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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.
joseph mondello and ja jacobs run nassau otb into the ground and keep it closed on roman catholic easter sunday when tracks sre running that the parties faithful and other bettors want to bet
ny pml sec 109 violates rights secured by ny condt art 1 sec 3
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.
HIGHLIGHTS
Says he told county exec renominating him wasn’t in party’s best interests
‘He did not take it well and he did not like it,’ Joseph Mondello says
Five months after Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano was arraigned on federal bribery charges, Nassau Republican Party chairman Joseph Mondello summoned him to his Westbury office.
There was no more putting off a frank conversation about Mangano’s political future — and the direction of a party that would be moving on without its political standard-bearer. Prosecutors had charged Mangano in October in a federal corruption case, and Mondello needed to select a new candidate that he thought could win in November.
“I run this like a business and my job is to win,” Mondello said Thursday in his first interview in five months as he recalled the meeting in March in which he told Mangano he wouldn’t back him for a third term. “I have a job to do and renominating the current county executive is not in the best interest of the Republican Party.”
“He did not take it well and didn’t like it,” Mondello said of the meeting in his second-floor office on Post Avenue.
Mondello said he and Mangano haven’t spoken since, and on Thursday night the party’s executive committee endorsed former state Sen. Jack Martins for county executive.
Mangano, who has yet to say if he will run for a third term without the party’s support, declined to comment for this story.
The strained conversation between Mondello and Mangano would have been unthinkable only months earlier.
Mangano, a former county legislator from Bethpage, had risen unexpectedly to the county executive seat in an upset win in 2009 against Democrat Thomas Suozzi, and followed up with a commanding win in their 2013 rematch.
But Mondello and many Nassau Republican Party leaders have come to see Mangano, 55, as unelectable.
In October, Mangano and former Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto pleaded not guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, fraud and obstruction of justice in connection with their dealings with Bethpage restaurateur Harendra Singh.
Singh, charged in September 2015 with income-tax evasion, obstruction of justice and bribing a former deputy Oyster Bay town attorney, has pleaded not guilty and has had his trial postponed indefinitely.
Mangano’s wife, Linda, is charged with obstruction and making false statements in relation to $450,000 she received from an alleged “no-show” job from Singh. She has pleaded not guilty.
Martins last year led a group of GOP state senators who called on Mangano to resign after he was indicted.
Mondello said he made it clear to Mangano he would not change his mind and his decision was final.
“I feel sorry for him and what he’s facing,” Mondello said of Mangano. “I am not the judge, jury and executioner. I cannot convict Eddie Mangano. That’s not my decision. I am a political leader and my job is to win elections.”
Mondello explained that the public perception of Mangano, no matter his guilt or innocence, will shape voters’ opinions when they go to the polls Nov. 7.
“The Republican Party is about more than any one man,” Mondello said. “It’s about certain principles. And if we don’t follow those principles, we could be in trouble.”
PoliticsThe Cost of Corruption
The comments about Mangano are unusual for a party chairman known for keeping the inner workings of the GOP political machine under wraps.
Mondello last granted an interview to Newsday in mid-November — shortly after the county executive’s arrest — but he refused to discuss Mangano’s future. Mondello was willing to be interviewed now in order to discuss the party’s support for Martins.
Michael Dawidziak, a Bohemia political consultant who works primarily with Republicans, said Mondello understands a critical lesson of county politics — that friendships and loyalty must often take a back seat in the name of victory.
“The job is to make decisions in the best interests of the party, no matter if the person in question is your best friend in the world,” Dawidziak said. “As they say ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown.’ ”
While party bosses across the country have seen their power diminished over the past 40 years because of changes to civil service law and the rise of municipal unions, Dawidziak says Mondello remains the unquestioned leader of the Nassau GOP.
NassauThe Mangano and Venditto case in under a minute
Mondello controls a small army of party faithful that are critical to collecting tens of thousands of petition signatures in the dead of summer, along with a loyal voter base in the Town of Hempstead that can dictate control of the county at large.
Without that support, Dawidziak said Mangano faces an uphill climb should he decide to run. “It’s not impossible, but he would have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Mondello acknowledged that the image of Nassau Republicans has taken a hit because of a series of political indictments, that include former Oyster Bay Commissioner of Planning and Development Frederick Ippolito, who pleaded guilty last year to federal tax evasion and was sent to prison, and Hempstead Town Councilman Edward Ambrosino, who pleaded not guilty earlier this month to federal tax evasion and wire fraud charges.
“People favor the GOP on finances and crime,” Mondello said. “But right now the only thing interfering with us is all these corruption allegations.”
