Monday, February 27, 2017

andrew the italiaian cuomo does not bet on sun april 16

we do.

he does not.

we will not vote for snyone who treats us like thst

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Track Code	Track Name	Entry	Scratch	1st Post ET	1st Post Local	Time Zone	Stakes Race(s)
EMD	EMERALD DOWNS	72	24	5:00 PM	2:00 PM	PDT
GG	GOLDEN GATE FIELDS	48	24	3:45 PM	12:45 PM	PDT
GP	GULFSTREAM PARK	72	0	1:15 PM	1:15 PM	EDT
LA	LOS ALAMITOS (MX)	72	48	8:00 PM	5:00 PM	PDT
LRL	LAUREL PARK	72	0	12:30 PM	12:30 PM	EDT
SA	SANTA ANITA PARK	72	24	3:30 PM	12:30 PM	PDT
SUN	SUNLAND PARK	120	24	3:30 PM	1:30 PM	MDT	Sunland Park H.
							Copper Top Futurity
WO	WOODBINE	72	48	1:00 PM	1:00 PM	EDT

New York State to Host the One of the World’s Biggest Days of Harness Racing

Yonkers Raceway will host combined Sire Stakes “Night of Champions” and International Trot on October 14 featuring more than $3 million in purses

The New York State Gaming Commission and the Department of Agriculture and Markets today announced that Yonkers Raceway will host one of the world’s single biggest harness racing events this October. For the first time, both the New York Sire Stakes “Night of Champions” and the International Trot will be held together. The event features horses from around the globe and New York’s best Standardbred horses that compete for more than $3 million in purses.

The Agriculture and New York State Horse Breeding Development Fund (Fund) and Yonkers Raceway will host this premier day of racing on October 14. The Fund – administered by the Gaming Commission, Department of Agriculture and Markets, and Standardbred breeders – runs the Sire Stakes racing program across the state. The New York Sire Stakes was the first program of its kind and has become the model for state-bred racing programs in North America.

The Sire Stakes “Night of Champions” consists of eight races featuring the best New York-bred Standardbreds. They will compete for combined purses of $1.8 million.

The $1 million International Trot is an annual world-class harness racing event held in the New York City area. The race was first held at Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury from 1959 to 1988, later moving to Yonkers Raceway until 1995. It returned in 2015 following a 20-year hiatus.

Two $250,000 invitational races have also been added to the card, bringing the total purses for the day to $3.3 million.

“This single event elevates New York horse racing’s international presence at an even higher level,” said Commission Executive Director Robert Williams. “We look forward to hosting these horses in October and seeing the best compete against the best.”

“The equine industry significantly benefits agriculture in New York State and this event proves the State is committed to strengthening that connection,” said State Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball. “New York’s horse population is the envy of the world and we are honored to show off these incredible animals that are bred and raised on New York farms on an international stage.”

“Yonkers is honored to host what is sure to be an exciting day of quality horse racing,” said Timothy Rooney, Sr., President of Yonkers Raceway. “Thanks to our partners in New York State Government, we have an excellent and sustainable racing product of which to be proud.”

“We are thrilled that Yonkers will be the center of the harness racing world this October,” said Mike Kimelman, Fund Trustee and prominent Standardbred breeder. “Our work with the Sire Stakes puts the best horses competing in the best races for substantial prizes, ultimately showcasing why New York’s racing has a storied legacy and a bright future.”

Established in 1965, the Fund’s primary mission is to promote and preserve agriculture through the promotion of horse breeding and equine research in New York State. The Fund directs the state’s premier harness racing program designed to stimulate the breeding, buying and racing of Standardbred horses in New York. Because of the State’s unparalleled breeding industry, there is strong international demand for New York-bred Standardbred horses.

The Fund receives money from the mutual handle at the licensed tracks across the state to provide purse money for the New York Sire Stakes in these major areas:

· Sire Stakes Races: The most talented New York-bred 2- and 3-year olds vie for enhanced purses at the State's pari-mutuel tracks. Each year, the top performers compete in eight races, traditionally known as the “Night of Champions.”

