On Monday, "The Wolf of Wall Street"—the Martin Scorsese directed film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and Matthew McConaughey—took over the swanky Milan luxury condo building on East 55th street between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

Outside of the building, which also serves as the Van der Woodsen's home on "Gossip Girl," the street was taken over by eight huge trucks full of production supplies, one large trailer for Mr.DiCaprio to relax in, and a craft services tent full of gourmet food and fresh fruit.

Inside the building, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese shot scenes in the penthouse, which will act as DiCaprio's character Jordan Belfort's apartment before he buys a house. Later Monday afternoon, DiCaprio's stunt double was thrown off the penthouse's terrace.

But it isn't cheap to rent out the penthouse apartment of a luxury building in Manhattan.

One set source reveals exclusively to Business Insider that production is shelling out roughly $25,000 per day to have access to the apartment for three weeks, in addition to a hefty donation of nearly $200,000 to the building.

The estimated $725,000 allows production to change everything about the already-swanky, multi-million dollar apartment. The front door, wall paper and furniture has all been swamped out to portray the lifestyle of Belfort, the real life Wall Street castaway whose autobiography the film is based on.

DiCaprio, who plays Belfort, "comes in and looks straight, doesn't talk to anyone" one building source tells us, while Jonah Hill, on the other hand, "is really friendly, he's hilarious." McConaughey doesn't have any scenes in the building.

Eight production trucks are currently lined up outside of the luxury condo building, The Milan, for the 3-day "Wolf of Wall Street" shoot on 55th Street and 2nd Ave.

Production supplies like this fill each truck. For 3 days of shooting, production pays the building and its tenant a total of $725K.

A full tent is devoted to craft services. It is filled with fresh fruits, peanut butter, salami and cheese, among other gourmet foods for the crew, director Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill.

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Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- United Continental Holdings Inc. and AMR Corp.’s American Airlines suspended most flights to and from the New York area starting later today because of a winter storm forecast to hit the northeast U.S.

American and its American Eagle regional partner also will suspend services in Philadelphia at noon local time, about three hours before grounding New York flights. Delta Air Lines Inc. also projected halting some flights. Southwest Airlines Co. and US Airways Group Inc. were tracking the storm.

The weather system is threatening the U.S. northeast after Hurricane Sandy forced about 20,000 cancellations last week. While airlines often move planes from the path of large storms to keep them from being stranded, United began reacting hours after forecasters started warning of the storm’s intensity.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this, when it’s just heavy rains and winds,” Bob McAdoo, an analyst with Los Angeles-based Imperial Capital LLC, said in an interview after Chicago-based United led off the cancellations.

United said long-haul international services and flights to other hubs from New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport will continue while other operations stop there and at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport at noon. About 500 flights will be scrubbed before service resumes at midday tomorrow, said Charles Hobart, a spokesman.

American and Eagle grounded 290 flights, and warned in a statement of possible additional cancellations and delays. The carriers expect to resume flights tomorrow morning.

Surge Risk

Some New Jersey towns ordered evacuations yesterday after the National Weather Service forecast the risk of a storm surge as high as 4 feet to the shores of New Jersey, New York City and Long Island. Delaware and Connecticut may also see flooding. Gusts as intense at 60 miles (97 kilometers) per hour may rake the area as the next system arrives, the weather service said.

No tally of Delta’s projected cancellations is available yet, said Morgan Durrant, a spokesman. The Atlanta-based airline waived rebooking fees for passengers flying to and from the New York-area airports and Philadelphia yesterday through tomorrow.

US Airways offered a similar waiver in the New York City area and Newburgh and White Plains, New York; and New Haven, Connecticut, according to its website. US Airways is “closely monitoring” the situation, said Todd Lehmacher, a spokesman.

JetBlue, Southwest

JetBlue Airways Corp.’s travel policy covered the New York City area airports and Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, New York; Washington; Hartford, Connecticut; Richmond, Virginia; Boston, and Burlington, Vermont. Southwest is tracking the storm and hasn’t made any decisions regarding delays or cancellations, said a spokeswoman, Katie McDonald.

About 580 flights had been scrapped at North American airports today as of last night, according to industry data tracker FlightStats Inc.’s website. United’s Hobart said by e- mail that the airline’s canceled flights are about 5 percent of the total in the 24-hour span covered by the suspension at the world’s largest airline.

