Andrew Cuomo tells Christie that he reminds him of Gary Hart.
Instead of dueling in Weehawken, they could try parachuting from the GW Bridge?
Christie declares that NJ will pay exactly what is owed to bettors just like the stock exchange and that there are no liars or slush funds in New Jersey as there are in New York.
Steven Crist: A penny won should be a penny received
About 30 years ago, a particularly loony New York State
assemblyman introduced a bill that would have required a minimum payoff
of $4 on every $2 bet at New York racetracks.
The idea, which would have bankrupted racing, was roundly and rightly ridiculed, the bill expired without action, and in almost every jurisdiction, the minimum payoff remains $2.10 for $2.
The nutty proposal did raise a legitimate pari-mutuel issue that has remained largely unaddressed to this day: Why should there be any guaranteed, artificial minimum payoff in the pari-mutuel system, and why are payoffs still rounded down in 10-cent or 20-cent increments instead of being paid off accurately to the penny?
Stock markets made the change to decimal pricing years ago, and racing can no longer hide behind the outdated excuse that these payoffs would slow mutuel lines to a crawl as tellers counted out pennies. An increasing number of bets today are made through advance-deposit wagering accounts or through vouchers at self-service machines.
Breakage, the practice of rounding down (always down) payoffs to supposedly more-convenient dime increments, is, in fact, nothing but institutionalized theft from customers, with their rightful earnings directed to a slush fund usually split between the state and the track.
Defenders of the practice, a group limited to beneficiaries of these slush funds, claim it is a matter so trifling that bettors don’t know or care about it, but breakage adds up and can, in fact, be more onerous than the highest of current takeout rates.
A horse who should pay $2.39 for $2 instead has that payout rounded down to $2.20, a breakage tax of almost 50 percent on top of the 15 percent to 20 percent house takeout that has already been applied.
Such a horse will pay $2.30 rather than $2.20 in New York, where a saner breakage scheme instituted in 1994 rounds to the nearest dime rather than 20-cent increment on payoffs under $10. (The trade-off is that Empire State payoffs break to 50 cents on $2 payoffs over $50 and to $1 on payoffs over $500, which minimizes breakage’s effect by flattening the percentage impact.)
This is an improvement, but even $2.30 instead of $2.20 on what should be a $2.39 payoff is still an unwarranted 24 percent profits surtax on the proper payoff.
Paying off the correct $2.39 quickly becomes significant: It’s a return of $23.90 instead of $22 on a $20 bet, or $239 instead of $220 on a $200 bet, and that is a whopping difference on a percentage basis, one that could even stimulate renewed interest in racing’s declining win, place, and show pools.
It amounts to a much more attractive investment opportunity and a takeout reduction that will ultimately benefit the track by putting more money back into circulation, where it will be churned repeatedly.
Going to penny payoffs would mean the end of the “bridge-jumping” era, as a minimum payoff of $2.01 instead of $2.10 would make show bets on supposedly sure things unattractive. You would have to be right 200 times out of 201, instead of the current 20 times out of 21, just to break even.
It’s an era worth ending. There is absolutely no logic to having an artificial, guaranteed minimum, which, in fact, violates the whole point of the pari-mutuel system and the neutrality of the stakeholder.
Some players may lament the absence of the occasional opportunity to play against a bridge-jumped horse, but they will do far better in the long run by getting the payoffs they deserve on every race.
The first state that switches to penny breakage will reap a huge bounty of goodwill and loyalty from its customers. Imagine betting a race tomorrow and getting across-the-board payoffs of $9.78, $4.31, and $2.79 instead of $9.60, $4.20, and $2.60.
In addition to immediately returning more money to bettors to be reinvested multiple times, it would become a widely reported news item across the general as well as racing and financial media, make the industry look like it cares about fairness to its overtaxed customers, and just might get some people thinking about whether there’s money to be made betting on horses.
Just because it makes too much sense doesn’t mean it’s not worth a try.
Two thirds of New Jersey residents polled believe the Fort Lee lane closures
ordered in September by some members of the Christie administration
were done for political retribution, and a third think the governor was
personally involved in the decision, according to a poll released
Monday.