· Excelsior/State Fair Series: 2- and 3-year-old New York-bred trotters and pacers compete in these races, including the annual State Fair race held at the Goshen Historic Track.

· County Fair Racing: The best "earn as you learn" program in Sire Stakes racing is non-betting racing that takes place at 20 agricultural fairs throughout the State, culminating in championship races for each age and gait at the end of summer.

· Agriculture and Equine Research: The Fund provides assistance to county agricultural societies to maintain and repair racing facilities and also contributes to both the 4-H program and the Dr. Harry M. Zweig Fund for Equine Research at Cornell University.

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we proufly support the us postal service buy stamps

To: Mr. Jackson Leeds:

I am the Freedom of Information Law (F.O.I.L.) officer at Suffolk Regional Off-Track Betting Corporation.

If you wish to avail yourself of the F.O.I.L., please send a written request to me. The request should specify exactly which documents you wish to inspect. My address is:

Suffolk Regional OTB

Att: James McManmon

425 Oser Avenue, Suite 2

Hauppauge, NY 11788

Please note it is our policy NOT to use email for F.O.I.L. correspondence.

Thank you,

James McManmon

Friday, February 24, 2017

joe

Science Under Stalin

Soviet scientists developed the laser, pioneered semiconductors and launched the first satellite. Their advances were undone by political terror. Loren Graham reviews “Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy 1905-1953” by Simon Ings.

LOREN GRAHAM

Feb. 20, 2017 7:05 p.m. ET

34 COMMENTS

The story of science in the Soviet Union is one filled with contradictions, achievements and tragedies. Here was a country that, at one point, had the world’s largest scientific establishment. It was the first country to launch an artificial satellite and the first to send a human being into space. It was the first to develop diodes and rudimentary transistors. Russians built the first digital computer in continental Europe. Russians received Nobel Prizes for the development of the laser. These technologies—space communications, transistors, lasers and computers—are at the base of much of the world technological boom of the past 50 years. But what role has Russia actually played in that boom?

The Soviet Union may have pioneered in space with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin,but today Russia has less than 1% of the world commercial market in space telecommunications, the most successful commercial product so far stemming from space exploration. Russians may have won Nobel Prizes for developing the laser, but Russia today is insignificant in the production of lasers for the world market. Russians may have developed the first digital computer in continental Europe, but who today buys a Russian computer? By missing out on the multi-billion-dollar markets for lasers, computers and space-based telecommunications, Russia has suffered a grievous economic loss.

Accompanying this technical and economic failure was a human tragedy. Russian achievements in science and technology occurred in an environment of political terror. The father of the Russian hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov,wrote in his memoirs that the research facility in which he worked was built by political prisoners, and each morning he looked out the window of his office to see them marching under armed guard to their construction sites. The “chief designer” of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, was long a prisoner who worked in a special prison laboratory, or sharashka. The dean of Soviet airplane designers, A.N. Tupolev, also labored for years as a prisoner in a special laboratory. Three of the Soviet Union’s Nobel Prize-winning physicists were arrested for alleged political disloyalty. Probably half of the engineers in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s were eventually arrested. In 1928 alone 648 members of the staff of the Soviet Academy of Sciences were purged.

When one looks at these statistics and at the genuine achievements of Soviet science, one is forced to ask basic questions about the relation of freedom to scientific progress. During the Soviet period, with all the atrocities, 10 Soviet scientists won Nobel Prizes. How could that be?

PHOTO: WSJ

STALIN AND THE SCIENTISTS

By Simon Ings
Atlantic Monthly, 508 pages, $28

During the past 30 years, and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a group of scholars—20 or so—primarily in the United States, Canada, Britain and Russia, have been trying to tell the story of Soviet science and answer some of these questions. They have worked in newly opened archives and have interviewed hundreds of people. Most of the resulting scholarship has been published in academic presses and journals with small readerships. In “Stalin and the Scientists,” Simon Ings has made an effort to read all of this material and summarize it. A science writer rather than an academic, he has not worked in the archives himself or done primary research on his own, but he has read prodigiously. And he is a gifted writer.