Mondello said he made the “necessary changes and put in new people who are good citizens.” Those changes, he said, begin with Martins, a former Mineola mayor who will lead the county ticket in November.
Martins, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year, called the executive committee’s endorsement “one step among many toward winning in November. This campaign is about restoring the public’s faith in government, cleaning up corruption and put Nassau County on the right track going forward.”
Vying for the Democratic nomination for county executive are Legis. Laura Curran of Baldwin, who has the county Democratic Party’s backing; Assemb. Charles Lavine of Glen Cove; and Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos, who switched from the Republican Party to run for the county’s top job.
Nassau Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs said voters “feel there is a culture of corruption with Republicans. They always think they have selected good citizens to run for office until they too get mired in this culture of corruption.”
“A lot of people want to see the death of Republican Party,” Mondello said. “But anyone who thinks we are going to roll over and give up without a fight is out of their mind. . . . The message is, we are not dead yet.”
see that faustman's patents are applied and that bcg is available
healthcare involves the provision of useful safe means
See faustmanlab.org pubmed.org faustman dl pubmed.org ristori + bcg
for useless others liars and lawyers their is "dynamite"
the employeed of nassau otb have been held up by the teamsters whose multiemployer pension plan has gone pbgc south
the us attorney general and andrew cuomo will not beat ms 13 because ms-13 has learned the lessons of the viet cong and Afghanistan.
the us cannot even treat the cause of csusalgia see the lancet p106 jan 14 1978 brcause egrne j ratner has died
Even a coal miner with a child with an autoimmune disease might be bright enough to know when he she is being scammed injured and destroyed by wrong healthcare solutions
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Why Would Congress Bail Out Miners’ Pensions?
If legislators don’t act by the end of April, miners will lose their health-care benefits. They may soon lose their retirement benefits, too.
Coal miners in Pennsylvania listen to Scott Pruitt of the EPAGene J. Puskar / AP
For decades, being a coal miner has come with a deal: Work in dangerous, unpleasant conditions for years, and in exchange, get lifelong health-care benefits and a decent pension. Now, though, part of that deal is jeopardy, as the funds that provide those benefits have dwindled.
When Congress returns next week, legislators will be under intense pressure to fund health-care benefits and pension plans for coal miners that are otherwise set to expire at the end of April. The United Mine Workers Association is urgingCongress to pass the Miners Protection Act, which would use money from a fund dedicated to cleaning up abandoned mines to instead shore up former mine workers’ health care and pension plans, which have been decimated as coal companies have filed for bankruptcy and stopped contributing to health-care and pension funds. America has a “moral commitment” to the nation’s retired miners, UMWA president Cecil E. Roberts wrote in a statement last month.
But does it really? The miners argue that Congress has an obligation to step in because of a deal signed between the federal government and the United Mine Workers in 1946 to end a nationwide strike. The federal government had taken control of the mines, and in order to get the miners to return to work, United Mine Workers president John King and Interior Secretary Julius Krug signed a deal that required coal companies to pay into a pension fund and a health insurance fund for miners. Today, the United Mine Workers of America refers to that deal as “The Promise,” and says that it means that the government (since Secretary Krug was one of the signees) committed to providing miners with health care and pensions for life.
But Congress is in a tight spot. If it bails out the miners, why stop there? Why not bail out all of the other pension funds, private and public, that are on the brink of insolvency? Miners are not the only group that is in danger of losing health care and pensions as their employers go bankrupt. One of the biggest private pension funds in the country, the Central States Pension Fund, which provides benefits for truck drivers, is also almost out of money and is proposing cutting benefits for current and future retirees. The miners and truckers funds are examples of defined-benefit multi-employer pension plans, meaning they provide a certain amount of money every month to covered workers from a number of companies. According to the Congressional Budget Office, such plans have $850 billion worth of benefit obligations, but have assets of only $400 billion. According to the Pension Research Council at the University of Pennsylvania, there are 1,300 such multi-employer pension plans, covering millions of workers.
“If you open the door here to the United Mine Workers, then you have 1,300 other plans waiting there to say, ‘Where's my bailout? Why is it fair that you preserved 100 percent of coal miners’ benefits?’” argues Rachel Greszler, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
There is, however, a federal backstop for failing private pension plans (though not for failing health-care plans). When the automaker Studebaker went out of business in 1963, it terminated its pension plan and more than 4,000 workers lost most or all of their promised pension benefits. That eventually motivated Congress to pass the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which set up the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which pays out reduced pensions in the event that a private pension fund becomes insolvent. (The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation itself is running out of money, which is another problem.)
The miners are no different than other employees who have had to turn to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation when their pension funds failed, argues Greszler. “This would be entirely unprecedented to say that the government is going to step in and bail out a pension fund and not even allow it to go to PBGC,” she told me.
