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Posted At : October 29, 2008 09:50 AM | Posted By : D McKee
Related Categories:
Taxes,Tribal,Election
Ian Sutton, over at GamingFloor.com spotted this, probably cobbled together on the quick, in the wake of CBS News' sloppily done piece on Sen. John McCain's popularity within the casino industry:
OK, the McCain+Paris Hilton+Britney Spears linkage is an amusing bit of payback for the famous "celebrity" spot. The rest of the ad is somewhere between disingenuous and deceptive. "More casinos"? That's a state-level issue, one that never shows up on presidential radar even from a distance. This is a stupid scare tactic that you'd have to be mighty gullible to buy.
"A million in campaign cash"? Try $951K at most. And the $133K donated to Sen. Barack Obama is somewhat more than chicken feed, too.
It might be possible to make a tenuous case that a President McCain could (help) enable more tribal casinos -- he's received $62,950 from the Mashantucket Pequots and two other tribes -- but the ad's glib McCain=Vegas equation forfeits that line of argument. Of course, the question of why donations from casinos are inherently more sinister than those from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, military contractors, oil companies, pharmaceutical firms, tobacco growers, HMOs, etc., is simply begged.
That '527' ad, though, is downright subtle when compared to this ham-fisted ploy, complete with eerie sound effects. Oooh, those spooooooky casinos! They're coming to get us!!!
If you're going to try and make hay of McCain's relationship with the casino industry, shouldn't you at least derive a metaphor, however hackneyed it may be? (Acoustic guitars should be banned from all Democratic Party and left-leaning ads, by the way.)
When you consider that Bill Clinton's administration flirted with a federal gaming tax and the Bush the Second floated the notion of using casinos to collect delinquent child support, it's only common sense that the casino industry would like to have the next president's ear. And since when did it have to forfeit its First Amendment rights to support the candidates of its choosing?
Besides, the GOP prospects already being touted for 2012 -- Mike Huckabee, and governors Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal -- are anti-gambling across the board. (Huckabee's proposed tax policy would be downright punitive to casinos and their suppliers.) Small wonder that casino CEOs want McCain to succeed.
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"McCain's largest gaming fundraiser has been MGM Mirage Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Lanni, who has collected at least $500,000 for the campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, the Web site operated by the Center for Responsive Politics. Wynn Resorts Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn has raised between $250,000 and $500,000 for McCain. Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson and company President Bill Weidner have each raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for McCain."