The first duty of any government executive, whether mayor, governor, or president, is to protect those in your care. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Rudi Giuliani failed miserably in this most basic duty.
The Giuliani administration deliberately ignored the safety of workers at the 9-11 site. The toll of those killed and sickened will never be fully known, but it continues to mount.
See
this diary by Egberto Willies from earlier this morning, discussing the question of why, oh why, any rational person would ever listen to what this guy says about anything.
From this 2007 article in the New York Times:
Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.
...
City officials have always maintained that they acted in good faith to protect everyone at the site but that many workers chose not to wear available safety equipment, for a variety of reasons.
[Emphasis added]
In a word -
No!
I have worked at hazardous material sites. There is no choosing not wear protective equipment - unless the people in charge are deliberately flouting the law.
I spent the summer of 1991 conducting a sampling program at an abandoned chemical plant. Much of the time we wore Level B protection - Tyvek suits and supplied air - due to Carbon Tetrochloride and other contaminants we had found.
It wasn't fun. You had to plan your route carefully to avoid crocheting your air hose with the hoses of the other workers. if your heart rate went above a certain number twice within an hour, you were done for the day. We groaned when the safety officer told us that we weren't allowed to ride around the site in the backs of pickup trucks - no seat belts.
But one topic never came up - noncompliance. We did the work, and as far as I know, everyone involved is healthy more than two decades later.
And now we come to the heart of the matter, from the same Times article:
At the same time, the [Giuliani] administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed.
So let's assemble that all together. If your work slows, you might get fired. And, you can "voluntarily" choose not to wear essential protective equipment such as respirators.
This is the right wing vision for the future. You have the Right to Work under unsafe conditions, because you'll be fired if you don't meet quota.
We hear all the time from executives at all levels how they should be accorded huge authority in order to protect us. There are plenty of problems with that approach - but if anyone wants that idea to be taken seriously, they need to actually protect people.
So next time you hear this gasbag going on about who loves America, remember the enduring health issues of the 9-11 workers, who were deliberately not protected. And consider those whose illness is yet to manifest due to latency, such as the several decades it may take for cancer to appear from Asbestos exposure.
Rudi Giuliani, Ayn Rand, and Paul Ryan walk on to a construction site.
They are crushed by a load of steel dropped by a crane, because OSHA requirements were redefined as voluntary guidelines during the Ryan Adminstration's reforms of 2017.
The end.