Monthly Archives: February 2022

The Future of the GOP – publicseminar.org

Posted: February 9, 2022 at 1:13 am

Photo Credit: Lev Radin / Shutterstock.com

It appears that the Republican National Committees (RNC) censure of Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), along with its declaration that the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was legitimate political discourse, has created a problem for Republican lawmakers as they try to position the party for the midterms and the 2024 election. Coming as the statement did, just after former President Trump said that Pence had the power to overturn the election and, that if reelected, Trump would pardon those who attacked the Capitol, it has put the Republican Party openly on the side of overturning our democracy.

Trump loyalists have been insisting that the rioters were political prisoners, and clearly the RNC was speaking for them. This wing of the party got a boost this evening when, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, the libertarian whose wealthForbesestimates to be about $2.6 billion, announced that he is stepping down from the board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to focus on electing Trump-aligned candidates in 2022. Thiel famously wrote in 2009 that he no longer believe[s] that freedom and democracy are compatible, and deplored the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women after 1920.

It also got a boost today when the Supreme Court halted a lower courts order saying that a redistricting map in Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act by getting rid of a Black majority district. Alabamas population is 27 percent Black, which should translate to 2 congressional seats, but by the practice of packing and crackingthat is, packing large numbers of Black voters into one district and spreading them thinly across all the othersonly one district will likely have a shot at electing a Black representative. The vote for letting the new maps stand was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the liberals against the new right-wing majority, in control thanks to the three justices added by Trump.

But the backlash against the RNCs statement suggests that most Americans see the deadly attack on our democracy for what it was, and Republican lawmakers are now trying to deflect from the RNCs statement.

RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said that media quotes from the resolution are a lie and says the committee did not mean it to be taken as it has been. But other Republicans seemed to understand that the RNC has firmly dragged the Republican Party into Trumps war on our democracy.

National Reviewcalled the statement both morally repellent and politically self-destructive, and worried that it will be used against hundreds of elected Republicans who were not consulted in its drafting and do not endorse its sentiment. If indeed the RNC simply misworded their statement, the editors said, its wording is political malpractice of the highest order coming from people whose entire job is politics.

Sunday, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who seems to entertain hopes for 2024, said onABCsThis Weekthat January 6 was a riot incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own wordsoverturn the election.

But others, like Senator Todd Young (R-IN), seem to be trying to split the baby. Young told Christiane Amanpour that those saying the attack was legitimate political discourse are a fringe group, although the RNC is quite literally the official machinery of the Republican Party. Young is up for reelection in 2022. He is also from Indiana, as is former Vice President Mike Pence, who seems to be positioning himself to take over the party as Trumps legal woes knock him out of the running for 2024.

On Friday, Pence told the Federalist Society that Trump was wrong to say that he, Pence, had the power to overturn the election. But he did not say that Biden won the election fairly. Then, on Sunday, Pences former Chief of Staff Marc Short, seemed to try to let Trump off the hook for his pressure on Pence, telling Chuck Todd onMeet the Pressthat the former president had many bad advisers who were basically snake oil salesmen giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do.

They seem to be trying to keep Trumps voters while easing the former president himself offstage, hoping that voters will forget that the Republican leadership stood by Trump until he openly talked of overturning the election.

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, seems unlikely to stand by as the country moves on, as theNational Revieweditors indicated they were hoping. As he said in his closing at Trumps first impeachment trial: history will not be kind to Donald Trump. If you find that the House has proved its case, and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history.

The other big news of the past day is that it turns out that Trump and his team mishandled presidential records, suggesting that we will never get the full story of what happened in that White House.

By law, presidential records and federal records belong to the U.S. government. An administration must preserve every piece of official business. Some of the documents that the Trump team delivered to the January 6 committee had been ripped up and taped back together, some were in pieces, and some, apparently, were shredded and destroyed. Legal commentator Asha Rangappa noted that Trumps impeachments mean that such shredding could have amounted to an obstruction of justice.

Today we learned that the National Archives and Records Administration had to retrieve 15 boxes of material from Trumps Florida residence Mar-a-Lago, including correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the letter that former president Barack Obama left for Trump (which would have brought a pretty penny if it were sold). Trump aides say they are trying to determine what other records need to be returned.

Former Republican Kurt Bardella noted, if this had happened during a Democratic Administration while Republicans were in the majority, I guarantee you [the Oversight Committee] would be launching a massive investigation into this and writing subpoenas right now to any and every W[hite] H[ouse] official that was involved in this.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the story to raise money for her progressive organization, Onward Together. She linked to the story as she urged people to take a sip from your new mug as you read the news. With the tweet was the picture of a mug with her image and the caption But Her Emails.

House January 6 committee member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) says that the committee is planning to hold public hearings in April or May. They have been slowed down by the reluctance of the Trump team to cooperate.

