Be afraid; Be very afraid

Joe Bruno’s characterization of the New York Racing Association’s briefing of horsemen and employees this week concerning ramifications of a Feb. 14 shutdown as “scare tactics” is evidence of something deeply troubling about the senate majority leader. Obviously, he is delusional. Or, worse, he is an undercover operative of Capital Play, the Australian client of his lobbyist son and still hovering like a stalking kangaroo in the Albany shadows.

Generally speaking, pending unemployment is something of which the people – in this case victims of Bruno -- wish to be made aware of in advance and NYRA’s employees were genuinely frightened long before being notified officially that their jobs may not exist beyond next week. The increasingly sinister process, with Bruno the obstructionist puppet master, is the source of their concern – fear, if you will.

The delay in forging an agreement on the racing franchise has gone beyond the point at which it can be written off as typical New York political dysfunction. There is the sense of a hidden agenda that in the end will benefit no New Yorker not named Bruno.

Of late, there has been a surge of misinformation, the predictable source of which is Bruno, who as recently as Thursday claimed an agreement is at hand, an announcement imminent while others involved – NYRA, the assembly leader and the governor – are on an entirely different page, one that Bruno has yet to read. This is, of course, openly dishonest, which is fast becoming Bruno’s trademark.

The process is no longer a negotiation, it is a charade. Bruno’s hidden agenda is becoming transparent. He is carrying the water for Capital Play and his son. The Darth Vader of racing will force a confrontation that results the shutdown of racing next week, sends 1,300 people with families unnecessarily into unemployment without health insurance, shatters lives, imperils NYRA’s pensioners, costs owners and horsemen millions of dollars, leaves economic entrails along Broadway in Saratoga Springs and quite possibly ends racing in New York for years if not forever while the courts decide the question of land ownership – a battle that the state is neither anxious to join nor certain of winning.

Those involved in racing here, people whose lives are being treated as inconsequential by the Senate Majority Leader, have legitimate reason for fear. Great fear.

Memo to the Breeders’ Cup:

What was the rush?

You might have waited until Santa Anita actually ran an entire week or so of racing without having to cancel a card before announcing that it has been chosen as the site for the 2009 races. If we’re lucky, those races will eventually be run on real dirt.