Anthony Galli

Putin wants torestore the Russian empire, which means keeping #Ukraine close. But just before the invasion, the media was talking as if Vlad the Invader might not invade after all. You see, there’s a tendency in the West to overestimate rubles over romanticism; physical forceover cultural influence. By underestimating Putin’s desire to subordinate Ukraine, the West made little attempt to prevent its invasion.Here’s what a competent administration should’ve done: The carrot: Biden should’ve promised not to add Ukraine to NATO because it’s unnecessarily provocative. Imagine if Russia built military bases on our border. Ever since the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. has been against foreign intervention in our hemisphere let alone on our border. Declaring that Ukraine will not be added to NATO would be similar to what JFK did to avoid war during the Cuban-Missile crisis where we removed our nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy. The stick: Biden should’ve signed into law sanctions and aid that would’ve automatically taken effect if Russian troops crossed a clearly defined red line such as Ukrainian territory“not occupied since 2014.”The US should’ve then jetted around the world to get as many nations as possible to sign on. This would’ve been better than scrambling post-invasion to figure out our sanctions and partners. It’s like rushing to finish your homework as the teacher is going around checking it. By signing this preemptive treaty it would’ve made the cost of an invasion more transparent so Russia would know we wouldn’t just slap their wrist again as we did after Crimea. A big part of the sanctions should’ve been on Russian oil and natural gas where as a matter of national emergency Biden should’ve opened up the US drilling floodgates as well as tapped into our Strategic Petroleum Reserve so we could promise our European allies that we’d meet their energy needs if Russia invaded Ukraine. The US only uses a tiny fraction of its energy production capacity because Democrats have succeeded in reducing U.S. nuclear energy, natural gas, and oil, therefore, making the world more dependent upon authoritarian regimes for energy. Ultimately, by encouraging the world to move from Russian energy to American energy this would’ve been a realpolitik way for the US to benefit from the invasion. A bad sanction the Biden administration has implemented isfreezing the Central Bank of Russia’s dollar reservesandremoving Russian banks from SWIFTbecause by punishing countries who store dollars weaccelerate the dollar's demise as the world’s reserve currency. Putin saw this sanction coming, which is why Russia has so few dollars in its reserves relative to other countries. When you couple rising gas & wheat prices with less international trust in the dollar you get massive inflation. If we did what I've suggested here thenbest case Russia would’ve accepted the NATO compromiseandworst case we would’ve made a lot of money from selling more energy. But instead, we’re sending an additional$13.6 billion to Ukraine. In 2019, the US government shutdown because House Democrats didn’t want to spend $5.7 billion on building more wall on the southern border to help reduce the unprecedented amount of illegal immigration and drugs flowing into the country.Why are we willing to spend billions enforcing other countries’ borders, but not our own?And why has Ukraine been so ill-prepared for this invasion? The Ukrainian government has beenextremely corrupt and incompetentand so why is it up to American taxpayers to bail them out? Republicans and Democrats are stepping over each other on who can appear tougher on Putin from behind their podiums, which it’s good if Democrats are distracted from implementing their destructive statist agenda, but Republicans should stay focused on freeing America first.

The New York Times believes: Hospital Greed Is Destroying Our Nurses. In this video, I explain why they're wrong.

We all know that education in America is broken, but how to fix it? The mainstream tells us it's because of a lack of funding or too much testing, but in reality, it comes down to power and who has it (hint: not students, parents, taxpayers, non-tenured teachers).

This isn't a discussion about how high or low taxes should be as much as it's about how we can tax more effectively.

Democrats say we're in a climate crisis, but act like we aren't. Actions speak louder than words.

How to personally and politically slow aging.

Should the United States of America (particularly President Harry S. Truman [D]) have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki, Japan During WW2?

Is reincarnation (aka rebirth) real? Let's explore the evidence and implications.

Why are newspapers declining? How much would BBB give them? What will be the consequences? How to make the local newspaper industry grow again?