Heather Cox Richardson is a Professor of History at Boston College. This post originally appeared on her Substack,Letters from an American.

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Nine Indiana Republicans file to run for Congress in the 9th district – The Center Square

Posted: at 1:13 am

(The Center Square) Nine Republicans have filed to run for Indianas 9thcongressional seat thats being vacated by Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, who announced in January he is not running for re-election.

The nine include Mike Sodrel, who represented the district in Congress for one term, from 2005 to 2007. Sodrel is the frontrunner for the nomination, says Jamey Noel, the 9thdistrict GOP chairman and also Clark County sheriff .

He ran when it wasnt cool to be a Republican in the 9thdistrict, Noel says. Mike really laid the groundwork. A lot of people have a ton of respect for Mike.

Sodrel ran in 2010 in an attempt to re-capture the seat, but lost the nomination to Todd Young, who went on to defeat Democrat Baron Hill in the general election.

Also running is state Sen. Erin Houchin, of Salem. Houchin ran for the nomination in 2016, finishing second to Hollingsworth in a five-person primary. She recently announced shes stepping down from her Senate seat to campaign for the nomination.

Also running is a State Rep. J. Michael Davisson, from Salem, who was appointed in October to fill the Statehouse seat left empty after the death of his father, former state Rep. Steve Davisson.

The newly redrawn 9thdistrict now takes in Bloomington and Monroe County one of only four counties in the state to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 but is otherwise a mostly rural district that runs along the Ohio River in the southeastern corner of the state, and to the Ohio border in the east, taking in New Albany and other towns that are part of the Louisville and Cincinnati metropolitan areas.

The primary election is May 3.

Other Republicans in the race include commercial real estate broker Jim Baker, from the New Albany area; Afghanistan war veteran Stu Barnes-Israel; Seymour-based defense professional Dan Heiwig; Indiana University-Southeast economics professor D. Eric Schansberg; Bill J. Thomas; and Brian Tibbs.

There are three running for the Democratic nomination IU employee Isak Nti Asare; Marine Corps veteran D. Liam Dorris; and high school math teacher Matthew Fyfe, who serves on the board of the local teachers union. All three are from Bloomington.

The 9th congressional district seat will be the only open seat in Indiana this year. But its not the only one that has drawn the interest of Republicans.

The 1st district, which takes in the northwest corner of the state and includes Hammond and Gary, has attracted seven Republican candidates to challenge incumbent Democrat Rep. Frank J. Mrvan in November.

The district is one of only two in the state that have been reliably Democrat over the years. The other is the 7thcongressional district, which covers most of Indianapolis.

The Republicans competing for the 1stdistrict nomination are Jennifer Ruth-Green, Mark Leyva, Martin Lucas, Blair Milo, Nicholas Pappas, Ben Ruiz and Aaron Storer.

Dan Dernulc, the GOP county chairman in Lake County, just outside Chicago, referred to a recent news report that the national Republican Party may invest in the race this year.

Ive been chairman for nine years, involved in politics for 25, he says. I have never seen interest from the national party. If theyre going to be putting money and time into it, thats a great opportunity for us.

The new district lines are only slightly different than the current lines, with two townships in LaPorte County dropped and three added. Dernulc says he doesnt think the district is any more Republican.

I think its about the same, he said. The stars might be lining up because of the mood of the countryIts a long shot. Its a real long shot. Im just saying there could be an opportunity.

In the U.S. Senate race, Republican Todd Young could have a challenger this year. Danny Niederberger, an asset manager, also ran for the 5thcongressional district in 2020.

Niederberger announced online that he succeeded in getting the required 500 signatures in each of the congressional districts to qualify for the ballot. But those signatures now must be verified.

Three people are vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Young, including Hammond mayor Thomas M. McDermott, Jr. The other two candidates are Haneefah Khaaliq and Valerie McCray.

Other statewide offices up this year include secretary of state, though nominees are chosen by state delegates state conventions held over the summer, not in primary elections. Two Republicans are challenging Holli Sullivan for the Republican nomination for secretary of state Diego Morales, a former staffer for Gov. Mike Pence; and Kyle Conrad, a former county clerk in Newton County who went on to work for Governmental Business Systems, a company that sells election equipment to Indiana counties.

Destiny Scott Wells, a Democrat, will run against the Republican nominee in November, along with the Libertarian candidate, Jeff Maurer.

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How Farage had the last laugh – UnHerd

Posted: at 1:13 am

Meet the teenage Nigel Farage. Its the absurdly late Seventies. He is a stalwart of Dulwich Colleges second XI cricket team, and a tittering purveyor of risqu racial banter. He likes snuff, golf, and brandishing a rolled-up umbrella at unsuspecting chums. He is advanced in his opinions, but delighted to play devils advocate for anyone elses.

