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Friday, November 29, 2019
Wandering Dago, Inc. v. Destito, No. 16-622 (2d Cir. 2018)
WD filed suit against OGS, alleging that defendants violated its rights under the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and the New York State Constitution by denying WD's applications to participate as a food truck vendor in the Lunch Program based on its ethnic-slur branding. The Second Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendant, holding that defendants' action violated WD's equal protection rights and its rights under the New York State Constitution. In this case, it was undisputed that defendants denied WD's applications solely because of its ethnic-slur branding. In Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017), the Supreme Court clarified that this action amounted to viewpoint discrimination and, if not government speech or otherwise protected, was prohibited by the First Amendment. The court rejected defendants' argument that their actions were unobjectionable because they were either part of OGS's government speech or permissible regulation of a government contractor's speech.
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.
take some new york money with an early morning betting line of 99:1
the counsel for new york city otb could not sue because he was nothing but a high priced fucking errand boy for the president of nyc otb.. his leagal analysis of the lack of merits of the precursor stature to ny pml sec 109 is convincing
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.
andrew cuomo et al love to be sued and pay off taxpayer dollars at the windows
Wandering Dago, Inc. v. Destito, No. 16-622 (2d Cir. 2018)
WD filed suit against OGS, alleging that defendants violated its rights under the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and the New York State Constitution by denying WD's applications to participate as a food truck vendor in the Lunch Program based on its ethnic-slur branding. The Second Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendant, holding that defendants' action violated WD's equal protection rights and its rights under the New York State Constitution. In this case, it was undisputed that defendants denied WD's applications solely because of its ethnic-slur branding. In Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017), the Supreme Court clarified that this action amounted to viewpoint discrimination and, if not government speech or otherwise protected, was prohibited by the First Amendment. The court rejected defendants' argument that their actions were unobjectionable because they were either part of OGS's government speech or permissible regulation of a government contractor's speech.
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.
charlestown and mountaineer at nassau otb any time its is running snd we want to make Christmas and Christmas Eve double or trible time paid holidays at nassau otb for Chridtians, not quite Cristians eg members of the Orthodox Church, plain old bettors, believers in NY const Art 1 Sec 3, infidels, non believers, and kevin mccaffrey suffolk county legislator , president of teamsters local 707, which represents the employees of nassau otb
Thanks for the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy, if you give me a mailing address.
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 Charleston Town Center Mall was decorated for Christmas in early November.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
The 72-Hour War Over Christmas
The mayor of Charleston, W.Va., wanted her city to be more welcoming to all faiths and people, so she changed an annual celebration to the ‘Winter Parade.’ It didn’t last long.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The first shot was fired in the middle of the afternoon in early October, back when the Appalachian leaves had barely turned orange and store shelves were lined with Halloween candy.
“The Charleston Winter Parade will begin at the corner of the Kanawha Boulevard and Capitol Street,” the post read.
For years, the city has put on an old-fashioned “Christmas Parade” each December in downtown Charleston. Marching bands, fire trucks, Shriners in their tiny cars and Santa in his red sleigh wind through the city streets with children chasing candy flung from floats decked out in holiday themes. Now, without any notification of a name change, officials were calling it a “Winter Parade.”
Charleston’s 72-hour war on Christmas was on.
Mayor Amy Goodwin didn’t see her decision to rename the parade as a war on anything. She thought the move would signal that this capital city situated along the Kanawha River was a place for people of all faiths and cultures. It was the same impulse that drove her when she first took office at the start of the year to invite Christian preachers, a rabbi, an imam along with people of other faiths to say prayers before City Council meetings. Renaming the parade was an extension of that open-door spirit, she believed.
“I wanted to show that Charleston is a welcoming and inclusive city,” she said.
That is not how many Charleston residents saw it.
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Mayor Amy Goodwin, who was elected last year, said she “wanted to show that Charleston is a welcoming and inclusive city.”Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
“The new mayor needs to be voted out if she does away with the Christmas parade,” read one comment on the initial Facebook post. “Christmas is all about Christ, not some winter parade.”
A local lawyer and newspaper columnist, Mark Sadd, said he didn’t understand why the mayor needed to show the city as more welcoming. It wasn’t like there were a lot of complaints.
“A Christmas parade is about as inclusive as we can get,” he said.
Some people thought renaming the parade was an attack on Christianity and traditions held dear in a city of 48,000 that feels more like a small town.
But for some, it hit at something deeper. Replacing “Christmas” with “winter” was a shot against a way of life that had already changed so much in recent decades as the coal industry in the region collapsed, jobs in chemical manufacturing disappeared, shops closed and large numbers of people moved out of town altogether, leaving a place so different from the one longtime residents remember from their youth.
Across America, the mention of “Christmas” in holiday greetings and decorations has become another measure of political divisiveness.
