People From New York City

"So what is it about Trump and Russia, and could it have any connection with Trump's close friendship with the deceased pedaphile, Jeffrey Epstein?"

"When recently asked... about the Epstein files, Trump said... "It's just a Russia, Russia, Russia hoax." ..."[H]oax," the word he used for when something is true, but the most telling... is that Trump's mind, [when] asked about Epstein, immediately went to Russia."

"There are few things that enrage the American public more than crooked, dark money political spending. If you tried to get a dark money political spending bill through the Senate, you couldn't do it. If you tried to get it through the House, you couldn't do it. If you put the Senate and House under Republican control, you still couldn't do it, but if you have captured the Supreme Court [...] then a decision that is as unpopular and enraging as this decision comes your way, and they pulled it off in plain daylight."

"Behind Trump’s fog bank and pretexts, he and his un-elected co-president Musk are simply stealing from the American people to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. It’s gangster government."

"Despite documented warnings from their own scientists dating from the 1970s, ExxonMobil pursued a campaign of deceit, denial, and delay. They may soon have to face the consequences. History will not look kindly on their choice."

"If Trump were purposefully doing Russia's bidding, it is hard to see what he would be doing differentlty."

"The basic principle with self-herding is that people don't know what they want very often. Figuring out our preferences is in fact very hard. If I ask you, "What is the best place to eat?" you have many choices. These are hard questions with lots of possible answers. They way we often answer these is by asking, "What have I done before? What I did before must have been a good decision, after all I wouldn't have made it if it wasn't a great decision, let me repeat it." We can consult our preferences or we can consult our memory. It turns out it's often easier to consult our memory.What does it mean to marketers? To the extent that you can get people to behave one way there's a good likelihood that people will keep on doing that later. If you can remind people how they behaved, there's a good chance that they will keep on behaving that way. So the logic suggests that the efforts of marketing should be particularly concentrated when people make first decisions about the product, like people in college who are making first decisions for themselves. It could include product introductions. It could also include things that happen when there's a shift in the economy. The recession caused many people to reconsider their habits."

"What we find is that lots of people can cheat a little bit. If we cheat a lot, we … face the possibility that we will feel bad about ourselves. So we play a game within ourselves.Sometimes we think about game theory as kind of a game between two parties. It is also a game within a person. You say to yourself, I want to think of myself as a good, honest, wonderful person. I selfishly want to benefit from dishonesty. It turns out that you can cheat a little bit and still feel good about yourself. That is the general lesson that we find."

"Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. Why? I think it's because humans are intrinsically afraid of loss"

"Imagine I give you a choice: Do you want to go for a weekend to Rome, all expenses paid -- hotel, transportation, food, a continental breakfast, everything -- or a weekend in Paris? Now, weekend in Paris, weekend in Rome -- these are different things. They have different food, different culture, different art. Imagine I added a choice to the set that nobody wanted. Imagine I said, "A weekend in Rome, a weekend in Paris, or having your car stolen?" It's a funny idea, because why would having your car stolen, in this set, influence anything? But what if the option to have your car stolen was not exactly like this? What if it was a trip to Rome, all expenses paid, transportation, breakfast, but it doesn't include coffee in the morning? If you want coffee, you have to pay for it yourself, it's two euros 50.Now in some ways, given that you can have Rome with coffee, why would you possibly want Rome without coffee? It's like having your car stolen. It's an inferior option. But guess what happened? The moment you add Rome without coffee, Rome with coffee becomes more popular, and people choose it. The fact that you have Rome without coffee makes Rome with coffee look superior, and not just to Rome without coffee -- even superior to Paris."

"I mean, today you probably will have some opportunities to take stuff and put it in your backpack, and nobody would know. You could take some silverware, there’s cups, there’s all kinds of things you could take home with nobody noticing, and no probability of being caught. If you’re a rational economist you would say, you should take all those options, there’s opportunity! But of course you think differently — if you did that, you’d feel you’re a bad person, and that’s what’s stopping you. The curious thing is that what stops us, doesn’t stop us from doing everything. We have a fudge factor, we have an ability to rationalize some dishonesty and as long as we cheat just a little bit, we can still rationalize it."

"With technological changes, there have also been changes to irrationality. We have been bombarded with more information, so making decisions is tougher than ever. Not only that, but we have a strong chance of regretting our decisions. Before the world was digital, you could make a decision, and you would probably never be able to see that your decision was not a great one. Now, if you buy something online, the day after it’s a click away to see that the prices have changed and regret can set in. So there’s a combination of information overload and a high potential for regret."

"One of the basic principles from behavioral economics is the environment matters. If you think about it, what is our environment trying to do? You’re walking down the street, you’re walking in the mall, in every shopping entity, in every advertisement, all of them want something from you. And what they want from you is not your long-term well-being. What they want is your time, money and attention right now. It’s getting harder and harder because our apps are on the phone, websites’ [ads] are popping so this question of resisting temptation is something that is becoming more and more difficult."

"Everywhere in the world except in Asia Minor, the three great Semitic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - are intruders; that indigenous Asia is Brahmanist, Confucianist, Buddhist, Taoist; indigenous Europe is pagan; that in Europe, Christianity is a superimposition; in Asia, Islam is."