Stumblingly, young Nige is starting to live out the two contradictory impulses that will frame his life. One: a conservatives respect for, and needy desire to be part of, institutions. Two: a libertarians outsider fantasy of bomb-tossing nonconformity. Yeah, the boy loves the club, but he quite fancies running a bulldozer through those front doors too. Luck will let him do both.

Nigel Farage, for all his talents, was lucky. He was time-and-place fortunate. His pampered enemies underestimated him, and thought him a punchline until the joke brought their house down. Many of them were no life experience professional political hermits like Danny Alexander or Ed Miliband. They raised no whirlwinds. Mostly, as David Foster Wallace put it, they werent enough like human beings even to hate. They were overpumped with focus-grouped shrewdness, not human instinct.

Farage was messily and chaotically human. He is, in that dreaded national formulation, a character. He has an anuran face, an aquatic aspect the ideally fishy tribune of an island where the moss is still damp and the rain is still thin.

In the 2010s he smashed through the Overton Window like a breeze block. First with Ukip, then with the Brexit Party. And even as he did so, he was being very badly behaved not that this ever made a scratch in his popular image as a plain-speaking common sense merchant. Fortune favours the charming miscreant sometimes. The rest was Britains exit from the European Union.

At least, thats the life that emerges from Michael Cricks new biography of Farage. One Party After Another: The Disruptive Life of Nigel Farage feels, quite simply, long. Five hundred beigely judicious pages read like 5,000. Cricks annoyingly pokey reportorial style a staple of Channel Four News for decades is absent here. Its a dull, reasonably objective attempt to tell the truth. There is voyeurism (we buy books like this to peep through the bedroom keyhole, dont we?) but not a single nose-turning jab of biographical GBH.

Crick comes perilously close to making Farage boring. He drowns him under mudslides of irrelevant detail. There are paceless accounts of infighting among Ukips National Executive Committee; a whole chapter about a dodgy party call centre in Kent; more information on Neil Hamiltons time as an MEP than even the most deranged politico could be expected to digest. Still, sanding away the trivia reveals two major themes: alcohol and luck. In Farages life they combine and recombine like clouds on a windy day.

His luck was personal and political. Ukips rise was only possible after the unexpected death of the wall-eyed billionaire tyrant James Goldsmith in 1997. His demise took his Referendum Party, Ukips lavishly financed rival, into the soil with him. Tony Blairs decision to approve a new proportional voting system for the UKs European parliamentary elections gave Ukip their first big breaks and Farages first media appearances proper in 1999.

Later on, Farage was sceptical about the need for a referendum. Ukips central policy was so outrageously unthinkable for most of Farages career that, in spite of his crashingly loud public idealism, it seems like he doubted whether it could ever happen. His electoral successes (not luck) eventually pushed David Cameron into promising a vote on exiting the EU in 2013 but it was Camerons unexpected majority in 2015 that made the referendum happen.

During the campaign, Farage had the lowest personal popularity rating of any of the major party leaders. Jeremy Corbyn was more popular. Farage did have political nous, though. Like Cummings, he understood that the old Left and Right labels were meaningless. We dont want to represent a wing, he said in 2004, but the heart and wishbone of the nation. He didnt think that English politics had changed since the 17th century. You are either a cavalier, a democrat, and a libertarian, or you are a doctrinaire, morally intolerant roundhead. He had identified one of the oldest, deepest, most durable divisions on the island. Spookily, the political map of the Brexit vote ended up resembling the regional distribution of support for the King, Court and Tories against Parliament, Merchants and Whigs in the Civil War. Except in 2016 the cavaliers won. Whoops.

For years, Ukip suffered from the pandemonium of being a party staffed entirely by cavaliers. Crick (without any sense of humour) gives the impression that the whole trembling structure could come crashing down at any moment. But Farages luck holds. The early Ukip days are clogged with writs, squabbles, and changes to office locks. The dramatis personae are livestock auctioneers, umbrella makers, undertakers, investment brokers, hoteliers, Rowan Atkinsons brother, and a barrister described, in a simile that is too fun to be Cricks, as an escapee from a Joanna Trollope novel. Tiny factions of them argue obscurely in the bitter wilderness.

Like Shakespearean fools, they tell unspeakable truths and babblingly predict a future others cannot see. The first full-length account of the party, Mark Daniels Cranks and Gadflies, described the membership as idiots, paranoiacs, and conspiracy theorists. Daniels real name Mark Fitzgeorge-Parker was also Ukips press officer at the time. Farage admitted they were all bumbling amateurs.

Peak bumble came in 2010. Farage was in Buckingham on polling day, where he was going to fail to win a seat in Westminster, again. It was planned as a photo-opportunity, which would have been a very Farage way to die. A blue Wilga 35A plane rather like a tractor Farage thought would pull a Ukip banner and its leader into the air, then fly low over Buckingham and the surrounding area. I just hope the plane doesnt blow up and crash, Farage joked to the press at the airfield. Five attempts were required for the plane to pick up the banner. This quickly wrapped itself around the tail and rudder. Powerlessly, the plane began to drop from the forever English sky. Oh, fuck! said Farage.

