New York start-ups are receiving more and more support from early stage investment firms and start-up incubators. This quarter they received $335 million from venture capital firms, with eighty-three deals getting funding.

Not only is the private sectors eyes opening up to the possibility of our city as the next innovation center, so is the city government.

Twitter lit up last night with people all across the country tuning into the New York gubernatorial debate. We New Yorkers, of course, had to hide our faces in shame.

It may have been a seven-ring circus for a lot of other folks, but for the residents of the Robert Fulton Terrace complex at 530-540 East 169^th Street and Third Avenue in The Bronx, the only televised 2010 gubernatorial debate was not important enough to warrant 90 minutes out of their evening. 

Pundits are predicting that the black and Latino vote can shape the results this year, something we’ve heard every election for the last 40 years. But this year, it looks possible for them to affect national politics beyond the boundaries of their districts.

An AP poll shows that a quarter of voters who voted for the Democratic Party in 2008 are voting for the Republican candidate in the midterms and half of them may simply stay at home.

The next governor will have to balance social contracts with bond covenants. How do you shrink government to bring tax relief to homeowners and businesses without laying off so many public workers you contribute to undermining the very recovery that is needed?

The national stage is so littered by the bizarre assertions of brazen candidates that even the most thoughtful observers are confused at the prospective results of the 2010 election. How do you explain an election in which major candidates are linked to Scientology or had dates on Satanic altars?

Dick Morris likes to say that if you're a candidate running for office and you're pro-choice, but don't want to make abortion an issue in your election, just say you're pro-environment. People will make the connection on their own. In other words, there are issues in politics which are predictors of other issues.

For me, that issue was always guns. I'm a life-long New Yorker, so I have no hope of ever owning a gun. In fact, I’ve never even shot one, yet I consider gun rights to be in my top 5 issues. I'm pro-gun and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, because I believe in the concept that more (legal) guns equals less crime.

The irony of the DADT policy is that all the relevant parties are on the same page: 78 percent of Americans think DADT should be repealed, top military leaders have called for a repeal, and we have a president who is committed to repeal. But a few obstructionist Republicans have gotten far more air time than they deserve because our broken political system has allowed them to stand in the way of justice.

-- John McWhorter.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is an inane policy, one in which we compel people to lie to their superiors about who and what they are as people. But while many on the left are cheering the ruling by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ordering an immediate halt to DADT policy, I am not.

When Obama announced his plan to ask Congress to approve his $50 billion allocation to improve our roads and railways through the Infrastructure Bank, and Andrew Cuomo announced his plans for a State Infrastructure Bank, I was elated. Now the question is: will Congress and the state have the common sense to fund it?

Why don’t Latinos have more clout? Their increasing population suggests they could regularly influence elections across the Southwest as well as in Illinois and Florida. When elections are tight because Anglo votes are divided, they can even swing states like Indiana and North Carolina which they may have done in 2008. That is the conclusion pundits first reached after the 1980 census documented their rapid growth. Every census since has reinforced the claim that this continued trend,  combined with geographic dispersion, has made them a key electoral force.

Insider trading laws that typically apply to corporations do not apply to members and their aides who are free to trade information and purchase stock based on non-public information.

How did Carl Paladino become the Republican candidate for Governor of New York? Guess #1 is that it's an anti-incumbent year and, as people had heard of Rick Lazio, he took on the incumbent stench. Guess #2? There is no guess #2 — just the lingering question and answer: could Republicans possibly have picked a more inept candidate? No. No, we could not.

Most people know that violence usually progresses from verbal abuse to physical abuse. We have no evidence of a direct connection between those accused of the crime and the biggest loudmouth homophobe in the state. However, it's probably more than a coincidence that Rubén Díaz’ hateful diatribes found a fertile place in the mushy brains of these cowards in the Bronx.

A study by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University produce some interesting results: while there is great dissatisfaction with Washington, Americans still want the government to increase spending and involvement in some policy areas.

All week, I've been listening to the coverage of the "funeral protest" case, Snyder v Phelps. Even though the Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday, and even though it is one of only two First Amendment cases this term, I hadn't planned to comment; but the old law teacher in me just can't keep silent anymore. I simply have to weigh in on two things: (1) misreporting of the issues in the case, and (2) the related oversimplification of the possible outcome.