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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.
it is a pisser when the big andrew causes the wandering dago to be chased out of town
Wandering Dago case to cost taxpayers $325K
Previous settlement cost $68K; additional litigation still underway
ALBANY — One half of the Wandering Dago’s five-year legal saga reached its conclusion, but there’s no end in sight for the other.
The controversially named food truck is back outside the state Capitol, selling lunch, but its owner is still fighting to get her state job back.
In 2013, state officials banned the truck from state property and programs because of its name. (“Dago” is widely considered an ethnic slur against Italian-Americans, but the truck’s owner has insisted it is actually a nod to Italians’ early history in America, when many were day laborers paid “as the day goes.”)
Truck owner Andrea Loguidice mounted a fight in federal court against the ban on freedom of speech grounds, lost an initial ruling, but won on appeal. Earlier this month, part of the cost to taxpayers was revealed, as attorneys for Loguidice and the state submitted paperwork in federal court stipulating the state would pay her attorney $325,000 for legal fees and court costs.
Because the state is represented by the Attorney General’s Office, whose staff would be drawing salary with or without the Dago case, that side of the pricetag is harder to quantify.
Saratoga Race Course faced a similar claim after ousting the Wandering Dago. NYRA later settled that suit for $68,500 without admitting liability.
Attorney George Carpinello of Boies Schiller Flexner said Loguidice wasn’t seeking reimbursement for revenue she lost when she was barred from state property and state programs, just an end of the ban. But he added that she did lose revenue. There are 10,000 potential customers within walking distance, and Wandering Dago missed out on every one of them during its exile, he said.
There’s more money still at stake for Loguidice and for state taxpayers as a result of state officials’ handling of the matter, Carpinello said Monday.
“This is only the end of the first chapter. We still have the second case to adjudicate,” he said, referring to Loguidice’s firing. “It’s really unfortunate that we’re five years into this.”
Loguidice was an attorney working for the state Department of Environmental Conservation when the Wandering Dago controversy boiled over. She was still on probationary status as a new hire, and officially was fired for conflict of interest: Bringing the food truck to a General Electric event while also being involved in legal matters involving General Electric’s dumping of PCBs in the Hudson River.
That’s unfounded for two reasons, Carpinello said. First, a GE property was the site of the event, not the organizer — a third party organized the event. Second, Loguidice was not involved in day-to-day operations of the food truck at that point, on instruction of her supervisors at DEC, though she retained ownership.
The purported conflict of interest is a pretext for punishing her for dubbing her truck Wandering Dago and then fighting back over it, Carpinello said.
“She was fired because of that controversy. Our claim is that she was terminated because she brought the lawsuit.”
In this part of the case, Loguidice is seeking more than legal costs: She also wants to be reinstated, with backpay.
“She would very much like to return to her job,” Carpinello said.
He said he hopes to go to trial soon, but pretrial processes are going slowly.
Loguidice has not practiced law since her firing.
Clarification: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the state would reimburse its owner for $325,000 in legal fees and court costs after losing its attempt to block its operation near the state Capitol. In fact, the state will make that payment directly to her attorney.
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NEWS ANALYSIS
Trump’s War on the Justice System Threatens to Erode Trust in the Law as andrew vuomo continues his war on infidels, the church of nassau otb, bettors and well read derikevts familiar with ny const art 1 sec 3 , ny pml sec 109 and all the great racing that takes place without new york
By Michael D. Shear and Katie Benner
WASHINGTON — It is a once-unimaginable scenario: Sometime soon in an American courtroom, a criminal defense lawyer may argue that the prosecution of an MS-13 gang member is a politically motivated “witch hunt” built around a witness who has “flipped” and taken what the lawyer calls a plea deal of dubious legality.
He will be quoting the president of the United States.
That is potentially the gravest danger of President Trump’s sustained verbal assault on the country’s justice system, legal experts say. In his attempt at self-defense amid the swirl of legal cases and investigations involving himself, his aides and his associates, Mr. Trump is directly undermining the people and processes that are the foundation of the nation’s administration of justice.
The result is a president at war with the law.
“You are dealing with a potentially indelible smearing of our law enforcement institutions,” said Neal K. Katyal, who was acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama. “If Trump’s views were actually accepted, there would be thousands of criminals who are out on the streets right now.”
The president’s public judgments about the country’s top law enforcement agencies revolve largely around how their actions affect him personally — a vision that would recast the traditionally independent justice system as a guardian of the president and an attack dog against his adversaries. For more than a year, he has criticized the Justice Department, questioned the integrity of the prosecutors leading the Russia investigation, and mercilessly mocked Jeff Sessions, his own attorney general.
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Mr. Trump continued that pattern on Twitter on Saturday morning, seizing on disputed reports in the conservative news media that the F.B.I. had ignored “thousands of Crooked Hillary Emails” and vowing to get “to the bottom of all of this corruption.”
“At some point I may have to get involved!” he warned.
But this past week’s stunning legal developments — a conviction for his former campaign manager, a guilty plea by a longtime lawyer for him who implicated Mr. Trump himself in illegal acts, and immunity agreements for two of his closest business associates — appear to have broadened the president’s hostility toward the legal system.