He should have been buried. But he was pulled out bleeding from the sorrily pretzeled fuselage, and shakily tried to smoke a fag. This was the third time in his life hed escaped death. At this point, some Brexiteers will see the hand of God at work. Remainers will mutter about Satanic power. If Farage had died in 2010, would Brexit have happened? Crick poses the question, then refuses to play around with it.

Clearly, Farage inspired voters who felt their plain lives were being mocked, and their succulent English liberties stolen. His public persona, all ebullient disrespect for starchy insider taboos and flashy Thatcherkind good time roller, was immensely appealing when set against Cameron, Miliband, and Clegg. Unlike them, as his aide Gawain Towler said, Farage spoke fluent human.

He told voters that over two decades in Britain there had been a shocking widening of the class system, where the rich have got a lot richer and the poor are robbed of the opportunity to attain their best. He was right. At times he seemed to hold Englands spleen in his hands, happy to squeeze its juices at his favourite targets: Westminster and Brussels.

Anger wasnt going to be enough. Paradoxically, the better Farage did in the years before the referendum, the more support for his core mission dropped off. He only appealed to voters who already wanted to leave the EU; he alarmed soft-eurosceptics with his hard-edged rhetoric on migration and HIV; he energised pro-Europeans who saw him as an unholy mash-up of Wat Tyler and Adolf Hitler. As Dominic Cummings put it: Farage put off millions of (middle class in particular) voters who wanted to leave the EU but who were very clear in market research that a major obstacle to voting Leave was I dont want to vote for Farage, Im not like that. He made the Brexit vote possible, but if he had played the Boris Johnson role in the referendum, Leave would have lost.

Practically every page of One Party After Another opens with the clink of bottles. Acquaintances speak to Crick about Farage with the awe accorded to people who live larger and harder than the rest of us. Ann Widecombe recollects Farage rowdily leading Brexit Party MEPs in song. Another describes Farage picking up a small coffee table and pretending to play the bagpipes with it. His ability to get by on a few hours sleep, says Aaron Banks, even after his usual heavy nights, never ceases to amaze.

It sounds like fun, and sometimes it was. But there was a desperate edge to Farages gregariousness. The plane crash had left him in immense pain, and ended his golfing days. His personal life, a thicket of chaotic amatory escapades and unhappy marriages, was broken. Crick quotes one Brexit Party insider who was surprised to find that Farage was not actually very confident. Hes quite a tense person really, not at all relaxed.

Alcohol gave him fluency, and let him escape himself. The sad, casual cruelty of all those affairs was not exposed in full before the referendum. Depending on the publics mood, it may have ruined him. Or they may have been content, as they have been with Johnson, to ignore what Farage got up to on his night shifts. As it always seemed to, his luck held.

Cricks biography is the first; it tells us how it happened, but doesnt tell us why. Whether he saved the club, or made a colossal wreck of it remains uncertain. One Party After Another doesnt have the answers. Crick claims that Farage is one of the most significant politicians of the last fifty years. His reason? Nobody can dispute that Nigel Farage achieved his goal of leaving the European Union. Well, duh.

Yes, he rode his luck, and he won. Farage is still agitating; hes now a two-legged media empire; a pundit, a poster, a YouTuber. Crick leaves Farage on a boat in the channel, bathetically posed, eyes and cameras scanning the choppy waters for fighting-age men in listing dinghies.

Of all the 2010s populists Le Pen, Bolsonaro, Salvini, Bannon, Trump, Wilders, Petry only Farage actually got what he wanted. In the process, his two contradictory impulses have resolved themselves. The libertarian beat up the conservative. The bomb-thrower exploded several British institutions. But like a pinstriped Alexander, Farage has no more worlds to conquer. His victories have handed him obsolescence.

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Taino Beach Resort & Clubs

Posted: February 7, 2022 at 7:23 am

July 13, 2020

Bahamas Ministry Of Tourism & Aviation Enters Phase 2 Reopening As Of July 1

All Islands Of The Bahamas Reopen to International Travel; Visitors Must Present Negative COVID-19 Test and Complete an Electronic Health Visa to be Granted Entry

NASSAU, Bahamas, July 10, 2020 The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation has entered into Phase 2 of theTourism Readiness and Recovery Plan, which began on Wednesday, July 1 and allows for the resumption of international travel to The Bahamas.

It is recommended that all travellers interested in visiting The Bahamas review requirements applicable to each member of their party at Bahamas.com/travelupdates before booking a trip, to determine what steps need to be taken to be granted entry.

-

June 15, 2020 COVID-19 update

The Islands Of The Bahamas is preparing to re-open our borders and welcome international travelers back to our beautiful island nation. The health & wellbeing of our residents and visitors is our number one priority, and we are putting even greater emphasis on making sure The Bahamas is safe and clean for all to enjoy.