“Stalin and the Scientists” is a good single source for anyone approaching Soviet science for the first time. It suffers from a number of flaws, however. Mr. Ings writes about what interests him most, such as biology, psychology and physiology. He gives no attention to mathematics and very little to theoretical physics, the fields in which the Soviet Union was the strongest. To him, physics means atomic weapons, but the Nobel Prizes that Soviet physicists won were in theoretical areas to which Mr. Ings gives little space.

Mr. Ings admirable effort to reach nonspecialized readers sometimes leads him to make exaggerated statements. He claims that we have “good agricultural and climate data for Russia going back over a thousand years” when in fact the data is incomplete and unreliable. Each of the following statements is incorrect or exaggerated: “Alexei Gastev was a ‘leading architect of the Soviet industrialisation programme’ ”; “The Bolsheviks never meant to nationalise industry on a mass scale”; the chemist V.N. Ipatiev owned the “holiday home in which Nicholas II and his family were murdered”; “most intellectuals had welcomed the revolutions of 1917”; Sergei Vavilov would become the “permanent secretary” of the Academy of Sciences under Stalin; Nikolai Bernstein “invented cybernetics”; collectivization of the Soviet type was an “American” invention; Niels Bohr’s work on physics showed that “nothing useful can be said about the actual state of the universe”; the arrest of the great Soviet biologist Nikolai Vavilov “had nothing to do with Trofim Lysenko,” the powerful and wrong-headed agronomist; Stalin was “the last in a long line of European philosopher kings”; “anti-semitism was not a strong force in Soviet life”; Nikolai Fedorov “rivalled Karl Marx as an intellectual driver of the 1917 revolution”; “Trotsky was a notorious blow-hard”; “By the time of its unexpected collapse, the Soviet Union had become what its founders had always dreamt it might become: a scientific state.”

The claim that the Soviet Union was a scientific state brings Mr. Ings close, in his conclusion, to condemning science itself. He sees science and technology as causing a coming global ecological collapse, and he thinks that in some ways the demise of the Soviet Union was a preview of what we will all soon face. In one of his final sentences he says: “We are all little Stalinists now, convinced of the efficacy of science to bail us out of any and every crisis.” “Stalin and the Scientists” deserves attention, but a very critical form of attention. It is based on an impressive amount of study, and most readers will learn a great deal. It is, however, incomplete and overdrawn.

Mr. Graham is professor of the history of science emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Georgia faith andfreedom coalition

Casino Companies Seek Foothold in Georgia, the U.S.’s Last Big Untapped Gambling Market

The pressure to find new markets has sent commercial casinos into nine new states over the last 15 years

CHRIS KIRKHAM

Updated Feb. 23, 2017 12:00 p.m. ET

12 COMMENTS

The world’s largest casino corporations have set their sights on Georgia this year, hoping state legislators will consider opening up one of the nation’s last untapped regional markets to full-service gambling.

Even though Georgia’s constitution bans casinos and the effort faces stiff resistance from Evangelical Christian groups in the Deep South, seven corporations including MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. have hired more than 50 lobbyists to press their case in the state.

A state senate committee is scheduled to vote next week on legislation that would open the door to two casino licenses in the state. Even if the legislature approves the idea, a majority of voters would have to approve a constitutional amendment on the ballot next year.

MORE ON THE GAMBLING INDUSTRY

New Jersey Votes Against Expanding Casinos Beyond Atlantic City (Nov. 9)
Atlantic City Vows to Retool Its Recovery Plan (Nov. 2)
New Jersey Casino Deal Brokered(Jan. 11, 2016)
Casino Boom Pinches Northeastern States (June 19, 2014)
So, You Think You Know the Gambling Business?