Disruptions from Sandy cost major airlines as much as $45 million each, according to Dan McKenzie, a Buckingham Research Group analyst in New York. That storm lashed the New York region, the biggest aviation market, and shut the area’s three major airports for most of last week.

--With assistance from Victoria Stilwell in New York and Brian K. Sullivan in Boston. Editors: Ed Dufner, Stephen West

To contact the reporters on this story: Mary Schlangenstein in Dallas at maryc.s@bloomberg.net; Mary Jane Credeur in Atlanta at mcredeur@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ed Dufner at edufner@bloomberg.net

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Obama wants the rich to pay more taxes than they are right now.

Boehner is okay with the government collecting more revenue, but is against any hike in rates.

So the hot idea is that a compromise might be worked out by limiting deductions that the wealthy take, a plan that was vaguely floated by Mitt Romney.

In a note, Morgan Stanley economist David Greenlaw explains how this works:

...When preparing their returns, taxpayers may choose the standard deduction or they may itemize and deduct certain expenses (including state and local taxes, mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and some medical expenses) to determine their taxable income. Taxpayers benefit from itemizing when their itemized deductions exceed the amount of the standard deduction. Note that for some types of expenses (such as medical expenses), only the amount that exceeds a given percentage of the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income may be deducted.  So, there is already a limitation imposed on certain types of deductions.  But, with all other deductions, the benefit of itemizing increases with a taxpayer’s marginal tax rate. For instance, $10,000 in deductions reduces tax liability by $1,500 for someone in the 15 percent tax bracket but by $2,800 for someone in the 28 percent tax bracket.

So how does this actually affect individuals?

Reverting to pre-Bush tax rates on incomes above $250,000 – as the President and many Democrats have long advocated – would raise about $1 trillion over the next ten years.  In order to achieve approximately the same amount of deficit reduction, the limitation on deductions would have to be set at 15%.  In other words, taxpayers in marginal tax brackets above 15% would lose some of the benefit of their itemized deductions.  Obviously, such a change would have the greatest impact on taxpayers in high brackets with a lot of deductions.  In particular, the limitation on deductions would hit taxpayers in high tax states – such as NY and California – particularly hard. 

Because state and local taxes are deductible, limiting deductions really creams rich taxpayers in places with high taxes.

And unfortunately, this probably reduces the odds of a deal, given how much clout people in both of those states.

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This last year's been extremely odd for black bears in New York, culminating in many more cubs than usual, though many are skinnier than they should be.

"We've seen more cubs than ever before," Ed Reed, senior biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation told Rochester's WHEC-TV.

North Country Wild Care's Trish Markisaid: "We saw five of them running around Glens Falls the other day."

More cubs may seem like a good thing for the species, but most of the cubs are much smaller than the 50 pounds they should weigh — coming in at 15 to 20 pounds instead. This could mean they won't survive the winter.

The rash of skinny cubs comes from a population boom after last year's season WHEC-TV reports:

The summer of 2011 had a bumper crop of berries and other bear food, so females were fat and had more cubs than average over the winter. With an unusually mild winter, the cub survival rate was high. But the summer of 2012 was very dry in parts of the state, making food scarce and driving bears into towns to forage in trash cans. The fall crop of acorns and beechnuts was also poor in many places, Reed said.

"There were a lot of cubs added to the population and not much food," Reed said. "Now we're seeing those cubs turning up, and some of them are pretty small."

"We're trying to tell people this is a natural thing and if they see undersize cubs, leave them alone. Don't feed them," Reed told WHEC-TV. "Some won't make it through the winter, but that's how nature works."

That could be really bad for the black bear population in New York State. Many of these young and small cubs probably won't make it through the season, especially since signs have indicated that this winter may be brutal.

Some cubs are being taken in by the Kindred Kingdoms Wildlife Rehabilitation center, run by Jean and Len Soprano. Soprano says many of the cubs seem younger than usual, or seem to have been born in larger litters — they aren't starving, just small. Still, large numbers of small cubs could mean fewer bears make it through the season.

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Bed bugs are nasty pests that live on fabrics (especially beds) and leave you with annoying itchy welts. They are also notoriously hard to get rid of.

But new research shows that we can kill these bugs by taking a drug traditionally used to fight off parasitic worms, Bloomberg's Jason Gale reports. 

To see if the new treatment worked, researchers allowed beg bugs to feed on human blood from people who have taken the drug ivermectin, commercially known as Stromectol. 

