Thursday, October 1, 2020

mike puts the fear of.....into andrew cuomo











Pompeo and Pope Andrew Cuomo fight over the holy church of nassau otb & ny const art 1 sec 3


Claude Solnik
(631) 913-4244
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.


The secretary calls for ‘bold moral witness’ in dealing with China.


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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks at Holy See Symposium on Advancing and Defending Religious Freedom through Diplomacy in Rome, Sept. 30

PHOTO: GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/REUTERS
Mike Pompeo arrived in Rome Wednesday at a sensitive moment for the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican is beginning talks to renew a controversial provisional agreement with China that expires Oct. 22. In a speech at a U.S. Embassy symposium on religious liberty, the Secretary of State said the world is a better place when the church exercises its “bold moral witness”—especially in dealing with regimes such as China. 
Mr. Pompeo was scheduled to meet with Pope Francis. But the Vatican canceled after Mr. Pompeo published an article in First Things magazine about China’s human-rights abuses against religious believers since the provisional Sino-Vatican deal was signed in 2018. In a tweet promoting his article, the secretary said “the Vatican endangers its moral authority, should it renew the deal.”
Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen, an outspoken critic of the Sino-Vatican deal, flew to Rome a week before Mr. Pompeo to share his concerns about China. He too was denied an audience with Pope Francis. 
The deal’s terms remain secret, but it has failed if its goal was to ensure freedom of worship. In his First Things piece, Mr. Pompeo went into some detail about China’s persecutions. These include the “Communist Party’s program of forced sterilizations and abortions of Muslims in Xinjiang, its abuse of Catholic priests and laypeople, and its assault on Protestant house churches—all of which are parts of a ‘Sinicization’ campaign to subordinate God to the Party while promoting [President] Xi [Jinping] himself as an ultramundane deity.” Then there are the arrests of the two most prominent lay Catholics in Hong Kong: Martin Lee and Jimmy Lai, both champions of freedom and democracy. 
Mr. Pompeo’s larger point is that a regime that doesn’t respect the right to religious freedom will not respect much else. He reminded his audience not to underestimate the power that comes from challenging dictatorships at their weakest point: moral credibility. The fearless witness of Pope John Paul II was responsible for “igniting the revolution of conscience that brought down the Iron Curtain,” Mr. Pompeo said.
Mr. Pompeo was asked after his speech about Vatican officials who seem to think he is attacking the church. To the contrary, he said, “I wrote that piece to honor the moral authority of the Catholic Church and its capacity to influence and make things better for people all across the world.” It is a welcome message from a U.S. Secretary of State, and the Vatican would do well to at least hear him out as it enters its latest negotiations with Beijing.

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