As of June 9, 2020, In accordance with the governments phased reopening plan, inter-island domestic travel has resumed across The Islands Of The Bahamas. Travel by commercial flight, as well as mailboat, passenger ferry, domestic pleasure craft and yachts, are permitted across all islands.

All persons intending to travel domestically within The Bahamas are required to complete a Travel Health Card application prior to departure. Travellers can visittravel.gov.bsto complete the form online. This is an important step for contact tracing purposes.

In the coming weeks, The Bahamas will continue preparing to reopen the countrys borders for international travel, which is expected on July 1.

________________________

April 7, 2020

On April 6, the Prime Minister of The Bahamas announced full lockdown orders for all of The Bahamas as follows:

During these lockdown periods, virtually all businesses and service providers will be closed, including grocery stores.Hospitals, hotels with guests, law enforcement and essential utility personnel are exempted from these around the clock shutdown restrictions.

Please note that, as a result, the office will be closed from Thursday April 9th through Monday April 13, 2020.

_______________________

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Kindred’s revenue from harmful gambling 4.0 per cent in the fourth quarter – PRNewswire

Posted: at 7:21 am

VALETTA,Malta, Feb. 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Kindred's commitment to contribute to a sustainable industry across all markets has continued throughout 2021. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Kindred's share of revenue from harmful gambling increased slightly to 4.0 per cent.

In February last year, Kindred Group plc (Kindred) started to communicate about its journey towards zero. The share of revenue from harmful gambling has fluctuated somewhat over the year and for the fourth quarter of 2021 it increased to 4.0 per cent from 3.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2021. The increase is based on different factors. One of them is that, historically, the fourth quarter of the year sees an increase in high-risk gambling. This due to the holiday season which can be a sensitive time for some people. Another factor is that Kindred ceased all services towards Dutch residents at the end of September which led to an increase in the numbers reported. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, the value decreased slightly.

Although Kindred invested more resources into their Responsible Gambling team during this period, this also highlights the necessity to focus on earlier interventions which can be automated for the lower risk group of customers. An early engagement is important to disrupt the behavioural development, which Kindred is focusing on achieving.

Global statistics from Kindred Group

Q1 2021

Q2 2021

Q3 2021

Q42021*

Share of gross winnings revenue from high-risk players

3.9%

4.3%

3.3%

4.0%

Improvement effect after interventions

76.6%

76.9%

64.9%

79.2%

*90 day rolling period between21 September and 31 December 2021

"Despite the share of revenue from harmful gambling increasing this quarter we remain dedicated and focused on our journey towards zero," says Henrik Tjrnstrm, CEO of Kindred Group. "While we are not pleased that the trend remains flat over the last year, we have known from the beginning that we won't solve this overnight, and we know there is still work to do. We have committed ourselves to this ambition and we will continue to work towards reaching zero per cent revenue from harmful gambling."

"In line with our roadmap, we look forward to even more targeted deliveries planned for 2022. While 2021 has been focused on research initiatives and have better data driven understanding of player dynamics, we will in 2022 continue the work to increase our capacity to effectively engage better and faster with detected customers. Besides additional self-control tools and optimised customer communication, will we launch automated interventions for lower risk groups." concludes Tjrnstrm.

During the year, Kindred continued to engage with researchers to further build on the approach to accurately identify markers of gambling harm and improve on existing measures to help customers stay in control of their gambling. The most prominent result of 2021, was a peer-reviewed research paperlooking into gambling harm markers that can be identified through online behavioural tracking.

About our journey towards zero

Kindred Group is committed to transform gambling by being a trusted source of entertainment that contributes positively to society. Therefore, Kindred has set an ambition to reach zero per cent revenue from harmful gambling by 2023 and to report this metric on a quarterly basis. This is done to increase transparency, to support a fact-based dialogue about harmful gambling, and to raise awareness of the Group's sustainability work. To read more, visit: http://www.kindredgroup.com/zero.

For more information, contact:

Maria Angell Dupont, External Communications Manager, Kindred Group[emailprotected] +46 72 165 15 17

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/kindred-group/r/kindred-s-revenue-from-harmful-gambling-4-0-per-cent-in-the-fourth-quarter,c3499673

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Online gambling: What sports betting apps are available in New York? – SILive.com

Posted: at 7:21 am

Online sports betting has arrived in New York.

The Empire State approved sports gambling late last year and it went live in New York on Jan. 8, 2022.

Want to bet on the Super Bowl?

Check out these betting sites.

The early results have been nothing short of spectacular as New York set a record for the amount bet on sports, and tax revenues, too, in the very first month after its rollout.

According to a report on Syracuse.com, bettors placed more than $1.6 billion in wagers on the outcomes of games and related propositions, according to the State Gaming Commission. That beat the old record handle of $1.3 billion set by New Jersey bettors in October.