Three out of five bed bugs died three hours after their blood meals. The drug can not only kill bed bugs, it can also prevent the small young ones from growing by preventing molting. This is great news, since bed bugs are increasingly resistant to traditional pesticides.

The drug could be the key to combating what's reemerged as a widespread problem, particularly in dense cities like New York. According to 2009 estimates, more than 400,000 New York City residents experienced bed beg infestation. The critters are so common, they have even taken over places like Google, Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and an AMC Movie Theater in Times Square.

SEE ALSO: Your Ultimate Guide To The War Against Bedbugs

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Imaging having fresh lettuce and herbs available any day, any season. That usually seems like a pipe dream in the tiny fourth-floor walk up apartments of New York, but Brooklyn-based start up Windowfarms says you can have it all — by growing plants vertically in your windows.

We previously introduced you to the windowfarms idea back in May of 2011, when they were just training people to make window gardens using plastic bottles.

The Brooklyn-based company has expanded their operations and even created a commercial product — a set of four vertically hanging pots and the water system to grow plants will set you back $119.95.

Their first batch of planters is sold out, but you can get on their waiting list for the second batch. We saw the planters in action as an installation in the new American Museum of Natural History exhibit Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture. There, we talked to Britta Riley and got the scoop on the planters.

The garden display holds 280 plants a variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. The exhibit opens November 17, 2012 and runs until August 11, 2013.

Windowfarms are vertical gardens designed to grow food year-round in your home. Windows provide the light and the warmth inside keeps the plants happy all year long.

Hydroponic systems do not use soil. The plants are grown in water with organic material holding it together. Here a stevia plant is grown in rock wool.

In the Windowfarms system, nutrient rich water is continuously pumped up from a reserve. The water travels to the top plant then goes down from one container to the next. The water nourishes the the plant roots until it reaches the reservoir and repeats the journey.

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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) and Consolidated Edison (Con Ed) after their response to Hurricane Sandy, the WSJ reports

The NY Attorney General's office had subpoenaed both companies, requesting information about how they had prepared for the storm and its aftermath.

The move comes after NY Governor Andrew Cuomobegan a commission that planned investigate utility companies for a failure to properly operate during the storm, which left 2 million without power in New York alone.

Schneiderman is believed to be investigating whether either company violated the Public Authorities Law.

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The first episode of a new Bravo reality show, "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley," launched a few weeks ago.

Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg's sister, is driving the drama as the show's executive producer. And she's already hunting for New Yorkers who could star in their own spinoff.

The current show has a cast of characters that range from videobloggers to entrepreneurs. They're young, up-and-coming people in tech who love to socialize.

With that in mind, we racked our brains for some of the most entertaining people Zuckerberg could sign up to represent New York's burgeoning tech scene.

You won't find Foursquare's Dennis Crowley or Thrillist's Ben Lerer on this list—anyone with serious funding probably has their hands too full to apply, though they'd make killer cameos.

The people we chose are young, fun, and on the brink of making names for themselves.

Think we missed a rising star? Put them in the comments.

Laurie Segall is a confident, up-and-coming video journalist

Segall is rapidly working her way up the ranks at CNN, where she covers technology and startups. She's conducted a number of video interviews and has appeared on multiple on-air segments.

The Michigan grad is a fiery, confident go-getter. Like Sarah Austin on the current Startup: Silicon Valley cast, she's in the video blogosphere. But unlike Austin, Segall covers market crashes, not party crashes.

Nitasha Tiku runs the show at the New York Observer's tech section, BetaBeat

Another member of the press who could be a good addition to the show is Nitasha Tiku.

She runs BetaBeat, the New York Observer's tech and startup section. She's well-sourced in the industry, having interviewed entrepreneurs and investors alike.

If Sam Biddle is half as funny on camera as he is in his articles, the Gizmodo writer would make a good Bravo star

Biddle is one of Gizmodo's funniest and savviest writers.

If he acts anything like he writes, he'd be a no-brainer for "Start-Ups: New York."

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New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman's office announced today that it is probing 13 gas stations for alleged price gouging in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

New York's price gouging law prohibits selling "consumer goods" at an "unconscionably excessive price" when the market is disturbed by "weather events, power failures, strikes, civil disorder, war," and other unusual events.

Because gasoline is considered crucial to health and safety during an emergency, it is a "consumer good," and sellers cannot drastically raise its price when the law is in effect.

Based on consumer complaints and independent pricing information, the Attorney General identified 13 stations that "stand out" for especially high prices, and, more importantly, an increase in prices in the wake of the hurricane.

