please help us ASAP
you do not want Andrew Cuomo too?
help us governor murphy
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
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.
help us governor nurphy
Radio Hosts Suspended After Derogatory Comments About New Jersey Attorney General
Two New Jersey radio hosts have been suspended for 10 days after making derogatory comments about the state’s attorney general, Gurbir S. Grewal, including calling him “turban man.”
On Wednesday, the radio hosts, Dennis Malloy and Judi Franco of New Jersey 101.5/WKXW-FM, were discussing Mr. Grewal’s recent announcement in which he asked prosecutors to delay cases concerning marijuana-related offenses for a month.
Mr. Molloy stated he was never going to learn Mr. Grewal’s name, and instead opted to call him “turban man,” according to audio of the broadcast.
“Listen, if that offends you, then don’t wear the turban and I’ll remember your name,” Mr. Malloy said. He then asked Ms. Franco if “turban man” was highly offensive.
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“To me?” she responded. “No. To people who wear turbans? Could be.”
Mr. Grewal, 45, a Democrat who took office in January, is the first Sikh to become a state attorney general.
The backlash to the radio hosts’ comments was swift. By Wednesday night, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, described the comments as “hate speech,” calling it “abhorrent and xenophobic.”
“We have to call out wholly inappropriate behavior and words immediately,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “We need to be unequivocal.”
Mr. Grewal sent a tweet to the radio station from his personal account on Thursday morning: “My name, for the record, is Gurbir Grewal. I’m the 61st Attorney General of NJ. I’m a Sikh American. I have 3 daughters. And yesterday, I told them to turn off the radio.”
The radio station announced Thursday afternoon in a statement that Mr. Malloy and Ms. Franco had been suspended and said that the pair apologized to Mr. Grewal.
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“We use humor and sarcasm to make a point and add color to the broadcast; in this instance, we were off the mark,” the statement said. “It was a mistake we both deeply regret.”
The hosts’ comments reduced Mr. Grewal down to just his faith, said Gurwin Singh Ahuja, co-founder of the National Sikh Campaign. But the real damage came not from dubbing Mr. Grewal “turban man,” he said, but rather the hosts’ clear disregard for what the turban represents to Sikhs.
“It’s a commitment to fight for our values,” which include gender and racial equality, as well as religious tolerance, he said. When Mr. Malloy stated he would remember Mr. Grewal’s name were he not wearing a turban, it was a reminder of the limit some Sikh Americans feel when expressing their cultural and religious identities, Mr. Ahuja said.
That remark is also what made Mayor Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken, N.J., the state’s first Sikh mayor, and his wife gasp.
“That was the dagger in the back,” Mr. Bhalla said. “It was blatantly discriminatory.”
“If he was an attorney general who was not a Sikh, he wouldn’t have a problem saying his name,” he added.
While Mr. Bhalla said he had heard similar derogatory comments in the past, “this situation is somewhat distinguishable because in this case, you have a media outlet with some measure of authority.” He called the 10-day suspension “a slap on the wrist,” and said the hosts should be required to have diversity training.
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