Sunday, April 28, 2013

take the Andrew Moelis U Penn religious

literary challenge. When is "Easter Sunday" 2013 ? DoesNY PML Sec 109 violate the rights of NY Bettors secured by NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3?




Roman Catholic Easter Sunday in preference to Greek Orthodox  Easter Sunday. Is it any wonder that NY is bankrupt and its OTBs going bankrupt one after the other? See NY PML Sec 109 and NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3 etc. You might think that one as yet unidicted NY official with standing would avail themselves of a FREE formal or informal opinion from  NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
See below  



Letter: Why close racetrack on Palm Sunday?

In this photo provided by New York Racing
Photo credit: AP | In this photo provided by New York Racing Association, Stay Thirsty, left, with Ramon Dominguez aboard, captures The G1 Cigar Mile horse race at Aqueduct in New York. (Nov. 24, 2012)
To see what's wrong up in Albany, one only needs to look at the fact that the Aqueduct Racetrack was closed on Palm Sunday. On an average Sunday, The Big A has a total handle of between $6 million and $7 million, of which New York State takes a percentage.
Racing also injects money into the industry, paying jockeys, trainers, grooms, etc. Hundreds of employees -- pari-mutuel clerks and racing officials -- help put on the show, which the state gets a piece of in income taxes.
All of this, worth thousands upon thousands of dollars, was lost because on an antiquated law. Not being allowed to race on Christmas or Easter is OK, but Palm Sunday? The New York Racing Authority races on Thanksgiving, and that's a holiday that the vast majority of us celebrate.
Changing this law would be a slam-dunk revenue creator.
Gerard Bringmann, Patchogue
Editor's note: The writer is both a racing fan and a practicing Catholic.



OPEN ON 1ST PALM SUNDAY, OTB RAKES IN $2M - NY Daily News

www.nydailynews.com/.../open-1st-palm-sunday-otb-rakes-2m-articl...
OPEN ON 1ST PALM SUNDAY, OTB RAKES IN $2M. By Jerry Bossert / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. Monday, April 14, 2003, 12:00 AM. Print · Print; Comment ...

OTB FACES HAND SLAP OVER PALM - NY Daily News

www.nydailynews.com/.../otb-faces-hand-slap-palm-article-1.667233
Apr 16, 2003 – By Jerry Bossert / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ... Aqueduct was also closed on Palm Sunday, but OTB thrived on action from around the country.






HI-
Thanks for the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy, if you give me a mailing address.

Claude Solnik
(631) 913-4244
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348 

Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012



Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.