The stations are located in every New York City borough except Manhattan, as well as Westchester, Suffolk, and Nassau Counties. According to consumer complaints, all were charging $4.74 or more per gallon of gasoline.

The Attorney General's office is beginning enforcement actions against the 13 stations, notifying them of the potential charges and requesting pricing information, including how much they paid to purchase the gas they sold.

If found guilty, they face fines.

In a press release, Attorney General Schneiderman said:

Today's action is the first in a series of steps my office will take as we continue to actively investigate the hundreds of complaints we've received from consumers of businesses preying on victims of Hurricane Sandy. We will do everything we can to stop unscrupulous individuals from taking advantage of New Yorkers trying to rebuild their lives.

SEE ALSO: All Of These Cars & Boats Were Destroyed By Sandy

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For the most part, New York City has had no problem expressing  its distaste for Guy Fieri's new Times Square mega-restaurant, Guy's American Kitchen and Bar.

The New York Times was especially brutal.

But there's at least one media personality that thinks Fieri is doing it right. Bloomberg's Tom Keene had nothing but praise for Guy's after he visited the restaurant week. The radio host documented it all on his Facebook page.

Here's what Keene wrote (the post has been edited for clarity):

I promised a road-trip to Times Square and Guy Fieri's much maligned restaurant. First, it was wonderful to walk into Times Square like a tourist. It has been years, and it is a very very special place. Yes, it is all tourists, but it is such an important statement of American dynamism. For all of us and for an entrepreneurial upstart out of Columbus, Ohio like Fieri.

The food: jalapeno margarita where you could actually taste the fire in it, with less salt. Malibu baked oysters where you could actually taste the damn oyster, with less salt, better than the last three I have had from chi-chi restaurants...Pork shank that was perfect portioned, with a sauce that was okay-hey-great but with truly interesting vegetables and rice, and less salt, unlike Bubba Gumps and the Hard Rock within shouting distance.

ZZ Top and Lovely Rita from Sgt. Peppers? Plain Guy margarita, duex? Duex? And Ashley the waitress from North Carolina is nailing the service, hey Guy, let her wear plaid! No dessert, too full. Guy hats for Sara and Scarlett, Ozark Mtn and Boston, Tom Scholz and Boston! Are you kidding? $6 16 oz. PBRs? I have never seen Fieri on TV. The place is brand new, ambitious and creates 150 to 200 jobs in the tourist nexus of New York City. Get over it Food Philistines. Fieri is trying to do American basic with a bit of flare...Ashley, I'll have another...I'm walking.

So chalk one up for Fieri.

We're just pleased to find out Keene likes ZZ Top.

To see photos of the restaurant itself, click here>

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Hurricane Sandy might have taken a toll on New York City's judicial system, with floodwaters possibly damaging thousands of pieces of police evidence.

There is already at least one case, a 2009 Bronx burglary, that could be compromised because of contaminated blood evidence, Reuters reported today.

Overall, nearly 10,000 barrels containing everything from bloody T-shirts to stained comforters may have been damaged, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told Reuters.

There are also about 4,000 bikes, 960 cars, and 760 motorcycles damaged in the Brooklyn and Queens warehouses.

It's still unclear how many cases — ranging from murder to burglary — are compromised, Browne told Reuters.

"We're still trying to sort through this and assess the damage," said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for the New York Post.

As to how this will affect criminal trials, it would depend on the individual cases, Kelly told The Post.

SEE ALSO: One Man's Gun Has Been Linked To Three Shopkeepers' Murders In Brooklyn >

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UPDATE 8:00 p.m. EST: Train service at Penn Station resumes after it was shut down at 5:20 pm. because of an electrical problem, The New York Times reports. 

A power failure affected the switches for trains coming into and out of the station. 

Earlier, Twitter user @ashleymarand posted a photo of the madness inside of Penn Station  as all Amtrack, New Jersey Transit and Long Island Railroad trains were delayed indefinitely. 

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New York City went a day without a murder on Monday, which according to police was the first time anyone could remember that happening. Overall, the city's murder rate this year is down 23%, reaching levels last seen in 1960. This is a milestone in the 20-year-long decline of violent crime in the Big Apple. It's cause for celebration, and Reuters reports that crime expert Tom Repetto attributes the success in part to the city's aggressive policing strategies, the famous "broken windows" tactics that got started in the 1990s under Ray Kelly, the police chief, and have more recently included the controversial stop-and-frisk policy.