America is increasingly becoming an oligarchy. Is it a left-wing or right-wing oligarchy? The answer should be obvious, but for those of you who are a bit slow (or busy) I provide the evidence and explain the phenonmon that's fueling it.

A Land Value Tax is the "least bad tax." It decreases inequality and increases economic efficiency, job creation, and affordable housing. It isn't widely implemented because of powerful interests, but times are changing. Buckle up, Buckaroo!

I didn't see any "I voted" stickers this year from my peers even though in 2021 there were elections in my hometown, county, and state (New York). Virtually every part of the country had local elections where one's vote often carries more weight than for federal positions, and yet, despite just one short year ago where everyone was guilt-tripped/fearmongered into voting the cries of "civic duty!" have dramatically died down.

The conservative case for breaking up Google and more generally Big Tech.

With so much responsibility shouldn't a President-Elect and his Cabinet be expected to undergo basic training?

Exploring the history of president-press relations and what's the best way a president should handle the press.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution protects the freedom of speech and press. As Walter Cronkite said, "Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy." But the First Amendment hasn’t stopped presidents from trying to bully, pressure, regulate, and impress the press. 0:00 President vs. Press Examples 3:56 Recurring Weekly Media Schedule 6:30 Bread & Circuses 9:25 Backroom Strategy At George Washington’s first inauguration he was described in almost universally favorable terms, but by the end of his first term, with the encouragement of his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson behind-the-scenes, opposition papers started popping up to attack Washington’s domestic and foreign policy. In his second term, these attacks became more personal by questioning his principles, integrity, and even military reputation. From 1776 to 1800, newspapers increased from under 50 to over 250, in part, because new federal laws made it cheaper to send mail through the postal system. George Washington concluded his presidency by writing a letter to his “friends and fellow citizens,” which was printed in newspapers across the country. According to political journalist John Avlon, Washington’s Farewell Address was "once celebrated as a civic Scripture, more widely reprinted than the Declaration of Independence." Overall, Washington’s approach to the press was to stay largely hands-off whereas his successor John Adams went full-on by signing the Alien and Sedition Acts, which criminalized journalistic dissent in the name of national security. Three score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln waged as biographer Harold Holzer described an “undeclared, unlegislated, unlitigated and largely unchallenged war” on newspapers. Lincoln justified it in a letter, “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch the hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy.” Theodore Roosevelt probably did more to alter president-press relations than anyone who has held the office before or since. He was the first president to give reporters working space inside the White House. He'd usually spoke to them while his barber gave him his morning shave. He staged some of the first photo-ops and invented the Sunday news drop, in order to give the press a hot story for their Monday edition. The benefit of Roosevelt’s constant courting, as one reporter of the era put it, was “more scoops of White House origin during the Roosevelt period than before or since.” Since TR, advances in technology have given presidents new ways to go over the press's head. FDR leapfrogged reporters with his Fireside Chats on radio and JFK did so with his News Conferences on TV. Our two most recent presidents are a case study of extremes. Trump was excessively open. He had a very little filter, which was exciting for a press that was bent on using anything he said against him. He gave them a ton of ammunition, but it was his “tell it as it is” bravado that got him elected in the first place. Like Theodore Roosevelt, Donald Trump wanted to be on the front page every day. Biden on the other hand is excessively insulated. Democrat Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa described in their book “Peril” how top White House officials set up a wall to shield the gaffe-prone president from unscripted events and long interviews. In the halls of the White House, you might be able to hear staffers whisper to each other, “Build the wall.” Of course, not in relation to the southern border where agents/scientists/experts have requested more wall as a multi-prong strategy to reduce illegal crossings, but in relation to protecting the president and therefore their jobs. It seems Trump wanted attention for attention’s sake whereas Biden wants chocolate chip ice cream. In general, presidents want to enact their agenda. To enact their agenda requires congressional consensus; to get congressional consensus requires public support, and to get public support requires an effective press strategy. Let’s explore… what’s the best presidential press strategy? First, a president should focus on one bill at a time. Keeping too many balls in the air increases the risk they’ll all fall because it’s politically easier for the opposition to reject the juggle by disliking any one part of it. “F.O.C.U.S. = Follow One Course Until Success” The president should have a recurring weekly media schedule built around advancing whatever is his next legislative item. For example, let’s say its infrastructure… Read FULL @ www.AnthonyGalli.com