"A growing revulsion against the atrocities (committed against farm animals) might well have a positive effect on reducing those practiced regularly on these shores against the aged, African-Americans, poor whites, Latinos, women, lesbians and gays, social activists, Native Americans and Asians, to name but a few of our perennial pariahs."

"When we talk about justice in America we're really talking about justice brought about by the people, not by judges who are tools of the establishment or prosecutors who are equally tools of the establishment or the wardens or the police officers."

"No honest man needs more than 10 rounds in any gun."

"The best way to address the firepower concern is therefore not to try to outlaw or license many millions of older and perfectly legitimate firearms (which would be a licensing effort of staggering proportions) but to prohibit the possession of high capacity magazines. By a simple, complete and unequivocal ban on large capacity magazines, all the difficulty of defining 'assault rifle' and 'semi-automatic rifles' is eliminated. The large capacity magazine itself, separate or attached to the firearm, becomes the prohibited item. A single amendment to Federal firearms laws could effectively implement these objectives."

"SALT encourages high-income New Yorkers to move to other states. And what you have to remember is even if a small number of high-income taxpayers leave, it has a dramatic effect on this tax space. We have one of the most progressive tax codes in the United States, which is a good thing. Which means the richer you are, the more you pay. However, that presents a very fragile economy because then you are relying on a very small number of people for the vast amount of your tax dollars. One percent of the taxpayers pay nearly half of all the taxes. One percent pay nearly half of all those taxes. Those one percent are the richest people in the state, they're the richest people in the country, and they are the most mobile people in the country. And you see the chart on the bottom. Top one percent - about 46 percent. Top five percent - 63 percent of all the revenue. Top 10 percent - 74 percent of all the revenue. Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. We did. Now, God forbid the rich leave. More than 95 percent of the tax increase from SALT falls on the top 20 percent of taxpayers."

"We’re the ones who are hit now. That’s today, but tomorrow it’s going to somewhere else, whether it’s Detroit, whether it’s New Orleans. It will work it’s way across the country"

"[Cuomo] chose to protect business profits over people's lives and now the whole world is paying attention to that decision and he needs to be held accountable for that"

"My brother Chris, is positive for coronavirus"

"New York State calls this attack on Jussie Smollett what it is — a hate crime. Homophobia and racism will not be tolerated"

"In May 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced a partnership with the Gates Foundation to 'reinvent education.' Cuomo called Gates a visionary and argued that the pandemic has created 'a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates'] ideas...all these buildings, all these physical classrooms-why with all the technology you have?' In fact, Gates has been trying to dismantle the public education system of the United States for two decades."

"It's a sad thing to say ... but that's classic Andrew Cuomo. A lot of people in New York State have received those phone calls. The bullying is nothing new. I believe Ron Kim and it's very, very sad, no public servant no person who's telling the truth should be treated that way. The threats, the belittling, the demand that someone change their statement right that moment ... many many times I've heard that and I know a lot of other people in this state have heard that"

"Governor Cuomo has complete discretion to be able to issue mass clemencies for the prisons. We know that de Blasio, the mayor, has the power to be able to release hundreds and thousands of people from Rikers Island and other jails. And so we really want them to be able to do that. There’s lots of pressure and demands that have been issued by local groups."

"You know who came through Ellis Island? A gentleman named Richard Cawley. A poor Irish immigrant who came during the potato famine. You know who his grandson is? Vice President Michael Pence. You know who else came through New York harbor? Frederick Trump, grandfather of Donald Trump. The greatest arrogance is when you forget where you came from, and where you started, and this is the greatest arrogance. We all came from somewhere else. We are all immigrants."

"We are not going to make America great again. It was never that great. We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping of women, 51% of our population, is gone, and every woman's full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution."

"'Just say no' isn't enough unless there is something to say 'yes' to.""

"Hemp and marijuana should be regulated like onions. No difference. If you can grow onion in your backyard, you can grow hemp or weed in your backyard. If you can grow onions in your farm, your family farm, you can grow hemp or marijuana in your family farm."

"I would love to have a society that is based only on volunteer associations. That would be amazing. I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime, so the closest I can get to that — that's what I want."

"Being a FBI agent, being a police officer in Denver, Aurora, or any community is a tremendously rewarding job. To a certain extent, it goes up and down. It can be thankless as well. But you're really serving your community if you're serving as a police officer. I prosecuted homicide cases in Washington for almost three years, where I spent much, if not most of my time in the courtrooms along with homicide victims' families and the like, and it tears apart a community, and there's no more valuable function to the safety and security of the community than the police forces."

"You really don't think about it as you go through it; you just try to do the right thing at the right time."

"The problem with training is it's the last thing on the budget list. It's the first thing to get cut. And it should not be."