Thats not all. The state earned $57.6 million in taxes on the revenues earned by sports betting operators in January. Thats more than double the previous record set by Pennsylvania in November. New Yorks tax rate on sports betting revenues is 51%, while Pennsylvania has the second highest rate at 36%.

Right now six companies betting apps are available in New York. They are Draft Kings, FanDuel, BetRivers, BetMGM, Caesars and PointsBet.

And its not too late to open an account and most all of them are giving special incentives to sign up, like cash back, free bets and ridiculous cant-lose odds.

These mobile version apps allows bettors to place wagers via their smartphones or other devices, all in the comfort of their homes.

No longer will Staten Islanders or other New Yorkers have to camp out in a neighboring state to place bets.

State residents can bet on professional and college sports. The NFL, college football and the NBA usually draw the most action.

However, wagers on in-state college teams, such as St. Johns, Syracuse and Wagner College and other schools, are still prohibited for both home and road games even if played in another state.

Note: Online/mobile sports betting is now legal in New York state, but wagers on in-state college teams, such as St. Johns and Wagner College, are still prohibited for both home and road games even if played in another state.

If you or a loved one has questions or needs to talk to a professional about gambling, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit 1800gambler.net for more information.

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Opinion | What’s New for This Super Bowl? The NFL’s Full Embrace of Gambling. – The New York Times

Posted: at 7:21 am

Casino technologists and designers have become expert in the art of manipulation (something we also see in grocery store layouts). By now, most of us know the tricks casinos use to compel people to wager more. No windows, no clocks, a labyrinthine floor layout that keeps people stuck inside, sitting and playing. Slot machines have irresistible sounds and colors, and some give payouts that arent even as big as the bet but still activate the I won portion of the brain.

Wagering apps, whether for sports or casino bets, use all those tricks and add a whole new set developed to keep people engaged with social media on their phones by engaging our desires for instant gratification. There is a race to the bottom of the brain stem, Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, said in a 2017 TED Talk. Liraz Margalit, a digital psychologist in Tel Aviv, told me that mobile app makers tone down the colors and sounds for first-time gamblers so as not to scare them off. App designers have taken research done to help people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and applied it to gamblers, she says.

A 2018 article in Gaming Law Review explains that casinos, both physical and virtual, try to induce a state of attenuated thought, or dissociation, by eliminating transactional frictions. The bet again function saves a players previous bet size and payline choices, while electronic funds transfer allows them to keep playing when their original stake runs out. Anything that can be done to break people out of their trance, then, is for the better. One of the most effective policy changes in terms of reducing gambling expenditure was the introduction of smoking bans that caused gamblers to take a break and leave the gambling venue to smoke, the authors wrote.

I read transcripts of recent conference calls in which gambling executives described their strategies to Wall Street analysts. As you can imagine, finding ways to limit wagering was not high on their list of priorities. Instead most of the talk was about the costly inducements that the companies are offering to attract new players, hoping to get them to stay. The terms of art are TOD and LTV: time on device and lifetime value.

Here are two remarks:

Jason K. Park, chief financial officer of DraftKings: This is a product that lends itself to a little bit of egging and elbowing and ribbing and talking trash with your friends or people that are in your network. And to have all of that embedded within your favorite app I think will drive retention for sure but also increase levels of play in monetization, new sport introduction, all of that.

Richard Schwartz, chief executive officer of Rush Street Interactive: When youre betting on things like sports and casino, you want to be able to enter the app and do a very quick face ID. Get in there, play, have it available on your phone very easily and accessible. He added that there are limited markets where we have some friction that were very eager to get rid of.

Theres nothing illegal about any of this, of course, but gambling executives understandable desire to add customers and get them to spend more takes on a different complexion when you consider that some customers have a hard time saying no and may be gambling with money they cannot afford to lose.

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Opinion | What's New for This Super Bowl? The NFL's Full Embrace of Gambling. - The New York Times

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5 senior police officers demoted for allowing gambling operations – The Thaiger

Posted: at 7:21 am

Five police officers were demoted for turning a blind eye to allow gambling venues to operate in their areas of jurisdiction. Those officers were from Khu Kot Police Station in Pathum Thani and Bang Sao Thong Police Station in Samut Prakan, where officers busted two large gambling operations and made dozens of arrests. The officers were demoted due to their recklessness and ordered to transfer to the positions at the Provincial Police Region 1.

On Saturday, the Commissioner of Provincial Police Region 1, Jiraphat Phumjit, shared that there were two gambling venues raided Pathum Thani and Samut Prakan. More than 80 alleged gamblers were arrested. Officers also seized gambling equipment and more than 160,000 baht. Besides breaking the gambling law, the case also violates Covid-19 prevention measures that prohibit large gatherings.