But hold on a minute. Up in Boston, they also had tremendous success in cutting murder rates in the 1990s. But they didn't focus on the broken-windows strategy, stop-and-frisk, or going after petty offenders. Instead they launched a project called "Operation Ceasefire" to cut gang violence. That project, as David Kennedy, a criminology professor at John Jay College who was instrumental in developing the programme, explained last year on "Fresh Air", had two basic prongs. First, it used community diplomacy to enlist respected neighbourhood figures to make it clear to gang members that it was their own relatives and neighbours, not the police, who needed them to stop the shooting. Second, it employed an innovative policing idea in which the most violent gang at any given time would be relentlessly targeted by police until it was effectively neutralised, followed by whichever gang then rose to the top of the list. This creates competition among gangs to refrain from lethal violence; it's also one of the key proposals in Mark Kleiman's book on how to reduce America's prison population, "When Brute Force Fails".

But hold on another minute! What's that you say, Eric Tucker of the Associated Press? Washington, DC is likely to see its first year in decades with less than 100 murders? Wow! In the late 1980s and early 1990s Washington had over 500 murders per year. Why the decline? No single factor, says Mr Tucker. A little of this, a little of that, a little of something else you probably never even thought of. Gentrification means the city has fewer dangerous neighbourhoods. Police have better technology and shorter response times. Community policing is better. And "better medical care, honed through lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, means patients who were once stabilized at the scene are more likely to be taken directly to the hospital, where they have access to improved blood transfusion processes." Also, the mayor is no longer a guy who smokes crack.

Anyway, this is a long-term nationwide trend. Murders are up in some cities, like Chicago, but in most cities America's urban violent crime rates are down radically since the early 1990s and still falling. And while falling violent crime is associated with a variety of different policies in different places, there's no one prescription you could point to. In fact, it's not clear how much of the decline is due to consciously pursued anti-crime policies at all. Nobody planned to cut the murder rate in New York, Boston or Washington by pushing real-estate prices up to the point where the socioeconomic groups more likely to commit murders could no longer afford to live there. Convincing arguments have been made that falling crime rates were caused by the legalisation of abortion and resulting decline in unwanted children. Others argue that reduced quantities of lead in the atmosphere due to the banning of leaded gasoline have played a major role, since lead stunts the parts of the brain responsible for judgment and impulse inhibition; studies have found the association between environmental lead and crime to be strong and statistically significant.

Basically, we don't entirely know why America's urban murder rate has fallen. As Philip Cohen points out, it doesn't seem to have much to do with rates of single motherhood. Beyond that, it could be several or all of dozens of different factors. What's the takeaway message? I'd say there are two of them. First of all, beware of takeaway messages! Lots of things in life, maybe most things, often the most important things, don't have explanations that can be packaged as a simple, coherent thesis. Second, given our inability to explain definitively why the crime rate is falling, we may need some scepticism about the recent push to demand scientifically valid evidence for the effectiveness of social betterment programmes. Random controlled trials might very well have found that the broken-windows strategy doesn't prevent crime, "Project Ceasefire" doesn't prevent crime, reducing rates of single motherhood doesn't prevent crime, family planning doesn't prevent crime, banning lead doesn't prevent crime, and so on and so forth; there might have been no statistically significant difference one could isolate for any of these things. And yet it seems extremely likely to me that most or all of these were good things to do! The drop in violent crime probably has to do with all of them. So we probably need to be a bit circumspect about demanding results from our cost-benefit analyses, and go ahead and do things that seem like they probably work. We ought to follow Bill and Ted's advice to be excellent to one another, even while recognising that when excellence happens, we won't necessarily know exactly why.

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New York State Senate Democrats are furious today over an unprecedented agreement reached by Republicans and conservative-leaning Democrats who disbanded from their party to form their own caucus. 

The move forms a "bipartisan governing coalition" between Republicans and the Independent Democratic Conference, just a month after Democrats won a numerical majority in the chamber.

Under the agreement, Republicans and the IDC will shift control every two weeks between GOP Leader Dean Skelos and IDC Leader Jeffrey Klein. On Tuesday, Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat from Queens, became the fifth Democrat to defect and join the IDC.

The other Democrats, obviously, are not happy about this. On Election Day, they had won several close races that put them in position to take control of the Senate. But Democratic Sen. Simcha Felder, of Brooklyn, soon announced that he would caucus with Republicans, The New York Times reported. And behind the scenes, the five Democrats were working to form a permanent IDC.