Some 83% of residents are paying attention to the scandal at the George Washington Bridge, where a local lane closures caused traffic in Fort Lee for four days in September, according to the Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll, the first conducted since documents revealed the administration’s involvement.
For months, Gov. Chris Christie brushed aside questions about whether he or his staff were involved in the lane closures. Documents subpoenaed by state Assembly Democrats showed one of the governor’s deputy chiefs of staff was involved in the lane closures.
The poll showed that 13% believe that the lanes were closed in the course of a legitimate traffic study, the administration’s initial explanation for the closures.
More than two-thirds of residents polled believed the motive was political retaliation, the poll said, and 80% said they think more members of the Christie administration will be implicated. Several Christie allies have resigned or been dismissed from their posts.
Three quarters of those surveyed, however, said they saw the behavior as “pretty common” in politics and not unique to the Christie administration.
Residents still give Mr. Christie’s job performance high marks, though his support has dipped. Mr. Christie’s job-approval rating fell to 59% from 65% a month ago, the first time his popularity at home has taken a real hit since superstorm Sandy struck in fall 2012.
Among New Jersey Republicans, 89% approve of Mr. Christie’s job performance, up from 85% last month. Support among residents who identify as political independents dropped to 73% from 62% in December. Support among Democrats declined to 38% from 47%.
But personally? His support has cratered from a year ago. About 44% of New Jerseyans have a positive impression of Mr. Christie, down from 70% in February 2013.
“There has been a shift from largely positive opinion of the man to a situation where some New Jerseyans are not quite sure what to think of him,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
Nationally, more people paid attention to the cold weather, the U.S. economy and the unemployment debate in Washington, D.C., than the Christie bridge story, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Six in 10 people said their opinion of the Republican governor hasn’t changed, while 16% said they had a less favorable view of him and 6% said they had a more favorable view.
For months, Mr. Christie said he wasn’t aware of any political motivations to the lane closures and assured reporters that his staff was not involved and knew nothing.
The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Christie’s top executive appointee at the Port Authority, Bill Baroni, had ordered the agency to close ranks and not publicly discuss the issue. “There can be no public discourse,” Mr. Baroni wrote in e-mails published by the Journal.
The poll surveyed 541 people between, and the sample has a margin of error of about 4%.
The idea, which would have bankrupted racing, was roundly and rightly ridiculed, the bill expired without action, and in almost every jurisdiction, the minimum payoff remains $2.10 for $2.
The nutty proposal did raise a legitimate pari-mutuel issue that has remained largely unaddressed to this day: Why should there be any guaranteed, artificial minimum payoff in the pari-mutuel system, and why are payoffs still rounded down in 10-cent or 20-cent increments instead of being paid off accurately to the penny?
Stock markets made the change to decimal pricing years ago, and racing can no longer hide behind the outdated excuse that these payoffs would slow mutuel lines to a crawl as tellers counted out pennies. An increasing number of bets today are made through advance-deposit wagering accounts or through vouchers at self-service machines.
Breakage, the practice of rounding down (always down) payoffs to supposedly more-convenient dime increments, is, in fact, nothing but institutionalized theft from customers, with their rightful earnings directed to a slush fund usually split between the state and the track.
Defenders of the practice, a group limited to beneficiaries of these slush funds, claim it is a matter so trifling that bettors don’t know or care about it, but breakage adds up and can, in fact, be more onerous than the highest of current takeout rates.
A horse who should pay $2.39 for $2 instead has that payout rounded down to $2.20, a breakage tax of almost 50 percent on top of the 15 percent to 20 percent house takeout that has already been applied.
Such a horse will pay $2.30 rather than $2.20 in New York, where a saner breakage scheme instituted in 1994 rounds to the nearest dime rather than 20-cent increment on payoffs under $10. (The trade-off is that Empire State payoffs break to 50 cents on $2 payoffs over $50 and to $1 on payoffs over $500, which minimizes breakage’s effect by flattening the percentage impact.)
This is an improvement, but even $2.30 instead of $2.20 on what should be a $2.39 payoff is still an unwarranted 24 percent profits surtax on the proper payoff.
