May 19, 2004
ONE DOES SO LOVE INTERNECINE WARFARE:
Daley rips governor on casino (FRAN SPIELMAN, May 19, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)
The Land of Lincoln is already the "Land of Gambling," Mayor Daley said Tuesday, mocking Gov. Blagojevich's core argument for saying "no dice" to a Chicago casino."He's against gambling. [He said] the state of Illinois doesn't want to be the state of Nevada.... But he's doing that outside Chicago. The Land of Lincoln outside Chicago has become the Land of Gambling," Daley said. [...]
"A megacasino in the city of Chicago, irrespective of who owns it, fundamentally changes the landscape of gaming in our state," the governor said. "That, coupled with other things, would frankly ... turn the Land of Lincoln into the land of Wayne Newton. I'm just not going to be the governor who presides over something like that." [...]
Before flying off to Paris last week, Daley took the wraps off his plan for a downtown city-owned casino to boost conventions and tourism, take the pressure off property taxes and generate a pot of gold for local government. The following day -- before City Hall had a chance to make a formal presentation -- Blagojevich shot it down.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2004 12:17 PM
The democrat party will eventually eat itself - the most bloated oroborous you ever did see...
Posted by: M. Murcek at May 19, 2004 2:39 PMI've had direct experience with Bullhead City, Arizona (with Laughlin, Nevada just across the river), and my East Coast spies tell me what happened to Atlantic City.
Casinos act as a major money siphon from the surrounding area, including the "downtowns" they are expected to revitalize. Why stay at a regular motel when you can get a room in a casino hotel at half the price? Whay eat at local restaurants when the casinos have all-you-can-eat buffets for less than $5? Anyone have two coins to rub together? Just run over to the casino, stick 'em in the slots, and YOU MIGHT GET RICH!
Then come the "Casino Creeps", those riff-raff who come to the casino town to get rich in the glamorous world of the casinos. A lot of them never make it in (or get used up and dumped off by the casinos -- after all, there's always more suckers coming in every day) and wind up homeless or into petty crime on the streets to survive.
With Vegas, Stateline, or a lot of the Indian Casinos, the problem isn't that bad -- they're "ghettoized" out in the middle of nowhere where it takes some effort to get to them, and Vegas is also a general resort/convention town as well. The first limits the damage (because there's not much in the surrounding area), and the second allows some fallback position for the economy.
I saw all of this first-hand when my parents retired to Bullhead City back in 1987 and I visited them in subsequent years. They soon found out that living in a Nevada border town is a lot different than just visiting it (when you have money for the casinos), but by then they were committed, ran through their money, and couldn't move away. They reacted to this by being consumed with bitterness which they then shared with everybody.
Posted by: Ken at May 19, 2004 4:10 PM