In the wake of those developments, the president assailed federal prosecutors for their attempts to “break” Paul Manafort, the former campaign chief who was convicted on eight felony counts, and the president’s lawyers hinted that he might eventually wipe away the case with a pardon. And he lashed out at Mr. Sessions for not taking “control of the Justice Department” and pursuing enemies like Hillary Clinton, prompting a rare rebuke from the attorney general.
The most remarkable moment came when Mr. Trump attacked the very notion that prosecutors should try to “flip” witnesses by reaching plea agreements. In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” the president questioned that tool, which has long been considered lawful and essential for prosecutions.
“I have had many friends involved in this stuff,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal.”
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Former prosecutors and defense lawyers said the president’s embrace of that notion — spread broadly by his bully pulpit and given a measure of validity by the office he holds — is likely to undermine trust in the justice system and weaken the government’s ability to win in court.
“How long will it take before a federal criminal defendant claims in court in front of a jury that the president of the United States rejects the legitimacy of cooperating witnesses and so too should jurors?” said Christopher Hunter, a former F.B.I. agent and prosecutor. “If only one juror agrees, a dangerous criminal could walk free.”
Mr. Trump’s often cynical view of the American legal system has been shaped by decades of courtroom clashes over his business decisions, his personal behavior and his aggressive pursuit of the presidency.
As a young developer in New York, he battled the Justice Department’s claims that he had violated the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against African-Americans. Later, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of financial reporting violations at his casinos.
The legal system was also the venue for infuriating and embarrassing battles with his former wives. But it has also offered tools with which to bludgeon his business adversaries or — as he is accused of doing during the 2016 presidential campaign — to bury unflattering stories.
As president, Mr. Trump is sworn to uphold the law, but he has viewed the legal system itself as an adversary, suggesting that it be circumvented to, for instance, send migrants back home.
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As Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, has investigated his actions for more than a year, the president has waged a relentless campaign to diminish the Justice Department and the F.B.I. in the eyes of the public. After Michael D. Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations that he said had been directed by Mr. Trump, the president falsely claimed that the violations were not even a crime. And he has criticized federal courts as they have blocked much of his agenda, including his efforts to wield executive authority on immigration, voting and the environment.
George T. Conway III, a conservative Washington lawyer who is often critical of the president (and who is the husband of Kellyanne Conway, the president’s counselor), tweeted on Friday that “what everyone should want, and the country needs, is a ‘President’ capable of comprehending what it means to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ Art. II, § 3.”
But Mr. Conway also offered a more hopeful observation, one that was echoed this past week by several constitutional and legal scholars: Many of the country’s law enforcement institutions seem to be standing up to Mr. Trump’s continued abuse — at least for now. As they always have, they are pursuing hundreds of cases across the country, even as the president is fixated on only one of them.
Asked on Twitter how the American government might react if a foreign leader showed the same disrespect for the rule of law, Mr. Conway saidthat “they might perceive that the system was so strong, its checks and balances so robust, that the ‘president’ is reduced to lamely tweeting insults at his attorney general, with no effect other than to continue to erode his own moral authority.”
The strength of the system was underscored on Tuesday, moments after Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty. Outside a courtroom in New York, Robert S. Khuzami, the deputy United States attorney, delivered a message that might have been directed squarely at the person in the Oval Office.
“That message is that the rule of law applies,” Mr. Khuzami said, standing in front of a phalanx of F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors.
Paula Duncan, a firm supporter of Mr. Trump who served on the jury that convicted Mr. Manafort, made the same point in an interview on Saturday. Although she believes that Mr. Manafort was targeted because Mr. Mueller’s team hopes he is a steppingstone to Mr. Trump, she said, he was convicted because of “overwhelming” evidence.
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She said it would be “a great mistake” if Mr. Trump pardoned Mr Manafort. If he does, “even his supporters will have questions, because it would send the message that it is O.K. to break the law,” she said. “No one is above the law, not even President Trump.”
Still, it is not clear how the president’s attack on the basic structures of the American legal system will reverberate among judges, lawyers, police officers, jurors and the public in the weeks and months ahead, said Leah Litman, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
It is possible, she said, that jurors will increasingly view prosecutors through the highly charged partisan lens that Mr. Trump repeatedly employs. If that happens, she said, trust in the system will erode.
“If people start to believe that all government prosecutions are politically tainted, or that you can just straight up lie or deny the facts, I don’t think that is a very stable arrangement for the system of laws to exist in,” Ms. Litman said.
The result, she said, would be “a general lack of concern for any compliance with the law, or adherence to basic norms of democratic legitimacy.”
And while the president has so far stopped short of firing Mr. Sessions or halting the inquiries that seem to be drawing nearer to him, his threats to “get involved” have only grown.
“No matter when this all ends, Trump will have caused long-lasting damage to the ability of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to execute on its mission,” Mr. Hunter said. “He is sacrificing our public safety and national security on the altar of his own ego.”
Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting.
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