"I think we're certainly vulnerable when it comes to the type of information that is out there. The type of information that is out there and available to those that want to find it and want to damage and harm to us. We're also to a certain extent vulnerable by the fact that we live by the rules passed by Congress. If I want to get an application before the court to intercept somebody's conversations, I have to show probable cause to believe that person is affiliated with a terrorist group. And if I don't get the probable cause, I can't do it. And we've had instances, Awlaki, a relatively famous individual exporter of the type of terrorism we've seen in the United States, was doing videos for a substantial period of time before the Fort Hood shooting, and it was only after that that we found out he was involved in the operations. Any other country, they may well have been up on his wire beforehand, because there's no responsibility of showing a court that there's probable cause to believe that this individual is involved in terrorist activities."

"[T]he Special Counsel regulations effectively gave me the role of . As a result, we structured our investigation around evidence for possible use in prosecution of federal crimes. We did not reach... conclusions. We did, however, set up processes... to identify and pass counterintelligence information... to the FBI. Members of our office periodically briefed the FBI about counterintelligence information. In addition, there were agents and analysts from the FBI who were not on our team, but whose job it was to identify counterintelligence information in our files, and to disseminate that information to the FBI. With these reasons, questions about what the FBI has done with the counterintelligence information obtained from our investigation should be directed to the FBI."

"Cyberbullying, I know, it's being handled, generally, on the state side with state legislation. I look at it, frankly, as a father with children, with their ability to use Facebook and the like, knowing that anything you put on Facebook is going to be there and be there and be there. And who at that age understands the consequences of doing something when you're 16 that may come back to haunt you when you're 25 and you're seeking a job not in the private sector, necessarily, but in the public sector that you really want but some of the things that you've said or done or taken back then preclude you from exploring those options."

"The order appointing me special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation and kept the office of the acting Attorney General apprised of the progress of our work. After that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime. The introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision."

"After September 11th, you had core al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan with (Osama) bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed. You have al Qaeda growing in countries like Somalia, but most particularly in Yemen. And there's still substantial threat out of Yemen. And now you have the countries in the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Mali; Egypt most recently, where they're breeding grounds for radical extremists who may not stay there, but may present an attack. And, finally, you have, within the United States, the growth of homegrown, radicalized extremists who are radicalized on the Internet and then get their instructions for developing explosives on the Internet, as well."

"I think there's a good chance we would have prevented at least a part of 9/11. In other words, there were four planes. There were almost 20 — 19 persons involved. I think we would have had a much better chance of identifying those individuals who were contemplating that attack."

"I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again."

"I would query about what do you mean in terms of civil liberties. ... Do we exchange information in ways we did not before? Absolutely. You can say that that is a — to the extent that you exchange information between CIA, FBI, NSA and the like — you could characterize that as somehow giving up liberties. But the fact of the matter is, it's understandable and absolutely necessary if you want to protect the security of the United States."

"Our relationship was based almost always on him calling up and asking, 'Is this a good deal?,' I’m not in his business, and I wasn’t trying to be. I was just a guy who admired him a lot and was flattered he wanted my advice. I buy my clothes at J.Crew online, I’m a very casual guy. When I go to see Iron Man 3, I’m not as enthralled as I was when I saw The Bridge on the River Kwai I don’t agree that the best giving is anonymous. We should be examples to our friends and communities. I should be an example to young, gay kids it’s not like people are really anonymous anyway -- you remember that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm? In the end, everybody knows who 'anonymous' is."

"Second) the Justice Department has asserted privileges concerning investigative information and decisions, ongoing matters within the Justice Department, and deliberations within our office. These are Justice Department privileges that I will respect. The department has released a letter discussing the restrictions on my testimony. I therefore will not be able to answer questions about certain areas... of public interest. For example, I am unable to address questions about the opening of the FBI's Russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment, or matters related to the... Steele dossier. These matters are the subject of ongoing review by the department. Any questions on these topics should therefore be directed to the FBI, or the Justice Department."

"When we had these African bombings of those embassies, we had an intelligence service in there that helped us. We had law enforcement agencies that helped us. We had access. In Libya, you have a government that does not control most of Libya, or a good portion of Libya. And consequently, the ambassador, the State Department, ourselves — were pushing to get in there at the earliest possible moment. And that ended up being a couple of weeks down the road. But that does not mean that we have not very thoroughly investigated that and are continuing to investigate it. And I do believe the persons responsible will be brought to justice."

"Finally) ...over the course of my career I have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government's efforts to interfere in our election is among the most serious..."

"It's Mueller Time."

"Mueller Ain't Going Away"

"Trump's cavalier attitude toward the Russian security threat has had a predictable yet devastating consequence. Moscow has not been deterred from attacking American interests. It has been emboldened. They continue to take advantage of the United States, around the world and on our own soil. Former director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified in January 2019 that Russia was still sowing social, racial, and political discord in the United States through influence operations, and several months later, Robert Mueller said the same. "It wasn't a single attempt," he testified to Congress. "They're doing it as we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign." This should be a national scandal, a cause for outrage and action against the Russian government. Instead, it's being ignored where it should matter most- in the Oval Office. Reporters asked Trump about Mueller's assessment days later and quizzed him again on whether he'd pressed Putin on the topic. "You don't really believe this," he shot back. "Do you believe this? Okay, fine. We didn't talk about it." Then he boarded Marine One."

"Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!"