Jean -Philippe who knows when Easter Sunday and Palm Sunday are or who can read NY Const Art 1, Sec 3 occur?
Call her before you decide who to vote for or how to vote?
HI-
Thanks for the help. The item’s
below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy, if you give me a mailing
address.
Claude
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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.
In New York Casino Vote, a Dance With Temptation
By ROBERT H. FRANK
In the 48 states that permit at least some form of commercial gambling,
lively debate continues over the industry’s relentless efforts to
expand. On Tuesday, New Yorkers will vote on a proposed constitutional
amendment that would permit up to seven new full-scale gambling casinos
in the state. (The state’s five existing casinos are confined to Indian
reservations.)
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo
argues that the amendment would create jobs, increase school aid and
lower property taxes. And, yes, it would do all those things. But it’s
still a bad idea. Other strategies would accomplish the same goals more
effectively, without the disastrous spillovers that invariably accompany
expanded gambling.
The ostensible attraction of the amendment is its promise to relieve
budget woes without new taxes. In proponents’ eyes, state income from
gambling is a form of voluntary tax payment. But modern casino revenue
comes mostly from slot machines, and the relationship between them and
some of their patrons is voluntary in only the most superficial sense. “Addiction by Design”
(Princeton University Press, 2012), Natasha Dow Schüll’s gripping
account of slot machine gambling in Las Vegas, looks into the technical
wizardry underlying modern slots and their effects on players. According
to slot designers and casino managers surveyed in the book, the mission
of these machines is simple: to separate patrons from their money in
the most ruthlessly efficient — yet psychologically agreeable — ways
possible.
The machines create an experience so compelling that some people stop
playing only when they’ve exhausted every available resource. Ms. Schüll,
a cultural anthropologist on the M.I.T. faculty, interviews a slots
player who sees the machines as so immersive that winning becomes a
distraction, something that matters only because it lets her play a
little longer. “It’s like being in the eye of a storm,” the woman says,
later adding, “You aren’t really there — you’re with the machine and
that’s all you’re with.”
Psychologists describe this state as flow, a feeling of being so
absorbed in what you’re doing that you become completely unaware of the
passage of time. Artists, writers and others who achieve flow in their
work call it one of the most pleasurable psychological states, one that
greatly enhances productivity. But in hindsight, at least, flow as
experienced by some slots players is a state that leads to ruin.
If casino gambling were expanded, most New Yorkers wouldn’t be directly
affected. Even in places that already have it, only a small proportion
of people become problem gamblers. But much the same could be said of
crack cocaine. If it were legal, most people wouldn’t even use it, much
less become addicted to it. But in both cases, the number who would
become addicted, though small in proportional terms, would be
disturbing. If governments shouldn’t raise revenue by sharing revenue
with sellers of crack cocaine, why should they enter similar pacts with
casino operators?
A 2004 study
of legalized casino gambling in Ontario estimated that about one-third
of casino revenue came from patrons with significant gambling problems.
Libertarians contend that if gambling addicts freely choose to waste
their own money, that is none of society’s business. But addiction also
harms the innocent, making marriages more fragile and bankruptcies more
likely. Properly accounting for these spillovers exposes casino
expansion as not only an inhumane policy, but one that could actually
reduce state revenue.
Historically, societies have tried to shield their most vulnerable
members from dangerous temptations, including many forms of gambling and
addictive drugs. Discreet private gambling and soft drug use are seldom
targets of these prohibitions. But active revenue sharing with casino
operators crosses a bright line. It lends the state’s imprimatur to
activities that ruin lives. Governments have been properly reluctant to
take this step.
As parents tell their children, the best way to get ahead is to get more
education, work hard and save for the future. For many years, however,
New York has encouraged its citizens to rely instead on luck, to dream
about what they’d do if they won the state lottery. “I’d buy the company
and fire my boss,” intoned one artfully produced, state-funded
television spot.
New York does need more revenue. And though no one relishes higher taxes
in the abstract, there are many things we should be taxing but aren’t.
When we buy heavier vehicles, for example, we put others at more risk.
If vehicles were taxed by weight, we’d have an incentive to consider
that risk when buying. Companies may emit pollution not because they
want to ignore the environment, but because cleaner processes are
expensive. If we taxed pollution, businesses would emit less of it.
Instead of promoting gambling, the governor should explain that the
state should be taxing activities that cause more harm than good, even
if we didn’t need the revenue.
Politicians naturally fear taking unpopular positions. But voters are
sometimes willing to cut them some slack. Mr. Cuomo might reflect on the
repeated vetoes of death penalty laws by his father, Mario M. Cuomo,
when he was governor in the 1980s and ’90s. The death penalty was
extremely popular at the time, yet voters sensed that the vetoes sprang
from sincere conviction, and they were quick to forgive him.
Voters might be similarly tolerant if the current Governor Cuomo
advocated more principled methods of generating new state revenue. He’ll
be more motivated to do so if voters reject an amendment that’s sure to
increase addiction by design.
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