Schools and government buildings have replaced Christmas trees and nativity sets with holiday lights and reindeer. Starbucks is just saying “Merry Coffee” this year.
President Trump has weighed in on several occasions with his support for the traditional seasonal greeting, occasionally casting his electoral victory as a seasonal win, too.
“I told you that we would be saying Merry Christmas again, right?” he said at a 2017 speech in Missouri.
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Students in the marching band at John Adams Middle School in Charleston practiced this month for the holiday parade.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
‘Can’t We Just Have a Christmas Parade?’
In the hours after the mayor’s announcement, it seemed to many residents as though Charleston was going the same direction they believed Starbucks had — waging an assault on the holiday, and one that could affect the grades of 12-year-old trumpet players, a small and longtime community of Muslims, and Christians marking the season in poinsettia-lined pews.
City Council members learned about the name change the same way as most every other resident — from the Facebook post. Did we vote on that, asked Courtney Persinger, so sleep deprived from nighttime stirrings by a new infant he briefly wondered if he somehow missed an action by fellow council members.
But Ms. Goodwin had launched the change unilaterally, unaware of what she would unleash. Word about it quickly spread that day in early October, across Facebook and Twitter, church sanctuaries, classrooms and dining rooms.
People in the overwhelmingly white, Christian city talked about an insult to “the almighty Supreme Being.” Some said they had stopped watching N.F.L. games when players protesting police brutality and racial inequality knelt during the national anthem. Now, they felt a similar sense of revulsion about the parade name change.
“The community reaction was a collective groan,” said Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce in Charleston, explaining how a simple name change could elicit such outrage. “It’s a cute little parade with cute little kids and can’t we just have a Christmas parade?”
Caitlin Cook, a City Council member, got a call from her parents. “What’s going on?” they demanded, trying to grasp what was behind a decision to tinker with tradition. Other constituents were calling and texting with similar questions. Ms. Cook didn’t know what to tell them. She supported the move — she thinks Charleston needs to signal it’s a welcoming city — but was caught off guard by it.
The first afternoon when the name change was announced, Brandon Willard, a junior high band teacher, was scrolling through his phone at John Adams Middle School watching the negative comments about it pile up on social media. He recognized some commenters’ names as parents or relatives of his band students.
Mr. Willard thought about his musical selection for his students in the parade this year: Sleigh Ride. It was secular. But with all the outcry, Mr. Willard worried that parents would pull their children in protest and leave him lacking enough musicians to play it.
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The sheet music for “Sleigh Ride,” which the marching band at John Adams Middle School had planned to perform at the parade.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
That would be a big disappointment to the students, who march every year in Santa hats and with decorated instruments. Mr. Willard had even ordered light-up necklaces for this parade. The parade also counted toward their grade. Concerned about the fallout on his band, he tracked down the principal.
“We are going to need to have a plan,” Mr. Willard told him.
The whole city seemed to be talking about the name change. An idea circulated to boycott the event and instead attend the Christmas parade in nearby South Charleston. The issue came up at the church youth group attended by Ms. Goodwin’s 15-year-old son. He arrived home that evening and assured his mother all the teenagers supported her.
“You’re totally good on this,” the mayor recalled him telling her.
But outrage continued to mount. People pored over the rules put in place by the shopping mall that sponsors the parade. One stated that religious-themed floats were banned. That rule had been on the books for years, officials said, but amid the anger over the new parade name it took on new meaning and inspired a new round of vitriol when people started sharing it on social media.
The next day on the city’s largely African-American West Side, Rev. Matthew J. Watts kept bumping into congregants from his Grace Bible Church who were upset about the mayor’s decision. He didn’t like it either. The small black population in Charleston has long felt shunned by government officials, Mr. Watts said. This was on another level. This time it felt like the mayor was shunning Jesus.
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Rev. Matthew J. Watts at Grace Bible Church in Charleston said his congregants didn’t like the name change and neither did he.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
To Mr. Watts, who has lived in Charleston for 41 years, it was a painful reminder that America was becoming more secular and that the Christian church was losing the influence it once had.
“I’m a traditionalist, and I grew up with a strong background of celebrating the birth of Christ,” he said.
Ms. Goodwin was busy with a packed agenda. There were “7,000 kids in foster care, people dying every day from opioid overdoses,” as she put it, plus the normal tasks of mothering two teenage boys. She recalled being in a meeting at city hall when a staff member approached her and calmly explained, “There’s some pushback on the parade.”
She had been in office barely 10 months. Her election had already brought about major change: She is Charleston’s first female mayor. And unlike the last mayor, who served for 16 years, she wasn’t a lifelong community resident. She was raised in Wheeling, 180 miles away.
“She didn’t come to Charleston until I was 45 years old,” said Ms. Goodwin’s mayoral predecessor, Danny Jones.