Here's a full statement from Senate Democratic spokesman Mike Murphy:

“This is not a coalition but a coup against all New Yorkers who voted for Democratic control of the Senate and a progressive state government.

Sadly, the real victims of today's announcement are the people of our State, whose clearly expressed desire for progress on a host of issues will now be scuttled. Senate Democrats will remain fierce advocates for them and the issues New Yorkers want to see implemented like standing up for women’s health, passing real campaign finance reform, raising the minimum wage and enacting common sense gun laws.”

In a joint statement, Skelos and Klein said the deal “guarantees a fiscally responsible, fully functional Senate that will continue to produce positive results for all New Yorkers."

The move might result in more criticism for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has come under fire from progressives who say he hasn't done enough to help elect Democrats in his state.

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Yesterday, Jay-Z uploaded a documentary to YouTube showing a look behind the scenes at how the Barclays Center in Brooklyn came to life. 

Inside the nearly half-hour video, we finally learn more about the rapper's famous subway ride in October to his final concert performance in Brooklyn where he struck up a conversation with an older woman.

It turns out the woman he sat next to, named Ellen Grossman, was unaware of the hip-hop artist's popularity.

"Are you famous?"

Jay-Z answered yes before adding "Not very famous – you don't know me. But I'll get there some day." 

Check out the documentary starting at their conversation below:

Now learn more about Ellen Grossman: Check out some of her awesome art >

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A day after Republicans and independent Democrats swept to unprecedented joint control of the New York state Senate, Governor Andrew Cuomo is feeling the heat from members of his liberal base.

The issue centers around the perception among liberals that Cuomo, widely considered to be a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, "didn't do enough" to elect Democrats" in the New York state Senate.

In the 2012 cycle, Cuomo endorsed two Republicans in their respective elections because of their support for his gay marriage bill in 2011. When asked before the election which party he prefers to control the state Senate, he said he doesn't care. 

Democrats won a numerical majority, but on Tuesday five Democrats broke from the party's caucus to form the Independent Democratic Caucus, which will share governing powers with Republicans. 

Markos Moulitsas, a prominent liberal blogger and founder of The Daily Kos, responded with an angry blog post today, writing that Cuomo was not a worthy potential successor to President Barack Obama because of how he has handled the Senate situation.

This is the sort of thing that gets the No Labels and America Elects crowd all excited, but if you're looking for a successor to Obama who will be a strong Democrat who will fight for Democratic ideals and his or her party, don't be looking at Cuomo. Point to his record on marriage equality all you want. The only thing that "he's with us more than he's against us" argument proves is that Cuomo is a worthy successor to the legacy of Joe Lieberman.

That'll make him popular with the Sunday morning talk shows. It should make him persona non grata in a Democratic presidential primary.

For his part, Cuomo is trying to frame his governorship as one that transcends party politics and is based on "progressive goals," which he outlined in a sternly worded op-ed in the Albany Times-Union today. In the op-ed, he slammed both sides of the Senate and wrote that the only way for individual legislators of either party to win his support was to advance his goals. 

"Corruption is no stranger to the Senate, as I well know from the cases I brought as Attorney General. Neither the Republican nor Democratic conferences come to this juncture with clean hands.

From 1966 to 2009, the Republican Conference led for 42 years and blocked much progressive legislation, including last year’s efforts to increase the minimum wage, enact campaign finance reform, and end the controversial “stop and frisk” policy. The Democratic Conference was in power for two years and squandered the opportunity, failing to pass any meaningful reform legislation despite repeated promises. The Democratic Conference dysfunction was legendary and the current leadership has failed to come to a cooperative agreement with Mr. Klein’s IDC faction."

One national Democratic consultant told Business Insider that Cuomo's lack of involvement in the Senate elections was just the tipping point for many liberals. Cuomo's close ties with Wall Street and his early 2012 fight with unions cemented his reputation as having at least some conservative leanings. 

"It is another data point that gives progressives pause about a Cuomo candidacy," the consultant said. "The fight over unions and pensions, his closeness with Wall Street after the party has inched away, and then this reluctance..."

For now, liberals and Democrats in the state remain hopeful Cuomo and the legislature will promote the governor's "progressive goals." But it's clear that uncertainty clouds over the New York legislature.

"We're in sort of uncharted territory here," said one liberal activist based in New York. "It's hard to know what it'll actually look like. ... Governor Cuomo has said that he wants to implement these progressive measures. We'd like to see him do it."