The filibuster isn’t a constitutional creation. The filibuster is a creature of the swamp. In its current form, the filibuster was created in the 1970s. As a matter of principle, anything created in the 1970s should probably be killed, including the Department of Education and my cousin Chuck. Prior to the 1970s, the filibuster existed as a “talking filibuster” whereby a Senator had to literally speak on the floor of the Senate to stall the will of the majority, but the longest filibuster was 24 hours so it wasn’t a very effective obstruction tactic hence why it was rarely done whereas today just the threat of a filibuster effectively kills a bill. The filibuster was created in its current form, I’d argue because Democrats wanted to maintain party unity. Democrats had control of the U.S. Senate from 1955 to 1997. You see, during the 1960s Democrats had fractured over Civil Rights so by increasing the power of the filibuster Democrats could say to black voters, “Shucks! We’d really like to help you there, but unfortunately, we now need 60 votes to make it happen so we have no choice but to focus on other issues. Peace!” The point of the filibuster therefore was to INCREASE political polarization, i.e. increase unity among Democrats. Democrats liked the filibuster when it helped them maintain power, but now that the American population has become more urbanized/coastalized it gives rural states even more disproportionate power in the Senate, which now hurts Democrats. Politicians being politicians, Senate Republicans of course want to keep the filibuster as it is because it basically means it’ll be impossible for Democrats to pass more than one bill a year (reconciliation) without their approval since the chances of Republicans having less than 40 seats in the Senate is close to 0. As a conservative though I think we should reform the filibuster because the filibuster has been one of the greatest culprits in creating a ballooning federal government where the only legislation that can get passed is that which is stuffed with pork and is voted on before any Senator even had a chance to read it so as to have “plausible deniability” and where the president is effectively extorted into signing the omnibus bill to avoid a government shutdown. In addition, the filibuster has clogged the legislative pipeline too much, therefore, leading Democratic and Republican presidents to increasingly go around the Senate, and therefore the U.S. Constitution, to enact their agenda. Republicans like David Harsanyi acknowledge some of my concerns but think, “conservatives would be better off living with what they have now,” i.e. a slow creep toward socialism is better than a sprint toward socialism. I think we owe the future more than that. His complacency with the status quo is indicative of a psychologically “conservative” person, but I think for those of us who are fed up with the destruction of the American middle class, fed up with the deterioration of the family unit, and fed up with the draining of the American innovative spirit than “conservative” must be synonymous with courage. Most of us don’t have the luxury nor the stomach to sit back in an armchair and watch idly by as America slowly kills itself. "The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes." Isn’t it better to fight for freedom, even if we may lose than to passively wait for our chains? David Harsanyi’s best point though is that removing the filibuster is just “one flank” of the progressive agenda, “… along with shelving the Electoral College, packing the courts, and attacking equal representation in the Senate — of a broader progressive project to create a more direct federal democracy. Many legislative agenda items that Democrats now support — most consequentially, the takeover of state elections through the “For the People Act” — are meant to subvert federalism and subvert election safeguards.” This is why I don’t believe in completely removing the filibuster. I just believe in nuking certain aspects of it, as Republicans have done in the past as it’s pertained to judicial appointments, which has thus far worked out in America’s favor. The best chance we have at reforming the filibuster is with a Senate Democratic majority. All it would take is one or two Republican Senators crossing over. In exchange for their votes, these Republicans could stipulate, "We will vote to amend the filibuster if it takes effect after the next general election (thus giving Republicans an opportunity to benefit more from it) and if we let the 60 filibuster rule continue to apply for admitting states and packing the courts." READ FULL @ https://www.anthonygalli.com/

