NYC: Bloomberg and Quinn up-spin another budget pact

Bound by a common interest in positive spin, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) jointly announced in triumphal tones their final agreement on a new budget. The lengthly statement is so clearly geared toward advertising the agreement's punctuality, balance, lack of increases in tax rates and funding of popular programs that it doesn't even include an overall figure for governmental operations, which is set to exceed $69 billion. 

Quinn's remarks as distributed in a press statement from Bloomberg's office, received Sunday evening, sounded aimed in part at disputing rivals' attacks as "grandstanding" in what's likely to be the make-or-break Democratic primary to succeed Bloomberg.