A future Harrah's employee?

Harrah's Entertainment is poking its snout into the prospect of obtaining a management contract at bankrupt Twin River Casino, a dog track with VLTs in Rhode Island. The paraphrase of the explanation given by Harrah's senior veep Jan Jones seems fairly counterintuitive: "the state might be motivated now to give the company a shot because Massachusetts was on the brink of legalizing casinos."

OK, so Massachusetts is likely to legalize casinos, which makes this the perfect time to expand into ... Rhode Island? With its 60% tax rate? The part of Jones' explanation that makes more sense is that Harrah's would be able to tap into its New England base of Total Rewards players much closer to home (the nearest Harrah's outposts being Chester, Pa., and Atlantic City).

This could all be moot if the R.I. Lege scuppers a gubernatorial compromise that would can the dog racing and keep the casino open 'round the clock. Greyhound racing is a sport that really needs to be put out to pasture. Besides, it's only in place at Twin River because of a Byzantine legislative arrangement that Steve Friess rightly calls "a very weird deal," much of which involves propping up the dog-race union. (I never knew there was such a thing, but there is.)

So it's a win-win, right? A corporate savior for Twin Rivers and no more suffering doggies, yes? Well ... no, not if you're a nearby homeowner like Hal Perry, whose semi-rural lifestyle has been impinged upon by creeping incrementalism at Twin Rivers. Rather than lower the usurious tax rate, the state (which is seriously hooked on VLT revenue) simply keeps moving the goal posts -- longer hours, more machines.

Here comes Harrah's and, if you're a Twin Rivers neighbor worried about your property value, the noises are ominous indeed. As Jones tells Friess, "you couldn’t build a hotel right now ... So all of this is a process. But it's the beginning of the process and the point is that it's an excellent opportunity."

"Right now ... process ... beginning." In other words, Mr. Perry: Sell! Sell now! Get out before Harrah's drives you out.

Harrah's wins one. Sort of by default, but a win is a win. Dissident bondholders S. Blake Murchison and Willis Shaw had a shyster for an attorney. Case dismissed. Clearly, their due diligence with regard to lawyers was even worse than that they displayed as investors.

Gunshot? What gunshot? Although the Las Vegas Hilton was able to keep an on-property suicide out of the local papers, the news eventually surfaced via the Louisville Courier-Journal.