This is part one of a two-part video series in defense of a stronger presidency and how it can be achieved. PART 2: {comes out next week} As a conservative federalist, I believe in a small limited federal government more in alignment with our U.S. Constitution. "Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." ― Alexander Hamilton "One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government." ― Ron Paul But where I differ with many of my friends on the right is I believe in a strong presidency, which of our Founding Fathers puts me more in agreement with Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. John Adams believed monarchy was a greater defender of liberty than aristocracy. "You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate." — John Adams Overall, I believe in strong executives whether they be in business or government; or function on the local, state, regional, national, or global level. Think about all the greatest things that have been created by human civilization… they were nearly all created or spearheaded by a strong executive/individual rather than a committee, legislature, or board. Hierarchical organizations are the most successful in history and anyone who’d try to ignore this lesson by forcing some ideal like “communism” or “corporate democracy” on the US socio-economic system will upon “success” automatically find themselves part of a dying country as it’d only be a matter of time before we’re superseded by a more effective/efficient hierarchical organization. Nature does not bow to utopia. Chimps need alphas. A committee/board/legislature isn’t effective at leading, but it can be effective at accountability so that if an executive fails to meet certain goals they can be removed from office via impeachment or firing so a new leader can steer the ship, but until/if then an executive should be allowed to steer it largely unimpeded. As a caveat I will say that America’s Chief Executive should be more constrained than your average CEO or monarch, but less than the status quo (in domestic affairs). Consider this — Trump had a Republican-majority House & Senate and now Biden has a Democratic-majority House & Senate and yet what have they achieved thus far? President Trump neither finished the wall, repealed Obamacare, or “drained the swamp” as evidenced by the fact no president has come to personify the swamp more than President Joe Biden. I think the inability of modern presidents’ to enact their domestic agenda is due to, as John Adams foreshadowed, America being ruled by an aristocracy. All the cheering and tears of 2016 so that Trump would barely move the needle. Bread & circuses to distract the public from the consolidation of power in the hands of the 1%: Big Gov, Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Ed. Over the last 100 years as the control of the federal government and the aristocracy has grown; the middle class has shrunk! Democratic presidents can speed up DC’s consolidation of power whereas Republican presidents only seem capable of slowing it down a bit. Unfortunately, as much as we’d like to think the buck stops with the president it hasn’t for a long time and so to suggest it does is a bit disingenuous and causes Americans’ to overestimate the president’s power. For example, the president is the head of our Executive Branch and yet he needs the consent of the Senate to make appointments to it. It’s interesting to note that John Adams had two central concerns for the U.S. Constitution: #1 there was no Bill of Rights (this was added later) and #2 that the president would be unable to make appointments without Senate approval. But here’s what I see is one of the key weaknesses of the presidency: a president can unilaterally fire his appointments (except judicial ones), but he cannot fire federal employees who supposedly work under his authority. Only the president’s appointees can fire federal employees in their department, but for the appointee to do that still requires a ton of paperwork and “cause.” Due to the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, Executive Order 10988, and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, it’s much easier for a department to move incompetent federal employees to a new position instead of firing them. Federal workers face a 0.2% chance of getting fired in any given year, which is more than 45X lower than their private-sector counterparts. The average federal employee also makes more than 160% of the average private worker. Read FULL Article @ https://www.anthonygalli.com/

