Last year worked so well by NY standards that the populace probably presumes the governor will be pull it off again with a budget that looks serious and reformist, yet carries no major pain for any of the state's powerful interest groups. He certainly sounded that way in his State-of-the State speech.

Of course you've never seen a State of the City speech. If the mayor expected you to care about it, he wouldn't do it in the middle of the afternoon. But there is a nice tea-leaf quality to this annual ritual. You can get a sense of what the Big Man really wants us to pay attention to.

Anything that makes Donald Trump money is a bad idea in my book. Mark this down as a bad week. The city has granted Trump the right to run a golf course in the Bronx that New York City taxpayers are spending at least $184 million to build.

Talk about a non-starter. This week the top Democrat in the New York state legislature floated the idea that the lawmakers deserve to get pay raises.