In a further investigation, authorities found that a number of senior officers acted recklessly and allowed the venues to operate. The five demoted officers include a superintendent, deputy superintendent, suppression inspector, and investigation inspector. Those will be moved to work closely under the watch of superior officers at the Provincial Police Region 1 until further notice.

SOURCES: Sanook | Khaosod

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5 senior police officers demoted for allowing gambling operations - The Thaiger

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Consultants named in ghost candidate probe had role in gambling petition – Tampa Bay Times

Posted: at 7:21 am

TALLAHASSEE The political consultants who created the funding structure for the 2020 ghost candidate scandal are now in the midst of another election controversy over possibly thousands of faked signatures submitted by the campaign that is trying to bring a casino to Jacksonville.

Tallahassee-based political consultants Abigail MacIver, Dan Newman and Jeff Pitts, who run Canopy Partners, formed a subsidiary called Game Day Strategies with the goal of getting enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the 2022 November ballot, according to records released Tuesday by investigators for the Miami-Dade County State Attorneys office who are looking into the ghost candidate case.

MacIver and Newman worked with Tallahassee pollster and political consultant Ryan Tyson, and the effort was financed by casino giant Las Vegas Sands through a political committee named Florida Voters in Charge, documents show.

By Tuesdays deadline for verifying petitions, the casino amendment effort appears to have fallen short. The group had submitted only 814,212 qualified petitions by the 5 p.m. deadline, according to the Florida Division of Elections. That was 77,297 fewer than the 891,509 needed for the casino amendment to be placed on the November ballot.

The goal of the petition drive was to capitalize on an opportunity created by the Seminole Tribes agreement with the state, known as a gaming compact, that opened the door for tribe-controlled sports betting in Florida, as well as the possibility of a Las Vegas-style casino not operated by the Seminole Tribe to be built in North Florida if voters approved it through a constitutional amendment.

While the petition campaign may have failed, an investigation into the signature-gathering process has begun.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, at the urging of local state attorneys and the statewide prosecutor, has been working with investigators in several counties since January, said Gretl Plessinger, Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesperson.

For two months, supervisors of elections across the state have complained that more than half of the signatures submitted by Florida Voters in Charge did not match with voter files, included names of dead people and that the suspect and hard-to-verify petitions were consuming their time and resources.

Secretary of State Laurel Lee in December urged Attorney General Ashley Moody to investigate.

No one has been charged with any wrongdoing, but supervisors and the committees opponents say they suspect that organizers for Florida Voters in Charge have paid petition gatherers by the signature, rather than by the hour. The Legislature made paying by the signature illegal in 2019, making violators guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. It also requires committees to submit every petition that is collected within 30 days after the elector signs the form or be liable for fees.

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Neither Tyson, MacIver, Pitts nor Newman responded to requests for comment. None have been charged with a crime.

Tyson and MacIver have been questioned by investigators for the Miami-Dade public corruption case, according to documents obtained by the Miami Herald.

What role the consultants MacIver, Newman, Pitts and Tyson played in the petition-gathering process for Sands casino initiative had been kept secret.

According to documents filed in Delaware, Game Day Strategies is a 501(c)(4) organization formed in June 2021. The nonprofit dark money organization is allowed by federal law to shield its donors and affiliations from disclosure.

But the political committee that hired them, Florida Voters in Charge, is required to disclose its contributions and expenditures. As of Dec. 31, Florida Voters in Charge had collected $50 million from Las Vegas Sands, and $45 million went to Game Day Strategies.

The casino company and its late owner, Sheldon Adelson, had long tried to bring a casino to Florida. His widow, Miriam Adelson, was ready to continue that quest. Within weeks of the legislative approval of the gambling compact last year, the consultants started lining up support and vendors for a petition drive and drafted an amendment that asked voters to authorize a casino at parimutuel facilities located 130 miles outside of the Seminole Tribes Florida facilities.

As of Dec. 31, Sands and supporters of Florida Voters in Charge had spent more than $51 million hiring petition gatherers to get the measure to the November 2022 ballot.

Sarah Bascom, spokesperson for Florida Voters in Charge, would not speak about the campaigns strategy and would not address questions related to Game Day Strategies.

The company does not have a deep public records trail in Florida, but information has emerged about its parent company, Canopy Partners.

MacIver and Pitts had previously worked with other political operatives, including former Tyson partner Alex Alvarado.

Alvarado is under investigation by the Miami-Dade County state attorney for his involvement with former state Sen. Frank Artiles, who is facing three third-degree felony charges related to campaign-finance violations in the ghost candidate scheme to siphon votes away from three state Senate Democratic candidates in the 2020 elections. Artiles has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel show the role MacIver, Newman and Pitts played in a dark-money group that funded the advertising campaign for the ghost candidate scheme.

Tyson, a Republican political consultant and pollster, was a former vice president of political operations at Associated Industries of Florida., has conducted polling for Gov. Ron DeSantis and also worked closely with Florida Power & Light.