When a socialist government fails, leftists tend to blame the CIA and more broadly the United States Government (USG). "The reason Afghan mothers are handing their babies to American soldiers is because the United States wiped out their socialist government in the 70s so we could prop up the mujahideen, which is now the Taliban, which is going to kill those f*cking people! Why? Because we propped them up and invented them and got rid of a government that was actually taking care of its people." Leftists tend to overestimate the power of the USG to avoid blaming socialism itself. It’s a convenient argument because for better or worse every country on Earth can draw a line to the United States to give it credit or blame, but an intelligent evaluation of historical events requires us to investigate the width of that line. Did we send 1 trillion dollars, 1 billion dollars, or 1 dollar? Any dollar amount is enough for leftists to say, “See! It’s the CIA’s fault!” But if I buy a “Made in China” iPhone am I now 100% responsible for everything bad that goes on in China? We are all to some degree responsible for everything that’s happening in the world — not just for the things we do, but also for the things we don’t do — so the question is how responsible are we for the outcome of any given case? The Taliban: Jimmy Dore claimed the socialist government was “taking care of its people” before the USG “invented” the Taliban to wipe them out. Another intellectual pitfall of leftists is they tend to over-idealize the time before the fall. Clearly, it’s an overstatement if not an outright lie to say that the Afghani socialist government — People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) — was “taking care of its people.” In April 1978, The PDPA seized power in a bloody coup from President Mohammed Khan. In a "disastrous symbolic move," the PDPA changed the national flag from the traditional black, red, and Islamic green color to a red flag similar to the Soviet Union’s that offended the country’s conservatives. The PDPA then prohibited usury and passed a land reform measure which led to an agricultural crisis. Journalist Robert Kaplan said their land reform policy was "confiscating land in a haphazard manner that enraged everyone, benefited no one, and reduced food production.” Naturally, the PDPA’s reforms provoked strong opposition, which they then brutally oppressed, therefore, leading to a Civil War in 1979 with the mujahideen, which translates to “Islamic guerrillas.” In September 1979, the PDPA General Secretary was assassinated by his own prime minister Hafizullah Amin who then became the new PDPA General Secretary. Under Amin, the situation deteriorated even faster where thousands of innocent people went missing, or as Jimmy Dore might recall it, “sent on vacation.” The soldiers' knock on the door in the middle of the night, so common in many Arab and African countries, was little known in Afghanistan, where a central government simply lacked the power to enforce its will outside of Kabul. Taraki's coup changed all that. Between April 1978 and the Soviet invasion of December 1979, Afghan communists executed 27,000 political prisoners at the sprawling Pul-i-Charki prison six miles east of Kabul. Many of the victims were village mullahs and headmen who were obstructing the modernization and secularization of the intensely religious Afghan countryside. By Western standards, this was a salutary idea in the abstract. But it was carried out in such a violent way that it alarmed even the Soviets. —  Robert D. Kaplan, Soldiers of God Displeased with Amin's government, the Soviet Army then invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. They killed Amin and replaced him with a Soviet-organized regime. Imagine being so brutal that even the Soviet Union was like, “Hold up! This is too much.” Additional Soviet troops were then sent down to stabilize their hand-picked regime, therefore, marking the beginning of the Soviet-Afghan War. Jimmy Dore is also wrong in saying the USG “invented” the Taliban. The US never funded the Taliban, let alone created it. It’s only natural some Afghan guerillas would rise up in their own self-defense after the Afghani President and most of his family were assassinated by the PDPA, or after the PDPA started killing each other and “caring for” the population, or after the Soviet army invaded. The USG then funneled $3 billion dollars over the course of nine years (1980 - 1989) to Pakistan’s (ISI) to equip and train those willing to fight the USSR. The USG’s goal wasn’t so much to “wipe out the socialist government” as much as it was to push out the USSR as evidenced by the fact that the US stopped funding in 1989 when the USSR left even though the PDPA’s leader Mohammed Najibullah was still in power and his government wouldn’t fall until 1992. Read Full Article at www.AnthonyGalli.com

