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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.
Pence defends barring rainbow flag at US embassies during pride month
Vice President Mike Pence said it was “the right decision” by the Trump administration to deny requests to fly rainbow flags during gay pride month, according to a new report.
Pence confirmed a recent report by NBC News that found the US Department of State prohibited at least four US embassies — Israel, Germany, Brazil and Latvia — from flying the flag during June.
He said the State Department told the embassies that only American flags should fly on the flagpoles.
“I support that,” Pence told NBC News in an interview Monday.
Asked whether his defense of the move contradicts President Trump’s tweet last month praising the “outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation,” the vice president reiterated his stance.
“As the president said on the night we were elected, we’re proud to be able to serve every American,” Pence said. “We both feel that way very passionately, but when it comes to the American flagpole, and American embassies, and capitals around the world, one American flag flies.”
He added that the Trump administration “put no restrictions” on US embassies placing gay pride flags elsewhere.
Pence, who once described himself as a “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” has come under fire for his views of the LGBT community before.
The former Indiana governor believes marriage should be between a man and a woman and, while governor, he signed into law a “religious freedom bill” that critics said allowed discrimination against gays and lesbians.
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