The effort underscores the pressure the industry faces in finding new markets in the U.S., as commercial casinos have spread into nine new states over the last 15 years and analysts raise concerns about an oversupply in regions such as the Midwest and Northeast.

“The casino industry has been seen as a growth industry over the last 20 to 30 years, and now you’re at an apex,” said Alex Bumazhny, a senior director at Fitch Ratings who focuses on the gambling business. “Gaming companies are kind of at the tail end of their growth opportunities.”

In the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, for example, the number of casinos will grow to 63 by next year, up from 24 in 2004. Gambling revenue has increased overall in those areas, but growth has been uneven.

New Jersey has seen its revenue from gambling cut in half over the last decade as Pennsylvania expanded commercial casinos, which led to a wave of casino closures in Atlantic City from 2014 through last year. Yet Pennsylvania’s rate of growth has also slowed in recent years as new casinos in Maryland and Ohio have cut into its market share, according to data from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, which doesn’t include tribal casinos.

Georgia, by contrast, is much less saturated.

“It’s got some big population centers, and it’s also bounded by states that have no gaming, which gives you additional supply,” said Jan Jones Blackhurst,executive vice president of government relations and corporate responsibility at Las Vegas casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp.

Georgia is the eighth-most populous state in the U.S., yet the closest full-service casinos with table games and slot machines are several hours away at either tribal casinos in North Carolina and Florida, or commercial casinos in Mississippi and Louisiana.

This is the second year in a row Georgia lawmakers have considered casino legislation. Last year the proposal never made it to a full vote, but supporters this year believe the idea is gaining more momentum, citing polls showing that between 56% and 57% of registered voters in the state would support legalizing casinos.

Last month Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal told lawmakers he was willing to entertain the idea of casinos if they didn’t harm the state’s lottery funding, which pays for a popular scholarship program. A lottery billboard in downtown Atlanta last year. PHOTO: ERIK S. LESSER/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Last month Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, who has previously said he would oppose any effort to allow casinos, told lawmakers he was willing to entertain the idea if it didn’t harm the state’s lottery funding, which pays for a popular scholarship program.

As drafted, the legislation would tax casino profits at 20%—lower than other states such as Maryland, which taxes casinos at a rate higher than 50%—and distribute the money to two different scholarship programs.

Operators would compete for two licenses: A minimum $2 billion resort in the Atlanta area and a $450 million property elsewhere in the state.

Casino companies have been busy in the state capitol. MGM Resorts International alone has registered more than 20 lobbyists in the state and Wynn Resorts Ltd. has hired former Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Sheldon Adelson, a prolific GOP donor, has also visited Georgia in recent years to meet with legislative leaders and has discussed legalizing casinos with the governor.

Opponents of casinos, including the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition, argue that opening the state to large-scale casino operators will introduce a powerful new set of political actors that could have a “pernicious effect” on state government.

“You think casinos are throwing a lot of money at it now?” said Dave Baker, the group’s executive director. “You let this go to a statewide referendum and they will just blanket the state.”

Most research shows that the introduction of casinos into states with lotteries may cause a short-term decline in lottery revenues, but that the lottery usually rebounds a few years later. A report from the State University of New York’s Rockefeller Institute last year found that new state revenue from casinos isn’t reliable in the long run, especially if gambling expands in nearby states.

Lorenzo Creighton, who has been leading MGM’s Georgia advocacy and is president of the company’s newly opened National Harbor resort outside Washington, said Georgia’s unique geographic position and limited number of licenses mean any project in the state would be an investment that would enhance the overall economy.

“You have roughly six million people in the Atlanta metro area, and there’s no other huge market close by that could cannibalize it,” Mr. Creighton said. “The fully integrated resort has a lot of staying power. That’s a business model we feel is sustainable for the long term.”

Write to Chris Kirkham at chris.kirkham@wsj.com