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Business Insider's Sam Ro and Julia LaRoche are both tweeting pictures from a black van or SUV that has exploded and gone into a ball of flame around 50th st. and 5th Avenue in Midtown New York.

Details are scarce. Not clear if anyone has been hurt. There is a large crowd gathered around. Julia heard an explosion. (Update: An FDNY spokesperson tells Julia that it's a "truck" but that no further information is available at the moment).

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New York residents would suffer more than $43 billion in tax hikes in 2013 if Congress fails to resolve the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations, according to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The federal spending cuts and tax increases, known as the fiscal cliff, are set to go into effect on January 1 unless lawmakers reach a compromise.

On Wednesday, Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives said talks with President Barack Obama were deadlocked.

"There is real danger ahead for New York's economy if America goes over the fiscal cliff," DiNapoli said in a prepared statement. He is scheduled to present a new report on the effects of the fiscal cliff on Thursday morning at a forum with business and labor leaders.

Taxes would rise sharply on January 1 for virtually all 8.9 million working New Yorkers, DiNapoli said in the report.

A pending 47 percent increase in the payroll tax rate would cost New Yorkers $7.7 billion. An extra 3.4 million people in the state would have to pay the federal alternative minimum tax in addition to the 500,000 who currently pay it.

From Buffalo to New York City and towns in between, the state and its local governments together would also lose $609 million in federal aid in 2013, including $210 million in education funding, according to Federal Funds Information for the States.

Total lost federal aid over nine years could be about $5 billion, DiNapoli said, citing calculations from the New York State Division of the Budget.

Federal lawmakers have also proposed limiting the tax exemption on municipal bonds as a way to raise revenue, but that would bump up costs for the state and other borrowers, DiNapoli said.

"Any change in the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds could force the state, municipalities, school districts, and public authorities to make a choice between passing on higher costs to taxpayers, or reducing capital investments for essential infrastructure," he said.

(Reporting By Hilary Russ)

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It's been a crazy year for the New York tech scene.

We saw the Draw Something craze take over the world, startups get acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars, and entire offices get shut down in Hurricane Sandy.

February: OMGPOP created Draw Something, and it sold to Zynga for $180 million two months later

In early February, New York game shop OMGPOP launched a mobile game, Draw Something.

The game grew faster than any mobile app ever before. In its first ten days it was downloaded 1.2 million times. After five weeks, it was downloaded 20 million times.

By week six, Zynga swooped in with an offer to buy the company for about $180 million. By then had been downloaded 35 million times.

March: Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai departed suddenly

On March 5, Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai departed the startup.

Gigaom uncovered the news when it started investigating employee stock options that investors were buying up. It turned out a good chunk of the options belonged to Selvadurai.

May: Facebook had a disaster of an IPO, and the aftermath affected the entire startup ecosystem, even on the east coast.

On May 18, Facebook went public. It priced its IPO at $38 per share, valuing the company at about $100 billion.

But the stock didn't pop. Instead, it fell a lot. Today, its stock is trading $11 below the opening price.

The Facebook Fallout affected the entire tech ecosystem, especially startups, and it spooked a lot of investors.

Paul Graham warned all of his Y Combinator founders of the fallout in an email:

The bad performance of the Facebook IPO will hurt the funding market for earlier stage startups. No one knows yet how much. Possibly only a little. Possibly a lot, if it becomes a vicious circle....What I do worry about is (a) it may be harder to raise money at all, regardless of price and (b) that companies that previously raised money at high valuations will now face "down rounds," which can be damaging.

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Welcome to First Bite, wherein we bring you a look at some of the city's newest restaurants shortly after they open.

We'll go, eat some food, take some pictures, and report back to you.

This go round it's L'Apicio, the newest project from Joe Campanale and chef Gabe Thompson on East First Street that opened October 18th.

We didn't have a chance to go before we left for Asia, but it was our first dinner when we got back to town.

One of the great things about Epicurean Management restaurants (dell'anima, L'Artusi, Anfora, and now L'Apicio) are the wine lists.

Joe Campanale, beverage director and co-owner, curates delightfully explorative wine lists to accompany chef Gabe Thompson's rustic, Italian cuisine. An example of this is the 2011 Arnot-Roberts trousseau from Clear Lake, California. Trousseau is a grape indigenous to the small wine producing region of Jura in eastern France, but also one that thrives in the cooler climate of Lake County, California, and the '11 Arnot-Roberts effort was recently featured in a New York Times article.

