In any event, Mr. Bloomberg himself seemed more concerned with winning concessions on mandates from the Legislature than with pressing Mr. Cuomo to soften the financial blow from his budget proposal.
Sometimes the resistance was open, and sometimes the work of opposition was left to the quiet grind of the bureaucratic wheel; there are many stories of mandates from on high getting "lost" in some resistant colonel's filing cabinet.
As she said in Austin, "Having served as governor, I also know what it's like to be on the receiving end of mandates from Washington".
When Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey was chosen to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she said she knew "what it's like to be on the receiving end of mandates from Washington".
Acting on a mandate from Congress, the National Institutes of Health announced last year that it would spend $24 million to help build and operate a chimpanzee sanctuary, in essence, a taxpayer-supported retirement home for research chimps.
Pakistan's Express Tribune is reporting that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made the decision after the site was down for the day on a mandate from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
The agency originally called participation in the program voluntary -- Secure Communities is not based on a mandate from Congress -- and even provided steps to allow local governments to opt-out.
On both occasions, the allies justified their action on the basis of Security Council resolutions calling on the Iraqi government to stop persecuting its population, rather than on any specific mandate from the UN.Iraq complains that these "no-fly zones" illegally infringe its sovereignty.
"It's just unfathomable that the legislature would not act on this direct mandate from Colorado voters to tax marijuana sales," he said, adding that voters would approve the tax when it comes before them next year, in advance of the first recreational pot stores opening in the state in 2014.
Both Obama's campaign strategists and his former colleagues on Capitol Hill congratulated themselves on having earned a clear mandate from the voters.
Recruited as the pastry chef here, reprising the talent she showed in San Francisco, Ms. Falkner has now taken on the entire kitchen; her mandate from the owner, Luis Gonzalez, is to focus on "coastal Italian".