The New York Times


April 27, 2013

Many Openings at State Agency Go to Those With Ties to Cuomo

ALBANY — New York State’s economic development agency created a new position last June, and then found a candidate to fill it: a young man named Willard Younger, who had just graduated from Colgate University with a degree in classics and religion. He became a special projects associate, at a salary of $45,000 a year, according to state personnel records.
His father, Stephen P. Younger, is a lawyer and power broker in legal circles who was a member of one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s transition teams. He has also donated $26,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the years, disclosure records show.
The next month, the agency hired 23-year-old Andrew Moelis, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, for another new position, strategic planning associate, at a salary of $75,000 a year.
Shortly before Mr. Moelis’s first day of work, his father, Ron Moelis, a prominent real estate developer, gave $25,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign, according to the records.
Since taking office in 2011, Mr. Cuomo has repeatedly pledged to bring a new approach to Albany, where politicians of both major parties have long rewarded supporters with jobs that are not open to the general public.
But an investigation by The New York Times into hiring by the agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, shows how Mr. Cuomo’s administration has engaged in some of the same patronage practices that have often prevailed here.
The investigation was based on personnel records obtained through a Freedom of Information request, as well as campaign finance and other state records. Numerous interviews were conducted with state officials, employees and outside experts.
While some of the new employees at Empire State had experience in economic development, others did not. Some of the jobs were not open to competition, and were filled with little input from the agency itself.
Empire State has also hired friends of Mr. Cuomo who may help form his political brain trust should he decide to run for president in 2016.
James P. Rubin, a former State Department spokesman, was hired at the agency in 2011 as counselor on competitiveness and international affairs, with a salary of $150,000 a year. Mr. Rubin’s appointment was seen by political consultants as a move by Mr. Cuomo to add a foreign policy hand to his stable.
Empire State hired 49 people in the first 20 months of the Cuomo administration, according to personnel records obtained by The Times. Nearly a third were the governor’s political associates, donors and friends, or their relatives, the records and interviews show.
At least seven of the new hires with connections were placed in newly created positions.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said that openings at Empire State were posted on many popular job sites in 2011 and 2012, including Monster.com.
After repeated requests for evidence of the postings, the office on Saturday morning provided receipts for those of six jobs advertised on Web sites in 2011 and 2012.
The office also said openings at Empire State were advertised extensively on job banks and Web sites run by the state government.
In a statement, the office said that questions about Empire State’s hiring practices amounted to an attempt to “create a scandal.”
“We have launched marketing, advertising and outreach campaigns that are unprecedented for state government,” the statement said, adding that such questions “unfairly tarnish the reputation of those who have taken a chance by entering public service instead of joining or remaining in the private sector.”
The administration has also said it had recently retained a consultant to improve recruitment of candidates for state agencies.
When Mr. Cuomo announced in October that he was seeking to hire a consultant, he declared that he was handling the filling of jobs differently than his predecessors.
“The old appointments process was disjointed and politicized, and it lacked access to the tools used by today’s recruitment professionals,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.
At a time when New York’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average, Empire State is supposed to play an important role in helping the administration bolster the state’s economy. It offers loans, tax credits and grants aimed at attracting and keeping businesses.
With about 300 employees, Empire State is one of the smaller state agencies. But governors of both parties have often used it for patronage because legally, it is a public authority — nominally independent of the state government, though controlled by the governor.
As a result, its workings are not subject to as much oversight as agencies within the executive branch itself.
Still, under the state’s Public Authorities Reform Act, Empire State board members have a fiduciary duty to the mission of the agency, not to outside political considerations.
Former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat who spearheaded the act, said the Cuomo administration’s hiring practices had undercut reform efforts.
“Authorities are not part of the executive branch, and their leadership is legally required to make judgments in the public interest, not in the interest of the executive branch,” Mr. Brodsky said.
Mr. Cuomo appointed a political ally, Kenneth Adams, as Empire State’s president in January 2011.
Mr. Adams previously ran the New York State Business Council, the leading advocacy group for business in the state, when it provided an important endorsement for Mr. Cuomo in the 2010 campaign. The Business Council has also collected money from contributors to help finance the Committee to Save New York, a lobbying and advocacy group set up with Mr. Cuomo’s blessing to promote his agenda.
Mr. Adams declined to comment.
Some of the new employees at Empire State seem to have benefited more than once from their connections to the Cuomo administration, according to interviews, state records and résumés on LinkedIn, the business social-networking Web site.
