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Claude Solnik
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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.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, second right, speaks at a ceremony commemorating Independence Day at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw’s Jozef Pilsudski Square on Nov. 11, accompanied by Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, Senate Speaker Stanislaw Karczewski, Sejm Speaker Marek Kuchcinski, and first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda. PHOTO: PAWEL SUPERNAK/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Poland’s ruling party faced growing criticism over its response to a weekend rally organized by nationalist groups, as opposition lawmakers and others accused it of largely turning a blind eye to a rising tide of racism and xenophobia.
Israel on Monday called for Polish authorities to “act against the organizers” of the march, in which some carried banners that read “White Europe,” “Europe Will Be White” and “Clean Blood.” Opposition lawmakers called the event a disgrace.
Some 60,000 people showed up for the rally, many of whom said they were only there to celebrate the country’s 99th anniversary of independence.
Many government officials have responded to international criticism but avoided an outright denunciation of the march and the nationalist sentiment shared by much of the base that has kept it in power.
The Law and Justice Party swept into office in 2015, decrying what it described as corrupt postcommunist elites and promising a fairer division of spoils from the country’s economic transformation. As with parties elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, it has strongly opposed immigration from Muslim countries and chafed against European Union rules—particularly on refugee policy.
Late Monday, Polish President Andrzej Duda, a former member of the party who has recently butted heads with it, said there was no place in the country for anti-Semitism and “sick nationalism,” some of the strongest words of condemnation.
Earlier, the foreign ministry strongly condemned “views springing from racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic convictions,” but defended the march as an event attended by “thousands of people who wanted to peacefully manifest their patriotic feelings.”
Poland’s criminal code bans promoting racist political movements or ideas. Patryk Jaki, a deputy justice minister, called the banners shameful and said there should be an investigation. But he added that he “wouldn’t want the few banners to eclipse the idea of the whole march.”
“Most of all, I saw there people with white-and-red flags, families with children, who once a year want to be in a place where they can feel national pride.”
A spokesman for the prosecutors’ office in Warsaw said police were investigating and were expected to pass on relevant evidence.
The march, which has taken place annually since 2010, was organized by nationalist youth groups and soccer fans to commemorate the anniversary of Poland regaining its independence in 1918. It has grown increasingly popular in recent years, attracting more people than official independence celebrations.
One of the organizers, the National Radical Camp, presents itself as the heir to a 1930s fascist movement of the same name, which worked to rid Poland of Jews in the years just before the Holocaust. The second group, All Polish Youth, is also named after an anti-Jewish interwar movement.
Grzegorz Schetyna, head of Poland’s largest opposition, center-right Civic Platform party, said ruling-party officials, including the powerful party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski, were “political fathers” to the Saturday events.
“It’s a disgrace to Poland’s image abroad, which has been completely ruined,” Mr. Schetyna said.
A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry called the event “a dangerous march of extreme and racist elements.”
The march comes as Warsaw has sparred with Brussels over its refusal to accept its assigned quota of refugees from Muslim countries and the government attempts to overhaul the country’s judiciary, which the EU says threaten the rule of law.
European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish Prime Minister at odds with the current government, went to Warsaw on Saturday to support the people celebrating Independence Day “without hostile chants and without clenched fists,” his spokesman said Monday.
The European Commission declined to comment. Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans is due to talk about the situation in Poland in a debate with the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday.
The parliament is likely to encourage the commission to trigger proceedings that can result in sanctions, including the suspension of Poland’s voting rights, a parliament official familiar with the discussions said.
The commission is confident it can muster the majority of EU nations it needs to start the punitive proceedings against Poland, but agreeing on sanctions would require unanimity among the remaining EU nations, with Hungary saying it would oppose any penalties imposed on Poland.
—Valentina Pop in Brussels and Nancy Shekter-Porat in Tel Aviv
contributed to this article.
contributed to this article.
Write to Wiktor Szary at Wiktor.Szary@wsj.com
