Wisdom worth sharing, words worth remembering.
You know I start with the assumption that -or with with the belief that this president has to succeed. We all have an enormous amount of capital invested in his success. His success is the country's success.
This society cannot go forward the way we have been going forward where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It's not politically viable it's not morally right it's just not going to happen.
When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.
When I came into office people said 'Billionaire? How do they live? What do they eat? How do they sleep?' Today they see me on the subway coming uptown. A couple of people say hi some people smile and nod. Some people just sleep. It's not an issue.
We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life. And it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11 2001.
Nobody is going to delegate a lot of power to a secretary that they can't control.
You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because unless we do all of these things it just doesn't work. And what's good theater and what's good politics isn't necessarily good economic policy.
You know if you look back in the 1930s the money went to infrastructure. The bridges the municipal buildings the roads those were all built with stimulus money spent on infrastructure. This stimulus bill has fundamentally gone started out with a $500 rebate check remember. That went to buy flat-screen TVs made in China.
If Warren Buffett made his money from ordinary income rather than capital gains his tax rate would be a lot higher than his secretary's. In fact a very small percentage of people in this country pay a big chunk of the taxes.
And I think the more money you put in people's hands the more they will spend. And if they don't spend it they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans and we need to do that.
If you really believe that you're making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools bring down crime build affordable housing clean the streets – not to have a fair fight.
These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country and they are the reason why it is so expensive or one of the reasons it's so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run.