Paying off the correct $2.39 quickly becomes significant: It’s a return of $23.90 instead of $22 on a $20 bet, or $239 instead of $220 on a $200 bet, and that is a whopping difference on a percentage basis, one that could even stimulate renewed interest in racing’s declining win, place, and show pools.
It amounts to a much more attractive investment opportunity and a takeout reduction that will ultimately benefit the track by putting more money back into circulation, where it will be churned repeatedly.
Going to penny payoffs would mean the end of the “bridge-jumping” era, as a minimum payoff of $2.01 instead of $2.10 would make show bets on supposedly sure things unattractive. You would have to be right 200 times out of 201, instead of the current 20 times out of 21, just to break even.
It’s an era worth ending. There is absolutely no logic to having an artificial, guaranteed minimum, which, in fact, violates the whole point of the pari-mutuel system and the neutrality of the stakeholder.
Some players may lament the absence of the occasional opportunity to play against a bridge-jumped horse, but they will do far better in the long run by getting the payoffs they deserve on every race.
The first state that switches to penny breakage will reap a huge bounty of goodwill and loyalty from its customers. Imagine betting a race tomorrow and getting across-the-board payoffs of $9.78, $4.31, and $2.79 instead of $9.60, $4.20, and $2.60.
In addition to immediately returning more money to bettors to be reinvested multiple times, it would become a widely reported news item across the general as well as racing and financial media, make the industry look like it cares about fairness to its overtaxed customers, and just might get some people thinking about whether there’s money to be made betting on horses.
Just because it makes too much sense doesn’t mean it’s not worth a try.
Christie’s Ratings Take Hit After Bridge Scandal: Poll
- Getty Images
- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie enters the Borough Hall in Fort Lee to apologize to Mayor Mark Sokolich on Thursday.
Some 83% of residents are paying attention to the scandal at the George Washington Bridge, where a local lane closures caused traffic in Fort Lee for four days in September, according to the Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll, the first conducted since documents revealed the administration’s involvement.
For months, Gov. Chris Christie brushed aside questions about whether he or his staff were involved in the lane closures. Documents subpoenaed by state Assembly Democrats showed one of the governor’s deputy chiefs of staff was involved in the lane closures.
The poll showed that 13% believe that the lanes were closed in the course of a legitimate traffic study, the administration’s initial explanation for the closures.
More than two-thirds of residents polled believed the motive was political retaliation, the poll said, and 80% said they think more members of the Christie administration will be implicated. Several Christie allies have resigned or been dismissed from their posts.
Three quarters of those surveyed, however, said they saw the behavior as “pretty common” in politics and not unique to the Christie administration.
Residents still give Mr. Christie’s job performance high marks, though his support has dipped. Mr. Christie’s job-approval rating fell to 59% from 65% a month ago, the first time his popularity at home has taken a real hit since superstorm Sandy struck in fall 2012.
Among New Jersey Republicans, 89% approve of Mr. Christie’s job performance, up from 85% last month. Support among residents who identify as political independents dropped to 73% from 62% in December. Support among Democrats declined to 38% from 47%.
But personally? His support has cratered from a year ago. About 44% of New Jerseyans have a positive impression of Mr. Christie, down from 70% in February 2013.
“There has been a shift from largely positive opinion of the man to a situation where some New Jerseyans are not quite sure what to think of him,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
Nationally, more people paid attention to the cold weather, the U.S. economy and the unemployment debate in Washington, D.C., than the Christie bridge story, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Six in 10 people said their opinion of the Republican governor hasn’t changed, while 16% said they had a less favorable view of him and 6% said they had a more favorable view.
For months, Mr. Christie said he wasn’t aware of any political motivations to the lane closures and assured reporters that his staff was not involved and knew nothing.
The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Christie’s top executive appointee at the Port Authority, Bill Baroni, had ordered the agency to close ranks and not publicly discuss the issue. “There can be no public discourse,” Mr. Baroni wrote in e-mails published by the Journal.
The poll surveyed 541 people between, and the sample has a margin of error of about 4%.
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