Despite its lighter-bodied profile, trousseau produces incredibly well-structured, complex, and balanced wines. We found the Arnot-Roberts trousseau to be similar to schiava, a grape that's grown in Trentino Alto-Adige in Italy's north. In both instances, the wines are light, floral, mineral-driven, and have a slightly bitter finish. Surprisingly tannic for such a thin-skinned varietal, Arnot-Roberts' trousseau is a refreshing alternative to the oft overbearing, rich, powerful wines produced in California.

The wine list will change with some regularity, particularly the by the glass options, but in order to highlight the list, we've provided a pairing option for each of the dishes we had.

Escarole pecorino-buttermilk dressing, almonds, and cucumber ($13) - The salad carries a bright acidity from a liberal squeeze of lemon in the buttermilk dressing. Cucumbers and radishes add texture and freshness to contrast the fat in the cheese and buttermilk.

The salad is a nod to the fundamentals of Italian cooking: minimal ingredients and fresh produce. It's a great way to excite the palate before the starches show up.

Wine: Vignoles Estate, Keuka Lakes Vineyards 2011 (Finger Lakes, New York) $10 - Finger Lakes wines are a quickly growing sensation. The terroir surrounding said lakes provides exceptional growing conditions in which wines of great freshness and bright acidity are produced. The vibrant, acid-driven vignoles is light and crisp, but has a slightly rich mouth feel that can withstand the fatty dressing.

Linguine clams, pepperoni, and chilies ($19) - There was no denying the fresh clam flavor in this pasta. Chilies brightened everything up, and while the inclusion of pepperoni provided a modern twist, didn't offer much else to the dish.

Wine: Bianchetta Genovese "U Pastine," Bisson 2011 (Liguria, Italy) $13 - Bianchetta Genovese is from the coastal region of Liguria in Italy, where seafood is a well-known and cherished fare. Many Ligurian wines have a subtle salinity that results from grapes growing in approximation to the Mediterranean.

It is especially evident in wines from Genoa, Liguria's coastal capital, and proves to go extremely well with the brininess found in shellfish. The wine, from one of the region's best producers, is rarely vinified as a varietal wine, and shows Campanale's passion for finding Italian gems.

Pappardelle short rib ragu ($18) - Ragus are sometimes the best place to look when scouring for a chef's ability to make pasta. This one hits the nail on the head. It's not an overly sauced, Americanized mound of poorly cooked meat; but a refined, richly flavored, and decadent pasta. The toothsome bit of the perfectly cooked noodles was matched by the most tender shreds of braised short rib meat.

Wine: Syrah "Tous Ensemble," Copain 2009 (Mendocino County, California) $15 - There are a few solid red options by the glass that would pair well with the ragu, but we settled on the California syrah. The pasta is packed with flavor and spice, so we thought a wine of similar character and ambition would be the best way to wash it down, especially on a cold night!

Broccoli Rabe garlic, chili, and onion ($16) - Polenta alla spianatora is a dish in the Epicurean Management Group unique to L'Apicio. It's a glorified side dish of sorts, served family style on a wooden board. Polenta might be to the Italian chef what the omelet is to a French chef and Thompson has the technique down pat.

With our ragu intake from the pasta, we settled on the veggie option. The result was a textural, flavorful delight. It was a little heavy handed on the spice (we dig spice), but everything polenta should be.

Wine: Nebbiolo, Vallana Boca 2004 (Piedmont, Italy) $17 -We say go for the nebbiolo, a grape indigenous to the northern parts of Italy. Polenta is said to have originated in Friuli, where nebbiolo is not grown, but the dish is also popular in Lombardia, where nebbiolo (known locally as chiavennasca) is one of the most widely planted grapes.

So, in a round about way, this pairing supports the ol' "grows together goes together" ideal. Being an '04, the wine is a bit further along in the aging process, so developed nuances and complexities will make for a more enjoyable, fuller bodied wine that will stand up to the fat and richness that makes polenta so good.

Chandeliers are part of the decor in the 180-seat restaurant. The ambitious room is hip in that industrial, clubby, East Village sort of way. It's a far cry from the intimate rooms found at other EMG restaurants, but the offerings are still undeniably Thompson and Campanale's.

L'Apicio | 13 East First Street | 212.533.7400 

Sunday-Wednesday, 5:30pm – 11:00pm, Thursday-Saturday, 5:30pm-12:00am

*brunch coming soon

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