Congress has, however, stepped in to bail out the miners’ health fund before. In 1992, Congress passed the Coal Act, which provided funding for health-care benefits of so-called “orphaned” retirees whose employers had gone bankrupt. It is the only time that Congress had intervened to provide retiree health benefits that had been promised by a private party. Congress intervened again in 2006 after a series of bankruptcies in the coal industry.
That Congress has taken such actions raises another question: Why do miners get special treatment from Congress? The miners emphasize “The Promise” and say that because the federal government promised them health and welfare benefits in 1946, it still owes them such benefits now. They say that the government essentially prevented the miners from striking for better benefits and conditions at the mines, because coal was necessary for the nation to keep functioning. As a result, they argue that the government’s promise to ensure decent working conditions for miners and retirees needs to be upheld. “The fact of the matter is that there’s a moral responsibility here, and the government has always lived up to it,” Phil Smith, the spokesman for the United Mine Workers, told me. This was also the position of then-Secretary Elizabeth Dole in 1989, when she convened a commission to look into coal miners’ benefits. “Retired miners have legitimate expectations of health care benefits for life; that was the promise they received during their working lives, and that is how they planned their retirement years. That commitment should be honored,” the Coal Commission concluded.
Patrick McGinley, a professor of law at the West Virginia University College of Law, says that coal has long earned a special position with American lawmakers because of coal’s one-time essential role in powering the nation. It was coal that helped power factories through the wars, and that helped sustain the nation’s post-war boom. “Historically, the reason for congressional support for coal miners has been a recognition that they have contributed so much to the prosperity of American economy. Through the World Wars, through Vietnam, they have powered American industry,” he said. Smith, of the United Mine Workers, says Congress has also recognized that coal-mining jobs were dangerous. “It was because miners were putting their lives and limbs and health on the line to provide the energy to fuel the nation that caused the benefits to be set up in the first place,” he said.
Some in Congress also recognize that if the health benefits were to lapse, there could be huge ripple effects in local economies across the country. People who no longer have health insurance will show up at emergency rooms, those whose pensions are reduced will depend more on services like food banks, and local government will have to step in. About half of the 22,000 miners set to lose health insurance will be eligible for Medicare, according to Smith.
Greszler has a different argument. She says coal is special to Congress because mine workers are good at lobbying. The Senate Finance Committee passed the Miners Protection Act last year with a significant number of Republicans voting for it, which is unusual for a bill supported by a union. “Coal has a very prominent influence on the hill and among certain legislators,” she said.
That influence might not be powerful enough to get Congress to act on both healthcare and pensions. The most likely course, Smith said, is that Congress will step in to shore up the miners’ health care funds, but not the pension funds. The miners’ pension funds, then, will be left to the same fate as thousands of other flailing pension funds across the country—it will have to eventually depend on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. And the PBGC does not have enough money to guarantee those pensions in the long run.
About 90,000 mineworkers are currently receiving a pension, and if the PBGC has to step in and pay for those pensions, it could very well bankrupt the agency. PBGC was hard hit by the financial crisis of 2008, and went from running a surplus to funding shortages, according to the Pension Research Council. As various companies in dying industries go bankrupt and stop paying pensions, PBGC is under more and more financial pressure to step in and save multi-employer plans.
Congress will eventually have to figure out a way to save the PBGC, says Barry Slevin, a principal at the law firm Slevin & Hart and an expert on employee benefits. If it doesn’t, the government agency will go bankrupt. But Congress currently has little incentive to spend taxpayer money to shore up an insolvent government agency. “We know from the Social Security debate, from the Medicare debate, that Congress does not deal with issue like this early in the problem. They tend to react to emergencies,” he said.
Congress isn’t bound to take the long view, then. Even if it does step in to help the coal miners, Congress is eventually going to have to face all the other pensioners who were also promised benefits for life. If Congress could learn anything from the experience of the mineworkers, it would be that the problems of private pensions in America are just starting to emerge.
Earlier this week, we took a closer look at the congressional lobbying teams employed by the transport sector’s biggest players, AASHTO and APTA. Today, it’s time to meet the representatives of the American Trucking Association (ATA), which reported $1.32 million in lobbying spending during the first half of this year on its congressional disclosures — more than AASHTO and APTA’s combined K Street bills.
The ATA is a dedicated opponent of expanding tolling to pay for infrastructure improvements, particularly on the interstate highway system and through congestion pricing plans.
Its lobbying activities extend to throwing cold water on legislation tackling climate change, which the group recently lamented would "impose significant costs on American consumers."
One prominent recent addition to the ATA’s lobbying slate is James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during the Clinton administration.