On September 20th, 2001, President Bush demanded the Taliban government to “close the terrorist training camps and hand over leaders of the al-Qaida network.” A few weeks later, President Bush updated the nation, “None of these demands were met. And now, the Taliban will pay a price.” Bush then specified how he’d make them pay, "On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaida terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime." He went on to say that with “the collective will of the world” we will “bring [al-Qaeda] to justice.” Over time though the purpose of this “conflict,” as it was sold to the American people, morphed into regime-change and then democracy-building. By December 17th, 2001, the Taliban had been removed from power, but most of al-Qaeda and the Taliban had retreated into the mountains and Pakistan so it was argued that to keep them out of power was to build Afghanistan into a democracy. The United States is committed to helping build a stable and democratic Afghanistan that is free from terror and no longer harbors threats to our security.  —  Colin Powell, The President’s Budget Request for 2005 The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.  —  George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address It was a noble goal. The Bush administration could’ve easily propped up a competent enough pro-American dictator to keep out our enemies as the U.S. government had done numerous times in the past. It would’ve cost us much less money and lives, but the Bush administration felt a moral responsibility to leave the country better than how we found it and argued that democracy was our best long-term defense against terrorism. After all, in the aftermath of 9/11, the war was initiated as a sort of quasi moral crusade. If we propped up a dictator then it would’ve trivialized the tragedy and provided additional fodder to the terrorist argument that the west is evil. By turning Afghanistan and then Iraq into thriving secular democracies and then defeating the “Axis of Evil,” 9/11 would’ve been even more impactful and meaningful. Fire turned to freedom. Despite conspiracy theories about oil, any reading of George W. Bush’s life shows that for better or worse he was heavily driven by moral meaning. After all, the born-again Christian campaigned as a “compassionate conservative.” But the Bush administration vastly underestimated the difficulty of democratizing the region and, I’d argue, wasn’t willing to pay the price to succeed. I believe the U.S. government could’ve succeeded if we responded to the deadliest terrorist attack in American history similar to how we responded to the deadliest military attack in American history. Nuked em! Just kidding. But if we are going to nation-build in Afghanistan then we should’ve done it similar to have we did it in Japan. First, it begins with an official acknowledgment of our main objectives. On September 6th, 1945, US President Truman approved a document titled “US Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan,” which set the two main objectives for the occupation: eliminating Japan’s war potential and “turning Japan into a democratic nation with a pro-United Nations orientation.” And then it’s about appointing a competent quasi-absolute ruler over the country. President Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) who served as the interim leader of Japan from 1945 until 1948, aka “America’s Emperor of Japan” or as the Japanese would later honor him, “The Last Shogun.” American biographer William Manchester argued that without MacArthur’s leadership, Japan wouldn’t have been able to make the move from an imperial, totalitarian state, to a democracy. And then it’s about winning the “hearts and minds.” Hearts SCAP’s first priority was to set up a food distribution network because, following the wholesale destruction of most major cities, most of the population was starving. SCAP imposed a major land reform where the government purchased from landowners 4,700,000 acres. By 1950, 89% of all agricultural land was owner-operated and only 11% was tenet-operated. Minds SCAP controversially preserved the God-Emperor but reduced his status. At SCAP’s insistence, Hirohito publicly renounced his divinity... Read Full Article at www.AnthonyGalli.com.