Tysons nonprofit has raised money from a number of large donors whose identities are not disclosed and made contributions to several politically active organizations, including Grow United the committee used by Canopy Partners to fund the ghost candidate advertising and other entities used by MacIver, Newman and Pitts, according to the documents.

Court documents obtained by the Miami Herald, as part of the Miami-Dade County investigation also show that Tysons nonprofit committee paid Artiles $125,000 for research, and paid Grow United $1.2 million.

Newman, a Democratic political consultant working with MacIver on Game Day Strategies, also previously worked for Sands lobbyist Nick Iarossi.

John Sowinski, an Orlando-based consultant who has worked on dozens of petition drives, said that while time was not on the side of Sands effort, it appears there was an attempt to overcome it by spending big on petition gatherers.

He said that traditionally vendors who hire petition gathering firms strive to have a 60-70 percent validity rate, but the casino petition was coming in with more than half of the petitions rejected, for various reasons.

Elections supervisors told the Times/Herald that there were batches of hundreds with just a small fraction acceptable.

We are rejecting about 60 percent to 62 percent of the casino petitions, said Wendy Link, supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County.

She said the county had to hire an enormous number of temporary staff at premium rates, to complete the verification of the petitions by the Tuesday deadline. By state law, any petitions received 30 days prior to the deadline must be validated by Feb. 1.

Because every fraudulent petition takes an estimated seven minutes to review, while the legitimate ones take a minute, it is costing her staff time and taxpayers money, Link said. This is killing our budget.

Meanwhile, Florida Voters in Charge filed an emergency motion in Leon County Circuit Court late Monday, asking the court to stop the secretary of state from certifying the information and declaring a new state law regulating petition gathering unlawful. Judge John C. Cooper held a hearing late Tuesday and denied the injunction.

The Sands-backed committee argues that elections officials have deemed more than 130,000 signatures invalid without offering the petition companies an opportunity to challenge the decisions or fix the signatures in question.

Bascom, the spokesperson for Florida Voters in Charge, said the 2019 changes in state law dramatically increased the cost to run the campaign and made it more difficult for political committees to validate the accuracy of their subcontractors.

She said the committee has gathered information and will gladly provide it to anyone investigating the signature gatherers and allegations of fraud.

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Consultants named in ghost candidate probe had role in gambling petition - Tampa Bay Times

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Edinburgh to Glasgow march calls for end to gambling involvement in Scottish football – The Scotsman

Posted: at 7:21 am

More than 40 people affected by gambling, including recovering addicts and their families, are to take part in the 60-mile march, between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which will end at the national stadium, Hampden Park in Glasgow.

The event is being staged by The Big Step, an organisation set up by a former gambling addict which now wants to see the industrys involvement with football ended across the UK.

The online betting site Dafabet is the current Celtic shirt sponsor, while Old Firm rivals Rangers has the logo of the 32Red online casino firm on its shirts.

The marchers will visit both clubs when in Glasgow on February 13, before finishing their march at Hampden stadium.

The walk, which starts on February 11, will also see campaigners visit a number of other clubs, meet their representatives and also with some elected politicians.

Starting in Edinburgh, marchers will visit both Hibernian FC and city rivals Hearts, before heading on to other clubs including Livingston, Motherwell, and Hamilton Academical.

Kelly Field, one of those who will be taking part, said her online gambling addiction was fuelled by a relentless barrage of advertising.

She said: At my worst, I wasnt eating or drinking properly I felt suicidal at times and would gamble in the bathroom in secret.

Explaining why she was taking part in her first march, she added: Advertising and sponsorship, in football and elsewhere, makes people think that gambling is totally normal and safe, when the reality is very different.

Gambling kills and football must stop promoting it. I know of people who have taken their own life when they couldnt see any other way out.

James Grimes, who founded The Big Step after being addicted to gambling for 12 years, said the organisations latest event comes as we stand at a crucial moment.

The UK Government is reviewing the 2005 Gambling Act, with some rumours suggesting this could see betting firms banned from shirt sponsorship in the English Premier League.

But The Big Step wants ministers to go further than this and end the promotion of gambling across all levels of football within the UK.

Mr Grimes said: Decision-makers must put the health of young fans first and end all gambling ads in football.

If they dont, we encourage every club and governing body in Scotland including the ones we are visiting on this walk to be brave and to ban gambling sponsorship and advertising before the government makes the decision for them.

He added: We applaud Scottish footballs recent move away from gambling sponsorship of competitions, but much more must be done. This is a unique chance to be on the right side of history and we hope fans will help their club make this decision.

The UK Government received more than 16,000 responses to its call for evidence as part of the review of the Gambling Act, with a White Paper setting out the findings and proposals from this expected to be published in the coming months.

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Edinburgh to Glasgow march calls for end to gambling involvement in Scottish football - The Scotsman

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