Mr. Younger, the recent Colgate graduate hired by the agency in June, had summer jobs in Mr. Cuomo’s office in 2011, as well as in 2010, when Mr. Cuomo was attorney general.
His father, Stephen, is a past president of the state bar association and a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in Manhattan. In addition to serving as a member of one of Mr. Cuomo’s transition teams after he was elected governor, Stephen Younger was a transition director for Mr. Cuomo after he was elected attorney general in 2006.
Neither Younger responded to several messages seeking comment. Josh Vlasto, Mr. Cuomo’s chief of staff, said he knew Willard Younger personally, praising him as a “tireless and exceptional worker.”
Mr. Moelis, who was hired as the $75,000-a-year strategic planning associate, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 with a degree in Assyriology, the study of ancient Mesopotamia, according to his résumé on LinkedIn. He worked for Citigroup as an analyst before being hired by Empire State.
Asked about Mr. Moelis’s qualifications, Mr. Cuomo’s office said that he had turned down an offer to stay at Citigroup before joining the agency.
Still, his ties to the administration run deep. His father, and his father’s real-estate firm, have donated a total of $75,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the years. His uncle, Kenneth Moelis, is a financial consultant whose firm, Moelis & Co., was hired by the administration last year as an adviser on gambling matters.
Reached by phone, Andrew Moelis declined to comment. At Empire State, he is listed as a contact on a redevelopment project that the agency is overseeing at Belmont Park on Long Island.
Maya Kriet, a spokeswoman for his father, Ron Moelis, said “there was no link between” the donation or political considerations and the hiring.
“Ron did not ask the governor or any of his staff to hire his son,” she said. “Andrew made a personal decision to join Empire State Development.”
Other employees include Rachel Adler, a $35,000-a-year press officer who graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2011. She is the daughter of Paul Adler, the former Rockland County Democratic chairman, who went to prison several years ago on federal corruption charges but is now active again in political circles.
Ms. Adler did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Adler said he had nothing to do with his daughter’s appointment, declining to comment further.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said Ms. Adler specialized in social marketing, crediting her with helping to increase Empire State’s Twitter followers by 5,000 since her hiring in November 2011.
Some officials at the agency are friends and political associates of Mr. Cuomo. Mr. Rubin, the former State Department spokesman, knows Mr. Cuomo from President Bill Clinton’s administration. (Mr. Cuomo was Mr. Clinton’s housing secretary.)
Mr. Cuomo’s office said trade missions conducted by Mr. Rubin had helped increase the exports of 63 state companies. Mr. Cuomo also named Mr. Rubin to the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
In announcing Mr. Rubin’s appointments to the two agencies in October 2011, Mr. Cuomo said, “With decades of work in government, finance and the media, James Rubin is a true national leader in international economic affairs."
Mr. Rubin declined to comment. Several others with political ties to Mr. Cuomo who were hired at Empire State either declined to comment or did not respond to phone and e-mail messages.
Rhoda Glickman is a $150,000-a-year senior vice president of arts and cultural development at the agency. She is the wife of Dan Glickman, who served in the Clinton cabinet with Mr. Cuomo and is the former head of the Motion Picture Association of America. She once ran a Congressional arts organization when her husband was in Congress, and her son Jonathan is a film studio executive.
“Her family is well known in the industry,” Mr. Cuomo’s office said.
The Glickman family has donated nearly $43,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns since 2001, according to campaign disclosure records.
Empire State also hired Irene Baker, a lawyer who had worked for Mr. Cuomo in the attorney general’s office, at a $120,000 salary, even as she was also acting as a director of cabinet affairs for Mr. Cuomo. Under the law, public authorities are required to operate at arms-length from the executive branch, raising questions about such dual roles. (Ms. Baker later resigned to take a job at Madison Square Garden.)
A number of other executives have been active in state politics. Sam Hoyt, a senior official at the agency, is a former Democratic assemblyman from Buffalo who was once involved in a sex scandal with an intern. A longtime ally of the governor, he was hired to represent the agency in the Western part of the state and earns $139,000 annually.
When the New York Legislature approved same-sex marriage in 2011, a signature Cuomo initiative, one of the administration’s allies was Ross D. Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda. Mr. Levi was later dismissed by the group after he had a falling out with its board.
He ended up at the agency, where he earns $130,000 as a vice president of marketing.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said Empire State had hired Vincent Esposito, a former county legislator and aide in the Assembly, because he had worked on economic development projects.
But last year, Mr. Esposito was widely viewed as a leading Democrat to take on State Senator James Alesi, an upstate Republican who provided a crucial vote in support of same-sex marriage.
Mr. Cuomo took a number of steps to shore up the re-election prospects of Mr. Alesi and three other Republicans in the Senate who supported the bill.
Mr. Esposito dropped out of the Senate race in May 2012. Two months later, he received a job at Empire State.

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