs due to location, not race.

Oh, and I take issue with your use of the word "biased". a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice. Having a point of view based on Giuliani's actions is not biased. It is judgement. If I saw you steal my wallet and called you a thief that is not a biased statement.

This post is so wrong on so many points. First, the author of the article admits and identifies his role in the history he is relating. There is a difference between point of view and bias. He goes on to offer a relation of events, not opinions. Evidently the courts agreed with him. Also, the poster says the author's underlying premise was that there was not really a racial problem for New York would-be taxi passengers. That is NOT what the author said at all. What he said was that Giuliani's procedures for responding to the complaints about discrimination were ham-handed grandstanding, illegal, unconstitutional, and biased against small independent cab drivers regardless of whether they were in fact discriminating based on race. Moreover, when called on his illegal acts, the mayor did his best to stonewall and refuse to cooperate, showing his contempt for the rule of law.
It seems to me these are important things to know about a presidential candidate.

And, I guess that you did not read clearly the post of the person that you are now criticizing! He said clearly (and I agree with him), that how can the cab drivers have said that the black people's destination was the reason that they were refused service, when according to tests put on by Michael Moore and others, that proved that the cab drivers were going by the blacks that were wanting cabs WITHOUT EVEN STOPPING TO SEE WHERE THEY WANTED TO GO?

ellamenta:

This post is so wrong on so many points. First, the author of the article admits and identifies his role in the history he is relating. There is a difference between point of view and bias.

I understand. And this is an example of bias. This was not a detached and neutral observer of the controversy who formed judgments about what had happened based on his obeservations. This was the lawyer who was hired by the cabbies to litigate these issues, and who apparently made a lot of money advocating these points for the cabbies. He is therefore biased. That's not to say whether he's right or wrong. You can be biased and still be correct.

But the point is, Slate is asking us to give credbility to his observations. Slate's readers should be (and I believe are, for the most part) more skeptical than that. If you're doing a background check on a person, and you wanted to know if that person has been an upstanding citizen, you would ask people who casually know the person. You wouldn't ask the person's mother. The same principle applies here. If you wanted to know whether Guiliani treated the cabdrivers unfairly, you wouldn't ask the lawyer for the cabdrivers. You'd ask someone who, at a mainimum, had no stake in the dispute.

The author here most certainly did try to minimize the problem of cabbies not picking up blacks by suggesting that of those who complained, only 15% were denied service due to race, the rest were denied service due to location. No thinking person would be persuaded by this statement. This obviously would not even count all the times that the cabbie wouldn't even pull over to pick up a black man, which I understand to have been the gravamen of the problem. And if a cabbie refuses to go to locations that have large black populations, that is not a racially-neutral reason.

As for the charge that Guiliani "stonewalled and refused to cooperate", once again, the bias of the writer prevents a critical reader from fairly judging the facts. Charges of "stonewalling and refusing to cooperate" are terms that are thrown around in legal disputes all the time. Much of litigation these days is consumed with discovery disputes, including disputes over who must give depositions, etc. The fact that the court eventually ordered Guiliani to testify doesn't necessarily mean that Guiliani's initial refual was in bad faith.

Let me illustrate this point. You purchase a Nintendo Wii. You take it home and it breaks. Nintendo refuses to fix it, claiming that you did something to void the warranty. You sue Nintendo.

If you have an aggressive lawyer, he will send out a multitude of discovery requests for documents in the possession of Ninetendo. This strategy is twofold: First, there probably are some documents he wants that may be relevant to the litigation. Second, he wants to force Ninetendo to spend a lot of man-hours defending your lawsuit, in the hopes that someone in a position of power at Nintendo will throw up his arms and cut you a check, realizing that its going to take more time, effort and money to fight the case than to write you a check. So your lawyer has every incentive to make his discovery requests as broad as possible. He wants every possible category of documents. He wants to depose everyone in the company. Nintendo, on the other hand, has every incentive to want to limit what your lawyer receive, and who they get to depose. Even if they have nothing to hide, the amount of time all this will take is time that could be better spent on business matters. So they will fight your requests. Your lawyer will argue that these documents sought fall into the category of documents that must be disclsoued. Nintendo will argue to the contrary. The rules are written to apply to all types of discovery request. They describe documents using very broad generalizations that any smart person could argue either does or does not apply to the documents that are being fought over. The judge will then make a decision. Nintendo may have to produce none, some or all of what your lawyer was asking for. This does not necessarily mean that Nintendo was "stonewalling". They may have had legitimate arguments for not releasing the documents.