Recap Andrew Cuomo's 3 terms in office as New York State Governor. I explore the conditions he came into, how he rose to the moment, his administration's accomplishments, his administration's controversies, and New York State's overall dysfunction. In 2010, the New York State Senate had 30 Republicans and 32 Democrats. On a warm summer day, Senator Libous rose from his seat to introduce a surprise resolution to replace Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith [D] with a Republican. This created commotion in the Senate chamber as two Democrats had struck a deal with Republicans to vote for the resolution. Malcolm Smith moved to recess and cut off the lights and internet, but as much as he tried to stop the resolution it had passed. This came to be known as the “Senate coup.” If that didn’t sound dysfunctional enough this was coming off the heels of Governor Eliot Spitzer [D] resigning due to paying “up to $80,000 for ladies of the night while he was attorney general, and later as governor” and then his successor Governor David Paterson [D] dropping out of his reelection campaign because he solicited an unlawful gift of free New York Yankees tickets and then “lied under oath” about it (at least it wasn’t New York Mets tickets). With Governor Paterson out of the race, Andrew Cuomo [D] easily won the Gubernatorial election and assumed office on January 1st, 2011. Governor Cuomo didn’t just step into a political whirlwind, but a fiscal housefire. New York had the highest debt per capita. New York was ranked 50th in business climate and 50th in economic development because of its extremely high taxes (taxes 66% higher than the national average) and was considered by CATO, “the worst state on regulatory policy. ” New York was #1 in education spending, but 34th in results, #1 in Medicaid spending, but #21 in results. At first, Andrew Cuomo rose to the moment. His experience as NY State Attorney General and as the son of a three-time governor plus his campaigning as a centrist Clintonesque “New Democrat” enabled him to hit the ground running to appeal to the Democratic-majority Assembly and Republican-controlled Senate. He began his term by pointing out to audiences across the state the dire fiscal mess the state was in and the games politicians play to avoid addressing it, When politicians talk about cutting the budget, a cut is defined as anything less than the anticipated growth. So anything less than the 13% increase is called a cut! All these years when you’ve been hearing they cut the state budget, you thought cut meant cut. Silly you! Why would you think cut means cut? Cut meant they didn’t have as large an increase as they thought they were going to have! As part of his “charm offensive,” he invited legislators to the governor’s mansion for bagels and policy talks. He established the Committee to Save New York, a lobbying group that spent millions of dollars on pro-Cuomo advertising and outreach. He used the media to play tough with legislators. “A source close to the governor” would, for example, leak to the press that an ethics bill isn’t passing the Senate because Senator Nozzolio’s law firm doesn’t want to reveal its clients. To strengthen the persuasive power of the bully pulpit, he’d use PowerPoint in his speeches. Cuomo’s first State of the Stateaddress Governor Cuomo effectively worked with labor unions who have more political power in NY than in any other state. Labor unions represent a larger percentage of workers in NY than anywhere else. Governor Cuomo pressured the unions to accept modest cuts or else he’d unleash Mayor Mike Bloomberg [R] on them. Mike Bloomberg had successfully got passed in the NY Senate a bill that would’ve allowed merit-based personnel decisions in city schools, which would’ve increased their quality, but Andrew Cuomo shot it down in exchange for reportedly getting the United Federation of Teachers to accept modest education cuts. This graph makes me wonder how much of a “cut” it actually wasthough. Cuomo also told hospital lobbyists and the healthcare workers union that he wanted to cut $2.9 billion in Medicaid and largely left it up to them to decide how to cut it. Another key aspect of Cuomo’s leadership style is how he built close working relationships with legislative leaders. He’d frequently meet with the Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver [D] and the Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos [R] and Senate Deputy Majority Leader Tom Libous [R]. Compromises were made. --- You can read the article version at www.AnthonyGalli.com.

There’s a viral video going around of a woman who approached Post Malone’s car. Here's the video + Kanye losing his cool + my analysis.

Popular #trending song on YouTube, which has recently been used by Apple for their new iPhone commercial highlights the descent of American culture.

Politics should be focused on policy. But we live in a democracy with a massive low-information electorate and so if conservatives want our policies to prevail we sometimes have to speak at a level most voters will understand. We need to gossip...

The left sometimes asks the right, “What vision do you offer for the future?” I empathize with the question because after all, conservatives aren’t promising “free” healthcare, housing, university, etc. in the name of “compassion” or “equality.” Conservatives tend to focus on why “free” is bad and suggest “tax cuts and deregulation” are better, which isn’t particularly persuasive to people who don’t pay taxes nor own much. We need to offer our own concrete conservative vision for the future that young people can grasp onto and fight for. So what do we offer? We offer the future!