bettors, infidels, Teamsters Local 858 Employees, and other true believers?
Muhammad Faridi Esq. and 99 Cent Express
Open On 1st Palm Sunday, Otb Rakes In $2m - New York Daily News
articles.nydailynews.com/.../18220335_1_racing-and-wagering-boar...Cached
Open On 1st Palm Sunday, Otb Rakes In $2m. BY JERRY BOSSERT DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER. Monday, April 14, 2003. New York City Off-Track Betting ... NY PML § 105. Supplementary regulatory powers of the board. Notwithstanding any inconsistent provision of law, the board through its rules and regulations or in allotting dates for racing or in licensing race meetings at which pari-mutuel betting is permitted shall be empowered to: (i) permit racing at which pari-mutuel betting is conducted on any or all dates from the first day of January through the thirty-first day of December, inclusive of Sundays but exclusive of December twenty-fifth and Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday; and (ii) fix minimum and maximum charges for admission at any race meeting.
Legislation would strengthen state OTB corporations - Elmont ...
Jackie Nash/Herald. Refaqat Malik, the owner of the 99 cent Express, ... in Franklin Square for six years, said the Franklin Square OTB is one of the most ...99 Cent Express
Long road to success: Immigrant's drive takes him from cabbie to law associate
Friday, October 14th 2011, 4:00 AM
Mariela Lombard for News
Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler associate Muhammad Faridi in his Manhattan office. They do it not so much because they know Faridi, 29, is an associate at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler, but because he used to drive a livery cab, as his father still does.
"These guys who drive me home - I used to work with them," Faridi said. "I worked with these people for seven years. I used to see them at airports, sit around and listen to them talk. All of them are older than me, most of them were my father's age."
Faridi describes himself as "an average kid from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn," which is mostly true: he went to James J. Reynolds Middle School and Lincoln High School in Brighton Beach, played first base on the high school baseball team, and knew Yankees statistics like the nearest subway stop to the family home.
But the "average" kid didn't immigrate to Brooklyn from Pakistan when he was 7, overcome a huge language barrier to graduate from high school, then drive a cab for years while attending law school.
And not every "average" kid got appointed head of the New York City Bar Associations' capital punishment committee - as Faridi was on Sept. 1 - or plan, during his three-year term, to examine death penalty issues ranging from federal authorities executing New York State residents to the sanctioned government assassinations of Osama bin Laden and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.
"There are a lot of issues about these assassinations that need to be discussed," Faridi said. "When can the government kill someone who is unarmed? Can you have targeted assassinations of anyone, and just as importantly, targeted assassinations of Americans? I want a place where we can have an open dialogue about this."
As a Muslim and an American who, in the days after the 9/11 attacks had a fellow Long Island Rail Road passengers ask him to stop reading an Arabic-language newspaper ("It was not written in Arabic," he said. "It was Urdu") because Arabic was "controversial," Faridi understands the complexity surrounding executions of any kind, even that of Bin Laden.
"As a Muslim, you are not going to find anyone more happy that he's dead, because there is no one who has done more harm to the image of Islam and has caused the death of so many Muslims than Bin Laden," Faridi said. "But as an American, it bothers me, because we in this country believe in the rule of law.
"We believe in Constitutional principles, we believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we believe in international law, that law matters. We have this school of thought that it is legal, but there are questions about it. As an American, it is not that I am against it, but it bothers me to my core."
Faridi's journey to his midtown Manhattan offices - and the downtown Brooklyn home he shares with his wife, Leila Faridi, whom he met while both attended CUNY Law School - began in Bharth, a small village near the town of Sialkot in northeastern Pakistan near the India/Kashmir border.
India and Pakistan were fighting over Kashmir, and Faridi recalls "going to the border every Friday to throw rocks at the Indian soldiers. We were little kids; we didn't know what was going on."
His father, Muhammad Ashraf Faridi, left the village in the early 1990s and made his way to America. Working as a livery cab driver, he was able to bring his wife and three children to Brighton Beach.
When he turned 18, Faridi's father took him to the city Taxi and Limousine Commission's Queens offices and got him a chauffeur's license.
"My father drove during the day and I drove at night," Faridi said. "While I was waiting for fares, I would play CDs to help me improve my English."
It was a fare - former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland Mary Robinson - who got Faridi to start thinking about law school.
He had driven her to a New Jersey speech, and on the way back, the car got a flat tire. Robinson stood behind Faridi as he changed the flat ("I should have called another car to come pick her up, but I didn't want to lose the fare," he said) and told him he could do what he wanted with his life, including go to law school.
Faridi enrolled in City University of New York, then went to CUNY Law School.
"I'm a CUNY baby," he said.
After his 2007 graduation, Faridi clerked for Federal Judge Jack Weinstein - the same man Faridi's father drove home at night.
As an associate litigator at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler, Faridi is involved in mortgage-backed securities cases but also does pro bono work in Bronx Housing Court, on capital punishment cases across the country, and even represents a group of disabled children suing the New Orleans school system.
Nowadays, Faridi's father occasionally drives him home at night.
crichardson@nydailynews.com
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