But when the defendant is the City of New York, rather than a videogame manufacturer, discovery is even more complicated. That is because governments are in possession of data, information, and documents that, if made public, could violate a statute, or violate someone's right of privacy, or compromise an investigation, etc. So I'm not at all willing to believe, simply based on the say-so of the lawyer for the cabbies, that Guiliani was "stonewalling". It seems quite plausible to me that Guiliani may have had a legitimate reason for refusing to turn over certain documents.

The same is true for deposition testimony. If you sue Nintendo, you don't automatically get to depose the CEO of Nintendo. The same is true with government. If you sue the United States, you don't automatically get to depose the President. If you sue the City of New York, you don't automatically get to depose the Mayor. You have to demonstrate to the court why it's necessary. The courts weigh the legitimate needs of the party seeking deposition testimony against the government's need to have its chief executive not bogged down in litigation. It's a balancing test, and you can never be ceratin which way the court will rule. So once again, just because Guiliani initially refused to testify doesn't mean he was "stonewalling". If Guiliani had to personally testify in every case where someone sued the City of New York, that's all he would have ever done while in office.

As I said from the very outset, I don't know the particulars of this issue between the cabdrivers and Guiliani. This author may be correct that Guiliani treated the cabdrivers poorly, and acted as if he were above the law during the ensuing litigation. Then again, he may not have. The fact that I am not a Guilaini supporter does not mean that I will automatically believe every charge that is leveled against the man. Unlike many in Guiliani's party, I didn't drink the Kool-Aid, so I don't accept the truth of every allegatuion made against someone who I don't support politically. If someone wants me to believe a charge against someone, they need to persuade me. Having the lawyer for the cabbies regurgitate the allegations will not persuade me, nor will it persuade most of Slate's readers, who are bit more critical in their thinking than Slate's editors might believe.

My previous post was in response to TJA.

You make good points, and of all the things to take with a grain of salt in this article, the details regarding the lawsuit are at the top of the list.

I think the bigger problem here is the implementation of the "crackdown". While there are many concerns about race-based profiling by cabbies, suspending or completely revoking licenses with no hearing and no appeal does not seem fair in the slightest. And as such, a $7 million settlement would, on its face, indicate that the courts agreed.

But I would have rather heard more about the shady aspects of Giuliani's program, and less about the lawsuit from a biased point of view. Lawsuits are so very easy to spin one way or the other, using the exact same set of facts.

Excellent original post. There's much I dislike about Guiliani, but his handling of this taxi situation isn't one of them. So the rude and racist cabbies might have had some rights trampled. Unfortunate, but not something high on my list to worry about.

I don't know, CalLawyer. I think there are a few reasonably bright lines in due process. One of them suggests it's not cool to deprive people of their livelihood without due process of law (see, e.g., Goldberg v. Kelly). To simply punt and say, "well, that's what the courts are for" is a surprisingly weak answer from a lawyer. Do you mean to suggest that the cab drivers have essentially been made whole after years of litigation? Seems unlikely.

It's not really good enough to treat it as though it was a close question ex ante---Giuliani himself is a lawyer and ought to have known better, just as you should (in case it's relevant, I'm a law student, and I did know better). Of course, this episode is perfectly in keeping with other accounts of Giuliani's lawyering, the unifying theme of which appears to be extraordinary bullying for political gain.

So, to come to the crux of your argument---that the article does not offer a reason not to vote against Giuliani---I would suggest that it does. It shows that Giuliani is willing to bully politically weak groups for his own gain, and generally act like a jackbooted thug on the basis of dubious information. He's a self-righteous zealot. That's good enough for me. "[He] went too far" is a perfectly good reason not to vote for him. He consistently goes too far, for the wrong reasons and in the face of reasonably clear limits.

Due process is not bright line, unless so held by an authoritative appellate court or a trial court that has jurisdiction. What amount of process one is due depends on the particular situation. In some circumstances, for example, the executive agent may make determinations that affect or impair an individual's rights--and the executive's good faith and reasonable determination suffices for sufficient process. In other situations, one's particular rights may not be impaired until after trial by jury right to attorney etc.

I do not know whether these cabbies were afforded due process, but I will not take their lawyer's word for it.