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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.


New York archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan fired back Thursday at President Trump’s former chief strategist, who accused the Roman Catholic Church of opposing Trump’s recent DACA move because they “need illegal aliens to fill the churches.”
Steve Bannon made the comments in an excerpt from CBS's “60 Minutes,” which will air Sunday. Bannon accuses the church of opposing Trump’s move to do away with the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program for economic reasons. He said bishops “have been terrible about this.”
“By the way, you know why? You know why? Because unable to really, to, to, to come to grips with the problems in the church, they need illegal aliens, they need illegal aliens to fill the churches. That’s, it’s obvious on the face of it,” Bannon said, according to the New York Post.
“That’s what, the entire Catholic bishops condemn him. They have, they have an economic interest. They have an economic interest in unlimited immigration, unlimited illegal immigration.”
Dolan told the Catholic Channel on SiriusXM radio that he was “befuddled” after seeing the transcript.
“I don’t care to go into what I think is a preposterous and rather insulting statement that the only reason we bishops care for immigrants is for the economic and because we want to fill our churches and get more money,” Dolan said.“That’s just so insulting and ridiculous that it doesn’t merit a comment.”